It's kind of hard to explain. But I'll try and, as long as you want to toss out questions, I'll try to answer better.
In a way, all the staff and all the higher phasers had that affect of superiority and 'sacred science' sort of thing. It just wasn't anywhere near as convincing. It was sort of stilted, at least from my point of view. I don't think many people believed literally that there was any mind reading going on. Just that it was probably best to pretend it was. After all, there was behavioral science, intense scrutiny and surveilance coupled with mock junkie wisdumb at work and so forth.
I don't think they flushed the utopian dream at all. I think they thought they were improving on it; tweaking, perfecting, making it more efficient and scalable. That, after all, is what Mel Sembler does. He builds shopping malls to replace home towns. These days it's come full circle. He's building multi use developments which are, for all the world, about as close as you can get to the living/commerce space design of all these old towns around here. Living upstairs and to the back, storefront at the street, the whole town walkable. Only thing missing is the hills and wild berries.
What do you think, S? I know you don't have the same frame of reference that I do. But nobody ever worshiped Mel Riddile or Dean Mistratta that I've ever heard of (well... uh, except maybe Dean's Boys getting on their knees. But that's a different sort of worship LOL)
I tried for years to live according to everyone else's morality.
I tried to live like everyone else, to be like everyone else.
I said the right things even when I felt and thought quite differently.
And the result is a catastrophe.
---Albert Camus
