#The Prime Directive

[lichqueenlibrarian]

“…we are in such violation of the Prime Directive as not even the Enterprise has managed before.”- Spock

Fuckin around and finding out, the novelization.

[ramblings-of-a-mad-cat]

The Prime Directive IS important though. You can't have the Federation without it. Playing God with primitive cultures can only end badly.

Yeah, that's the conventional reasoning that every iteration of Star Trek seems to use, but it doesn't work for me. Never has. Whenever characters defend The Prime Directive, (especially in The Orville, 3X10) All I can think to myself is - that's an awful lot of words to say "I won't help those in need." Like, they can dress it up in poetry all they want, but at the end of the day, that's what they're saying, and I can't get on board with it.

Yes, things can go wrong when you help people. They can make the wrong choices with the opportunities you've given them. But that's just life, and that's on them. It's not always going to happen, and it's not a justification to stop helping people. It's honestly so odd that this is The Federation's policy, because...it's pretty much the same logic people use when they refuse to give money to the homeless because "they might spend it on drugs." Like, not to get political, but Star Trek (and The Orville) are generally pretty liberal and the Prime Directive is...not. They claim they can't provide aid to more primitive cultures, but refusing to do so for no other reason than a baseless prediction of how it might go wrong is just...selfish.

They make a point of showing us the "consequences" of interfering in various episodes, but it never changes my mind. Episode 1X12 of The Orville deals with this by having a religion form around the First Officer after she uses advanced tech to heal an injured child. But this was a stone age civilization and a religion was bound to form anyway - the descendants of these people even tell the crew that if it hadn't been the First Officer, it would have been somebody else. People are gonna do what they do. You can't control them. You can only control you own decisions and whether or not you choose to help those in need. And how dare The Federation claim moral superiority over everyone when it's strictest law is this selfish?

Maybe this is because I'm a Whovian. Maybe it's because I watched Doctor Who first. Because for those of you out there who are in both fandoms, you ever notice how The Doctor's values are in direct conflict with those of The Federation? I think back to Eleven telling Clara with his whole chest, "We don't walk away. And yes, it's a fundamental part of the character, the Time Lord who ran away from Gallifrey and defies their policy of "non-interference" at every turn.

(Actually, this is unrelated, but I've always wondered why Star Trek and Star Wars have such a fandom rivalry. Because apart form being the same genre and having similar names, the stories have nothing in common. Star Trek and Doctor Who, on the other hand, have very similar formulas with conflicting values. )

[a-fistfull-of-datas]

the two things that piss me off the most about star trek (the next generation) is the prime directive and the space racism

[usslakevee]

The thing with Star Trek is that some episodes are really bad, and I have to struggle to get through them. But then! But then! I get rewarded with the most interesting episode I've ever seen in my life.

Like tell me more about the M-class planet that moves at a different speed from the rest of the universe.

Tell me more about Voyager getting stuck in its orbit when the humanoid species that lived there had yet to move out of caves.

Tell me more about that species developing a mythos around Voyager, the brightest star in the sky.

Tell me more about the kids toys they made of the star ship. Tell me more about how the reached for the sky because they knew from the beginning there were people up there.

Tell me more about the debates they have, tell me more about the people that feared the ground shaker and the kids who yearned to meet the sky friends.

Tell me more about how this species grows. Tell me more about how the learn and help Voyager escape the orbit.

Anyways on to the next episode.

[biblioflyer]

Space Trolleys: Seven's Joker Dilemma

Unpacking my reflexive disgust for the way S1E5 "Stardust City Rag" ends and Seven of Nine's execution of a notorious gangster and Borg vivisector. Turning this over and over in my head, I arrive at uncomfortable conclusions about moral convictions I hold when they are taken to absolutes rather than guiding principles.

This is part of a series of essays reevaluating Star Trek Picard and interrogating the widely held fandom criticism that Picard made the Federation into a Dystopia.

The trolley problem in ethics is a way of exploring morality by presenting the participant with a stark moral choice and then interrogating how they reason their way through it. The classic version goes that a runaway train will continue down a track where five incapacitated innocent people are on the tracks. Before the train kills them, the decision maker could throw a switch and send the train down a track with only one innocent victim.

The incredibly delightful and macabre game by Cyanide and Happiness: Trial by Trolley, presents all sorts of fun variations to fight about and judge each other over.

Anyway, the choice that is made in this situation tends to reveal what sort of moral actor the decider is. 

