Personal Identity & Star Trek Pt. 1

Ok it’s been a while sense we covered this in class but I just forgot to post these two thoughts until now. 

            In the movie Star Trek: the Motion Picture, (the first Star Trek movie) the primary story wrestles with what gives us our sense of who we are.  But as is common in Star Trek, the exploration of the philosophy of personal identity is removed from the normal characters and placed on someone, or in this case something else.  By using this method it is easier to step back and get a sense of what is actually going on.

            In the movie, a damaged, old earth space probe, V-ger, had traveled to another planet populated entirely by machines.  The machines on the planet repaired the probe and upgraded its simple “learn all that is learnable” programing giving it a sense of existence and sent it back to earth.  On the way back it logged data in hopes that once it came back to earth “The Creator” could give it a sense of identity and purpose.  However, because of the reprograming, V-ger now thinks that only machines are alive and that people or “carbon based units” are not true life forms.  Upon arriving back at earth, it discovers that “The Creator’s” planet is infested with carbon based units.  The crew of the Enterprise then had to make V-ger understand that humans are “The Creator” before it tries to destroy earth’s inhabitants. 

            V-ger’s identity is closely tied into how it views facts of the universe and what it believes about “The Creator.”  I believe this is a good analogy for people.  We define ourselves by what we think we know, what we perceive, and what we believe.  Identity is not necessarily a physical property of our existence.  By projecting identity onto something not human, the movie helps the viewer to see around Bacon’s idol of the tribe and be more objective in examining the situation.  The movie itself arrives at a paradox, where we see the only way we can truly view personal identity is by trying to think and see past the idols (particularly the tribe); however the idols are part of what seemingly give personal identity.  In the end, V-ger is able to see past the preconceived notions to find out why it existed but once it did, it was not the same afterwards.  Everyone’s views and beliefs are different and those are a part of what makes us who we are.