If the Prime Directive were done properly
- Thread starter Gingerbread Demon
- Start date
Please explain
True, the Niburu people would be toast. Well the Vulcans weren't interested in Earth according to First Contact they considered humans too primitive until Cochran flew that torpedo lol
"One week from then their priests will see a weirdly shaped cloud and decide to bow to that instead..."
"These people have a keen eye if they're capable of drawing a perfectly proportioned vertical projection of the Enterprise from the fisheye perspective they must have seen..."
First the implication that the priests would worship a cloud as easily as they worshipped a starship rising out of the ocean.
Then what reads to me as a bit of a snub directed at them for something that's also obviously a bit of a movie conceit, nevermind that we have no idea what level of sensory perception the Nibiru might possess.
Painting a culture as less sophisticated is the first brick on the road to justifying interference because "we know better than they do."
The alternative was total extinction... Are you going to argue that it would be preferable for them to be all dead than to bow to a blueprint of Enterprise?
Which is fun to imagine. I mean if these people can draw an industrial quality drawing of a starship that they saw for a couple of seconds from a very close distance while being rained on by a curtain of water, I have no doubt that they'll find warp propulsion on their own in a couple of generations.
The anachronistic nature of this "tribe" or "small village" grows more ridiculous each time I think about it!
Plus there are at most a hundred people there, and likely much fewer, so even if these people acquire some kind of arcane knowledge from their brief encounter with the Entreprise, it won't affect the rest of the planet.
FYI, planets are very big!
I think that altering a culture is a form of extinction. Preferable to physical extinction, but let's not pretend that Our Heroes saved the people either, at least not as they existed at the time.
Given your somewhat glib tone, I'll assume you're not really interested in discussing the matter, though.
Given your somewhat glib tone, I'll assume you're not really interested in discussing the matter, though.
I just don't believe you have a case here.
I can understand trying to preserve culture, there's many episodes where TNG crew works with other cultures to sustain their way of life while also helping them. I just don't get trying to avoid impact until a certain point of advancement.
Withhold medical tech, and the federation dooms those people to suffer while it's culture gets up to speed (if it ever does). Withhold weapons technology, and the federation dooms them to be helpless against any advanced threat that happens to find their planet etc..
Give them the chance to adapt, and then their culture can deal with reality that the federation exists out there
Withhold medical tech, and the federation dooms those people to suffer while it's culture gets up to speed (if it ever does). Withhold weapons technology, and the federation dooms them to be helpless against any advanced threat that happens to find their planet etc..
Give them the chance to adapt, and then their culture can deal with reality that the federation exists out there
I don't see how it is moral to help a culture that has achieved warp speed and not one that hasn't. If one is immoral then so is the other and vice versa. If the culture barely reached warp speed and you have... say super-warp speed aka trans-warp speed, you could say we want to let you find super-warp speed on your own. If they have yet to find the cure for all cancers that you've had for centuries, you could say "hey, find that cure on your own!".
Fixing an arbitrary limit below which no help is given and above which all help is given is idiotic IMO.
Say the people don't have warp speed but they are aware of extraterrestrial cultures, should you help them or let them die, looks like a puzzler...
Fixing an arbitrary limit below which no help is given and above which all help is given is idiotic IMO.
Say the people don't have warp speed but they are aware of extraterrestrial cultures, should you help them or let them die, looks like a puzzler...
I think it's a good idea to not think of it in terms of moral or not but of wise or not. You're likely to be a lot more impactful, perhaps negatively, if you're that much more advanced than you and you (rather than you and all other alien societies they encounter) have exclusive influence over them.
So they'll encounter us... What's that got to do with helping them?
That's like saying that we only care for people as soon as we have no choice but to see them in their misery.
Imagine what would happen if we reasoned this way on Earth? "We only help people that have achieved a level of industrialization." and let the others starve to death, let diseases spread among them without doing anything! Not that we do much for the latter mind you but with your prime directive we'd do even less! How would that make us more moral?
I'd like people to try to defend that one without sounding like heartless monsters.
Um. You are aware of how North America was colonized, right?
Maybe not interfering with people who haven't achieved a level of industrialization would be a damn good idea.
And I personally think it's naive to assume that anyone who opted to interfere would be doing it with the best interests of the natives in mind. Certainly that hasn't historically been the case.