Passively allowing the five people to die reveals that the moral actor is probably a deontologist, someone who feels that actions are intrinsically moral or immoral and they are resolute enough that they will not accept responsibility for taking a life, even if it is to save five. The act of making an affirmative choice to kill is completely unacceptable. 

Sending the trolley down the track with only one victim tends to indicate that someone is a consequentialist, actions may or may not have independent morality but sometimes the ends really do justify the means.

You’re probably already clued into where I’m going with this: Seven executing Bjazl is a trolley problem. Now the trolley problem is obviously an oversimplification, most people have an instinctive tendency to think in terms of acts being invested with morality or if outcomes are what make an act moral or not. Seven relenting to Rios’ consequentialist argument about consequences for other people beyond Seven also reveals that she’s not beyond rationality in her seeking revenge, delaying gratification is an option. Not getting her revenge is not an option.

Early on in the episode, Picard will lecture Seven on vigilante justice while admitting that he is at least in part in admiration of what the Fenris Rangers are trying to do. In doing so, Picard will reveal that he still thinks very strongly in terms of official governments and prime directives. Humanitarianism is admirable, but taking paramilitary action outside of one’s legitimate sphere is questionable at best. 

Notably, nobody ever really confronts Picard with the harsh truth that one consequence of the Federation adopting that posture is the very lawlessness the Rangers are seeking to mitigate as well as the kidnapping of XBs and the harvesting of their Borg technology. This is not dissimilar to the Federation being hands off about Tasha Yar’s homeworld. 

Every single person who came of age during the Global War on Terror no doubt has a very well informed understanding of the consequences of inaction when it comes to morally horrifying situations in the world but also the consequences of action that is hubristic, inadequate, or treats every problem as a nail because we have a hammer industrial complex that needs to justify itself.

Picard would likely take the stance that absent a complete understanding of the situation and confirmation that you have the right tools to intervene productively, restraint is what it is called for, lest the situation become ever worse. I think a lot of people would probably have taken his side in 2004 before the invasion of Iraq had they known that an occupation with devastatingly wrongheaded assumptions about how to rebuild and reconstruct a society was going to lead to the Islamic State. 

Yet, taking non-intervention as a moral absolute means doing nothing when its the Yazedis fleeing genocide or Rojava trying to carve out a more equitable, not perfect, but more equitable space apart from Turkish or Syrian domination. And of course there may be consequentialist arguments about unforeseen consequences that might throw a wet blanket on the humanitarian impulse. Although I suspect that Season Three Picard and Seven would both be united in at least expressing the principle that declining to accept risk and failing to act with compassion when faced with an atrocity makes us less humane and less human.

My own reflexive disgust at how this episode plays leads me down the path of examining my own moral impulses. I can reason my way into accepting that there is something that needs doing when Seven lies about her intentions to Picard in order to return to Stardust City, much more heavily armed this time, to kill Bjazl and fight her way out if needed. 

Yet I can’t squelch the side of me that is horrified. Cards on the table: I am pretty absolutist about the death penalty. I don’t believe that any quantity of people have the right, let alone the collective wisdom to decide if someone no longer should be alive. And this scene feels an awful lot like an execution, although I recognize the ways in which this is not exactly identical to passing judgment on a prisoner who is already no longer in a position to do harm.

I can map out Seven’s trolley problem and find my way towards seeing what she did as probably good, but let's also be forthright in saying that Seven didn’t do this because it was just, it may be just, but that was clearly not her motive. She craved revenge because Bjazl had vivisected someone who was like a son to her, among other victims, and also because Bjazl had pulled an evil Ro Laren or Eddington on her: betraying Seven’s trust to do vile things. 

Which means that I do not at all think that it's histrionic to consider whether or not this act is morally damaging to Seven, even if it is ethical. That’s a confusing sentence. It's a confusing sentence because this is a confusing moral dilemma.

Track 1: Seven spares Bjazl

Immediate Consequences: 

Bjazl keeps on keeping on, including butchering XBs for fun and profit.

Mid to long term hypotheticals:

Maybe Picard can leverage what’s left of his influence to get Bjazl’s operation shut down eventually and Starfleet Intelligence or another interested benign party will flip enough people in her organization to bring down major elements of the XB trafficking enterprise. This will no doubt take time assuming Starfleet doesn’t shrug and say “Prime Directive.”

Moral considerations:

If killing Bjazl would represent a step down a slippery slope, Seven hangs onto that part of her humanity, morality, or impulse control that would have been sacrificed in settling accounts.

