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Avatar: The Holocaust We Will Not See

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Re: Avatar: The Holocaust We Will Not See

#21

Post by jacoblyles »

aaronblohowiak wrote: post #7
_h4xr wrote: post #2

I recommend getting over it. You are almost certainly the descendants murderers and conquerors. http://www.exile.ru/articles/detail.php?ARTICLE_ID=7819&... That's just how humans roll. Western Europe had lots of problems, but countries that operate in the European tradition are better places to live. (At least, when you look at the immigration patterns between third-world and first-world countries, it's clear that fi…

"Meanwhile, poor countries send their top .1% to join the Western world's top 10%; a good deal for both sides" -- not for the rest of the population of poor countries.

What if the top .1% (however defined) of poor countries wouldn't have had the opportunity to exercise their talents at home? How many famous scientists would be subsistence farmers if the GDP of their country was lower?

I would guess that India gains by having rich Indians living abroad. They increase the wealth of their families still living in India, they sometimes move back to India or start businesses there. If they didn't have the opportunity to move abroad and get rich, India probably wouldn't be as wealthy.

Re: Avatar: The Holocaust We Will Not See

#22

Post by vinutheraj »

bokonist wrote: post #3

Question to HN readers who are sympathetic with this article: If you could wave a magic wand and "undo" all that was done, would you do so? So imagine all those who perished in the 1500's would be revived from the dead and restored to their ancestral lands, all those living in the Americas now would be sent back to England, Ireland, China, etc, with a one way ticket and $10K in cash to start a new life. Would you wav…

I think our moral viewpoint has changed over time !

When we were in tribes killing animals, that was deemed necessary at that point of time, because of all the benefits of animal food and the shelter provided by the animal skin.

Then we moved into killing other humans, to gain control of their resources, because it was either them or us. I think it was correct from their viewpoint what they did.

It's unfair to judge them using our morality, maybe our descendants will judge us in the future for wasting our natural resources, who knows ?!

Re: Avatar: The Holocaust We Will Not See

#23

Post by yummyfajitas »

bokonist wrote: post #3

Question to HN readers who are sympathetic with this article: If you could wave a magic wand and "undo" all that was done, would you do so? So imagine all those who perished in the 1500's would be revived from the dead and restored to their ancestral lands, all those living in the Americas now would be sent back to England, Ireland, China, etc, with a one way ticket and $10K in cash to start a new life. Would you wav…

It would have almost no effect. Unless the Americas were completely isolated from Eurasia, everyone would have died anyway. The Americas were not conquered by force of arms, but by disease. A common pattern: send an expedition, which discovers cities, towns and gardens. Send another expedition years later: find nothing. I highly recommend the book 1491, which is a great historical account.

There was absolutely nothing (short of complete isolation until the development of modern medicine) which would have prevented the Indians from dying out. Even if the Europeans did nothing but bring candy, puppydogs and fireworks in trade for furs, the puppydogs would have carried diseases deadly to American Indians.

Re: Avatar: The Holocaust We Will Not See

#24

Post by DanielBMarkham »

I made it about halfway this through before bailing. Yet another "western civilization is so bad" articles. Ho hum.

The problem here is, as mattmaroon put it, if you buy into this logic we'd all still be chasing down antelopes on the savannah. At some point some civilizations, for whatever reason, start developing things like private property, the wheel, common law, reading, the printing press, etc.

It's become fashionable to say something like "well, that doesn't make them any better than other civilizations" but I think that's soft-headed horseshit. Anybody who lives in a civilization with private property, contract law, medicine, literature and art is living in a better place, and in a better way, that somebody who doesn't have it. Some cultures are demonstrably better than others, like it or not.

The interesting question, especially with alien stories, is "How do two wildly diverse cultures interact in a way that is respectful of both?"

I've thought about this for some time, and using all the earthly examples I can come up with, the fact is they don't. If we ever meet another primitive species and interact with them? It's going to be very traumatic on the part of the other species. Likewise, if Cebulons from the Osari System arrive next week with technology five thousand years ahead of ours? You can say goodbye to a lot of what people think of when they talk about human culture.

And I guess I'm okay with that. If the Cebulons show up, I'm going to be first in line learning to speak Cebulonese, watching all the Cebulonese TV shows, and taking my kids to Cebulonese high schools. We will learn, adapt, and overcome, and the human species will continue. To me that's a lot more rational that sitting around moaning about how things might have/would have been had things not changed. I just hope the Cebulons come to trade and exploit our resources in a manner respectful of private property, so we can go to their system and do the same one day :)

I really did not like Avatar. Gorgeous, magnificent movie. Terrible hackneyed, one-dimensional plot. Ugh. I think a quote from Cameron's other movie is most apt: I vote we nuke it from orbit. It's the only way we can really be sure.

