The more you all talk about The Culture, less interested in it I become. A story with a society that's actually as invincible and invulnerable as it claims sounds so, so boring.
One that unilaterally interferes with "lesser" civilizations because it just knows what's best is...yikes.
The concept of the Prime Directive isn't "suffering builds character," it's "having superior ability does not make us superior beings."
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CambiataCommander ShepardThe likes of which even GAWD has never seenRegistered Userregular
The more you all talk about The Culture, less interested in it I become. A story with a society that's actually as invincible and invulnerable as it claims sounds so, so boring.
One that unilaterally interferes with "lesser" civilizations because it just knows what's best is...yikes.
The concept of the Prime Directive isn't "suffering builds character," it's "having superior ability does not make us superior beings."
It's a lot more subtle and complex that descriptions of it in this thread can really describe.
That said, the best stories about The Culture are ones in which it brushes up against other societies, societies where you can lose everything, or be poverty stricken, or be denied your rights because of an accident of birth like your gender.
I've mentioned Player of Games before, and that is a story where a Culture man visits a multi-planet empire, and said empire is, socially speaking, very much like our society. At home safe in the Culture, the main character isn't under any real threats, and the beginning of the book is about how that's a problem for him and he's bored with life where there are no real gambles. When he eventually gets to the alien empire, his life becomes filled with dangers from every corner, starting small with humiliation, and ramping up over time to the threats of castration and death. That story is very good and keeps me on the edge of my seat with each new challenge to the protagonist - though the most interesting challenges are spiritual and mental.
"If you divide the whole world into just enemies and friends, you'll end up destroying everything" --Nausicaa of the Valley of Wind
The more you all talk about The Culture, less interested in it I become. A story with a society that's actually as invincible and invulnerable as it claims sounds so, so boring.
One that unilaterally interferes with "lesser" civilizations because it just knows what's best is...yikes.
The concept of the Prime Directive isn't "suffering builds character," it's "having superior ability does not make us superior beings."
It's a lot more subtle and complex that descriptions of it in this thread can really describe.
That said, the best stories about The Culture are ones in which it brushes up against other societies, societies where you can lose everything, or be poverty stricken, or be denied your rights because of an accident of birth like your gender.
I've mentioned Player of Games before, and that is a story where a Culture man visits a multi-planet empire, and said empire is, socially speaking, very much like our society. At home safe in the Culture, the main character isn't under any real threats, and the beginning of the book is about how that's a problem for him and he's bored with life where there are no real gambles. When he eventually gets to the alien empire, his life becomes filled with dangers from every corner, starting small with humiliation, and ramping up over time to the threats of castration and death. That story is very good and keeps me on the edge of my seat with each new challenge to the protagonist - though the most interesting challenges are spiritual and mental.
There’s also interference and interference. The Culture’s Special Circumstances subdivision doesn’t exist, but if it did, it would exist to figure out where to deploy a scalpel and where to deploy the metaphorical tactical nuke. They tend not to get too visibly involved in the day to day of your average corporate dystopia, but might arrange for politically active squillionaires to be given life extension treatments in return for improving the broader base of social conditions. On the other hand, that government running death camps may suffer a sudden series of perfectly explainable but unexpected tactical reverses or the occasional heart attack.
But all this stuff isn’t really the focus of the Culture books anyway; it’s just looking outward as a civilisation that has decided it has things pretty good, thank you very much, and wants to make things elsewhere better.
The books themselves tend to focus on Culture misfits brushing up against the edges of other, less chill civilisations.
It’s very hard to sell the series; but it’s all good.
ETA: you know what, I’ll let Banks talk about what the Culture is, himself. I do wonder if the Federation would be better off emulating the Culture…
ETA2, a key para from the above link, which is loooong:
“ In general the Culture doesn't actively encourage immigration; it looks too much like a disguised form of colonialism. Contact's preferred methods are intended to help other civilisations develop their own potential as a whole, and are designed to neither leech away their best and brightest, nor turn such civilisations into miniature versions of the Culture. Individuals, groups and even whole lesser civilisations do become part of the Culture on occasion, however, if there seems to be a particularly good reason (and if Contact reckons it won't upset any other interested parties in the locality).”
The more you all talk about The Culture, less interested in it I become. A story with a society that's actually as invincible and invulnerable as it claims sounds so, so boring.
One that unilaterally interferes with "lesser" civilizations because it just knows what's best is...yikes.
The concept of the Prime Directive isn't "suffering builds character," it's "having superior ability does not make us superior beings."
In fact this is literally the most divisive issue in the entire book series within the Culture itself. But to do absolutely nothing in the face of unspeakable horror is to accept moral relativism at face value. The Culture, mostly, believes that inaction is itself a stance. Neutrality is itself a position, it is not a lack of position. Failing to oppose the Nazis is supporting the Nazis. When they went the war, the only time they went to war, a significant minority of people left the Culture because they believed that violent interference was never justified no matter how expansionist and awful the civilization is.
Keeping in mind that entire star systems join and leave the Culture all the time, because they are anarchistic. So to compare the Federation interfering in another race's affairs to the Culture is incorrect, the Culture is not a monolith and has no government, and it spans a huge percentage of the galaxy. If they all agree on something, it's probably worth agreeing.
Basically, instead of saying "interference is something we always avoid because it might lead to space hitler", they say "what are the chances of space hitler arriving if we save these people? lets actually work the problem, the messy variables, get our hands dirty, and take responsibility for our place in the galaxy"
The only book I haven't read is about a time they utterly fucked it up and made everything worse, which I hear is a good book
The more you all talk about The Culture, less interested in it I become. A story with a society that's actually as invincible and invulnerable as it claims sounds so, so boring.
One that unilaterally interferes with "lesser" civilizations because it just knows what's best is...yikes.
The concept of the Prime Directive isn't "suffering builds character," it's "having superior ability does not make us superior beings."
This is a really incorrect perception of the Culture and broadly what it's "about". In the sense of it being "invincible and invulnerable" the books are largely attempting to demonstrate concepts of scale, and one of the very significant things Banks tries to impart is the idea of how incredible the gulfs in scale can be, whether they be sheer size, or age, or mental capacity, or technological development, or ethical development. You are never given the sense that the Culture simply wins out of hand because the author says so, Banks goes to great lengths to establish the sheer enormity of the Culture, its history, and what it represents ethically, philosophically, and technologically. Banks coined the term "Outside Context Problem" and these are the sorts of things he's deliberately exploring, situations in which individuals or societies butt up against massive problems of scale that dwarf them and everything they have the context to deal with. And he doesn't force these things onto the reader either, in fact he generally comes from perspectives either outside of or critical of the Culture and uses this to flesh out what the Culture is and what the ethical dilemmas inside and on the periphery of it are.
And, for that matter, the books explore in great detail the primary ethical dilemma of the Culture and what it does to other civilizations, and the books don't at all shy away from drawing attention to the uglier or contentious aspects of what it does. The books do posit the idea that there are a core set of ethics that people can hold that are ultimately the better way to construct a society, and beyond that the idea that with enough knowledge and understanding you actually can be in a position to say what will lessen the suffering of others (often Star Trek tows this line extremely clearly too, the Federation's ethics are depicted as clearly ethically superior to those of, say, the Cardassians). The Culture novels posit that on the extreme end of this scale you run into an absolute necessity to intervene, because the amount of suffering that is being caused is too great to sit aside and watch. And the Culture novels really do not shy away from demonstrating the amount of suffering that is possible when there are flaws in the ethical constraints you're operating under.
But the books also go to pretty great lengths to not push this concept of "having superior ability makes us superior beings" as well. One of the central tensions running through the books is what the value of the individual human life is in a society where there are AI Minds running everything, and it dwells pretty heavily on this and what it means for individuals to have choice and how one can actually maximize that choice. It depicts situations where the Culture was explicitly mistaken or flawed in their judgment, or lacked the capacity to intervene to create the best outcome, and it asks whether there's still not a necessity to make those mistakes in those positions. They have done the math, they have collected the data; they have actual evidence-based reasons to believe that interfering with other societies will improve the lives of individuals inside of them, and they have what they feel is a moral imperative to intervene in accordance with their ethical position.
Yeah, from a cursory description it can sound like The Culture is engaging in adventurism
The Culture doesn't consider one of its members more valuable than any random person anywhere in the cosmos. They don't have nationalism as we understand it, or patriotism. Stopping 5 culture minds who have done the math that giving Turbomedicine to World A because you disagree with the concept of intervention - and being able to do so because you have more firepower than them - is no morally different than what they are doing. Except you're doing it out of devotion to an unthinking dogma: interference is wrong, and they're doing what they do because they believe it will help, even if they get it wrong sometimes. Instead, wouldn't the best course be to engage with them, and provide counterpoints to their solutions if you find holes in them?
It's a messy issue, and the books don't present it any other way
For all that, everyone in Star Trek is a good deal more smug than the people in the Culture. Even in Player of Games where he's interacting with a society that is just as barbaric as our own, he gives them a fair shake and legitimately entertains all of the aspects of their society, even if he simply can't wrap his head around certain concepts like racism
The more you all talk about The Culture, less interested in it I become. A story with a society that's actually as invincible and invulnerable as it claims sounds so, so boring.
