PD breaking individuals, SoD spoilers...

[Geoff Thorne]

Trent, as always, a voice of correctness and reason. The question here isn't what is objectively so but what individuals might plausibly beleive given the agreed upon facts.

Is it unlikely that other officers in Starfleet might consider Sisko's actions (or that of the entire organization) towards Bajor a PD breach? I say, "no."

Joshua Grant

Pike and April have never been explicitly stated never to have breached the PD to my knowledge so I say they each did at least once. In fact, I would assume, given Starfleet's overall mission as well as the fact that every captain the show has followed has violated at least one of the PDs, it must be a fairly common occurrence.

Humans are pretty emotional and generally a bit bullheaded when it comes to Right and Wrong. Picard, to me, was the least likely to breach the PD while Kirk and Calhoun vie for most likely with Janeway coming close.

Since all of them did so at least once it's not illogical to think that Pike and April did also.

Now that I've said they did, some intrepid writer can tell those stories (presuming they haven't already. I'm only halfway through BURNING DREAMS which is AWESOME).

In the comics April fired on an unknown space ship in the final cliffhanger and that story was never finished AFAIK so that could have been his time.

 

[Therin of Andor]

RedJack said:
In the comics April fired on an unknown space ship in the final cliffhanger and that story was never finished AFAIK so that could have been his time.

And Pike was down on the planet - disguised as a local - so maybe the rest of that story was when both of them broke the PD.

 

[Christopher]

RedJack said:
The Bronx-born and raised Dalai Lama is a sound analogy. Such an individual would completely divert if not destroy Tibetan society as the Chinese well know. It's why they replaced the Panchen Lama with a ringer.

That's a totally false analogy. What matters is not where the person comes from, but where the idea comes from. Sociologically speaking, the cultural role and identity assigned to a person matters far more than the physical origin or nature of that person. If the impetus for declaring a Bronx native to be the Dalai Lama came from within Tibetan society, if that Bronx native were systematically persuaded by the Tibetan monks to accept the identity they wished to place upon him and ultimately came to accept his role as they defined it, that would be totally different from a situation where an outside power such as China tries to compel them to accept a cultural construction of the Dalai Lama that is not their own.

Starfleet did not try to force Bajor to accept Benjamin Sisko as the Emissary against their own cultural values. That's the exact, diametric opposite of what actually happened. If anything, it was the Bajorans who were making the decisions all along. Sisko and Starfleet did everything they could to cling to their definition of Sisko as not being the Emissary, but the Bajorans' own insistence on defining him that way eventually brought Sisko around to their way of thinking, and Starfleet was helpless to do anything about it. The outsiders did not force the natives to change their cultural assumptions; the natives successfully held onto their cultural assumptions and changed the outsiders in the process.

I believe Sisko being human, raised somewhere other than Bajor and having not the faintest clue about the subtleties or inner workings of the Bajoran faith, would have necessarily created massive frictions and schisms within that culture whether he chose to be passive or active in his interactions as Emissary.

Perhaps. But frictions and schisms are a part of any process of growth and change. The idea that the "natural" development of a society is somehow a perfectly smooth process with no frictions or problems of any kind unless outsiders meddle is just as historically and anthropologically unsupportable as the idea that its "natural" development occurs in isolation or without major change.

You must not fall into the trap of defining the native culture as a passive entity subject to the whims of outsiders. No matter what changes result from an outside contact, the agendas and opinions of the natives are a contributing factor to those changes just as much as any outside influences are. The frictions and schisms that arise will be outgrowths of pre-existing tensions, as rival groups latch onto outsiders as symbols or catalysts for escalating their rivalries. The ways that indigenous groups interpret and respond to outside influences will be a function of their own cultural heritage, their own agendas and goals. They're not just pawns, they're people with just as much strength of will and commitment to their goals as the outsiders are.

Did the major conflicts within Bajoran society after Sisko's arrival arise from Ben Sisko or Starfleet? No, they arose from within, from pre-existing factions that were already at odds before Sisko even arrived. The Circle, Minister Jarro, Vedek Winn, Vedek Bareil, Vedek Yarka, Shakaar, Akorem Laan... all these people who tried to affect the shape of Bajoran society, many of whom took stands on the identity and role of the Emissary, were all acting on beliefs and agendas they already held. Sisko didn't make them do what they did, think what they thought. Usually they tried to use him, to influence him, or to marginalize him (or to replace him in Akorem's case).

