If you have followed my posts for a few years, you may remember that when I was working for the Texas Department of Aging and Disability Services (DADS), I met a visitor from Japan whose last name was Kobayashi. We took a flight together to North Texas, and at one point, waiting in the airport, I asked her the meaning of the word Maru. “Boat,” she replied.
Now, if you, like me, are an aficionado of Star Trek, you know that Kobayashi Maru means no win scenario. It is a Star Fleet Academy test given to all candidates who aspire to command. It isn’t a test for physicians, nurses, engineers or security candidates. It is for candidates who aspire to command – Captains, Navigators, Helmsmen, First Officers, and the like.
The Kobayashi Maru scenario confronts the candidate with a set of conditions that compel the individual to action in order to save the besieged people on the Kobayashi boat at the cost of the individual’s own vessel. It’s a simple case of fucked if you do versus fucked if you don’t.
The Texas law that proposes to ban abortion after six weeks of pregnancy is a Kobayashi Maru scenario. Few people who are six or fewer weeks pregnant know that they are pregnant. So, setting the limit for abortion at six weeks essentially creates a no-win, Kobayashi Maru scenario.
Today, I read that the international body that regulates competitive swimming passed a rule that requires any transgender person who wants to compete in female swimming prove that they transitioned by the age of twelve. Of course, the national and international medical consensus on gender transitions (male to female) is that such transitions should occur at age 14 or later. Upshot? Kobayashi Maru, of course.
James Tiberius Kirk knew that the Kobayashi Maru scenario was a cheat. Yes, it was designed to box the candidate into a situation that had no successful solution, but it also asserted that such scenarios exist and somehow reveal something important about the leader so challenged. Both assertions are contestable.
In the case of the Texas abortion law, I assert one or more solutions – albeit not equitably available to pregnant persons of all socio-economic strata. One might order twelve doses of oral abortifacients. At the end of each menstrual cycle, one might simply take the abortifacient agents. Ideal? Of course not, but the point of the Kobayashi Maru scenario is to defeat the bad guys and save the good guys. There are more elegant solutions, of course. I just offer this one because it is simple to understand.
As regards the swimming competition rules, I can only offer that FINA-ISL is the beginning rather than the end of the sanctioning of swimming competitions. American physicians, for one, have revolted against the specialty recertification rules of the American Board of Medical Specialties (ABIM) because of their predatory, profit-seeking model of recertification. I wasn’t among the number of insurrectionists simply because the new rules did not apply to me; nonetheless, I was/am sympathetic to their cause. Perhaps we need another organization to oversee athletic competitions such as swimming – one that is focused on science, inclusion, social justice and things other than profit and political power.
At heart, I’m a Kobayashi Maru type academy candidate willing to use the very same guile and strategems as the oppressors use in order to win because what’s the point of taking the test if you can’t defeat the bad guys and save the good guys?