One that unilaterally interferes with "lesser" civilizations because it just knows what's best is...yikes.
The concept of the Prime Directive isn't "suffering builds character," it's "having superior ability does not make us superior beings."
Yeah "suffering builds character" is like the worst description of the prime directive ever. Even Dear Doctor did better then that.
Now, there's been multiple different interpretations of the Prime Directive over the years from different writers. And some can get pretty stupid. But they all basically centre around non-interference because we don't have the right to always say what outcome is best for someone else.
The more you all talk about The Culture, less interested in it I become. A story with a society that's actually as invincible and invulnerable as it claims sounds so, so boring.
One that unilaterally interferes with "lesser" civilizations because it just knows what's best is...yikes.
The concept of the Prime Directive isn't "suffering builds character," it's "having superior ability does not make us superior beings."
Yeah "suffering builds character" is like the worst description of the prime directive ever. Even Dear Doctor did better then that.
Now, there's been multiple different interpretations of the Prime Directive over the years from different writers. And some can get pretty stupid. But they all basically centre around non-interference because we don't have the right to always say what outcome is best for someone else.
I'm struck by the point @Winky made above, which is that the Culture views inaction as an explicitly active ethical choice. In an extreme example: The Culture can seamlessly intervene to stop genocides happening on worlds that are less technologically advanced,, and they may well do so. The Federation may not do so, if it breaches the Prime Directive. Which arguably makes them culpable. The Culture have seemingly decided they are not OK with that, and the Federation have decided that they are.
To be fair, the Federation and the Culture are on vastly different scales, though. The prime directive exists because the Federation is a military hierarchy headed by human beings who have many times shown themselves to be extremely fallible and corruptible. The prime directive is a blunt guard rail that exists because the Federation has to deal with realities regarding their own limitations, limitations that the Culture is depicted as having overcome millennia ago. One interpretation of the Culture is as essentially what the Federation would become after a few thousand years of technological development and overcoming its own ethical hurtles.
To be fair, the Federation and the Culture are on vastly different scales, though. The prime directive exists because the Federation is a military hierarchy headed by human beings who have many times shown themselves to be extremely fallible and corruptible. The prime directive is a blunt guard rail that exists because the Federation has to deal with realities regarding their own limitations, limitations that the Culture is depicted as having overcome millennia ago. One interpretation of the Culture is as essentially what the Federation would become after a few thousand years of technological development and overcoming its own ethical hurtles.
This is true. But the tension between the Federation as a practical entity, and the ideal of the Prime Directive, versus the ethical implications of a society which is OK with its provisions are...striking. Sure, we see captains make exceptions all the time, but one assumes that exceptions exist as a minority in the face of a rule which allows for any cruelty to be left unremarked when done by a non-Federation outgroup. Like, sure, don't intervene if you don't want to, but don't get all smug about it.
The more you all talk about The Culture, less interested in it I become. A story with a society that's actually as invincible and invulnerable as it claims sounds so, so boring.
One that unilaterally interferes with "lesser" civilizations because it just knows what's best is...yikes.
The concept of the Prime Directive isn't "suffering builds character," it's "having superior ability does not make us superior beings."
This is a really incorrect perception of the Culture and broadly what it's "about". In the sense of it being "invincible and invulnerable" the books are largely attempting to demonstrate concepts of scale, and one of the very significant things Banks tries to impart is the idea of how incredible the gulfs in scale can be, whether they be sheer size, or age, or mental capacity, or technological development, or ethical development. You are never given the sense that the Culture simply wins out of hand because the author says so, Banks goes to great lengths to establish the sheer enormity of the Culture, its history, and what it represents ethically, philosophically, and technologically. Banks coined the term "Outside Context Problem" and these are the sorts of things he's deliberately exploring, situations in which individuals or societies butt up against massive problems of scale that dwarf them and everything they have the context to deal with. And he doesn't force these things onto the reader either, in fact he generally comes from perspectives either outside of or critical of the Culture and uses this to flesh out what the Culture is and what the ethical dilemmas inside and on the periphery of it are.
And, for that matter, the books explore in great detail the primary ethical dilemma of the Culture and what it does to other civilizations, and the books don't at all shy away from drawing attention to the uglier or contentious aspects of what it does. The books do posit the idea that there are a core set of ethics that people can hold that are ultimately the better way to construct a society, and beyond that the idea that with enough knowledge and understanding you actually can be in a position to say what will lessen the suffering of others (often Star Trek tows this line extremely clearly too, the Federation's ethics are depicted as clearly ethically superior to those of, say, the Cardassians). The Culture novels posit that on the extreme end of this scale you run into an absolute necessity to intervene, because the amount of suffering that is being caused is too great to sit aside and watch. And the Culture novels really do not shy away from demonstrating the amount of suffering that is possible when there are flaws in the ethical constraints you're operating under.
But the books also go to pretty great lengths to not push this concept of "having superior ability makes us superior beings" as well. One of the central tensions running through the books is what the value of the individual human life is in a society where there are AI Minds running everything, and it dwells pretty heavily on this and what it means for individuals to have choice and how one can actually maximize that choice. It depicts situations where the Culture was explicitly mistaken or flawed in their judgment, or lacked the capacity to intervene to create the best outcome, and it asks whether there's still not a necessity to make those mistakes in those positions. They have done the math, they have collected the data; they have actual evidence-based reasons to believe that interfering with other societies will improve the lives of individuals inside of them, and they have what they feel is a moral imperative to intervene in accordance with their ethical position.
Well, I'm glad it's more complex than I initially thought. I'll put it on the list. People talk about "Consider Plebias" a lot. Is that a good place to start?
The more you all talk about The Culture, less interested in it I become. A story with a society that's actually as invincible and invulnerable as it claims sounds so, so boring.
One that unilaterally interferes with "lesser" civilizations because it just knows what's best is...yikes.
The concept of the Prime Directive isn't "suffering builds character," it's "having superior ability does not make us superior beings."
In fact this is literally the most divisive issue in the entire book series within the Culture itself. But to do absolutely nothing in the face of unspeakable horror is to accept moral relativism at face value. The Culture, mostly, believes that inaction is itself a stance. Neutrality is itself a position, it is not a lack of position. Failing to oppose the Nazis is supporting the Nazis. When they went the war, the only time they went to war, a significant minority of people left the Culture because they believed that violent interference was never justified no matter how expansionist and awful the civilization is.
Keeping in mind that entire star systems join and leave the Culture all the time, because they are anarchistic. So to compare the Federation interfering in another race's affairs to the Culture is incorrect, the Culture is not a monolith and has no government, and it spans a huge percentage of the galaxy. If they all agree on something, it's probably worth agreeing.
Basically, instead of saying "interference is something we always avoid because it might lead to space hitler", they say "what are the chances of space hitler arriving if we save these people? lets actually work the problem, the messy variables, get our hands dirty, and take responsibility for our place in the galaxy"
The only book I haven't read is about a time they utterly fucked it up and made everything worse, which I hear is a good book
To me, the Prime Directive is less about avoiding Space Hitlers and more about avoiding colonialism. I'm sure many 19th Century Europeans genuinely wanted to help Africans and they had entire scientific fields to justify their ethical positions. And they were wrong. Good intentions are necessary but not sufficient to avoid damaging or destroying other cultures.
The Prime Directive is best described as an admission that the Federation is not always right.
This is best shown with the Maquis, where the Federation held to its principles and only made things worse. Had Starfleet crushed Cardassia in the 2350s, it's possible that the Dominion War never happens. Of course, it was impossible for anyone to know that at the time—and that's the point. The Federation doesn't always know. What seems like the clear choice today might reveal itself to be the exact wrong one tomorrow. So if you're going to interfere—and sometimes it's imperative to do so—you have do it carefully, eyes wide open, without any chauvinistic certainty in a "Federation Man's Burden."
Anyway, that's my Watsonian interpretation of the Prime Directive. The Doylist one is that it got Flanderized by lazy writers so that most of the time characters argue whether they should let people die instead of considering the ethical use of power.
I would recommend reading Player of Games first and then Excession, but that's just because that's the order I started reading them in and they're two of my favorites.
It's not bad to read them in release order, but Consider Phlebas is often thought of as a bad place to start because it centers around a protagonist who is actively hostile to the Culture and presents it from their point of view, and little of it actually takes place in the Culture. I think it's a neat way of introduction to the Culture as a concept and the broader setting of the galaxy, but if you're attempting to get as good an idea of what the Culture is really like in as few books as possible I recommend the order of Player of Games -> Excession.
I would recommend reading Player of Games first and then Excession, but that's just because that's the order I started reading them in and they're two of my favorites.
It's not bad to read them in release order, but Consider Phlebas is often thought of as a bad place to start because it centers around a protagonist who is actively hostile to the Culture and presents it from their point of view, and little of it actually takes place in the Culture. I think it's a neat way of introduction to the Culture as a concept and the broader setting of the galaxy, but if you're attempting to get as good an idea of what the Culture is really like in as few books as possible I recommend the order of Player of Games -> Excession.
