What is the purpose of the Prime Directive?

[Triskelion]

I also want to mention that if you see a person drowning or about to be hit by a car, you know how to react because you are familiar with those contexts on Earth. People can't breathe. Cars are dangerous.

So what if you are on Klingon and see a man strike a woman? If you jump in to defend her honor, she may beat the crap out of you! They were just doing a little public flirting.

Or what if you see a woman removing a baby's oxygen mask, and the baby gasps for air? Are you so sure it's oxygen, and she's not just weaning the baby?

And what if you see a subjugated third race that acts as a surrogate for the two other races to procreate? Are you going to start a war to liberate them? And if they don't want to be liberated, or wish to cooperate with you in any form whatsoever?

For that matter, having a society embrace logic sounds pretty cruel, doesn't it? Vulcans are just in denial. Let's provoke them so they can embrace their true inner humanity.

And if Klingons want empire, let's turn 'em into vassals instead. They aren't interested in diplomatic solutions, they just understand war and conquering - so if that's the language they speak, and we obviously can't sit by while they conquer, we have to conquer the Klingon Empire. Let's launch a massive interstellar war, from which we may not actually survive, in the name of moral obligation.

And if the person on the street corner has no vocal ability because her vocal chords were injured? Can we still publicly stone her if she didn't shout?

Which is what the PD does. If that person has the ability to shout, now they are responsible for the whole mess. If that person has no abiltiy to shout, they cannot be held responsible.

Because if we overpollute our planet, and start massive wars for dwindling resources, and we find out all along we were being observed by advanced alien races who all along knew how to solve our problems - ha, now we have someone to point a finger at, someone to divert blame away from ourselves. And they, simply, will have dodged a bullet by letting people like us in their Federation.

 

[Triskelion]

If you will, a little thought experiment:

Hello, I am the galaxy. My name is Fred, actually.

You are the captain of a Federation starship that encounters the following planets. What do you do?

1. Hypoxia
A planet is choked with carbon emissions and has evidence of civilization on all four continents, but now is only populated in the corner of one city. Communications are being actively blocked by technological interference. Most of the emissions are coming from automated factories all over the planet. You cannot get to the people, who seem to be fortified under a mountain.

You have an energy beam that can scoop up all that carbon in one day's time, but you have to deliver some medical supplies to plague victims and your rendezvous is in a day and a half. So it's now or never.


2. New Floridia
Another planet is full of people whose life span has been reduced to half of what it once was. Your Chief Medical Officer has a simple vaccination.


3. The Celestial Seat of All Empire in the Universe
Here's a planet with a medieval astronomer who discovered your ship in orbit. He is convinced you are a holy doomsday weapon conjured from the nation across the channel. The palace guard has been doubled, and all the guards have double-sided poleaxes. Which one of your crew do you beam down to discuss it with him? The nations then start the war they have been preparing for for seven centuries. What do you do? (hint: kicking over the anthill is not an option)

4. Earth
And finally, due to a time hiccup you find yourself in orbit of planet Earth, fifty years ago. Several nations have detected your ship and are arming nuclear weapons for war. What do you do?


Now go forth intrepid captains, and act on your moral obligations.

 

[DevilEyes]

I fail to see how giving the Valakians the cure you already had discovered and then going away would make their planet "dependent vassal state" of the then-still-not-existing Federation. Please enlighten me.

Because the next time there's a catastrophic disease they may wait for deus ex machina cures rather than research the cure on their own, or maybe just delay or reduce research funding. Dependency is never an overnight phenomenon. And once you create that dependency, then and only then, are your actually morally bound to fix it.

Or, maybe they don't.

By that logic, you should never help anyone, even when they're in most immediate life danger, because, oh shucks, they might become dependent on you in a hypothetical situation sometime in the future which might never happen anyway.

I also want to mention that if you see a person drowning or about to be hit by a car, you know how to react because you are familiar with those contexts on Earth. People can't breathe. Cars are dangerous.

So what if you are on Klingon and see a man strike a woman? If you jump in to defend her honor, she may beat the crap out of you! They were just doing a little public flirting.
<snip>

The Valakians did their best to find someone who could help, and asked for help. They needed and wanted to get the cure. Can it get more clear-cut than that?

Which is what the PD does. If that person has the ability to shout, now they are responsible for the whole mess. If that person has no abiltiy to shout, they cannot be held responsible.

