Are intentionally single women selfish for caring more about their own development than their potential roles as wives and mothers? Not according to the future as seen in Star Trek.
Star Trek: The meaning of life in the 24th century
I’m a Star Trek fan. It’s no surprise, as my dad’s been a fan of the series since the very first episode aired. One of my earliest memories was of watching an episode of Star Trek: The Original Series on TV. I didn’t even know what was going on in the show, because I couldn’t talk yet.
Growing up in the ’80s and ’90s, I watched a lot of The Next Generation. Captain Picard, fictional though he is, is still one of my heroes. As I got older, I began to appreciate the show’s messages about humanity’s future.
Something that always seemed to make sense to me was the fact that, in the 24th century, no one used money. Captain Picard explains this in the film First Contact by saying, “The acquisition of wealth is no longer the driving force in our lives. We work to better ourselves and humanity.”
Though the show’s creator, Gene Roddenberry, didn’t write this line, it sums up his beliefs pretty well. In his future, humans had continued to evolve socially and morally. We no longer gave into our baser, beast-like urges. Our social development had instead caught up with our biological evolution and our technological advancement. He believed we would outgrow our old customs that had served our ancestors, and create a world where “there will be no hunger, there will be no greed, and all the children will know how to read.”
Spinsters and Star Trek
It’s a lovely vision, but how does it connect to the solo lifestyle? Well, it’s not that we singles have nothing better to do than sit at home alone and watch Star Trek reruns on Netflix, if that’s what you were thinking. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. It’s that the reasons women are staying single longer line up with the idyllic future Gene Roddenberry imagined.
Marrying for Survival
Recently I shared an article on The American Spinster’s Facebook page about the dropping marriage rate among Chinese adults. The views expressed in the article, both by the women and their parents, are very similar to those of their American counterparts. Essentially, the interviewees said that urban women are focusing on their personal development instead of immediately diving into the baby-producing traditional lifestyles their parents had.
“It’s not that successful women don’t want to marry, it’s that making money makes us pickier,” says the successfully employed Dai Xuan. “Before, in China, you married to survive. Now I’m living well by myself, so I have higher expectations in marriage.”
The often-scapegoated Millennials (now in or approaching our 30s) are also moving away from marriage for survival. Now that employers can’t legally discriminate against women, we can earn our own livings. We’re marrying later—if at all. And when we do marry, it’s less frequently due to financial needs than it was for previous generations of women.
Obviously that’s a broad statement which doesn’t apply to everyone. Discrimination still exists, and many women in the U.S. are still in cultural and financial situations that lead them to marry to survive. I’m not saying we’ve moved past it. But we are moving past it.
Focusing on Ourselves
One of the common criticisms intentionally single women face is (you guessed it) that we’re selfish. All we care about is money and partying. Our lives are examples of pure hedonism. Etc., etc.
Despite the fact that most single women living alone actually spend most of their waking hours working (living alone is expensive, after all), this view is flawed for another reason. It equates focusing on oneself with selfishness and depravity. And while prioritizing your own wants over the needs of others is often selfish, prioritizing your needs over the wants of others is not. No matter how much your mother wants her some grandbabies, your needs are still more important.
Why? Because Star Trek says so.
Unlike the classic (and deeply meaningful) scene in Rocky, where Rocky tries to explain that he and his new girlfriend Adrienne “fill gaps” in each other, in Star Trek‘s couples aren’t two broken individuals coming together to create a whole. They’re two whole people coming together to create a couple. Pairing up is never a means of salvation (at least among Federation characters) like it is in so much of 20th and 21st century media.
But in order to have two whole people to start with, you have to have a society that encourages personal growth and self improvement. Captain Picard says that in the 24th century, we work to develop ourselves. Humans just 300 years from now will live their lives with the sole purpose of reaching their fullest potential.
Staying Single
When women (and men) elect to remain single and focus on themselves, the result is not unhampered debauchery. It’s a generation of more conscious and mindful individuals.
This is even true in subcultures that still see marriage as the ultimate goal. If you go to any Christian single woman’s corner of the internet, you’ll find pins, posts, and videos about becoming a stronger, more capable woman while you wait for your spouse to arrive in your life. That’s huge. The idea that the best way to spend one’s time as a single Christian woman is not to make yourself meeker and more malleable, but stronger and more capable is an incredible change (and toward the better, in my opinion).
We are moving toward Gene Roddenberry’s ideal of a future where every human being is whole and always striving to learn more; where we work every day to better ourselves. This kind of world has no room for meaningless customs that no longer serve us. It certainly has no room for institutions that exist only as a means of survival. If marriage is going to continue to exist (and Star Trek seems to think it will), it has to become a partnership between two whole people who don’t need one another’s resources, but want one another’s company.
Star Ship Captains Fly Solo, Too
It’s interesting to me how many of the main characters on Star Trek are single. Captains Kirk, Picard, Janeway, and Archer are all unmarried*. Many members of the bridge crews also remain single throughout the series. When we do see marriages among the Federation crew, such as that between Lt. O’Brien and Professor Ishikawa, they’re never formed out of necessity or for emotional healing.
This is excepting one-episode instances, such as The Paradise Syndrome, in which Kirk loses his memory, becomes married and widowed, and never mentions it again.
If you’re single, just remember: You’re in good company. If the captains of the U.S.S. Enterprise (and Voyager), living in a Utopian future, can focus on their careers without being sad and shallow, so can you.
You’ve got one life, and there’s nothing wrong with using it to develop your own fullest potential.
If you want to find out how you can reach your full potential at work, check out 3 Ways to Rock Your Career as a Single Woman.
