It is a bit ironic, the prime directive embodies a misguided principle of protection by isolation, but in at least half of prime-directive centric episodes I can remember it was broken by the characters that recognised that it was not universal and that context mattered
@@Trekspertise How is the two universes of Star Trek in one with all these movies and series with each other with the new series Star Trek: Discovery and these other series and movies Star Trek: Enterprise, Star Trek: Horizon, Star Trek: Ambush, Star Trek: Short Treks, Star Trek: Discovery, Star Trek: Captain Pike, Star Trek Stranger New Worlds, Star Trek Porn Remake, Exeter Trek - Tease, Star Trek original Viaje a las estrellas, Ömer the Tourist in Star Trek, Sex Trek, Sex Trek II: The Search for Sperm, Sex Trek III: The Wrath of Bob, Sex Trek: The Man Eater, Sex Trek: Charly XXX, Sex Trek: Where No Man Has Cum B4, Sex Trek IV: The Next Orgasm, Star Trek: A Gay XXX Parody, After Dark: Trek XXX, XXX Trek: The Final Orgasm, This Ain’t Star Trek XXX, This Ain’t Star Trek XXX 2: The Butterfly Effect, This Ain’t Star Trek 3 XXX: This Is a Parody, Star Trek: Constellation, Star Trek First Frontier, Star Trek: Phase II, Star Trek II - In Living Color, Star Trek: Outlaws, PenPals: A Star Trek Fan Production, Star Trek Continues, Star Trek Yorktown A Time to Heal, Star Trek: New Voyages, Dannii Harwood Star Trek Spoof, Star Trek Parody-Carol Burnett Show, Star Trek; The Wrath of Farrakhan, StarTrek TOS - 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The Making of Star Wars Jedi Fallen Order 2019, Star Wars SC 38 Reimagined 2019, Disney Gallery Star Wars The Mandalorian 2020, Star Wars The Last Padawan 2 2021, A Blaster in the Right Hands A Star Wars Story 2021, Keeper of Peace A Star Wars Collateral Story 2021, Star Wars Galaxy of Sounds Miniserie de TV 2021, Star Wars: Skeleton Crew Serie de TV 2021, Star Wars Ahsoka Serie de TV 2022, Secura a Star Wars fan film 2022, Star Wars A Droid Story Serie de TV 2022, Disney Gallery: Star Wars: The Book of Boba Fett TV 2022, Star Wars Andor Serie de TV 2022, Star Wars The Acolyte Serie de TV 2023, Star Wars Lando 2023, Star Wars Rogue Squadron 2023, Valerian, Fall of Hyperion 2008, Foundation 2021/2022, Dune 1984, Frank Herbert's Children of Dune 2003, Dune 2021/2022, The Expanse 2015/2022, etcfanfilmfactor.com/log-entries-fan-film-features-3/ fanfilmfactor.com/log-entries-fan-film-features-2/ fanfilmfactor.com/log-entries-fan-film-features/ and aside from these other similar series and movies it could be joined with Star Trek and Star Trek Spoof The Orville with these series and movies Battlestar Galactica 1978, Battlestar Galactica Galáctica: Astronave de combate, Battlestar Galactica 2003, Battlestar Galactica 2004, Battlestar Galactica: Razor 2007, Battlestar Galactica: Blood & Chrome 2012, space 1999, space 2099, Galaxy Quest, space command redemption, Invasión Starship Troopers, Starship Troopers 2: Hero of the Federation, Starship Troopers 3: Marauder, Battlefield Earth, Crónicas Marcianas, Space: Above and Beyond, Fuerza roja, Stargate: La puerta del tiempo, Stargate SG-1 1997-2007, Stargate: Atlantis 2004-2009, Stargate: Continuum, Stargate: The Ark of Truth, Stargate SG-1: Children of the Gods - Final Cut, SGU Stargate Universe 2009-2011, Firefly, Farscape, Gene Roddenberry’s Andromeda, 5th Passenger, Space Raiders, Defiance, Supernova, Falling Skies, Buck Rogers, Alien 1979, Aliens 1986, Predator 1987, Predator 2 1990, Alien 3 1992, Alien: Resurrection 1997, Alien vs. Predator 2004, Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem 2007, Predators 2010, The Predator 2018, Alien Raiders, Event Horizon, Pandorum, showdown at area 51, Alien Hunter, Area 51, Space Academy, Blake’s 7, Lexx, Alien Nation, Terra Nova, The Expanse, plan 9 from outer space, 2001 a space odyssey, 2010: Odyssey Two, día de la Independencia, día de la Independencia 2, The Last Ship, Asteroid vs. Earth, seaquest, Invasión del mundo - Batalla: Los Ángeles, Invasión Roswell: Los exterminadores, etc
It was always primarily a storytelling tool. An aspect of their otherwise perfect society is flawed. The Federation, as shown on screen, is perfectly willing to make compromises, and to revisit old decisions. So having this one immovable principle gives the characters something from within against which to struggle. In-universe, it's an emotional issue, and the directive is an attempt at a logical solution. It has 'Vulcan' written all over it.
@@sadface7457 ENT really did have some good hard prime directive lessons. Examples of why it's a good idea instead of just times where it falls short. So good it gets real cringe some times like progenitor. Trip has a hard time accepting space isn't Florida I guess.
I will counter one assertion that you made, that "Warp Drive is an arbitrary metric." It is a key metric for one specific reason: once a species has the means to leave their solar system, isolation is no longer possible. Until that point, the Federation can chose to not interfere. But once a society has the means overcome the distances of interstellar travel, First Contact is almost inevitable. Now the question of whether the Federation SHOULD wait until first contact is inevitable before making their presence know is open for debate.
But that is a universal, arbitrary metric based on an outdated, racist ideology. It doesn't hold water in the real world and even in Star Trek, where the rule is broken every time it comes up, it doesn't seem to be carrying any water. The Cytherians from TNG "The Nth Degree" come to mind, as do half a dozen other fictional species.
Green dragon is right, the prime directive gives a code of conduct for a very chaotic universe. The directive inadvertently promotes more human like species to develop throughout the galaxy
@@TrekspertiseI would counter that it's as arbitrary as any other law. It's a compromise between two different ideals. The first being that civilizations ought to have their destiny in their own hands, the second being that starfleet/the federation ought to make friends with their neighbors. The line between those two ideologies has to go somewhere in the general case and interstellar travel/communication seems as reasonable as anything. I fundamentally agree that each specific instance appears to break down, but I view that as an indictment against universal morals rather than the prime directive specifically
@@Trekspertise You're assuming at the Federation would ignore if a civilization found some other means of real interstellar travel ("real" meaning "not just flinging a generation ship out there and hoping for the best"). Do you have any evidence of that?
@@Trekspertise I am agreeing with these critiques leveled against you, all laws are in some sense arbitrary. It absolutely makes sense as species with warp travel will be meeting you whether you want to or not. The Cytherians do NOT make your point because again, they HAD WARP TRAVEL (many miss the throw-away line in that episode that the Cytherian probe arrived by warp means), and even if they didn't, the whole argument is still redundant as the Cytherians had the ability to contact other species and actively did, as they contacted the federation first, again, making the entire argument redundant.
As it exists now, the best and most consistent function of the Prime Directive is as a shield for Starfleet personnel, not xenocultures. The metric they chose even reflects this, since warp travel essentially is the point at which "they would have found us eventually" becomes unavoidable.
This was my take too. I really enjoyed the anthropological exploration in this video, but it seemed to ignore the possibility of realpolitik underpinnings for the Prime Directive. If you start trying to become every sentient civilization's Space Friend, don't you bear some responsibility for doing (or NOT doing!) things within your power that could help them? If there are two non-warp civs next to a supernova and you have only one starship in the sector, how do you choose who to help? Or if the civ takes knowledge or tech from your exchanges and ends up using them in a civil war, aren't you liable to some degree for the bloodiness of those killed?
@@ikidre Yes, there are practical reasons for the prime directive, too. Basically, once they know about you, then they will look to you for help. If you don't supply that help, then you could quickly from Space Friend to Space Enemy. And if you're not going to help, then what's the point of contacting them in the first place?
There might be another reason behind the Prime Directive. Imagine you are running an Earth Vulcan mining conglomerate looking for new sources of ore to extract. You are bound by the Prime Directive, because you are in the Federation. Your Ferengi competitor beats you to the best sources of ore because they are not in the Federation and not bound by the PD. The PD limits competition amongst their own members to make contact and do deals with non Federation members. This is a lot like the European Union, which is why the Ferengi (AKA Singapore) would not dream of joining the EU.
I feel like you have grossly misunderstood the application of the Prime Directive...or maybe we just have diferent views on it. If nothing else the development of warp/subspace-comm is not in of itself what "makes them worthy" (which is certainbly flawed framing, but that's a different discussion) of being contacted. Its a general indication that species/world has achieved enough social cohesion to develop the material mastery required to either travel to other stars or otherwise contact them. At which point whteher to make contact or not is really no longer a choice the Federation gets to make as they will find it impossible to "remain hidden." In essense, the idea is to refrain from effecting the course of their natural, or at least internal, development to the point where that is no longer feasible. At tht point the people of that world have clearly expressed a desire and/or need to push far beyond the cradle of their own sphere and thus implicitly assent to interaction. Now, you could make the argument that is is conceivable that a species could master warp flight before ever harnessing fire (or whatever exo-equivalent they have) and that is certainly the case, But that poses two issues from the metaperspective of writing a show: it is really quite hard to wrap ones head around in the timeframe of an episode and its pretty complicated to make into interesting stories. So the ST franchise usually steers clear of that (though I think STD s4 dealt with this a little bit towards the end which was interesting). Next, I don't get where you are describing the approach of the franchise as unilineal as opposed to multilineal (these are not the terms I would have used by I am for the sake of comprehension). Or at least not past the early days of TNG. It seems fairly evident to me that TNG peroid was one of transition and by DS9 a real new era had been begun that while its characters' perspectives might have been unilineal the narrative and morals were certainly multilineal; Sisko and Quark interacting inregards to the advancement of Ferengi culture in comparison to humanity's history is a stark example of this. Finally, I appreciate the video. It was interesting and its clear you put plenty of thought and research into it. Its just unfortunate (for me, not you) that I find myself so at odds with its precepts.
The Prime Directive is very much about drawing a technological line int he sand. That is how it is portrayed in Star Trek repeatedly. And, it is very telling that every time the Prime Directive comes up, it is a rule that is being broken. Very telling, indeed. But, I like the idea you are expressing here...that the Prime Directive is a way of sorting "those who want to explore and make contact" apart form those who do not. I thought about that an it has a nice appeal to it. I do not think Trek has ever done it that way...but it would be a great approach to try.
@@Trekspertise "The Prime Directive is very much about drawing a technological line int he sand." That is so not because the technology is important, but because it serves as the point at which not making contact is no longer an option. You are placing undue emphasis on the "mesauring device" instead of what it is "measuring." " And, it is very telling that every time the Prime Directive comes up, it is a rule that is being broken." ...this is just flat out false. Maybe you want to phrase it as everytime it comes up it is been debated and grappled with? Sure, but also duh because that's the entire point of the storytelling. The concept of the Prime Directive is far from perfect (or even fully-fleshed out, likely by design) and could surely always be updated and improved, but its highly misplaced to just handwave it as being a misconceived holdover from a different time or "colonialism."
@@Trekspertise the important thing to note here is that the prime directive is accurately depicted for what it is: a least bad solution to a problem for which a good solution does not exist. it is a principle which any starfleet member, from new recruit to an admiral and even crews of civilian vessels can understand, the mantra of "don't mess with pre-warp people" is genius in it's simplicity. you can't leave stuff like this up to an individuals interpretation, so sticking with a simple metric that is easily remembered, easily verified from a safe distance and ensures a level of safety for both parties (more on this below) is the way to go. you see different technologies tend to develop in parallel so if a society has made it to the point of warp travel or deep space communication, they are not only proving that they're looking to make contact, but are also likely to also have advanced enough medicine to deal with any germs that might contaminate their world when first contact is made, better yet when they've developed deep space communication, first contact can be made with zero danger of contamination occurring. also side note on your argument of bows being better than early firearms: on an individual basis yes a bow is a superior weapon. once you're equipping an army and it becomes a matter of logistics, even early muskets are superior for a variety of reasons: first of all training an archer to a level where he has developed the muscle mass and accuracy to effectively use a war bow takes a LOT of time. outfitting an army of archers is also much more difficult, a bow needs very specific wood, a skilled craftsman and a lot of man hours as each bow must be tailored to the archers draw length, which can vary on an individual basis. then you get into supply issues. making an arrow takes different materials, two skilled craftsmen (a blacksmith forging the arrowhead a fletcher making the actual arrow) and time, while any soldier can cast lead bullets at a campfire.
here's my opinion on the prime directive, I think the biggest issues with it is how most watchers only know the cliffnotes of the rules. I honestly see them more as a way to remind captains to basically pay attention to the civilization they run into and ease them into learning about things. Everyone wont act the same when encountering something like star fleet and at worst it needs fine tuning, like any rule that was likely more useful when it was first created but just stuck because it has been around for so long it basically became a religion.
@@Trekspertise like you said it's made via old science but that was my own take on it. Always felt to me as one of those rules that was made because someone REALLY fucked up during the early days of the federation or United earth's alliance. Though it was my overall justification of how and why it was made, remember in the real world there are some backwards rules in the rule world that exist because people never think to change/remove them for a good while.
I think that if you look at how starfleet wrestles with the prime directive, it suggests that many of them in fact do approach it from the perspective you suppose: of using open-mindedness s a criteria e.g; "Dear Doctor." However, they do also resort to the bogus litmus test. And yet, one might argue that some forms of technology might not be achievable without a sufficiently open mind; although "First Contact" also provides a counterpoint. On the gripping hand, I think the idea of not giving away technological toys to everyone you meet has not been sufficiently explored/refuted. Just as no two cultures are the same, nor are any two people... but still we put in place sweeping guidelines to restrict access to driving, smoking, drinking, voting, etc. You can say that's paternalistic, and it is, but it's also an effort to act responsibly.
The way I'd reframe this essay is "Several episodes of Star Trek have a colonialist interpretation of the Prime Directive." I think the directive itself is smart and the true consequence of the discussion in this video is that the series hasn't done it proper justice or done deep enough dives yet.
@@Trekspertise It's easy to see how it would seem racist, given that your video only goes into interpretations of the rule, and itself states that the rule is open to interpretation, and doesn't focus much on the text of the rule. I think this thread of the debate would be a lot more manageable, and probably more meaningful, around the text.
@@Trekspertise Not sure why it's not smart. Why knock on someone's door if you don't need to? On the other hand, if they're about to head your way, you might as well come out and say, hello.
@@brak666Starfleet's primary mission is exploration and making friendly contacts with foreign civilizations. That is their whole reason for existing. Actively outlawing the main thing you were supposed to do, and refusing to view it with any nuance is just baffling.
I always saw the cutoff of the prime directive being the manipulation of subspace. which would make sense since once a civilization can see subspace they will be unable to remain separate from the galaxy, regardless of anyone's intention, by virtue of their own development.
Yeah, it just means "do not initiate contact unless it is imminent". They'll communicate with anyone who *has* warp-drive, regardless of how it's been acquired. eg: Pakleds, Klingons. They do avoid talking over subspace radio to non-warp civilizations (Data was chastised for responding to an subspace transmission from an unknown source, even though this theoretically happens all the time)
It is just not a useful metric for anything. Contacting pre-warp peoples is no bad thing. Establish contact! talk to people. Trade with them. There are no natural stages of universal cultural development to interrupt. There are no stages at all.
@@Trekspertise While you make a very good point that complete isolation is bad, perhaps over connectivity can be bad too. A lot of vibrant human cultures had time to develop in relative isolation without being swamped by the alluring incessant babble of another culture. In individuals, creativity requires some peace and quiet and maybe the same might be true of cultures as well.
@@Trekspertise there are no natural stages of universal cultural development to interrupt because cultural development has no end point, it's an ongoing process ,the people of the federation are still developing and will until the day they go extinct. Establishing contact and trading with those people would destroy their culture. If they were to have a famine and they ask for help we would give them the answers we found, that shaped our cultures. Tame animals to eat the food you can't eat. Ferment food to give them longer a shelve life grill the food, boil the food, bake the food, put it in a stew. political unrest? teach them democracy! cultural cuisines weren't invented because people felt like it, but because they were an answer to a problem they had. Cultures are just a pile of answers to problems we once had, by giving them our own answers we deny them the opportunity to develop for themselves, by interfering with their wars we tell to think like us. Yes, star trek admirals getting mad because a spaceship was seen by people who would most likely explain it away as just a thing of nature, like floods, volcanos and asteroids is silly and the usage of "primitive" and "civilized" is problematic, but the prime directive is a good thing.
You are engaging your audience in bad faith. Clearly there is a useful distinction with warp drive capability. You simply disagree on the act of contacting at all, but the point many, many people are making to you IS USEFUL, clearly when it comes to contact warp drive is hugely important as it eliminates the OPTION of remaining radio silence to whoever we are talking about.
The Prime Directive is supposedly, quoting Captain Archer, a reminder than we are not going out there to play God. Although the notion that we need to be gods, or morally superior in any sense, to help lesser people in times of need can be potentially overrated in the Trekiverse. We just need to find the right ways to do so and as children of the one true God, we should all be equally endowed with that much positivity. Of course the natural differences for an ET species could easily create unforeseen problems. But when those like Picard say that we cannot turn our backs, then the optimism that we are in the position to help for a reason doesn't feel farfetched.
Your entire argument hinges on the assumption that the prime directive is based on an outdated theory of cultural evolution along a linear path. If that assumption can be proven, then the argument makes sense. However, I do not think you have proven that point with this video. You spent most of the video explaining why that theory of linear cultural advancement is incorrect, outdated, and rooted in racism. That is all well and good, but you spent comparatively little time examining how the prime directive is portrayed and how it is completely dependent on the prior theory being true. I do not recall a time anywhere in Trek where a character says something along the lines of "our social science has proven that every society reaches certain levels of advancement in a certain order". A society *may* invent FTL travel or communication, but do they state anywhere that every society inevitably will do so? We are given few details about how or why the prime directive was established. It doesn't exist during ENT, but by TOS it seems to be a long standing rule. Understanding the event(s) that lead to the creation of the prime directive is critical if you want to examine what purpose it serves. Earth (and/or the Federation) outlaws most genetic engineering, which seems perplexing at first glance, but the Eugenics Wars gives the necessary context to understand why that law exists. It may still be a bad law, but at least we know what caused it. I do not interpret the prime directive to mean that federation thinks they are superior and know what is best for cultures they deem less advanced. Rather its quite the opposite. I view it as the federation acknowledging that they cannot fully understand an alien culture without it being filtered through their own views, and because of this, they cannot possibly predict what effects their presence will have, good or bad. If, some time between ENT and TOS, peaceful contact with a new alien culture led to that culture completely destroying themselves, the Federation would rightfully feel responsibility for that. If, despite their best intentions, they can never be certain what the results of first contact will be, perhaps they decided for a policy of zero tolerance for accidentally causing the genocide of a whole society. Great tragedies tend to lead to the creation of laws that try to prevent another tragedy like it from occurring. *If* that hypothetical is true, then warp drive is not an arbitrary and meaningless line in the sand. FTL travel/communication is the point at which contact is happening, whether the federation wants it to or not. I'm not saying that the above *is* true. However, I do not think you have done enough to prove that your view is the only one that can be correct, and something like what I said above is impossible to have occurred. Apologies if this comes off as combative just for the sake of it. That is not my intent. I enjoy all the videos you've done, and I enjoyed this one too!
My grandpa said the most thought provoking thing to me one day, as a child (I was 8 and burying myself in history) comparing the achievements of various peoples to each other. He asked me if I gave the Romans and the Egyptians a blow gun, how would it take before they choked to death on a dart? I didn't have the word for it then, but I realized that day what enthnocentrism was and why it was idiocy rooted in intellectualism.
Thats absurd. The romans would almost certainly have NOT sucked on a new weapon, and even if one of them did, the rest would immediately see how it worked, and then still beat whoever gave them the blow gun.
One subject I would be interested in hearing your thoughts on are the situations in which the Prime Directive is ignored, and both parties are considered to be on a similar "level" of technological development; most notably, when Janeway formed an alliance with the Borg in a war that arguably she had no skin in, and Voyager's giving of holographic technology to the Hirogen as a way of hoping to prevent further mass killings. In both cases, these were decisions made on the idea that it would be better for everyone involved, only for the consequences to end up far worse for others. This makes the argument that the Prime Directive exists as a practical rule more so than a moral one - that you cannot predict the effects of widespread cultural and political changes you help introduce, however well intentioned, so therefore it is better to simply not get involved. Is this even a Prime Directive issue, or should this be called something else entirely?
And may be the whole reason why why the prime directive is even applied is for the purpose of exploring the evolution of human societies as a social commentary
Warp drive isn't a completely arbitrary line, but more an acknowledgement of reality,. Once a culture has developed warp drive, they will have the ability to travel to other systems, encounter other species, and create their own colonies. So of course you have to contact them then so you can tell them about the political structures that are already in place and hopefully prevent them from getting into or causing too much trouble. Essentially it's a matter of leaving societies alone and keeping them from knowing about other species until you have no choice but to reveal everything.
The warp drive is a completely different beast than the wheel. The thing about the warp drive is, that this civilization *can* be avoided. If they have FTL travel, they *will* meet other species. A better comparison would be the question, whether to land on inhabited islands where the people do not have seafaring technology. Once they do, the question is, sooner or later, moot, whether to excert active or passive influence and contact is inevitable. Now what to do with those without FTL drive is another question. But the warp drive as some threshold of when there's no longer even a question of enacting contact is very sensible.
It is just not a useful metric in any way, either the wheel or warp drive. "Are they ready for contact" is predicated on the assumption of natural, universal stages of progress and that is a concept that A) just doesn't exist and B) is loved by racists everywhere because it makes them feel superior. If you want to break the argument down on "well, we don't want to talk to them for X reason," or maybe "if they can't travel FTL then maybe they don't want to associate with US," then maybe that case can be made. But Star Trek doesn't couch the Prime Directive like that, do they? Maybe that if they started doing that, they could fix this broken rule. But as it stands right now, with 50+ years of Star Trek, the Prime Directive is as unilineal as it gets.
I would also have preferred it if Starfleet beam down on a hill and preached down the absolute truth to these primitive species, telling them what to belief in, what to think, what to eat and what law they should have and what is good and evil. Starfleet and especially mankind knows best what is good for them, because god loves us more than them for sure. We are the center not just of the galaxy, but the universe. Sorry for that irony, but i prefer NOT to proclaim infallibility, and thats possible with the prime directive.
But, its the same isn't it? Using the Prime Directive is proclaiming an absolute truth...that one believes that all cultures across the universe (just Earth, really) are the same and that one culture knows best by keeping another in the dark about its existence. The Prime Directive is the height of hubris masquerading as empathetic response to ethnocentrism. It uses the same illusion of superiority as its base.
Everyone has heard the phrase, "you're comparing Apples and Oranges", this video is comparing Apples and Muons. Your title is "Rethinking the Prime Directive of Star Trek", did you forget that what it was supposed to be about that? You seem to be confused about the "light speed or warp" requirement. Who WROTE this Prime Directive? It was Starfleet, the protector/exploratory arm of the Federation of Planets. The Federation is an Interstellar alliance. While exploring, Star Fleet 'Seeks out" new worlds and also looks for cavillations to join the Federation this would REQUIRE warp capabilities. As they explored out into the Galaxy, any warp capable species that currently didn't know about the Federation would "run into" them or their members eventually, so contact would be almost mandatory to see if they will be friend or foe. Any planet, that didn't have warp would NOT be members of the Federation as well as NOT A THREAT, there would be no reason to interfere with their development. The question of "interfering" for any other reasons like natural disaster etc.. has always been treated as Captains option. It's the interfering to artificially "advance" a civilization, including "advanced information", THAT is the SPIRIT of the non-interference directive. This is how I see it.
