Formalism, Fascism, and the Federation of Planets
Part 3: Kazakh independence & childhood charms
Welcome! If you haven’t yet, read Part 2: Brazen Babushkas & The Soviet Steppes
A little backstory here:
I’m part of this close and storied friend group called the Enclave. We go back almost 20 years at this point. Since the dorm days at Michigan, believe it or not, now living in all four corners.
Depicting the 14 of us, you’d have to display a big Block M surrounded by an interlinked chainmail of venn diagrams; some are engineers, some are doctors, some are creators, some are dads, some are travelers, some are Star Trek fans, and so forth.
It is our strength and our jangle, and my expatriate host in Kazakhstan is an OG of the latter 3 rings. That’ll matter later.
What’s with all the Star Trek references?
Because nowadays when you travel abroad, you can point your phone camera at a menu or sign in Cyrillic script—and GoogleTranslate magically turns it into English onscreen, mimicking the original font style and color.
I couldn’t help thinking about the next generation of this tech. What if you could just put on some glasses or contacts and look anywhere in your own language? Hear a translation in someone’s own voice via AI audio.
Because we’re living in this future where you can sit around a long table in a dim guest house in some remote steppe-valley village in Kazakhstan, and have an in-depth conversation about complex local politics and social philosophy—with a guy who speaks only Russian and Kazakh. Through your phone, sitting there next to your plate.
If you showed me a picture of our driver—craggy featured and winsome, looking 50-something but a grandfather and veteran of Soviet Afghanistan (1980s)—the voice I’d hear in my head would be Google’s friendly computer lady, talking woodenly about the dangers of formalism, and the need for civil society to wake up to the corruption in their government and get back to a constitutional system.
Her bland android voice describing a fledgling nation still reeling from soviet dominion and downfall, with all the right institutions in place but faltering on the brink between democracy and neofascism (sound familiar?)
What a time to be alive…
Formalism (n): Total focus on form over function. Making and/or enforcing rules for rules’ sake, often at the cost of meaning, connection, and development. (See also: Originalism; Fundamentalism)
ABCs of a Decent Education
Although none of it stuck, I did make a halfhearted attempt to learn the Russian alphabet—under the patient tutelage of my friend’s very precocious 6 y/o, who will one day make an excellent teacher if she follows her parents’ career footsteps.
But she may wind up taking a different career path entirely, inspired by watching Star Trek: The Next Generation, (her sacred daddy-daughter thing after the babies go to bed).
Connecting via TNG is a cinch for me, my own childhood being much soundtracked by that familiar theme song, that rich professorly voice of Captain Picard. Warped into galaxies of thoughtfulness and problemsolving play, science being cool, violence being last-resort and always sad.
Dang, I’m getting a little emotional just writing about it. 😭
Early on and without mercy, this gifted first-grader spotted me as a complete sucker for getting drawn into her make-believe sessions—whenever the opportunity presented itself. Who could say no? Playgrounds became away-missions, sticks became phasers, and her toddler sister was a seemingly hostile but actually just misunderstood alien creature…
Anyway, growing up with Star Trek: TNG is good for a kid, I have no doubt of that. Surely there are much louder and much worse role models for a bright little girl, than an empath commanding officer who helps people understand their reactions and inner humanity.
Before dinner one night, she was heads-down fervently drawing something…finally presenting a full-color headshot of herself in Starfleet uniform, labeled [sic sic]:
Counsler Deanna Troi’s Corters
Dutifully taped up on her bedroom door, adjacent to our own guest quarters.
Enchanting me to the point that I utterly neglected to take a picture of the thing until it was too late and the paper placard was swept away with other holy debris in the wild whirlwind of childhood.
And then suddenly our visit in Kazakhstan was over, and it was onward to Istanbul…