Star Trek and Idealism vs cynicism

[TwoSix]

It's always struck me as weird how many people are dedicated to the idea of Trek being "utopian" when the Starfleet Prime Directive is "Don't help people or you'll screw them up by accident."

 

[Bedrockgames]

I would argue - as many scholars do (not that I am a scholar, just saying) - that there was relatively little genuinely "meritocratic" about the Chinese imperial bureaucracy and the exam system, that it was far more about maintaining a specific social order and controlling who was allowed to do what than anything else.

An awful lot of exams through human history, into the present day, don't really test any objective or neutral "merit", they simply test how well you check the boxes of a certain society, which tends to mean they're hugely easier for people from certain backgrounds. And I say that as someone who tests very well, like incredibly well, in my own society.

And that is a huge can of worms. To be clear I wasn’t trying say whether it was truly meritocratic or not. On that we might agree in some places and disagree in others. But mainly it as an example to point out how different it is from a modern notion of it (for example we tend to strongly correlate meritocracy with favoring business and that was a society where merchants were considered lower on the social hierarchy)

 

[MarkB]

It's always struck me as weird how many people are dedicated to the idea of Trek being "utopian" when the Starfleet Prime Directive is "Don't help people or you'll screw them up by accident."

"It's easy to be a saint in paradise." The Federation lacks the perspective to properly deal with the problems of societies that aren't post-scarcity and post-inequality. Starfleet at least has the sense to acknowledge that lack of perspective.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

And that is a huge can of worms. To be clear I wasn’t trying say whether it was truly meritocratic or not. On that we might agree in some places and disagree in others. But mainly it as an example to point out how different it is from a modern notion of it (for example we tend to strongly correlate meritocracy with favoring business and that was a society where merchants were considered lower on the social hierarchy)

For sure, different cultures have different ideas of what meritocracy is.

It's always struck me as weird how many people are dedicated to the idea of Trek being "utopian" when the Starfleet Prime Directive is "Don't help people or you'll screw them up by accident."

I mean, the Prime Directive is a utopian directive. Utopian doesn't mean perfection, it means striving for enlightened goals, striving for better, more perfect society. The Prime Directive is enlightened in precisely that, it's just that it's not yet perfect in how it is applied. Had there been no Prime Directive, far more harm would likely have been done, and the Federation might easily have turned into essentially an exploitative colonialist machine, possibly even a war machine.

The mistake is seeing the Prime Directive as this sort of "barrier to helping people". In the vast majority of situations, they don't need help. Only when are things are truly desperate or the Federation has already screwed up in some way does it become a problem. And then its clear that it can circumvented, unless the Captain is an ABSOLUTE DUNCE called Archer. The meritocracy sure failed on that one!

Also the Prime Directive isn't just protecting societies from Federation interference, it's protecting the Federation from itself, as it were, because it would be so, so easy to start landing on every planet with sentients and indoctrinating them into Federation ways. But the utopians of the Federation believe its better to avoid that. You can say they're wrong, but they're striving in a very utopian way.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

"It's easy to be a saint in paradise." The Federation lacks the perspective to properly deal with the problems of societies that aren't post-scarcity and post-inequality. Starfleet at least has the sense to acknowledge that lack of perspective.

Not only that but it's also about avoiding indoctrinating societies and becoming essentially an empire that just arrives at weaker people and claims them. That's why part of the test is warp-capability. I.e. could this society stand on their own if they reject the Federation and their ways? If they're warp-capable, even if they're inside the borders of Federation territory, they could, the Federation wouldn't stop them leaving to trade with others or the like.

I imagine there have to be a few small stellar nations within Federation territory who are warp-capable but didn't get along with the idea of the Federation so aren't part of it (I struggle to remember any examples, perhaps someone with the right lore knowledge does).

 

[Ryujin]

Maybe what we need is a "slice of life" series or movie about everyday life in The Federation, so some of these questions can be answered? All that we've really seen, in Star Trek, is really the para-military side of things.

For sure, different cultures have different ideas of what meritocracy is.


I mean, the Prime Directive is a utopian directive. Utopian doesn't mean perfection, it means striving for enlightened goals, striving for better, more perfect society. The Prime Directive is enlightened in precisely that, it's just that it's not yet perfect in how it is applied. Had there been no Prime Directive, far more harm would likely have been done, and the Federation might easily have turned into essentially an exploitative colonialist machine, possibly even a war machine.

The mistake is seeing the Prime Directive as this sort of "barrier to helping people". In the vast majority of situations, they don't need help. Only when are things are truly desperate or the Federation has already screwed up in some way does it become a problem. And then its clear that it can circumvented, unless the Captain is an ABSOLUTE DUNCE called Archer. The meritocracy sure failed on that one!

Also the Prime Directive isn't just protecting societies from Federation interference, it's protecting the Federation from itself, as it were, because it would be so, so easy to start landing on every planet with sentients and indoctrinating them into Federation ways. But the utopians of the Federation believe its better to avoid that. You can say they're wrong, but they're striving in a very utopian way.

The Prime Directive is also about not holding a society back. "What if they manage to do better than we have?" is also a question.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

"What if they manage to do better than we have?" is also a question.

Yeah exactly - the Federation believes in IDIC, and IDIC requires D - diversity! That means they need to let these cultures find their own way until they're inevitably going to bump into others. And yes, I definitely think the Federation is open to the idea that they might find an even more philosophically/practically sound society than their own, or at least find some ideas worth learning from - but that they won't if they just go around overwriting everyone with standard Federation ideas before they even get a chance to consider their own.

Also even when they have a problem, they might solve it better than the Federation would.

I do think that - going forwards - the Federation need to consider a "civilizational destruction/accidental genocide" get-out clause, even if it requires top-level Starfleet approval and so on, because it's kind of happened a few times now! And whilst most captains are smart enough to figure out a way, some of them are Archer (yeah I'm still mad, you? lol).

 

[Ryujin]

Yeah exactly - the Federation believes in IDIC, and IDIC requires D - diversity! That means they need to let these cultures find their own way until they're inevitably going to bump into others. And yes, I definitely think the Federation is open to the idea that they might find an even more philosophically/practically sound society than their own, or at least find some ideas worth learning from - but that they won't if they just go around overwriting everyone with standard Federation ideas before they even get a chance to consider their own.

It has been stated explicitly at least once, in a Prime Directive episode. I don't remember for sure, but I think it was "Who Watches the Watchers", when Picard was talking to the Mintakins at the end of the episode.

 

[MarkB]

Not only that but it's also about avoiding indoctrinating societies and becoming essentially an empire that just arrives at weaker people and claims them. That's why part of the test is warp-capability. I.e. could this society stand on their own if they reject the Federation and their ways? If they're warp-capable, even if they're inside the borders of Federation territory, they could, the Federation wouldn't stop them leaving to trade with others or the like.

Well, that and the practical consideration that avoiding cultural contamination is going to be pretty much impossible once that society is actively going out and visiting other worlds.

 

[jian]

I’d watch that show.

Crime is rare, so detectives are rare (and eccentric). And when crime does happen it’s spectacularly weird.

That’s what I’ve been saying! Golden Age murder mysteries but with weird science.