Which is what it should do - rather than be used as an excuse not to try to save any of the people whose planet is about to be destroyed, or provide a cure for people who are dying on masse of a disease and who have asked for help.

There are cases where PD should be applied, and there are those where it doesn't make sense. That's what sentient people have minds for, to be able to judge a situation and make a decision accordingly. Starfleet officers should be intelligent enough to be able to do that, rather than refuse to think and follow a letter of a law rather than its spirit. Otherwise, you could just send non-AI computers to do the job and 'explore' instead of sentient beings. Some cases may be tricky, but the situations like the two I mentioned above are as clear-cut as they come.

 

[Anwar]

Or, maybe they don't.

By that logic, you should never help anyone, even when they're in most immediate life danger, because, oh shucks, they might become dependent on you in a hypothetical situation sometime in the future which might never happen anyway.

The chance is still too great, once they get help from a higher source it would set a precedent and a mark on the culture after that.

And no matter how many times you bring up a simplistic human/human situation, it still won't work because humans of the same general culture aiding one another is totally different from alien cultures far different in levels of advancement are not the same thing. You're being way too simplistic about this.

 

[Sci]

And no matter how many times you bring up a simplistic human/human situation, it still won't work because humans of the same general culture aiding one another

Anyone who claims that all Humans have the same general culture is being absurd. Move to Uganda or Pakistan or Saudi Arabia or Indonesia or France and try telling me with a straight face that they're the same general cultures just because they're all Human.

And a hell of a lot of posters are demonstrating quite clearly in this thread how the purpose of the Prime Directive evolved so that it is no longer about preventing the Federation from embracing imperialism but instead about justifying the Federation's monopoly on power and technology.

 

[Crazy Eddie]

And no matter how many times you bring up a simplistic human/human situation, it still won't work because humans of the same general culture aiding one another

Anyone who claims that all Humans have the same general culture is being absurd. Move to Uganda or Pakistan or Saudi Arabia or Indonesia or France and try telling me with a straight face that they're the same general cultures just because they're all Human.

And a hell of a lot of posters are demonstrating quite clearly in this thread how the purpose of the Prime Directive evolved so that it is no longer about preventing the Federation from embracing imperialism but instead about justifying the Federation's monopoly on power and technology.

Don't the two go hand in hand, Sci? After all, a technological monopoly can just as easily empower a minority movement to use that technology to impose a cultural monopoly on its neighbors, on the half-baked theory that their technology is superior because THEY are superior. That's the general root meme of imperialism, isn't it?

When you remove that meme, or at least put limits on its expression, then you remove the impetus to "compassionately" expand your monopoly to include some little child race you found somewhere who would be better off working for you. Put that another way, it avoids the temptation to share the wealth by building a chain of sweatshops for the peasants.

I don't think the Prime Directive is the end-all of Federation foreign relations. I actually interpret it more like child labor laws: the need to protect the innocent and under-developed from being exposed to pressures and responsibilities they are not ready for. Children need to go to school and be educated before they can join the workforce; just because you have a billion dollars doesn't mean you can help them by having them come work for you.

 

[The Borgified Corpse]

And no matter how many times you bring up a simplistic human/human situation, it still won't work because humans of the same general culture aiding one another

Anyone who claims that all Humans have the same general culture is being absurd. Move to Uganda or Pakistan or Saudi Arabia or Indonesia or France and try telling me with a straight face that they're the same general cultures just because they're all Human.

While there are many differences between various human cultures, I suspect that even the two most foreign cultures on Earth have far more in common with each other than they would with a culture from an alien planet.

Just because the Federation has the ability to help someone doesn't mean they are obligated to devote all of their resources toward it. It may be morally praiseworthy but not morally obligatory. However, I think it is rediculous when Starfleet allows the Prime Directive to prevent them from helping people that they could help very easily, like the Valakians in "Dear Doctor" or that planet suffering from all those earthquakes in "Pen Pals." I don't think Starfleet should have a rule that says that they must permit other species to go extinct rather than try to help them.

However, I think barring some uncontrollable extinction-level event, every planet reserves the right to solve its own problems and develop its own culture free from alien influences, even ostensibly benign ones. I'm not saying society would crumble if exposed to alien species. I'm saying that exposure to an alien species would irrevocably, unnaturally alter the evolution of that culture, even if only in impreceptible ways. And every culture deserves to develop individually, without interference or influence, within its own planet. The rest of the galaxy was kind enough to let humanity sort out thousands of years of its own culture before thrusting us out into a larger galactic stage. I think we should extend that same courtesy to other planets.

