The Prime Directive kind of makes sense in the tone of an anti-colonialism stance, in that a uplifted society is influenced by the Federation, and if it starts making trouble for itself or others,...
The Prime Directive kind of makes sense in the tone of an anti-colonialism stance, in that a uplifted society is influenced by the Federation, and if it starts making trouble for itself or others, or proves to have a valuable resource, then the Federation takes agency over however the society would develop, and the track record of that happening on Earth isn't that great tbh.
I think something like the Prime Directive makes more sense with regards to truly "alien" encounters. Things like the Crystalline Entity, Junior, the Devidians, or Species 8472. Creatures so...
I think something like the Prime Directive makes more sense with regards to truly "alien" encounters. Things like the Crystalline Entity, Junior, the Devidians, or Species 8472. Creatures so un-humanlike that interactions with them can have wildly unpredictable consequences.
However, it turns out most of the galaxy is populated with people who are basically humanoid, living in civilizations that parallel ours in predictable ways. I don't think the Prime Directive does those species any real favors.
Can someone sell me on the Prime Directive? I haven't thought about this that deeply, but it seems to me that: The Federation is complicit in a lot of suffering by not sharing their technology,...
Can someone sell me on the Prime Directive? I haven't thought about this that deeply, but it seems to me that:
The Federation is complicit in a lot of suffering by not sharing their technology, philosophy, etc., possibly making it the most evil political institution in human(?) history.
It doesn't really make sense from an anti-colonialist perspective. There's no reason the Federation couldn't engage in technological/cultural exchanges without disrupting the sovereignty of the planet/culture they are visiting.
I'm not sure that it even makes sense for the Federation to be anti-colonialist. It is clearly highly superior in its political organization, technological prowess, philosophy, etc., to any civilization that has arisen on Earth in this universe, and presumably on most pre-contact planets in the Star Trek universe. If we were given the chance to accept absolute rule under an interstellar, post-scarcity, highly enlightened civilization such as the Federation, I would say it would be immoral not to take it, as it would give us a much greater chance of solving our problems than we would have on our own, in addition to ending poverty, starvation, homelessness, etc. Is it really that much of a stretch to say that such a civilization ought to impose such rule regardless of the will of the subjugated? Obviously colonialism has been terrible historically, but that's because the colonists were always superior only in technology, and often inferior in many other ways to the colonized. I don't think this would be true with respect to a colonialist Federation.
I always had the impression that the Prime Directive was adopted out of poor experiences with first contact—i.e., rather than being based on moral principles, it is based on practical...
I always had the impression that the Prime Directive was adopted out of poor experiences with first contact—i.e., rather than being based on moral principles, it is based on practical observations.
It's certainly not difficult to imagine that pre-interstellar civilizations are prone to severe destabilization when the existence of more technologically-advanced aliens is revealed to them; and while a ship with the resources and technology of the Federation's larger vessels probably could enforce martial law over an entire planet, it would certainly still be a tremendously destructive mess.
Taking Star Trek too seriously always ends in misery. I doubt any of the writers, given the choice between following the show's idea(l)s to their logical conclusions and having a fun episode with...
Taking Star Trek too seriously always ends in misery. I doubt any of the writers, given the choice between following the show's idea(l)s to their logical conclusions and having a fun episode with bonkers sci-fi stuff, ever chose raw logic.
So this isn't about Star Trek, really, but there's an interesting sci-fi-y thought I like that's kinda related. Basically, when you think about the purpose of life and civilization, the next step above self-protection you find is often "discovery". Exploration, knowledge, science. Star Trek certainly has that theme (the latest entry literally being called "Star Trek: Discovery"). But there might be a point (and Star Trek civilization seems close) where it's becoming unlikely that you actually encounter "new science". In the Star Trek universe, energy generation has clearly been "solved", as has poverty, hunger, the vast majority of health issues and any kind of resource scarcity. Most objectives of science, engineering and labor are done and cared for, the only jobs left are holodeck designer, replicator cook and... starship officer.