I'd go Player of Games (this is a bit of the Culture acting on another entity) - > Consider Phlebas (this is what the Culture looks like from the perspective of another entity) -> Use of Weapons (this is the Culture getting involved at a more intimate level) -> Excession (galactic scale high concept sci-fi) -> The rest
The more you all talk about The Culture, less interested in it I become. A story with a society that's actually as invincible and invulnerable as it claims sounds so, so boring.
One that unilaterally interferes with "lesser" civilizations because it just knows what's best is...yikes.
The concept of the Prime Directive isn't "suffering builds character," it's "having superior ability does not make us superior beings."
Yeah "suffering builds character" is like the worst description of the prime directive ever. Even Dear Doctor did better then that.
Now, there's been multiple different interpretations of the Prime Directive over the years from different writers. And some can get pretty stupid. But they all basically centre around non-interference because we don't have the right to always say what outcome is best for someone else.
I'm struck by the point Winky made above, which is that the Culture views inaction as an explicitly active ethical choice. In an extreme example: The Culture can seamlessly intervene to stop genocides happening on worlds that are less technologically advanced,, and they may well do so. The Federation may not do so, if it breaches the Prime Directive. Which arguably makes them culpable. The Culture have seemingly decided they are not OK with that, and the Federation have decided that they are.
Again, there is no standard here because no one in the writer's room has seemingly ever cared to define exactly how the Prime Directive works.
But overall there does frequently seem to be a lot of wiggle room. The idea that the Federation cannot break the Prime Directive does not match what we actually see under most interpretations. Starfleet officers seem to not draw a hard line on this issue at all. But they are wary of it and I think there's not really a coherent argument against being cautious in imposing your own morality on a situation you may well not understand.
And that's kinda important and why the comparison to the Culture is completely flawed because the Federation is just not that much different in terms of their ability to intervene in situations like that then we are. And these comparisons are deliberate since Star Trek is meant to be relatable to us, the viewer. Part of the reason for these limits is considerations for the fallibility of the people making the decisions and for the limits of what Starfleet can actually accomplish.
The comparison you should be thinking of with the Prime Directive is not The Culture, it's the present day and questions of like "Should the first world interfere in X country for 'humanitarian reasons'?". Which are really fraught with considerations of both the right to make the decision and the ability to actually do something other then just making it all worse.
Given the time period from which the series originally comes, I can't help but consider the Prime Directive in the context of the Cold War.
shryke on
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JacobkoshGamble a stamp.I can show you how to be a real man!Moderatormod
Consider Phlebas also goes OTT and edgelordy in parts because it was one of Banks' first books and his non-M (ie, published as "Iain Banks") books were originally horror. He got better as he went on at siloing his Culture writing style from the more horror/experimental style he used in books like The Wasp Factory and A Song of Stone.
Also, I think CP is just a bit too long of a book and could have used another editing pass. I strongly believe that after about 350-400 pages each additional 100 pages in a novel (especially a sci-fi/fantasy novel) needs to work progressively harder to justify itself, and I don't think every episode in Consider Phlebas does that.
The Player of Games is short, tight, punchy and impactful, and when disquieting or upsetting things happen they are strictly in service of establishing a tone and telling the story instead of kind of "heh heh heh, gonna blow their minds with this one."
The more you all talk about The Culture, less interested in it I become. A story with a society that's actually as invincible and invulnerable as it claims sounds so, so boring.
One that unilaterally interferes with "lesser" civilizations because it just knows what's best is...yikes.
The concept of the Prime Directive isn't "suffering builds character," it's "having superior ability does not make us superior beings."
Yeah "suffering builds character" is like the worst description of the prime directive ever. Even Dear Doctor did better then that.
Now, there's been multiple different interpretations of the Prime Directive over the years from different writers. And some can get pretty stupid. But they all basically centre around non-interference because we don't have the right to always say what outcome is best for someone else.
The culture philosophy was pretty much created because of exactly that - you don't always have the right to day what's the best outcome for a given civilization, but...
Do you sometimes?
Given the ways the federation prime directive was shown to cause suffering numerous times, and, like you said, the fact that no two authors of a star trek episode seem to agree on what exactly the prime directive actually means or even is supposed to mean, that question is also asked in star trek.
But in the culture novels, it's not just a vehicle to cause drama for one episode among dozens. It's a topic treated with the gravitas it deserves.
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MonwynApathy's a tragedy, and boredom is a crime.A little bit of everything, all of the time.Registered Userregular
I would recommend reading Player of Games first and then Excession, but that's just because that's the order I started reading them in and they're two of my favorites.
It's not bad to read them in release order, but Consider Phlebas is often thought of as a bad place to start because it centers around a protagonist who is actively hostile to the Culture and presents it from their point of view, and little of it actually takes place in the Culture. I think it's a neat way of introduction to the Culture as a concept and the broader setting of the galaxy, but if you're attempting to get as good an idea of what the Culture is really like in as few books as possible I recommend the order of Player of Games -> Excession.
I'd go Player of Games (this is a bit of the Culture acting on another entity) - > Consider Phlebas (this is what the Culture looks like from the perspective of another entity) -> Use of Weapons (this is the Culture getting involved at a more intimate level) -> Excession (galactic scale high concept sci-fi) -> The rest
I'd substitute Consider Phlebas with Look to Windward, personally.
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JacobkoshGamble a stamp.I can show you how to be a real man!Moderatormod
The more you all talk about The Culture, less interested in it I become. A story with a society that's actually as invincible and invulnerable as it claims sounds so, so boring.
One that unilaterally interferes with "lesser" civilizations because it just knows what's best is...yikes.
The concept of the Prime Directive isn't "suffering builds character," it's "having superior ability does not make us superior beings."
Yeah "suffering builds character" is like the worst description of the prime directive ever. Even Dear Doctor did better then that.
Now, there's been multiple different interpretations of the Prime Directive over the years from different writers. And some can get pretty stupid. But they all basically centre around non-interference because we don't have the right to always say what outcome is best for someone else.
I'm struck by the point Winky made above, which is that the Culture views inaction as an explicitly active ethical choice. In an extreme example: The Culture can seamlessly intervene to stop genocides happening on worlds that are less technologically advanced,, and they may well do so. The Federation may not do so, if it breaches the Prime Directive. Which arguably makes them culpable. The Culture have seemingly decided they are not OK with that, and the Federation have decided that they are.
Again, there is no standard here because no one in the writer's room has seemingly ever cared to define exactly how the Prime Directive works.
But overall there does frequently seem to be a lot of wiggle room. The idea that the Federation cannot break the Prime Directive does not match what we actually see under most interpretations. Starfleet officers seem to not draw a hard line on this issue at all. But they are wary of it and I think there's not really a coherent argument against being cautious in imposing your own morality on a situation you may well not understand.
And that's kinda important and why the comparison to the Culture is completely flawed because the Federation is just not that much different in terms of their ability to intervene in situations like that then we are. And these comparisons are deliberate since Star Trek is meant to be relatable to us, the viewer. Part of the reason for these limits is considerations for the fallibility of the people making the decisions and for the limits of what Starfleet can actually accomplish.
The comparison you should be thinking of with the Prime Directive is not The Culture, it's the present day and questions of like "Should the first world interfere in X country for 'humanitarian reasons'?". Which are really fraught with considerations of both the right to make the decision and the ability to actually do something other then just making it all worse.
Given the time period from which the series originally comes, I can't help but consider the Prime Directive in the context of the Cold War.
This is really important. People come to Star Trek from a background of just reading sci-fi novels and go "murble murble murble, why isn't this like those? Where are the people downloading their brains into clouds of boner mist?" and it's because that's not the point. Trek is trying to tell stories about the way we are today and the world we could have right now if we had the will. We don't need replicators to have a more equitable society where people can live without worrying about starving to death if they miss a shift and we don't need to wait to invent godlike computers to start building a more ethical and just government. We just need to want it and work for it.
I enjoy the Culture and other far-out sci-fi but I think sometimes people use the near-magical technology in those stories to excuse their own inaction in the real world. "Well, I could feed that homeless guy but I'd rather wait for science to invent food nanites." The fact that Star Trek characters are basically just people like you and me is important to reminding us that being better really is within our reach.
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Ninja Snarl PMy helmet is my burden.Ninja Snarl: Gone, but not forgotten.Registered Userregular
The enormous problem with the Prime Directive is that the Federation applies it along a span of civilizations from club-wielding primates to the borderline-warp-equipped, then says that a society's or species' "natural evolution" is worth more than any amount of potential pain or suffering. But the Federation is also willing to do fuck-all to stop, say, an ultra-aggressive hyper-predator species that makes Klingons look like Tribbles until it steps over that warp line, and by that time it would be too late.
