TNG - The Masterpiece Society

[pilight]

I think Picard is thinking about the decision to grant asylum to the people who wanted to leave rather than the decision to save lives when he's pondering the PD. If you choose contaminate over exterminate the damage you do is unfortunate but is the price they have to pay to stay alive. But Picard didn't have to agree to take those who wanted to leave. He could have used the PD to justify refusing them but he didn't. That's what he's agonizing over in the coda.

[Madner Kami]

"This is just a thing. Things can be replaced. Lives cannot."

Is this true in a society that genegineers and (possibly) clones it's citizens to such a degree? I feel each "individual" would be very much replacable, as they could literally tailor-remake their society back into existence, as long as the technology and philosophy continue to exist.

[clearspira]

"This is just a thing. Things can be replaced. Lives cannot."

Is this true in a society that genegineers and (possibly) clones it's citizens to such a degree? I feel each "individual" would be very much replacable, as they could literally tailor-remake their society back into existence, as long as the technology and philosophy continue to exist.

Rome fell to the barbarians and yet there is still a Rome. Athens fell to the Romans and yet there is still an Athens. Egypt fell to the Romans and yet there is still Egypt. When this colony fell however, it fell completely. As Chuck noted, the problem wasn't the concept, the problem was that they are stagnant and short-sighted. So yeah, they could settle somewhere else. But that colony is probably just as doomed.

The closest historical precedent I can think of is Sparta. A city-state so ruled by inflexible conservatism that when presented with clear evidence that they were dying off as a people they couldn't conceive of any other way of life but their own.

[LordFeagans]

I would hate to be a child in that society. Imagine, you're in school, growing up with your friends and classmates. You discover that your best friend is supposed to be the future leader of the society, your brother is going to be one of the head engineers and there you are, getting your soul crushed as you discover that your future career is going to be cleaning the toilets and restocking the toilet paper and tampon dispensers, then you're told: "Oh, don't worry, you'll grow to love what you do." You tell your friends the bad news and the one who will be the future leader laughs, then purposely clogs the toilet and tells you that it's time to start on your grand career and plunge his crapper. Then as you grow up you discover that there is the perfect number of toilet cleaners in this perfect society, and it's just you. You have no peers, you have no coworkers, it's just you and your plunger and a society that claims to be perfect, but still chooses to indulge in "Taco Tuesday".

[AllanO]

I actually always remembered the Prime Directive part of this episode and thought it was actually kind of insightful (you can help in ways that causes unintended and substantive harm) and I don't think the actual position Chuck takes is materially different from the position the episode plumps for. Note Picard laments the possible destruction of the society while still being quite willing to take on the refugees/asylum seekers who have petitioned to leave and whose absence will destabilize and possibly destroy the society. Materially Picard's position is that it is an imperfect solution that still was justified because it achieved the best trade offs of gains (saving lives, respecting personal freedom etc.) over losses (destabilizing the society by removing key members) and that is materially Chuck's position. The differences is just rhetorically Picard describes the imperfection in terms of the Prime Directive, but despite arguably talking in absolutes he does not act on those absolutes, he makes the relative trade offs.

There are other positions under one the destruction of the Master Piece Society while preserving the lives of those in it, is no imperfect solution at all because the society does not matter at all or even should be destroyed because it is flawed or insufficient. I think that is more the position Picard's musings tell against, they do not really tell for the positions that would not have tried to do something about the disaster or not accepted the asylum seekers. I think Chuck is admitting a lot of the case for the Prime Directive position by admitting that the unintended consequences were in any sense bad. Picard's musings come off to me as more saying he wishes they had found another way and he has to wonder if he fully grappled with the considerations at stake when made his decisions, but I don't think he ever says as such he would make different decisions nor does he reverse decisions like those about taking asylum seekers he has made but could easily change.

Just in terms of defining the moral calculus, Chuck's says that preserving the society is just an ideal whereas saving lives is a moral imperative, I don't think the distinction is much of a distinction. If you can't save everyone you should save all the lives you can not fail to save anyone because you can't save everyone. You should try to save everyone but that may not be possible, but that just means saving everyone is the ideal, while saving who you can is the moral imperative. So saying saving the society is the ideal makes it a goal not unlike saving everyone, in reality circumstances and other priorities may prevent it and so your imperative becomes engineering some more limited outcome. The difference is that the way Picard talks he might be denying that the individual lives take priority over social and cultural issues, but in fact in his actions he shows that actually he is still prioritizing lives and personal freedom over society.

