How Star Trek Primed Me for Rational Philosophy

Star Trek gave my younger self a push in the right direction, and I owe much of who I am today to its influence.

I have always been fascinated by the world around me. From a young age, I was intrigued by a wide array of subjects, from astronomy to architecture, dinosaurs to diesel engines—things that other children dismissed and berated as uncool, dull, or downright weird. I also grew to love science, which particularly put me at odds with the children I met from religious families, whose worldviews seemed to deny everything I loved about reality.

Likewise, many of the things my peers talked about, such as sports and reality TV, didn’t appeal to me at all. Unsurprisingly, this made me something of a pariah in my school years. Other children reacted to my interests and worldview with an anger I couldn’t understand. I kept to myself, enjoying my passions regardless of others’ opinions of them, and they called me self-absorbed and antisocial. Feeling alone in a world that didn’t understand me, I grew to resent the fact that society is so unaccommodating of curious, independent minds. I felt like I belonged in another world.

At the same time, I began to enjoy a TV franchise that embodied the spirit of curiosity I wanted to see in the people around me: Star Trek. It depicted a world where everyone was scientifically minded, kind, thoughtful, and motivated to improve themselves. 

But there was one thing in Star Trek that particularly appealed to me: The logical worldview of the Vulcans, represented in characters such as Spock, Tuvok, and T’Pol. As I became a teenager, Star Trek: Enterprise began airing, and that showed Vulcan society in greater detail than ever before. It was everything I wanted: A culture completely founded on the principle of logic.

The only problem was that Vulcans repressed all of their emotions. On the one hand, their society had no anger, hatred, or malice. But it also had no joy, love, or excitement. I knew I needed those things. I wanted something I thought couldn’t exist: a worldview built on logic, without giving up the emotions that give life its meaning.

For more than a decade, well into my twenties, I continued to struggle with this problem. The resentment and anger I felt towards most of the people I met, and to society at large, made me wonder if perhaps I should suppress my emotions and adopt a kind of Stoic philosophy. I got involved in the New Atheist movement, but although they advertised themselves as the antidote to religious irrationality, they didn’t offer an alternative philosophy that made sense to me. All I saw from them was the same ideas about how to live your life that I saw everywhere else, minus God.

I seemed doomed to go through life feeling like I was alone in a society I didn’t belong in. That was until a YouTube recommendation led me to watch a 1950s TV interview with a philosopher I’d never heard of before. She had an intense, slightly unnerving gaze and a thick Russian accent, but I decided to give her a chance. Her name was Ayn Rand.

When the interviewer opened by asking her to “capsulize” her philosophy, Rand described it as one based “on the concept that reality exists as an objective absolute. That man’s mind—reason—is his means of perceiving it. And that man needs a rational morality.” 

‘YES!’ I thought to myself. ‘Absolutely right.’ Then she went on to apply that principle to many different areas of life. She talked about limiting the role of government and getting it out of education. ‘YES!’ I thought. I had always felt stifled and restricted by government education as a child. She talked about emotions being the means by which you enjoy your rational values. ‘YES!’ I thought. She talked about a man’s own life being his highest value, and introduced me to the idea that selfishness is good. Suddenly, I was armed with the idea that I shouldn’t be guilty about living my life differently to everybody else.

That was a decade ago. Since then, I have applied Rand’s philosophy to every area of my life. It has taught me the value of hard work, the value of learning and self-development, and the value of true friendship. It has taught me how to build and maintain self-esteem without depending on others, and, at the same time, it has taught me how to build and experience a deeper bond of love with another human being than I ever thought possible. It has led me to a community of people who support and encourage the best in me, and it has led me to the most amazing wife I could ever have asked for.

Clearly, I owe a great deal to Ayn Rand. But I doubt I would ever have found her, or accepted her philosophy of consistent rationality, if not for Star Trek. It’s not perfect (what fiction is?), but it gave me what I needed when I was most in need of a push in the right direction, and I owe much of who I am today to its influence.