The Culture knows that messing with a civilization can have grave consequences, but it also knows that it's far, far better to nudge civilizations towards not being horrendous warmongering death cults than let them slaughter their way to the stars because they haven't crossed a tech limit yet. And the Culture level of interference is not to plant their people to control worlds, but to arrange events to let those worlds reach their own conclusions. Case in point, in adjusting the course of a medieval-level society, the Culture basically just spooks an army so it won't go butcher a neighbor and screwing with the development of a kingdom with a far better understanding of morality.
The Culture will absolutely admit when it isn't right, up to and including reparations for mistakes. It does not make the outright insane Federation choice that non-interference in all non-warp civilizations is optimal for every civilization, warp or non-warp. Asteroid gonna fuck up your planet? Oh, sorry, your warp test isn't until next week so you're all going to die because it's more important for the civilization to believe it died of a natural event than disrupt their history by showing aliens exist. The Culture, on the flip side, would shrug and go "welp, we ain't gonna let them fucking die from something this stupid, let's make the rescue amazing", turn it into a fireworks show, then zip down and explain everything because it doesn't just assume everybody without warp is an idiot species. Then it would explain how the Culture works, how the society isn't ready to join, but the Culture is still going to talk to them because they're still neighbors and everybody deserves a chance to wise up and join later, if they want.
And if you don't like what the Culture does? You can literally call up a vote on it and everybody will vote, if it's considered a big enough issue. And if you don't like the results of the vote? You can literally just leave and know that you had nothing to do with the Culture's choice of interference. Hell, the Culture will give you a ship to leave in. It'll give you a fleet of ships if you have enough people to need it. There might even be dissenting Minds willing to go along, and they're free to go too.
All said and done, living in or around the Federation would suck ass compared to the Culture. The Culture will happily expend a shitload of resources to, visibly or invisibly, keep something stupid from wiping out your species, the Federation will just wring its hands and go "but they'll see us and that would ruin them!"
The more you all talk about The Culture, less interested in it I become. A story with a society that's actually as invincible and invulnerable as it claims sounds so, so boring.
One that unilaterally interferes with "lesser" civilizations because it just knows what's best is...yikes.
The concept of the Prime Directive isn't "suffering builds character," it's "having superior ability does not make us superior beings."
Yeah "suffering builds character" is like the worst description of the prime directive ever. Even Dear Doctor did better then that.
Now, there's been multiple different interpretations of the Prime Directive over the years from different writers. And some can get pretty stupid. But they all basically centre around non-interference because we don't have the right to always say what outcome is best for someone else.
I'm struck by the point Winky made above, which is that the Culture views inaction as an explicitly active ethical choice. In an extreme example: The Culture can seamlessly intervene to stop genocides happening on worlds that are less technologically advanced,, and they may well do so. The Federation may not do so, if it breaches the Prime Directive. Which arguably makes them culpable. The Culture have seemingly decided they are not OK with that, and the Federation have decided that they are.
Again, there is no standard here because no one in the writer's room has seemingly ever cared to define exactly how the Prime Directive works.
But overall there does frequently seem to be a lot of wiggle room. The idea that the Federation cannot break the Prime Directive does not match what we actually see under most interpretations. Starfleet officers seem to not draw a hard line on this issue at all. But they are wary of it and I think there's not really a coherent argument against being cautious in imposing your own morality on a situation you may well not understand.
And that's kinda important and why the comparison to the Culture is completely flawed because the Federation is just not that much different in terms of their ability to intervene in situations like that then we are. And these comparisons are deliberate since Star Trek is meant to be relatable to us, the viewer. Part of the reason for these limits is considerations for the fallibility of the people making the decisions and for the limits of what Starfleet can actually accomplish.
The comparison you should be thinking of with the Prime Directive is not The Culture, it's the present day and questions of like "Should the first world interfere in X country for 'humanitarian reasons'?". Which are really fraught with considerations of both the right to make the decision and the ability to actually do something other then just making it all worse.
Given the time period from which the series originally comes, I can't help but consider the Prime Directive in the context of the Cold War.
This is really important. People come to Star Trek from a background of just reading sci-fi novels and go "murble murble murble, why isn't this like those? Where are the people downloading their brains into clouds of boner mist?" and it's because that's not the point. Trek is trying to tell stories about the way we are today and the world we could have right now if we had the will. We don't need replicators to have a more equitable society where people can live without worrying about starving to death if they miss a shift and we don't need to wait to invent godlike computers to start building a more ethical and just government. We just need to want it and work for it.
I enjoy the Culture and other far-out sci-fi but I think sometimes people use the near-magical technology in those stories to excuse their own inaction in the real world. "Well, I could feed that homeless guy but I'd rather wait for science to invent food nanites." The fact that Star Trek characters are basically just people like you and me is important to reminding us that being better really is within our reach.
For what it's worth, I agree!
But equally, I think that we can't ignore the ways that Trek encourages that behaviour.
And the Prime Directive is perhaps the, er, prime example. It is an argument for inaction in the face of atrocity. That Captains on our screen ignore it is also an active choice, as is when they do so. Or when they don't. Of course we can map the Prime Directive back to the real world. Of course we can. But it carries the same ethical payload anyway.
Trek is telling stories about the way the world is today, but so is The Culture. They're just telling different versions of those stories. And that's OK! Maybe the points they are making are in parallel, like "Sometimes you might have to intervene in some stuff because you can help, but it might go wrong" and "Sometimes you might want to not intervene in some stuff, it might get worse if you do". And those are both valid points. But the Federation and the Culture are two big, fictional utopia's, and how they approach and present this to us, here, in the real world, matters. Because people read books, and then they think, and they watch shows, and they think. The messages from both of those things matter. And so...we discuss about them in the fiction, because we care about what that says and how it maps back to us.
Otherwise, Star Trek really is just wagon train to the stars, and the Culture is just a bunch of Minds jerking one out.
The enormous problem with the Prime Directive is that the Federation applies it along a span of civilizations from club-wielding primates to the borderline-warp-equipped, then says that a society's or species' "natural evolution" is worth more than any amount of potential pain or suffering. But the Federation is also willing to do fuck-all to stop, say, an ultra-aggressive hyper-predator species that makes Klingons look like Tribbles until it steps over that warp line, and by that time it would be too late.
The Culture knows that messing with a civilization can have grave consequences, but it also knows that it's far, far better to nudge civilizations towards not being horrendous warmongering death cults than let them slaughter their way to the stars because they haven't crossed a tech limit yet. And the Culture level of interference is not to plant their people to control worlds, but to arrange events to let those worlds reach their own conclusions. Case in point, in adjusting the course of a medieval-level society, the Culture basically just spooks an army so it won't go butcher a neighbor and screwing with the development of a kingdom with a far better understanding of morality.
The Culture will absolutely admit when it isn't right, up to and including reparations for mistakes. It does not make the outright insane Federation choice that non-interference in all non-warp civilizations is optimal for every civilization, warp or non-warp. Asteroid gonna fuck up your planet? Oh, sorry, your warp test isn't until next week so you're all going to die because it's more important for the civilization to believe it died of a natural event than disrupt their history by showing aliens exist. The Culture, on the flip side, would shrug and go "welp, we ain't gonna let them fucking die from something this stupid, let's make the rescue amazing", turn it into a fireworks show, then zip down and explain everything because it doesn't just assume everybody without warp is an idiot species. Then it would explain how the Culture works, how the society isn't ready to join, but the Culture is still going to talk to them because they're still neighbors and everybody deserves a chance to wise up and join later, if they want.
And if you don't like what the Culture does? You can literally call up a vote on it and everybody will vote, if it's considered a big enough issue. And if you don't like the results of the vote? You can literally just leave and know that you had nothing to do with the Culture's choice of interference. Hell, the Culture will give you a ship to leave in. It'll give you a fleet of ships if you have enough people to need it. There might even be dissenting Minds willing to go along, and they're free to go too.
All said and done, living in or around the Federation would suck ass compared to the Culture. The Culture will happily expend a shitload of resources to, visibly or invisibly, keep something stupid from wiping out your species, the Federation will just wring its hands and go "but they'll see us and that would ruin them!"
Except that like...as has been brought up many times in the past few pages...this doesn't happen? At least not in TOS, TNG, and DS9; I haven't seen all of VOY or ENT. But in the first three shows the characters agonize and debate over it a bit and then do the right thing nearly every time, except in a few famously bad episodes.
The Prime Directive seems to be "be on your best behavior," not "never do this." Picard and Kirk violate it frequently but after due consideration, and they seem to bear no visible consequences, apparently because they're found to have made the right call.
When used properly, the Prime Directive exists to make Starfleet officers think.
In terms of TV, that's true. In terms of the in-universe society, I am not sure that is true. Dear Doctor is nominally pre-Prime directive, though it deliberately lampshades it, and it fills me with a tooth grinding rage every time I watch it, because it showcases the sort of ethical calamity the Federation exposes itself to with its philosophy of inaction.
Now granted, as @Jacobkosh says, we see a lot of exceptions made by our protagonists on TV, but I would presume that those exceptions exist to prove the rule. And the rule enshrines inaction in the face of current atrocity, for the sake of potential future harm
ETA: I just want to add this wonderful quote from Worf: "The Prime Directive is not a matter of degree. It is an absolute."