Track 2: Seven executes Bjazl

Immediate Consequences:

Bjazl’s organization is lobotomized and will need to find a successor. This will probably at least disrupt their XB vivisection operations as well as other seedy and vile enterprises.

Mid to long term hypotheticals:

Bjazl’s death may lead to a power vacuum that results in armed struggle among individuals and organizations seeking to fill that void. The way these things typically go in the real world involves significant casualties among the evildoers but the risk of collateral damage among innocent people is nonzero.

Moral considerations:

The slippery slope: is there a price to be paid in humanity, morality, or impulse control from doing this that will make killing and other hard choices easier in the future? Analogies to Breaking Bad and other prestige dramas about moral decay would not be improper.

Conclusion:

At the end of the day, I think what really bothers me about this scene is that there’s a very strong argument to be made that while it may be very personally damaging to Seven and there may be unintended consequences, the argument that Seven was right to execute Bjazl is rather strong. In defending this, others have called back to “The Most Toys” where Data is beamed up just as he is about to kill his captor to prevent him from harming the other prisoners after having just demonstrated he has no qualms about slaughtering the other prisoners to blackmail Data into not opposing him.

So I have to eat some crow on this. Squeamish as I am, there was precedent for these sorts of scenarios as far back as TNG. Thus Picard is not uniquely “edgy” or at least not if this is a primary datapoint.

There is some room for despair in that if you consider the broader implications, Bjazl is a clear cut example of a Federation failure. Whether because the Prime Directive is being used (or perhaps misused) to shield Freecloud from an intervention to stop ongoing atrocities (the idea that no one has tried to alert Starfleet seems laughable given Seven’s implication that many Fenris Rangers are ex-Starfleet or Starfleet adjacent) or because the Federation in the present of Season One is still inwardly focused, fearing attack from some unknown vector even though Raffi seems to be one of the few who wasn’t persuaded by the “the Synths just glitched” story.

That makes this hard.

The Prime Directive makes a certain amount of sense if you’re skeptical of armed intervention. Good intentions can turn tragic real fast. We almost never think of ourselves as malicious actors in the moment, that’s a judgment of history.

Spanish Conquistadors surely had their reasons that helped them sleep at night. Self serving narratives about how their civilization was more deserving of Aztec riches and those resources will serve the cause of ensuring the preeminence of the self evidently superior and more enlightened Spanish civilization. Meanwhile the “savages” were receiving the knowledge of Christ and salvation. So fair trade right?

The Prime Directive guards against rationalizing malignant acts for the greater good. President Jean luc Picard is unlikely to order the invasion of Space Iraq “for their own good” with a head full of appallingly misinformed ideas about what conditions lead to pluralistic democracy and what the competencies and capacities of the United States government and military actually are in all practicality when faced with a challenge on that scale.

In his admonishment of Seven and the Rangers, Picard is critical of their taking the law into their own hands. He is profoundly uncomfortable with the idea of intervention into the affairs of other societies, even ones as broken and contrary to his moral aesthetics as Vashti or Freecloud.

Yet would a President Picard provide weapons and logistical support to a Space Ukraine under invasion by Space Russia? Would this be a clearcut situation in which even his reflexive concern for blowback, unintended consequences, and moral decay is overriden by the scale of the problem and the lack of moral ambiguity in who is on the right and wrong sides of this conflict?

Which leaves me more than a little queasy considering the implications. How many tragic mistakes are made “for the greater good?” How many tragedies go unprevented because of too much timidity? Is the moral clarity and the situational awareness needed to avoid the tragic mistakes while preventing the needless tragedies even possible? For us? For the Federation?

Does asking that question presume that the perfect should be the enemy of the good if there’s any cause for uncertainty?

Is Freecloud an example of too much restraint or is it a tragic consequence of a policy that works more than it fails but some failure is unavoidable if greater harm is to be averted?

Okay so maybe this was a better episode than I gave it credit for. Maybe I was (and perhaps still am) too uncomfortable with being made uncomfortable. Maybe I’m being juvenile about not liking scenarios where a rousing speech about justice and tolerance isn’t enough.

And maybe it's a bad episode and I’m reading too much into it.

[maniacalchuckling]

Hey I just want to complain about the prime directive.

