Dr. Soran reentering the Nexus / Star Trek: Generations / Paramount
In the 1994 film Star Trek: Generations, the first to feature the Next Gen crew, the main villain, Dr. Soran, through nefarious acts, attempts to regain access into the Nexus, an alternate reality that, as Guinan puts it, feels like being wrapped up in joy, where the goal is to make you as happy as possible, to make it so that you’d never want to leave.
Picard fails to stop Soran and gets trapped inside the Nexus. Despite the bliss he experiences, Guinan, or an echo of Guinan in the Nexus, convinces him that he must escape and try to stop Soran anew. First, though, he must find another captain, James T. Kirk, who was trapped inside the Nexus decades earlier, to help.
This takes some work. Kirk has many reasons for staying, like Picard. But Kirk makes up his mind to join Picard in stopping Soran because, among other things, “It isn’t real” – referring to the Nexus.
This got me thinking. What if it were real? Suppose we lived in such a universe where everyone got what they wanted, assuming no one wanted to hurt others. In other words, you’d live a perfect life - no regrets. Your happiness would be guaranteed.
On the surface it sounds wonderful, especially given our current reference frame. Life is full of unavoidable suffering and tragedies. It’s stressful and chaotic, much of the time. People often live with regrets. To err is human. So, the opportunity to erase all the pain or to do away with all our shortcomings sounds kinda nice, no? If there were a God, why not create such a world? Isn’t that the promise of Paradise?
Well, to me, there’s something absolutely dreadful about the Nexus. Think about it. Picture a world in which everything you’d ever want would happen. Want to have a dog or a cat? Want cake? Want sex? Want a family? Boy or girl? Sure. Anything you want! Whenever you want it!
Part of the problem is that there’s no randomness. Everything, because it’s what you want, is, more or less, up to you. To me, this feels boring. How long of this before I would want to hit the eject button or go crazy? Not too long, I suspect. It would be like getting stuck in a time loop, like Groundhog Day (1993) or the Stargate SG-1 episode “Window of Opportunity.” One of my favorite episodes from the franchise.
Sure, you could add some randomness into the equation. Let the Nexus choose at random if a girl rejects you or not, for example. To be fair, because it seems to be based, at least in part, on memories, there may already be some element of randomness in the Nexus.
Ok.
Another, bigger part of the problem, though, is that there’s no real struggle. Suffering is bad, by definition. But, man, does it make me more grateful for what I have, for when I don’t suffer. We get used to anything; that might be part of the human condition. Thus, living in perpetual joy may degrade our sense of gratitude. In a similar way, working hard for something, which entails the possibility of failure, the uncertainty of success, makes the reward that much richer. The reward represents more to us. It’s a bit cliché, but suffering allows us to understand the value of our joy.
You could also somehow add adversity to the Nexus. Hypothetically, if that would make you happy, it should do that. Make it rain, sometimes. Introduce people into the Nexus with motives that go against yours. Have some competition.
Ok. Better still.
But, ultimately, I think, the problem is that, in life, we are not the authors of our fate. The world doesn’t exist to please us. Our efforts matter. If we knew that, in the end, we’d be happy no matter what, I think most of us would probably not care much about what they choose to do since the consequences would be predetermined. The same applies to other people, who seek their own happiness; they’re not simply means to justify our ends. So how we treat them matters – for their sake.
When we love someone, say, we understand that they are free not to love us back, to reject us – and that makes it that much more meaningful when they do love us back. When we succeed, it is not because the world conspires to make it so, but because, for better or worse, we try and triumph under the circumstances; we are free to fail. We are free. And that’s what makes life worth living.
And if you added some element to the Nexus that made it so that your happiness would no longer be predetermined, then it would cease to be the Nexus. You’d be in the real world. If the Nexus represents a better world, you are actually in the Nexus! Congrats!
Think about this the next time you recall a painful moment.