Lt. JG Natasha Cole - Cross-Cultural Diplomacy in Practice

[Natasha Schell]

(( Auditorium - Operations Center, Deck 5, USS Artemis-A ))

Bergmen: Exciting, right? Ferenginar has so much to offer! So, get a little temperature in this wonderful audience —please, raise your hands if you've already met some Ferengi or visited Ferenginar. What can you tell me about your experience?

 

Jaran: I've met a couple Ferengi. We would occasionally make trips to Deep Space 9 when I was a child, and I continued that tradition into adulthood. There were always Ferengi there, especially around Quark's. Even as a kid, they were always trying to sell me something.

Cole: Having met a few, I think they’re capable of growth. Just takes them a little longer. Like bonsai trees.

 

Tho'Bi: ::kindly:: I think many are happy as there are.

Imril: I’ve been to the original Quark’s a few times. I don't see why the holo-salesman is so defensive about Ferengi food. I like it. I'm planning to go on a restaurant crawl, if anyone's interested in joining me.

 

Bergmen: Response

Jaran: Are we being a little harsh here, perhaps?

Cole: Jaran, I don’t think it’s that simple. Clearly some ::gestures around:: of our crewmates have, unfortunately, had bad experiences and that has lead them to have biases towards the Ferengi.

 

Imril: I had a bad day with a Da’al once. I’d like to think he isn’t representative of his whole civilization.

 

Bergmen/Any: Response

 

Cole: Personally I try not to judge an entire race solely on how a select few have chosen to conduct themselves, even if regrettably there are vast cultural differences that lead to preconceptions and assumptions.

Tho'Bi: ::nodding:: Yeah… everybody thinks Andorians just solve problems with knife fights ::pause for thought:: …I mean we do …but, still. …you know …bias.

 

Natasha smiled at that, here she thought Andorians were all nudists.

 

Imril: It’s easy to think of all Andorians as duelists or Ferengi as greedy, when those traits are generally held up as a society’s most likely means to be successful in life. The people that succeed at being those things are the ones outsiders are more likely to interact with and be given impressions by. Take Grand Nagus Rom. He was pretty anonymous, for a Ferengi. Just some guy who was better at engineering than profit-generating, tinkering away in the background out of view while his brother openly and eagerly chased latinum… Until, one day, he was running Ferengenar and challenging some of the things his people are stereotyped for.

 

Jaran/Bergmen/Any: Response

 

Tho'Bi: What they have …works for them. …Profit is their knife fight. 

 

Imril: And the Rules Of Acquisition their Art Of War. 

 

Cole: ::turning towards Imril and Tho’Bi:: That is an excellent comparison

 

Bergmen/Jaran/Any: Response

 

Tho'Bi: Maybe the real bias is The Federation's insistence we know best…

 

Imril: The Federation has done things that leave a bad taste in some mouths, too. The treatment of Synths after Mars, for instance. And augments and ex-Bs who were changed or assimilated against their will. All that suspicion and discrimination, over horrible things which none of them were responsible for.

 

Cole: Those kinds of biases… they don’t come from policy. They come from fear. And fear makes people cruel. … ::quite:: I’ve seen that up close. ::beat::  So yeah, the Federation stumbled sometimes hard. But I also know people who would bend the whole galaxy to keep those same groups safe now. We’re messy, and we’re not perfect. But I think we try to be better than we were.

 

Bergmen/Jaran/Tho'Bi/Imril/Any: Response

TAG/TBC

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Lt. JG Natasha Cole
Security Officer
USS Artemis-A
Writer ID A240205NC4