The federation really just said "erm, we understand that you would desperately want to know alien life exists, and that doing so would only be beneficial, but you haven't met an arbitrary technological milestone, sorry :/"

Like, I get it's to "protect their culture" and shit, but culture changes. That's what it does. You don't have the right to withhold information from someone because they might stop doing an interesting dance before they build a pot. These are people not interesting social science subjects.

[yaytomhiddlestonyay]

capitalism/growth ideology is bad, neoliberalism is bad, austerity is bad, AI is bad, and the future is bad

this is bleak

the luddites were, in general, right

and so were all the people who would have chosen to live simply and peacefully in the distant past

how do we stop this from going any futher

it already went too far a long time ago

Yes fine i know that technology has enabled scientists and psychologists and anthropologists and doctors and dieticians to study human functioning and needs faster/more,

but but...... to have a similar level of good useful knowledge/results/outcomes for human, animal, planet wellbeing in many ways, we could have instead just....

....just not had capitalism and greed and technology and violence disrupt and destroy and degrade and assimilate healthy cultures + systems + lifestyles in the first place

fuckin borg

I suppose.... I suppose a lot of changes bring good as well as bad

Why can't we get our shit together and just codify a bunch of human, animal and planet needs and givens that have to be super carefully protected, like much better/deeper than we currently do or ever have, and include human diversity and community and concepts like in that in a big way,

and then in advance just always disallow any changes or developments to impact those givens, or disallow them to be used in ways or settings that impact those givens...

I suppose maybe i am overlooking/dismissing an obvious human need/maybe human culture/anthropological need

desire for ever-expanding knowledge

and maybe other ones that i can't understand that much or be sympathetic to if i'm not an inventor or engineer

but......

if we could just make the perogative for change and 'advancement' not be greed or profit or growth, and disallow it to be used for that and disallow those things a fair bit, and disallow negative impacts on people or animals or the planet

maybe that's the way

I wonder if tribal elders and sages and wise men and mystics and, well, teenagers and stoners and artists and poets and weirdos, have had this same discussion from the beginning of time

from rocks and flints and implements

to standing upright and carrying stuff

to fashioning objects to carry stuff and alter the environment and use resources and and.......

I hope you're all happy with the back problems and spine problems and neck problems and foot problems from standing upright and carrying stuff.

absolute madness

did i just end up back at tao/yin/yang/duality/alan watts/ lore and mythologies and prometheus and pandora and icarus, and whatever the opposing stories of those were... Are we so dumb now from our technology and our destroyed cultural functions that I dumbly wasnt taught this unsolvable paradox/conundrum via tribal lore and mythology already, instead everybody has to annoyingly and exhaustingly get there on their own

either that or do the bothersome treadmill of seeking money or success or blah blah

what if we finally did fuck up the fundamental nature of humanity and human culture

i would give anything to know all the lore and mythology of any sustainable & humane tribal cultures, and compare it with that of early cities, capitalist/growth civilizations, etc

what if knowledge retention and growth drive is fundamental to humans and human needs

that wish for enough resources for all young, and ease and comfort instead of struggle

and at its problematic level, i guess overemphasis to a problematic degree on abundance, excess, security, control, etc

what if every bird and insect and creature's biology & DNA is constantly desperately trying to evolve towards getting enough resources to raise all young well, instead of losing some, and a magical desire to not be at the mercy of weather conditions or rain level or....stuff, and getting the best mate/gene mix possible, and the best health of you and your kiddos, to go further and better

and the only reason they arent causing havoc in the process is brain's less developed, can't oppose thumb, can't make good implements, can't stand upright and carry stuff.

Well I mean...... nature is kind of horrible

I guess they kind of do miserable havoc

maybe a somewhat alternative to that struggle and certain unpleasant things was tools, agriculture, knowledge, and setting aside resources and land and .... 🙄

and maybe an alternative to watching your offspring struggle was....

marriage, passing down property/wealth, amassing armies or strongmen & building better weapons to beat other assholes, honing knowledge, gathering more and better resources to do this.....

oops accidentally invented civilization/growth/capitalism

Edit:

OK fine i forgot about birth control

and probably a few other things

But those are EXCEPTIONS

[azuremist]

Some trans people say that they felt betrayed when someone told them that “they always gave trans vibes” when they came out. Thinking, “Why didn’t you say anything?” Encouraging others to tell their “egg” friends. Saying they felt like they lost years to delaying their transition, because they weren’t told.

Other trans people say that they were mentally fucked up by people trying to tell them they were trans. They felt angered by people claiming to know them better than they knew themselves. Saying they felt like they lost years to delaying their transition, because they didn’t want the people who spoke down to them about their own identity to feel justified.