In a way, there IS an example within Star Trek of what you're talking about: it's in the Alternative Timeline book “Infinity’s Prism”, specifically the second of the three novellas in the book, “Places of Exile”. The fact that it’s in a book automatically makes it beta-canon; however, the story begins with events portrayed in the Voyager episode “Scorpion”, before the event that created the alternate timeline; the perspective of Chakotay perfectly matches what we see in the canon episode. Therefore, I would argue that the following excerpt from the book could ALMOST be considered canon: “I'm not convinced this is a Prime Directive situation,” Chakotay said. “These aren't the Kazon trying to steal our replicators. The Vostigye have just developed differently than we did. They were forced off their planet early by a geological cataclysm, concentrated on building artificial habitats instead of warp drive. They're behind us in some ways, but they could teach us plenty about environmental engineering & robotics.”
@@Trekspertise I HIGHLY recommend you read the whole story, as well as the other 2 novellas in the book. The first novella is “A Less Perfect Union”, set in 2264, but in a timeline where Terra Prime won & Earth didn't join the Coalition of Planets. The third novella is “Seeds of Dissent” set in the DS9 era, but in a timeline where Kahn won the Eugenics Wars.
@@TrekspertiseI'm not sure what you're arguing for? Do you think there should be no prime directive? Uhm. There should. Its an absolute must. Is it always adhered to? No. But it is adhered to most of the time, and the times it isn't, there are specific reasons or circumstances why it isn't. Not following the prime directive is trash and filth JJ Abrams or Klutzman come up with on a regular basis in their garbage shows which they name "star trek"
Great video! But I disagree with one major point. The technological barrier is not that arbitrary! Warp technology is the point, when it is impossible to ignore a civilization. Then we have to interact with them, no matter if we want to or not. Cultures still could not have adopted a philosophy of mutual respect and already adopted warp technology (there are even a lot of examples within star trek like the klingons), which makes it impossible to ignore them. :/
Does it have to be a cultural thing? On our part, I mean? Being able to produce a Warp drive doesn't ALLOW contact according to the Prime directive, it NECESSITATES contact. If you've discovered the warp drive or sub-space communications, you've run out of time for your society to evolve in isolation. You now HAVE TO interact with the wider universe. Your chance to have a culture, uncorrupted by outside influence, is over. Seeing it that way, it could be argued that the prime directive simply says: "Allow others to grow in isolation as much as they are able, protected as much as we are able, make contact ONLY when absolutely necessary."
@Trekspertise Sorry, but I don't think I've heard a single word of cultural evolution in any of the Star Trek episodes. Might be mentioned in some book somewhere, but in that case, I haven't read it. The Federation comes of as a bit holier-than-thou in attitude and Picard especially comes of as a bit paternalistic but for the most part they don't seem to look down on "primitive" cultures, they just seem protective of them. I'm removing the newer Star Trek movies from this list, Kelvin Timeline is not canon. Cultures change when they make contact with other cultures. Cultures can be subsumed if they encounter other cultures. A culture can't remain undisturbed when in contact with other cultures. If you have a vested interest in allowing other cultures to grow as far as they can, in as many ways as they can, on their own before they start interacting with yours, limiting contact is the only way. As soon as they get Subspace tech or Warp drive, this period in their development is over. From that point, they will begin to blend in other peoples cultures into their own.
I think you guys are making a giant logical misstep with this video. Your own quote explains why. "Western Europe felt it could set the terms of these interactions....". This is exactly why the Prime Directive exists as written in the setting. The very act of choosing to communicate and make first contact with a society is setting the terms of the interactions. The Federation would choose the time, the place, and the evolutionary point at which these societies would be contacted. Invariably, as shown by history, these decisions are often made with self interest in mind. Imagine if Star Fleet had your idea of a multilineal evolution model. At what point would first contact then be acceptable? Who's metric of advancement would be appropriate. Some sort of standard or set of rules would have to be in place right? The very nature of those rules would be ethno centric in and of itself since Star Fleet is the only party to those rules. The virgin civilization on some M class planet certainly wouldn't have a say in it. Would those set of rules be bent or flexed if the planet was in a strategic star system or one that held a strategic deposit of minerals? Would this multilineal test be tainted by the needs of the present of the Federation? This is why the rule is set the way it is. Star Fleet doesn't come talk to you or reveal itself to a virgin civilization until that civilization invents the technology and then actively uses it to push beyond the boundaries of its own system. It is when they have access to subspace and warp drives that the firewall can no longer be kept. And it will be at a time and place of *their* choosing independent of the knowledge that there is life beyond their own system. Subspace and Warp drive are not markers of progress. They are markers of when the Prime Directive can no longer be enforced because that civilization that has been ignored for all those years will finally listen in Star Fleet transmissions and be able to travel the distances necessary to see that a galaxy of life exists beyond their own system. Non interference is simply not possible anymore because they themselves are pushing beyond the firewall that was set.
In its own canon, humans on Earth have been contacted multiple times by various aliens of varying levels of benevolence and malevolence. If their own species didn't die, if their own species wasn't ruined, then that contact could be used as a model for contacting less advanced species .
In fact, Vulcans openly engaging in friendly contact was THE thing that got humanity to get its act together. Human history is an argument against the prime directive.
The Concorde went away because it was never really profitable except when it was wildly overcharging. People forget the Concorde flew for like a year after that first crash.
From Encyclopedia Britannica: "The Concorde’s retirement was due to a number of factors. The supersonic aircraft was noisy and extremely expensive to operate, which restricted flight availability. The operating costs required fare pricing that was prohibitively high for many consumers. The resulting financial losses led both British Airways and Air France to make New York City their only regular flight destination. Finally, in 2000 an Air France Concorde’s engine failure and subsequent crash killed all 109 people on board and 4 people on the ground. Many believe this event accelerated the retirement of the Concorde in 2003."
00:10 s00 *_The Prime Directive_* 01:29 s01 *_... in Practice_* 06:12 s02 *_What Stage are We On?_* 09:47 s03 *_There is no S̶p̶o̶o̶n̶ Stage_* 13:09 s04 *_A Look Back to Yesteryear_* 19:16 s04B *_A History Written by the Victors_* 23:27 s05 *_A New Context for TPD?_* 28:08 s05B *_The Persistence of Unilineal_* 29:53 s05C *_A New Prime Directive?_* 30:11 s06 *_Conclusion_* 32:06 *_Credits_*
The Prime Directive, in the context of TOS, was a critique of the US's efforts to destabilize governments across the world who reject it's hegemony via "development", loans and the newly created IMF (founded in 1944.) The same criticism applies to the Soviet Bloc, who, being state capitalists, functioned in much the same way. The TOS writers knew what they were doing.
Technological milestones like FTL propulsion or FTL communication might indeed be arbitrary and irrelevant measures of a civilization's cultural and social development. But these sorts of technologies immediately impose a very practical consideration. The civilization has the ability to reach out to the stars. You would have to consider them "worthy" of contact simply out of necessity.
I was so terrified when I saw the title that this was going to be an exhortation for Starfleet to adopt a Samantha Power style 'Responsibility to Protect' policy or some such thing but I should have known better given your previous content. An excellent video though I would say the Prime Directive or something like it probably does more good than harm overall as a simple starting point when considering its similarities to India protecting the (self imposed) isolation of North Sentinel Island.
it is a big topic! We'd say that the Prime Directive does far more harm than good. A rule like that should never be adopted because it requires abject racism in order to function.
Concorde did not meet it's fate due to being unsafe. Concorde met it's fate due to low profits and upcoming major services that did not make financial sense.
From Encyclopedia Britannica: "The Concorde’s retirement was due to a number of factors. The supersonic aircraft was noisy and extremely expensive to operate, which restricted flight availability. The operating costs required fare pricing that was prohibitively high for many consumers. The resulting financial losses led both British Airways and Air France to make New York City their only regular flight destination. Finally, in 2000 an Air France Concorde’s engine failure and subsequent crash killed all 109 people on board and 4 people on the ground. Many believe this event accelerated the retirement of the Concorde in 2003."
Your passion for anthropology is clear but I think the point you were dying to make about Unilinear models obscured the motivation behind the Prime Directive. It doesn't presume unilinearity, it exists precisely BECAUSE cultures are multilinear. The Federation seeks to preserve uniqueness where it can. It is not inevitable that every culture will discover warp drive; there are many examples of the Federation protecting such planets for centuries. Warp drive isn't the line because it is inevitable, it's the line because once a culture has it, they become part of the larger galactic community.
@@Trekspertise Because it's what makes discovery and interaction on an interstellar scale possible. If a race discovered teleportation technology that could send them to other inhabited words, they would be consider "warp capable" by the Prime Directive.
How can racist be applied to an organization comprised of many different beings..seems like folks on the back side of the directive are just as diverse….the presentation is excellent however…
Interesting video. I think for me the thing I wrestle with is more about avoiding imposing ones own culture on those you encounter. The arbitrary lines often drawn by the Federation don't seem to be a good approach but I'm curious if you have thoughts on how to approach this. There's a wide spectrum of options between conquest and isolation.
Yea! Just talk to people. Each society you come across, talk to them. Learn from them. Ask to trade with them. Ask to exchange knowledge. No matter who. That's it. That's my prime directive.
@@Trekspertise I can’t tell if that’s sarcasm. I think the ramifications would be truly catastrophic for many societies who haven’t even considered the existence of aliens as a possibility
Racist as it may be on the surface, it does serve a useful purpose - an 'are you sure about that' for any captain wanting to screw around without thinking. Sometimes, helping a pre-warp society is necessary, or beneficial. But a clumsy attempt to 'help' might cause a lot more harm than good - just look at Friendship One, or Iain Banks' Contact books. If you are going to interfere in a pre-warp society, you'd better have thought through what you are going to do - and there, the Prime Directive has a use. Plus, the Prime Directive ISN'T the #1 directive of all Starfleet. You can thank Voyager for that.
There's definitely nuance and it definitely needs to be a guideline rather than an absolute law, but I understand the usage of warp drive as a sort of measuring line. If a society is capable of warp travel, they will inevitably end up meeting up with other spacefaring societies and better to meet them on positive terms rather than end up in conflict with them due to a misunderstanding or accident in space. It's less a case of they must remain isolated for their safety so much as it is coming from the opposite perspective...they are no longer isolated and as such interaction is inevitable. It's less about technological progression and more about societal accessibility. We of course see different people interpret the Prime Directive differently, but in those cases, the onus is on the person rather than the Prime Directive regarding their actions. Regardless, it should be a guidepost rather than a barrier...a caution sign to thoroughly consider your actions and the potential unintended side effects of them.
That argument is based on a universal, natural stages of cultural evolution argument from the 19th century. Is does not make sense, at best. At worst, it is racist.
@@Trekspertise If "universal, natural stages" is truly your issue, then you should be MORE in favor of the Prime Directive. Should contact be made with every species and hand them OUR tools or should we allow them to develop their own from a unique and creative perspective which the Federation has never considered? In universe, look at the Federation vs. the Romulan power sources. Had the Federation formed before the Romulans made it to space and invented their singularity drive, that would be one less technology out there in the galaxy. Allowing a planet to naturally come to their own solutions encourages creativity and uniqueness in the galaxy rather than the Federation's own form of assimilation. I'm not saying leave a planet to die, but letting them develop separately and uniquely. Let them build a civilization without a "wheel" but when they have made their way out into the greater galaxy, potentially without a warp drive as the Federation knows it, greet them as friends and allies.
If an alien culture were to arrive and offer such things as warp drive which requires antimatter production and containment tech what would happen... A. The world would benefit from bountiful energy and exploration B. Governments would weaponize it. I think we all know what would happen.
Great video..I really appreciate the effort put into making the motion graphics and animations. You even managed to get away with using stock footage and it not be boring because of how you tied it into the overall aesthetic you were going for. Nicely done.
I prefer Iain M Banks Cultures approach. They have a couple of specialist branches called Contact and Special Circumstances respectively, who very much engage and attempt to influence less sophisticated societies with altruistic intention, but they do so with a surgeons approach.
While I agree with you with most of your points I do believe warp travel isn't a bad metric. Warp travel means that they have opened their world's ecosphere to pathogens. The ability to travel through warp is a level of understanding subspace for communication they would need and could assume a certain vague level of medical expertise to deal with said pathogens. Yeah the way it's used is backwards but they do show that the further you get in the timeline the more it becomes from being a strict mandate to more of a guideline.
We think warp drive is an AWFUL metric. And it is based in abject racism. With aliens, exchange of pathogens is literally impossible. So, that is not a concern (a virus or a bacteria has to have a shared evolutionary history and shared evolutionary basis in order to be infectious, something aliens could never have). It is like the wheel...radically unnecessary to living in a modern galaxy.
@@Trekspertise That is demonstrably not true in universe. There are plenty of cases of interspecies breeeding and disease exchange, and these are made more plausible by virtue of the humanoid species in Star Trek being a product of seeding by a DNA template from a progenitor species in "The Chase."
Present day humanity as a whole would very much be less advanced than the Federation, and if such made First Contact with us, it would very much be be our own disaster in the making, or at best, we'd be assimilated into their way of thinking. If we had warp drive today, then contact becomes unavoidable.
Great video! I do have one minor quibble though. At about 18 minutes in you seem to suggest that we don't fly Concorde anymore because it's considered unsafe. In actuality, Concorde only had one fatal accident in 31 years of operation, and the proximate cause of that was debris on the runway, rather than the airframe itself being unsafe. The very real problems with Concorde were much more around the economics of flying it (high fuel costs and low passenger capacity), and severe limitations on what routes it could fly because of it's sonic boom, which restricted it to only transatlantic routes. Your overall point remains the same - the problems were economic and social rather than technological, but safety was not the deciding factor in this case.
Thank you for taking the time to watch! The financials were the biggest reason the Concorde was on the chopping block. But the crash sealed the deal.But the video was already long enough.
In the thumbnail going from left to right you have people caring less and less about the Prime Directive(and rules in general). Janeway is definitely the 50% mark.
That's a brilliant observation and I can't believe it was a mere coincidence! Perhaps that's Trekspertise's trekspertise working even on an unconscious level :)
Your comment about Spain entering peaceful relations with the Aztec reminded me of a dream I had: I was with a group of students on a field trip to some monument to some battle against Native Peoples, when a storm hit. We took shelter in a nearby cave, and when the storm passed the world was different. A different monument was present, and the nearby town was now heavily influenced by Native culture, and there seemed to be an attempt to not dominate the landscape, like Europeans did, but to live with nature. Eventually, we find a museum, where we learn that here the Natives and the Settlers came together to form a better society, and the Cave we stayed in was supposedly home a world where the worst of man was encouraged. Ever the sci-fi geek, I commented before I woke up, "You know that thing in sci-fi where they go to the universe were everyone is bad? WE ARE the ones from the EVIL Universe!"
Any civilization which has ingrained in its culture that it is benevolent and charitable will invariably create foreign policy which demonstrates their benevolence and charity. Should that civilization find that their technology, a product of their culture, be used for things neither benevolent or charitable, they will create policies to limit their technology's exposure. Humanity in Star Trek constantly reminds us of the Eugenics Wars, the thousands of years of bloodshed that led up to the Federation, as though Gene and the rest have made History a required course year after year in galactic academia. The Prime Directive exposes the fears of 20th century America when it shows us what NOT to do (A very old testament measure of survival) rather than advising its staff on what one OUGHT to do (A New Testament, Pro-Active measure of societal cohesion.) I do not find the Prime Directive to be Eurocentric in its focus but instead as universally focused on the human conditions and failings that come from smug superiority (The Chinese Emperor calling Elizabeth I a Petty Queen in a long distant backwards petty Kingdom, The Tokugawa Shogunate's closing-off period, The massive inflationary periods which arose from the Emperor of Mali spreading gold on Hajj, etc..) I'm always happy to see a Trekspertise upload. You guys put a lot of work into these.
The Wheel isn’t a direct corollary to Warp Drive. The closest would be sea-worthy ships. The Prime Directive makes sense since it is useful to explain that once a culture has developed it, it will interact with other cultures.
Well Homo Sapiens that walked their ways out of Africa had to be seaworthy to populate the globe before even the first civilizations emerged. So let’s say why is the value of life different for one pocket of the early Homo Sapiens who stayed on Asia and the other group that migrated through the Southern Pacific onto New Zealand?
"When we saw all those cities and villages built on water; and the other great towns on dry land, and that straight and level causeway leading to Mexico, we were astounded. These great towns and shrines and buildings rising from the water, all made of stone, seemed like an enchanted vision from the tale of Amadis. Indeed some of our soldiers asked whether it was not all a dream. It is not surprising therefore that I should write in this vein. It was all so wonderful that I do not know how to describe this first glimpse of things never heard or, never seen, and never dreamed of before." Bernal Diaz, "The Conquest of New Spain," c.1565
Lets Look at this through the lense of our own eyes. people as they are today. We are in many ways more technologically advanced than we were 30, 40 years ago. We have smart phones, internet , AI artists, lots of things. Lets also look at the behavior of everyone with this finger tip technology . Read the comment section. Look at how we treat each other. The way we talk to each other. And its not just an American thing. Its a global thing. The way we treat diagreement. My way or the high way. You have the wrong opinion. No discussion. only rampant petty arguing. And its not just a " right wing" or " left wing" thing. Technology hasnt made things better. its just made things more convient. We give small children tablets and call that learning. Now imagine if we wake up tommorow and an advanced Alien Species makes first contact. and they decide to help us solve all our problems. It would not only send our world into culture shock, every imaginable way people could take advantage of the situation, would. Using Technology we have no comrfehension of , using it with our current mindset would be disasterous. The divide between the haves and have nots would grow even wider. The machine of war would get deadlier. How would we treat the Aliens. I'm sure in their mind theyre being benevolent. Why would we use whats given against them? But ofcourse I can see where we would. We do it to ourselves now. Mirror Uinverse anyone. The idea that warp drive is a good measure of where a people are technologically is a fair one. Space travel takes a measure of cooperation we arent even close close to now. Sometimes hands off is the better approach. But Like Picard said, no law should be absolute. Especailly when concerning life and the sanctitty of it.
Apart of Analyzing this video, I think, is just looking at the Prime Directive from a real life perspective and not what the show tells us how the Prime Directive works within the science fiction work itself. Not related, but loved the upgrade and evolution of your own videos.. It's fun to see how your editing and cinematography has advanced.
Thanks, and thank you for watching! It has been an evolution. Obviously we don't release regularly, so we have focused on making a better video than the previous ones, on details like animation, research, etc... This is probably our best edit and it took two months to accomplish. The script itself took several weeks beyond that to write. We are very happy with how this one turned out.
I am not so sure that you are on the right track here. In my mind the First Directive ist intervoven with the questions a) has a socienty developed WarpDrive capability and b) is it willing to use it. Only a and b together are qualifiers in my mind. There exists several examples of highly sophisticated socienties (with warp drive or similar or even something better) that did not wanted contact. To want to go out there into space is a trait of a society. Forbidding meddling in the first place can not be a bad thing. It is not a question of "beeing ready" but "can the society adapt" and that is not something a captain of a ship can decide in a couple of hours.
It all depends. But the 'are they ready" question is deeply intertwined with the assumption of a unilineal, universal set of stages of cultural evolution. And THAT part of it is bad, outdated science that is still used by racists. And, like the wheel, using warp drive is just not a useful metric. There are far too many exceptions for the Prime Directive to even be a useful rule.
@@Trekspertise Maybe that is my socialist/marxist upbringing, but I found it very comforting that in the future we would be "ready". We definitly are not at this moment. Maybe it is not even a sozial thing but species thing. We as humans would lay waste to the galaxy if we had the means.
Prime Directive is logical. It's not about "level of advancement" Once you have interstellar travel, interaction is inevitable, at that point it's no longer the Federation's responsibility to ensure cultural isolation. You can have the most advanced, wonderful civilization, but if you're not interacting with the rest of the galactic community, there's no good moral reason to contact you.
@@Trekspertise I thought the video was about "making judgments about other cultures by how advanced you perceive them to be is racist." Trek writers sometimes use this as justification for the Prime Directive (see the Wheel speech), which is obviously wrong and ignorant. But that's not what the Prime Directive is about. It's a harm reduction policy, and I still think it's pretty sound if your goal is to preserve galactic diversity and the right, to self-determination. Especially as the federation is often criticized for homogenizing member cultures, using soft power to force their values and way of life on them. Without the Prime Directive, BRAVE NEW WORLDS would become quickly become SAME OLD WORLDS. Regardless of "perceived advancement" there is a massive power imbalance between space-faring and non-space-faring civilizations that can be abused, even without ill intentions. What right do we have to drag a culture minding its own business onto the galactic scene? (That said, it's a good argument to have and I don't get why Trek writers never mine it for gold by creating a faction within the federation that rejects the prime directive as immoral.)
I strongly disagree with your opinion in this video and I find that the American liberal politics which you use to analyze and criticize it is a poor tool for that. The idea is not about who is more advanced or European in a first contact situation, but who has the most to lose and who has the strength to decide for both parties. If the Federation is a table, the Prime Directive says people should not be invited at the table if they don't know how to stand, sit, use a fork and understand what they are eating. You could invite dogs to the table, but it wouldn't be pretty and the dogs would get sick, even if they would find a way to get to the table and eat without standing, sitting or using a fork, because they don't understand what they are eating or how to relate to people at the table. And giving them scraps works, but it doesn't do anything good for the societal development, especially when more scraps go to the "good" dogs. Interstellar flight (not warp drive) is the line in the sand, but it's not an arbitrary, it defines a species that by itself can initiate first contact. The "advanced" in the Prime Directive is more about tactical advantage, the military higher ground, than a social metric. Of course a culture can be taken advantage of if you can get to it and it can't get to you. It has nothing to do with racism, but with numerous historical examples of first contact which have proven detrimental, long before what happened in the Americas, where people usually get stuck in the argument. Yes, civilizations don't have a predetermined evolution line, but on today's Earth, most of those have disappeared or been forced to adhere to the culture of the most powerful. Star Trek divided humanity into specific archetypes which they chose to represent as very distinctive species. That's considered racist now and probably why no new Star Trek seems to be working anymore, but that was a metaphor. The Prime Directive is also a metaphor, for all the historical "first contact" cases where we would want, as a global society, to have done things differently. It is profoundly antiracist and apologetic, an evidence based proposed solution for past perceived wrongs. Not perfect? Sure. But your argument attaches things to it that I think are not what Star Trek embodies. That being said, Star Trek has some poor episodes that use the Prime Directive as a blunt McGuffin and may even have been written from a place of doubtful social awareness, but the Prime Directive is a concept around which all Star Trek orbits. It was a wise decision to never properly explain it, because it is the job of the viewer to interpret it and imagine a better future. This video uses almost exclusively American history and American social political thinking to attack the historical European worldview. Isn't that a little hypocritical?
1) There are no liberal anythings in this video. 2) The issue isn't that the Federation is being particular about who it invites to the table. They can be selective. But it HOW they are being selective that is the issue. If they are just going to borrow the paradigm from racists of the 19th century, then we've learned nothing and Star Trek accidentally, cynically, demonstrates that nothing changes and that the old Euro-centric cultural perspective is king. 3) The Prime Directive is based on a myth of history, not the actual reality. We take efforts to break some of those down in this video. 4) And, of course, the perspective is American. We admit as much in the video. We center ourselves, in the video, in the Americas. And al that is because Star Trek is an American creation, created for Americans by Americans, embodying the ideal of American empire, and deploying a Prime Directive philosophy which is specifically American in scope and worldview.
