Who Ya Calling Primitive?

Obviously I lied again. I didn’t come right back. A whole week has passed since my last post. But I think it’s important to ponder long & hard before calling my father names like “racist.” He has photon torpedoes, you know.

Anyway, in my previous post I made the rather shocking assertion that the Prime Directive we all know & love is actually a racist doctrine. Let me explain.

The very notion of a “more advanced” civilization or a “more primitive” civilization implies a one-size-fits-all “natural trajectory of human development,” which, frankly, sounds stupid to me. How can any mere mortal presume to know, much less understand, what the “natural trajectory of human development” might be? I mean, I’m sure it seemed to the Europeans of 1492 that the path they were on was the only possible way for anyone to get anywhere, but it also seemed to those people that city streets were a great place to dump brimming chamber pots.

In hindsight, they were clearly wrong about the chamber pots, & I maintain they were also wrong when they concluded that North American cultures were lagging far, far behind their own on some inevitable evolutionary road. Seems to me that during the Age of Exploration the Europeans came up with that little lie to soothe their guilt-ridden souls, the same way we came up with the Prime Directive.

How can I be so sure the First Nations of North America were not lagging far behind Europeans on that inevitable evolutionary road? Um, because the First Nations of North America were actually travelling down a different road. While I can’t really say whether or not there’s any sort of “natural human trajectory,” I think it’s safe to say that one group of people can’t possibly be lagging behind another group of people if the two groups of people are travelling down two entirely different roads.

And that, my friends, is the starting point for The Spirit Keeper.

Oh, I know it’s supposed to be just another cheap historical romance, but, damn it, Star Trek was supposed to be just another ‘60s tv show to sell crap to unsuspecting consumers and look how that turned out. Live long & prosper, Katie O’Toole!