And if "To Serve Man" is a cookbook?
Rather than viewing the PD as a license to be laissez faire about the suffering in the universe, it's more of a "Don't raise children on the Big Brother show". It's called Observer Effect. Revealing yourself to a culture that has not had a chance to define itself, thereby skewing their entire future - and yes, possibly even your own, in time - when you had the choice, is supremely arrogant. Not recognizing your cultural contamination - is irresponsible in the extreme. Assuming your culture is the natural culmination of their development - is delusional. Not Federation qualities.
The fact is, you don't know where they will be in 1000 years. You don't know if your aid today will in fact destroy them tomorrow. Riding in to the rescue is not as simple and cut-and-dried as solving all their problems for them.
But these strident arguments that automatically choose interference as the obvious moral choice - is simplistic and irresponsible. Do you patch up a battered wife so she can go home and get beaten again? Or do you swoop in and kill her husband, leaving her to raise her children alone? Do you try him in your court or even try to navigate the local legal system - and what if there is no provision in place that suits your moral outrage at it? And what if she is in fact the bully and he just snapped? You don't know all the facts, and you're not likely to know all the facts.
And now you've got to make a policy to guide whole fleets of people in charge of planet-destroying power, starships. Do you give them license to just fly in and do whatever they think is right at the moment?
Hey, this captain believes in female circumcision, that captain believes in nazism, another captain believes in the Bajoran prophets, another captain believes in military solutions.
Sounds like a recipe for self-destruction, you ask me.
But you
helped those people. Maybe. Maybe destroyed their species, but you helped that one population that one time.
If the aliens wanted to eat us, they'd do so already. Plus I doubt they'd want to eat a race with heart problems, diabeties and several pounds of toxic material plugged-up in their intestines. :P
Plus...what if, say an Asteroid was going towards Earth in the past...it should have missed, but say another astroid somehow came and changed the course....and the only way to stop it was for Starfleet to go back, but beng seen by the earlier humanity....I'd say go for it and let humans learn there's a better future to strive for themselves and their unborn.
The battered wife issue...been there...I knew a chick who got beat up by her boyfriend on a normal basis. So...I called the cops on his ass. She hated me, BUT, she's get less missing teeth to worry about. And the boy friend is probably getting butt fucked by some large, bald guy named Bruno right about now. I feel this boy scout has done his good deed.
If a person gets outside knowledge, they either do well or do bad. I mean if aliens landed here and offered us:
Cure for cancer, it puts the big name drug companies outta business....I'm fine with it. Fuck the drug companies.
We are shown new sources of energy...or even free energy where we need no fuels....we put the oil companies outta business... let the cowboys and shieks boil in their own juices.
We are shown how to travel faster than light, it makes Newtonian and Einsteinian physics nothing, no loss there. We simply not take theories as dogmatic facts in science. And we'd not be using primative rockets anymore....did you see what's gonna replace the shuttle...they want the Aeries...which is merely "Apollio on steroids", why are we using technolgy our grandfathers used rather than something better?
And the fact we got aliens on our door step pretty much would mean that NASA and other such agencies were lying the entire time to us.
You see, our world...from science to medicine to energy is more political than politics itself. Politics and money. You really think things like big oil and big pharmacuda will be cool with and allow things like the cure for cancer and energy that would put both of them out to pasture, willingly? I think not.
Also, look at the Voyager episodes where that one race was dumping billions of tons of contaminated anti-matter....in other world's systems....and those people refused to change things, simply for economic reasons...even if it envolves poisoning the surrounding worlds? I'd put those guys outta business if I were calling the shots. Same with that ship that kidnapped other beings and forced them to fight gladiatorial games for the sake of entertaining folks watching the Delta Quadrent equivlent of TV.
One reason that I always looked up to The Doctor in
Doctor Who was that he traveled the universes and involved himself against such power/money mad conspirators and bullies and even offered the oppressed ways to improve themselves. I dunno about you, but if aliens wanted to come and help us (Yes, I think there are many aliens out there that are more humane than humans ever can be.), I'd be all for it, and vice versa. If I was traveling the cosmos like the Doctor, and I saw a race that , for example could have potential to advance themselves, say a new energy source, but can't because say the makers of....Oiltonium...a non renewable energy source kept getting rich, as oppossed to simply accepting the fact that Castellanium, an energy source that either never goes out, or can last 50 times longer than Oiltonium, and keeping the public in the dark about this, or enfluencing markets by making Castellanium either contraband or insanely expensive via poltical connections....I'd go in, and do everything I can not just to make Castellanium available for anyone who wants it, but to also show that the Oiltonium companies were lying and bullying their way, just for the sake of their own profits....and I'd make sure the Oiltoniun company would get so buttfucked, they'd never be trusted by anyone and go under...or in the very least, make the market fair and competitive. Same if I travelled to a world where a nasty, horrible, debilitating illness...one that made one weak and wrapped in pain all the time....and there was a cure...a simple planet or a mineral....but either a company or a government either censored this information or banned it....cause the makers of a drug that only goes after symptoms...and poor at that....were getting rich....I'd do all I can to make sure those bad guys get it badly in the end. Same if I saw a world where slavery was legal and it was making the slave traders rich. I'd make Abe Lincoln and Moses look like amatuers....even if it caused a major economic/social dent in that world. Or if there was a world that worshipped a 'god' that demanded sacrifices of people's first borns every 2 years....and if it turns out that 'god' was just some ambitious priest who simply had a hard-on for power...I'd go in and show them the charlaton for what he is.
And if the Federation would have listed me as
Galactic Enemy #1, simply because I went and did what I believe inside myself was right, having helped and saved the innocent, the ignorent, the poor, the oppressed, and the enslaved, I'd carry that mark on my name with pride. The Doctor was pretty much considered a menace by his own people, the Timelords, because of that...and, ironically, they got saved by that same rogue.
I feel a new fan-fic coming......
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