What a great take on the philosophies and anthropologies that inform the Prime Directive! BUT...what if we kept the Prime Directive, but changed the reasoning behind it to reflect foreign policy and defense goals? Because you can build a ship that can sail to my shores, how you encounter me and the means you use to do it is very much my interest. If you fly to my world and we have a misunderstanding, or your crew doesn't return to your world as planned, then that has foreign policy implications for me and puts me on the back foot. Or worse - you might also bring your weapons to my world and decide you have a reason to use them. I'm not OK with that. How do I solve that problem? I go to you instead, and I meet you on your ground. Then you have the security of being at home, and I have the security of keeping you far from mine (and my flying space fortress that conveniently doubles as a diplomatic conference room) until I understand you better. Then, when we come to an agreement about how to move forward together, we can exchange diplomats and begin formal diplomatic relations. So no one's world is assaulted, their societies don't get nervous, and we agree a set of rules for how we relate to each other so we can learn and grow together with mutual respect for each other's values.
As I continue to read the comments, I can see the subject of contacting pre-warp civilisations coming up. So why don't we contact pre-warp civs? In a word, risk. It's risky. Even though I'm from the Federation, we don't have infinite people and resources. We have all we need, and we need those people and things to do other stuff that we've decided is worth the risk. If your people don't have anything I need, then it's really not in my interest to divert my people from their missions to you. They risk their stuff, their time, and their lives. I have a duty to the Federation and to my crew to make sure it's worth putting them out there, so until you're capable of reaching me, it's just not that important. It's interesting - we can learn stuff from each other - but that's not a good enough reason for me to risk first contact.
Let's look at the flip side of that. If I'm the pre-warp society, why might I not want to be contacted (even if I don't know there's something out there)? It turns out we have a few RL examples to illustrate that. @Trekspertise already told us about a few encounters between Europeans and other civs. Each one went pretty badly without the need for a particular technology to justify contact. If I was governing a pre-warp civ and could even imagine being contacted by extraterrestrials, I'd have to say I wouldn't want it based on that history alone. But my reasons aren't limited to just the potential for conflict or exploitation. Here's where we have another RL example. Globalisation. WW2 opened the door to massive military and scientific movement into the Pacific Islands - places like Guam, the Northern Marianas, Samoa. We sometimes colloquially call this "colonialism", but more generally these are client states (American Overseas Territories don't resemble the colonial system in important ways - I won't get into it, but they don't). Because the US military decided to post up in their neighbourhoods, they also had the advantage of American technologies. Within a very short period of time those people became dependent on the military for everything - building materials, access to overseas markets, medicine, to name a few. And not only that - their young people, correctly recognising that this is a bad way to live and that they could have it better elsewhere, join the military with a view to leaving home for a better standard of living or just more attractive opportunities. Now if the Federation came to my planet and started teaching us about all the great stuff they have and do, wouldn't that threaten the values of the society that I and my forebears have built for generations on generations? Isn't that as much a threat to our way of life as it is a chance to see beyond our world? Until my society has come to a place where it can truly leave the confines of our star system and return home, I think we also deserve the opportunity to decide how we encounter the final frontier.
Isn't even the notion that societies NECESSARILY grow more complex debatable? For instance, it's safe to assume that a society that doesn't experience population growth (for whatever reason) may transform over time but without any added complexity to its social relations, technological discoveries, economy and so on.
I agree with much of the sentiment but I think the point of the Prime Directive was to say colonialism is bad; also, interfering in other's affairs can have unintended, highly damaging consequences. But to the meat of the discussion, there's some dogma and self-righteous American-splaining in this video that's backed up with a lot of false logic... (sorry, just my feeling on this video and I love Trekspertise) The white/euro-centric view that cultures evolve on a single path is obviously racist but that doesn’t mean that cultures don’t follow similar development paths. And acknowledging that some cultures have “developed” farther technologically or morally than others doesn’t necessitate a value judgement on which culture or ppl are better. It also doesn’t compromise the value of holding all people with equal importance or dignity. The danger in pretending that “cultures are not developed or undeveloped - just equal or you’re racist” is that it allows one to call everything relative. You can say “don’t judge cultures who murder LGBTQ people or have slavery - that’s just a different culture and if you judge, you’re racist!” All peoples of the world are humans- primates with a hierarchy of needs and similar emotional ability thanks to our common biology. The notion that as a culture “develops”, it embraces liberal values like human rights, is almost certainly true. When technology provides basic needs, higher needs like appreciation, self fulfillment, etc. will be pursued… thus, liberal values take hold. The example of Europeans poisoning themselves, thinking themselves superior, is just an example of foolish self-superiority and irrelevant to disproving similar development trajectories of all cultures.
But there are no stages of cultural advancement. It is all relative, all context-based. The Concorde is a good example of that...is the west less developed now than it was on account of discontinuing the use of the Concorde? That's only one measure. Why does any one measure hold more water than other measures? Very quickly, whatever litmus test that is devised, falls apart. One could argue that longevity of human life can be used as a metric for advancement. So, that leaves the US off of the top lists of the world, as our life expectancy is shorter than some. And yet, we have the most powerful military ever devised. Is that how we describe advancement? Or is it which population is happiest? In 2022, that would be Finland. Are they the most advanced culture in the world? It is all nonsense. The social sciences figured that out decades ago. "Developed or developing" is just another way of saying "savagery, barbarism, and civilization." All the metrics we have on judging who is developed and who is developing are based squarely in the experience of western cultures. It is ethnocentric. But that is how cultures are...throughout time, imperial cultures have always judged outsiders by their own standards. The Greeks gave us the word 'barbarian' from 'barbar' which was how they made fun of the sounds of anyone who didn't speak Greek. We can't help but to see the world through ethnocentric glasses. It takes special efforts to see around those biases. There ARE ways of evaluating the behavior of cultures. But none of those ways are marks of superiority. Just differences. And it really depends on what the aim is in evaluating any culture. For example, over 7,000 people A DAY are harmed in traffic accidents in the United States. Meanwhile, in Great Britain, 80+ people a day are harmed. Is Great Britain superior? No. But, in that comparison, one is armed in order to make a change (hopefully toward less injury and death).
@@Trekspertise Thank you for the detailed reply! Since this is your video essay, I will try to stick to your examples. I’m not sure if the Concorde or other vanity accomplishments are a good measure of progress. I guess we would agree on that. But I think advancing human rights is definitely “progress” or positive “development” or whatever euphemism we want to use. And rights, to a degree, are universal or at least - for example, in Japan where I live, there is often more weight given protecting groups rather than individual, but regardless, ppl here still value many of the same rights as the West. I also agree there is no “developed” vs “developing”. I have lived in the US, Japan, and Argentina.. all have their own points of exception. And areas they lag. The US, as you mentioned… has many problems. Longevity, healthy, happiness, as you pointed out, important. I also think the US has taken a massive step backwards in becoming a giant, car- dependent suburb over the last 70 years. That’s not progress. Most differences between cultures are “relative” but not all. Progress is multi-spectrum, nuanced, and hard to measure. As you said in another comment, depends on the “metric”. But progress is real. And I do think, at their own pace, and in their own way, most cultures are making progress. Regarding value judgements. You said, “There ARE ways of evaluating behaviors of cultures.” I’m not sure if you’re saying cultural and behaviors are different. I don’t think they are because behaviors like slavery are justified by cultural values. It would seem arbitrary to say cuisine, language, or rituals that don’t harm people are “cultural” but harmful rituals are not cultural… in any case. I assume we would agree that some behaviors are bad. And it’s not merely relative. So any difference of opinion would be on the definition of words, not on substance. I would just add that as a culture “develops”, ahem, makes “technological progress” and achieves a sufficient affluence, it allows people more time to agitate for other change as well- like their legal system to make progress. And for cultural values to move towards equality rather than caste system etc... there are common trends.
As you state in your essay, The Prime Directive is about non-interventionalism full stop, which is why it applies to the Klingon Civil War as much as to non-galactic societies. Star Trek has also framed The Prime Directive as being based on the premise that only a planet that has managed to pool its resources and collective will in harmonious collaboration could have managed to develop warp drive, which is why the movie First Contact is so good because it shatters that illusion. I'm not saying anything about this essay is incorrect, only that it's incomplete, though certainly the significant bulk of the whole picture. Reframing the Prime Directive in terms of non-intervention in societies outside Federation treaties wouldn't be much of a leap. Also, any show that explores spacetime and other worlds that does not employ writers from as many different human cultures as possible needs to step up, and fast. There is no longer any excuse. Looking at you, Doctor Who!
Then the Star Trek franchise needs to make that clear and explicit. As it stands, the concept is muddy as hell and dangerously close to the racism of our own world.
@@Trekspertise i keep recommending this channel in comment sections of all other trek channels i come across, hoping to make a tiny contribution. 🤡 but still...
I get what you're saying but counter that the prime directives line in the sand around warp drive/subspace communication is a practical line and one which largely sticks with the theme of non-interference. Just the act of first contact with a culture such as an interstellar federation of planets would cause irreversible change to another cultures natural progression. Potentially positive, potentially negative. Setting the line where the prime directives does essentially says that those cultures should be left to their own devices for as long as they practically can. Once warp drive or subspace communication become a thing it is essentially impossible to hide everything from them anymore. That is the point you inject yourself into their culture and make that irreversible change, once it is inevitable anyways.
@@Trekspertise not that I intend to argue with the dude who said the words or is obviously more qualified but it sounded to me like the video ways saying there is no natural end point/goal for cultural progression (although evolution might be a better word). Cultures do naturally progress just the same as everything else in my experience, there is just no singularly correct way. Correct me if I have taken away the wrong message though.
@@Trekspertise likely we are just using different definitions of natural progression here, because I mean progression/evolution/change without outside influence. Whatever course said culture would take left to its own devices.
I wish you took a more deeper dive into historical materialism specifically, as it sticks out among the other theories you mention. Because its obviously easy to dismiss things like "civilizational stage" but things such as class society is far more of a real thing, than any "stages".
I have one or two major issues with the video. The Prime Directive in my view is fine but the way the writers choose to express it often uses words which make it sound problematic and does sound like the "Unilineal Culture Evolution" at times. But I also think the Enterprise episode Dear Doctor best addresses a lot of issues by having the race we are told is "less developed" actually being saved from basic slavery by Phlox using the prime directive having Cpt Archer as the POV character arguing to save the "more developed" race. The episode that did get mentioned that also addresses this is Strange New World (which I didn't like) but the "less developed" culture was just the US. I like your conclusion about maybe Spain should have had peaceful diplomatic relations but I would use that to argue exactly the opposite, the phaser & nuclear weapons back then were smallpox which they used to kill entire civilizations.
That episode resulted in the genocide of an entire race by withholding treatment of a preventable disease. If you're proposing it as a way of showing why the Prime Directive is moral, I feel like your idea of morality is vastly different to mine. (Incidentally I don't recall the Menk being enslaved though it could be I'm misremembering the episode, so I apologise if I'm wrong on that point). Even taking your recollection of the episode at face value though... say during the height of chattel slavery, a disease started to spread that, due to genetic reasons, could only infect white people (obviously it's not as simple as that - but this would work even with a large subset of western European people). Due to the relatively primitive state of medicine at the time, it soon spreads to the entire world and threatens to kill millions and completely exterminate many Western European cultures. If some benevolent outside force arrived, who had the power to cure this disease... can you seriously argue that the correct moral thing to do is to refuse to do so because of the injustices perpetrated by white people? Understandable, sure, arguable, maybe, but moral? To me when I think of purposely avoiding treating a disease because you don't agree with the actions of the group who are affected by the disease, I think of the bigotry that led to the apathy around AIDS among world leaders at the time. Not enlightened utopias.
@@Muzer0 I was trying yo point out the Prime Directive as Amoral. I think the Federation deciding to intervene on the behalf of a planet is very different than a crew of a 100 people on a startship with 1 person in charge from making a decision that could lead to severe moral questions. This extends past disease and natural disasters to perhaps questions of war. Maybe a benevolent force could cure a disease (and that's a far better framing) than what if an alien came down and halted US military involvement in another country. Or Russian? What if they decided which governments were in control of what land and what people? I'm not saying I would write out the Prime Directive the way they do in the show, but I do think it would be improper for 1 starship to decide the fate of a planet. There would be steps and procedures and guidelines etc but thats not what the video was about nor my comment.
Excellent video essay, as an anthropologist it's great to see the discipline get this sort of attention, for both the good and the bad. We anthropologists have been on a continual identity crisis since social evolution was thrown out the window!
@@Trekspertise It is, if it's an area that interests you, other anthropologists from the early-mid 20th century like Franz Boas for cultural relativity. You might also find Edward Sapir/Benjamin-Lee Whorf of interest for their linguistic relativity which has its roots in some of the stuff you touched on. I could go on but anyways great video!
So anthropology is all about ignoring practical concerns? Warp isn't used as a measure of whether a civilization is "ready", it's used because a pre-warp society is fundamentally incapable of participating in interstellar society as anything other than a client state because space is too damn big for sub-light travel to be practical.
This is much better thought out and far more comprehensive than anything that I've come up with and I don't disagree with anything said in the video but I have always had a drastically different take, I've always thought the main reason the Prime Directive exists in Star Trek is to explain why we, in the 20th/21st century haven't met many of these different alien species yet if the galaxy is teeming with life, like we see in Star Trek. I've also never really seen warp drive as a singular technology as the point that at which it's "OK" to interact with another species, it's just the most common technology, in the Trek Universe, that makes contact with species from other worlds inevitable. If it was instead the discovery of subspace communication, which was mentioned in the video, that introduced a species to the wider galactic community, that would be valid as well. However I don't think it starts and ends with those two technologies, if a species possessed telepathic abilities that made them aware of alien civilizations, I think that's fair game. If another species not bound by the prime directive has already had contact the federation isn't bound by the prime directive and there are examples of that in the original text. If two intelligent species develop on different planets in the same star system and have only had contact with one another they seem to be fair game to communicate with, there is an example of that in TNG as well. There are other facets of the Prime Directive but I've always seen this as the most important and iconic angle. The bits about sharing technology seem arbitrary as other cultures would likely always have some useful technology or cultural practice to trade and trading/sharing technologies seems to be fair game in some instances so that's pretty vague.
@@Trekspertise Coming from you this means a lot! Thanks so much Trekspertise! I have no doubt that the take in this video is much closer to the actual intent of the writers, particularly when it comes to cold war era politics in TOS but, I'd like to think that at least some of the writers in the TNG era saw it, at least partly, like I do. Thanks for all the great videos!
@@Trekspertise It's a season 3 Lower Decks episode, you should watch it. You may find their take on multilineal cultural evolution intresting since it kinda pokes fun at how arbitrary warp technology is as a reference point
Did you also claim that the world would have been a kinder, better place if the Aztec Empire had survived? 😂 Tell me you know nothing about the AE, without telling me you know nothing about the AE.
I know a great deal about the Aztecs. Assuming that they are some kind of evil people comes from a place of ignorance. People who buy, people who believe unquestionably the tales that conquistadors spun about them, are at a disadvantage in understanding the world. Conquistadors were liars and braggarts who ran around the globe stabbing people, raping, enslaving, exaggerating their deeds, etc...they were jihadists of a stripe. So, we are to take their word on who the people of Mesoamerica were? Instead of actual Mesoamericans? And the video doesn't ultimately claim that the world would be a kinder place with the Aztecs in it (after all, we still have Aztecs today). The ultimate point the video makes, especially in that moment, is that we have no idea what the world would look like has Spain not sailed halfway across the planet to invade and conquer people. A passage of 500 years of time is along, long time in human years. Anything is possible. Anything is still possible. And there are still no universal cultural stages of evolution.
@@Trekspertise - I never claimed that the Mexica as a people were evil, nor did I claim that there are "universal cultural stages of evolution". But to deny that the AE was warlike and expansionistic to a degree that would have made even ancient Sparta ask them to take a chill pill is plainly ridiculous. There was a reason, after all, that the Tlaxcalans (and others) were very keen to trust these strange, alien newcomers whose likes they had never seen. That reason was the same as why the Nazis were originally hailed as liberators in Ukraine, until they realized they'd come from the frying pan of the USSR to the fire of Nazi rule. The Aztec Empire was so hated and mistrusted in its region that those it hadn't already subjugated were eager to join forces with ANYONE who had the strength to oppose it. The Spanish arrived at the right place at the right time to take advantage of this. The culture and entire worldview was built around human sacrifices. That was not exclusive to the AE, but they were the ones who systematized it the most. Because the gods required human blood to keep the world going. Before you reply with "Muh witch trials!": The perversions and abuses of Christianity during Renaissance and the Age of Enlightenment were exactly that: Perversions. And it was Christians who ended them again. But when your entire culture and worldview is based on the belief that unless the gods get human blood, the world will end, that's not something that can just be brushed aside. As a sidenote: I'll also remind you that the fiercest advocates of decent treatment of the conquered peoples, and harshest critics of the exploitation of them committed by the settlers, plantation/mine owners, etc.....were clergy. These were also those most eagerly trying to retain and preserve the natives' stories, language and culture (though of course not their religion). And no, I'm not Roman-Catholic. Your "Peace and love and playful puppies"-suggestion for what would have happened if the AE hadn't been conquered is equally as valid as the idea "The AE would have become Nazi Germany on steroids". Which is to say: We have no idea of that at all. Because we don't have a device capable of penetrating the multiverse. Now, if you're just going to reply with an elaborate version of "REEEE U A WHITE MALE!", then don't bother. But if you have anything of substance, please do reply.
I have never watched a frame of Star Trek. But I have watched many, many hours of video ABOUT Star Trek. (Mostly because Mike from RedLetterMedia references it a lot and I want to get the references.) I honestly have always seen the Prime Directive as a story device. It allows the writers a limit on what they can explore for... business purposes. Whether you want to see this as time constraints, education deficits, ad revenue, etc. A lot of tv and film does this, so I tend not to take those concepts literally. As I understand story to be metaphor. BUT this is clearly a limited view because stories do not exist in a vacuum. Your explanation of this really broadens my view here. Really great video. Was sent over by Rowan, glad I came over. If I ever actually WATCH Star Trek, your channel will be the first I come to. Cheers!
About _The Prime Directive..._ Back in the day, the DS9 days...a buddy made the old argument about DS9 being a space station not a starship. So I rebuiled... _"Understandable, but it a chance to see the Prime Directive in it's longevity..."_ DS9 now stands as his favorite _Star Trek series..._ xD =/\=
I listen to a lot of your videos while working or while driving and it was extremely jarring having the clips being played over a TV or a speaker. I am very guilty of not watching the actual visual stimuli so audio changes like that give me extremely bad sensory. Did you do this to avoid strikes on thr video or was it a creative choice?
Counter argument(s) if you're reading this, @Trekspertise \ Kyle, that spawn from the same very basic principle : The first is that while we humans evolved culturally in a very different reason, as you mentioned with Conquistador vs Aztecs part, the Aztecs were indeed at war with Tlaxcallan that gladly took the opportunity given by Cortez to defeat their enemies. Fast forward few centuries and back to your later example of a Federation starship coming to earth right now.. Are we really edging our bets that NATO Countries, China, India and Russia (just to simplify, but mostly "the whole world") would just drop any belligerance ? Isn't it more likely that in the very same fashion that we still hold to this day, despite all the cultural advancements, nuclear weapons as "deterrent" to start yet another world war, we would hold that same technology in the same regard ? And even if all the countries would get along.. Are we sure that even an harmless technology like Replicators + Endless renewable energy won't just be held by a rich corporation or country to become the de-facto economic leader of the world. This to say that yes, i'd love to think that we as humans are capable to understand the obvious benefits of switching to a post scarcity culture but we all know that we live in the same world where the people who hold most power are the very same people that thinks that "i struggled in my youth, you should struggle too" and "i worked my whole life to earn this, i won't give it away!". So...
In your suggested alternate history of the Spanish making peaceful contact with native peoples, tens or hundreds of millions would've still died due to disease. The natives would've, rightly I think, blamed the Spanish for inflicting that harm on them. After all, they didn't ask the Spaniards to come make contact, and since the Spanish were already such international explorers, they should've aware how devastating even peaceful contact could potentially be. It'd be a different story, if native had gone out and encountered Europeans at sea, or invited ships they spotted to come ashore. As it relates to Star Trek,, I don't think the achievement of warp drive is necessarily an arbitrary threshold for first contact. It means that a society has made a deliberate choice to seek out other life or invite contact from outside their world because that is what warp drive enables. You're quite correct that there's no linear way a society develops, but regardless you can't assume that they would desire contact, however peaceful. For that reason, I'd argue that the prime directive allows for the maximum degree of agency for a civilization.
Yea...the disease thing still would have been an issue, perhaps. It took 300 or 400 years for people anywhere to understand how disease worked. But still, without a Spanish invasion, the Americas, and the world would be vastly different today. Would be fun to speculate how. And the Spanish didn't really care, on the whole. They had been in the Caribbean for barely 20 years before they contacted the Aztecs. They were only just starting to explore the planet. But they weren't about new knowledge, they were about 'gold, guns, and god' and getting to Chin as soon as possible so they could get rich! The initial contacts with Native America were sometimes ocean-bound. Columbus's 4th voyage encountered sea-going Maya vessels, for example. ANd of course, Native America had been playing in the oceans since the great migrations out of Siberia.
Thank you for mentioning the specific details about Spanish/Native American encounters and the European ideals that drove that because it is one critical thing that irks the hell out of me whenever the Prime Directive comes up in Trek. I get why writers want to use it as a writing tool and I understand that in some of their minds they intend for it to be an ideal where one socio-economic-political entity does not interfere with another entity. However, that intention underlies a severe ignorance of the contextual history of those first contacts between Europeans & Native Americans. The harm didn't happen from meeting up, the harm happened when one aggressive entity decided to conquer the land of the other for their own interests. Even the spread of diseases like smallpox, influenza, etc. alone is factored by that contextual history because recent scholarship of that period details that maybe one of the reasons those epidemics occurred was because of the way the Spanish military and the ensuing encomienda system harmed the people enough to be able to spread as fast & brutally as it did.
This is a hard subject to debate, one hand you have the ability to eliminate all disease, hunger, and scarcity, but is a species capable of adapting to such advancements over night. To due so would require complete overview of said society for quite a long period. You couldn’t just hand over the technology and say, “good luck” that’d be super reckless. There would have to be a sort of governmental body to watch and illustrate everything, altering society norms, which could be vast in contrast. If this was to happen to us right now, the implications would be disastrous. We are still to primitive and greedy to hold such power. A better scenario would be to acknowledge their existence and technological superiority proving we still have an immense amount of knowledge to learn and that we know nothing about the laws of physic. That simple fact alone would ignite our scientific rigour, pushing us to heights unknown without just handing it to us.
Yeah it'll have to go the way of Planet of Hats, I don't know to me the writers have kinda addressed it over the years especially in DS9 the geopolitical subtext of "Drinking Rootbeer" but yeah it has almost been framed in too good of a light
@@Trekspertise What do you guys think about the new Picard season? I had high hopes season 3 would be better than 1&2 but sadly I am a bit disappointed, it feels dark and gloomy, the scenes with Rafi have this weird bladerunner feel. I watch it out of nostalgia, and because I love the actors. Amanda Plummer is a splendid villain, but stuff like that portal weapon are a bit too far fetched. I feel a bit mean for writing this, but I feel Sir Patrick Stewart has gotten a bit too old to go galivanting through the galaxy, but of course without him it wouldn't be "Picard"...