Re: Avatar: The Holocaust We Will Not See

#25

Post by rainyday »

bokonist wrote: post #3

Question to HN readers who are sympathetic with this article: If you could wave a magic wand and "undo" all that was done, would you do so? So imagine all those who perished in the 1500's would be revived from the dead and restored to their ancestral lands, all those living in the Americas now would be sent back to England, Ireland, China, etc, with a one way ticket and $10K in cash to start a new life. Would you wav…

While there's no magic wand for the past, you can affect the future. We're in the midst of a great extinction event, combined with anthropogenic climate change, various unsustainable practices. A lot of life--human, nonhuman--is going to die, badly, and for a long time, if people waste their time on junk like Avatar instead of dealing with this mess.

Re: Avatar: The Holocaust We Will Not See

#26

Post by kf »

eries wrote: post #6

I was expecting the "The Holocaust We Will Not See" to be the one that will obviously take place after the film ends. The native people have driven the imperialists off their planet. But, the imperialists have space weapons and the natives do not. Plus, the imperialists only want inert matter that exists underground. And, they are so evil they have no respect for life in any form. I assume a kinetic bombardment is im…

I thought about that and assumed it was a plot hole in the movie. A neutron bomb seemed like such an obvious solution.

The scriptment fills in some of the gaps though. First, corporations are banned from using weapons of mass destruction in space. Second, the planetary consciousness convinces the humans to leave and not return by threatening them with a virus that will kill all of them.

Re: Avatar: The Holocaust We Will Not See

#27

Post by _h4xr »

wendroid wrote: post #20
_h4xr wrote: post #2

I recommend getting over it. You are almost certainly the descendants murderers and conquerors. http://www.exile.ru/articles/detail.php?ARTICLE_ID=7819&... That's just how humans roll. Western Europe had lots of problems, but countries that operate in the European tradition are better places to live. (At least, when you look at the immigration patterns between third-world and first-world countries, it's clear that fi…

The third-world isn't some laggard full of overbreeding simpletons. It was created in the 18th & 19th century by well armed invaders helped at the end of the 19th C by drought & flood that killed 50m people in India & China and 50m in S. America. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Late_Victorian_Holocausts Indian & Chinese civilisation was crushed by armies & opium.

The third-world isn't some laggard full of overbreeding simpletons.

Any concrete reason for that belief? It looks like the "overbreeding" is objectively true: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_birth_rate . As far as simpletons go, you tell me: is there any intelligence test you know of that routinely ranks people in Djibouti over people in Japan? If not, it sounds like your statement is unfounded.

The rest of your interpretation is also suspect. The places Victorians conquered weren't more advanced than the places the Victorians came from. Regardless of the reason, Europe was more technologically advanced than the rest of the world, and they used that advantage to conquer as much of the world as they could.

When you complain about how the Victorians ran things, you have to compare it to something. If you compare, e.g., the Congo in 1955 (http://www.time.com/time/printout/0,8816,866343,00.html ) to the Congo in 2008 (http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1713275,00.htm... ) you get the idea. You might not like how imperialists run things--but they run things well because they run them for profit. You can also consider Singapore (which is basically Victorian, and basically paradise on earth for law-abiding people).

Re: Avatar: The Holocaust We Will Not See

#28

Post by swernli »

aristus wrote: post #12
mattmaroon wrote: post #4

"But in this case the metaphor is conscious and precise: this is the story of European engagement with the native peoples of the Americas." One planetary race driving another into extinction is a universal, cookie-cutter sci-fi plot device. See Independence Day or Ender's Game. I suppose this was the only one where the victims had some sort of aboriginal-sounding accent, but I wouldn't take it as social commentary.

They also had badass arrows. But on a world where the flying things are all glowing and lizardy, where did they get the feathers for the arrows?

Could have been from some of the plant life. There certainly seemed to be an abundance of native flora and fauna that took sufficiently different forms from the standard leafy greens that it isn't implausible that the "feathers" were really plant-based.

Then again, it's a made up world in a sci-fi movie; there is a long list of things that wouldn't be "implausible."

Re: Avatar: The Holocaust We Will Not See

#29

Post by cynicalkane »

DanielBMarkham wrote: post #24

I made it about halfway this through before bailing. Yet another "western civilization is so bad" articles. Ho hum. The problem here is, as mattmaroon put it, if you buy into this logic we'd all still be chasing down antelopes on the savannah. At some point some civilizations, for whatever reason, start developing things like private property, the wheel, common law, reading, the printing press, etc. It's become fashi…

Would you be OK with that if the Cebulons wiped out 90% of the human population? Because that's at least the scale of the genocide we're talking about.

Re: Avatar: The Holocaust We Will Not See

#30

Post by cynicalkane »

_h4xr wrote: post #2

I recommend getting over it. You are almost certainly the descendants murderers and conquerors. http://www.exile.ru/articles/detail.php?ARTICLE_ID=7819&... That's just how humans roll. Western Europe had lots of problems, but countries that operate in the European tradition are better places to live. (At least, when you look at the immigration patterns between third-world and first-world countries, it's clear that fi…

I'd like to think modern man is a better class of humans than their murderously genocidal ancestors.

With so many of the comments seemingly endorsing manifest destiny on the part of "civilized" people, I'm beginning to reconsider this opinion.

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