Insofar as we, the members of the United Federation of Planets, do
recognize and respect the vital role that each and all of our separate
peoples has played in the building of our union, and insofar as that
union is then the product of our differences as well as our commonalties,
one built as much of the acknowledgment of our failings as the
recognition of our potentials, we do so resolve, as a United Federation
of Individual Planets strong both in spirit and the desire to live free,
never to lose sight of those principles, which, by fate of providence,
have served toestablish this Federation as a meeting of equals. We shall
foster within the bounds of our common influence the inescapable belief
that all life is possessed of the inalienable rightto flourish on its
own terms and in its own time and place. Therefore, we devote our energies
to the establishment and fostering of such a state in equal measure
throughout the known galaxy, and dedicate our Star Fleet to the preservation
and protection of that state being an insular program of non-interaction
and non-interference with those cultures whose development of self and
whose singular right to self determination would be unduly burdened or
damaged by the interaction with, or even the knowledge of, more technologically
advanced races, even those races who's motives and intentions are unimpeachable
and altruistic, even unto the destruction of the culture by lack of action, it
being none the more justifiable to crush the special essence of a new culture in
the process of saving it. We shall do all within our power to leave the
development ofany and all cultures entirely to their own devices, to let them
flourish or fail as their differing gifts allow, and to prevent any and all
who would deprive them of this, their most basic right, from performing
self-serving and selfish actions at the expense of the innocents, until
such time as they, themselves, come forward as equals, and mindful of
their place within the greater whole. We stand unified in our avowed proclamation of
this as ourfirst and foremost principal, our PRIME DIRECTIVE" |