So it's imaginable that in such a society, art and culture become much more valuable. Any society invents warp technology, eventually. That's boring. It's always the same science. What's interesting is how it got there. What struggles it met along the way, what music, poetry and architecture it produced in the different stages of resources being available to them. There's probably a noble way of formulating this and the fact that you can formulate it so selfishly might be the main issue, here, but: That's the only value foreign civilizations have to the Federation. Why mess with that? Further, no foreign civilization can possibly be a threat, however the moment they have warp drives, they can. So it's necessary to force them into a political structure. It's not goodwill, it's self-preservation.
The basis of the Prime Directive in the show is described as a practical one, as mentioned by @whbboyd. IMO the reason it persisted as a theme in the show was to serve as a reminder that being an...
The basis of the Prime Directive in the show is described as a practical one, as mentioned by @whbboyd. IMO the reason it persisted as a theme in the show was to serve as a reminder that being an enlightened technologically advanced race, doesn't make you right. Or in more practical terms, being rich (monetarily, economically, or otherwise) doesn't mean you know what's better for others.
It would be an act of hubris in the extreme to roll up to another planetary civilization, announce yourself, and share everything on the assumption that everything you have will make their lives better.
This is different from your point 3, which is describing the ethics of accepting what the aliens are offering.
Take the internet, as a technology. Imagine rolling up to a planet and giving them the technologies to build a working worldwide high speed internet in a matter of a decade. All of the negatives that have come alongside the positives of having the internet since the 1970s, only accelerated. Can the negatives be controlled? Maybe. Is that the responsibility of the giver or the receiver? If the negatives aren't curtailed, or if totally novel societal problems develop, does the receiving society blame the species that gave it to them? It may not even matter who's fault it is if in the end it destroys relations with the new species you where trying to help.
You've basically hit the kind of philosophical meaning that I liked to think of it as. One of the main values of the Federation is that all life has value, and I think the main reason why the...
You've basically hit the kind of philosophical meaning that I liked to think of it as.
One of the main values of the Federation is that all life has value, and I think the main reason why the prime directive is such important doctrine is because of the effects that contact can have on a civilization. If you think of a civilization as a single unit, then contacting it will fundamentally change it; if they are in their early stages, they might think of us as gods. If they are more advanced, they might try to steal our technology to start a war. They don't even have to steal it - they just have to be inspired enough to eventually replicate it. And that's with just momentary, temporary contact.
Because the things that the federation has to offer are all revolutionary to these cultures, contact essentially means that that culture has no choice to join the federation. What if you suddenly learned that you weren't alone in the universe, and that there were actually thousands of civilizations who may decide at any point to exterminate everything you've ever loved simply because of your planet's resources? There's many sources of extremely strong motivation to join up, and it's easy to understand why the Federation may not be interested in allowing them to join.
But you know what, honestly, the fact that they personify civilizations as if they are capable of learning from their mistakes is something I have become increasingly skeptical of.
Keep in mind that if they didn't follow the prime directive, and just went around helping/controlling the species they found while exploring, the Federation would end up with a bunch of 'client'...
Keep in mind that if they didn't follow the prime directive, and just went around helping/controlling the species they found while exploring, the Federation would end up with a bunch of 'client' species and planets which they now have to devote resources to, and to protect from the numerous enemies to the Federation that are present in the show.
I'm not extremely knowledgeable about Star Trek's universe, but it's also not particularly complicated. It's the "prime directive," but it's a very strong suggestion like any decent rule....
I'm not extremely knowledgeable about Star Trek's universe, but it's also not particularly complicated. It's the "prime directive," but it's a very strong suggestion like any decent rule. Following 100% of the time would be like allowing utilitarian philosophy to be your only guiding rule (coughThanoscough), or any other single framework.
