The images of deep space and distant galaxies captured by the Webb Space Telescope have been wowing people all over the World this week, including me!

Admittedly I hadn’t even heard of the telescope until these images were released, but they’re gorgeous. 

It really got me thinking about how I used to watch Star Trek as a kid, and how hopeful it made me for the future. It was a vision of a future where we’d come together and solved most of the problems facing our species together. We looked up and it sparked our imaginations. 

It seems like the better our technology gets, the more we go backwards as a species, the further away from those ideals and dreams that Star Trek inspired we get. 

I blame Facebook for a lot of it. There have been others obviously, but that’s where it started. That’s when we started looking down at the shiny black mirrors in our hands rather than up to the stars. Where people started being swayed against there own best interests and fascists got a platform that legitimised them. 

This last few years, it’s been difficult to keep the faith that the World will swing back away from the fascist path it seems to be on. Seeing the images from the Webb Telescope has reminded me of that hope I had as a kid. Hopefully, there are brighter times not too far around the corner.