Do Starfleet Captains Play God?

Still, there is a difference between not wanting people to worship him and being unwilling to lift a finger to save people who were going to die of asphyxiation if nothing was done. As in, the difference between heroic and horrific.

 

I think this should be the prime objective of Starfleet and the Federation send out starships to do good things. I understand leaving less advance societies alone. Unless, they are in some kind of life ending event. Starfleet can save them from...

 

“All men when clothed with power will use it, and sometimes abuse it.” --W.T. Sherman

 

The dumbest of it is that Picard's refusal to help the Boraalans seems to be only there to setup the conflict situation for Worf. It doesn't even play an important role in the story after that has been done. At the end of the episode, Picards qualms about saving them have magically disappeared and he's even glad they did

If only they could have added a scene where Picard & Riker discussed a plan where Picard would act like the absolute dick he was in order to 'encourage' Worf to a conflict resolution in his strained relationship with his foster brother (Riker: I don't think you could play that card convincincly, sir, no-one on board would believe you'd actually refuse to save the Boraalans, you're not such a mean, cold and heartless person!), or anything like that, I could have lived better with it

 

I was once at a small dinner party/bbq and a stinging wasp snuck in, as I was moving to kill it one of the other guests shouted OH no don't!!

So I retorted OK, you go grab it and fling it back outside. A frown and silence was what little came in a silent reply. Then I went into the kill zone, yes I played gawd of a sort or Captain if you wish.

One has to judge the threats posed between a fly vs a wasp. btw flies, for the most part, lay their eggs in shit.

 

It's classic character assassination to artificially create conflict. Of course Picard stopped being a weiner, he no longer needed to be one to create the conflict.

 

IMHO, saving a planet or the life on it isn't playing god for them. It's an action within the realm of human capability that they pursue. If I know something about my brother's wife that would end their marriage, were he to know it, & I tell him, am I playing God? It's just something he didn't know, & I made it so he does. Does that make any power or wisdom you exercise a god power, if someone else doesn't have it?

There is no such thing as playing God, because there is no such thing as God power, because imho there is no such thing as God. It's all just exercising the power we find ourselves with at any given moment... & trying to do that as benevolently as humanly & humanely possible... such that you are not lording it over others

 

You behaved like a Klingon...

 

I'm curious, how does a wasp "sneak in"? Like, was it tiptoeing around the property line, waiting for the moment it thought no one was looking before crossing over, only you spotted it anyway? Or rather than "wasp" the insect, do you mean "WASP" a snooty stuck-up person?

 

No, a rational human. In my past I have keep honeybees which are fascinatingcreatures. I leave wasps/klingons alone if they do likewise w/ me, cuz they eat pests, flies otoh receive no mercy.

 

Flying in thru an open door. Stinging might have been a hint.
If you are still confused I offer this for your edification.

https://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Wasp

 

Yeah, that doesn't meet my criteria for the definition of "sneaking in."

 

bugger off then if that does not satisfy your personalized criteria.

 

Well, Sisko got pissed off at Eddington, and ended up contaminated the atmosphere of a couple of planets.

 

I still think it was more of a terrorist attack so I thought of when Sisko got the Romulans into Dominion War...I thought about it but he used standard spook stuff to achieve the job... Wait, he is the chosen one so he godly inspired Garak as his godly instrument to achieve his goal... Garak was an instrument of a god...

 

Saving an entire planets population from annihilation could be considered something like being a good person.
It's a massive thing to do but doing it once doesn't make one a supreme being.

This could be some kind of prime directive?

 

Even doing it regularly doesn't, if it's routine, like galactic spacefaring technostuff is to their crew.

If all I do is drop a couple bucks worth of coins into a panhandler's cup per day on my lunch break, cuz I got a sandwich for lunch & a mcmuffin for breakfast earlier. It's routine for me, negligible to me even, but maybe it averages $1.50 daily, 5x a week = $7.50. If I go to lunch with a coworker who mimics me out of peer pressure, our crew's effect is a weekly income of $15. That guy could maybe do some portion of feeding himself with that. We are not gods or lords to him. We're just people, with the right means & in the right position to help.

So too with world savers. Those captains' crews are just do-gooders at a scale heretofore unknown & perhaps unimaginable to us. Now, if I TELL those worlds, I can & will save you, only if you worship me & do my bidding, THAT'S playing God, lording it over people.... even if the statement comes after the deed.

 

One summer I had a bedroom with a crack in the ceiling where some sort of wasp or hornet had its home. I didn't kill it or try to put it outside. I just ignored, and it ignored me.

 

Playing god is deciding if a sentient species lives or dies out... Archer play god with the Valakians... Pike played god with those people on that dry plant and created miracle by bringing water to a planet... Only a god could do that...