The travelers were aware of the deeply ingrained biases of earth people, biases that stifle the imagination for remedial change. Where to begin? Probe the mind of a selected person! If even one earth person could understand and accept, then the potential for social change could be a reasonable possibility.
The star treks technology had the biochemical ability to probe an individual’s thought patterns. It could scan the minds of thousands of people at a time. People are predictable when making institutional decisions. People react in a predictable way to stimulation from social institutions. People are born, raised, and educated by their institutions. Institutions determine habits, customs, and ways of doing things and thinking about things.
The institutions of planet earth are the arts, sciences, religions, politics, philosophies, economics and business. Predictable behavior patterns are an indication of the choice selections dictated by institutional rules. When a person succeeds in arriving at a predictable decision that person experiences a sense of satisfaction.
The space visitors have intimate knowledge of these institutions because there was a time in their evolution when they had lived through this identical social era. They also knew that it was possible but not inevitable that a society could succeed in achieving the necessary adjustments for change.
A law of nature dictates that if a species fails to adjust to changing conditions, that species will become endangered. Evolution is change!
The visitor’s basic nature includes love, compassion and understanding. They feel compelled to influence earth’s direction toward social change. Would a gentle nudge influence an awareness of a simple solution to a complex problem? Let the experiment begin!