TNG - The Masterpiece Society

[clearspira]

Which means she'd never be happy in Hooterville after this because, of course, isolated paradise is bumfuck nowhere once you live outside it.

To put this into a real world, 2021 context; I often wonder about all of those isolated Amazon tribes that still exist who fire arrows at helicopters and murder missionaries.
1) They only still exist because of the benevolence of the government of the day. Very soon the real world is going to come for them be it for a new mall, a new palm oil crop or some idiot with a gun.
2) Imagine being born into one of these tribes and suddenly thrust into our world. Why would you want to go back? Why aren't we going in there and giving them the choice more to the point. These people live in their own dirt and probably die forty years before we do.

Liberated Tribesman - ''Huh, I mean, I could go back to living half-naked on an island where there is no medicine, we only eat twice a week and my education is so prehistoric that I cannot tell a bird from a flying machine... or I could stay here laden with food and where there are drugs that mean I won't die of a dental abscess like my dad did.''
Some Guy Who Sounds Like Picard - ''But what about your ancient culture and the paradise of rural simplicity that you come from? You'll cause more damage to that island than a mall ever could!''
Liberated Tribesman - ''Yeah... let me think about that whilst you tell me more about birth control and how I no longer need to bury yet another wife who died in childbirth.''

[Riedquat]

Yeah, definitely. That's basically the entire point of something like Brave New World as an examination of a situation where "what if it were possible to do this?"

From inside, it's Utopia where no one is ever unhappy with their lives. From outside, it's an authoritarian (depending on how it's structured and who decides what shape society has) cult filled with brainwashing horror.

I think the Federation manages to have a Utopia that feels a lot less horrifying (that is, you have to look much harder to find the cracks). Your mileage may vary.

The idea of a utopia where no-one's ever unhappy is impossible simply because different people want different things from their lives. The Federation isn't much of my personal idea of utopia; most of what we see in it I find aesthetically incredibly bland and unappealing, and whilst having no material concerns might be one big step towards utopia it's certainly not sufficient - and for some people (such as myself) a very significant factor in quality of life.

[Riedquat]

Which means she'd never be happy in Hooterville after this because, of course, isolated paradise is bumfuck nowhere once you live outside it.

To put this into a real world, 2021 context; I often wonder about all of those isolated Amazon tribes that still exist who fire arrows at helicopters and murder missionaries.
1) They only still exist because of the benevolence of the government of the day. Very soon the real world is going to come for them be it for a new mall, a new palm oil crop or some idiot with a gun.
2) Imagine being born into one of these tribes and suddenly thrust into our world. Why would you want to go back? Why aren't we going in there and giving them the choice more to the point. These people live in their own dirt and probably die forty years before we do.

Liberated Tribesman - ''Huh, I mean, I could go back to living half-naked on an island where there is no medicine, we only eat twice a week, my education is so prehistoric that I cannot tell a bird from a flying machine... or I could stay here laden with food and where there are drugs that mean I won't die of a dental abscess like my dad did.''
Some Guy Who Sounds Like Picard - ''But what about your ancient culture and the paradise of rural simplicity that you come from? You'll cause more damage to that island than a mall ever could!''
Liberated Tribesman - ''Yeah... let me think about that whilst you tell me more about birth control and how I no longer need to bury yet another wife who died in childbirth.''

A bit black and white don't you think? Very much "my modern culture is ideal, no-one in their right mind could possibly not want it." There's a frequent arrogance about the enthusiasts of modernity; even when raising perfectly valid material concerns they often sound as smug as the Next Gen crew, unable to understand why anyone might find it unsatisfying. Yes, you've got plenty of good with it, such as advanced medicine, I'd have thought ideally people would be able to pick and choose, but there's quite a bit of "everyone should live the way I think people should and be grateful for it."

The past was inhumane, the present though I find inhuman, and getting more so.

