Synopsis: The Enterprise encounters two colonies from twenty-second century Earth.
In “Up the Long Ladder” the Enterprise first comes across the Bringloidi people, descendants from an Earth space exploration from the twenty-second century. The Bringloidi have assumed simple ways and have settled into caves on their planet, but they need to be rescued from there in order to escape certain imminent death from solar flares. Their leader asks Captain Jean-Luc Picard if he has found the other colony, and soon thereafter another Earth colony established at the same time is found on the planet Mariposa. There were only five colonists who survived to create the colony on Mariposa, so these scientists relied upon cloning to populate the planet, only now, after so many generations the clones were beginning to become defective. Picard and Counselor Deanna Troi come up with the idea of resettling the Bringloidi on Mariposa so that the two colonies can pool their resources to become stronger. Troi believes that the Bringloidi possess energy and drive that the clones from Mariposa lack, and that the clones from Mariposa possess emotional maturity and technical knowledge that the Bringloidi do not have. Each side finds the other repugnant, but in order to survive they need each other.
This is a good illustration of the union of opposites, which is one of Carl (C. G.) Jung’s main theories, the ideas that the opposite parts of our psyche, when integrated make us more whole. And just as the two sets of colonists found the other group foreign, so does the conscious ego find the bits of material from the unconscious incomprehensible and totally different. Yet, if these bits of the unconscious can be integrated into the ego in the union of opposites, the psyche overall becomes stronger, and the individual feels more whole.
Original post created 13 July 2021
mydailysoultrek 