His choice to participate means that all his subsequent choices, passive or active, exert extra-cultural influence on a society we've been told is thousands of years old and has its dogmatic lifeview firmly and nearly universally entrenched. That, to me, is the definition of a PD breach. One of.

I've already warned against buying into the kneejerk assumption that an old culture must be unchanged since its beginnings. No culture is so static. If one generation is strict and dogmatic, generally the next will be rebellious and liberal in direct response to that. No culture is monolithic; every society has different groups jockeying with each other for advantage, even if it's just the old and the young, the haves and the have-nots. The current generation will usually define its ways as "the way things have always been," but if you dig into the actual history, you'll find that that's a selective interpretation at best.

You're also saying something self-contradictory. If the society is so strongly invested in its traditions, doesn't that mean it would be highly resistant to change imposed from outside? Is the mightiest, sturdiest tree the most vulnerable to collapse?

While it's true there were bunches of individual cultures on the continents cited, it is also true that, were it not for the need of Europeans to expand and absorb, the vast majority of those cultures would have developed along massively different and, in many cases, preferable lines.

True, but if Europe hadn't come into contact with Asia, then Europe would've developed on different lines too. And if those different individual cultures hadn't come into contact with each other, they would've developed along different lines. And if I hadn't seen "The Corbomite Maneuver" when I was five years old and gotten hooked, I would've developed along different lines. And if my grandmother had wheels, she'd be a wagon. This is such a trivial assertion as to be utterly meaningless. The way that any entity develops is shaped by the experiences and interactions it has, and it's axiomatic that it would go differently if those interactions were different. As I said, it's not contact itself that causes the disruption, it's the particular form of contact that occurred in this case, where the contactors were aggressively trying to repress the contactees.

And that tendency within Europe was a response to its own contact history. The cultural and religious imperialism that drove the Spanish in the Americas was an outgrowth of their centuries of fighting off the Muslim rulers of the Iberian Peninsula; once they drove the nonbelievers out of their own land, they just kept going. And Islam arose as a result of the intermixing of cultures and ideas in the crossroads of Arabia, as Arabs took ideas from Judaism and Christianity and adapted them into a new faith which was used by one faction to unite and achieve political and economic victory over their oppressors. And Christianity arose partly as a counterculture movement in response to the domination of the Roman Empire over the Hebrews. And the Roman Empire took much of its knowledge and value system from the Greeks. And the Greek civilization was a synthesis of indigenous and invader cultures in the Aegean. And so on.

All of those cultures would have developed differently if their contact histories had been different, obviously. But that doesn't mean that contact itself is an anomaly or a wrong to be prevented. It's a normal and inseparable part of cultural evolution on any continent, on any planet.

And as I pointed out before, the thing about European contact that was most devastating to the Native Americans was disease, not cultural imperialism. The Americans (those south of the Arctic Circle, at least) had been isolated from Eurasia for at least 12,000 years and had no immunity to Eurasian diseases. Those diseases, transmitted across the continent through indigenous trading networks, wiped out as much as 90 percent of the population of the Americas before most of them had ever met a European. So many American cultures were already devastated even before European people (rather than microbes) reached them and had any influence over them. If that hadn't happened, the Europeans would've encountered cultures that were ten times more populous and far more robust, much more able to hold their own. Sure, Europe would've probably dominated them politically or economically the way it did in India, China, Africa, etc., but it wouldn't have driven them to extinction through cultural imperialism alone. (And without the same near-unfettered access to the Americas' wealth and territory, Europe would never have grown into a strong enough colonial power to do as much damage to Africa and Asia as it did.)

I don't find the 24th century PD paternalistic. I find it respectful.

It's respectful to abandon an entire species to extinction because you think they're too mentally fragile to handle new knowledge? Sounds like the same kind of "respect" for women that led to society treating women as hothouse flowers to be isolated and sheltered from anything unpleasant. Respect taken too far becomes condescension.

 

[The Laughing Vulcan]

Sisko's inetrvention on Bajor doesn't count. His mother was a Prophet, a being with no sense of linear time. His becoming the emissary was preordained. He would have been breaking the PD if he had refused, although that is only apparent with hindsight.

Now when it comes to Sisko playing hard and fast with the rules chasing down the Maquis using WMDs in the process. That could be a PD issue.