The digging ditches example is one part of it. There seems to be an idea that digging ditches is a bad thing that no-one should have to do. The idea that anyone could be satisfied with it, nope, not worthy of consideration, anyone who says otherwise must be a naive idiot who thinks Insurrection is a realistic portrayal. Rather than considering that the problem with digging ditches might well be more down to having to do it in all weathers until your back breaks for peanuts.

There's a friend of mine, she's got a PhD in maths, and was working in a high-tech industrial science computing job. She quit it to drive trucks, and seems much happier now too. A job which looks likely to be automated away in the name of progress at some point possibly not too distant.

[clearspira]

Which means she'd never be happy in Hooterville after this because, of course, isolated paradise is bumfuck nowhere once you live outside it.

To put this into a real world, 2021 context; I often wonder about all of those isolated Amazon tribes that still exist who fire arrows at helicopters and murder missionaries.
1) They only still exist because of the benevolence of the government of the day. Very soon the real world is going to come for them be it for a new mall, a new palm oil crop or some idiot with a gun.
2) Imagine being born into one of these tribes and suddenly thrust into our world. Why would you want to go back? Why aren't we going in there and giving them the choice more to the point. These people live in their own dirt and probably die forty years before we do.

Liberated Tribesman - ''Huh, I mean, I could go back to living half-naked on an island where there is no medicine, we only eat twice a week, my education is so prehistoric that I cannot tell a bird from a flying machine... or I could stay here laden with food and where there are drugs that mean I won't die of a dental abscess like my dad did.''
Some Guy Who Sounds Like Picard - ''But what about your ancient culture and the paradise of rural simplicity that you come from? You'll cause more damage to that island than a mall ever could!''
Liberated Tribesman - ''Yeah... let me think about that whilst you tell me more about birth control and how I no longer need to bury yet another wife who died in childbirth.''

A bit black and white don't you think? Very much "my modern culture is ideal, no-one in their right mind could possibly not want it." There's a frequent arrogance about the enthusiasts of modernity; even when raising perfectly valid material concerns they often sound as smug as the Next Gen crew, unable to understand why anyone might find it unsatisfying.

The past was inhumane, the present though I find inhuman, and getting more so.

But that's just it though: we don't give these tribes a choice as to whether they want to embrace a modern culture or not. And literally the only justification I have ever seen is ''but won't someone please think of their culture?'' Its the exact empty argument used by Picard.

I got to be honest with you, I don't even understand what you mean about our life today being inhuman. Absolutely everything you see before you has been moulded by the most powerful tool we currently know of in the universe - the human brain.

[Riedquat]

But that's just it though: we don't give these tribes a choice as to whether they want to embrace a modern culture or not. And literally the only justification I have ever seen is ''but won't someone please think of their culture?'' Its the exact empty argument used by Picard.

Yes, choice - I've no problem there (I'd added that to my post before I saw your reply in fact). But I don't regard "screw their culture, we've decided what they should want" as any better than just "someone think of their culture". In any case the question's moot in this episode because the culture was dead regardless, it's just wether or not the lives are too, and dead culture but living people is unambigously better than dead culture and dead people.

Well, at least unless you're a Trek writer with some very strange ideas about morality. I have my suspicions that their approach arose from a simple concept "The Prime Directive, all that non-interference stuff, look at the mess interference has caused, is good, and therefore any decision which fits in with that must be good." I think it arises from what seems to be a common way of thinking - you've got a set of rules, you apply a situation to them, and you see whether it's good or bad by which pigeonhole the outcome ends up in, rather than by giving any actual thought and reasoning to the situation.

I got to be honest with you, I don't even understand what you mean about our life today being inhuman. Absolutely everything you seen before you has been moulded by the most powerful tool we currently know of in the universe - the human brain.