The example I think of is whether or not to save a culture that may die from an imminent threat, such as their star going supernova. Given what you say, that people adapt according to context, they may lack the context, the stellar knowledge to know about the imminent threat, so giving them that seems kinder than just watching them be erased by accident. The visitors could say they can help evacuate you but only if you want, and let individuals decide as part of that. But unless the visitor's culture was accommodating, then it might be a slow death anyway depending on adaptive ability. Given the premise, though, if *I* were in a similar situation I would want to be informed of the impending doom so I could at least decide. After the whole planet's gone there's not much more growth or deciding to be had. I guess to me it feels just as much like playing god to leave people to their fate without any help. But I'm glad you bring up that this was supposed to come from the right place, the fear of cultural contamination which is still I think a general principle in anthropology even if it's not as rigid as the Prime Directive. I feel like the active component, introducing knowledge or trade or whatever might better be on a case-by-case basis partly due to self-interest, not wanting new cultures to overrun what is ostensibly a non-competitive society. I'm happy these questions are at least examined, I feel like they kind of have to be for stuff like Star Trek to be a bit more than just a fairy tale
Even if early European explorers had been kind to the indigenous people of the “new world”, they still would have been devastated by waves of new disease.
Kyle, thank you for this intellectually stimulating video! 👍🏻 You are correct about civilizations evolving in different paths and there is no such thing as a singular and rigid one, bravo! 👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻 Also, your new interpretation of the prime directive in which civilizations will adapt and not explode or cease to exist is spot on! 👌🏻 I think future writers of Star Trek should take this into account for future Star Trek TV series spinoffs! 😊 I look forward to seeing more of your videos! You just earned a new subscriber! 😎
Avatar is a good example of this theory. The Na'vi are not savages. In fact, they are much older race than humans. But thanks to the environment they evolved in, they know that keeping the balance is more important than technological progress.
The Prime Directive is not an absolute. Starfleet and its officers can break the rules, but they better have a good reason to break it! If Starfleet can justify it, the Federation Council is content.
You seem to have misunderstood the point to warp-drive being the marker of when a civilization is "ready" for contact; it's not a meaningless or arbitrary line. For one thing, warp-drive is significantly more powerful than other technologies, it's leaps and bounds more powerful, and thus, more dangerous that steam-power, electricity, even nuclear weapons. It's basically an end-game weapon/tech-tree skill. After that, there's only sci-fi-level stuff like time-travel left, which is just one step below ascension to all-knowing, all-connected energy-beings. It's like teaching cavemen how to make machine-guns, it's just _highly_ probably they'll end up destroying themselves with it because it's a planet-destroying, extinction-level-event type of technology. It's dangerous enough that they _can't_ "adapt" as you said, they'd be gone. The other reason they use it as a marker of when to make contact or not is because space is big. That is to say, space is HUGE! Even light itself takes forever to get anywhere. The vast majority of life in space is scattered in massive pockets of emptiness. Most life will never manage to even detect other life, let alone contact it, let alone meet it. The only way for a civilization to do so is to figure out how to reach other life is to develop FTL technologies (which again, is devastatingly dangerous if misused or abused). The Federation tries to restrict themselves to just scanning planets with primitive life, they don't actually go down there, they avoid making contact. They only ever try to sneak in under rare circumstances where it's necessary and try to avoid the people as much as possible. They leave it up to the people to figure out a way to contact them. Trying to draw analogs to Earth history is specious. The Aztec may not have used wheels much because they didn't need them or invent guns, but that doesn't mean they were ready for Howitzers. The Federation isn't calling pre-warp civilizations "primitive", they acknowledge that might be good enough for them, but that doesn't mean the UFP can meddle with them. A real-world analogy is uncontacted tribes like the North Sentinlese. They have managed to stay "primitive" for tens of thousands of years, well into the 21st century. They _don't need_ to develop sailing vessels to seek out new frontiers. But that doesn't mean it's okay for the world to go say hello, doing so is bad for everybody. Your accusation that the Federation is racist is not only wrong, it's insulting. The Federation has this directive specifically for the _opposite_ reason: out of respect for other civilizations and the understanding that they have no right to push their ideas on others and to allow other civilizations to develop however they want and however works for them. They already know life is "multilineal" as you kept repeating. They allow aliens to reach out to them instead of the other way around. They know most "intelligent" life will eventually reach a point of curiosity and ambition that will cause them to look at the skies and wonder what's out there and if they're alone and try to go, so the Federation lets them do it on their schedule. They just figure that if they reach a point where they can travel faster than light and haven't destroyed themselves, they're more likely to be able to handle things like transporter without doing it as well, it's all about statistics and probabilities and risk-reduction. And respect. (Oh, and "real fans" don't consider CBS Trek canon because it's just awful. And that SNW episode was just a ripoff of an Orville episode.)
No, we've understood it perfectly. Star Trek has been clear enough on this. Warp drive is a powerful technology, potentially dangerous. But that's not what Trek is doing. They aren't saying "you cannot have this powerful technology" most of the time. Instead, they are saying, "don't talk to them or you will disrupt their natural, cultural evolution!" But there are literally no such thing as natural, universal stages of cultural evolution, or any stages of cultural evolution.
I have to disagree. The Prime Directive is an important anti-Colonial and harm reduction policy. The Vietnam and Iraq Wars of course show us how humanitarian rhetoric can easily be exploited for expansionist goals, and result in the deaths of millions. But even if the Federation just peacefully contacted pre-warp civilisations, and traded with them, it's extremely easy to imagine how that could result in tragedy. How many Star Trek episodes revolve around Starfleet personnel contracting runious exotic space diseases? Is the Federation willing to take responsibility if they unwittingly transmit Levodian flu to a culture without advanced medicine, killing billions? What if they teach a pre-warp civilisation how to split the atom, and they immediately use it to create nuclear bombs instead of energy reactors (just like the real-world United States did)? Is the UFP responsible if that planet's population subsequently wipes itself out in a nuclear war? Or if they all get chronically addicted to Holodecks, and cease to reproduce? If so, who gets punished and court-martialed? It would perhaps be advisable for Starfleet (and the writers) to stop referring to pre-warp civilisations as "primitive". But it seems to me that there is only a modest amount to be gained from the Federation contacting pre-warp civilisations, and the potential for a lot of innocent people to die, no matter how well-intentioned the Federation is. Frankly, why meddle with a situation which isn't broken? Unless a species is about to go extinct absent intervention, it's frankly courting disaster. A billion deaths following First Contact even once is too many. I also disagree with the assertion that warp drive is an "arbitrary" line for First Contact. The reasoning is very simple- once a species has warp drive, they can seek out other species, so First Contact is inevitable. Better to make sure it happens on peaceful terms in a controlled environment, rather than a Federation starship bumping into a random species for the first time with no prior warning. Again, it's a policy of harm reduction- obviously a massive interstellar government can't hide its presence FOREVER. I agree that the Prime Directive should be waived in cases of extinction-level natural disasters facing pre-warp societies, since that's already a worst case scenario. But apart from that exception, it's a responsible and scrupulous philosophy- don't intrude upon civilisations you know nothing about unless you're willing to take responsibility for every (potentially disastrous) consequence. I certainly wouldn't trust current-day humanity with replicators, matter-antimatter reactors, or holodecks. Tell me with a straight face that the United States in 2023 is ready to handle every potential ramification of that insane tech jump.
Agree with you on most points except for the extinction level event exception. In a natural system, species emerge and go extinct constantly. Starfleet intervening to prevent extinctions would be a never ending task, and would in fact involve picking winners and losers in an otherwise natural process. The flaw in the way Star Trek frames prime directive dilemmas is that they generally depict very human-like civilizations. They look, sound, and behave so much like human beings so it's a no-brainer that they should be saved from potential extinction, PD be damned. However in a more realistic scenario, a given planet would have millions of different species, among which a great many could display different forms of intelligence, sentience, and civilization. Should Starfleet intervene to save the alien equivalent of whales, chimpanzees, octopi, dogs, even honeybees?
You focus so much on the fact that a line was drawn and forget why it was drawn. The implications are massive, which was widely explored within Star Trek. You put your own bias into this, I never understood pre-warp civilizations to be "undeserving" of contact or help, you really twist yourself into a pretzel in order to force this point. Why do we leave isolated tribes in the Amazon alone? Because they don't deserve penicillin? Because we think they're not ready to talk to us? No! We do it to protect their way of life, because we have no right to interfere in their natural development. The question is not weather or not they can comprehend that we exists so differently, nobody says that they can't.
We think that's a perspective that the Star Trek franchise just has not enunciated well enough. And we say as much in the video. So, the onus is on Trek - put this weird rule to rest. Say clearly why and what it is supposed to do. But, let's be clear, there is no 'natural development" that happens to any human society. SO, why go out into the universe armed with a philosophy that doesn't bear resemblance to reality? It certainly does more harm than good. It is easy to see why Prime Directive stories are so love / hate, hot / cold.
@@Trekspertise Suppose the Federation does exactly what you're suggesting- they parade around the universe, gung-ho, making contact with any sapient life they find, whether they're a space-age civilisation, or hunter gatherers who haven't discovered bronze. They hand out holodecks and replicators, and warp drives to anybody who wants them. They preach Federation universalist philosophy to anybody who wants to hear it. It's simply a fact that doing so will irrevocably change each species' conception of their place in the universe, and culture, forever. Suppose they have a religion with a core tenant that they are the only life in the universe, and that they should never venture into space? Well the Federation just debunked that piece of culture, forever. Suppose the second that Holodecks and replicators are discovered, the entire planet turns into a drug den where nobody goes outside? To say that current-day Earth would be totally unaltered by the discovery of aliens with miracle technology, or that we'd deal with the change well, is hopelessly naïve. Most cultures would be unrecognisable after meeting aliens for the first time. A core tenet of Vulcan and Federation philosophy is "Infinite Diversity, in Infinite Combinations". It isn't exactly unclear why a society which respects self-determination and diversity in culture so much would be resistant to imposing themselves on other people without consent, and irrevocably changing their cultures in the process. What you're suggesting is inherently more imperialistic than the Prime Directive. The Prime Directive gives each culture a choice in whether they want to reach for the stars- if they don't want to meet anybody else, or they don't want the social disruption which developing new technologies brings, they can simply not develop warp tech, and stay home. It's designed to prevent the Federation from imposing themselves (and their ideals) on people who might not want it, and to prevent homogenising the entire universe.
Cultural isolation is bad. Cultural swamping might be worse. Like species, cultures require isolation to develop and only then can they thrive with increased contact with virulent outside cultures. Working out the amount and timing of mutually beneficial contact could become a scientific discipline all of its own.
*the Prime Directive(tm) think plot convenience or stringent iron clad script deadlines* *or maybe StarFleet Legal's means of insuring that captain's and crew have a CYA clause when dealing with first contact encounters that suddenly got all wonky or sideways*
Just as Star Trek has its own physics rules it has its own cultural rules. So WITHIN Star Trek the prime directive it does make sense. In the real world not so much. Just like transporters, photon torpedoes and Wesley Crusher. Warp capability may not be a great threshold for first contact but maybe all others are worse and this is a compromise. Either way, I'm glad Star Trek tackles such questions at all. Can't say the same for most other content out there. As for "more" or "less" advanced I suggest to differentiate between technology and civilization, the latter being derived by various factor such as happiness, kindness towards another etc. An example: Is the TV a sign of advancement? Yes, technologically. Is it a sign of being civilized? Not if you look at what's on TV. For the most part. Anyway, great video. Really like the wide format. Especially on a wide screen. Chromatic aberration is a little bit overused though
Allowing a culture the space and time to develop at it's own pace is surely worthy After all, the asymmety of the 'technologically advanced beings' deciding unilaterally to turn up on someone's doorstep is precisely what we dont want.
The example of the wheel reminds me of the much more bike friendly culture that exists in Europe versus the car dependent infrastructure that exists in North America. Who's more advanced, the people in miraculously engineered steel tanks spending hours in them at a time, or the people on nimble framed 100 year old technology that easily costs less than $1,000 to buy brand new
I agree with other commenters on the notion that Warp Drive is not quite an arbitrary metric, not only because it signifies a level of planetary societal cohesion being reached (as is supposedly required to enable and maintain an interstellar space programme) but also because its presence makes further isolation impossible. The aspect of societal cohesion is important because (as Star Trek regularly depicts, and I agree about) subspace-manipulating technology is by its nature extremely dangerous. Not only in serving as a beacon to hostiles like the Borg, but especially since the high-energy technology involved will inevitably be usable in military applications. The risks to a divided planetary society having access to such a capacity for self-destruction is the point in both TNG and SNW, where civilisations on the cusp of developing warp-drive are depicted, in one case resulting in the "slow down" scene, in the other resulting in a hasty uplifting to prevent a apocalyptic war that is already brewing. It's essentially an anti-nuclear-weapons stance, projected into an era of anti-matter bombs. The Warp Drive is not the only limit to this: In the Klingon civil war, as you mentioned, the Federation refused to intervene. You make it seem as if they changed their minds once the Romulan involvement in the war was revealed because only then it fit Federation policy to do so. That goes against the explicit text of the episodes, which make it clear that the Federation does not intervene because the Civil War is a purely internal affair of another society and thus the Prime Directive applies, even though they would want to back Gowron to maintain the treaty between the Klingon Empire and Federation. Only after the Romulan involvement shows that the civil war is not actually an internal matter of the Empire does the Federation intervene. Another factor is the harm to any alien species' cultural identity. While an argument can be made about safe contact being possible (as you suggested with potential peaceful contact between Aztecs and Spain), the consequences of such contact are virtually unpredictable. Had the Aztecs and Spanish contatct remained peaceful, the Aztecs would likely still have been devastated by plagues that neither they nor the Spanish had cures for. Their culture might have survived and changed further, but it would not exactly have been by their choice. They were contacted by the Spanish, they did not seek them out. In Star Trek, the Prime Directive serves primaribly to humble starship crews. It reminds them that they do not have the right to impose themselves onto another culture, and that even just the act of showing up and saying "Hi!" is such an imposition. It is a prohibition on Perry Expedition-style exploration, because the Federation both aims to respect the right of other cultures to self-determinate and understands itself to be fallible enough that a positive outcome to First Contact cannot be guaranteed. Thus, First Contact is delayed until it becomes inevitable, to allow for the best possible chances of two stable societies (regardless of their diverging cultural histories) to meet, rather than for one to crumble from any number of factors introduced by the other (this includes both cultural factors pertaining to the existence and presence of interstellar life and the availability of technology to allow safe contact, such as medical knowledge etc.). This only leaves the number of instances in which Starfleet crews save uncontacted societies from extinction, in one way or another. And while these scenarios have been handled somewhat inconsistently throughout the decades of Star Trek content, generally preventing global extinction level events seems to be permitted and encouraged by Starfleet (otherwise, most series' captains would have been imprisoned at one time or another). The edge-case seems to be preventing the demise of isolated populations from natural causes, such as what Kirk did in Into Darkness.
You're making a category error. Establishing contact with a pre-warp civilisation isn't a neutral act, in the way that one nation establishing diplomatic contact with another is. No, you'd potentially be changing that species' conception of itself and its place in the universe, and in doing so altering its evolutionary path forever. That's huge. Personally I think you're making too much out of the 'stages of development' idea. I interpreted the prime directive as more about respecting the right of every species to evolve on its own terms, whatever that happens to be. Strange New Worlds goes some way to clarifying this when Spock says the Vulcans invented first contact procedures. You can see the prime directive as an expression of the Vulcan philosophy of IDIC, infinite diversity in infinite combinations, a recognition of the inherent diversity and unpredictability of existence. A counter-point would be the Culture novels of Iain Banks, an interstellar civilisation that sees no problem meddling in the affairs of other species to help them reach the Culture ideal. One of the more interesting stories happens when this intervention leads to devastating civil war among one of the species they're trying to help. Though it's not Banks's intention, this is a form of explicit cultural imperialism. Also, referring to some of the most complex thinkers of the Enlightenment as "dead white guys" feels a tad... reductive. We're also talking about development in terms of respecting individual rights and liberties and the incidence of violence and exploitation in a society. Those are universal values that are strongly inculcated in Europe, but they are also human values that are for everyone. And I'm not sure how high the Aztecs would rank, no matter how technologically well-adapted they were. (But this is a separate question as we're talking about human-to-human comparisons, not the interspecies ethics of Star Trek.)
@@Trekspertise Right, but I don't think the prime directive assumes that there is. Quite the opposite. You also need to bear in mind that when Picard says he has no doubt that species will reach the stars, he's not talking about the prime directive; he's expressing his own personal view on the developmental path that species will take, not quoting the prime directive.
It is a bit ironic, the prime directive embodies a misguided principle of protection by isolation, but in at least half of prime-directive centric episodes I can remember it was broken by the characters that recognised that it was not universal and that context mattered
Says quite a lot, if you dwell on it.
@@Trekspertise How is the two universes of Star Trek in one with all these movies and series with each other with the new series Star Trek: Discovery and these other series and movies Star Trek: Enterprise, Star Trek: Horizon, Star Trek: Ambush, Star Trek: Short Treks, Star Trek: Discovery, Star Trek: Captain Pike, Star Trek Stranger New Worlds, Star Trek Porn Remake, Exeter Trek - Tease, Star Trek original Viaje a las estrellas, Ömer the Tourist in Star Trek, Sex Trek, Sex Trek II: The Search for Sperm, Sex Trek III: The Wrath of Bob, Sex Trek: The Man Eater, Sex Trek: Charly XXX, Sex Trek: Where No Man Has Cum B4, Sex Trek IV: The Next Orgasm, Star Trek: A Gay XXX Parody, After Dark: Trek XXX, XXX Trek: The Final Orgasm, This Ain’t Star Trek XXX, This Ain’t Star Trek XXX 2: The Butterfly Effect, This Ain’t Star Trek 3 XXX: This Is a Parody, Star Trek: Constellation, Star Trek First Frontier, Star Trek: Phase II, Star Trek II - In Living Color, Star Trek: Outlaws, PenPals: A Star Trek Fan Production, Star Trek Continues, Star Trek Yorktown A Time to Heal, Star Trek: New Voyages, Dannii Harwood Star Trek Spoof, Star Trek Parody-Carol Burnett Show, Star Trek; The Wrath of Farrakhan, StarTrek TOS - Parody, Mexican Star Trek - Mad TV, Star Trek Equinox: The Night of Time, Star Trek - El futuro comienza, Star Trek Into Darkness, Star Trek Into Darkness (Parody), Star Trek Beyond, Star Trek Sequel, Star Trek Into Darkness Special, Star Trek: Progeny, Star Trek: The Motion Picture, Star Trek: The Wrath of Khan, Star Trek III: The Search for Spock, Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home, Star Trek V: The Final Frontier, Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country, Star Trek: Revenge, Star Trek: USS PAN, Star Trek: Of Gods and Men, Star Trek Spoof, Seth MacFarlane Comedy Drama Series, IRS Star Trek Parody, Star Trek: The Next Generation, Star Trek: Deception, Chance Encounter - A Star Trek, Star Trek: Generations, Star Trek: The Next Generation - A XXX Parody, MadTV Star Trek Deep Stain Nine, Sex Trek V: Deep Space Sex, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, Star Trek Evolutions, Star Trek: GENESIS, Star Trek: Voyager, Star Trek Voyager - Funny Spoof of Star Trek Voyager from the NASA Star Trek Tribute !, Star Trek: Hidden Frontier, Star Trek: Odyssey, Star Trek: Primer contacto, Star Trek: Insurrection, Star Trek: Nemesis, Star Trek: Intrepid, Star Trek Hyperion, Digital Ghost - A Star Trek, Star Trek Dark Armada, Star Trek: Federation One, Star Trek: Temporal Anomaly, Star Trek Euderion, Star Trek: Shepard, Star Trek: Osiris, Star Trek: Renegades, Star Trek: Phoenix, Part Star Trek: Deception, Star Trek Picard, Star Wreck, Star Wreck IV: The Kilpailu, Star Wreck: Lost Contact, Star Wreck: In the Pirkinning, Star Wreck 2pi: Full Twist, Now!, iron sky, Iron Sky 2, Iron Sky: The Coming Race, Iron Sky: Nobility, The Ark, Babylon 5: The Gathering 1993, Babylon 5 1994-1998, Babylon 5: In the Beginning 1998, Babylon 5: The River of Souls 1998, Babylon 5: A Call to Arms 1999, Crusade 1999-, Babylon 5: The Legend of the Rangers: To Live and Die in Starlight 2002, Babylon 5: The Lost Tales 2007, Spaces Rangers, Star Wars La guerra de la galaxie IV 1977, Star Wars The Empire Strikes Black V 1980, Star Wars Return of the Jedi VI 1983, Star Wars The Phantom Menace I 1999, Star Wars Attack of the Clones II 2002, Star Wars Revenge of the Sith III 2005, Star Wars The Force Awakens VII 2015, Star Wars Rogue One A Star Wars Story 2016, Star Wars The Last Jedi 2017, Han Solo A Star Wars Story 2018, Star Wars The Rise of Skywalker 2019, Untiled Star Wars Trilogy I 2021, Star Wars The Mandalorian tv serie 2019, The Star Wars Holiday Special tv 1978, R2-D2 Beneath the Dome 2001, Robot Chicken Star Wars tv 2007, The Ewok Adventure tv 1984, Ewoks The Battle for Endor tv 1985, Return of the Eqok 1982, Form Star Wars to Jedi The Making Of A Saga 1983, Classic Creaturs Return of the Jedi 1983, Empire of Dreams The Story of the Star Wars Trilogy tv 2004, The Making of 'Star Wars'1977, Secret of The Force Awakens A Cinematic Joumey 2016, Blueprint of a BattleThe Snow Fight 2016, The Director and rhe Jedi 2018, The Last Jedi Scene Breakdowns 2018, The skywalker legacy 2020, Disney Gallery Star wars The Mandalorian 2020-, Balance of the Force 2018, Star Wars The Force Awakens The Stoey Awakens The Table Rwad 2016, The Force Awakens Building BB-8 2016, The Force Awakens Force for Change 2016, The Force Awakers Crafting Creatures 1016, ILM The Visual Magic od The Force Awakens 2016, Lighting the Spark Creating the Space Battle 2018, PS FX Special Effectos The Empine Strikes Black 1980, The Birthof the Lightsaber 2004, Star Wars El imperio de los Sueños tv 2004, The Grey Jedi A Star Wars Tory 2018, From Star Wars to Jedi The Making of a Sage 1983, Star Wars The Legacy Revealed 2007, The Beginning Making Episode I 2001, Dark Resurrection 2007, The Director and The Jedi 2018, Scout A Star Wars Story 2017, Fanboys 2009, Star Wars Tales of the Twin Suns Episode One Bith of a Monster 2019, Star Wars Downunder 2013, Spoon Wars 2011, From Puppets to Pixels Digital Characters in Episode II 2002, Star Wars A Musical Jouney 2005, Vader Episode 1 Shards Of The Past - A Star Wars Theory Fan-Film 2018, Untitled Star Wars Cassian Andor series Tv Series 2021, Star Wars The Old Republic Hope 2010, Star Wars Threads of Destiny 2014, Star Wars Exile 2016, Star Wars Star Warriors 2007, Star Wars Revelations 2005, Star Wars Destroyer 2017, From Puppets to Pixels Digital Characters in Episode II 2002, Spaceballs 1987, The Making of 'The Empire Strikes Back' 1980, Empire of Dreams The Story of the 'Star Wars' Trilogy 2004, Within A Minute The Marking of 'Episode III' 2005, The Ewok Adventure 1984, The Characters of 'Star Wars' 2004, The Force I with Them The Legacy of 'Star Wars' 2004, Star Wars: Origins 2019, Battle Star Wars 2020, Ewoks The Battle for Endor 1985, Star Wars The Mandalorian 2020/2021, Star Wars The Book of Boba Fett 2021/2022, Star Trek / Star Wars - a tale of two galaxies 2002, The True Story of Turkish Star Wars 1982, Turks in Space, Turkish Star Wars 2 2006, Star Crash, Choque de Galaxias 1978, Star Crash 2, Huida de la tercera Galaxia 1981, Galactic Battles 2018, Troopers 2011 -2013, Troopers 2019-, Space Battles, Babel 13, Battlestar Galactica Wars, Starcon 2016, Science of Star Wars Miniserie de TV 2005, Star Wars Tech 2007, Renacimiento 2008, Simon Pegg and Nick Frost's Star Wars 2011, Star Wars Evolution of the Lightsaber Duel TV 2015, Star Wars The Lesser Evil 2015, Star Wars The New Republic Anthology 2015, Hoshino 2016, Star Wars Amulet of Urlon 2016, TK630 2018, Star Wars Dresca 2018, Star Wars Galaxy's Edge Adventure Awaits 2019, Star Wars Hand of the Empire 2019, Built by Jedi - The Making of Star Wars Jedi Fallen Order 2019, Star Wars SC 38 Reimagined 2019, Disney Gallery Star Wars The Mandalorian 2020, Star Wars The Last Padawan 2 2021, A Blaster in the Right Hands A Star Wars Story 2021, Keeper of Peace A Star Wars Collateral Story 2021, Star Wars Galaxy of Sounds Miniserie de TV 2021, Star Wars: Skeleton Crew Serie de TV 2021, Star Wars Ahsoka Serie de TV 2022, Secura a Star Wars fan film 2022, Star Wars A Droid Story Serie de TV 2022, Disney Gallery: Star Wars: The Book of Boba Fett TV 2022, Star Wars Andor Serie de TV 2022, Star Wars The Acolyte Serie de TV 2023, Star Wars Lando 2023, Star Wars Rogue Squadron 2023, Valerian, Fall of Hyperion 2008, Foundation 2021/2022, Dune 1984, Frank Herbert's Children of Dune 2003, Dune 2021/2022, The Expanse 2015/2022, etcfanfilmfactor.com/log-entries-fan-film-features-3/ fanfilmfactor.com/log-entries-fan-film-features-2/ fanfilmfactor.com/log-entries-fan-film-features/
and aside from these other similar series and movies it could be joined with Star Trek and Star Trek Spoof The Orville with these series and movies Battlestar Galactica 1978, Battlestar Galactica Galáctica: Astronave de combate, Battlestar Galactica 2003, Battlestar Galactica 2004, Battlestar Galactica: Razor 2007, Battlestar Galactica: Blood & Chrome 2012, space 1999, space 2099, Galaxy Quest, space command redemption, Invasión Starship Troopers, Starship Troopers 2: Hero of the Federation, Starship Troopers 3: Marauder, Battlefield Earth, Crónicas Marcianas, Space: Above and Beyond, Fuerza roja, Stargate: La puerta del tiempo, Stargate SG-1 1997-2007, Stargate: Atlantis 2004-2009, Stargate: Continuum, Stargate: The Ark of Truth, Stargate SG-1: Children of the Gods - Final Cut, SGU Stargate Universe 2009-2011, Firefly, Farscape, Gene Roddenberry’s Andromeda, 5th Passenger, Space Raiders, Defiance, Supernova, Falling Skies, Buck Rogers, Alien 1979, Aliens 1986, Predator 1987, Predator 2 1990, Alien 3 1992, Alien: Resurrection 1997, Alien vs. Predator 2004, Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem 2007, Predators 2010, The Predator 2018, Alien Raiders, Event Horizon, Pandorum, showdown at area 51, Alien Hunter, Area 51, Space Academy, Blake’s 7, Lexx, Alien Nation, Terra Nova, The Expanse, plan 9 from outer space, 2001 a space odyssey, 2010: Odyssey Two, día de la Independencia, día de la Independencia 2, The Last Ship, Asteroid vs. Earth, seaquest, Invasión del mundo - Batalla: Los Ángeles, Invasión Roswell: Los exterminadores, etc
It was always primarily a storytelling tool. An aspect of their otherwise perfect society is flawed. The Federation, as shown on screen, is perfectly willing to make compromises, and to revisit old decisions.