When used properly, the Prime Directive exists to make Starfleet officers think.
In terms of TV, that's true. In terms of the in-universe society, I am not sure that is true. Dear Doctor is nominally pre-Prime directive, though it deliberately lampshades it, and it fills me with a tooth grinding rage every time I watch it, because it showcases the sort of ethical calamity the Federation exposes itself to with its philosophy of inaction.
Now granted, as @Jacobkosh says, we see a lot of exceptions made by our protagonists on TV, but I would presume that those exceptions exist to prove the rule. And the rule enshrines inaction in the face of current atrocity, for the sake of potential future harm
This is why I proselytize the Rise of the Federation series despite hating Enterprise. The back of that series explores the genesis of the Prime Directive and does it well.
ETA: I just want to add this wonderful quote from Worf: "The Prime Directive is not a matter of degree. It is an absolute."
It's worth pointing out that this quote is from an argument involving lots of characters where Worf is the only one with this hardline a stance on the subject.
The more you all talk about The Culture, less interested in it I become. A story with a society that's actually as invincible and invulnerable as it claims sounds so, so boring.
One that unilaterally interferes with "lesser" civilizations because it just knows what's best is...yikes.
The concept of the Prime Directive isn't "suffering builds character," it's "having superior ability does not make us superior beings."
Yeah "suffering builds character" is like the worst description of the prime directive ever. Even Dear Doctor did better then that.
Now, there's been multiple different interpretations of the Prime Directive over the years from different writers. And some can get pretty stupid. But they all basically centre around non-interference because we don't have the right to always say what outcome is best for someone else.
I'm struck by the point Winky made above, which is that the Culture views inaction as an explicitly active ethical choice. In an extreme example: The Culture can seamlessly intervene to stop genocides happening on worlds that are less technologically advanced,, and they may well do so. The Federation may not do so, if it breaches the Prime Directive. Which arguably makes them culpable. The Culture have seemingly decided they are not OK with that, and the Federation have decided that they are.
Again, there is no standard here because no one in the writer's room has seemingly ever cared to define exactly how the Prime Directive works.
But overall there does frequently seem to be a lot of wiggle room. The idea that the Federation cannot break the Prime Directive does not match what we actually see under most interpretations. Starfleet officers seem to not draw a hard line on this issue at all. But they are wary of it and I think there's not really a coherent argument against being cautious in imposing your own morality on a situation you may well not understand.
And that's kinda important and why the comparison to the Culture is completely flawed because the Federation is just not that much different in terms of their ability to intervene in situations like that then we are. And these comparisons are deliberate since Star Trek is meant to be relatable to us, the viewer. Part of the reason for these limits is considerations for the fallibility of the people making the decisions and for the limits of what Starfleet can actually accomplish.
The comparison you should be thinking of with the Prime Directive is not The Culture, it's the present day and questions of like "Should the first world interfere in X country for 'humanitarian reasons'?". Which are really fraught with considerations of both the right to make the decision and the ability to actually do something other then just making it all worse.
Given the time period from which the series originally comes, I can't help but consider the Prime Directive in the context of the Cold War.
This is really important. People come to Star Trek from a background of just reading sci-fi novels and go "murble murble murble, why isn't this like those? Where are the people downloading their brains into clouds of boner mist?" and it's because that's not the point. Trek is trying to tell stories about the way we are today and the world we could have right now if we had the will. We don't need replicators to have a more equitable society where people can live without worrying about starving to death if they miss a shift and we don't need to wait to invent godlike computers to start building a more ethical and just government. We just need to want it and work for it.
I enjoy the Culture and other far-out sci-fi but I think sometimes people use the near-magical technology in those stories to excuse their own inaction in the real world. "Well, I could feed that homeless guy but I'd rather wait for science to invent food nanites." The fact that Star Trek characters are basically just people like you and me is important to reminding us that being better really is within our reach.
I mean to me, Player of Games was very much to demonstrate that you don't need Culture Magic to have a Better World
the Azadian Empire is hundreds of years more advanced than we are, they are basically as advanced as the United Federation of Planets, but just as barbaric Earth is today. I feel like this is to make the reader say "but you could provide for everyone and have equality! it doesn't need to be a pipe dream, you have starships and fusion reactors and AI expert systems!"
I'm pretty sure Banks is trying to get the reader to think in those terms, frustration at the Azadians amid plenty, and then realize yes they could fix their problems even given their relative technological disadvantage compared to the culture. So could we. That's us right now, we could also do those things
To me thats why Player of Games is both the best book and the best first book
ETA: I just want to add this wonderful quote from Worf: "The Prime Directive is not a matter of degree. It is an absolute."
It's worth pointing out that this quote is from an argument involving lots of characters where Worf is the only one with this hardline a stance on the subject.
Equally, he is not alone:
Kirk: ""A star captain's most solemn oath is that he will give his life, even his entire crew, rather than violate the Prime Directive." (ha!)
Picard: ""The Prime Directive is not just a set of rules; it is a philosophy… and a very correct one. History has proven again and again that whenever mankind interferes with a less developed civilization, no matter how well intentioned that interference may be, the results are invariably disastrous."
Janeway: "We have our own set of rules, which includes the Prime Directive. How many times have we been in the position of refusing to interfere when some kind of disaster threatened an alien culture? It's all very well to say we do it on the basis of an enlightened principle. But how does that feel to the aliens? I'm sure many of them think the Prime Directive is a lousy idea."
I couldn't find an especially egregious Sisko one, and that pleases me a little.
The enormous problem with the Prime Directive is that the Federation applies it along a span of civilizations from club-wielding primates to the borderline-warp-equipped, then says that a society's or species' "natural evolution" is worth more than any amount of potential pain or suffering. But the Federation is also willing to do fuck-all to stop, say, an ultra-aggressive hyper-predator species that makes Klingons look like Tribbles until it steps over that warp line, and by that time it would be too late.
The Culture knows that messing with a civilization can have grave consequences, but it also knows that it's far, far better to nudge civilizations towards not being horrendous warmongering death cults than let them slaughter their way to the stars because they haven't crossed a tech limit yet. And the Culture level of interference is not to plant their people to control worlds, but to arrange events to let those worlds reach their own conclusions. Case in point, in adjusting the course of a medieval-level society, the Culture basically just spooks an army so it won't go butcher a neighbor and screwing with the development of a kingdom with a far better understanding of morality.
The Culture will absolutely admit when it isn't right, up to and including reparations for mistakes. It does not make the outright insane Federation choice that non-interference in all non-warp civilizations is optimal for every civilization, warp or non-warp. Asteroid gonna fuck up your planet? Oh, sorry, your warp test isn't until next week so you're all going to die because it's more important for the civilization to believe it died of a natural event than disrupt their history by showing aliens exist. The Culture, on the flip side, would shrug and go "welp, we ain't gonna let them fucking die from something this stupid, let's make the rescue amazing", turn it into a fireworks show, then zip down and explain everything because it doesn't just assume everybody without warp is an idiot species. Then it would explain how the Culture works, how the society isn't ready to join, but the Culture is still going to talk to them because they're still neighbors and everybody deserves a chance to wise up and join later, if they want.
And if you don't like what the Culture does? You can literally call up a vote on it and everybody will vote, if it's considered a big enough issue. And if you don't like the results of the vote? You can literally just leave and know that you had nothing to do with the Culture's choice of interference. Hell, the Culture will give you a ship to leave in. It'll give you a fleet of ships if you have enough people to need it. There might even be dissenting Minds willing to go along, and they're free to go too.
All said and done, living in or around the Federation would suck ass compared to the Culture. The Culture will happily expend a shitload of resources to, visibly or invisibly, keep something stupid from wiping out your species, the Federation will just wring its hands and go "but they'll see us and that would ruin them!"
Except that like...as has been brought up many times in the past few pages...this doesn't happen? At least not in TOS, TNG, and DS9; I haven't seen all of VOY or ENT. But in the first three shows the characters agonize and debate over it a bit and then do the right thing nearly every time, except in a few famously bad episodes.
The Prime Directive seems to be "be on your best behavior," not "never do this." Picard and Kirk violate it frequently but after due consideration, and they seem to bear no visible consequences, apparently because they're found to have made the right call.
Picard and the crew were willing to let an entire people die rather than relocate them, and they would have died if Worf's brother hadn't secretly beamed them aboard.
Or if Data hadn't gotten a random telephone call from a little girl.
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Inquisitor772 x Penny Arcade Fight Club ChampionA fixed point in space and timeRegistered Userregular
I mean, it's called the Prime Directive. Not the Prime Law-That-Shall-Not-Be-Broken.
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Ninja Snarl PMy helmet is my burden.Ninja Snarl: Gone, but not forgotten.Registered Userregular
edited July 2021
The Prime Directive just doesn't work for anything reasonable. What would've been the situation if the Bajorrans were pre-warp when occupied by Cardassia? Would the Federation have done nothing because they were pre-warp? Would they committed everything to freeing them because it was a warp society conquering a non-warp society? Would the Federation have ignored them after the occupation because they didn't have their own warp tech yet? Then that would also bring into question dealing with the Ferengi or Klingons, neither of which developed their own warp tech.