Unfortunately, that wasn't always possible on The Original Series. Often times, sadly, less advanced civilizations would be caught in the middle of the cold war between the Federation & the Klingons. We saw this time & again in episodes like "Errand of Mercy," "Friday's Child," & "A Private Little War."

The worst misapplication of the Prime Directive, IMO, was in "The Communicator." It would have been better for Captain Archer to come clean about alien life rather than provoke a nuclear war between the 2 powers on that planet by misleading one of them into thinking the other side had developed sophisticated genetically engineered super soldiers. Or perhaps they should have just left the communicator behind. Their efforts to retrieve it seemed to just make things worse.

 

[The Borgified Corpse]

But a hard and fast simple rule that prevents you from getting involved, regardless of the morality or the circumstances - you can avoid 'playing God'. (remeber what happened on SGA when Rodney and Shepherd played Sim City with real villages? Even with the best of intentions, they polluted those societies to such an extent that they almost extinguished themselves).

That was a terrible episode and not even necessarily a good analogy. For one thing, Sheppard & McKay didn't know that what they were doing had any real world consequences. Secondly, the theme of the episode seemed to have more to do with video games turning grown men into petty, retarded children. (While I could see Sheppard & McKay having that kind of personal relationship, I can't believe they would start acting more mature once they realized they weren't playing a game. The fact that Lorne & Zelenka got sucked into the same pattern even after they knew it was real was beyond pathetic.)

 

[T'Girl]

Anyone who claims that all Humans have the same general culture is being absurd. Move to Uganda or Pakistan or Saudi Arabia or Indonesia or France and try telling me with a straight face that they're the same general cultures just because they're all Human.

A few of the countries you just mentioned are examples of people who've had a outside culture imposed upon them, would the PD prevent a captain from stopping someone, not starfleet or federation, from breaking the PD? If little group A, was shoving their culture down the throats of big group B, could a captain stop them, saying "Look, this is fine for you, but our rules say you can't affect another culture." Or does general order one apply solely to starfleet personel? How far does it go?

 

[Sci]

And no matter how many times you bring up a simplistic human/human situation, it still won't work because humans of the same general culture aiding one another

Anyone who claims that all Humans have the same general culture is being absurd. Move to Uganda or Pakistan or Saudi Arabia or Indonesia or France and try telling me with a straight face that they're the same general cultures just because they're all Human.

While there are many differences between various human cultures, I suspect that even the two most foreign cultures on Earth have far more in common with each other than they would with a culture from an alien planet.

There's really no particular reason to think that. Cultures whose ancestors lost contact with one-another hundreds of thousands of years ago are necessarily going to have cultures that are as divergent from one-another as cultures that evolved on different planets, especially since Trek has made it clear that most of the galaxy's cultures are roughly the same age, with at most a two thousand year age difference. (The exception to this rule seems to be Bajor.)

Either way, you're talking about collections of cultures that have no memory or record of one-another and have had thousands of years to diverge.

Anyone who claims that all Humans have the same general culture is being absurd. Move to Uganda or Pakistan or Saudi Arabia or Indonesia or France and try telling me with a straight face that they're the same general cultures just because they're all Human.

A few of the countries you just mentioned are examples of people who've had a outside culture imposed upon them,

And a review of this thread will reveal that I have consistently argued for an interpretation of the PD that treats other cultures as equals and sovereign, capable of handling interaction with foreign cultures and of determining their own destiny for themselves, rather than a paternalistic interpretation that treats less technologically advanced cultures as inferior to the Federation and justifies Federation technological and military dominance.

would the PD prevent a captain from stopping someone, not starfleet or federation, from breaking the PD? If little group A, was shoving their culture down the throats of big group B, could a captain stop them, saying "Look, this is fine for you, but our rules say you can't affect another culture." Or does general order one apply solely to starfleet personel? How far does it go?

Well, we know that the Federation didn't intervene when the Cardassian Union annexed and occupied Bajor, so that strongly implies that the Federation regards imperial projects by non-Federation worlds against other non-Federation worlds as an internal conflict the UFP is not obliged to interfere with.

 

[Crazy Eddie]

Anyone who claims that all Humans have the same general culture is being absurd. Move to Uganda or Pakistan or Saudi Arabia or Indonesia or France and try telling me with a straight face that they're the same general cultures just because they're all Human.