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

The Laughing Vulcan said:
Now when it comes to Sisko playing hard and fast with the rules chasing down the Maquis using WMDs in the process. That could be a PD issue.

The Prime Directive doesn't forbid the Federation to defend itself from attack.

In any case, Sisko did this to catch Eddington, which he was ordered to do anyway.

 

[William Leisner]

RedJack said:
I seem to recall an office scene where an admiral expressed precisely the concerns we're talking about. And Sisko too.

First season. But it's been a while.

Expressed concern, yes. But that's ALL they ever did. If the admiralty ever once, in seven years, thought keeping Sisko at DS9 constituted an on-going violation of the PD, or even a potential violation, they would have recalled him. And let's make sure we're clear here: it's Starfleet Command, not Commander Benjamin Sisko, who made the ultimate decision to leave a human Emissary as the ranking Starfleet officer in the Bajor sector.

And, as I said before, Sisko gave the admiralty a golden opportunity (not to mention a damned good reason) to recall him early on, following the Circle's coup, for fear that he was intent on unduly influencing Bajoran society. Needless to say, they didn't. Clearly, they didn't see the PD issues you do.

To me that externally inspired change, for good or ill, is a breach of the PD.

With all respect, bovine excrement. If the PD were so absolutist about effecting change on alien cultures, they should not only mothball the entire fleet, but also come back to Earth, close the shutters, and pull the bedcovers up over their heads. Because you can't explore strange new worlds or met new life and new civilizations without the risk that you're going to change something, and you can't know what will change a culture, by what degree, and to what end.

pg 405 DS9 Companion. Ron Moore says about Sisko and his treatment in the series almost verbatim what I have expressed here.

Uh... no.

Ronald D. Moore said:
"It's almost a Prime Directive issue [...] it probably would have raised a lot of eyebrows back at Headquarters."

(emphasis mine)

"Raising eyebrows" is certainly not the same as declaring this a PD violation, and unequivically declaring what Sisko did as "wrong", as you do. (And "almost a Prime Directive issue," is a bit like "almost pregnant.")

Besides which, this is not a typical "captain inexplicibly goes nutty and does bad stuff on the planet of the week" scenario. Sisko's connection with the wormhole aliens had been established for four years at this point. Sisko was not just hearing voices in his head, but was suffering a documented medical condition. And, again, do note that not only is Sisko not relieved of duty or reprimanded for his actions... but it's Admiral Whatley who asks Sisko afterwards to wield his singular influence to sway the Bajoran government and get the Federation what it wants.

 

[mrs260]

RedJack said:
Well, what can I say? Again, we differ.

The Bronx-born and raised Dalai Lama is a sound analogy. Such an individual would completely divert if not destroy Tibetan society as the Chinese well know.

Are you aware that the Dalai Lama has promised to reincarnate outside the Chinese sphere of influence? (Also, he's holding a vote to see whether his followers want him to name a successor while he's alive.)

I guess he'd better be careful not to reincarnate in the Bronx. Maybe California.

 

[Geoff Thorne]

I never said, here or in SoD, that all these breaches were "wrong." Only that they were breaches that irrevocably changed a society. The implication being that such changes should not be implemented lightly or, in most cases, at all.

Yes, to me, it would have been preferable for the Europeans to have left the rest of the world alone for a few more centuries. Or, barring that, to have left the cultures they encountered intact. Simply meeting and trading with new peoples is quite different from making yourself an integral and influential part of their society. So my interpretation of the PD is shaped by that worldview.

Even if the cultural mythology includes the eventual coming of a leader from Outside, that outsider being from someplace completely separate from the culture is going to change that culture irrevocably. If that outside culture has its own taboos against undue interference in other peoples' business, you can, again, see how the two ethos would bump against each other. Sisko can both be the prophesied Emissary AND breach the PD by accepting the job. Which is precisely how I see it. Nowhere do I say it's "bad," only that, IMO, it's a breach. Kobayashi Maru.

I don't find it paternalistic to see a society not my own, doing things I don't understand or agree with and leave them to it. It's none of my business and I certainly lack the foresight and wisdom to know that my interference, however benign it may seem in the moment, will not have far reaching negative consequences in the future. This, to me, is the essence of the PD.

It's not "natural" for an individual from one planetary culture to become the spiritual leader of another any more than it's natural for my nephew to be the silverback of a gorilla troupe. Or to be the best hunter in a wolf pack. These are conceits of the medium which we accept, reject or modify to suit our outlooks. Mine differs from some here. Maybe all. GOOD.