And then there's setting the line at warp as a totally arbitrary thing. There's apparently a whole pile of ways of go FTL, several of which are superior to warp. And what happens if a society is entirely sophisticated enough to develop warp but simply lacks the materials in their home system? There could easily be a society with a more advanced philosophy and government than the Federation, but the Federation wouldn't be able to talk to it without it getting over that warp threshhold first. How about the reverse? Achieving warp tech and the Romulan, Cardassian, or Breen societies becoming more peaceful had zero correlation. Romulans want to take over and force order. Cardassia wanted the same, except with more ass-kissing from the conquered. The Breen wanted Earth for experimentation. So why is warp the limit when there's no correlation between sophisticated tech and sophisticated moral philosophy?
On basically every point, the Prime Directive is just lousy. It doesn't stop officers intent on thinking around it or outright ignoring it, and it fucks over a lot of worlds when officers are sticklers for it. It's just not a good piece of writing or philosophy, no matter how much it gets massaged. It always should've been the "Prime Guideline" or something, where it's the standing policy but not even remotely a concrete rule.
The Prime Directive just doesn't work for anything reasonable. What would've been the situation if the Bajorrans were pre-warp when occupied by Cardassia?
Did Star Fleet do anything with Bajor prior to the Cardassians retreating?
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daveNYCWhy universe hate Waspinator?Registered Userregular
The problem with the use of the prime directive in the show is that they end up having arguments about interfering in extinction events. Genocide, especially nasty wars, famine, etc. I could get behind arguing over interference in those situations. I'd be in favor of stepping in and wrecking some level of face, but there's a discussion to be had over the value of letting cultures develop on their own even if it involves them making horrible mistakes along the way. But the writers keep busting out situations where an entire species is going to die out, possibly quite painfully, and the initial position of the command staff is to shrug and go 'whelp'. The outcome from not interfering is too extreme for me to take the debate seriously. The least they could do is make the alien species weirdly dangerous in some way. Krogan, Mind Flayers, Magog, just something that could at least provide a practical reason for not wanting to save them. Instead it's just random peeps with strange foreheads who get to die because 'better dead than knowing that the Federation exists' is somehow a valid starting point for discussion.
Unless it's Dear Doctor, where Darwin cares not from where the blood flows. That one is like FBI watch list material.
Shut up, Mr. Burton! You were not brought upon this world to get it!
In TOS (and, ironically, Into Darkness), when it came to extinction events, the Prime Directive was all about "so don't get caught preventing them." It was TNG and later that gave us the strict dogmatic version, which asserted that a species' "natural development" might be simply to end, to some random, unforeseeable and unpreventable (at their TL) catastrophe. Again, not only is this kind of dumb (and smacks of the very superstition that TNG's humanity claim to have put behind them - "do not interfere in the ways of Fate and plans of the gods, lest you be smote for your hubris!"), in practice it's always set up so that the crew can do the morally right thing (by the audience's lights) by breaking this rule that's been elevated to an inviolable absolute. Like all of those Bad Admirals, its dramatic purpose is to be wrong and opposed; and that, IMO, makes it a bad rule (in-universe) and a cheap plot device (out of).
The Prime Directive just doesn't work for anything reasonable. What would've been the situation if the Bajorrans were pre-warp when occupied by Cardassia? Would the Federation have done nothing because they were pre-warp? Would they committed everything to freeing them because it was a warp society conquering a non-warp society? Would the Federation have ignored them after the occupation because they didn't have their own warp tech yet? Then that would also bring into question dealing with the Ferengi or Klingons, neither of which developed their own warp tech.
And then there's setting the line at warp as a totally arbitrary thing. There's apparently a whole pile of ways of go FTL, several of which are superior to warp. And what happens if a society is entirely sophisticated enough to develop warp but simply lacks the materials in their home system? There could easily be a society with a more advanced philosophy and government than the Federation, but the Federation wouldn't be able to talk to it without it getting over that warp threshhold first. How about the reverse? Achieving warp tech and the Romulan, Cardassian, or Breen societies becoming more peaceful had zero correlation. Romulans want to take over and force order. Cardassia wanted the same, except with more ass-kissing from the conquered. The Breen wanted Earth for experimentation. So why is warp the limit when there's no correlation between sophisticated tech and sophisticated moral philosophy?
On basically every point, the Prime Directive is just lousy. It doesn't stop officers intent on thinking around it or outright ignoring it, and it fucks over a lot of worlds when officers are sticklers for it. It's just not a good piece of writing or philosophy, no matter how much it gets massaged. It always should've been the "Prime Guideline" or something, where it's the standing policy but not even remotely a concrete rule.
As soon as a civ is warp / ftl capable, the prime directive goes out the window, because you can't prevent them from just looking around.
It does not go out the window, but simply being seen or communicating is no longer considered interference, which in turn allows a lot of other things to stop being interference. Starfleet still can't try to influence their government or social policy and if they think becoming a Cardassian vassal world is a great deal Starfleet can't pick a fight with Cardassia to protect them.
It applied during the Klingon succession war, which was a situation involving two large space empires, and the Bajoran occupation, which was the conquest of one warp capable civilization by another. All three TNG era series applied it to regional interstellar balance of power, particularly in response to requests like, "Hey, that magic food hole in your wall would solve a lot of problems for us a lot easier than having your ship babysit the planet forever."
I almost like the Prime Directive being a dogmatic thing, as it demonstrates that humanity and the Federation still have further to go on their journey to self betterment. Like the ban on genetic tampering, they still fear the worst excesses of the past and allow that fear to actively stymie their future.
I almost like the Prime Directive being a dogmatic thing, as it demonstrates that humanity and the Federation still have further to go on their journey to self betterment. Like the ban on genetic tampering, they still fear the worst excesses of the past and allow that fear to actively stymie their future.
It meant there was still room to grow.
The problem with that is that the show presents them like objectively good things. The message is that those are the things we need to grow into, not out of.
Star Trek is very much rooted in the place and time of its creation (The US, mostly of the '90s) and its perception of foreign relations is a counter to that.
Non-intervention seems pretty good when the only alternative you can conceive is bombing and economic destruction, no matter what seemingly nice rhetoric is used.
It's also the US view of the state as inherently harmful pushed to the international level. The same arguments are used against universal healthcare and welfare, for example.
It's incredibly pessimistic: it starts with the assumption that it is impossible to help others, and that all good intentions are nothing more than delusions.
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One that unilaterally interferes with "lesser" civilizations because it just knows what's best is...yikes.
The concept of the Prime Directive isn't "suffering builds character," it's "having superior ability does not make us superior beings."
It's a lot more subtle and complex that descriptions of it in this thread can really describe.
That said, the best stories about The Culture are ones in which it brushes up against other societies, societies where you can lose everything, or be poverty stricken, or be denied your rights because of an accident of birth like your gender.
I've mentioned Player of Games before, and that is a story where a Culture man visits a multi-planet empire, and said empire is, socially speaking, very much like our society. At home safe in the Culture, the main character isn't under any real threats, and the beginning of the book is about how that's a problem for him and he's bored with life where there are no real gambles. When he eventually gets to the alien empire, his life becomes filled with dangers from every corner, starting small with humiliation, and ramping up over time to the threats of castration and death. That story is very good and keeps me on the edge of my seat with each new challenge to the protagonist - though the most interesting challenges are spiritual and mental.
There’s also interference and interference. The Culture’s Special Circumstances subdivision doesn’t exist, but if it did, it would exist to figure out where to deploy a scalpel and where to deploy the metaphorical tactical nuke. They tend not to get too visibly involved in the day to day of your average corporate dystopia, but might arrange for politically active squillionaires to be given life extension treatments in return for improving the broader base of social conditions. On the other hand, that government running death camps may suffer a sudden series of perfectly explainable but unexpected tactical reverses or the occasional heart attack.
But all this stuff isn’t really the focus of the Culture books anyway; it’s just looking outward as a civilisation that has decided it has things pretty good, thank you very much, and wants to make things elsewhere better.
The books themselves tend to focus on Culture misfits brushing up against the edges of other, less chill civilisations.
It’s very hard to sell the series; but it’s all good.
ETA: you know what, I’ll let Banks talk about what the Culture is, himself. I do wonder if the Federation would be better off emulating the Culture…
http://www.vavatch.co.uk/books/banks/cultnote.htm
ETA2, a key para from the above link, which is loooong:
“ In general the Culture doesn't actively encourage immigration; it looks too much like a disguised form of colonialism. Contact's preferred methods are intended to help other civilisations develop their own potential as a whole, and are designed to neither leech away their best and brightest, nor turn such civilisations into miniature versions of the Culture. Individuals, groups and even whole lesser civilisations do become part of the Culture on occasion, however, if there seems to be a particularly good reason (and if Contact reckons it won't upset any other interested parties in the locality).”
