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   ooooo   ooooo  .oooooo.  oooooooooooo       HOE E'ZINE RELEASE #818
   `888'   `888' d8P'  `Y8b `888'     `8
    888     888 888      888 888          "Data's Decision and the Decadence
    888ooooo888 888      888 888oooo8     of the Modern (and Future) World"
    888     888 888      888 888    "                  by Rhea
    888     888 `88b    d88' 888       o               9/1/99
   o888o   o888o `Y8bood8P' o888ooooood8
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        When I was younger, my brother used to watch "Star-Trek: The Next
 Generation" a lot and sometimes I would watch it with him.  So my mind, the
 dazzling machine that it is, was able to identify the show the other night
 when I happened to come across it while aimlessly flipping channels.  I had
 just been thinking about how much I hated TV, and of course at the same time
 loving the hypocrisy of that thought.  (You see, at first, the incredible
 amount of hypocrisy I find in myself disgusted me, but recently I realized
 that if I let it bother me, I'd die of self-loathing.  And so now I just
 observe my hypocrisies with a mild amusement, bordering on apathy.  And now
 I'm just perfectly peachy-keen. Wee.)

        But that thought quickly disappeared as soon as I said to my dog,
 "Whoah, is that Star Trek?  All right!" and I immediately began wasting
 precious moments of my life watching the show.

        It was an episode where Data met his "mother" for the first time.  In
 this episode, there were many touching scenes where Data's mommy burst into
 heart-wrenching emotional monologues about the creation of Data, her love
 for her husband, and the "bad android" - Data's older brother- whom she had
 to destroy.  There was also some other thing going on at the time.. a planet
 was about to be destroyed and the Enterprise had to save it, or something.
 I didn't pay attention to that part - I never liked the technical parts to
 the show anyway.  They were more my brother's thing.  But anyway, Data's
 mother had something to do with saving the planet, and she and Data were
 down on the planet with their computers saving the day when something went
 wrong, and she and Data had to jump off a cliff to save themselves.  At the
 bottom of the jump, Mommy was unconscious on the ground, and Data rushed to
 her and saw-- (drum roll, please) wires poking out of her arm!  That's
 right!  Data's *mother* was an android, too!  She had fooled everyone!

        Data took her back to the Enterprise and fiddled around with her
 microchips and whatnot and found a programmed "message" in her, which he
 played.  It was from his father, saying that his mother (who had once been
 human) had been killed in an accident, and the father was so devastated that
 he quickly made an android that looked just like her and downloaded all the
 mother's thoughts and memories into the android's brain.  When the android
 woke up, she was exactly like the mother had been, and the father never
 told her anything about her technical reincarnation -- she believed she was
 still as human as can be!

        Data, after receiving the message, found himself faced with a
 terrible dilemma.  Once he revived his android mother, should he tell her
 about her true nature, or let her keep on believing she was a normal human?
 He consulted with all his star-trek friends, saying he wanted to do the
 "right thing" and make the right decision.  Finally, the episode peaked with
 the mother opening her eyes.  The moment had come.  I was sure what Data
 would do.

        And then, to my surprise, he lied to her!  He told her she had just
 hit her head and that she was fine now!  He didn't tell her the truth about
 herself!  And she went away, happy as can be, never suspecting that she was
 an android!

        I was outraged.  I still can't believe he chose that.  Data, the
 scientific unemotional android, should value truth above all else.  Sure,
 his mother was more comfortable not having to adjust to any shocking facts
 about herself, but that's simply no excuse for keeping the truth from her.
 Choosing comfort over truth is the lazy way out, and shouldn't a
 civilization so far advanced in the future have realized that by then?

        If *I* were an android, I would want to know.  It would be a shock at
 first, but soon after realizing that I still had all my emotions and
 memories and thoughts I would be ecstatic about having escaped death
 permanently.  And imagine all the new things I could do with access to my
 android brain - complicated math problems, etc.

        Data had absolutely no right to keep the truth from her.  Truth,
 knowledge, liberty -- these should be the things people strive to achieve
 throughout their lives.  Choosing comfort over these values is a terrible
 terrible thing to do, and it's a horrible tragedy that this is the choice
 most people in our world today make.  It should not be this way! Data should
 have known that!  He should have told her the truth!  Who cares if it would
 have made the episode much longer and if the commercials would have had to
 be cut-out to fit into the hour time-slot and if the show wouldn't have made
 any money at all without those disgusting commercials!  That's not
 important!  Money is not as important as truth!  Doesn't Data *know* that?

        I'm very disappointed, and I will never watch that show again.  I
 mean it.  It has turned out to be nothing but complete propaganda to control
 the numb-minded TV-watching comfortable middle-class citizens of the
 country.  "Be comfortable, people," says the show to all the unsuspecting
 brain-dead viewers, "Keep watching your Star-Trek!  Who cares about truth
 anyway... the word itself barely has meaning!  Comfort above all else.. what
 else is there?"

        (Meanwhile I'm sitting in my chair in front of the computer doing
 nothing at all, living an ordinary comfortable life of an angsty
 middle-class girl.  Hmm... Did I mention I was hypocritical? *sigh*)

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 [ (c) !LA HOE REVOLUCION PRESS!       HOE #818 - WRITTEN BY: RHEA - 9/1/99 ]
