Nonviolence is an inherently privileged position in the modern context. Besides the fact that the typical pacifist is quite clearly white and middle class, pacifism as an ideology comes from a privileged context. It ignores that violence is already here; that violence is an unavoidable, structurally integral part of the current social hierarchy; and that it is people of color who are most affected by that violence. Pacifism assumes that white people who grew up in the suburbs with all their basic needs met can counsel oppressed people, many of whom are people of color, to suffer patiently under an inconceivably greater violence, until such time as the Great White Father is swayed by the movement’s demands or the pacifists achieve that legendary “critical mass. – How Nonviolence Serves the State

Critical support for the collection of Dims, Ghosts, and Gimmees just trying to make a better life for themselves.

They were part of the ship’s frame of reference. This applies to standard physics but is explicitly true if there’s a warp bubble around the ship.

Now who can argue with that? I think we’re all indebted to TheFerrango for clearly stating what needed to be said. I’m particulary glad that these lovely children were here today to hear that speech. Not only was it authentic Star Trek technobabble, it expressed a courage little seen in this day and age.

Yeah. Commits going right to prod makes my skin crawl.

Took me a while to track it down, but I think this is the book to which you were referring.

https://angryflower.com/348.html

I make no cleans about the stances of this artist; I just saw this strip years ago.

A lot of my head canon around this and the notable lack of automation prevalent in Starfleet: it’s a futuristic, post-scarcity jobs program. Yes, it’s about exploration and rendering assistance and all that. But it gives people something to do, a way to serve the whole. Picard said as much to Geordi when Scotty was aboard. I’ve of the many things Starfleet does is give people a sense of usefulness.

Also uses ableist language.

Were we watching the same speech? The one where she condemns them, but states that she doesn’t have the freedom to kill someone that another might live (in this scenario, killing an alien for the sake of a crewman) and ultimately decides to turn them loose with a promise of reprisal if encountered again?

Janeway’s own log started that Tuvix was better than the sun of the parts; a better cook and tactical officer. The point of a team is that no one person is a point of failure. Factoring in a hypothetical future scenario is spurious.

An extrajudicial execution (to be charitable) for no crime is beyond most ethical frameworks.

And not one person has even tried to reconcile the speech to the Vidiians.

I understand but disagree with that perspective. To me they were not alive at the time. However, you still haven’t accounted for the rest. Reconcile the Majalis problem and Janeway’s own speech to the Vidiians.

If you abandon your principles when things get hard then they’re not principles; they’re hobbies.

You’d fit right in on Majalis then.

The two crew members that were lost at the same time Tuvix appeared? The dead (not alive) ones? And again, square this with the speech she gave the Vidiians.

If you’re going to refute, then address the whole thing.

This is not a trolley problem in that there is sequence involved:

1: Tuvok and Neelix alive before transport

2: Tuvok and Neelix dead and a new rational being in their place. This being had a moral blank slate and are thus blameless for the circumstances of creation.

3: Janeway decides that the speech she gave to the Vidiians was just hot air and that she will kill Tuvix to get the original two back. (Non lethal ways were explored, but quickly abandoned)

4: The blameless being makes an articulate case for their life, and even addresses the “needs of the many” argument by stating the truth: the other two are gone and the new being is there. (Raw, unalloyed utilitarianism is problematic at best, just ask the people of Omelas Majalis)

5: The doctor straight up says that the procedure is unethical and refuses to do it.

6: Janeway does it anyway.

Calling it a trolley problem is reductive and inaccurate.

(Edited for typo.)

I experienced this and still get PTSD flashbacks 😢

This screams Dresden Files.

“Meanwhile, Black Mirror presumably got back to the work of its horror-based arms race, as the show continues to try to find a doomsday prophecy that tech giants might still view as a warning and not a corporate benchmark for [next fiscal quarter].” – AVClub

I found myself wanting more from the video; favorite episodes/plot arcs/characters and so on. But it was still cool.

As an exmo, it is specifically a ban on coffee and tea (not herbal tea, caffeinated tea). Some are strict and extrapolate this to mean “caffeine” and some are literalists that chug Mountain Dew. It’s very weird. As an aside: one of the names of ephedra is “Mormon tea”.