C. O. Bonham

There are three great works that are so deeply ingrained into our popular culture that there isn’t a person on the planet who wouldn’t recognize quotes from one of  The Big Three.

These three opuses will forever be around to shape the human imagination and to inspire future generations.

The three greatest collections of knowledge and inspiration, which are so powerful that each was built on the shoulder of the one before, are:

The Holy Bible — which is the very truth of God. This is the work of works. It has shaped our modern culture into what it is.

The Christian Bible tells us why we are the way we are and what we should yet strive to be.

The Complete Works of Shakespeare — Encompasses of the human spirit. It tells us what we are as the Human race. Shakespeare shows us how we think and how we feel.

Like the Bible, Shakespeare requires Faith. denying that Shakespeare wrote his own plays is like denying that Jesus was the Son of God.  In the same way that no one would die for a madman, would Shakespeare’s friends have bothered spending the money to publish the First Folio if someone else had written the plays?

And the last but definitely not the least is. . .

Star Trek — Take the franchise as a whole or just take the three original seasons of The Original Series, either way it would be hard to deny Star Trek’s influence over our modern way of life. Just flip open your Cell phone and talk, you are holding the communicator from Star Trek.
Star Trek inspires us to look to the future. It encourages progress and it shows us what we can achieve and what the future can become.

Star Trek also embraces the past and reminded the generation of the late 60’s and the early 70’s of the moral lessons that were no longer being taught in their class rooms. Maybe not a lot of people realize it but Star Trek is actually a series of Morality plays that expound Biblical morals and Shakespearian ethics.

Go ahead question me but then sit down and really watch it. Even if the show is lacking in direct quotes you have to admit that the ideas are there.

So there they are the Three most important contributions to modern society. The inspirations for everything  we achieve.

The Record of the past that tells us how we began and why we are here.

The poetry and plays of The Bard that move  us to thought and spark our imaginations.

And the Futuristic morality plays that dare us to move forward without losing sight of the past.

Interesting how the Big Three move through the different mediums from written record to stage plays to television production.

One wonders, Will there be a fourth and what form will it take?