Pardon me, but how ethnocentric is that idea -- that a set of cultures (no planet would have only one culture) hasn't had the chance to define itself just because they haven't met one particular set of foreign cultures (i.e., those not native to their world)?
Are you going to claim that the Arawaks hadn't had the chance to define themselves before the arrival of Christopher Columbus? That the Aztecs hadn't had a chance to define themselves before the arrival of Hernán Cortés? Did the Powhatan Renape not have a chance to define themselves before the arrival of the English?
The problem with this idea is that no culture naturally exists in a vacuum; cultures exist in interaction with other cultures. That's normal and healthy. Further, contact with aliens wouldn't be the "culmination," because cultural evolution doesn't have a "peak" or "apex" against which a culture's "maturity" can be judged. Cultures just are.
The issue isn't "interference or isolationism." The issue is, treating these other cultures as equals.
Where to begin, somehow I doubt you believe the Arawaks, Aztecs, and Powhatan Renape are better off because of the arrival of the Europeans.
As I have argued several times in this thread, I think that whether or not a given culture benefits from contact with a more technologically advanced culture depends on the more powerful culture's attitudes. Europe benefited
greatly from contact with the more technologically advanced cultures of Asia and the Middle East -- and then it set out to conquer the world, bringing ruin to less technologically-developed cultures.
In other words, I am arguing that inter-cultural contact is only harmful when the more technologically powerful culture engages in imperialism.
This is setting aside a far more legitimate concern when it comes to inter-cultural contact -- the spread of diseases to which the people exposed are not immune. I'm judging the idea of "cultural" damage rather than the issue of the spread of disease.
That's a ridiculously patronizing way of describing it. The Arawaks, Aztecs, and Powhatan Renape would all have been fine had the Europeans not adopted a hostile, imperialist policy. What if the Kingdom of Spain and the Kingdom of England had decided to treat them as equals and respected their sovereignty?
All of those cultures will have been exposed to wildly differing ideas for
millennia on their own world. They would all have been thoroughly familiar with the processes of being exposed to new cultures and assimilating some ideas from them while disregarding others; that's what cultures do. They would all have strong senses of cultural identity.
The only difference is that this time, the new cultures would be from another planet rather than another continent. There is no reason at all to think that that would be inherently more harmful than contact with new cultures native to the same planet -- especially if the two cultures have been separated by so many millennia that neither culture has any clue the other exists; in such a situation, they
are, effectively, the same thing as aliens to one-another.
That says more about
you than about that culture.
To me,
that is what the Prime Directive ought to be about -- not about saying that this culture is somehow unequal to our own because they have some sort of cultural practice we abhor, but instead saying, "We need this rule to fight the impulse we have to refuse to treat foreign cultures as equals and engage in cultural imperialism because we don't like something aliens do amongst themselves."
No. But I think the Spanish would have been right to make contact with the Aztecs, minimize the spread of disease (to be fair to the Spanish, from what I understand, they didn't understand at first that they were spreading illnesses to which the Aztec had no immunity), and establish peaceful, egalitarian diplomatic relations with them while seeking to, peacefully, as equals, persuade the Aztecs to change policies they objected to while still respecting the Aztecs' right to make those decisions for themselves.
And, by the same token, the Aztec would have been right to make contact with the Spanish, minimize the spread of disease, and establish peaceful, egalitarian diplomatic relations with them while seeking to, peacefully, as equals, persuade the Spanish to change policies they objected to while still respecting the Spaniards' right to make those decisions for themselves.
And if the Federation would have listed me as Galactic Enemy #1, simply because I went and did what I believe inside myself was right, having helped and saved the innocent, the ignorent, the poor, the oppressed, and the enslaved, I'd carry that mark on my name with pride.
But they wouldn't, would they? As TNG's "Angel One" showed, the Prime Directive only applies to Starfleet officers. There's nothing to keep *civilians* from doing what they like. So going by your example, you would be free to do all of those things under Federation law. Unless you are a Starfleet officer of course. The Prime Directive does not apply to private citizens, only Starfleet.
Indeed; the Prime Directive is Starfleet General Order Number One. It's the rule that's in place when there are not contradictory orders from the Federation government.
However, according to DS9's "
Inter Arma Enim Silent Leges," the Federation Charter strictly bans interference in the internal affairs of foreign states, so the Federation Charter seems to have a civilian government equivalent to the Prime Directive.
Given "Angel One"'s claim that Federation civilians were capable of interfering in the internal affairs of foreign states without the Federation stopping them, I would presume that the ban in the Federation Charter specifically applies to the Federation government, its agencies, and its constituent polities and their agencies, but not to individual citizens operating outside of Federation territorial jurisdiction.
That's what we've learned from episodes like "Homeward" and "Dear Doctor". 
Now I'd need a nice, lil ship to suit me.