In the media, the idea is explored as a way of allowing societies to exist as their own societies first, to join the federation when ready. As mentioned in the article, there are regularly occurring situations where they have to violate the prime directive, either by stopping an attack or transporting people off planet to a spaceship they had no idea existed until five minutes ago. They've revealed themselves to space-ready planets that can understand who they are, if they don't have the capability yet, but typically never to agrarian societies.
There is more to morality than simply improving the living conditions of those you see with "less," and my take is the Federation isn't trying to force itself on anybody, unlike, say, the Romulan or Klingon empires, who exist as empires for the standard empire reasons of invasion, conquering and imperialism). Much like we wouldn't want the US to take over Haiti to "make it better," by replacing local culture with its own in exchange for better living conditions, the Federation wouldn't want to land on a planet and say "Oh, btw, you're 'members' of the United Federation of Planets now."
There's the standard "it's fiction" argument, which I unfortunately need to lean on a bit, as well. I think when Roddenberry came up with the idea, he was trying to avoid certain problematic areas, such as a colonizing force of humans "improving" the galaxy for the "greater good."
OTOH, didn't Earth get warp drive from aliens or something? It would make sense to pay it forward to other societies, but humanity has a history of not making the best calls on who is worthy, so I could also see Roddenberry wanting to avoid this trap.
Humanity created warp drive on their own and happened to catch the attention of aliens on their first test run. There was also time travel involved in a movie but it's kinda complicated and plays...
OTOH, didn't Earth get warp drive from aliens or something? It would make sense to pay it forward to other societies, but humanity has a history of not making the best calls on who is worthy, so I could also see Roddenberry wanting to avoid this trap.
Humanity created warp drive on their own and happened to catch the attention of aliens on their first test run. There was also time travel involved in a movie but it's kinda complicated and plays out mostly the same way.
I think its exceptionally ethical. At it's core the I believe the idea behind the Prime Directive is that we must accept our inherent limitations as living beings in order to facilitate the common...
I think its exceptionally ethical. At it's core the I believe the idea behind the Prime Directive is that we must accept our inherent limitations as living beings in order to facilitate the common cause of other living beings. To put it more simply, all too often in my 40+ years on this planet, I've decided to meddle in matters with the best of intentions only to realize too late that all I did was make things worse and wish I could go back in time and tell myself, "Leave it alone".
That having been said, there are also situations where it would be absolutely paramount of act and the rule of the Prime Directive can and should be set aside, but those times are far and few between. Knowing when those times are... well that's tough. Various episodes of various series tackle this conflict in various ways. While I can't remember any of them off the top of my head, I vaguely recall some of them being quite good.
In any case it's a question of ethics. Nobody said the answer was going to be easy or simple, did they? ;)
Having recently watched TNG again for the Nth time I can name a few off the top of my head: The most recognizable one is probably Who Watches the Watchers, which is about dealing with the fallout...
Various episodes of various series tackle this conflict in various ways. While I can't remember any of them off the top of my head, I vaguely recall some of them being quite good.
Having recently watched TNG again for the Nth time I can name a few off the top of my head:
The most recognizable one is probably Who Watches the Watchers, which is about dealing with the fallout of inadvertently breaking the Prime Directive.
Pen Pals is probably the most clear-cut willful violation I can think of, and a solid episode.
SpoilersThey wound up wiping the girl's memory in the end though, so even though Data did violate the Prime Directive, the damage was at least mitigated somewhat.
Justice is another Prime Directive related episode, although it (like most Wesley Crusher focused episodes) is pretty cringy.
And another good one is Symbiosis, where Picard actually uses the Prime Directive as a way to resolve an ethically tricky situation.
The Prime Directive kind of makes sense in the tone of an anti-colonialism stance, in that a uplifted society is influenced by the Federation, and if it starts making trouble for itself or others, or proves to have a valuable resource, then the Federation takes agency over however the society would develop, and the track record of that happening on Earth isn't that great tbh.
I think something like the Prime Directive makes more sense with regards to truly "alien" encounters. Things like the Crystalline Entity, Junior, the Devidians, or Species 8472. Creatures so un-humanlike that interactions with them can have wildly unpredictable consequences.
