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Picard Season 2 established that Starfleet (not the Federation, oops) rejected Seven specifically because of the implants
Oof. That sucks.
and I don’t believe there’s a sound reason to force people to go through the misery of historical development by themselves
Because if you let capitalist species climate change themselves back into the stone age then you limit the number of fascist empires running around in space making problems for everyone else. Gene Roddenberry was a big believer in the idea that a closed minded people does not deserve to go into space and meet the diversity that is out there. Honestly, I wouldn’t want the humans of the real world going into space either. They’d fuck everything up. Aliens, if you’re spying on us right now: please go away. We’re not ready to meet you.
So you think the Galactic International would allow capitalist worlds to stay capitalist, or that the process of uplifting them wouldn’t be revolutionary at its core.
Something just feels gross to me about that kind of manifest destiny thinking. Starfleet’s reasoning on the subject is that if you don’t allow cultures to develop independently, you end up with less diversity, which can have terrible consequences down the line if the One Way your civilisation does things can’t cope with a novel situation. We actually have that going on on Earth. Every country is pressured to do things the capitalist way, and that’s why none of them is taking appropriate action on the climate crisis. There aren’t any countries left that have novel solutions to offer. In Australia, the white people took over the running of things from the indigenous by force and it didn’t go well. They suck at it.
Every country being pressured under capitalist imperialism is fundamentally different from revolutionary internationalism. What we have happening on Earth is absolutely nothing like a hypothetical that uplifts people out of their material conditions; imperialist “development” is not internationalist, it’s superexploitation. There is no interest to improve anything for anyone but the rich.
Furthermore, indigenous people weren’t peacefully assimilated, they were killed and imprisoned and enslaved and raped and had their children kidnapped and their languages/cultures made illegal and all of this was done through the use of incredible violence. Manifest destiny was all just colonialist propaganda. The White Man’s burden was a lie that whitey told himself to not feel bad about murdering and raping everyone. Never, at any point, did the empires actually try to make things better for other people around the world. It was always for themselves.
Oof. That sucks.
Because if you let capitalist species climate change themselves back into the stone age then you limit the number of fascist empires running around in space making problems for everyone else. Gene Roddenberry was a big believer in the idea that a closed minded people does not deserve to go into space and meet the diversity that is out there. Honestly, I wouldn’t want the humans of the real world going into space either. They’d fuck everything up. Aliens, if you’re spying on us right now: please go away. We’re not ready to meet you.
So you think the Galactic International would allow capitalist worlds to stay capitalist, or that the process of uplifting them wouldn’t be revolutionary at its core.
Interesting
Something just feels gross to me about that kind of manifest destiny thinking. Starfleet’s reasoning on the subject is that if you don’t allow cultures to develop independently, you end up with less diversity, which can have terrible consequences down the line if the One Way your civilisation does things can’t cope with a novel situation. We actually have that going on on Earth. Every country is pressured to do things the capitalist way, and that’s why none of them is taking appropriate action on the climate crisis. There aren’t any countries left that have novel solutions to offer. In Australia, the white people took over the running of things from the indigenous by force and it didn’t go well. They suck at it.
Every country being pressured under capitalist imperialism is fundamentally different from revolutionary internationalism. What we have happening on Earth is absolutely nothing like a hypothetical that uplifts people out of their material conditions; imperialist “development” is not internationalist, it’s superexploitation. There is no interest to improve anything for anyone but the rich.
Furthermore, indigenous people weren’t peacefully assimilated, they were killed and imprisoned and enslaved and raped and had their children kidnapped and their languages/cultures made illegal and all of this was done through the use of incredible violence. Manifest destiny was all just colonialist propaganda. The White Man’s burden was a lie that whitey told himself to not feel bad about murdering and raping everyone. Never, at any point, did the empires actually try to make things better for other people around the world. It was always for themselves.