It is human nature-no matter the fall, we will find a way up again. It fell, but it picked itself up and it did better. Those truths were forged on Earth as it burned in the Eugenics Wars. Unity only endures when it gathers around principles and ideals rather than individuals, and there are few better than the guiding principles on which Starfleet is based.

It’s putting them back together again that’s hard. There is no shortage of dystopian vision, but breaking things is easy. Star Trek understands this better than perhaps any other science fiction. Everyone agrees which way is up, at the bottom of the barrel. People began to rediscover common ground when a traveler told a forgotten truth: better things are possible. Life went on even as society slipped into pieces. The news got scary, goods became scarce, but the long slow slide was hard to appreciate from the ground.

When the Burn came upon the galaxy, for most people it was a distant, incomprehensibly vast problem. Living through collapse is just living, in the end.

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