It is interesting to note that this episode takes a different view from Pike in the Discovery episode where they discover Terralysium the world that the Red Angel put a bunch of humans on during World War III. Pike declares that the Prime Directive does apply in that case. Whereas here it automatically does not apply to the humans in this episode. Just in case we are keeping score (like I'm not a stickler for cannon or anything it just interesting to note).

In terms of Prime Directive considerations in general my sense is that in the case of post-Warp/interstellar civilizations that request aid in dealing with natural disasters (or indeed the ravages of war etc.) in general there is not a prime directive violation in doing that. Although there may have been cases where they did not. Also in general the Federation seems willing to take asylum seekers from anywhere without worrying about interfering with internal affairs. So assuming we consider these colonists part of an interstellar civilization the Enterprise (Federation etc.) would presumably have dealt with them much as they did whether they were aliens covered by the Prime Directive, but you could always wonder if you were as circumspect as you should have been in your actions etc.

It is more often in pre-warp non-interstellar civilizations where the prime directive gets invoked to not do anything. I would tend to agree the cases where the refuse to save civilizations from natural disasters that could be prevented make little or no sense. However I do think the whole having more restrictions around contact with pre-warp civilizations makes a lot of sense, even if some of the applications and justification of those restrictions (the Prime Directive) have been coco-bananas.

Of course the Prime Directive since TOS has as much been about creating drama, enunciating a dilemma for characters to have a consistent and rigorous philosophy. So any attempt to build a coherent position out of the disparate examples is going to be a process of picking example you like or find striking and ignoring the ones you don't like or feel are weird (outliers etc.). I guess I reconstruct my Prime Directive more sympathetically than Chuck and the one I come up with sounds a lot like the anti-colonialist anti-exploitation etc. position he thinks is reasonable.

"This is just a thing. Things can be replaced. Lives cannot."

Is this true in a society that genegineers and (possibly) clones it's citizens to such a degree? I feel each "individual" would be very much replacable, as they could literally tailor-remake their society back into existence, as long as the technology and philosophy continue to exist.

It is clear from the way the crisis at the end of the episode is framed that they do not have quick grow fully trained and competent humanoids technology on the colony and that the loss of a large number of people will destabilize and possibly destroy it because they can not easily replace large numbers. Whether they should have had such technology given that apparently the cloners of Up the Long Ladder that seemed to be of a similar technological junction (being Earthers of a similar time period etc.) did is another question, but the episode frames it that that don't.

[Al-1701]

I wonder if Picard's comment was meant to be earlier in the episode, like when they first face the fact that people want to leave. Because then we would get the rebuttal. The society was doomed, but there's still hope for the people.

But I do not like how the Prime Directive evolved under Berman. It was meant as a rebuke of the Truman Doctrine (and Roddenberry would be proven right as the Truman Doctrine has been a major source of our foreign policy problems) as well as colonialism (which is another major source of our foreign policy problems). However, he used it as a cheap tool to form pseudo-intellectual drama. This did start while Roddenberry was still alive, but it got real bad as Berman assumed more and more control.

The Prime Directive seemed to be invoked to justify their unwillingness to get their hands dirty and make hard decisions. This society is going to collapse, but it was a house of cards waiting for someone to bump the table. It just happened to be you. A doomed race goes from being alone in the universe to being thrust into one teeming with life which is going to be a massive shock but they will adapt.

[Archanubis]

And what's funny is season 3 rejected this idea of the societal ideal being more important than staying alive in "Ensigns of Command" - "This is just a thing. Things can be replaced. Lives cannot."

Wish they'd have remembered that when they came up with the Maquis. Especially since those colonies, as far as Trek told us, weren't around as long as the one in "Ensigns of Command."

[Durandal_1707]

I've always thought the biggest argument against the efficacy of the Masterpiece Society's social planning was that kid attempting to play Chopin. If that's what they consider the epitome of that job, then I don't have much faith in the rest of them...