So having this one immovable principle gives the characters something from within against which to struggle.
In-universe, it's an emotional issue, and the directive is an attempt at a logical solution. It has 'Vulcan' written all over it.
@@yvindblff5628 see my comment, although i probably like the prime directive more than you!
@@Trekspertise 😅
I feel like, much like Asimov's Three Rules, The Prime Directive mostly serves to create stories that show it to be insufficient.
Except in enterpise
@@sadface7457 ENT really did have some good hard prime directive lessons. Examples of why it's a good idea instead of just times where it falls short. So good it gets real cringe some times like progenitor. Trip has a hard time accepting space isn't Florida I guess.
I will counter one assertion that you made, that "Warp Drive is an arbitrary metric." It is a key metric for one specific reason: once a species has the means to leave their solar system, isolation is no longer possible. Until that point, the Federation can chose to not interfere. But once a society has the means overcome the distances of interstellar travel, First Contact is almost inevitable. Now the question of whether the Federation SHOULD wait until first contact is inevitable before making their presence know is open for debate.
But that is a universal, arbitrary metric based on an outdated, racist ideology. It doesn't hold water in the real world and even in Star Trek, where the rule is broken every time it comes up, it doesn't seem to be carrying any water. The Cytherians from TNG "The Nth Degree" come to mind, as do half a dozen other fictional species.
Green dragon is right, the prime directive gives a code of conduct for a very chaotic universe. The directive inadvertently promotes more human like species to develop throughout the galaxy
@@TrekspertiseI would counter that it's as arbitrary as any other law. It's a compromise between two different ideals. The first being that civilizations ought to have their destiny in their own hands, the second being that starfleet/the federation ought to make friends with their neighbors. The line between those two ideologies has to go somewhere in the general case and interstellar travel/communication seems as reasonable as anything. I fundamentally agree that each specific instance appears to break down, but I view that as an indictment against universal morals rather than the prime directive specifically
@@Trekspertise You're assuming at the Federation would ignore if a civilization found some other means of real interstellar travel ("real" meaning "not just flinging a generation ship out there and hoping for the best"). Do you have any evidence of that?
@@Trekspertise I am agreeing with these critiques leveled against you, all laws are in some sense arbitrary. It absolutely makes sense as species with warp travel will be meeting you whether you want to or not. The Cytherians do NOT make your point because again, they HAD WARP TRAVEL (many miss the throw-away line in that episode that the Cytherian probe arrived by warp means), and even if they didn't, the whole argument is still redundant as the Cytherians had the ability to contact other species and actively did, as they contacted the federation first, again, making the entire argument redundant.
As it exists now, the best and most consistent function of the Prime Directive is as a shield for Starfleet personnel, not xenocultures. The metric they chose even reflects this, since warp travel essentially is the point at which "they would have found us eventually" becomes unavoidable.
This was my take too. I really enjoyed the anthropological exploration in this video, but it seemed to ignore the possibility of realpolitik underpinnings for the Prime Directive. If you start trying to become every sentient civilization's Space Friend, don't you bear some responsibility for doing (or NOT doing!) things within your power that could help them? If there are two non-warp civs next to a supernova and you have only one starship in the sector, how do you choose who to help? Or if the civ takes knowledge or tech from your exchanges and ends up using them in a civil war, aren't you liable to some degree for the bloodiness of those killed?
@@ikidre Yes, there are practical reasons for the prime directive, too. Basically, once they know about you, then they will look to you for help. If you don't supply that help, then you could quickly from Space Friend to Space Enemy. And if you're not going to help, then what's the point of contacting them in the first place?
There might be another reason behind the Prime Directive. Imagine you are running an Earth Vulcan mining conglomerate looking for new sources of ore to extract. You are bound by the Prime Directive, because you are in the Federation. Your Ferengi competitor beats you to the best sources of ore because they are not in the Federation and not bound by the PD. The PD limits competition amongst their own members to make contact and do deals with non Federation members. This is a lot like the European Union, which is why the Ferengi (AKA Singapore) would not dream of joining the EU.
I feel like you have grossly misunderstood the application of the Prime Directive...or maybe we just have diferent views on it. If nothing else the development of warp/subspace-comm is not in of itself what "makes them worthy" (which is certainbly flawed framing, but that's a different discussion) of being contacted. Its a general indication that species/world has achieved enough social cohesion to develop the material mastery required to either travel to other stars or otherwise contact them. At which point whteher to make contact or not is really no longer a choice the Federation gets to make as they will find it impossible to "remain hidden." In essense, the idea is to refrain from effecting the course of their natural, or at least internal, development to the point where that is no longer feasible. At tht point the people of that world have clearly expressed a desire and/or need to push far beyond the cradle of their own sphere and thus implicitly assent to interaction. Now, you could make the argument that is is conceivable that a species could master warp flight before ever harnessing fire (or whatever exo-equivalent they have) and that is certainly the case, But that poses two issues from the metaperspective of writing a show: it is really quite hard to wrap ones head around in the timeframe of an episode and its pretty complicated to make into interesting stories. So the ST franchise usually steers clear of that (though I think STD s4 dealt with this a little bit towards the end which was interesting).
Next, I don't get where you are describing the approach of the franchise as unilineal as opposed to multilineal (these are not the terms I would have used by I am for the sake of comprehension). Or at least not past the early days of TNG. It seems fairly evident to me that TNG peroid was one of transition and by DS9 a real new era had been begun that while its characters' perspectives might have been unilineal the narrative and morals were certainly multilineal; Sisko and Quark interacting inregards to the advancement of Ferengi culture in comparison to humanity's history is a stark example of this.
Finally, I appreciate the video. It was interesting and its clear you put plenty of thought and research into it. Its just unfortunate (for me, not you) that I find myself so at odds with its precepts.
The Prime Directive is very much about drawing a technological line int he sand. That is how it is portrayed in Star Trek repeatedly. And, it is very telling that every time the Prime Directive comes up, it is a rule that is being broken. Very telling, indeed.
But, I like the idea you are expressing here...that the Prime Directive is a way of sorting "those who want to explore and make contact" apart form those who do not. I thought about that an it has a nice appeal to it. I do not think Trek has ever done it that way...but it would be a great approach to try.
@@Trekspertise "The Prime Directive is very much about drawing a technological line int he sand."
That is so not because the technology is important, but because it serves as the point at which not making contact is no longer an option. You are placing undue emphasis on the "mesauring device" instead of what it is "measuring."
" And, it is very telling that every time the Prime Directive comes up, it is a rule that is being broken."
...this is just flat out false. Maybe you want to phrase it as everytime it comes up it is been debated and grappled with? Sure, but also duh because that's the entire point of the storytelling.
The concept of the Prime Directive is far from perfect (or even fully-fleshed out, likely by design) and could surely always be updated and improved, but its highly misplaced to just handwave it as being a misconceived holdover from a different time or "colonialism."
@@Trekspertise the important thing to note here is that the prime directive is accurately depicted for what it is: a least bad solution to a problem for which a good solution does not exist.
it is a principle which any starfleet member, from new recruit to an admiral and even crews of civilian vessels can understand, the mantra of "don't mess with pre-warp people" is genius in it's simplicity.
you can't leave stuff like this up to an individuals interpretation, so sticking with a simple metric that is easily remembered, easily verified from a safe distance and ensures a level of safety for both parties (more on this below) is the way to go.
you see different technologies tend to develop in parallel so if a society has made it to the point of warp travel or deep space communication, they are not only proving that they're looking to make contact, but are also likely to also have advanced enough medicine to deal with any germs that might contaminate their world when first contact is made, better yet when they've developed deep space communication, first contact can be made with zero danger of contamination occurring.
also side note on your argument of bows being better than early firearms:
on an individual basis yes a bow is a superior weapon.
once you're equipping an army and it becomes a matter of logistics, even early muskets are superior for a variety of reasons:
first of all training an archer to a level where he has developed the muscle mass and accuracy to effectively use a war bow takes a LOT of time.
outfitting an army of archers is also much more difficult, a bow needs very specific wood, a skilled craftsman and a lot of man hours as each bow must be tailored to the archers draw length, which can vary on an individual basis.
then you get into supply issues. making an arrow takes different materials, two skilled craftsmen (a blacksmith forging the arrowhead a fletcher making the actual arrow) and time, while any soldier can cast lead bullets at a campfire.
here's my opinion on the prime directive, I think the biggest issues with it is how most watchers only know the cliffnotes of the rules. I honestly see them more as a way to remind captains to basically pay attention to the civilization they run into and ease them into learning about things. Everyone wont act the same when encountering something like star fleet and at worst it needs fine tuning, like any rule that was likely more useful when it was first created but just stuck because it has been around for so long it basically became a religion.
I'm not sure the Prime Directive is useful at all.
@@Trekspertise like you said it's made via old science but that was my own take on it. Always felt to me as one of those rules that was made because someone REALLY fucked up during the early days of the federation or United earth's alliance. Though it was my overall justification of how and why it was made, remember in the real world there are some backwards rules in the rule world that exist because people never think to change/remove them for a good while.
This is another amazingly well done video. You folks deserve more views than that.
Thanks :)
@@Trekspertise You're welcome
I think that if you look at how starfleet wrestles with the prime directive, it suggests that many of them in fact do approach it from the perspective you suppose: of using open-mindedness s a criteria e.g; "Dear Doctor." However, they do also resort to the bogus litmus test. And yet, one might argue that some forms of technology might not be achievable without a sufficiently open mind; although "First Contact" also provides a counterpoint. On the gripping hand, I think the idea of not giving away technological toys to everyone you meet has not been sufficiently explored/refuted. Just as no two cultures are the same, nor are any two people... but still we put in place sweeping guidelines to restrict access to driving, smoking, drinking, voting, etc. You can say that's paternalistic, and it is, but it's also an effort to act responsibly.
The way I'd reframe this essay is "Several episodes of Star Trek have a colonialist interpretation of the Prime Directive." I think the directive itself is smart and the true consequence of the discussion in this video is that the series hasn't done it proper justice or done deep enough dives yet.
Doesn't feel smart. Feels racist.
@@Trekspertise It's easy to see how it would seem racist, given that your video only goes into interpretations of the rule, and itself states that the rule is open to interpretation, and doesn't focus much on the text of the rule. I think this thread of the debate would be a lot more manageable, and probably more meaningful, around the text.
@@Trekspertise Not sure why it's not smart. Why knock on someone's door if you don't need to? On the other hand, if they're about to head your way, you might as well come out and say, hello.
@@brak666Starfleet's primary mission is exploration and making friendly contacts with foreign civilizations. That is their whole reason for existing.
Actively outlawing the main thing you were supposed to do, and refusing to view it with any nuance is just baffling.
I always saw the cutoff of the prime directive being the manipulation of subspace. which would make sense since once a civilization can see subspace they will be unable to remain separate from the galaxy, regardless of anyone's intention, by virtue of their own development.
Yeah, it just means "do not initiate contact unless it is imminent". They'll communicate with anyone who *has* warp-drive, regardless of how it's been acquired. eg: Pakleds, Klingons.
They do avoid talking over subspace radio to non-warp civilizations (Data was chastised for responding to an subspace transmission from an unknown source, even though this theoretically happens all the time)
It is just not a useful metric for anything. Contacting pre-warp peoples is no bad thing. Establish contact! talk to people. Trade with them. There are no natural stages of universal cultural development to interrupt. There are no stages at all.
@@Trekspertise While you make a very good point that complete isolation is bad, perhaps over connectivity can be bad too. A lot of vibrant human cultures had time to develop in relative isolation without being swamped by the alluring incessant babble of another culture. In individuals, creativity requires some peace and quiet and maybe the same might be true of cultures as well.
@@Trekspertise there are no natural stages of universal cultural development to interrupt because cultural development has no end point, it's an ongoing process ,the people of the federation are still developing and will until the day they go extinct. Establishing contact and trading with those people would destroy their culture. If they were to have a famine and they ask for help we would give them the answers we found, that shaped our cultures. Tame animals to eat the food you can't eat. Ferment food to give them longer a shelve life grill the food, boil the food, bake the food, put it in a stew. political unrest? teach them democracy! cultural cuisines weren't invented because people felt like it, but because they were an answer to a problem they had. Cultures are just a pile of answers to problems we once had, by giving them our own answers we deny them the opportunity to develop for themselves, by interfering with their wars we tell to think like us.
Yes, star trek admirals getting mad because a spaceship was seen by people who would most likely explain it away as just a thing of nature, like floods, volcanos and asteroids is silly and the usage of "primitive" and "civilized" is problematic, but the prime directive is a good thing.
You are engaging your audience in bad faith. Clearly there is a useful distinction with warp drive capability. You simply disagree on the act of contacting at all, but the point many, many people are making to you IS USEFUL, clearly when it comes to contact warp drive is hugely important as it eliminates the OPTION of remaining radio silence to whoever we are talking about.
The Prime Directive is supposedly, quoting Captain Archer, a reminder than we are not going out there to play God. Although the notion that we need to be gods, or morally superior in any sense, to help lesser people in times of need can be potentially overrated in the Trekiverse. We just need to find the right ways to do so and as children of the one true God, we should all be equally endowed with that much positivity. Of course the natural differences for an ET species could easily create unforeseen problems. But when those like Picard say that we cannot turn our backs, then the optimism that we are in the position to help for a reason doesn't feel farfetched.
Your entire argument hinges on the assumption that the prime directive is based on an outdated theory of cultural evolution along a linear path. If that assumption can be proven, then the argument makes sense. However, I do not think you have proven that point with this video. You spent most of the video explaining why that theory of linear cultural advancement is incorrect, outdated, and rooted in racism. That is all well and good, but you spent comparatively little time examining how the prime directive is portrayed and how it is completely dependent on the prior theory being true.
I do not recall a time anywhere in Trek where a character says something along the lines of "our social science has proven that every society reaches certain levels of advancement in a certain order". A society *may* invent FTL travel or communication, but do they state anywhere that every society inevitably will do so?
We are given few details about how or why the prime directive was established. It doesn't exist during ENT, but by TOS it seems to be a long standing rule. Understanding the event(s) that lead to the creation of the prime directive is critical if you want to examine what purpose it serves. Earth (and/or the Federation) outlaws most genetic engineering, which seems perplexing at first glance, but the Eugenics Wars gives the necessary context to understand why that law exists. It may still be a bad law, but at least we know what caused it.
I do not interpret the prime directive to mean that federation thinks they are superior and know what is best for cultures they deem less advanced. Rather its quite the opposite. I view it as the federation acknowledging that they cannot fully understand an alien culture without it being filtered through their own views, and because of this, they cannot possibly predict what effects their presence will have, good or bad.
If, some time between ENT and TOS, peaceful contact with a new alien culture led to that culture completely destroying themselves, the Federation would rightfully feel responsibility for that. If, despite their best intentions, they can never be certain what the results of first contact will be, perhaps they decided for a policy of zero tolerance for accidentally causing the genocide of a whole society. Great tragedies tend to lead to the creation of laws that try to prevent another tragedy like it from occurring.
*If* that hypothetical is true, then warp drive is not an arbitrary and meaningless line in the sand. FTL travel/communication is the point at which contact is happening, whether the federation wants it to or not. I'm not saying that the above *is* true. However, I do not think you have done enough to prove that your view is the only one that can be correct, and something like what I said above is impossible to have occurred.
Apologies if this comes off as combative just for the sake of it. That is not my intent. I enjoy all the videos you've done, and I enjoyed this one too!
My grandpa said the most thought provoking thing to me one day, as a child (I was 8 and burying myself in history) comparing the achievements of various peoples to each other. He asked me if I gave the Romans and the Egyptians a blow gun, how would it take before they choked to death on a dart?
I didn't have the word for it then, but I realized that day what enthnocentrism was and why it was idiocy rooted in intellectualism.
Sounds like a helluva grandfather!
Thats absurd. The romans would almost certainly have NOT sucked on a new weapon, and even if one of them did, the rest would immediately see how it worked, and then still beat whoever gave them the blow gun.
@@napoliskey Nah, they had plenty of old weapons to suck on. (Sorry, couldn't resist)
One subject I would be interested in hearing your thoughts on are the situations in which the Prime Directive is ignored, and both parties are considered to be on a similar "level" of technological development; most notably, when Janeway formed an alliance with the Borg in a war that arguably she had no skin in, and Voyager's giving of holographic technology to the Hirogen as a way of hoping to prevent further mass killings. In both cases, these were decisions made on the idea that it would be better for everyone involved, only for the consequences to end up far worse for others. This makes the argument that the Prime Directive exists as a practical rule more so than a moral one - that you cannot predict the effects of widespread cultural and political changes you help introduce, however well intentioned, so therefore it is better to simply not get involved. Is this even a Prime Directive issue, or should this be called something else entirely?
It is very telling that the episodes in which the Prime Directive appears, it is a rule that is being broken.
@@Trekspertise th-cam.com/video/YiW3N290P2I/w-d-xo.html
And may be the whole reason why why the prime directive is even applied is for the purpose of exploring the evolution of human societies as a social commentary
This does not apply, with the Borg it can hardly be described as a first contact situation.
@@RebekkaHay And the Borg are not on the same level as the Federation, they are a lot more advanced.
Warp drive isn't a completely arbitrary line, but more an acknowledgement of reality,. Once a culture has developed warp drive, they will have the ability to travel to other systems, encounter other species, and create their own colonies. So of course you have to contact them then so you can tell them about the political structures that are already in place and hopefully prevent them from getting into or causing too much trouble. Essentially it's a matter of leaving societies alone and keeping them from knowing about other species until you have no choice but to reveal everything.
The warp drive is a completely different beast than the wheel. The thing about the warp drive is, that this civilization *can* be avoided. If they have FTL travel, they *will* meet other species. A better comparison would be the question, whether to land on inhabited islands where the people do not have seafaring technology. Once they do, the question is, sooner or later, moot, whether to excert active or passive influence and contact is inevitable.
Now what to do with those without FTL drive is another question. But the warp drive as some threshold of when there's no longer even a question of enacting contact is very sensible.
It is just not a useful metric in any way, either the wheel or warp drive. "Are they ready for contact" is predicated on the assumption of natural, universal stages of progress and that is a concept that A) just doesn't exist and B) is loved by racists everywhere because it makes them feel superior.
If you want to break the argument down on "well, we don't want to talk to them for X reason," or maybe "if they can't travel FTL then maybe they don't want to associate with US," then maybe that case can be made. But Star Trek doesn't couch the Prime Directive like that, do they? Maybe that if they started doing that, they could fix this broken rule. But as it stands right now, with 50+ years of Star Trek, the Prime Directive is as unilineal as it gets.
I would also have preferred it if Starfleet beam down on a hill and preached down the absolute truth to these primitive species,
telling them what to belief in, what to think, what to eat and what law they should have and what is good and evil. Starfleet and especially mankind knows best what is good for them, because god loves us more than them for sure. We are the center not just of the galaxy, but the universe. Sorry for that irony, but i prefer NOT to proclaim infallibility, and thats possible with the prime directive.
But, its the same isn't it? Using the Prime Directive is proclaiming an absolute truth...that one believes that all cultures across the universe (just Earth, really) are the same and that one culture knows best by keeping another in the dark about its existence.