However, it turns out most of the galaxy is populated with people who are basically humanoid, living in civilizations that parallel ours in predictable ways. I don't think the Prime Directive does those species any real favors.
And they all speak English!
Babel Fish! No wait, wrong series. Universal Translator. ;)
Can someone sell me on the Prime Directive? I haven't thought about this that deeply, but it seems to me that:
I always had the impression that the Prime Directive was adopted out of poor experiences with first contact—i.e., rather than being based on moral principles, it is based on practical observations.
Indeed, Picard says as much.
It's certainly not difficult to imagine that pre-interstellar civilizations are prone to severe destabilization when the existence of more technologically-advanced aliens is revealed to them; and while a ship with the resources and technology of the Federation's larger vessels probably could enforce martial law over an entire planet, it would certainly still be a tremendously destructive mess.
Taking Star Trek too seriously always ends in misery. I doubt any of the writers, given the choice between following the show's idea(l)s to their logical conclusions and having a fun episode with bonkers sci-fi stuff, ever chose raw logic.
So this isn't about Star Trek, really, but there's an interesting sci-fi-y thought I like that's kinda related. Basically, when you think about the purpose of life and civilization, the next step above self-protection you find is often "discovery". Exploration, knowledge, science. Star Trek certainly has that theme (the latest entry literally being called "Star Trek: Discovery"). But there might be a point (and Star Trek civilization seems close) where it's becoming unlikely that you actually encounter "new science". In the Star Trek universe, energy generation has clearly been "solved", as has poverty, hunger, the vast majority of health issues and any kind of resource scarcity. Most objectives of science, engineering and labor are done and cared for, the only jobs left are holodeck designer, replicator cook and... starship officer.
So it's imaginable that in such a society, art and culture become much more valuable. Any society invents warp technology, eventually. That's boring. It's always the same science. What's interesting is how it got there. What struggles it met along the way, what music, poetry and architecture it produced in the different stages of resources being available to them. There's probably a noble way of formulating this and the fact that you can formulate it so selfishly might be the main issue, here, but: That's the only value foreign civilizations have to the Federation. Why mess with that? Further, no foreign civilization can possibly be a threat, however the moment they have warp drives, they can. So it's necessary to force them into a political structure. It's not goodwill, it's self-preservation.
The basis of the Prime Directive in the show is described as a practical one, as mentioned by @whbboyd. IMO the reason it persisted as a theme in the show was to serve as a reminder that being an enlightened technologically advanced race, doesn't make you right. Or in more practical terms, being rich (monetarily, economically, or otherwise) doesn't mean you know what's better for others.
It would be an act of hubris in the extreme to roll up to another planetary civilization, announce yourself, and share everything on the assumption that everything you have will make their lives better.
This is different from your point 3, which is describing the ethics of accepting what the aliens are offering.
Take the internet, as a technology. Imagine rolling up to a planet and giving them the technologies to build a working worldwide high speed internet in a matter of a decade. All of the negatives that have come alongside the positives of having the internet since the 1970s, only accelerated. Can the negatives be controlled? Maybe. Is that the responsibility of the giver or the receiver? If the negatives aren't curtailed, or if totally novel societal problems develop, does the receiving society blame the species that gave it to them? It may not even matter who's fault it is if in the end it destroys relations with the new species you where trying to help.
You've basically hit the kind of philosophical meaning that I liked to think of it as.
One of the main values of the Federation is that all life has value, and I think the main reason why the prime directive is such important doctrine is because of the effects that contact can have on a civilization. If you think of a civilization as a single unit, then contacting it will fundamentally change it; if they are in their early stages, they might think of us as gods. If they are more advanced, they might try to steal our technology to start a war. They don't even have to steal it - they just have to be inspired enough to eventually replicate it. And that's with just momentary, temporary contact.
