Perhaps sex isn’t an individual “need.” Perhaps it’s more of a “want.” But it is needed for the survival of the species at least for now. Who knows what the future will bring when it comes to procreation? This is not the place to debate Maslow’s Hierarchy theories.
It is perfectly possibly to get the sensations of love and belonging from sources higher on the pyramid, not just from sex. So it would seem that sex – at the base of the pyramid — is not an absolute requirement to generate feelings of being loved and belonging, which are higher on the pyramid.
We’re only using Maslow’s Hierarchy as a way to organize what citizens should expect from their communities and we’re not saying that people should expect sex from their communities. However, sex is a powerful need or want, and a driving force of much human behavior. (Is this one of the first pages on this site that you visited?) Sex is a favorite behavior modification tool for advertisers and propagandists. We should all at least be taught how to defend ourselves from this manipulation.
The government should definitely stay out of our bedrooms. But what if the community had a much more open and healthy attitude about sex? What if public health departments had all the resources necessary to deal with teen pregnancy, sexually transmitted diseases and sexual predators. What if lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender sexual activities weren’t demonized? What if over population continued to be an issue? Or, what if under-population became an issue? What if lust was no longer a part of procreation? What if virtual technology and robotics became the central source of sexual pleasure for humans? What if technologies came in to play that allowed expanded in vitro genetic engineering in humans – tweak the baby’s eye-color and hair color, straighten the teeth, choose the gender or increase the athletic ability or the intelligence in vitro. We will have to explore whether that’s safe for our civilization and whether it’s an unfair advantage unless everyone has access to this new reproductive technology.
How will new policies about sex, mating and procreation have an impact on our story arc and on our characters’ motivations? Obviously, budget will force us to show sparingly pieces of the visual future we imagine. Also, we believe our cameras we will be shooting mostly at human scale in anthropometric dimensions. Our characters will be mostly in walkable urban villages or neighborhoods. Our -50 | 0 | +50 careful futurism predicts that much will look the same in 2064 as it does in today. Just as much of St. Louis – at human scale – looks the same today as it did in 1964. That will leave a lot of city locations for us to use. This careful futurism strategy will keep our creative conceits in check and be an interesting challenge for producers, writers directors and actors.
Yes, we also have a social point of view. That is that systemic change in our economic and political systems are necessary if we are to survive the clear and present dangers of our times — global warming and biosphere destruction; the new gilded age, and the massive inequality of wealth and opportunity it imposes; corporate capitalism and the plutocracy it has created; and the destruction of our delicate representative democracy.
All the world’s a “sustainable” stage. In developing the series concept, we asked: What would it be like to live in a future more like Roddenberry’s Star Trek than Huxley’s Brave New World? What would life be like in a sustainable city? What would it be like to live in a place that practiced good old fashioned conservation of resources and at the same time developed advanced technology to do the same? A place that practiced “New World Business.”
Stories, film and television can help people bridge the gap between what is now and what is possible. Gateway: the City’s Reason envisions a future with mostly positive outcomes – where good old American optimism touches everyone. That’s the stage on which Gateway stories take place. And we think it’s a stage that citizens should see more of today.
Your ideas?
A series Bible is a reference document used by writers, directors, producers and actors for information about characters, settings and other elements of the show. In many ways, we are only beginning our research into what a sustainable city will be like in 50 years. Even so, we’ve decided to publish portions of the Gateway-TCR bible in order to share the foundations of Gateway: the City’s Reason with you. We want to describe “the stage” upon which our stories will be told and we welcome your ideas.
