Wisdom (discernment; knowledge) from the Stars

As previously mentioned, the title of this blog comes from the motto of Starfleet Academy. Ex Astris, Scientia, literally, “From the Stars, knowledge.” It clearly grasps the nature of Starfleet’s exploratory raison d’etre, and speaks of the Academy’s role in service to that mission. Despite all the knowledge gained from books, lectures, drills, field tests and whatever else they do at the San Francisco-based campus, cadets ought to be propelled to the stars to gain the knowledge necessary to succeed not simply as Starfleet officers but as sentient life-forms in an Interstellar society.

On a personal note, the title for my blog is more fitting than I had realized. From 2009 to 2014, my life largely entailed graduate studies at the Toronto School of Theology, a consortium of seminaries attached to the University of Toronto. I certainly made time for the world of sci-fi fandom, but I couldn’t devote too much reflection to deeper philosophical and intellectual themes contained in these worlds since my focus was clearly elsewhere. When I finished my MA Thesis and graduated, I was able to give more attention to this whole world that existed outside the Church bubble, a world that from the foundation of the genre has been able to step out from humanity and our earth-bound home—out to the stars—and reflect on the meaning of human existence, social life, finitude, and yes, the meaning of God and of religious traditions and experiences.

This is not simply a quest for scientia, as in objective, factual or technical knowledge. It is a quest for sapientia, traditionally translated as wisdom or discernment, as in the ability and information with which to decide upon a just or virtuous course of action. Scientia—including its true cognate, science—very much supplies some of this information, but not all of it. Wisdom requires an account of human existence, social life, finitude, and yes, the meaning of God and of religious traditions and experiences: things that cannot fully be comprehended by objectivity or fact in the modern sense (as many a good scientist would readily admit). While the aptly-named Science Fiction genre often does not provide an account congruent with the Christian tradition (with some unspeakably profound and very intentional exceptions exemplified here and here), I hope that my training in Christian theology can make for some fresh and creative contributions to the interpretation of this genre.

So this is Ex Astris Sapientia, or Wisdom from the Stars. As I start out, there are two disciplines (“discipline” is also very much a part of Wisdom traditions) that I will follow. The first is the discipline of brevity or concision. Eons ago (early undergrad) I had a (now-deleted) blog that, to be charitable to my younger self, was rather long-winded. With this blog, I will seek to spend at most an hour writing each post, not counting later editing, re-reading and preparing for upload. I will also aim for each post to be about 600 words. This might mean that not all my thoughts are fully probed, and will surely mean that they aren’t all fleshed out in detail. It might mean that some posts will come in two- or multi-parters. It will also hopefully mean that neither your or I will ever have to file anything in the tl/dr (too long, didn’t read) folder, and most importantly that it’ll leave room for fleshing things out and discussing things in the comment section here or on Facebook. Provoking further discussion is a primary purpose of blogging.

It also means that I’ll be far more inclined to stick to my second discipline, namely regularity. If I’m just devoting an hour of my time to something I’m thinking about already, then I find it easier to just “get to it,” and get to it weekly. I’ll do my best to get to blogging and posting as early in the week as possible, maybe even first-thing Monday morning if I’m not doing something else. If employment or other occupation gets in the way of that, then I’ll figure something out.

And yes, I’ll always do the shameless plug thing and post the latest link to facebook and twitter (speaking of shameless plugs, follow me at @neug485 if you don’t already). If you have thoughts, questions, comments or outright criticism, please do comment on the fb or here.

Happy wisdom-seeking!