Simon_Jester wrote:I find it a little odd that your desire for religions not to be true causes you to find it intrinsically offensive when a hypothetical religion that bears no real resemblance to anything on this earth happens to be true... in fiction.
There's a difference between believing that there is no god, and wanting there to be no god, in the active sense. The latter is a bit less common, and I'd be interested to hear your views on this.
Not sure if I understood you correctly, but first off, I am not against fictional religions in general or their deities. Say, I have no problem with the zoo of gods they have in D&D or any given fantasy setting.
I do grow irritated when settings that are supposed to be based on real life and our own world and history (although fictionalised, obviously) include gods, whether mythological or made up for the setting. It cannot help but come across as a statement to the effect of, "Look, religion was really right after all!"
Which, of course(?), would be false.
In the case of the Navi, it becomes particularly bad because of the heavy-handed allegory of the film otherwise: By making the Space Indians
right in their superstition, Cameron is also saying (by implication, at least) that real-life Amazon Delta tribes (or whatever) are perhaps also
right. While the people of the Western world, who are Out Of Touch With Nature, are wrong.
And, of course, it is therefore a bad thing to aspire to, while the personal enrichment of RDA senior executives is a fucking great way to spend our time and resources.
Or, put another way, as long as the bank executives have plenty of money, who cares if normal people are losing their mortgages?
That's a disgusting way to run a civilization when you look at it from a consquential standpoint. There has to be some notion of public policy, of acknowledging human aspirations and ambitions not created by greed, of not making the primary purpose of our existence be the piling up of an infinite number of iPods. Otherwise, we're going to turn on ourselves and devour ourselves, simply because the easiest way to become rich is to make your surroundings a zero-sum game and make sure you get to write the rules.
I would imagine that it was done more for the enrichment of RDA stockholders than their execs.
Seriously, though: What
is the alternative to selfishness? Self-interest - that is, concern for the individual, or his family - is what drives the overwhelming majority of humanity to actually care and work for a living. There are many historical examples of selflessness also, to be sure, but these generally tend to be limited to select environments where group conformity and indoctrination are rather stronger than is the norm in general society (such as the military). Equally, there are individual persons who are extremely giving, selfless and sacrificing (whether because of belief in a religion, ideology, or just because of intrinsic personal qualities), but they tend to be a small minority. They also tend to be a suffering minority, since they get used and abused by everyone less moral.
On those occasions when systems have tried to appeal to the better nature of man (socialism) to get him to work without material recompense, it has inevitably failed. It can work in small, utopian communes where everyone is dedicated to a particular style of belief. But not for larger society, where most people are at best indifferent in their politics and worship.
Or, alternatively, because the planetary ecosystem just views viruses as a stupid waste of effort, on par with punching yourself in the face?
Why cast it in theological terms? Eywa isn't protecting the Na'vi from disease as a reward for their lifestyle. Eywa's protecting the Na'vi from disease for the same reason I don't want my clothes to get ripped full of holes- they're valuable and I like them and I don't want them getting damaged needlessly by things I don't like.
If you put it like that, why would the world-brain value the Navi out of self-interest? What do they contribute to it? For that matter, why does it bother to keep all those weird animals around? Would it not be more efficient to just keep the brain-trees and the minimum of scavengers and micro-organisms needed to take care of whatever dead biomass might accrue? Since it can apparently run the animals by remote control, it hardly needs an elaborate hierarchy of predators to keep the populations balanced.
I've usually seen the conflation from people who oppose environmentalism, and want to cast it as luddism to give themselves an excuse for not worrying about the ecological consequences of their actions.
The closest there is to a dominant anti-technological theme in the environmental movement is the idea that there are values other than "he who dies with the most toys, wins" applied on the largest scale possible. Which seems to me to be rather important, and not at all a bad thing. The idea that yes there is some higher, or at least saner, purpose that we should be trying to keep an eye on, that questions like "but do we feel fulfilled?" and "how does what we do to the natural world reflect on us as human beings?" must be asked... that doesn't seem to me to be luddism.
I was thinking more of stuff like knee-jerk rejection and stark fear of everything with the word "nuclear" in it and similar issues. Which seems rather endemic to the green movement as such, though it is of course in no way confined to it.
I do not myself object by default to any notion of a "higher purpose" than basic greed and materialism (in fact, I think human beings require some such in order to function, although I also find many of the extant proposed higher purposes wrong-headed at best), but that is an issue quite separate from any discussion of environmentalism. Every ideology and religion (except perhaps Randian objectivism) tries to address those questions. And, of course, they are in no way Luddite as such.
1) Trade would be mediated through Grace and the rest of the xenobiology team. They may not have wanted to try too hard to sell consumer goods to the Na'vi because they know what happens then: the Na'vi become dependent on the stuff and their culture declines, as happened around the world.
They would not have to run any advanced sales pitch to get them to realize the inherent worth of, say, knives of stainless steel. If the company got them to just demonstrate those things to them, they probably could not keep them away if they tried and told them monstrous horror stories about how metal eats the soul.
This assuming that they actually have human-like psychologies, as the film showed. Of course,
Avatar fans can always fall back on them not really being human, so their alien nature covers up all such potential holes.
Unless, of course, they never tried to trade at all, but that goes contrary to the film as best as I remember; Selfridge seemed to imply that they had offered them quite more valuable stuff than basic tools.
2) By the time the movie begins, there has already been a sharp breach between the Na'vi and the humans of the Avatar program. This breach would have a huge effect on the level of scientific curiosity or publically expressed interest in human gadgets that any Na'vi might show, because you don't go oohing and aahing over the wizardy of a foreign enemy unless you want to make yourself look bad.
In real life, there would still be
some kind of interaction and trade, even if lower-key. Especially since the Navi, at least some of them by now speaking quite decent English, would have no need of the biologists as interpreters or intermediaries. All one thrifty warrior would need would be to approach one of the less jittery drivers or noncoms and strike a deal. They have stuff they can offer the corporation (or if the RDA higher-ups are for some reason not interested, an enterprising merc-
cum-businessman as a private person) in return for shinies, even if it is nothing more than tall tales or local lore . . . which should be valuable by any sane standard.
Then, he can get a fine new metal knife or ten to give to his girlfriend for an engagement present (or whatever).
...Honestly? My impression is that they were far more interested in investigating the planet (now with its cooperation or at least neutrality) than in any kind of lifestyle change. They want to stay on Pandora because they like researching the planet.
How does that in any way invalidate the fact that they still consider this worth renouncing human society and technology altogether? Environmentalism might not be their motive for it, but they still adapt the primitive lifestyle. And Sully himself even tries to "upload" into the avatar body so he can be a full-time Space Indian in every way.
"
- PeZook
So, are you claiming that there can be no morally ambiguous wars or conflicts, but only ones where one side is clearly right and the other equally clearly wrong?
Usually it is Serafina who throws it in, though.