A few of the countries you just mentioned are examples of people who've had a outside culture imposed upon them, would the PD prevent a captain from stopping someone, not starfleet or federation, from breaking the PD? If little group A, was shoving their culture down the throats of big group B, could a captain stop them, saying "Look, this is fine for you, but our rules say you can't affect another culture." Or does general order one apply solely to starfleet personel? How far does it go?

I'm pretty sure the Prime Directive only applies for Starfleet, and other similar rules make it strongly frowned upon by the Federation (arms control and economic laws make it illegal to sell certain things to certain people and so on). Sort of like how we have laws against selling cigarettes to children.

 

[ProtoAvatar]

I notice that all posters who support PD seem to think that any contact between the Federation and a pre-warp culture - or even any culture at all - will inevitably be damaging to this culture.
I find these assumptions absurd.
In Earth's history - every time there was contact between a more advanced (technologically, culturally) and a less advanced civilization AND the stronger civilization didn't intentionally/systematically try to destroy the other culture, this less developed culture benefitted from the contact.

The same posters claim that PD is there to stop humans from "playing god".
Well, "playing god" is inevitable whether one respects the PD or not. Acting and saving someone or NOT acting and letting someone die IS PLAYING GOD.
Captains respecting the PD, doing nothing beside watching entire sentient species die ARE PLAYING GOD - an amoral, distant and cruel GOD.

In episodes such as TNG:Homeward or Ent Dear Doctor the less advanced culture was facing annihilation!
What worse result could Starfleet intervention possibly achieve?

And about Ent Dear Doctor - The Archer/Phlox excuse was based on some really bad science and on incredible prophetic abilities on Phlox's part.

 

[Anwar]

We already discussed this in other posts ProtoAvatar, the Homeward situation would have led to the Galactic Nanny State.

 

[ProtoAvatar]

We already discussed this in other posts ProtoAvatar, the Homeward situation would have led to the Galactic Nanny State.

I already countered all arguments you brought in support of the "galactic nanny state" you mean - starting with the frequency of extinction-level-events on worlds populated by sentient species, the number of people who must be saved in order to ensure the survival of the species (150 - yes, so few), the Federation resources, and, most important of all, the morality of action/inaction on the part of the Federation.

 

[Anwar]

Trek shows that those sort of things happen quite a bit, how would they pick and choose who to save out of millions, and if it's due to a natural disease/war/environment action then leaving them alone to deal with it is the moral thing to do.

Anything else? Because this "save everyone from every little thing" course of action is unrealistic and foolish.

 

[ProtoAvatar]

Trek shows that those sort of things happen quite a bit,

Anwar - as I have already pointed out when we discussed the issue, when you chose to look the other way in order to ignore the argument - intelligent life needs hundreds of millions of years without setbacks due to extiction-level-enents to develop. The fact that sentient, intelligent life actually exists in the trekverse PROVES that such catastrophes don't come weekly.

how would they pick and choose who to save out of millions,

How would the Federation choose whom to save?
The same way medics choose whom to save during medical triage - based on objective criteria designed to save as many people as possible.

Anything else? Because this "save everyone from every little thing" course of action is unrealistic and foolish.

Anwar, just because you can't save everyone doesn't mean you can't save many.
And the decision to abandon everyone because you can "only" save many is beyond immoral - it's monstruous.

According to your "logic" doctors shouldn't bother saving anyone, simply because they can't save everyone.

and if it's due to a natural disease/war/environment action then leaving them alone to deal with it is the moral thing to do.

Anwar - you made your social darwinistic point of view clear in this thread.
According to you, you should let a person drown when you have the ability to save that person with no risk to yourself because...
What?
Because this person has a very small chance of saving oneself in desperation?
Because there is a non-zero possibility of this person becoming the next Hitler - which could be said about ANY person, including yourself?

Monstruous - Hitler&co had justifications along those lines - racial superiority, genocide in so-called "self-defense".
In reality, it was just hatred. History judged them.

 

[DevilEyes]

I notice that all posters who support PD seem to think that any contact between the Federation and a pre-warp culture - or even any culture at all - will inevitably be damaging to this culture.
I find these assumptions absurd.
In Earth's history - every time there was contact between a more advanced (technologically, culturally) and a less advanced civilization AND the stronger civilization didn't intentionally/systematically try to destroy the other culture, this less developed culture benefitted from the contact.