Even Modan expresses this to Jaza when she says he will be ALONE. How can he be alone surrounded by intelligent beings? Because they are only like him in that one way. The rest is absolutely alien. That's why he rejects Starfleet's precepts in order to help the Orishans. Starfleet is too small in that context. The PD is too restrictive. Riker, btw, comes to the same conclusion.

There are fundamental differences, automatic ones, that would make certain contacts fantastically dicey. I see Sisko as the Emissary as such a contact.

And, despite argument here, I'm comfortable that his creators felt the same.

The phrase, "a little bit pregnant" is apt. Either it's a PD violation or it isn't. I say "is." So nyah nyah nyah. Interstellar politics being what they are in the Trek-verse, my feeling is Starfleet deemed the whole Emissary thing to be a Kobayashi Maru too. I see fist pounding arguments about whether to leave Sisko there or to use his position to the Federation's benefit or to leave Bajor alone altogether. Starfleet has a history of acknowledging PD breaches and then not punishing the offenders.

Yes, Mark, for the Tibetans' sake, he'd better not.

 

[Christopher]

RedJack said:
Yes, to me, it would have been preferable for the Europeans to have left the rest of the world alone for a few more centuries. Or, barring that, to have left the cultures they encountered intact. Simply meeting and trading with new peoples is quite different from making ourself an integral and influential part of their society. So my interpretation of the PD is shaped by that worldview.

Well, that's basically what I'm saying -- that contact is not automatically harmful, and that bringing new ideas into a culture doesn't make it any less "intact" because it has no fixed, static form to begin with. The only thing that's harmful is coercion or conquest, not simple interaction. Or rather, if simple interaction with outsiders breeds conflict and disruptive change, it will be because it magnifies tensions that already existed within the society. Leaving a culture alone does not guarantee there won't be problems any more than contacting it guarantees that there will be. (The Mexica had already been conquered and oppressed by the Aztec state before Cortez came along, and would've probably rebelled and overthrown it eventually anyway even if he hadn't. He just accelerated the timetable -- although the smallpox he brought did far worse overall.)

Even if the cultural mythology includes the eventual coming of a leader from Outside, that outsider being from someplace completely separate from the culture is going to change that culture irrevocably.

Cultures are always changing. Even the word "irrevocably" is a value judgment, implying there's some reason why a change would be revoked. Cultures constantly change and rarely revert to an earlier form. Even reactionary or fundamentalist movements that claim to be advocating a return to an earlier state are usually promoting their own modern reinterpretation of "traditional values" to suit their present-day needs.

And as I mentioned, the change usually goes both ways. One thing I regret about ST is that it harps so much on the risk of humanity changing alien cultures, but rarely addresses how humanity would be changed by alien cultures. It can't be assumed that the only risk is to the less advanced culture. Asia was more advanced than Europe for most of their respective histories, but then Europe took Asian advancements and used them to become an empire that unseated Asia from its traditional dominance.

In fact, that's one of the best arguments in favor of a Prime Directive, though one that's never made. It shouldn't just be about protecting the other guys, but about protecting the Federation as well. Who knows how Federation culture might be changed by the influx of new, alien ideas? Who knows whether a culture that obtains Federation technology might come back and conquer it a couple of centuries later? Change and influence go both ways.

But as William said, that doesn't mean contact should be avoided altogether. It means it should be approached carefully, responsibly, and with eyes wide open. I like to think that's the real point of the Prime Directive -- it's not supposed to say "avoid any contact/interaction at all costs," it's supposed to say "be very careful and consider the consequences before you decide to interact." That's how it tended to be applied in the 23rd century, before it evolved into the more absolutist, extremist version seen in the 24th century. Extremism in defense of anything is generally a vice.

If that outside culture has its own taboos against undue interference in other peoples' business, you can, again, see how the two ethos would bump against each other. Sisko can both be the prophesied Emissary AND breach the PD by accepting the job. Which is precisely how I see it.

Again, we're bumping into the fact that the PD has at least two distinct facets, for pre-contact and post-contact societies. For pre-contact, the rule is "no intervention, period." But for post-contact societies like Bajor, it's more a pledge to respect the society's political autonomy -- you're allowed to advise, interact, and provide assistance, just not to impose Federation or Starfleet policies against the will of the planet's legitimate government or to take sides in its internal political or military conflicts. It's important not to confuse these branches of the Directive.

