I had a professor in a political science class tell me this past spring that we should not get ourselves caught in the "fallacy of presentism."

He went on to explain what he meant by this semi-complex and confusing term. As humans, we tend to get too caught up in the here and now. We think that the way things are now are the way they always have been and the way they always will be. We get so caught up in this "immediate now" -- presentism -- that we forget that the world around us is ever-changing, that things have not always been this way and will not always be this way, and that what we do has a very real impact on not only today, but far into the future as well.

If we look through the vast pages of history, we constantly see examples of this fallacy of presentism. We see this sense of pure arrogance from those who colonized from Europe to the governments of the United States and other Western nations of today. There seems to be this feeling out there among the vast majority of the power-holders as well as many others that we live in a time of unparalleled greatness and that the way things are now will continue into eternity.

Sure, we might have things such as global warming to deal with, but overall, we view things as fantastic. Reality, however, couldn't be more different.

The truth is we live in an era where the desire for unbridled profits -- in short, greed -- conquers all else. We live in a world where we have an unprecedented opportunity to do so much, yet we do so little. Billions suffer needlessly and millions die all over the world at the benefit of a small fraction of people, which as a U.S. citizen, I am a part of.

I could go on and on, citing uncountable examples of the inequalities, violence, greed, mistreatment and death in our world, but I don't believe there is any need. No matter the creed, I believe everyone knows that things aren't right and that we can -- and should -- do better.

Ultimately, history will be the judge of our short time on this planet. Whenever we get a glance into the past on Star Trek, it portrays today's society as abhorrent and maybe even a little barbaric, not unlike how we view society not even two centuries in our past.

But the real question here is how do we want to have ourselves portrayed in the vast chronicles of history? Do we want the humans of the future to see us as a society so filled with individualism, greed and violence that we virtually destroy ourselves, or do we want our time to be that when the human race actually starts to fulfill its potential and make real strides toward something better, something more human?

Personally, I prefer the latter.

Brian Meskimen is a columnist for Airlock Alpha writing out of Minnesota. He can be reached at bmeskimen@airlockalpha.com.

The Trek Within is a feature of Airlock Alpha and also available on Roddenberry.com, the official Web site for the Roddenberry family maintained by Eugene W. Roddenberry Jr. Visit Roddenberry.com to read The Trek Within as well as a bonus feature from Airlock Alpha site coordinator Michael Hinman every other week.

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