There is no conclusion to this post. Just a wide variety of trans experiences.

[solidsmax]

Metroid Prime 4: Beyond (2025)

[entiqua]

nintendo direct 🙂

[ramblings-of-a-mad-cat]

Mad cat do you like The Orville? I saw your post talking about Twice Upon a Lifetime. Gordon has my whole entire heart and I wish they could have just let him be, but they had to protect the timeline. Everything they did they did for the sake of their future.

I do! In a lot of ways, it was baby's first Star Trek, for me. I saw episodes of Next Gen here and there when I was a kid, but The Orville is what inspired me to watch Next Gen (and Discovery) in full. Even to this day, I consider The Orville to be "real" Star Trek. Not saying it's better than official content (though I certainly enjoy it) but I would argue that it's more than earned it's place as an addition to that fictional universe.

Regarding Twice In a Lifetime,

I know that was the point of view the episode wanted to establish for Ed and Kelly, and I'm not even sure if they wanted us to see Gordon as being in the right or wrong. I can only tell you that when I watched it, I was absolutely on his side and frankly, rooting for Ed and Kelly after that episode was...challenging.

They claim they want to protect the timeline, but they have an extremely narrow definition of what that means, regarding a subject that they freely admit to not fully understanding. The fact is, Gordon could be right. Maybe the timeline where he stays on Earth is the "right" one. The Orville crew don't know. They can't be sure, one way or the other, so what makes the version of time they're fighting for more real, more legitimate, more "safe?" Whether or not Gordon should have done what he did, it's happened now. Ed claims that it's still in flux "until we act." But that doesn't make any sense. Everything they do is "acting." How does the timeline know when they "mean" it?

Oh and, they go back in time to rescue Gordon from 2015, despite already interacting with Gordon in 2025, and obtaining the fuel they need to make that journey from 2025. Would that not create gigantic paradox? I guess it doesn't, but again, how the hell could the Orville crew be sure that it wouldn't before they make that jump? Can we also talk about how they mine a finite resource from the Earth's crust that hasn't even been discovered yet, like that won't affect the timeline more than Gordon having kids.

There is no way to not leave a footprint when you're in the past. It is not possible. On paper, hiding out in the woods seems like it would change less, but it really doesn't. Every one of the animals Gordon killed for food might have played some role or been part of a domino effect that changed the future somehow. It's called The Butterfly Effect for a reason. Living a quiet, mundane life, to me, is just as acceptable and probably smarter than staying in the wilderness. Oh yeah, and when they find Gordon's bio, Kelly asks "Why is there a record of him at all?" My sister in Christ, why were you looking him up in the first place if you didn't expect to find something?

Ed and Kelly keep bringing up Union law to Gordon, even though the Union literally doesn't exist in the 21st century. How is he supposed to break laws that don't exist? The Union can try to legislate the past all it wants, but in actual practice it should have no right or jurisdiction. By The Union's it's own reasoning, the past is apparently written in stone. Ed and Kelly also mention how Gordon "took an oath" as if he hasn't made it very clear that he's resigning his post as a Union officer. And so long as we're talking about the law, would it not be a crime to erase Edward and his unborn sibling? Like, Gordon raises that point and Ed/Kelly don't acknowledge it.

Man, I could go on. I could talk about the hypocrisy of The Orville crew considering history says they're all supposed to be dead after the dark matter storm in Season 1. How they were far more open minded with Past Kelly in Season 2, agreeing to let her stay and not forcing a memory wipe on her when she was going home. Not to mention they were willing change history in The Road Not Taken. I could talk about how, in just the previous episode, they were willing to risk losing their greatest ally against the Kaylon just so Topa could transition. I'm not saying any of these decisions were wrong, but if that's the attitude we've been going with so far, how do Ed and Kelly justify such a sharp turn?

In general, I have a lot of issues with the laws of The Union/Federation. I also think The Prime Directive is a circular argument that basically humble-brags about it's own lack of empathy, but that's a debate for another time.

[paulthebukkit]

metroid fans we have come so far

[scarlett-ink]

Made this super fast because MY BABY IS REAL

[sharkface]

If there are supposedly hordes of trans women sniffing out shy moody androgynous goth boys and turning them into extroverted freaky raver puppygirls explain why hasn't it happened to me yet. Am I not pretty enough

[emuanon34]