If a warp-era planet's government invites a Federation representative to come in as an advisor -- for example, asking an SCE team to fix their planetary computer network, asking a medical team to help with a serious disease, or asking a Federation negotiator to serve as a neutral mediator in peace talks (all of which have precedent in onscreen or published Trek tales) -- it is not a breach of the Prime Directive to accept that invitation. So long as the local government still has the freedom to accept or reject the advisor's suggestions, there's no undue interference. The PD only says that if the government decides to do something different than what the advisors say, the advisors have to accept it. It doesn't say they can't make suggestions.

And this is essentially what happened on Bajor. The political and religious leaders of Bajor, a post-contact, warp-capable civilization, invited Benjamin Sisko to act in an advisory capacity. True, the fact that they perceived him as a major religious figure means they were likely to follow his advice; but there were multiple cases when Sisko advised one thing and the Bajoran leaders chose to do another, and Sisko did not attempt to force them to choose differently. The Prime Directive as it is defined for post-contact civilizations was not violated.

It's not "natural" for an individual from one planetary culture to become the spiritual leader of another any more than it's natural for my nephew to be the silverback of a gorilla troupe.

Why not? There are many different spiritual traditions. There are fringe cults on Earth today that look to aliens as their saviors. The Ottoman Empire required its rulers to be the offspring of slaves taken from other cultures, essentially making it impossible for indigenous members of their own society to be in charge of it. You can't impose a limited definition of what represents a "natural" cultural phenomenon, because what's natural is diversity. Especially if we're talking about societies on other planets -- we're certainly not qualified to place limits on what would be "natural" (whatever that word even means) for them.

There are historical precedents for cases where "aliens" to a culture were perceived as divine or supernatural figures by that culture -- Cortez in Mexico, Cook in Hawai'i, various English explorers in Algonquian societies. But a study of those precedents dispels the myth that it's invariably a case of the "alien" imposing his beliefs and values on the natives. Generally, if a society makes you a god and you try to do something different from what they expect, they'll decide you aren't their god after all and will kill you as a pretender. That's what happened to Captain Cook, basically. Cortez avoided that fate by going along with it -- he just took over the culturally predefined role of the divine ruler and continued to operate within that same infrastructure. When a culture makes you their god, it's in service to their needs -- it's a way of integrating the fact of your existence into their own cultural process by plugging you into a mythological role that already exists in their society. It's more about subordinating you to them than subordinating themselves to you. It preserves their culture rather than disrupting it. And those who tried to disrupt the local cultures found themselves punished for it. Cultures aren't houses of cards. They have defense mechanisms.

And there have been primate behaviorists who have gotten themselves adopted into ape societies. Indeed, that's really the only way to conduct a really effective study of ape behavior. Even species is not an insurmountable divide in matters of cultural affiliation. Culture is a function of behavior and belief, not biology.

There are fundamental differences, automatic ones, that would make certain contacts fantastically dicey. I see Sisko as the Emissary as such a contact.

I dunno. Aside from having ridged noses and sneezing when they're pregnant, I don't see Bajorans as falling outside the range of human behaviors at all. Let's face it, when we're talking about interactions between onscreen Trek species, we're talking about metaphors for human cultural interactions. Even in the lit, we can only go so far in creating truly alien behaviors; whatever we come up with is usually based on human cultural variants. I've read about more than a few human cultures that are/were a lot more alien to our Western assumptions than the Bajorans are.

 

[Geoff Thorne]

The Law of Unintended Consequences is the heart of the PD, IMO. Tread very lightly is the rule. Accepting the job as alien Pope or Dalai Lama is not treading lightly by any definition. Nor is rejecting the offer. Hence, Kobayashi Maru.

I think the Federation is protected against new ideas because, internally, it's too flexible. You don't join up, in fact, unless you agree, in principle, with the basic organizational structure and ethos. Why would you?

The differences between the Klingons and the Federation are, obviously, too great, for instance (though they eventually join up. Maybe Quark is right about humans being insidious.)

 

[Christopher]

The Emissary isn't the equivalent of the Pope or the Dalai Lama, though. That would be the Kai.