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In fact this is literally the most divisive issue in the entire book series within the Culture itself. But to do absolutely nothing in the face of unspeakable horror is to accept moral relativism at face value. The Culture, mostly, believes that inaction is itself a stance. Neutrality is itself a position, it is not a lack of position. Failing to oppose the Nazis is supporting the Nazis. When they went the war, the only time they went to war, a significant minority of people left the Culture because they believed that violent interference was never justified no matter how expansionist and awful the civilization is.
Keeping in mind that entire star systems join and leave the Culture all the time, because they are anarchistic. So to compare the Federation interfering in another race's affairs to the Culture is incorrect, the Culture is not a monolith and has no government, and it spans a huge percentage of the galaxy. If they all agree on something, it's probably worth agreeing.
Basically, instead of saying "interference is something we always avoid because it might lead to space hitler", they say "what are the chances of space hitler arriving if we save these people? lets actually work the problem, the messy variables, get our hands dirty, and take responsibility for our place in the galaxy"
The only book I haven't read is about a time they utterly fucked it up and made everything worse, which I hear is a good book
This is a really incorrect perception of the Culture and broadly what it's "about". In the sense of it being "invincible and invulnerable" the books are largely attempting to demonstrate concepts of scale, and one of the very significant things Banks tries to impart is the idea of how incredible the gulfs in scale can be, whether they be sheer size, or age, or mental capacity, or technological development, or ethical development. You are never given the sense that the Culture simply wins out of hand because the author says so, Banks goes to great lengths to establish the sheer enormity of the Culture, its history, and what it represents ethically, philosophically, and technologically. Banks coined the term "Outside Context Problem" and these are the sorts of things he's deliberately exploring, situations in which individuals or societies butt up against massive problems of scale that dwarf them and everything they have the context to deal with. And he doesn't force these things onto the reader either, in fact he generally comes from perspectives either outside of or critical of the Culture and uses this to flesh out what the Culture is and what the ethical dilemmas inside and on the periphery of it are.
And, for that matter, the books explore in great detail the primary ethical dilemma of the Culture and what it does to other civilizations, and the books don't at all shy away from drawing attention to the uglier or contentious aspects of what it does. The books do posit the idea that there are a core set of ethics that people can hold that are ultimately the better way to construct a society, and beyond that the idea that with enough knowledge and understanding you actually can be in a position to say what will lessen the suffering of others (often Star Trek tows this line extremely clearly too, the Federation's ethics are depicted as clearly ethically superior to those of, say, the Cardassians). The Culture novels posit that on the extreme end of this scale you run into an absolute necessity to intervene, because the amount of suffering that is being caused is too great to sit aside and watch. And the Culture novels really do not shy away from demonstrating the amount of suffering that is possible when there are flaws in the ethical constraints you're operating under.
But the books also go to pretty great lengths to not push this concept of "having superior ability makes us superior beings" as well. One of the central tensions running through the books is what the value of the individual human life is in a society where there are AI Minds running everything, and it dwells pretty heavily on this and what it means for individuals to have choice and how one can actually maximize that choice. It depicts situations where the Culture was explicitly mistaken or flawed in their judgment, or lacked the capacity to intervene to create the best outcome, and it asks whether there's still not a necessity to make those mistakes in those positions. They have done the math, they have collected the data; they have actual evidence-based reasons to believe that interfering with other societies will improve the lives of individuals inside of them, and they have what they feel is a moral imperative to intervene in accordance with their ethical position.
The Culture doesn't consider one of its members more valuable than any random person anywhere in the cosmos. They don't have nationalism as we understand it, or patriotism. Stopping 5 culture minds who have done the math that giving Turbomedicine to World A because you disagree with the concept of intervention - and being able to do so because you have more firepower than them - is no morally different than what they are doing. Except you're doing it out of devotion to an unthinking dogma: interference is wrong, and they're doing what they do because they believe it will help, even if they get it wrong sometimes. Instead, wouldn't the best course be to engage with them, and provide counterpoints to their solutions if you find holes in them?
It's a messy issue, and the books don't present it any other way
For all that, everyone in Star Trek is a good deal more smug than the people in the Culture. Even in Player of Games where he's interacting with a society that is just as barbaric as our own, he gives them a fair shake and legitimately entertains all of the aspects of their society, even if he simply can't wrap his head around certain concepts like racism
Yeah "suffering builds character" is like the worst description of the prime directive ever. Even Dear Doctor did better then that.
Now, there's been multiple different interpretations of the Prime Directive over the years from different writers. And some can get pretty stupid. But they all basically centre around non-interference because we don't have the right to always say what outcome is best for someone else.
I'm struck by the point @Winky made above, which is that the Culture views inaction as an explicitly active ethical choice. In an extreme example: The Culture can seamlessly intervene to stop genocides happening on worlds that are less technologically advanced,, and they may well do so. The Federation may not do so, if it breaches the Prime Directive. Which arguably makes them culpable. The Culture have seemingly decided they are not OK with that, and the Federation have decided that they are.
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This is true. But the tension between the Federation as a practical entity, and the ideal of the Prime Directive, versus the ethical implications of a society which is OK with its provisions are...striking. Sure, we see captains make exceptions all the time, but one assumes that exceptions exist as a minority in the face of a rule which allows for any cruelty to be left unremarked when done by a non-Federation outgroup. Like, sure, don't intervene if you don't want to, but don't get all smug about it.
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Well, I'm glad it's more complex than I initially thought. I'll put it on the list. People talk about "Consider Plebias" a lot. Is that a good place to start?
To me, the Prime Directive is less about avoiding Space Hitlers and more about avoiding colonialism. I'm sure many 19th Century Europeans genuinely wanted to help Africans and they had entire scientific fields to justify their ethical positions. And they were wrong. Good intentions are necessary but not sufficient to avoid damaging or destroying other cultures.
The Prime Directive is best described as an admission that the Federation is not always right.
This is best shown with the Maquis, where the Federation held to its principles and only made things worse. Had Starfleet crushed Cardassia in the 2350s, it's possible that the Dominion War never happens. Of course, it was impossible for anyone to know that at the time—and that's the point. The Federation doesn't always know. What seems like the clear choice today might reveal itself to be the exact wrong one tomorrow. So if you're going to interfere—and sometimes it's imperative to do so—you have do it carefully, eyes wide open, without any chauvinistic certainty in a "Federation Man's Burden."
Anyway, that's my Watsonian interpretation of the Prime Directive. The Doylist one is that it got Flanderized by lazy writers so that most of the time characters argue whether they should let people die instead of considering the ethical use of power.
It's not bad to read them in release order, but Consider Phlebas is often thought of as a bad place to start because it centers around a protagonist who is actively hostile to the Culture and presents it from their point of view, and little of it actually takes place in the Culture. I think it's a neat way of introduction to the Culture as a concept and the broader setting of the galaxy, but if you're attempting to get as good an idea of what the Culture is really like in as few books as possible I recommend the order of Player of Games -> Excession.
I'd go Player of Games (this is a bit of the Culture acting on another entity) - > Consider Phlebas (this is what the Culture looks like from the perspective of another entity) -> Use of Weapons (this is the Culture getting involved at a more intimate level) -> Excession (galactic scale high concept sci-fi) -> The rest
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Again, there is no standard here because no one in the writer's room has seemingly ever cared to define exactly how the Prime Directive works.
But overall there does frequently seem to be a lot of wiggle room. The idea that the Federation cannot break the Prime Directive does not match what we actually see under most interpretations. Starfleet officers seem to not draw a hard line on this issue at all. But they are wary of it and I think there's not really a coherent argument against being cautious in imposing your own morality on a situation you may well not understand.
And that's kinda important and why the comparison to the Culture is completely flawed because the Federation is just not that much different in terms of their ability to intervene in situations like that then we are. And these comparisons are deliberate since Star Trek is meant to be relatable to us, the viewer. Part of the reason for these limits is considerations for the fallibility of the people making the decisions and for the limits of what Starfleet can actually accomplish.
The comparison you should be thinking of with the Prime Directive is not The Culture, it's the present day and questions of like "Should the first world interfere in X country for 'humanitarian reasons'?". Which are really fraught with considerations of both the right to make the decision and the ability to actually do something other then just making it all worse.
Given the time period from which the series originally comes, I can't help but consider the Prime Directive in the context of the Cold War.
Also, I think CP is just a bit too long of a book and could have used another editing pass. I strongly believe that after about 350-400 pages each additional 100 pages in a novel (especially a sci-fi/fantasy novel) needs to work progressively harder to justify itself, and I don't think every episode in Consider Phlebas does that.
The Player of Games is short, tight, punchy and impactful, and when disquieting or upsetting things happen they are strictly in service of establishing a tone and telling the story instead of kind of "heh heh heh, gonna blow their minds with this one."
The culture philosophy was pretty much created because of exactly that - you don't always have the right to day what's the best outcome for a given civilization, but...
Do you sometimes?
Given the ways the federation prime directive was shown to cause suffering numerous times, and, like you said, the fact that no two authors of a star trek episode seem to agree on what exactly the prime directive actually means or even is supposed to mean, that question is also asked in star trek.
But in the culture novels, it's not just a vehicle to cause drama for one episode among dozens. It's a topic treated with the gravitas it deserves.
