The Prime Directive

I had the chance to talk with a recent visitor to Venezuela and Argentina. One of the sights that struck him the most was the number of shacks that had satellite dishes. "I mean the dish must cost more than the home they live in," he observed.

I, too, was struck by the impact of western entertainment on third world cutlure (yes, most of which is American/Hollywood produced) when I traveled. An Indian woman acosted me over Dallas, the prime time soap, which apparently is very popular there. A man harrassed me at a temple in Delhi over his inability to get a beautiful wife, like he sees on American TV. One of the most shocking scenes I came across was in the hills of the Indian Ghats. After hiking all day through the jungle, I suddenly found myself staring at a small mud house with a generator and a satellite dish.

The impact of its technology on developing countries is a paradox for the west. What we forget is that our culture had to go through stages to get to this level where we can produce satellites and the media that passes through them. What happens when you bypass all of that? In the case of medicine, we caused a large amount of the world to ignore sanitation and water treatment. Western civilization was on its own when the Plague created solid waste management and Cholera instituted water treatment. Worse, the west provided an endless supply of hypodermic needles for vaccines and they ended up contributing to the spread of HIV. What's the saying about the road to hell?

Other effects are harder to imagine but are readily seen in the "street" of the third world. What kind of angst is created when young men forbidden sexual contact watch Pamela Anderson on Baywatch. I mean it was hard enough keeping my hormones in check when I was 17; I can't imagine what it would be like in Jordan (the country, not doug). Is it enough to make one drive a plane into a building? Especially if 70 virgin Pamela Andersons were waiting for you?

In the inbox is a letter from a friend in Fallujah with the Marines. He's observed that for a bunch of men who find homosexuality evil, Arab young men in Fallujah sure seem to engage in a lot of it. I'm reminded of a story I read in Generation Kill where recon marines were being propositioned by men in Baghdad.

India also has a culture which frowns on pre-marital contact between the sexes. As a result, Indian boys engage in a lot of fondling and intimate behavior. They are told that it must stop after a certain age when usually your parents find you a wife. Because homosexuality is not allowed in these cultures, it must be very tough on those gays who are suddenly taken from their comfort zone. And with the impact of satellite TV, it is very disturbing to see these alternative lifestyles expressed in the open, as a reminder to closeted gays and as an insinuation for homophobic straights. For a culture that didn't go through the sexual revolution, it's a tough way to play catch-up.

The United Federation of Planets was right to make non-interference the Prime Directive. Of course, it was impossible to keep as Captain James T. Kirk well knew. He had to kick a lot of Klingon ass over it.

So, along those lines, we have Egypt getting it's own Baywatch called "Action in Hurghada" . It's going to be low on sex. Yep, that should work. Along with the cleric's advice to lower your eyes when Baywatch comes on, this should solve the problem. I wonder if Pamela Anderson knows just how much trouble she's caused.