Otherwise, yes, the PD advises caution in interactions, and Ben Sisko obeyed its letter and spirit faithfully. He never attempted to impose his or Starfleet's will on the Bajorans, never exploited the Emissary role as a bully pulpit. He served the wishes of the indigenous populations of the Bajoran system -- if we count the aliens inhabiting the wormhole as one of those indigenous populations. The only times he used his Emissary status to influence Bajoran policy were when he was relaying the advice of the system's other indigenes, the Prophets. After all, that's what an emissary is -- Not a leader or a god, just an intermediary. And Sisko was very reluctant to accept even that role. It wasn't something he entered into lightly or capriciously, or even willingly.

On the other point, that's certainly valid within the established fictional conceits of the Trek universe, but my point is that it would be a lot more interesting if the series explored ways in which humanity was changed by alien ideas. The Federation we've seen is pretty much middle-class America writ large; a real interspecies civilization would be a much more interesting syncretism of various human and alien cultures.

 

[trampledamage]

Christopher said:
...it would be a lot more interesting if the series explored ways in which humanity was changed by alien ideas.

I'd buy that book!

 

[Geoff Thorne]

It's a fine point. MY feeling is that, regardless of his specific means of interaction, by entering what was, essentially, a closed system in such a meaningful way, he created an automatic PD breach.

And the Emissary presided over weddings, blessed children and endeavors. I'd say he was more than a passive conduit for the Prophets' wishes. The simple fact of his presence caused strife on Bajor by factionalizing the Bajorans themselves.

They were the pond, he was the stone. It doesn't matter what his intentions are. He makes ripples.

I agree, it would be interesting to see the effect of alien thought on the Federation at large but, isn't the whole IDIC thing an example of that? it's not like humanity is embracing that concept currently. Maybe it just takes a longer time than we've had to see the effects.

 

[Christopher]

RedJack said:
It's a fine point. MY feeling is that, regardless of his specific means of interaction, by entering what was, essentially, a closed system in such a meaningful way, he created an automatic PD breach.

How was Bajor a closed system? They'd been travelling in space for centuries and had been occupied by Cardassia for 60 years. They had many refugee populations living offworld and interacting with the Federation and other starfaring cultures. Indeed, I recall some reference to the Bajorans spreading their art and architecture across space millennia ago, suggesting a prior space age before the more recent "age of sail."

Bajor, as I've said, was a post-contact civilization at the point that Sisko arrived. Therefore, it's a mistake to judge the situation by the logic of the pre-contact side of the Prime Directive, the one that says "no interference in a closed system," to borrow your terms. A post-contact society is, by definition, not a closed system. It's a neighboring power with the right to engage your society in dialogue, not a bunch of primitives who need to be sheltered and coddled. If they choose to interact with you and are changed by that interaction, that's the result of their own choice as a mature civilization able to take responsibility for itself.

And the Emissary presided over weddings, blessed children and endeavors. I'd say he was more than a passive conduit for the Prophets' wishes. The simple fact of his presence caused strife on Bajor by factionalizing the Bajorans themselves.

It didn't cause strife. The strife arose from the pre-existing agendas and conflicts within the society. His presence simply catalyzed them, gave them a focus. Like I said, the Mexica would've rebelled against the Aztecs eventually with or without Cortez. You cannot treat an indigenous culture as a passive receptacle. It has its own existing dynamism, its own internal trends and processes, and any outside forces merely contribute to the shaping of those processes rather than supplanting them altogether.

Yes, Sisko participated in the culture, but since it's a post-contact, warp-era civilization, there is no Prime Directive prohibition against simple participation. Only against forcibly acting against the will of its leaders or taking sides in an internal conflict. Sisko was part of an equal, mutually consensual interaction between post-contact societies. That's not a Prime Directive violation any more than it's statutory rape to have consensual sex with a 25-year-old.

 

[Sci]

RedJack said:
I think the Federation is protected against new ideas because, internally, it's too flexible. You don't join up, in fact, unless you agree, in principle, with the basic organizational structure and ethos.

Tell that to the Selelvians and the Danteri and the Ardanians.

Why would you?

Self-defense. The desire to gain influence in the Federation if you have something they want/need.

Why did the South join a Union built on the idea that all men are created equal if they wanted to preserve slavery and the ability of the state governments to disregard federal law? Why has the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland joined the European Union if they don't want to adopt the euro or adhere to European Union law? Why did the Republic of Poland join the European Union if they don't want to abide by its human rights laws with regard to gays? Why is the State of Israel part of the United Nations if they want to violate the Universal Declaration of Human Rights when it comes to Palestinians? Why is the Syrian Arab Republic a part of the United Nations if it wishes to torture its prisoners? Why is the United States a part of the United Nations if it wishes to torture its prisoners? Why is the Commonwealth of Massachusetts a part of the United States if it believes in universal health care and same-sex marriage?

