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[Bauglir]

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well this is awkward

[mainiac]

More of a Star Trek prime directive thing.

I think it's interesting to consider the context that the prime directive was invented in.  It was the height of the cold war and when there were still lingering remnants of colonial empires.  Not just like their influences but outright European rule in parts of Asia and Africa.  There had been a pro national self determination intellectual movement going on for decades but it was a very difficult idea to get going in practice.  The US had been big on the ideals of self determination but was now at the height of american involvement in Vietnam.  That background lead to Gene Roddenberry coming up with the prime directive as a radical reaction against the assumption that humanity would take imperial ambitions into the future.  Star Trek was always about the idea that humanity would get morally better and move away from greed.  The prime directive has no room for greed in it, it's a complete rejection of imperialist impulse.  The difficulty was living up to these hard standards.  That's how you get episodes like A Private Little War where the question is how do we minimize the damage that the big bad galaxy does to these primitive people.

The prime directive was the apex of liberalism when it was invented but since then, society has progressed.  The biggest problems that people face aren't the meddling influences of evil empires or cold war manipulations of outside powers.  Hong Kong didn't want to leave the British empire and China had to threaten war to keep the British from expanding the franchise before they left.  The Falkland islands overwhelmingly want to stay British.  Peurto Rico doesn't want independence, it wants to improve it's economic situation as part of the United States.  The neoliberal impulse is dangerous as always but the interaction is much more complex now.  That lead to what I think is the most interesting conversation in star trek.

The prime directive wouldn't be invented today.  It's a product of the final days of the era of nationalism when the right of national self determination was still being spread worldwide.  These days national self determination isn't really the problem, the problem is personal self determination.  It's a much thornier problem because you there isn't a clear line you can draw on a map and say it's "solved".  Back when Star Trek was first coming up with the prime directive the problems of national self determination were so big that you could blame limits on personal freedom on lack of it.  These days if anything the situation is reversed.

[Rolan7]

I've been watching TNG completely (instead of grabbing bits off tv when I was young) and one of the harshest episodes recently involved the prime directive.  In a nutshell, there were two worlds in a system, and the inhabitants of one needed a special medicine that only grew on the other.  Otherwise they grew pained, irritable, even aggressive.  Desperate to have more.  The world that provides it is a utopia living off the lucrative trade.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Turns out it was a cure once, millenia ago, but now it's just an addiction.  The Enterprise crew learns the truth, and has the opportunity to reveal it.  And provide high-tech chemicals which will ease the withdrawal effects.

But Picard honors the prime directive and leaves without revealing the truth.  The trade lane is disrupted so the addicted think he's leaving them to die, but after weeks of suffering they'll recover.  Crusher hates him for it... arguably rightly.  But that's the prime directive.  What right did the Federation have to free those slaves?

Well, I think they should have.  But I respect Picard's decision, and the moral question.  It's a lot more interesting than Original Series episodes where Kirk would have punched the pushers and fucked one of the users.

[mainiac]

It's episodes like that which show how the prime directive has aged.  There are situations where "first do no harm" is the most important things but others where withholding medicine is inhumane.  The episode resorts to what is essentially a cop out, oh it just so happens that the ships are breaking down so you can not act and still see the change they need.  But that is just a chance to dodge the need to answer the question.  What if the ships weren't breaking down or wouldn't run out for another couple decades?  That is the real question.  And the answer in that episode is that the Federation would refuse to act unless it could rationalize it on a technicality.  But if a technicality could be found, they would intervene.

[Rolan7]

And even with that cop-out, Picard's decision dooms the planet to suffering which likely will result in deaths, and practically destroys any hope of diplomacy with either side.  Heck, those two sides likely go to war later!

All this over a principle.  Which is all fine and good if the principle is worthwhile, but this illustrates that "non-interference" is not always the *beneficial* route for either party.  I really doubt it is on average.

[Descan]

Spoiler: Nerd rant. (click to show/hide)

My problem with the Prime Directive is the flanderization it experienced as the series' wore on, from TOS to TNG to DS9 to VOY, culminating in literal genocide apologism under the guise of not understanding what the hell evolution is in Dear Doctor in ENT.

In TOS, Kirk and Spock literally have a conversation where they go "Prime Directive doesn't make sense when it's a choice between interferance and cultural genocide."

In TNG, there's an episode where Picard and the other main characters have a conversation about the Prime Directive, with the result that because they can't interfere in EVERY situation (from an asteroid impact to a disease to a genocide a la Hitlerites to a planetary war), that means it's not right to interfere in ANY situation. Riker makes an off-hand comment about "If there is a cosmic plan, what right do we have to interfere?" Which Geordi basically says "Bullshit," and rightly so (maybe the cosmic plan is for the Enterprise TO come up and interfere! Even if it exists, you do not know what is in the plan, and thus inaction could be just as interfering as action.)

In Voyager... Well, the Voyager writers were shit. There were a couple episodes where the same rationale is used by Janeway to both advocate interfering, AND to advocate not interfering. However, in an early episode, Janeway has no recourse to Paris saying "Anything is better than mass genocide!" except to ORDER him that he can't warn the pre-warp civilization, she has no other reasoning behind it except authority. She only decides to interfere when she realizes that Voyager was the cause of the accident in the first place. So at least she's willing to clean up her own fuck-ups, even if she's not willing to save peoples lives.