It's quite hard to put in to words. Some of it is a perception that we're all too keen to try to remove ourselves from the equation as much as possible; human - human interaction in ordinary day to day lives dwindles (even without Covid), we increasinly distrust ourselves to do anything. And the environment we create seems ever more mechanical - I hesitate to use the word "unnatural" because someone always jumps on it with the inane "but none of it's natural" (an effort in trying to miss the point rather than understand what the person is saying). Sure, you can point out the difficulties and hardships of life that we don't experience, or experience far less (hence it was inhumane), but personally I find a sort of alien wrongness about much of now. Like I said, hard to put in to words.

[Jonathan101]

Which means she'd never be happy in Hooterville after this because, of course, isolated paradise is bumfuck nowhere once you live outside it.

To put this into a real world, 2021 context; I often wonder about all of those isolated Amazon tribes that still exist who fire arrows at helicopters and murder missionaries.
1) They only still exist because of the benevolence of the government of the day. Very soon the real world is going to come for them be it for a new mall, a new palm oil crop or some idiot with a gun.
2) Imagine being born into one of these tribes and suddenly thrust into our world. Why would you want to go back? Why aren't we going in there and giving them the choice more to the point. These people live in their own dirt and probably die forty years before we do.

Liberated Tribesman - ''Huh, I mean, I could go back to living half-naked on an island where there is no medicine, we only eat twice a week, my education is so prehistoric that I cannot tell a bird from a flying machine... or I could stay here laden with food and where there are drugs that mean I won't die of a dental abscess like my dad did.''
Some Guy Who Sounds Like Picard - ''But what about your ancient culture and the paradise of rural simplicity that you come from? You'll cause more damage to that island than a mall ever could!''
Liberated Tribesman - ''Yeah... let me think about that whilst you tell me more about birth control and how I no longer need to bury yet another wife who died in childbirth.''

A bit black and white don't you think? Very much "my modern culture is ideal, no-one in their right mind could possibly not want it." There's a frequent arrogance about the enthusiasts of modernity; even when raising perfectly valid material concerns they often sound as smug as the Next Gen crew, unable to understand why anyone might find it unsatisfying.

The past was inhumane, the present though I find inhuman, and getting more so.

But that's just it though: we don't give these tribes a choice as to whether they want to embrace a modern culture or not. And literally the only justification I have ever seen is ''but won't someone please think of their culture?'' Its the exact empty argument used by Picard.

I got to be honest with you, I don't even understand what you mean about our life today being inhuman. Absolutely everything you see before you has been moulded by the most powerful tool we currently know of in the universe - the human brain.

Lots of tribes are given the choice to join mainstream society and they choose to stay.

Some who join the rest of the world also become depressed and /or contact diseases.

Very few societies are left totally alone, and when they are it is with the damage done to the ones that were not that is kept in mind.

[TGLS]

But that's just it though: we don't give these tribes a choice as to whether they want to embrace a modern culture or not. And literally the only justification I have ever seen is ''but won't someone please think of their culture?'' Its the exact empty argument used by Picard.

OK, a few arguments:
1) For the Sentinelese in particular, they tend to violently respond to the arrival of outsiders. It took decades to have them come around.
2) Many post-contact scenarios have resulted in the outbreak of diseases.
3) There's greater concern that these arguments will be made to justify contact more motivated by the exploitation of resources rather than the best interests of the uncontacted peoples.

[Fuzzy Necromancer]

Which means she'd never be happy in Hooterville after this because, of course, isolated paradise is bumfuck nowhere once you live outside it.

To put this into a real world, 2021 context; I often wonder about all of those isolated Amazon tribes that still exist who fire arrows at helicopters and murder missionaries.
1) They only still exist because of the benevolence of the government of the day. Very soon the real world is going to come for them be it for a new mall, a new palm oil crop or some idiot with a gun.
2) Imagine being born into one of these tribes and suddenly thrust into our world. Why would you want to go back? Why aren't we going in there and giving them the choice more to the point. These people live in their own dirt and probably die forty years before we do.