The same posters claim that PD is there to stop humans from "playing god".
Well, "playing god" is inevitable whether one respects the PD or not. Acting and saving someone or NOT acting and letting someone die IS PLAYING GOD.
Captains respecting the PD, doing nothing beside watching entire sentient species die ARE PLAYING GOD - an amoral, distant and cruel GOD.

In episodes such as TNG:Homeward or Ent Dear Doctor the less advanced culture was facing annihilation!
What worse result could Starfleet intervention possibly achieve?

And about Ent Dear Doctor - The Archer/Phlox excuse was based on some really bad science and on incredible prophetic abilities on Phlox's part.

ITA. Well said. I especially like the point about "amoral, distant and cruel God."

 

[BillJ]

Trek shows that those sort of things happen quite a bit, how would they pick and choose who to save out of millions, and if it's due to a natural disease/war/environment action then leaving them alone to deal with it is the moral thing to do.

Anything else? Because this "save everyone from every little thing" course of action is unrealistic and foolish.

So we should let the child on the corner die of starvation because we can't save every child from starvation?

 

[Horga'hn]

This thread spurred me to register, and as such shall be the target of my first post!

While there are many differences between various human cultures, I suspect that even the two most foreign cultures on Earth have far more in common with each other than they would with a culture from an alien planet.

There's really no particular reason to think that. Cultures whose ancestors lost contact with one-another hundreds of thousands of years ago are necessarily going to have cultures that are as divergent from one-another as cultures that evolved on different planets

I disagree. First consider that culture is most strongly influenced by the local environment, since this dictates the survivability requirements of life within that environment (and consequently the basic physiological and psychological requirements of the species which develop). Groups within a particular species may become culturally divergent due to isolation but so long as their genetic dispositions are similar they will always share certain traits.

On another planet altogether, the environmental differences alone would engender vast dissimilarities between those and the humanoids which developed on good old Earth.

especially since Trek has made it clear that most of the galaxy's cultures are roughly the same age, with at most a two thousand year age difference. (The exception to this rule seems to be Bajor.)

The Chase (TNG) suggests that many of the galaxy's humanoid cultures are the same age (at least, in terms of when their genetic development was started) but there are many examples of non-humanoid intelligence too. Even if we are to boldly assume that all humanoid cultures share traits which allow for an intrinsic understanding of each other (or enough traits to allow this), what of non-humanoid intelligence?

One episode which comes to mind is from The Savage Curtain (TOS) where the aliens wanted to study the concepts of good and evil. How could we relate to a species which employs totally different systems of abstraction in social constructs - lacking, for example, in something as vital to our society as the concept of ethics?

I notice that all posters who support PD seem to think that any contact between the Federation and a pre-warp culture - or even any culture at all - will inevitably be damaging to this culture.
I find these assumptions absurd.
In Earth's history - every time there was contact between a more advanced (technologically, culturally) and a less advanced civilization AND the stronger civilization didn't intentionally/systematically try to destroy the other culture, this less developed culture benefitted from the contact.

I would agree that direct contact would not necessarily be irreparably damaging in all cases - sometimes the effect might be minimal, other times we would be so incompatible that there would be no change whatsoever - but how often would something go wrong hours, years or even centuries down the line? What if the medical supplies provided to a species whose body chemistry was not fully understood killed them all? What if advice in medical science gave a species the means to develop and release a deadly virus upon their enemies? Who can reasonably assess these risks when faced with a poorly understood culture in imminent peril?

A final note:

The Prime Directive is not just a set of rules. It is a philosophy and a very correct one. History has proved again and again that whenever mankind interferes with a less developed civilisation, no matter how well intentioned that interference may be, the results are invariably disastrous.

In terms of canon, the PD is absolutely sound. Ney-ner-ney-ner-ney-ner.

 

[Anwar]

Trek shows that those sort of things happen quite a bit, how would they pick and choose who to save out of millions, and if it's due to a natural disease/war/environment action then leaving them alone to deal with it is the moral thing to do.

Anything else? Because this "save everyone from every little thing" course of action is unrealistic and foolish.

So we should let the child on the corner die of starvation because we can't save every child from starvation?

No, we send him to the child or social services meant to deal with cases like him. The people and organizations already set up to deal with these situations, which we are legally obligated to do.

We do NOT take him under our own care and see to it ourselves that he lives for the rest of his life.

And others have already demonstrated that even situations like a person drowning are more complex than "save them or not". That line of thinking is dangerously over-simplified.