Synopsis: The USS Enterprise receives a distress call from the USS Lantree and discovers a mysterious aging disease.
In “Unnatural Selection” we see what happens when the conscious ego becomes inflated by identifying with god-like powers and believes that it can improve on nature.
In the act of responding to the distress call from the USS Lantree, the crew of the USS Enterprise, from the safety of the bridge, find all aboard the other vessel have died of old age, even though the crew was in perfect health only eight weeks before. The only clue is found in the last Captain’s Log from the Lantree which mentions a recent stop at the Darwin genetic research facility on Gagarin IV.
Captain Jean-Luc Picard orders the Enterprise to Gagarin IV to investigate, and finds that there too, all personnel of the research facility are dying of old age, except for the genetically enhanced children that were bred there. Lt. Commander Data is able to conclude that what occurred is that the First Officer of the Lantree had a cold, and when he arrived on the planet, the immune systems of the genetically enhanced children were so powerful, that they were able to change the genetic structure of the cause of the virus as well as all non-genetically enhanced humans that came in contact with them. Gagarin IV is quarantined, and the enhanced children there will live out their lives not being the hope of human potential, but a means to its destruction.
This is an analogy to what occurs when the conscious ego comes in contact with the power of an unconscious archetype and becomes inflated. And while this is an aspect of Carl (C. G.) Jung’s transcendent function, as without some inflation the power to go forward would not exist, when the identification becomes too strong or lasts too long, it can cause damage to the psyche. The feeling of being all powerful is intoxicating but must pass and move in an enantiodromia-like manner to the opposite position, and back again, for us to continue to include all aspects of our psyches to become more whole.
Original post created 25 June 2021
mydailysoultrek 