I often joke (the way you do about things that aren’t jokes at all but absolutely true) the two belief systems I grew up within were Judaism and, ever so slightly beneath that, Star Trek. 

I say two; really, I experienced them as a continuum. Not because Star Trek’s creator Gene Roddenberry was Jewish, or even because the symbolism of the Vulcan salute Leonard Nimoy created for his character, Mr Spock, was drawn from having seen the shape of the Hebrew letter shin formed with the hand as part of an orthodox service when he was a child. It was because Star Trek – while not literally, presently real – was about potential. Here was an imagined version of humanity in which we had survived the worst things about ourselves. We had become a force in the universe not for self-destruction but for exploration, outward and inward. We were motivated not by personal gain but by personal betterment, connection, and curiosity. That was the agenda from which we boldly went where we hadn’t been before. It was not a statement of who we were, but who we had it in us to be… Read the full article for free on my Substack