The Prime Directive is the height of hubris masquerading as empathetic response to ethnocentrism. It uses the same illusion of superiority as its base.
Everyone has heard the phrase, "you're comparing Apples and Oranges", this video is comparing Apples and Muons. Your title is "Rethinking the Prime Directive of Star Trek", did you forget that what it was supposed to be about that?
You seem to be confused about the "light speed or warp" requirement. Who WROTE this Prime Directive? It was Starfleet, the protector/exploratory arm of the Federation of Planets. The Federation is an Interstellar alliance. While exploring, Star Fleet 'Seeks out" new worlds and also looks for cavillations to join the Federation this would REQUIRE warp capabilities. As they explored out into the Galaxy, any warp capable species that currently didn't know about the Federation would "run into" them or their members eventually, so contact would be almost mandatory to see if they will be friend or foe.
Any planet, that didn't have warp would NOT be members of the Federation as well as NOT A THREAT, there would be no reason to interfere with their development. The question of "interfering" for any other reasons like natural disaster etc.. has always been treated as Captains option. It's the interfering to artificially "advance" a civilization, including "advanced information", THAT is the SPIRIT of the non-interference directive. This is how I see it.
In a way, there IS an example within Star Trek of what you're talking about: it's in the Alternative Timeline book “Infinity’s Prism”, specifically the second of the three novellas in the book, “Places of Exile”. The fact that it’s in a book automatically makes it beta-canon; however, the story begins with events portrayed in the Voyager episode “Scorpion”, before the event that created the alternate timeline; the perspective of Chakotay perfectly matches what we see in the canon episode. Therefore, I would argue that the following excerpt from the book could ALMOST be considered canon:
“I'm not convinced this is a Prime Directive situation,” Chakotay said. “These aren't the Kazon trying to steal our replicators. The Vostigye have just developed differently than we did. They were forced off their planet early by a geological cataclysm, concentrated on building artificial habitats instead of warp drive. They're behind us in some ways, but they could teach us plenty about environmental engineering & robotics.”
EXACTLY
That’s a great example! All three of those Myriad Universes collections are super creative, amazing reads!
@@Trekspertise I HIGHLY recommend you read the whole story, as well as the other 2 novellas in the book. The first novella is “A Less Perfect Union”, set in 2264, but in a timeline where Terra Prime won & Earth didn't join the Coalition of Planets. The third novella is “Seeds of Dissent” set in the DS9 era, but in a timeline where Kahn won the Eugenics Wars.
@@TrekspertiseI'm not sure what you're arguing for? Do you think there should be no prime directive? Uhm. There should. Its an absolute must. Is it always adhered to? No. But it is adhered to most of the time, and the times it isn't, there are specific reasons or circumstances why it isn't. Not following the prime directive is trash and filth JJ Abrams or Klutzman come up with on a regular basis in their garbage shows which they name "star trek"
Great video! But I disagree with one major point. The technological barrier is not that arbitrary! Warp technology is the point, when it is impossible to ignore a civilization. Then we have to interact with them, no matter if we want to or not. Cultures still could not have adopted a philosophy of mutual respect and already adopted warp technology (there are even a lot of examples within star trek like the klingons), which makes it impossible to ignore them. :/
Does it have to be a cultural thing? On our part, I mean? Being able to produce a Warp drive doesn't ALLOW contact according to the Prime directive, it NECESSITATES contact. If you've discovered the warp drive or sub-space communications, you've run out of time for your society to evolve in isolation. You now HAVE TO interact with the wider universe. Your chance to have a culture, uncorrupted by outside influence, is over.
Seeing it that way, it could be argued that the prime directive simply says: "Allow others to grow in isolation as much as they are able, protected as much as we are able, make contact ONLY when absolutely necessary."
Absolutely it does. The whole argument of the Prime Directive is based on universal stages of cultural evolution. There isn't any such thing.
@Trekspertise Sorry, but I don't think I've heard a single word of cultural evolution in any of the Star Trek episodes. Might be mentioned in some book somewhere, but in that case, I haven't read it. The Federation comes of as a bit holier-than-thou in attitude and Picard especially comes of as a bit paternalistic but for the most part they don't seem to look down on "primitive" cultures, they just seem protective of them. I'm removing the newer Star Trek movies from this list, Kelvin Timeline is not canon.
Cultures change when they make contact with other cultures. Cultures can be subsumed if they encounter other cultures. A culture can't remain undisturbed when in contact with other cultures. If you have a vested interest in allowing other cultures to grow as far as they can, in as many ways as they can, on their own before they start interacting with yours, limiting contact is the only way. As soon as they get Subspace tech or Warp drive, this period in their development is over. From that point, they will begin to blend in other peoples cultures into their own.
I think you guys are making a giant logical misstep with this video. Your own quote explains why. "Western Europe felt it could set the terms of these interactions....". This is exactly why the Prime Directive exists as written in the setting. The very act of choosing to communicate and make first contact with a society is setting the terms of the interactions. The Federation would choose the time, the place, and the evolutionary point at which these societies would be contacted. Invariably, as shown by history, these decisions are often made with self interest in mind.
Imagine if Star Fleet had your idea of a multilineal evolution model. At what point would first contact then be acceptable? Who's metric of advancement would be appropriate. Some sort of standard or set of rules would have to be in place right? The very nature of those rules would be ethno centric in and of itself since Star Fleet is the only party to those rules. The virgin civilization on some M class planet certainly wouldn't have a say in it. Would those set of rules be bent or flexed if the planet was in a strategic star system or one that held a strategic deposit of minerals? Would this multilineal test be tainted by the needs of the present of the Federation?
This is why the rule is set the way it is. Star Fleet doesn't come talk to you or reveal itself to a virgin civilization until that civilization invents the technology and then actively uses it to push beyond the boundaries of its own system. It is when they have access to subspace and warp drives that the firewall can no longer be kept. And it will be at a time and place of *their* choosing independent of the knowledge that there is life beyond their own system. Subspace and Warp drive are not markers of progress. They are markers of when the Prime Directive can no longer be enforced because that civilization that has been ignored for all those years will finally listen in Star Fleet transmissions and be able to travel the distances necessary to see that a galaxy of life exists beyond their own system. Non interference is simply not possible anymore because they themselves are pushing beyond the firewall that was set.
Extremely well put. Wish I could thumbs up 10X.
In its own canon, humans on Earth have been contacted multiple times by various aliens of varying levels of benevolence and malevolence. If their own species didn't die, if their own species wasn't ruined, then that contact could be used as a model for contacting less advanced species .
A great point.
Weren't most of those contacts kidnappings?
@@rwall514 not necessarily. Greek Gods, Kulkulkan, Rubber Tree People
In fact, Vulcans openly engaging in friendly contact was THE thing that got humanity to get its act together. Human history is an argument against the prime directive.
Yea but in those cases they didn't know it was aliens
The Concorde went away because it was never really profitable except when it was wildly overcharging. People forget the Concorde flew for like a year after that first crash.
From Encyclopedia Britannica:
"The Concorde’s retirement was due to a number of factors. The supersonic aircraft was noisy and extremely expensive to operate, which restricted flight availability. The operating costs required fare pricing that was prohibitively high for many consumers. The resulting financial losses led both British Airways and Air France to make New York City their only regular flight destination. Finally, in 2000 an Air France Concorde’s engine failure and subsequent crash killed all 109 people on board and 4 people on the ground. Many believe this event accelerated the retirement of the Concorde in 2003."
@@Trekspertise Getting called out for your fib again
00:10 s00 *_The Prime Directive_*
01:29 s01 *_... in Practice_*
06:12 s02 *_What Stage are We On?_*
09:47 s03 *_There is no S̶p̶o̶o̶n̶ Stage_*
13:09 s04 *_A Look Back to Yesteryear_*
19:16 s04B *_A History Written by the Victors_*
23:27 s05 *_A New Context for TPD?_*
28:08 s05B *_The Persistence of Unilineal_*
29:53 s05C *_A New Prime Directive?_*
30:11 s06 *_Conclusion_*
32:06 *_Credits_*
The Prime Directive, in the context of TOS, was a critique of the US's efforts to destabilize governments across the world who reject it's hegemony via "development", loans and the newly created IMF (founded in 1944.) The same criticism applies to the Soviet Bloc, who, being state capitalists, functioned in much the same way. The TOS writers knew what they were doing.
Technological milestones like FTL propulsion or FTL communication might indeed be arbitrary and irrelevant measures of a civilization's cultural and social development.
But these sorts of technologies immediately impose a very practical consideration. The civilization has the ability to reach out to the stars. You would have to consider them "worthy" of contact simply out of necessity.
When it comes down to saving a species from imminent destruction to no fault of their own though, it is extremely arbitrary.
I was so terrified when I saw the title that this was going to be an exhortation for Starfleet to adopt a Samantha Power style 'Responsibility to Protect' policy or some such thing but I should have known better given your previous content.
An excellent video though I would say the Prime Directive or something like it probably does more good than harm overall as a simple starting point when considering its similarities to India protecting the (self imposed) isolation of North Sentinel Island.
it is a big topic!
We'd say that the Prime Directive does far more harm than good. A rule like that should never be adopted because it requires abject racism in order to function.
@@Trekspertisereal question. Do you trust colonial Brittain with modern military battleships
So let’s use nothing of our history to determine protocol with alien species and see what happens….hmm
That's not what we are proposing. Just the opposite!
Concorde did not meet it's fate due to being unsafe. Concorde met it's fate due to low profits and upcoming major services that did not make financial sense.
All the same, we travel slower for reasons that are complex.
@@Trekspertise But you still fibbed.
No we absolutely did not. The Concorde, like warp drive, is a useless metric to judge anything. And for exactly the reasons we are BOTH stating.
@@Trekspertise But you still fibbed about why Concorde failed. And now you're fibbing about fibbing.
From Encyclopedia Britannica:
"The Concorde’s retirement was due to a number of factors. The supersonic aircraft was noisy and extremely expensive to operate, which restricted flight availability. The operating costs required fare pricing that was prohibitively high for many consumers. The resulting financial losses led both British Airways and Air France to make New York City their only regular flight destination. Finally, in 2000 an Air France Concorde’s engine failure and subsequent crash killed all 109 people on board and 4 people on the ground. Many believe this event accelerated the retirement of the Concorde in 2003."
Your passion for anthropology is clear but I think the point you were dying to make about Unilinear models obscured the motivation behind the Prime Directive. It doesn't presume unilinearity, it exists precisely BECAUSE cultures are multilinear. The Federation seeks to preserve uniqueness where it can. It is not inevitable that every culture will discover warp drive; there are many examples of the Federation protecting such planets for centuries. Warp drive isn't the line because it is inevitable, it's the line because once a culture has it, they become part of the larger galactic community.
Then why use a universal, unilineal technological metric in judging all alien societies?
@@Trekspertise Because it's what makes discovery and interaction on an interstellar scale possible. If a race discovered teleportation technology that could send them to other inhabited words, they would be consider "warp capable" by the Prime Directive.
How can racist be applied to an organization comprised of many different beings..seems like folks on the back side of the directive are just as diverse….the presentation is excellent however…
Well, that's what they are doing. Star Trek is using a racist ideology from the 19th century to make its Prime Directive stories go.
Interesting video. I think for me the thing I wrestle with is more about avoiding imposing ones own culture on those you encounter. The arbitrary lines often drawn by the Federation don't seem to be a good approach but I'm curious if you have thoughts on how to approach this. There's a wide spectrum of options between conquest and isolation.
Yea! Just talk to people. Each society you come across, talk to them. Learn from them. Ask to trade with them. Ask to exchange knowledge. No matter who.
That's it. That's my prime directive.
@@Trekspertise I can’t tell if that’s sarcasm. I think the ramifications would be truly catastrophic for many societies who haven’t even considered the existence of aliens as a possibility
Racist as it may be on the surface, it does serve a useful purpose - an 'are you sure about that' for any captain wanting to screw around without thinking. Sometimes, helping a pre-warp society is necessary, or beneficial. But a clumsy attempt to 'help' might cause a lot more harm than good - just look at Friendship One, or Iain Banks' Contact books. If you are going to interfere in a pre-warp society, you'd better have thought through what you are going to do - and there, the Prime Directive has a use.
Plus, the Prime Directive ISN'T the #1 directive of all Starfleet. You can thank Voyager for that.
Nobody brings up the Ferengi bought warp drive and instantly became a thorn for Starfleet.
There's definitely nuance and it definitely needs to be a guideline rather than an absolute law, but I understand the usage of warp drive as a sort of measuring line. If a society is capable of warp travel, they will inevitably end up meeting up with other spacefaring societies and better to meet them on positive terms rather than end up in conflict with them due to a misunderstanding or accident in space.
It's less a case of they must remain isolated for their safety so much as it is coming from the opposite perspective...they are no longer isolated and as such interaction is inevitable. It's less about technological progression and more about societal accessibility. We of course see different people interpret the Prime Directive differently, but in those cases, the onus is on the person rather than the Prime Directive regarding their actions.
Regardless, it should be a guidepost rather than a barrier...a caution sign to thoroughly consider your actions and the potential unintended side effects of them.
That argument is based on a universal, natural stages of cultural evolution argument from the 19th century. Is does not make sense, at best. At worst, it is racist.
@@Trekspertise If "universal, natural stages" is truly your issue, then you should be MORE in favor of the Prime Directive. Should contact be made with every species and hand them OUR tools or should we allow them to develop their own from a unique and creative perspective which the Federation has never considered?
In universe, look at the Federation vs. the Romulan power sources. Had the Federation formed before the Romulans made it to space and invented their singularity drive, that would be one less technology out there in the galaxy.
Allowing a planet to naturally come to their own solutions encourages creativity and uniqueness in the galaxy rather than the Federation's own form of assimilation. I'm not saying leave a planet to die, but letting them develop separately and uniquely. Let them build a civilization without a "wheel" but when they have made their way out into the greater galaxy, potentially without a warp drive as the Federation knows it, greet them as friends and allies.
If an alien culture were to arrive and offer such things as warp drive which requires antimatter production and containment tech what would happen...
A. The world would benefit from bountiful energy and exploration
B. Governments would weaponize it.
I think we all know what would happen.
It really depends on which culture we are talking about, doesn't it? Not al cultures would respond the same way.
@@Trekspertise I'm talking the world as a whole. Sure some would be the cool kids but many many more would turn to humanities dark core.
Great video..I really appreciate the effort put into making the motion graphics and animations. You even managed to get away with using stock footage and it not be boring because of how you tied it into the overall aesthetic you were going for. Nicely done.
Glad you enjoyed it!
I prefer Iain M Banks Cultures approach. They have a couple of specialist branches called Contact and Special Circumstances respectively, who very much engage and attempt to influence less sophisticated societies with altruistic intention, but they do so with a surgeons approach.
With sometimes disastrous results. I always saw Banks's Culture as more of a dystopia, with the Minds pulling the strings.
@jimbopumbapigsticks What strings?
While I agree with you with most of your points I do believe warp travel isn't a bad metric. Warp travel means that they have opened their world's ecosphere to pathogens. The ability to travel through warp is a level of understanding subspace for communication they would need and could assume a certain vague level of medical expertise to deal with said pathogens.
Yeah the way it's used is backwards but they do show that the further you get in the timeline the more it becomes from being a strict mandate to more of a guideline.
We think warp drive is an AWFUL metric. And it is based in abject racism.
With aliens, exchange of pathogens is literally impossible. So, that is not a concern (a virus or a bacteria has to have a shared evolutionary history and shared evolutionary basis in order to be infectious, something aliens could never have). It is like the wheel...radically unnecessary to living in a modern galaxy.
@@Trekspertise There have literally been multiple episodes with a disease spreading between different alien species. It's not racist. You're an idiot.
@@Trekspertise That is demonstrably not true in universe. There are plenty of cases of interspecies breeeding and disease exchange, and these are made more plausible by virtue of the humanoid species in Star Trek being a product of seeding by a DNA template from a progenitor species in "The Chase."
Present day humanity as a whole would very much be less advanced than the Federation, and if such made First Contact with us, it would very much be be our own disaster in the making, or at best, we'd be assimilated into their way of thinking. If we had warp drive today, then contact becomes unavoidable.
Great video! I do have one minor quibble though.
At about 18 minutes in you seem to suggest that we don't fly Concorde anymore because it's considered unsafe. In actuality, Concorde only had one fatal accident in 31 years of operation, and the proximate cause of that was debris on the runway, rather than the airframe itself being unsafe. The very real problems with Concorde were much more around the economics of flying it (high fuel costs and low passenger capacity), and severe limitations on what routes it could fly because of it's sonic boom, which restricted it to only transatlantic routes. Your overall point remains the same - the problems were economic and social rather than technological, but safety was not the deciding factor in this case.
Thank you for taking the time to watch!
The financials were the biggest reason the Concorde was on the chopping block. But the crash sealed the deal.But the video was already long enough.
In the thumbnail going from left to right you have people caring less and less about the Prime Directive(and rules in general). Janeway is definitely the 50% mark.
Haha! That's...a solid observation and a total accident on our part. Nice :)
That's a brilliant observation and I can't believe it was a mere coincidence! Perhaps that's Trekspertise's trekspertise working even on an unconscious level :)
@@kaicanyonellis Much of it bubbles up in our sleep, at any rate =)
@@Trekspertise it's like the episode of TNG where everybody discovers they've been getting abducted by aliens. "I've been in this room before!!!" 🤓
Dredd pirate Janeway 😂
Your comment about Spain entering peaceful relations with the Aztec reminded me of a dream I had:
I was with a group of students on a field trip to some monument to some battle against Native Peoples, when a storm hit. We took shelter in a nearby cave, and when the storm passed the world was different. A different monument was present, and the nearby town was now heavily influenced by Native culture, and there seemed to be an attempt to not dominate the landscape, like Europeans did, but to live with nature. Eventually, we find a museum, where we learn that here the Natives and the Settlers came together to form a better society, and the Cave we stayed in was supposedly home a world where the worst of man was encouraged.
Ever the sci-fi geek, I commented before I woke up, "You know that thing in sci-fi where they go to the universe were everyone is bad? WE ARE the ones from the EVIL Universe!"
Any civilization which has ingrained in its culture that it is benevolent and charitable will invariably create foreign policy which demonstrates their benevolence and charity. Should that civilization find that their technology, a product of their culture, be used for things neither benevolent or charitable, they will create policies to limit their technology's exposure. Humanity in Star Trek constantly reminds us of the Eugenics Wars, the thousands of years of bloodshed that led up to the Federation, as though Gene and the rest have made History a required course year after year in galactic academia. The Prime Directive exposes the fears of 20th century America when it shows us what NOT to do (A very old testament measure of survival) rather than advising its staff on what one OUGHT to do (A New Testament, Pro-Active measure of societal cohesion.) I do not find the Prime Directive to be Eurocentric in its focus but instead as universally focused on the human conditions and failings that come from smug superiority (The Chinese Emperor calling Elizabeth I a Petty Queen in a long distant backwards petty Kingdom, The Tokugawa Shogunate's closing-off period, The massive inflationary periods which arose from the Emperor of Mali spreading gold on Hajj, etc..)
I'm always happy to see a Trekspertise upload. You guys put a lot of work into these.
The Wheel isn’t a direct corollary to Warp Drive. The closest would be sea-worthy ships. The Prime Directive makes sense since it is useful to explain that once a culture has developed it, it will interact with other cultures.
Well Homo Sapiens that walked their ways out of Africa had to be seaworthy to populate the globe before even the first civilizations emerged. So let’s say why is the value of life different for one pocket of the early Homo Sapiens who stayed on Asia and the other group that migrated through the Southern Pacific onto New Zealand?
"When we saw all those cities and villages built on water; and the other great towns on dry land, and that straight and level causeway leading to Mexico, we were astounded. These great towns and shrines and buildings rising from the water, all made of stone, seemed like an enchanted vision from the tale of Amadis. Indeed some of our soldiers asked whether it was not all a dream. It is not surprising therefore that I should write in this vein. It was all so wonderful that I do not know how to describe this first glimpse of things never heard or, never seen, and never dreamed of before."
Bernal Diaz, "The Conquest of New Spain," c.1565
Lets Look at this through the lense of our own eyes. people as they are today. We are in many ways more technologically advanced than we were 30, 40 years ago. We have smart phones, internet , AI artists, lots of things. Lets also look at the behavior of everyone with this finger tip technology . Read the comment section. Look at how we treat each other. The way we talk to each other. And its not just an American thing. Its a global thing. The way we treat diagreement. My way or the high way. You have the wrong opinion. No discussion. only rampant petty arguing. And its not just a " right wing" or " left wing" thing. Technology hasnt made things better. its just made things more convient. We give small children tablets and call that learning. Now imagine if we wake up tommorow and an advanced Alien Species makes first contact. and they decide to help us solve all our problems. It would not only send our world into culture shock, every imaginable way people could take advantage of the situation, would. Using Technology we have no comrfehension of , using it with our current mindset would be disasterous. The divide between the haves and have nots would grow even wider. The machine of war would get deadlier. How would we treat the Aliens. I'm sure in their mind theyre being benevolent. Why would we use whats given against them? But ofcourse I can see where we would. We do it to ourselves now. Mirror Uinverse anyone. The idea that warp drive is a good measure of where a people are technologically is a fair one. Space travel takes a measure of cooperation we arent even close close to now. Sometimes hands off is the better approach. But Like Picard said, no law should be absolute. Especailly when concerning life and the sanctitty of it.
Apart of Analyzing this video, I think, is just looking at the Prime Directive from a real life perspective and not what the show tells us how the Prime Directive works within the science fiction work itself. Not related, but loved the upgrade and evolution of your own videos.. It's fun to see how your editing and cinematography has advanced.
Thanks, and thank you for watching! It has been an evolution. Obviously we don't release regularly, so we have focused on making a better video than the previous ones, on details like animation, research, etc... This is probably our best edit and it took two months to accomplish. The script itself took several weeks beyond that to write.
We are very happy with how this one turned out.
Excellent video. Always happy to see a new video from this channel!
It has been too long.
I am not so sure that you are on the right track here. In my mind the First Directive ist intervoven with the questions a) has a socienty developed WarpDrive capability and b) is it willing to use it. Only a and b together are qualifiers in my mind. There exists several examples of highly sophisticated socienties (with warp drive or similar or even something better) that did not wanted contact. To want to go out there into space is a trait of a society. Forbidding meddling in the first place can not be a bad thing. It is not a question of "beeing ready" but "can the society adapt" and that is not something a captain of a ship can decide in a couple of hours.
It all depends. But the 'are they ready" question is deeply intertwined with the assumption of a unilineal, universal set of stages of cultural evolution. And THAT part of it is bad, outdated science that is still used by racists. And, like the wheel, using warp drive is just not a useful metric. There are far too many exceptions for the Prime Directive to even be a useful rule.
@@Trekspertise Maybe that is my socialist/marxist upbringing, but I found it very comforting that in the future we would be "ready". We definitly are not at this moment. Maybe it is not even a sozial thing but species thing. We as humans would lay waste to the galaxy if we had the means.
Prime Directive is logical. It's not about "level of advancement" Once you have interstellar travel, interaction is inevitable, at that point it's no longer the Federation's responsibility to ensure cultural isolation. You can have the most advanced, wonderful civilization, but if you're not interacting with the rest of the galactic community, there's no good moral reason to contact you.
But "ensuring cultural isolation" is the height of hubris and, as we discussed in the video, just plain ol' racism.