ETA - Let's take a moment to consider the irony that we're discussing this on Indigenous Peoples Day.
Maybe not interfering with people who haven't achieved a level of industrialization would be a damn good idea.
And I personally think it's naive to assume that anyone who opted to interfere would be doing it with the best interests of the natives in mind. Certainly that hasn't historically been the case.
ETA - Let's take a moment to consider the irony that we're discussing this on Indigenous Peoples Day.
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I can't believe you're arguing this on a case where the alternative was extinction! Don't you see how innappropriate it is?
Pike berated Kirk for what amounted to saving a species from going extinct!
And you're defending this?
And you're using THIS CASE to say that it enforces the idea that the prime directive was a good thing!!
Except that in this case, the only long-term alteration is their object of worship, IE from bowing to a parchment with indefinite markings on it to one with the silhouette of a starship. Did their priests change? NO! Did their bowing habit change? NO! Everything is the same as before except for a drawing (insanely precise, I must add) that will serve as a substitute to the former parchment.
Big deal!
What do you have to oppose that?
Nothing, but your gratuitous affirmation that this is a sea change with nothing to substantiate your contention.
What I thought was peculiar about "Homeward" was that it was the guest character, Rozhenko, who came across as the heroic one while Picard seemed rather heartless.
I don't know how many TNG episodes where the guest character actually upstaged or outshined Picard in a positive way. But this was one of them, imho.
The Enterprise did save some Boraalans from their demise. But they were saved in spite of Picard. Rozhenko forced Picard's hand by covertly beaming the villagers into the holodeck. Throughout the episode, Picard seemed obsessed with not culturally contaminating the Boraalans.
While I can understand the rationale of the prime directive, the way the story unfolded, I thought Rozhenko stood on the moral high ground in contrast to Picard who acted more like a heartless bureaucrat mindlessly trying to follow the prime directive to the letter.
Even the dialogue that you mentioned sort of reinforced Picard's narrow mindedness, imo, regarding the prime directive (at least in this instance). The Vorin character was the Boraalan who stepped out of the holodeck and discovered the whole thing was a charade.
Even though Picard allowed Vorin to decide whether he wanted to return to his people or stay with the Enterprise, the talk that Picard had with Vorin strongly indicated that he was trying to persuade Vorin to stay. It was as though Picard didn't care if Vorin had loved ones and friends who would miss him and that he would miss. Cultural contamination was all Picard seemed to be concerned with. Where was Picard's compassion and humanity? I couldn't help but wonder.
At the end, there was this dialogue between Worf and Rozhenko:
Rozhenko: It's my fault. If I'd been more like you, we wouldn't have had so many problems.
Worf: No. If you had been more like me, these people would not be here now. You gave them a chance at a new life.
It sounded to me that Worf basically endorsed Rozhenko's actions. In contrast, Picard had a lame response to Crusher's question.
The way I saw the story. The writers allowed Picard to maintain his integrity by having him stick to his adherence to the prime directive. But at the same it, the story, in a roundabout way, seem to rebut Picard's interpretation of the prime directive. In any case, Rozhenko was shown in a better-light than Picard, which I thought was unusual.
At the very least, the episode seemed to offer a mixed message about the "correct" interpretation of the prime directive.
Yes Picard seemed overly sternly rigid and Rozhenko somewhat appealing but not as much as he initially seems or might be assumed to be-like that he actually wanted to save the village largely because of his personal bias that a woman is carrying his child and also that, IIRC, apart from saving the group he wasn't initially sure about whether he would stay with her to raise it.
Consider a precursor, "Who Watches the Watchers", a group believing Picard was a god quickly led to them thinking they should punish non-believers-the effects of violating the directive can rapidly be catastrophic.
I thought Picard and the crew generally seemed sincere that they wanted to help people avoid the demise but not if it meant revealing their existence so it makes sense that Worf would be approving of his brother forcing the action on them after it largely worked.
I don't like the implications of WWTW, that a peaceful people would become murderous simply because of a new religion. People often use religion to do what they are inclined to do. Violent people will have religions justifying violence and vice versa, non-violent people will adhere to non-violent religions. We see that in everyday life. When people adopt a civilized way of life they'll adhere to a softer version of their initial religion, and sometimes even abandon it if it doesn't correspond to their new way of life. The initial source of terrorism is not religion, it's poverty and lack of education, IOW social injustice.
