Well, for starters, it's not an opinion, it's more like a pattern of behavior...It's an unpopular opinion for Trek fans to rationalize away things?
Unpopular Trek opinions game
- Thread starter ED-209
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Opinions can be patterns of behaviors if people are consistent in their opinions.Well, for starters, it's not an opinion, it's more like a pattern of behavior...
It's an unpopular opinion for Trek fans to rationalize away things?
Then I've been doing this wrong for forty years!
I mean, I didn't want to be the one to tell you this...Then I've been doing this wrong for forty years!
Star Trek is Posadist, and Saru's story is an excellent piece of Posadist literature. A civilization can only become advanced to Star Trek levels by eliminating capital (that isn't to say all barter or exchange systems, but capitalism as a mode of controlling resources). Additionally through this lens of course UFP admitted Saru as a refugee, as any socialist civilization would ally with the workers.
Meat for discussion:
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/24/...-and-its-debt-to-revolutionary-socialism.html
Meat for discussion:
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/24/...-and-its-debt-to-revolutionary-socialism.html
I've just watched TNG's "Pen Pals" and boy, do I hate the pompous asses that both Picard and Riker are in that episode. Arguing that they shouldn't intervene when people are about to go extinct because "we don't know what the consequences would be"!!! Whatever they are, it's got to be better than extinction!!! And then Picard arguing that since we shouldn't intervene in case of a dispute or a local war then we shouldn't in that CASE!!! It's like saying that since I won't meddle when my neighbor has an argument with his other neighbor that means that I shouldn't do anything if he has a heart attack!!! You see my point, don't you? Appalling!!!
It’s like saying we shouldn’t invade $country because they are in a civil war, because if we do we’ll likely make it worse.
As for the “extinct” part, I suspect Picard has changed his mind now — he was interfering with the natives on the romulan world to protect them from a natural occurrence
I could do without the straw man, thank you.
Not really. The whole idea of the prime directive is to ensure that captains don’t embroil the federation into messy wars that cause more harm.
Trek has always been a reflection of the current day.
Trek has always been a reflection of the current day.
How does that apply to people facing annihilation due to a natural disaster?
If we apply that all-encompassing misguided prime directive we wouldn't give any aid to third world countries.
That's basically what they are doing. They watch people die of a preventable catastrophe and do nothing!!
The prime directive is too crude and ill-conceived to be of any practical use.
Picard uses that PD as an excuse to watch people die and do nothing. Worf's brother is the only one who had the right attitude about it and he's regarded as some kind of renegade.
Besides Picard violates it when it suits his purpose (e.g. Justice) which shows that he's nothing but a hypocrite.
It doesn't on a planetary case (like in Pen Pals and Homeward), it's a fixed rule, but there are always exceptions to the rule. In the past Captains have made exceptions for the wrong reasons (like Picard in Justice), so they aren't allowed to bypass it. Doesn't stop them doing it though - and indeed Picard didn't appear to suffer any ill effects from Justice. In Pen Pals, Picard was wrong to not interfere, he was also wrong to change his mind for the reason he did.
On a more local case than planetary loss it isn't as clear cut. Imagine if an alien race is going to get hit by an asteroid that's going to kill hundreds of millions (issuing in WW3 style devestation). As a society and a species they'll survive, they learn more science, they progress, they build their space program up, they can stop future asteroids.
Now imagine it magically fixes itself. That species stops learning, burns the scientists, destroys the observatory so it never happens again, and instead starts worshipping the magic space aliens that fixed the problem. The species is thrown into a dark ages.
It wouldn't fix itself magically. People would apply the smallest of deviation so that it would miss its target by the minimum but at any rate, people don't abandon science for such a silly reason. Just as people don't change their way of life because (a handful of them) saw something in the sky that they can't possibly identify as what it really is. History is full of legends with enormous beasts. It would just be one legend that for once would be based ona real event but who would know the difference???The justifications for letting an entire planet die or even a sizeable portion of it are not valid.
As I said if we follow that stupid rule we would never give any aid to third world countries. In fact, we would never help anyone at all on the assumption that that guy could be the next Hitler. That about as silly an interpretation as the one you've given.
People won't abandon science or become raging psychopaths because a meteor DIDN't Strike their planet. It's the contrary that is likely to happen. A civilization could never recover from such a disaster and people could revert to a prehistorical age with all the suffering and the dying that that would imply.
So mankind could never recover from ww3?
An asteroid wiping out a city like LA would be just what we need to focus the world on larger problems. I hope anyway.
An asteroid wiping out a city like LA would be just what we need to focus the world on larger problems. I hope anyway.
If there's ever a ww3, it's likely that we won't recover from it, indeed.
In fact, it's likely that we will go extinct even WITHOUT ww3. Have you read any scientific articles about the deterioration of Earth lately? It's even worse than we anticipated ten or twenty years ago. There are already large portions of the oceans that are nearly lifeless. Ecosystems that had existed for millions of years are on the verge of collapse.
So yeah, ww3 would definitely speed things up and definitely not slow them down. The idea that a war could engender anything else than destruction, misery and backward thinking is insanely wrong. In France it took us almost thirty years to recover from ww2 and we weren't even the ones who took the brunt of it. Poland and East Germany were and it took them much longer.
That's a horrible thing to think. To write it, is beyond... comment. Shame on you!
There was a ww3 and Earth did recover from it. Had the Vulcans stopped ww3 would we have had the federation?
Probably not. Humanity needed something common to join them.
Regardless, I believe humans can survive WW3 and will rebuild, and probably faster than we give them credit for.
And that experience could well have fed into the culture of mankind as it took a leading role in the federation and the prime directive.
We'll survive World War III. It will cull the heard, but we will adapt.
It took many Communist countries much longer to recover than the rest.
It took many Communist countries much longer to recover than the rest.
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