And in ENT... God. That comment by Riker? About a cosmic plan? That's taken to 11, in Dear Doctor, with Phlox saying that because this species-wide extinction event is "the natural outcome of their evolutionary path" they have no right to interfere. So Archer does not help this dying species, they pack up and go on their way, and in the end, Phlox commends Archer for his decision to allow genocide. Keep in mind, this is before the Prime Directive was ever formulated in the series, though Archer literally name-drops it in one cringe-inducing scene. They are not at all obligated to not interfere; they were already trying to help these people before Phlox figured out it was their version of sickle-cell anemia or something, some genetic disorder. Somehow an illness can be fixed if it's from some virus, but a genetic disorder, welp you're fucked, Rubber-Forehead #4212.

My problem with the Prime Directive is that it became a shield to cower behind so the characters could do nothing at all, allow mass death, and pat themselves on the back as "a moral choice."

This guy makes a much better explanation of the bullshit inherent to the Prime Directive, as written in the series'.

[Shadowlord]

Rolan: What was the name of that episode?

I'm doubting the Enterprise would even have the capability to cure an entire planet full of addicts in 2 weeks even if they replicated cureophan* or whatever as fast as they could. In other episodes with epidemics they had to deliver medicine from starbases or other planets iirc. Probably don't have sufficient medical replicators or w/e.

* I totally just made that up, and it does not sound star trek at all

[Mech#4]

Wasn't a reason given that if they interfered they would be denying races the negative periods that had shaped the human race? If aliens had come and prevented several world wars then humans wouldn't have seen the terribleness of it and moved away from it. I suppose that works better if races have more than a single personality type across all members.

It's a bit like how in KOTORII Traya berates you for doing every little task people ask you to because you're denying them the experience of solving their own problems.

[mainiac]

Wasn't a reason given that if they interfered they would be denying races the negative periods that had shaped the human race? If aliens had come and prevented several world wars then humans wouldn't have seen the terribleness of it and moved away from it.

You didn't personally live through the world wars.  You are unlikely to genocide because your grandparents lived through Ghandi and your parents lived through Martin Luther King.  It's not in your genetic code, it's something that other people told you about.

I would trade away the world wars for a lesson in alien history in a heartbeat.  We can learn from other peoples mistakes instead of our own.  Italian people aren't going to nuke Libya even though it wasn't the Italians dropping nukes on Hiroshima.

[Mech#4]

Well, not personally but it did effect several generations of people and shape a lot of policies between countries for at least the following century.
I think part of the Prime Directive was to avoid elevating alien races that weren't prepared for interacting with the wider galactic community.

[Rolan7]

Rolan: What was the name of that episode?

I'm doubting the Enterprise would even have the capability to cure an entire planet full of addicts in 2 weeks even if they replicated cureophan* or whatever as fast as they could. In other episodes with epidemics they had to deliver medicine from starbases or other planets iirc. Probably don't have sufficient medical replicators or w/e.

* I totally just made that up, and it does not sound star trek at all

Wow it was in season 1 actually??  Which started off very rocky, then got good in a weird way (that they kind evolved from).
S1E22, "Symbiosis".
I really thought it was in Season 4, or 5 (where I am) but no.
Also, Tasha Yar...  Seriously disturbing character.  In a good way.  And they revisit her a couple of times which is both cool and even more disturbing.

As for being able to provide help for a whole planet, ehhh...  Yeah the scale is significant, but the episode does show that a planetary dose of drug can be concentrated into that relatively small package.  Science fantasy.

[mainiac]

I think part of the Prime Directive was to avoid elevating alien races that weren't prepared for interacting with the wider galactic community.

Yes and that part totally makes sense.  You want to be prudent in your actions and it would be dangerous to both us and them to prematurely give them technology.  But the part is that they take that reasonable idea and take it to a zealous extreme.  They will withhold medicine from a dying race, they will leave people on a dying world where they are (until someone breaks the rules and they have a technicality to justify their actions).

It's based on the assumption that intervention never does good but we know that is bullshit.

Well, not personally but it did effect several generations of people and shape a lot of policies between countries for at least the following century.

It sure did but you only learned about it in school.  Schools can teach you about events no human has experienced like the big bang and extinction of the dinosaurs.

[Helgoland]

It sure did but you only learned about it in school.  Schools can teach you about events no human has experienced like the big bang and extinction of the dinosaurs.

Your grampa never told you stories from the war? Man, I've heard countless stories about the war - both about the fighting and about the situation back home -, about fleeing from the Russians in the winter of '44 (that one includes an apparently-frozen-to-death baby, by the way), throwing yourself down in the furrows of a field because the American planes overhead occasionally make a sport of hunting civilians... A good buddy of mine has a similar relationship to the US-Vietnamese war. And don't even get me started on the numerous war and holocaust memorials strewn all over the place. Stolpersteine deserve a special mention here, I think.

There's a difference between 'Someone did something like that at some point' and 'People like me did exactly this not too long ago, and I can still see the consequences in lots of places'.

[mainiac]

You are still talking about memetic exchanges.  And the primary memetic exchange is still school education.

[Bauglir]

Yeah, and there's a significant difference in the quality of the exchange between "This is what it might be like if it happened" and "This is what it was like when it happened".