[McAvoy]

I would hate to be a child in that society. Imagine, you're in school, growing up with your friends and classmates. You discover that your best friend is supposed to be the future leader of the society, your brother is going to be one of the head engineers and there you are, getting your soul crushed as you discover that your future career is going to be cleaning the toilets and restocking the toilet paper and tampon dispensers, then you're told: "Oh, don't worry, you'll grow to love what you do." You tell your friends the bad news and the one who will be the future leader laughs, then purposely clogs the toilet and tells you that it's time to start on your grand career and plunge his crapper. Then as you grow up you discover that there is the perfect number of toilet cleaners in this perfect society, and it's just you. You have no peers, you have no coworkers, it's just you and your plunger and a society that claims to be perfect, but still chooses to indulge in "Taco Tuesday".

Damn that was an amusing story you got there. Write a novel, I'd read it.

[LordFeagans]

I would hate to be a child in that society. Imagine, you're in school, growing up with your friends and classmates. You discover that your best friend is supposed to be the future leader of the society, your brother is going to be one of the head engineers and there you are, getting your soul crushed as you discover that your future career is going to be cleaning the toilets and restocking the toilet paper and tampon dispensers, then you're told: "Oh, don't worry, you'll grow to love what you do." You tell your friends the bad news and the one who will be the future leader laughs, then purposely clogs the toilet and tells you that it's time to start on your grand career and plunge his crapper. Then as you grow up you discover that there is the perfect number of toilet cleaners in this perfect society, and it's just you. You have no peers, you have no coworkers, it's just you and your plunger and a society that claims to be perfect, but still chooses to indulge in "Taco Tuesday".

Damn that was an amusing story you got there. Write a novel, I'd read it.

You know, after I wrote that, I thought about that more.

Joe is 13 years old and goes to his counselor to find out what he was literally born to do in this perfect world. His best friend was told that he was going to be the future colony leader. His sister was told that she was going to be the next great opera singer. His crush is going to be the next leading genetic scientist. He can't wait to find out what he's going to do. His counselor looks at his files and profile charts. She says "Huh, this only comes up once in seventy years. This is amazing. I had to check to see if this was an error, but no, it's no error."

Joe thinks: "Once in seventy years? Whoa, this is amazing, it's like I'm some sort of prophecized legend come to life." Excitedly he asks: "What is, what am I going to be doing?!"

The counselor swallows hard, looks around, unsure of how to answer this question, but its got to be answered. She decided to just cut straight to the point. "You're going to be the guy who cleans and unclogs all the colony toilets, installs new ones, and restocks the toilet paper rolls and tampon dispensers."

He can't believe it. His heart just sank. He can't process what he's just heard. He wants to ask if she's joking, but remembered just recently his overwhelming desire to replace the urinal cake in the school restroom just yesterday. Then it hits him: this includes urinals. "I didn't know we had people who did that."

"We don't have people who do that, we have one, one at a time. Bob is getting rather old, but it didn't occur to me that he was that old."

Heartbroken, Joe goes home. His friends and sister are celebrating and bragging about what they are going to become in their adulthood. Joe has not only learned what he is going to be doing with his life, but also discovered that there is no actual training or schooling for this. The counselor actually suggested dropping out and shadowing Bob for the next several years.

He tells his parents. His dad is angry. His mom says "Damnit. I am going to get a lawyer and sue the engineering algorithm that created YOU."

Junior High School is a mix of classroom learning that any teenager goes through and the start of prepping for their careers. Joe comes home every night and during dinner he hears about how his sister is rehearsing for the upcoming musical and she hasn't gotten a lead role yet, she's showing real promise. His dad tells him of Joe's best friend. He's taking his first civil engineering classes. Finally, as Joe is scooping out a spoonful of peas to put onto his plate, his mother asks, with a scowl, "So, tell me about your day son, make me proud to be the mom of the future crapper cleaner." Joe pours the peas onto his plate and says "Today I learned about bleach."

His mom rolls her eyes. "Today I was having lunch with Patricia. Her son is training to improve the structural integrity of this biodome. Next time there is a tremor, we won't even feel it unless it is a seven on the rictor scale. Annie, her son is genetically engineering the crops to improve output and will decay slower so it will last longer before we will need to toss it out. Then I had to face the embarrassment from them when I had to pretend that I was happy that my son is going to be cleaning the shit from their little children for the rest of his wasted life."

It was that day, Joe realized he'd never get married. If his own mother couldn't love him because of his role in society, he knew no other woman could either.