Because the things that the federation has to offer are all revolutionary to these cultures, contact essentially means that that culture has no choice to join the federation. What if you suddenly learned that you weren't alone in the universe, and that there were actually thousands of civilizations who may decide at any point to exterminate everything you've ever loved simply because of your planet's resources? There's many sources of extremely strong motivation to join up, and it's easy to understand why the Federation may not be interested in allowing them to join.
But you know what, honestly, the fact that they personify civilizations as if they are capable of learning from their mistakes is something I have become increasingly skeptical of.
Keep in mind that if they didn't follow the prime directive, and just went around helping/controlling the species they found while exploring, the Federation would end up with a bunch of 'client' species and planets which they now have to devote resources to, and to protect from the numerous enemies to the Federation that are present in the show.
I'm not extremely knowledgeable about Star Trek's universe, but it's also not particularly complicated. It's the "prime directive," but it's a very strong suggestion like any decent rule. Following 100% of the time would be like allowing utilitarian philosophy to be your only guiding rule (coughThanoscough), or any other single framework.
In the media, the idea is explored as a way of allowing societies to exist as their own societies first, to join the federation when ready. As mentioned in the article, there are regularly occurring situations where they have to violate the prime directive, either by stopping an attack or transporting people off planet to a spaceship they had no idea existed until five minutes ago. They've revealed themselves to space-ready planets that can understand who they are, if they don't have the capability yet, but typically never to agrarian societies.
There is more to morality than simply improving the living conditions of those you see with "less," and my take is the Federation isn't trying to force itself on anybody, unlike, say, the Romulan or Klingon empires, who exist as empires for the standard empire reasons of invasion, conquering and imperialism). Much like we wouldn't want the US to take over Haiti to "make it better," by replacing local culture with its own in exchange for better living conditions, the Federation wouldn't want to land on a planet and say "Oh, btw, you're 'members' of the United Federation of Planets now."
There's the standard "it's fiction" argument, which I unfortunately need to lean on a bit, as well. I think when Roddenberry came up with the idea, he was trying to avoid certain problematic areas, such as a colonizing force of humans "improving" the galaxy for the "greater good."
OTOH, didn't Earth get warp drive from aliens or something? It would make sense to pay it forward to other societies, but humanity has a history of not making the best calls on who is worthy, so I could also see Roddenberry wanting to avoid this trap.
Humanity created warp drive on their own and happened to catch the attention of aliens on their first test run. There was also time travel involved in a movie but it's kinda complicated and plays out mostly the same way.
I think its exceptionally ethical. At it's core the I believe the idea behind the Prime Directive is that we must accept our inherent limitations as living beings in order to facilitate the common cause of other living beings. To put it more simply, all too often in my 40+ years on this planet, I've decided to meddle in matters with the best of intentions only to realize too late that all I did was make things worse and wish I could go back in time and tell myself, "Leave it alone".
That having been said, there are also situations where it would be absolutely paramount of act and the rule of the Prime Directive can and should be set aside, but those times are far and few between. Knowing when those times are... well that's tough. Various episodes of various series tackle this conflict in various ways. While I can't remember any of them off the top of my head, I vaguely recall some of them being quite good.
In any case it's a question of ethics. Nobody said the answer was going to be easy or simple, did they? ;)
Having recently watched TNG again for the Nth time I can name a few off the top of my head:
The most recognizable one is probably Who Watches the Watchers, which is about dealing with the fallout of inadvertently breaking the Prime Directive.
Pen Pals is probably the most clear-cut willful violation I can think of, and a solid episode.
Spoilers
They wound up wiping the girl's memory in the end though, so even though Data did violate the Prime Directive, the damage was at least mitigated somewhat.Justice is another Prime Directive related episode, although it (like most Wesley Crusher focused episodes) is pretty cringy.
And another good one is Symbiosis, where Picard actually uses the Prime Directive as a way to resolve an ethically tricky situation.
p.s. And yes, I am a massive trekkie nerd. ;)