@@Trekspertise I thought the video was about "making judgments about other cultures by how advanced you perceive them to be is racist." Trek writers sometimes use this as justification for the Prime Directive (see the Wheel speech), which is obviously wrong and ignorant. But that's not what the Prime Directive is about. It's a harm reduction policy, and I still think it's pretty sound if your goal is to preserve galactic diversity and the right, to self-determination. Especially as the federation is often criticized for homogenizing member cultures, using soft power to force their values and way of life on them. Without the Prime Directive, BRAVE NEW WORLDS would become quickly become SAME OLD WORLDS. Regardless of "perceived advancement" there is a massive power imbalance between space-faring and non-space-faring civilizations that can be abused, even without ill intentions. What right do we have to drag a culture minding its own business onto the galactic scene? (That said, it's a good argument to have and I don't get why Trek writers never mine it for gold by creating a faction within the federation that rejects the prime directive as immoral.)
I strongly disagree with your opinion in this video and I find that the American liberal politics which you use to analyze and criticize it is a poor tool for that. The idea is not about who is more advanced or European in a first contact situation, but who has the most to lose and who has the strength to decide for both parties. If the Federation is a table, the Prime Directive says people should not be invited at the table if they don't know how to stand, sit, use a fork and understand what they are eating. You could invite dogs to the table, but it wouldn't be pretty and the dogs would get sick, even if they would find a way to get to the table and eat without standing, sitting or using a fork, because they don't understand what they are eating or how to relate to people at the table. And giving them scraps works, but it doesn't do anything good for the societal development, especially when more scraps go to the "good" dogs.
Interstellar flight (not warp drive) is the line in the sand, but it's not an arbitrary, it defines a species that by itself can initiate first contact. The "advanced" in the Prime Directive is more about tactical advantage, the military higher ground, than a social metric. Of course a culture can be taken advantage of if you can get to it and it can't get to you. It has nothing to do with racism, but with numerous historical examples of first contact which have proven detrimental, long before what happened in the Americas, where people usually get stuck in the argument. Yes, civilizations don't have a predetermined evolution line, but on today's Earth, most of those have disappeared or been forced to adhere to the culture of the most powerful.
Star Trek divided humanity into specific archetypes which they chose to represent as very distinctive species. That's considered racist now and probably why no new Star Trek seems to be working anymore, but that was a metaphor. The Prime Directive is also a metaphor, for all the historical "first contact" cases where we would want, as a global society, to have done things differently. It is profoundly antiracist and apologetic, an evidence based proposed solution for past perceived wrongs. Not perfect? Sure. But your argument attaches things to it that I think are not what Star Trek embodies.
That being said, Star Trek has some poor episodes that use the Prime Directive as a blunt McGuffin and may even have been written from a place of doubtful social awareness, but the Prime Directive is a concept around which all Star Trek orbits. It was a wise decision to never properly explain it, because it is the job of the viewer to interpret it and imagine a better future.
This video uses almost exclusively American history and American social political thinking to attack the historical European worldview. Isn't that a little hypocritical?
Yup. It's extremely cringe how narrow the worldview is on this vid.
I really like how you explained this, totally agree on many points.
1) There are no liberal anythings in this video.
2) The issue isn't that the Federation is being particular about who it invites to the table. They can be selective. But it HOW they are being selective that is the issue. If they are just going to borrow the paradigm from racists of the 19th century, then we've learned nothing and Star Trek accidentally, cynically, demonstrates that nothing changes and that the old Euro-centric cultural perspective is king.
3) The Prime Directive is based on a myth of history, not the actual reality. We take efforts to break some of those down in this video.
4) And, of course, the perspective is American. We admit as much in the video. We center ourselves, in the video, in the Americas. And al that is because Star Trek is an American creation, created for Americans by Americans, embodying the ideal of American empire, and deploying a Prime Directive philosophy which is specifically American in scope and worldview.
@@Trekspertise You're doing it still. Making declarations instead of arguments. Cringe and blinkered.
@@therocketboost That doesn't make any sense.
If you are just inventing argument for the sake of argument, go watch the news.
What a great take on the philosophies and anthropologies that inform the Prime Directive! BUT...what if we kept the Prime Directive, but changed the reasoning behind it to reflect foreign policy and defense goals?
Because you can build a ship that can sail to my shores, how you encounter me and the means you use to do it is very much my interest. If you fly to my world and we have a misunderstanding, or your crew doesn't return to your world as planned, then that has foreign policy implications for me and puts me on the back foot. Or worse - you might also bring your weapons to my world and decide you have a reason to use them. I'm not OK with that.
How do I solve that problem? I go to you instead, and I meet you on your ground. Then you have the security of being at home, and I have the security of keeping you far from mine (and my flying space fortress that conveniently doubles as a diplomatic conference room) until I understand you better. Then, when we come to an agreement about how to move forward together, we can exchange diplomats and begin formal diplomatic relations.
So no one's world is assaulted, their societies don't get nervous, and we agree a set of rules for how we relate to each other so we can learn and grow together with mutual respect for each other's values.
As I continue to read the comments, I can see the subject of contacting pre-warp civilisations coming up. So why don't we contact pre-warp civs?
In a word, risk. It's risky. Even though I'm from the Federation, we don't have infinite people and resources. We have all we need, and we need those people and things to do other stuff that we've decided is worth the risk. If your people don't have anything I need, then it's really not in my interest to divert my people from their missions to you. They risk their stuff, their time, and their lives. I have a duty to the Federation and to my crew to make sure it's worth putting them out there, so until you're capable of reaching me, it's just not that important. It's interesting - we can learn stuff from each other - but that's not a good enough reason for me to risk first contact.
Let's look at the flip side of that. If I'm the pre-warp society, why might I not want to be contacted (even if I don't know there's something out there)? It turns out we have a few RL examples to illustrate that.
@Trekspertise already told us about a few encounters between Europeans and other civs. Each one went pretty badly without the need for a particular technology to justify contact. If I was governing a pre-warp civ and could even imagine being contacted by extraterrestrials, I'd have to say I wouldn't want it based on that history alone. But my reasons aren't limited to just the potential for conflict or exploitation. Here's where we have another RL example.
Globalisation. WW2 opened the door to massive military and scientific movement into the Pacific Islands - places like Guam, the Northern Marianas, Samoa. We sometimes colloquially call this "colonialism", but more generally these are client states (American Overseas Territories don't resemble the colonial system in important ways - I won't get into it, but they don't). Because the US military decided to post up in their neighbourhoods, they also had the advantage of American technologies. Within a very short period of time those people became dependent on the military for everything - building materials, access to overseas markets, medicine, to name a few. And not only that - their young people, correctly recognising that this is a bad way to live and that they could have it better elsewhere, join the military with a view to leaving home for a better standard of living or just more attractive opportunities.
Now if the Federation came to my planet and started teaching us about all the great stuff they have and do, wouldn't that threaten the values of the society that I and my forebears have built for generations on generations? Isn't that as much a threat to our way of life as it is a chance to see beyond our world? Until my society has come to a place where it can truly leave the confines of our star system and return home, I think we also deserve the opportunity to decide how we encounter the final frontier.
Isn't even the notion that societies NECESSARILY grow more complex debatable? For instance, it's safe to assume that a society that doesn't experience population growth (for whatever reason) may transform over time but without any added complexity to its social relations, technological discoveries, economy and so on.
It IS debatable. But it also depends on your measure of sophistication.
I agree with much of the sentiment but I think the point of the Prime Directive was to say colonialism is bad; also, interfering in other's affairs can have unintended, highly damaging consequences.
But to the meat of the discussion, there's some dogma and self-righteous American-splaining in this video that's backed up with a lot of false logic... (sorry, just my feeling on this video and I love Trekspertise)
The white/euro-centric view that cultures evolve on a single path is obviously racist but that doesn’t mean that cultures don’t follow similar development paths. And acknowledging that some cultures have “developed” farther technologically or morally than others doesn’t necessitate a value judgement on which culture or ppl are better. It also doesn’t compromise the value of holding all people with equal importance or dignity.
The danger in pretending that “cultures are not developed or undeveloped - just equal or you’re racist” is that it allows one to call everything relative. You can say “don’t judge cultures who murder LGBTQ people or have slavery - that’s just a different culture and if you judge, you’re racist!”
All peoples of the world are humans- primates with a hierarchy of needs and similar emotional ability thanks to our common biology. The notion that as a culture “develops”, it embraces liberal values like human rights, is almost certainly true. When technology provides basic needs, higher needs like appreciation, self fulfillment, etc. will be pursued… thus, liberal values take hold.
The example of Europeans poisoning themselves, thinking themselves superior, is just an example of foolish self-superiority and irrelevant to disproving similar development trajectories of all cultures.
But there are no stages of cultural advancement. It is all relative, all context-based. The Concorde is a good example of that...is the west less developed now than it was on account of discontinuing the use of the Concorde? That's only one measure. Why does any one measure hold more water than other measures? Very quickly, whatever litmus test that is devised, falls apart.
One could argue that longevity of human life can be used as a metric for advancement. So, that leaves the US off of the top lists of the world, as our life expectancy is shorter than some. And yet, we have the most powerful military ever devised. Is that how we describe advancement? Or is it which population is happiest? In 2022, that would be Finland. Are they the most advanced culture in the world?
It is all nonsense. The social sciences figured that out decades ago. "Developed or developing" is just another way of saying "savagery, barbarism, and civilization." All the metrics we have on judging who is developed and who is developing are based squarely in the experience of western cultures. It is ethnocentric. But that is how cultures are...throughout time, imperial cultures have always judged outsiders by their own standards. The Greeks gave us the word 'barbarian' from 'barbar' which was how they made fun of the sounds of anyone who didn't speak Greek. We can't help but to see the world through ethnocentric glasses. It takes special efforts to see around those biases.
There ARE ways of evaluating the behavior of cultures. But none of those ways are marks of superiority. Just differences. And it really depends on what the aim is in evaluating any culture. For example, over 7,000 people A DAY are harmed in traffic accidents in the United States. Meanwhile, in Great Britain, 80+ people a day are harmed. Is Great Britain superior? No. But, in that comparison, one is armed in order to make a change (hopefully toward less injury and death).
@@Trekspertise Thank you for the detailed reply! Since this is your video essay, I will try to stick to your examples.
I’m not sure if the Concorde or other vanity accomplishments are a good measure of progress. I guess we would agree on that. But I think advancing human rights is definitely “progress” or positive “development” or whatever euphemism we want to use. And rights, to a degree, are universal or at least - for example, in Japan where I live, there is often more weight given protecting groups rather than individual, but regardless, ppl here still value many of the same rights as the West.
I also agree there is no “developed” vs “developing”. I have lived in the US, Japan, and Argentina.. all have their own points of exception. And areas they lag. The US, as you mentioned… has many problems. Longevity, healthy, happiness, as you pointed out, important. I also think the US has taken a massive step backwards in becoming a giant, car- dependent suburb over the last 70 years. That’s not progress.
Most differences between cultures are “relative” but not all. Progress is multi-spectrum, nuanced, and hard to measure. As you said in another comment, depends on the “metric”. But progress is real. And I do think, at their own pace, and in their own way, most cultures are making progress.
Regarding value judgements. You said, “There ARE ways of evaluating behaviors of cultures.” I’m not sure if you’re saying cultural and behaviors are different. I don’t think they are because behaviors like slavery are justified by cultural values. It would seem arbitrary to say cuisine, language, or rituals that don’t harm people are “cultural” but harmful rituals are not cultural… in any case. I assume we would agree that some behaviors are bad. And it’s not merely relative. So any difference of opinion would be on the definition of words, not on substance.
I would just add that as a culture “develops”, ahem, makes “technological progress” and achieves a sufficient affluence, it allows people more time to agitate for other change as well- like their legal system to make progress. And for cultural values to move towards equality rather than caste system etc... there are common trends.
As you state in your essay, The Prime Directive is about non-interventionalism full stop, which is why it applies to the Klingon Civil War as much as to non-galactic societies. Star Trek has also framed The Prime Directive as being based on the premise that only a planet that has managed to pool its resources and collective will in harmonious collaboration could have managed to develop warp drive, which is why the movie First Contact is so good because it shatters that illusion.
I'm not saying anything about this essay is incorrect, only that it's incomplete, though certainly the significant bulk of the whole picture.
Reframing the Prime Directive in terms of non-intervention in societies outside Federation treaties wouldn't be much of a leap.
Also, any show that explores spacetime and other worlds that does not employ writers from as many different human cultures as possible needs to step up, and fast. There is no longer any excuse. Looking at you, Doctor Who!
Then the Star Trek franchise needs to make that clear and explicit. As it stands, the concept is muddy as hell and dangerously close to the racism of our own world.
(not saying you are wrong. The opposite actually. The Prime Directive SHOULD be like you describe)
@@Trekspertise Absolutely, it needs to change, I fully agree with you 👍
you deserve to be THE biggest star trek channel ever, across all timelines and mirror universes.
That would be nice, wouldn't it?
@@Trekspertise i keep recommending this channel in comment sections of all other trek channels i come across, hoping to make a tiny contribution. 🤡 but still...
I get what you're saying but counter that the prime directives line in the sand around warp drive/subspace communication is a practical line and one which largely sticks with the theme of non-interference. Just the act of first contact with a culture such as an interstellar federation of planets would cause irreversible change to another cultures natural progression. Potentially positive, potentially negative. Setting the line where the prime directives does essentially says that those cultures should be left to their own devices for as long as they practically can. Once warp drive or subspace communication become a thing it is essentially impossible to hide everything from them anymore. That is the point you inject yourself into their culture and make that irreversible change, once it is inevitable anyways.
The point of our video is that there IS no natural progression. And anthropology is in agreement. That's not how cultures function.
@@Trekspertise not that I intend to argue with the dude who said the words or is obviously more qualified but it sounded to me like the video ways saying there is no natural end point/goal for cultural progression (although evolution might be a better word). Cultures do naturally progress just the same as everything else in my experience, there is just no singularly correct way. Correct me if I have taken away the wrong message though.
That is correct. No natural progression, no universal stages, no unilineal cultural evolution. No universal endpoint. Nothing of the sort. Exactly.
@@Trekspertise likely we are just using different definitions of natural progression here, because I mean progression/evolution/change without outside influence. Whatever course said culture would take left to its own devices.
But there is no universal.course a culture would take 'if left to it's own devices,' That's an illusion! That's what we are saying in this video!
I wish you took a more deeper dive into historical materialism specifically, as it sticks out among the other theories you mention.
Because its obviously easy to dismiss things like "civilizational stage" but things such as class society is far more of a real thing, than any "stages".
We'd turn this into a mini-series if we could! So much to cover ;)
Fantastic work. So many rich ideas explored in a beautifully presented way.
Thanks!! Was a lot of fun to make.
I have one or two major issues with the video. The Prime Directive in my view is fine but the way the writers choose to express it often uses words which make it sound problematic and does sound like the "Unilineal Culture Evolution" at times. But I also think the Enterprise episode Dear Doctor best addresses a lot of issues by having the race we are told is "less developed" actually being saved from basic slavery by Phlox using the prime directive having Cpt Archer as the POV character arguing to save the "more developed" race. The episode that did get mentioned that also addresses this is Strange New World (which I didn't like) but the "less developed" culture was just the US. I like your conclusion about maybe Spain should have had peaceful diplomatic relations but I would use that to argue exactly the opposite, the phaser & nuclear weapons back then were smallpox which they used to kill entire civilizations.
It is a complicated topic, for sure! Which is probably why this comments section is on fire!
That episode resulted in the genocide of an entire race by withholding treatment of a preventable disease. If you're proposing it as a way of showing why the Prime Directive is moral, I feel like your idea of morality is vastly different to mine. (Incidentally I don't recall the Menk being enslaved though it could be I'm misremembering the episode, so I apologise if I'm wrong on that point). Even taking your recollection of the episode at face value though... say during the height of chattel slavery, a disease started to spread that, due to genetic reasons, could only infect white people (obviously it's not as simple as that - but this would work even with a large subset of western European people). Due to the relatively primitive state of medicine at the time, it soon spreads to the entire world and threatens to kill millions and completely exterminate many Western European cultures. If some benevolent outside force arrived, who had the power to cure this disease... can you seriously argue that the correct moral thing to do is to refuse to do so because of the injustices perpetrated by white people? Understandable, sure, arguable, maybe, but moral? To me when I think of purposely avoiding treating a disease because you don't agree with the actions of the group who are affected by the disease, I think of the bigotry that led to the apathy around AIDS among world leaders at the time. Not enlightened utopias.
@@Muzer0 I was trying yo point out the Prime Directive as Amoral. I think the Federation deciding to intervene on the behalf of a planet is very different than a crew of a 100 people on a startship with 1 person in charge from making a decision that could lead to severe moral questions. This extends past disease and natural disasters to perhaps questions of war. Maybe a benevolent force could cure a disease (and that's a far better framing) than what if an alien came down and halted US military involvement in another country. Or Russian? What if they decided which governments were in control of what land and what people? I'm not saying I would write out the Prime Directive the way they do in the show, but I do think it would be improper for 1 starship to decide the fate of a planet. There would be steps and procedures and guidelines etc but thats not what the video was about nor my comment.
Excellent video essay, as an anthropologist it's great to see the discipline get this sort of attention, for both the good and the bad. We anthropologists have been on a continual identity crisis since social evolution was thrown out the window!
Makes me happy to see you here. I hope the material is represented well-enough.
@@Trekspertise It is, if it's an area that interests you, other anthropologists from the early-mid 20th century like Franz Boas for cultural relativity. You might also find Edward Sapir/Benjamin-Lee Whorf of interest for their linguistic relativity which has its roots in some of the stuff you touched on. I could go on but anyways great video!
So anthropology is all about ignoring practical concerns? Warp isn't used as a measure of whether a civilization is "ready", it's used because a pre-warp society is fundamentally incapable of participating in interstellar society as anything other than a client state because space is too damn big for sub-light travel to be practical.
This is much better thought out and far more comprehensive than anything that I've come up with and I don't disagree with anything said in the video but I have always had a drastically different take, I've always thought the main reason the Prime Directive exists in Star Trek is to explain why we, in the 20th/21st century haven't met many of these different alien species yet if the galaxy is teeming with life, like we see in Star Trek. I've also never really seen warp drive as a singular technology as the point that at which it's "OK" to interact with another species, it's just the most common technology, in the Trek Universe, that makes contact with species from other worlds inevitable. If it was instead the discovery of subspace communication, which was mentioned in the video, that introduced a species to the wider galactic community, that would be valid as well. However I don't think it starts and ends with those two technologies, if a species possessed telepathic abilities that made them aware of alien civilizations, I think that's fair game. If another species not bound by the prime directive has already had contact the federation isn't bound by the prime directive and there are examples of that in the original text. If two intelligent species develop on different planets in the same star system and have only had contact with one another they seem to be fair game to communicate with, there is an example of that in TNG as well.
There are other facets of the Prime Directive but I've always seen this as the most important and iconic angle. The bits about sharing technology seem arbitrary as other cultures would likely always have some useful technology or cultural practice to trade and trading/sharing technologies seems to be fair game in some instances so that's pretty vague.
Then your head canon is of a better quality than actual canon. Maybe you should be writing for the show!
@@Trekspertise Coming from you this means a lot! Thanks so much Trekspertise! I have no doubt that the take in this video is much closer to the actual intent of the writers, particularly when it comes to cold war era politics in TOS but, I'd like to think that at least some of the writers in the TNG era saw it, at least partly, like I do. Thanks for all the great videos!
This is so great thank you
Thank you for watching :)
Can't believe "A Mathematically Perfect Redemption" wasnt even mentioned, since it kinda comments directly on this
What is that?
@@Trekspertise It's a season 3 Lower Decks episode, you should watch it. You may find their take on multilineal cultural evolution intresting since it kinda pokes fun at how arbitrary warp technology is as a reference point
Having a hard time with Lower Decks.
Also, the Prime Directive (as revealed in Enterprise) is a Vulcan idea.
But, of course, that doesn't square with today's rampant oikophobia
Did you also claim that the world would have been a kinder, better place if the Aztec Empire had survived? 😂 Tell me you know nothing about the AE, without telling me you know nothing about the AE.
I know a great deal about the Aztecs. Assuming that they are some kind of evil people comes from a place of ignorance. People who buy, people who believe unquestionably the tales that conquistadors spun about them, are at a disadvantage in understanding the world. Conquistadors were liars and braggarts who ran around the globe stabbing people, raping, enslaving, exaggerating their deeds, etc...they were jihadists of a stripe. So, we are to take their word on who the people of Mesoamerica were? Instead of actual Mesoamericans?
And the video doesn't ultimately claim that the world would be a kinder place with the Aztecs in it (after all, we still have Aztecs today). The ultimate point the video makes, especially in that moment, is that we have no idea what the world would look like has Spain not sailed halfway across the planet to invade and conquer people. A passage of 500 years of time is along, long time in human years. Anything is possible. Anything is still possible. And there are still no universal cultural stages of evolution.
@@Trekspertise - I never claimed that the Mexica as a people were evil, nor did I claim that there are "universal cultural stages of evolution".
But to deny that the AE was warlike and expansionistic to a degree that would have made even ancient Sparta ask them to take a chill pill is plainly ridiculous. There was a reason, after all, that the Tlaxcalans (and others) were very keen to trust these strange, alien newcomers whose likes they had never seen.
That reason was the same as why the Nazis were originally hailed as liberators in Ukraine, until they realized they'd come from the frying pan of the USSR to the fire of Nazi rule. The Aztec Empire was so hated and mistrusted in its region that those it hadn't already subjugated were eager to join forces with ANYONE who had the strength to oppose it. The Spanish arrived at the right place at the right time to take advantage of this.
The culture and entire worldview was built around human sacrifices. That was not exclusive to the AE, but they were the ones who systematized it the most. Because the gods required human blood to keep the world going. Before you reply with "Muh witch trials!": The perversions and abuses of Christianity during Renaissance and the Age of Enlightenment were exactly that: Perversions. And it was Christians who ended them again. But when your entire culture and worldview is based on the belief that unless the gods get human blood, the world will end, that's not something that can just be brushed aside. As a sidenote: I'll also remind you that the fiercest advocates of decent treatment of the conquered peoples, and harshest critics of the exploitation of them committed by the settlers, plantation/mine owners, etc.....were clergy. These were also those most eagerly trying to retain and preserve the natives' stories, language and culture (though of course not their religion). And no, I'm not Roman-Catholic.
Your "Peace and love and playful puppies"-suggestion for what would have happened if the AE hadn't been conquered is equally as valid as the idea "The AE would have become Nazi Germany on steroids". Which is to say: We have no idea of that at all. Because we don't have a device capable of penetrating the multiverse.
Now, if you're just going to reply with an elaborate version of "REEEE U A WHITE MALE!", then don't bother. But if you have anything of substance, please do reply.
I have never watched a frame of Star Trek. But I have watched many, many hours of video ABOUT Star Trek. (Mostly because Mike from RedLetterMedia references it a lot and I want to get the references.) I honestly have always seen the Prime Directive as a story device. It allows the writers a limit on what they can explore for... business purposes. Whether you want to see this as time constraints, education deficits, ad revenue, etc. A lot of tv and film does this, so I tend not to take those concepts literally. As I understand story to be metaphor. BUT this is clearly a limited view because stories do not exist in a vacuum. Your explanation of this really broadens my view here. Really great video. Was sent over by Rowan, glad I came over.
If I ever actually WATCH Star Trek, your channel will be the first I come to. Cheers!
Please god why are these clips on a recording of a television
Because TH-cam and Paramount+ will not allow this otherwise. It is an adaptation we had to make. Either this, or we delete the channel.
@@Trekspertise You know what? Fair enough, my apologies. I did not know they were so unreasonable, but I should have expected it.