Liberated Tribesman - ''Huh, I mean, I could go back to living half-naked on an island where there is no medicine, we only eat twice a week and my education is so prehistoric that I cannot tell a bird from a flying machine... or I could stay here laden with food and where there are drugs that mean I won't die of a dental abscess like my dad did.''
Some Guy Who Sounds Like Picard - ''But what about your ancient culture and the paradise of rural simplicity that you come from? You'll cause more damage to that island than a mall ever could!''
Liberated Tribesman - ''Yeah... let me think about that whilst you tell me more about birth control and how I no longer need to bury yet another wife who died in childbirth.''

Honestly, a big reason we don't contact them is because the modern diseases we don't even feel the effects from would annihilate them completely. There's concern that one of those dead missionaries could STILL end up wiping out the entire community because of the microbiome in his corpse.

You've also got a lot of assumptions about health and longevity. We have more medicine and medical care, sure, but a lot of people don't have any access to it, and even more can't afford it. We have a lot of diseases made only possible by the population density of cities. Heck, talk about dying in childbirth, the current way people give birth in hospitals is designed not for the comfort of the mother but for the convenience of the physician, and trying to give birth in a more traditional way can get you arrested.

Life is full of tradeoffs. Maybe we should take the nonverbal language at face value and leave the people who throw weapons at people who try to contact them alone until there's a really pressing reason to do otherwise.

[CharlesPhipps]

^ That means she isn't really exercising free will; she's doing EXACTLY what she was programmed to do, in a way.

It's also a sign of how the science of their utopia isn't actually that exact. Even if you genetically engineer a guy to want to be the greatest janitor who ever lived, he may want to be a janitor on RISA because at least there he gets to look at the half-naked aliens all day.'

As for Picard's PD speech, I imagine he meant that the colony is going to die out because the Enterprise contacted them, so I don't think the complaint is justified here- it's not a case of "save them" or "don't save them" so much as "quick death" vs "slow death", since the people who stayed on the colony will probably become miserable depressed yet unable to leave. Perhaps he could have explained it better, but that is probably what he is going for.

You could also do more optimistically Picard is viewing them as innocent in their ignorance but now are aware their entire way of life is pointless and impossible to continue. Even if 90% of people want to stay, it needs to adapt and change. Which is always weird in Star Trek as if "cultural contamination" is a thing versus societies growing.

[CharlesPhipps]

To put this into a real world, 2021 context; I often wonder about all of those isolated Amazon tribes that still exist who fire arrows at helicopters and murder missionaries.
1) They only still exist because of the benevolence of the government of the day. Very soon the real world is going to come for them be it for a new mall, a new palm oil crop or some idiot with a gun.
2) Imagine being born into one of these tribes and suddenly thrust into our world. Why would you want to go back? Why aren't we going in there and giving them the choice more to the point. These people live in their own dirt and probably die forty years before we do.

Liberated Tribesman - ''Huh, I mean, I could go back to living half-naked on an island where there is no medicine, we only eat twice a week and my education is so prehistoric that I cannot tell a bird from a flying machine... or I could stay here laden with food and where there are drugs that mean I won't die of a dental abscess like my dad did.''
Some Guy Who Sounds Like Picard - ''But what about your ancient culture and the paradise of rural simplicity that you come from? You'll cause more damage to that island than a mall ever could!''
Liberated Tribesman - ''Yeah... let me think about that whilst you tell me more about birth control and how I no longer need to bury yet another wife who died in childbirth.''

To be fair, these guys are only about a century behind the Federation. Which is still pretty damn primitive by comparison when they thought they were the top dogs and is more like people showing up in a aircraft carrier to 19th century Great Britain.

Still it's a big shock for people who previously believed they were masters of all they surveyed. It also impacts their view of the Enterprise.

They see Geordi and think, "Inferior Blind Man" but he's actually CYBORG GENIUS.

Even then, it's not that all of the people want to leave. 90% want to see but that 10% include maybe the only guy who knows how to clean the bio-filter.

(I do think leaving the colonists in ENT: TERRA NOVA was morally bankrupt)