Sunday, November 15, 2020

Conflicting identities and healing from identity crises


Of the watchlist, the episode that is most interesting for me from a mutliple identities point of view is The Family from the Next Generation. 

On the one hand, we learn more about the upbringing of Worf by human parents, and interesting topics for someone working with parents. It is becoming a more and more important question in the case of adoption how parents can ensure that their child, coming from a very different culture, can not only be supported in understanding the identity of their adoptive parents, but also their birth culture. This would have always been an important matter, but with a child rights approach it is coming to the firefront. In my home country, adoptive parents are generally white middle class people while the overwhelming majority of adoptable children are Roma. They even look different having usually darker skins, so their parents really need to pay attention, especially since our society generally rejects Roma people. Not an easy task, pretty much similar to the task of raising a child of a former enemy, the Klingons, whose birth identity is similary obvious at first sight. 

On the other hand, this is an episode that also depicts the struggle of Picard with his own identity, something he had taken for granted for a lifetime, after his assimilation into the Borg. This raises several questions about the solidity of one's identity, and also about healing after your basic beliefs have been shaken by life experiences. Probably it is more topical than it has ever been since the premier of the series, with so many people, believing themselves to be liberals and having spent a lifetime on figthing for individual rights, have been converted to an autocratic, dictatoric way of life. For these people, healing after leaving the Borg Cube of Covidworld will be a long and painful process, I think.

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