I'd substitute Consider Phlebas with Look to Windward, personally.
This is really important. People come to Star Trek from a background of just reading sci-fi novels and go "murble murble murble, why isn't this like those? Where are the people downloading their brains into clouds of boner mist?" and it's because that's not the point. Trek is trying to tell stories about the way we are today and the world we could have right now if we had the will. We don't need replicators to have a more equitable society where people can live without worrying about starving to death if they miss a shift and we don't need to wait to invent godlike computers to start building a more ethical and just government. We just need to want it and work for it.
I enjoy the Culture and other far-out sci-fi but I think sometimes people use the near-magical technology in those stories to excuse their own inaction in the real world. "Well, I could feed that homeless guy but I'd rather wait for science to invent food nanites." The fact that Star Trek characters are basically just people like you and me is important to reminding us that being better really is within our reach.
The Culture knows that messing with a civilization can have grave consequences, but it also knows that it's far, far better to nudge civilizations towards not being horrendous warmongering death cults than let them slaughter their way to the stars because they haven't crossed a tech limit yet. And the Culture level of interference is not to plant their people to control worlds, but to arrange events to let those worlds reach their own conclusions. Case in point, in adjusting the course of a medieval-level society, the Culture basically just spooks an army so it won't go butcher a neighbor and screwing with the development of a kingdom with a far better understanding of morality.
The Culture will absolutely admit when it isn't right, up to and including reparations for mistakes. It does not make the outright insane Federation choice that non-interference in all non-warp civilizations is optimal for every civilization, warp or non-warp. Asteroid gonna fuck up your planet? Oh, sorry, your warp test isn't until next week so you're all going to die because it's more important for the civilization to believe it died of a natural event than disrupt their history by showing aliens exist. The Culture, on the flip side, would shrug and go "welp, we ain't gonna let them fucking die from something this stupid, let's make the rescue amazing", turn it into a fireworks show, then zip down and explain everything because it doesn't just assume everybody without warp is an idiot species. Then it would explain how the Culture works, how the society isn't ready to join, but the Culture is still going to talk to them because they're still neighbors and everybody deserves a chance to wise up and join later, if they want.
And if you don't like what the Culture does? You can literally call up a vote on it and everybody will vote, if it's considered a big enough issue. And if you don't like the results of the vote? You can literally just leave and know that you had nothing to do with the Culture's choice of interference. Hell, the Culture will give you a ship to leave in. It'll give you a fleet of ships if you have enough people to need it. There might even be dissenting Minds willing to go along, and they're free to go too.
All said and done, living in or around the Federation would suck ass compared to the Culture. The Culture will happily expend a shitload of resources to, visibly or invisibly, keep something stupid from wiping out your species, the Federation will just wring its hands and go "but they'll see us and that would ruin them!"
For what it's worth, I agree!
But equally, I think that we can't ignore the ways that Trek encourages that behaviour.
And the Prime Directive is perhaps the, er, prime example. It is an argument for inaction in the face of atrocity. That Captains on our screen ignore it is also an active choice, as is when they do so. Or when they don't. Of course we can map the Prime Directive back to the real world. Of course we can. But it carries the same ethical payload anyway.
Trek is telling stories about the way the world is today, but so is The Culture. They're just telling different versions of those stories. And that's OK! Maybe the points they are making are in parallel, like "Sometimes you might have to intervene in some stuff because you can help, but it might go wrong" and "Sometimes you might want to not intervene in some stuff, it might get worse if you do". And those are both valid points. But the Federation and the Culture are two big, fictional utopia's, and how they approach and present this to us, here, in the real world, matters. Because people read books, and then they think, and they watch shows, and they think. The messages from both of those things matter. And so...we discuss about them in the fiction, because we care about what that says and how it maps back to us.
Otherwise, Star Trek really is just wagon train to the stars, and the Culture is just a bunch of Minds jerking one out.
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You would not believe how fast a Mind can jerk one out for you. Here comes the good part, we'll slow it down...
Except that like...as has been brought up many times in the past few pages...this doesn't happen? At least not in TOS, TNG, and DS9; I haven't seen all of VOY or ENT. But in the first three shows the characters agonize and debate over it a bit and then do the right thing nearly every time, except in a few famously bad episodes.
The Prime Directive seems to be "be on your best behavior," not "never do this." Picard and Kirk violate it frequently but after due consideration, and they seem to bear no visible consequences, apparently because they're found to have made the right call.
In terms of TV, that's true. In terms of the in-universe society, I am not sure that is true.
Dear Doctor is nominally pre-Prime directive, though it deliberately lampshades it, and it fills me with a tooth grinding rage every time I watch it, because it showcases the sort of ethical calamity the Federation exposes itself to with its philosophy of inaction.
Now granted, as @Jacobkosh says, we see a lot of exceptions made by our protagonists on TV, but I would presume that those exceptions exist to prove the rule. And the rule enshrines inaction in the face of current atrocity, for the sake of potential future harm
ETA: I just want to add this wonderful quote from Worf: "The Prime Directive is not a matter of degree. It is an absolute."
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This is why I proselytize the Rise of the Federation series despite hating Enterprise. The back of that series explores the genesis of the Prime Directive and does it well.
It's worth pointing out that this quote is from an argument involving lots of characters where Worf is the only one with this hardline a stance on the subject.
I mean to me, Player of Games was very much to demonstrate that you don't need Culture Magic to have a Better World
the Azadian Empire is hundreds of years more advanced than we are, they are basically as advanced as the United Federation of Planets, but just as barbaric Earth is today. I feel like this is to make the reader say "but you could provide for everyone and have equality! it doesn't need to be a pipe dream, you have starships and fusion reactors and AI expert systems!"
I'm pretty sure Banks is trying to get the reader to think in those terms, frustration at the Azadians amid plenty, and then realize yes they could fix their problems even given their relative technological disadvantage compared to the culture. So could we. That's us right now, we could also do those things
To me thats why Player of Games is both the best book and the best first book
Equally, he is not alone:
Kirk: ""A star captain's most solemn oath is that he will give his life, even his entire crew, rather than violate the Prime Directive." (ha!)
Picard: ""The Prime Directive is not just a set of rules; it is a philosophy… and a very correct one. History has proven again and again that whenever mankind interferes with a less developed civilization, no matter how well intentioned that interference may be, the results are invariably disastrous."
Janeway: "We have our own set of rules, which includes the Prime Directive. How many times have we been in the position of refusing to interfere when some kind of disaster threatened an alien culture? It's all very well to say we do it on the basis of an enlightened principle. But how does that feel to the aliens? I'm sure many of them think the Prime Directive is a lousy idea."
I couldn't find an especially egregious Sisko one, and that pleases me a little.
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Picard and the crew were willing to let an entire people die rather than relocate them, and they would have died if Worf's brother hadn't secretly beamed them aboard.
And then there's setting the line at warp as a totally arbitrary thing. There's apparently a whole pile of ways of go FTL, several of which are superior to warp. And what happens if a society is entirely sophisticated enough to develop warp but simply lacks the materials in their home system? There could easily be a society with a more advanced philosophy and government than the Federation, but the Federation wouldn't be able to talk to it without it getting over that warp threshhold first. How about the reverse? Achieving warp tech and the Romulan, Cardassian, or Breen societies becoming more peaceful had zero correlation. Romulans want to take over and force order. Cardassia wanted the same, except with more ass-kissing from the conquered. The Breen wanted Earth for experimentation. So why is warp the limit when there's no correlation between sophisticated tech and sophisticated moral philosophy?
On basically every point, the Prime Directive is just lousy. It doesn't stop officers intent on thinking around it or outright ignoring it, and it fucks over a lot of worlds when officers are sticklers for it. It's just not a good piece of writing or philosophy, no matter how much it gets massaged. It always should've been the "Prime Guideline" or something, where it's the standing policy but not even remotely a concrete rule.
Did Star Fleet do anything with Bajor prior to the Cardassians retreating?
Unless it's Dear Doctor, where Darwin cares not from where the blood flows. That one is like FBI watch list material.
As soon as a civ is warp / ftl capable, the prime directive goes out the window, because you can't prevent them from just looking around.
It applied during the Klingon succession war, which was a situation involving two large space empires, and the Bajoran occupation, which was the conquest of one warp capable civilization by another. All three TNG era series applied it to regional interstellar balance of power, particularly in response to requests like, "Hey, that magic food hole in your wall would solve a lot of problems for us a lot easier than having your ship babysit the planet forever."
It meant there was still room to grow.
The problem with that is that the show presents them like objectively good things. The message is that those are the things we need to grow into, not out of.
Star Trek is very much rooted in the place and time of its creation (The US, mostly of the '90s) and its perception of foreign relations is a counter to that.
Non-intervention seems pretty good when the only alternative you can conceive is bombing and economic destruction, no matter what seemingly nice rhetoric is used.
It's also the US view of the state as inherently harmful pushed to the international level. The same arguments are used against universal healthcare and welfare, for example.
It's incredibly pessimistic: it starts with the assumption that it is impossible to help others, and that all good intentions are nothing more than delusions.