About _The Prime Directive..._
Back in the day, the DS9 days...a buddy made the old argument about DS9 being a space station not a starship. So I rebuiled...
_"Understandable, but it a chance to see the Prime Directive in it's longevity..."_
DS9 now stands as his favorite _Star Trek series..._ xD
=/\=
DS9 is simply the best Trek =)
@@Trekspertise _"Don't walk to Quark's..._
I listen to a lot of your videos while working or while driving and it was extremely jarring having the clips being played over a TV or a speaker. I am very guilty of not watching the actual visual stimuli so audio changes like that give me extremely bad sensory. Did you do this to avoid strikes on thr video or was it a creative choice?
It was a creative choice to get around that fact that we absolutely cannot screengrab Paramount material any more.
Counter argument(s) if you're reading this, @Trekspertise \ Kyle, that spawn from the same very basic principle :
The first is that while we humans evolved culturally in a very different reason, as you mentioned with Conquistador vs Aztecs part, the Aztecs were indeed at war with Tlaxcallan that gladly took the opportunity given by Cortez to defeat their enemies. Fast forward few centuries and back to your later example of a Federation starship coming to earth right now.. Are we really edging our bets that NATO Countries, China, India and Russia (just to simplify, but mostly "the whole world") would just drop any belligerance ? Isn't it more likely that in the very same fashion that we still hold to this day, despite all the cultural advancements, nuclear weapons as "deterrent" to start yet another world war, we would hold that same technology in the same regard ?
And even if all the countries would get along.. Are we sure that even an harmless technology like Replicators + Endless renewable energy won't just be held by a rich corporation or country to become the de-facto economic leader of the world.
This to say that yes, i'd love to think that we as humans are capable to understand the obvious benefits of switching to a post scarcity culture but we all know that we live in the same world where the people who hold most power are the very same people that thinks that "i struggled in my youth, you should struggle too" and "i worked my whole life to earn this, i won't give it away!". So...
In your suggested alternate history of the Spanish making peaceful contact with native peoples, tens or hundreds of millions would've still died due to disease. The natives would've, rightly I think, blamed the Spanish for inflicting that harm on them. After all, they didn't ask the Spaniards to come make contact, and since the Spanish were already such international explorers, they should've aware how devastating even peaceful contact could potentially be. It'd be a different story, if native had gone out and encountered Europeans at sea, or invited ships they spotted to come ashore. As it relates to Star Trek,, I don't think the achievement of warp drive is necessarily an arbitrary threshold for first contact. It means that a society has made a deliberate choice to seek out other life or invite contact from outside their world because that is what warp drive enables. You're quite correct that there's no linear way a society develops, but regardless you can't assume that they would desire contact, however peaceful. For that reason, I'd argue that the prime directive allows for the maximum degree of agency for a civilization.
Yea...the disease thing still would have been an issue, perhaps. It took 300 or 400 years for people anywhere to understand how disease worked. But still, without a Spanish invasion, the Americas, and the world would be vastly different today. Would be fun to speculate how.
And the Spanish didn't really care, on the whole. They had been in the Caribbean for barely 20 years before they contacted the Aztecs. They were only just starting to explore the planet. But they weren't about new knowledge, they were about 'gold, guns, and god' and getting to Chin as soon as possible so they could get rich!
The initial contacts with Native America were sometimes ocean-bound. Columbus's 4th voyage encountered sea-going Maya vessels, for example. ANd of course, Native America had been playing in the oceans since the great migrations out of Siberia.
Thank you for mentioning the specific details about Spanish/Native American encounters and the European ideals that drove that because it is one critical thing that irks the hell out of me whenever the Prime Directive comes up in Trek. I get why writers want to use it as a writing tool and I understand that in some of their minds they intend for it to be an ideal where one socio-economic-political entity does not interfere with another entity. However, that intention underlies a severe ignorance of the contextual history of those first contacts between Europeans & Native Americans. The harm didn't happen from meeting up, the harm happened when one aggressive entity decided to conquer the land of the other for their own interests. Even the spread of diseases like smallpox, influenza, etc. alone is factored by that contextual history because recent scholarship of that period details that maybe one of the reasons those epidemics occurred was because of the way the Spanish military and the ensuing encomienda system harmed the people enough to be able to spread as fast & brutally as it did.
its strange to me that the prime directive is being correlated with colonialism. i do not believe this to be the case.
It is very much the case.
@@Trekspertise Oh no it isn't
It is extremely the case. We just made this whole video outlying our point.
@@Trekspertise With extremely flawed arguments, you failed to make that point.
@@Trekspertise what is your definition of colonialism?
This is a hard subject to debate, one hand you have the ability to eliminate all disease, hunger, and scarcity, but is a species capable of adapting to such advancements over night. To due so would require complete overview of said society for quite a long period. You couldn’t just hand over the technology and say, “good luck” that’d be super reckless. There would have to be a sort of governmental body to watch and illustrate everything, altering society norms, which could be vast in contrast. If this was to happen to us right now, the implications would be disastrous. We are still to primitive and greedy to hold such power. A better scenario would be to acknowledge their existence and technological superiority proving we still have an immense amount of knowledge to learn and that we know nothing about the laws of physic. That simple fact alone would ignite our scientific rigour, pushing us to heights unknown without just handing it to us.
Yeah it'll have to go the way of Planet of Hats, I don't know to me the writers have kinda addressed it over the years especially in DS9 the geopolitical subtext of "Drinking Rootbeer" but yeah it has almost been framed in too good of a light
One of my most favorite episodes of all Trek is "pen Palls" where Data breaks the prime directive out of sheer compassion
GREAT episode.
@@Trekspertise What do you guys think about the new Picard season? I had high hopes season 3 would be better than 1&2 but sadly I am a bit disappointed, it feels dark and gloomy, the scenes with Rafi have this weird bladerunner feel. I watch it out of nostalgia, and because I love the actors. Amanda Plummer is a splendid villain, but stuff like that portal weapon are a bit too far fetched.
I feel a bit mean for writing this, but I feel Sir Patrick Stewart has gotten a bit too old to go galivanting through the galaxy, but of course without him it wouldn't be "Picard"...
Season 3 seems to be much stronger than the previous two seasons. Unsure yet if it will continue that way.
@@Trekspertise It was very nice to see Worf again. That was a definite plus.
@Trekspertise you guys do interviews?
Like, interviews of other people? Or as interviewees?
Anyone know what those lights (vertical ones on the desk)
They are Luxceo lights.
The example I think of is whether or not to save a culture that may die from an imminent threat, such as their star going supernova. Given what you say, that people adapt according to context, they may lack the context, the stellar knowledge to know about the imminent threat, so giving them that seems kinder than just watching them be erased by accident. The visitors could say they can help evacuate you but only if you want, and let individuals decide as part of that. But unless the visitor's culture was accommodating, then it might be a slow death anyway depending on adaptive ability. Given the premise, though, if *I* were in a similar situation I would want to be informed of the impending doom so I could at least decide. After the whole planet's gone there's not much more growth or deciding to be had.
I guess to me it feels just as much like playing god to leave people to their fate without any help. But I'm glad you bring up that this was supposed to come from the right place, the fear of cultural contamination which is still I think a general principle in anthropology even if it's not as rigid as the Prime Directive. I feel like the active component, introducing knowledge or trade or whatever might better be on a case-by-case basis partly due to self-interest, not wanting new cultures to overrun what is ostensibly a non-competitive society. I'm happy these questions are at least examined, I feel like they kind of have to be for stuff like Star Trek to be a bit more than just a fairy tale
Even if early European explorers had been kind to the indigenous people of the “new world”, they still would have been devastated by waves of new disease.
There is that.
Starfleet should stay away from undeveloped planets altogether, Starfleet even breaks there own rules, just to get what there want.
The opposite! They should visit everyone!
@@Trekspertise Nope.
Incredibly done sir
Thanks for watching!
Kyle, thank you for this intellectually stimulating video! 👍🏻 You are correct about civilizations evolving in different paths and there is no such thing as a singular and rigid one, bravo! 👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻 Also, your new interpretation of the prime directive in which civilizations will adapt and not explode or cease to exist is spot on! 👌🏻 I think future writers of Star Trek should take this into account for future Star Trek TV series spinoffs! 😊
I look forward to seeing more of your videos! You just earned a new subscriber! 😎
Avatar is a good example of this theory. The Na'vi are not savages. In fact, they are much older race than humans. But thanks to the environment they evolved in, they know that keeping the balance is more important than technological progress.
Very enjoyable, thank you for this
Glad you enjoyed it!
The Prime Directive is not an absolute. Starfleet and its officers can break the rules, but they better have a good reason to break it! If Starfleet can justify it, the Federation Council is content.
But it is a bad rule to begin with, based in the underpinnings of racism. Just get rid of it all together.
You seem to have misunderstood the point to warp-drive being the marker of when a civilization is "ready" for contact; it's not a meaningless or arbitrary line.
For one thing, warp-drive is significantly more powerful than other technologies, it's leaps and bounds more powerful, and thus, more dangerous that steam-power, electricity, even nuclear weapons. It's basically an end-game weapon/tech-tree skill. After that, there's only sci-fi-level stuff like time-travel left, which is just one step below ascension to all-knowing, all-connected energy-beings. It's like teaching cavemen how to make machine-guns, it's just _highly_ probably they'll end up destroying themselves with it because it's a planet-destroying, extinction-level-event type of technology. It's dangerous enough that they _can't_ "adapt" as you said, they'd be gone.
The other reason they use it as a marker of when to make contact or not is because space is big. That is to say, space is HUGE! Even light itself takes forever to get anywhere. The vast majority of life in space is scattered in massive pockets of emptiness. Most life will never manage to even detect other life, let alone contact it, let alone meet it. The only way for a civilization to do so is to figure out how to reach other life is to develop FTL technologies (which again, is devastatingly dangerous if misused or abused). The Federation tries to restrict themselves to just scanning planets with primitive life, they don't actually go down there, they avoid making contact. They only ever try to sneak in under rare circumstances where it's necessary and try to avoid the people as much as possible. They leave it up to the people to figure out a way to contact them.
Trying to draw analogs to Earth history is specious. The Aztec may not have used wheels much because they didn't need them or invent guns, but that doesn't mean they were ready for Howitzers. The Federation isn't calling pre-warp civilizations "primitive", they acknowledge that might be good enough for them, but that doesn't mean the UFP can meddle with them. A real-world analogy is uncontacted tribes like the North Sentinlese. They have managed to stay "primitive" for tens of thousands of years, well into the 21st century. They _don't need_ to develop sailing vessels to seek out new frontiers. But that doesn't mean it's okay for the world to go say hello, doing so is bad for everybody.
Your accusation that the Federation is racist is not only wrong, it's insulting. The Federation has this directive specifically for the _opposite_ reason: out of respect for other civilizations and the understanding that they have no right to push their ideas on others and to allow other civilizations to develop however they want and however works for them. They already know life is "multilineal" as you kept repeating. They allow aliens to reach out to them instead of the other way around. They know most "intelligent" life will eventually reach a point of curiosity and ambition that will cause them to look at the skies and wonder what's out there and if they're alone and try to go, so the Federation lets them do it on their schedule. They just figure that if they reach a point where they can travel faster than light and haven't destroyed themselves, they're more likely to be able to handle things like transporter without doing it as well, it's all about statistics and probabilities and risk-reduction. And respect.
(Oh, and "real fans" don't consider CBS Trek canon because it's just awful. And that SNW episode was just a ripoff of an Orville episode.)
No, we've understood it perfectly. Star Trek has been clear enough on this.
Warp drive is a powerful technology, potentially dangerous. But that's not what Trek is doing. They aren't saying "you cannot have this powerful technology" most of the time. Instead, they are saying, "don't talk to them or you will disrupt their natural, cultural evolution!" But there are literally no such thing as natural, universal stages of cultural evolution, or any stages of cultural evolution.
I have to disagree. The Prime Directive is an important anti-Colonial and harm reduction policy. The Vietnam and Iraq Wars of course show us how humanitarian rhetoric can easily be exploited for expansionist goals, and result in the deaths of millions. But even if the Federation just peacefully contacted pre-warp civilisations, and traded with them, it's extremely easy to imagine how that could result in tragedy. How many Star Trek episodes revolve around Starfleet personnel contracting runious exotic space diseases? Is the Federation willing to take responsibility if they unwittingly transmit Levodian flu to a culture without advanced medicine, killing billions? What if they teach a pre-warp civilisation how to split the atom, and they immediately use it to create nuclear bombs instead of energy reactors (just like the real-world United States did)? Is the UFP responsible if that planet's population subsequently wipes itself out in a nuclear war? Or if they all get chronically addicted to Holodecks, and cease to reproduce? If so, who gets punished and court-martialed?
It would perhaps be advisable for Starfleet (and the writers) to stop referring to pre-warp civilisations as "primitive". But it seems to me that there is only a modest amount to be gained from the Federation contacting pre-warp civilisations, and the potential for a lot of innocent people to die, no matter how well-intentioned the Federation is. Frankly, why meddle with a situation which isn't broken? Unless a species is about to go extinct absent intervention, it's frankly courting disaster. A billion deaths following First Contact even once is too many.
I also disagree with the assertion that warp drive is an "arbitrary" line for First Contact. The reasoning is very simple- once a species has warp drive, they can seek out other species, so First Contact is inevitable. Better to make sure it happens on peaceful terms in a controlled environment, rather than a Federation starship bumping into a random species for the first time with no prior warning. Again, it's a policy of harm reduction- obviously a massive interstellar government can't hide its presence FOREVER.
I agree that the Prime Directive should be waived in cases of extinction-level natural disasters facing pre-warp societies, since that's already a worst case scenario. But apart from that exception, it's a responsible and scrupulous philosophy- don't intrude upon civilisations you know nothing about unless you're willing to take responsibility for every (potentially disastrous) consequence. I certainly wouldn't trust current-day humanity with replicators, matter-antimatter reactors, or holodecks. Tell me with a straight face that the United States in 2023 is ready to handle every potential ramification of that insane tech jump.
Agree with you on most points except for the extinction level event exception. In a natural system, species emerge and go extinct constantly. Starfleet intervening to prevent extinctions would be a never ending task, and would in fact involve picking winners and losers in an otherwise natural process. The flaw in the way Star Trek frames prime directive dilemmas is that they generally depict very human-like civilizations. They look, sound, and behave so much like human beings so it's a no-brainer that they should be saved from potential extinction, PD be damned. However in a more realistic scenario, a given planet would have millions of different species, among which a great many could display different forms of intelligence, sentience, and civilization. Should Starfleet intervene to save the alien equivalent of whales, chimpanzees, octopi, dogs, even honeybees?
You focus so much on the fact that a line was drawn and forget why it was drawn. The implications are massive, which was widely explored within Star Trek. You put your own bias into this, I never understood pre-warp civilizations to be "undeserving" of contact or help, you really twist yourself into a pretzel in order to force this point. Why do we leave isolated tribes in the Amazon alone? Because they don't deserve penicillin? Because we think they're not ready to talk to us? No! We do it to protect their way of life, because we have no right to interfere in their natural development. The question is not weather or not they can comprehend that we exists so differently, nobody says that they can't.
We think that's a perspective that the Star Trek franchise just has not enunciated well enough. And we say as much in the video. So, the onus is on Trek - put this weird rule to rest. Say clearly why and what it is supposed to do. But, let's be clear, there is no 'natural development" that happens to any human society. SO, why go out into the universe armed with a philosophy that doesn't bear resemblance to reality? It certainly does more harm than good.
It is easy to see why Prime Directive stories are so love / hate, hot / cold.
@@Trekspertise Suppose the Federation does exactly what you're suggesting- they parade around the universe, gung-ho, making contact with any sapient life they find, whether they're a space-age civilisation, or hunter gatherers who haven't discovered bronze. They hand out holodecks and replicators, and warp drives to anybody who wants them. They preach Federation universalist philosophy to anybody who wants to hear it.
It's simply a fact that doing so will irrevocably change each species' conception of their place in the universe, and culture, forever. Suppose they have a religion with a core tenant that they are the only life in the universe, and that they should never venture into space? Well the Federation just debunked that piece of culture, forever. Suppose the second that Holodecks and replicators are discovered, the entire planet turns into a drug den where nobody goes outside? To say that current-day Earth would be totally unaltered by the discovery of aliens with miracle technology, or that we'd deal with the change well, is hopelessly naïve. Most cultures would be unrecognisable after meeting aliens for the first time.
A core tenet of Vulcan and Federation philosophy is "Infinite Diversity, in Infinite Combinations". It isn't exactly unclear why a society which respects self-determination and diversity in culture so much would be resistant to imposing themselves on other people without consent, and irrevocably changing their cultures in the process.
What you're suggesting is inherently more imperialistic than the Prime Directive. The Prime Directive gives each culture a choice in whether they want to reach for the stars- if they don't want to meet anybody else, or they don't want the social disruption which developing new technologies brings, they can simply not develop warp tech, and stay home. It's designed to prevent the Federation from imposing themselves (and their ideals) on people who might not want it, and to prevent homogenising the entire universe.
I'm here because of the TH-cam channel Orange River.
Ayyy
Nice! Tell them we said hello.
Huzzah!
Cultural isolation is bad. Cultural swamping might be worse. Like species, cultures require isolation to develop and only then can they thrive with increased contact with virulent outside cultures. Working out the amount and timing of mutually beneficial contact could become a scientific discipline all of its own.
*the Prime Directive(tm) think plot convenience or stringent iron clad script deadlines*
*or maybe StarFleet Legal's means of insuring that captain's and crew have a CYA clause when dealing with first contact encounters that suddenly got all wonky or sideways*
Just as Star Trek has its own physics rules it has its own cultural rules. So WITHIN Star Trek the prime directive it does make sense. In the real world not so much. Just like transporters, photon torpedoes and Wesley Crusher. Warp capability may not be a great threshold for first contact but maybe all others are worse and this is a compromise.
Either way, I'm glad Star Trek tackles such questions at all. Can't say the same for most other content out there. As for "more" or "less" advanced I suggest to differentiate between technology and civilization, the latter being derived by various factor such as happiness, kindness towards another etc. An example: Is the TV a sign of advancement? Yes, technologically. Is it a sign of being civilized? Not if you look at what's on TV. For the most part.
Anyway, great video. Really like the wide format. Especially on a wide screen. Chromatic aberration is a little bit overused though
It is a very Star Trek topic, 100%.
Allowing a culture the space and time to develop at it's own pace is surely worthy
After all, the asymmety of the 'technologically advanced beings' deciding unilaterally to turn up on someone's doorstep is precisely what we dont want.
Sure. It just has no bearing on reality whatsoever.
@@Trekspertise Because it's science FICTION
The example of the wheel reminds me of the much more bike friendly culture that exists in Europe versus the car dependent infrastructure that exists in North America.
Who's more advanced, the people in miraculously engineered steel tanks spending hours in them at a time, or the people on nimble framed 100 year old technology that easily costs less than $1,000 to buy brand new
The US got to the moon.
I agree with other commenters on the notion that Warp Drive is not quite an arbitrary metric, not only because it signifies a level of planetary societal cohesion being reached (as is supposedly required to enable and maintain an interstellar space programme) but also because its presence makes further isolation impossible. The aspect of societal cohesion is important because (as Star Trek regularly depicts, and I agree about) subspace-manipulating technology is by its nature extremely dangerous. Not only in serving as a beacon to hostiles like the Borg, but especially since the high-energy technology involved will inevitably be usable in military applications. The risks to a divided planetary society having access to such a capacity for self-destruction is the point in both TNG and SNW, where civilisations on the cusp of developing warp-drive are depicted, in one case resulting in the "slow down" scene, in the other resulting in a hasty uplifting to prevent a apocalyptic war that is already brewing. It's essentially an anti-nuclear-weapons stance, projected into an era of anti-matter bombs.
The Warp Drive is not the only limit to this: In the Klingon civil war, as you mentioned, the Federation refused to intervene. You make it seem as if they changed their minds once the Romulan involvement in the war was revealed because only then it fit Federation policy to do so. That goes against the explicit text of the episodes, which make it clear that the Federation does not intervene because the Civil War is a purely internal affair of another society and thus the Prime Directive applies, even though they would want to back Gowron to maintain the treaty between the Klingon Empire and Federation. Only after the Romulan involvement shows that the civil war is not actually an internal matter of the Empire does the Federation intervene.
Another factor is the harm to any alien species' cultural identity. While an argument can be made about safe contact being possible (as you suggested with potential peaceful contact between Aztecs and Spain), the consequences of such contact are virtually unpredictable. Had the Aztecs and Spanish contatct remained peaceful, the Aztecs would likely still have been devastated by plagues that neither they nor the Spanish had cures for. Their culture might have survived and changed further, but it would not exactly have been by their choice. They were contacted by the Spanish, they did not seek them out.
In Star Trek, the Prime Directive serves primaribly to humble starship crews. It reminds them that they do not have the right to impose themselves onto another culture, and that even just the act of showing up and saying "Hi!" is such an imposition. It is a prohibition on Perry Expedition-style exploration, because the Federation both aims to respect the right of other cultures to self-determinate and understands itself to be fallible enough that a positive outcome to First Contact cannot be guaranteed. Thus, First Contact is delayed until it becomes inevitable, to allow for the best possible chances of two stable societies (regardless of their diverging cultural histories) to meet, rather than for one to crumble from any number of factors introduced by the other (this includes both cultural factors pertaining to the existence and presence of interstellar life and the availability of technology to allow safe contact, such as medical knowledge etc.).
This only leaves the number of instances in which Starfleet crews save uncontacted societies from extinction, in one way or another. And while these scenarios have been handled somewhat inconsistently throughout the decades of Star Trek content, generally preventing global extinction level events seems to be permitted and encouraged by Starfleet (otherwise, most series' captains would have been imprisoned at one time or another). The edge-case seems to be preventing the demise of isolated populations from natural causes, such as what Kirk did in Into Darkness.
You're making a category error. Establishing contact with a pre-warp civilisation isn't a neutral act, in the way that one nation establishing diplomatic contact with another is. No, you'd potentially be changing that species' conception of itself and its place in the universe, and in doing so altering its evolutionary path forever. That's huge.
Personally I think you're making too much out of the 'stages of development' idea. I interpreted the prime directive as more about respecting the right of every species to evolve on its own terms, whatever that happens to be. Strange New Worlds goes some way to clarifying this when Spock says the Vulcans invented first contact procedures. You can see the prime directive as an expression of the Vulcan philosophy of IDIC, infinite diversity in infinite combinations, a recognition of the inherent diversity and unpredictability of existence.
A counter-point would be the Culture novels of Iain Banks, an interstellar civilisation that sees no problem meddling in the affairs of other species to help them reach the Culture ideal. One of the more interesting stories happens when this intervention leads to devastating civil war among one of the species they're trying to help. Though it's not Banks's intention, this is a form of explicit cultural imperialism.
Also, referring to some of the most complex thinkers of the Enlightenment as "dead white guys" feels a tad... reductive. We're also talking about development in terms of respecting individual rights and liberties and the incidence of violence and exploitation in a society. Those are universal values that are strongly inculcated in Europe, but they are also human values that are for everyone. And I'm not sure how high the Aztecs would rank, no matter how technologically well-adapted they were. (But this is a separate question as we're talking about human-to-human comparisons, not the interspecies ethics of Star Trek.)
The point to take away here is that there is no cultural evolution template to follow.
@@Trekspertise Right, but I don't think the prime directive assumes that there is. Quite the opposite.
You also need to bear in mind that when Picard says he has no doubt that species will reach the stars, he's not talking about the prime directive; he's expressing his own personal view on the developmental path that species will take, not quoting the prime directive.