 

[Geoff Thorne]

I don't discuss the Confederacy as my views on the subject tend to piss some people off and that isn't my aim here.

Bajor was a closed religious system. Sisko's presence as an outsider catalyzed the strife, not the simple existence of an Emissary. Please stop using rape analogies. It makes me nervous as we are talking about fictional characters and events. There are many lenses through which we can view these constructs.

My version of complexity assumes a certain amount of cultural chaos as the result of Sisko's arrival. It just seems to me that it would be so. And, luckily, the canon material supports this. This is a culture that was just recently occupied by a hostile alien power and you think the arrival of an alien Emissary wouldn't make massive ripples?

Come on.

It defies logic to assume that a man from a completely different social system would not radically alter any new society in which he participated at the level Ben Sisko did under the best circs. It would be like tossing a live chicken into a high performance engine. Would Kai Winn have gone over to the Pah Wraiths if Sisko had not been the Emissary? Had she not, would they have been released? That's an unintended consequence. That is a massive ripple.

We don't know what would have happened because we can't know that. All we know is what did happen. A human became the Bajoran Emissary and hilarity ensued.

You don't have to concede the point. You don't have to agree with my interpretation. But you d have to accept that it is a legit one, based upon available data.

 

[Christopher]

Sci said:
Why did the South join a Union built on the idea that all men are created equal if they wanted to preserve slavery and the ability of the state governments to disregard federal law?

Because the Constitution originally defined a black man as only 3/5 of a man. Also because "all men are created equal" is from the Declaration of Independence, which was not a binding legal document. The union wasn't formally, officially built on that idea at the time of its creation. It wasn't the law of the land until the Fourteenth Amendment was ratified.

But more broadly, you have a point -- no union is founded because its members agree on everything. There were many points of disagreement among the founders of the US, which is why they insisted on a system with so many checks and balances and compromises, which is why that system has been so successful and adaptable over time.

And from what little we've seen, the UFP is no different. When we first saw Vulcans, Tellarites, and Andorians together in the same place ("Journey to Babel"), they didn't get along too well. And they expressed rather different cultural values from each other and from humanity.

The problem is that the species are all still so distinct and separate after centuries of interaction. There should be a lot more cross-cultural interfertility.

 

[Sci]

Christopher said:
But more broadly, you have a point -- no union is founded because its members agree on everything. There were many points of disagreement among the founders of the US, which is why they insisted on a system with so many checks and balances and compromises, which is why that system has been so successful and adaptable over time.

Exactly, and that same paradigm recurrs to this very day. the UK has constantly had to negotiate between its "special relationship" with the US and its membership in the EU, as these two roles often conflict (to say nothing of its desire to maintain its distinct identity separate from the rest of Europe). Countries like Israel, Russia, the US, and Syria are all United Nations Member States and all signatories to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, yet all of them presently violate the UDHR on a regular basis. Poland's expressed a desire to build a giant police databse of every single gay person in the country, even though that's a plain violation of EU law.

It's incredibly common for polities to join larger polities, states, alliances, and intergovernmental organizations without necessarily agreeing to the fundamental premises of those larger entities, and there's no reason to think that that pattern wouldn't recurr with the Federation and its Member States.

And from what little we've seen, the UFP is no different. When we first saw Vulcans, Tellarites, and Andorians together in the same place ("Journey to Babel"), they didn't get along too well. And they expressed rather different cultural values from each other and from humanity.

Yup. In fact, they were apparently on the brink of civil war over the admission of Coridan as a Federation Member State!

The problem is that the species are all still so distinct and separate after centuries of interaction. There should be a lot more cross-cultural interfertility.

Oh, I dunno. I'm from Ohio, and I'd feel pretty out of place if I were to move to Texas or Louisiana or Alabama. The cultures there are so different!

 

[Christopher]

RedJack said:
Bajor was a closed religious system.

Even if that's true, that doesn't mean it lacked dynamism. We certainly saw enough examples of purely internal differences of belief and policy among the Bajoran faithful.

