Star Trek’s Minimalist Future

For a ship that spends so much time facing annihilation, the Enterprise-D looks like a remarkably comfortable place to live. Spacious quarters, soft lighting, a lounge overlooking the stars. Even the carpet looks reassuring.

Watch what its crew actually care about, though, and something rather lovely emerges. Their lives are full of interests, friendships and ambitions. Possessions rarely seem to be how they measure their success.

That, to me, is where Star Trek’s version of minimalism becomes interesting. Beyond the uncluttered rooms is a society learning to be satisfied with having enough. Once humanity stops treating the accumulation of things as life’s great objective, there is room for a different kind of wealth: knowledge, experience and understanding.

Picard puts it beautifully in Star Trek: First Contact:

“We work to better ourselves and the rest of humanity.”

It is an extraordinary thing to hear from someone commanding a vessel as impressive as the Enterprise. The technology is astonishing, but the purpose behind it is what makes that future so appealing.

The Next Generation tackles this directly in “The Neutral Zone”. Ralph Offenhouse, a businessman revived centuries after being cryogenically frozen, is desperate to recover his financial affairs. His fortune helped define his place in the world. Finding himself in a society that has moved beyond that way of thinking leaves him thoroughly lost.

Picard offers him another purpose: improving and enriching himself. I find that scene more interesting the older I get. Offenhouse’s confusion is understandable. Take away the measures of success someone has spent a lifetime following, and they have to work out what actually matters to them.

Of course, it helps enormously to have a replicator.

When food and many everyday goods can be produced on demand, our relationship with those things is bound to change. There is less reason to stockpile ordinary belongings when you can trust that what you need will be available. For Earth’s comfortable future to mean anything, that security has to come first. Choosing to live with less becomes a very different proposition when you are confident you will have enough tomorrow.

The technology also raises a question I love: if we could have so much so easily, what would still be worth striving for?

Star Trek’s answer gives us an entire reason to leave spacedock.

There are languages to learn, strange phenomena to investigate and civilisations whose assumptions might overturn everything we think we know. Knowledge becomes a form of wealth because it expands what people can understand and do. A discovery can help a whole community. Sharing it allows its value to grow.

And there is something wonderfully hopeful about the idea that people would still bother. Give them security, time and opportunity, and many will want to build something, solve a problem or find out what is over the next horizon.

You can see that curiosity in the quieter parts of life aboard the Enterprise. Riker plays jazz. Beverly Crusher directs plays. Data experiments with painting, music and poetry as he tries to understand the people around him. The time they spend on these things has value in itself. Even Data’s poetry readings, which occasionally require considerable patience from his audience, belong in that picture.

A future like that ought to leave room for being an enthusiastic amateur, too. You should be able to enjoy learning an instrument without becoming the finest musician in the quadrant. Otherwise, we have simply invented another exhausting way to compete. The freedom to explore an interest, make mistakes and carry on seems a much more generous ambition.

None of this stops physical objects from mattering deeply.

Think of Picard’s Ressikan flute. After the experience of “The Inner Light”, that small instrument carries his connection to a family, a lifetime and a vanished civilisation. Watching him hold it, you understand why he keeps it. Its meaning comes from what he has lived through.

That is a kind of attachment any of us can recognise. A photograph, an old book or a gift from someone we love can occupy very little space and still mean the world. Star Trek leaves plenty of room for that affection.

Deep Space Nine gives us another lovely example in “In the Cards”. Jake wants to get a Willie Mays baseball card for his father because he hopes it will cheer him up. The resulting adventure sends Jake and Nog through a wonderfully ridiculous series of favours and exchanges.

The card matters because Jake knows his dad. There is something very ordinary and very touching about that. Even in the twenty-fourth century, finding the right little gift for someone can say a great deal.

And yes, Quark would have several objections to this entire article.

Star Trek’s galaxy still contains trade, money and people who are extremely interested in making a profit. Its economic details can be inconsistent, and humanity’s ideals are regularly tested. The Ferengi alone should warn us against treating Picard’s outlook as a universal description of the future. It is an aspiration we see especially clearly in The Next Generation’s vision of humanity.

That aspiration is what stays with me. A life can be full of pleasure, comfort and cherished belongings while leaving the constant pursuit of more behind.

For us as Trek fans, there is a pleasing irony here. We can get very excited about collecting models of ships crewed by people who have largely moved beyond collecting things to demonstrate their success. I think we can allow ourselves a little affection for the Enterprise on the shelf.

What matters is having space in our lives for everything else the series encourages: curiosity, friendship, creativity and the willingness to understand someone different from ourselves.

Imagine being able to spend an afternoon learning something simply because it fascinates you, with no anxiety about whether it will earn its keep. Imagine that opportunity being ordinary.

That is a future I would love to see. I would even make peace with the beige carpet.