The Prime Directive

I was asked to comment on the Prime Directive. As someone who watched TOS when it premiered, as well as watching a number of spinoffs, that question has a certain nostalgia. I doubt any deep thought went into whatever TV producer concocted the Prime Directive. I assume it was one of those on the fly decisions. But despite its philosophically undistinguished origins, the Prime Directive is an interesting, provocative concept. 

The Prime Directive is a blanket ban on interference with the internal development of less advanced alien cultures and societies. However, that proved to be dramatically suffocating, so it was routinely flouted by screenwriters, although sometimes a ST episode centered on the controversial nature of the directive. Let's begin by considering some defenses and real-world counterparts to the Prime Directive:

1. The observer effect

Here's a dilemma in anthropology. Say an anthropologist does field study. She wants to study a culture firsthand. Learn about the culture from the inside out. But her presence, as she interacts with the natives, may change the very thing she came to study. Take the proverbial tribe that's discovered in the Amazon. The tribe had no awareness of the outside world. That makes anthropologists eager to study a human culture untainted by modernity or cultural diffusion. But by making contact, and living with them, the anthropologist is exposing them to her own culture. 

2. Imperialism

Plundering other countries and civilizations for what benefits the invader. The destruction of American Indian societies in the name of Manifest Destiny. 

3. White man's burden

The patronizing notion that we're necessarily superior to other cultures, and have a duty to civilize them. 

4. Boondoggles 

Wars of liberation that trigger civil wars and border wars. Foreign aid wasted on Haiti, Africa, the West Bank, &c.

5. Law of unintended consequences

Even well-meaning intervention can have disastrous unforeseen consequences, making things worse than before. 

Now let's consider some objections to the Prime Directive:

1. Reductio ad absurdum

i) Rigid adherence to the principle means you allow entire people-groups to perish. But how is that benevolent? Do the dead have rights? Isn't that Santayana's definition of the fanatic: someone who's lost sight of his objective but redoubles his efforts to get there? 

To take a comparison, it's normally useful to have opposing lanes of traffic. If, however, it's necessary to evacuate a city before natural disaster strikes, the law against driving in the wrong direction becomes counterproductive. 

ii) However, a tenacious utilitarian can argue that intervention to save a people-group is shortsighted since, for all we know, if they survive, they may wage war or commit genocide on another people-group. To avoid complicity, it's best for us to practice a hands-off approach. 

iii) There are, however, some serious problems with the utilitarian argument. To begin with, the law of unintended consequences cuts both ways. Both action and inaction have unintended consequences. Likewise, both intervention and nonintervention can have good consequences, bad consequences, or both. So the principle is too abstract to be meaningful. 

iv) It's arguable that we have a greater social obligation to those closer to us in time and space. To real people rather than future people. Although there may be far more people in the future than presently exist, those are hypothetical people, and the future becomes increasingly unpredictable the farther out. By contrast, actual people actually suffer, and we know their situation much better than futuristic projections. 

2. Cultural diffusion

For better or worse, different cultures interact and cross-pollinate. That's inevitable. The Prime Directive is unenforceable. 

3. Tradeoffs

Plains Indians benefited from having horses and rifles. Eskimos benefit from having electricity, snowmobiles, high-powered rifles, modern medical care, &c. The Conquistadors were brutal, but so were the indigenous warrior cultures they disrupted. 

4. Teaching a man to fish

If a culture suffers from entrenched social pathologies, then foreign aid is wasted. If, however, it's possible to change the social mores to remove their dysfunctional values, then intervention can be helpful. It depends on how resistant or receptive the natives are. 

5. The Gospel

There's a standing duty to evangelize the lost. And Christian discipleship includes instruction in personal and social ethics. 

6. Cultural relativism

i) Cultural relativism is arbitrary.

Feminists and gay activists scream about slights to their dignity in the Western world, but make excuses for the far harsher treatment of women and homosexuals in the Muslim world because cultural values are incommensurable. But if there are no transcultural norms, then feminism or gay rights can't be morally obligatory at one time and place but not at another–although it can be universally mistaken. 

ii) Apropos (i), cultural relativism is self-refuting:

The normative principle of a need for tolerance and acceptance towards other points of view (see §2.6), which leads to so-called “normative or prescriptive cultural relativism”, or the positions that cultural relativism is a moral requirement (see also normative moral relativism in §4.5).

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/relativism/#CulRel