My version of complexity assumes a certain amount of cultural chaos as the result of Sisko's arrival. It just seems to me that it would be so. And, luckily, the canon material supports this. This is a culture that was just recently occupied by a hostile alien power and you think the arrival of an alien Emissary wouldn't make massive ripples?

I never said it wouldn't make changes. I said it is merely one contributing factor to the ongoing process of change within the society. It didn't create ripples in a still pond, it created ripples in whitewater rapids. Bajoran society was already in a highly turbulent and chaotic phase when Sisko arrived.

His presence and identity contributed to that, yes, but that is neither anomalous nor improper. If a post-contact civilization invites a member of the Federation to participate in its societal processes, that person is entitled to accept the invitation, so long as he respects the sovereignty of that civilization and makes careful, informed decisions. Whatever change results is due to the mutual and consensual choice of all participants.

It defies logic to assume that a man from a completely different social system would not radically alter any new society in which he participated at the level Ben Sisko did under the best circs.

See, this is the problem. You're still defining change as something anomalous and external, so you're assuming that by disagreeing with you I'm saying that change does not occur. If you still think that, then you've completely misread everything I've written for the past two days. All along, my point has been that, yes, contact brings change, but there's nothing unusual about change. The "natural" process of growth for any society includes interaction with outside cultures and absorption of new ideas from them -- ideas which are then filtered and co-opted by the pre-existing dynamics of the civilization, rather than swallowed whole by passive receptacles. Sometimes that interaction brings problems and disruption, yes, of course, but that's normal. And it's the flipside of the dynamism that keeps societies vibrant and adaptable.

Would you refuse to let your children exercise to keep them from getting hurt? Is it worth depriving them of the benefits of exercise to shield them from its risks? Yes, cross-cultural interaction carries risks. I don't dispute that. But it also carries immense potential for gain, and few societies ever advance very far without interaction with outside cultures and value systems.

Would Kai Winn have gone over to the Pah Wraiths if Sisko had not been the Emissary?

She didn't just suddenly decide to be a self-righteous, power-hungry fanatic the moment Starfleet took over DS9. She used the Emissary's alien origin as an excuse for advancing her pre-existing political opposition to the sitting authority structures. It was her craving for power that led her to turn to the Pah Wraiths. If the Emissary had been Bajoran, Winn would've just found another excuse for pursuing her political ambition. Maybe by saying that the Emissary was the wrong kind of Bajoran, or that the scriptures had been misinterpreted and he wasn't the real Emissary.

So yes, Sisko's presence was a contributing factor to a process of disruptive change. But that doesn't necessarily mean that no disruption would have occurred in his absence.

To sum up:

Did Sisko's participation in Bajoran society contribute to change? Yes.
Did that therefore demand that he be cautious and responsible in said participation? Yes.
Did Sisko fail to exercise caution and responsibility? No.
Did he violate the Prime Directive as it applies to post-contact cultures? No, although his unique position did push the envelope now and again.

 

[Geoff Thorne]

I don't believe the envelope can be pushed. It's a line. You're either on one side of it or you've crossed it. Sisko crossed it. Multiple times and in multiple ways.

And I never presented change as a negative. I simply said that the introduction of a factor, in this case an intelligent, decision-making factor named Ben Sisko, would create a change that was not part of the civilization's existing paradigm and would automatically generate unforeseen consequences.

I envision Starfleet brass going bananas after SIsko was made Emissary but having no course left to them that wouldn't constitute a violation of the PD. Pull him out, chaos. Leave him there, manageable chaos. Which is what we saw. Violence. Factionalization. Potential governmental collapse. Terrorist acts. The lot. Almost entirely centered around or inspired by Sisko's Emissary status. Which would not have been the case with a homegrown Emissary.

So they were stuck with him using his best judgement. But, whatever his judgement on a given issue, his mere non-Bajoran presence, the result of a wholly non-Bajoran and, in some ways, anti-spiritual upbringing would have massive effect on the Bajoran culture.

At no time has the Bajoran faith been presented as outward looking or evangelical. It is an insular, navel-gazing philosophy concerned entirely with their binary relationship with their prophets- a closed system. Sisko represents not only a random element thrown into that system but a random element capable of shifting intent based on factors of which he himself is not completely in control.

Sudden MASSIVE effect with unforeseen consequences to alien society based upon differences of culture and intelligent choice = PD breach. One of the biggest in Federation history, IMO.