Avatar is about capitalism

Dragon Rider (drag)

The totem system from the Countries I am from allows for the person to be the knowledge holder of the animal or plant they are given or born into. Within your family group (also known as mob) you are the person that is responsible for its survival and use. For example, if you are given the Kangaroo, people in your mob or Country would come to you to gain permission to hunt the Kangaroo for food or clothing. If you had observed the Kangaroo having high population numbers you could allow them to be hunted to feed families, and on the flip side if population numbers were low, you would not allow this. This totem system was vital to survival of Indigenous people, but also ensured that biodiversity was sustained. It is considered the social responsibility of the community to preserve the environment. By having this relationship and responsibility with a totem creates lifelong physical, spiritual, and emotional connections to the environment. With my personal totem being a Koala, I have dedicated my research interests to understanding more about this animal and advocating for its conservation and preservation. I have focused my early career research on understanding the Koalas diet selection and its relationship to habitat selection.

Conservation through the eyes of Indigenous Australian culture - The Oxford Scientist

Teresa Cochrane explores the intimate connection between Indigenous peoples in Australia and the environment using personal experiences.

The Oxford Scientist (oxsci.org)

Go tell Teresa that her tribe's environmental management strategies are fake and racist because they make aboriginals look too smart

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Explore, exploit, exterminate.

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Sure, but none of the economies we actually have (or recently had) work like that.

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Satisfactory music starts playing

Dragon Rider (drag)

Avatar does have some good science fiction like the idea of a planetary hivemind being worshipped as a god. The Na'vi religion is literally true, it just seems false to humans who don't know anything. That's very different to Dune, where the Fremen religion is true because people like Paul's mum make it true.

Dragon Rider (drag)

Someone had better have a communist revolution so we do have one like that, then.

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Judging by the communist revolutions we had so far, I'm not holding my breath for that.

qyron

I'll grant that waffer thin idea as a good attempt of putting something akin to good sci-fi into an otherwise solely for visuals work, although I disagree with the notion of deifying something that is tangible, as in the setting put forward in the movie.

And I mentioned Dune because of the immortality mention. The spice is also irreplaceable and unique, produced only in a single planet, through a rather complex organic process, harvested at great risk and cost, then to be synthesized by the tons.

That was good sci-fi, with sound social and religious criticism in it.

Dragon Rider (drag)

If you'll allow drag to play devil's advocate, Eywa isn't tangible. Ewya is a mind, and minds are made of electrical signal patterns. You can't touch electricity. And you definitely can't touch a pattern of information, which is essentially made out of maths. That's what a mind is, a bunch of incredibly complex maths.

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They get stronger because they mutate to fight back

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Are you Teresa?

Dragon Rider (drag)

That's not how evolution works. A species evolves to get stronger in battle if the weak ones die in battle. A species evolves stronger lungs if the weak ones die of lung cancer. Dying of lung cancer doesn't make a species better fighters.

Dragon Rider (drag)

Are you? You're the one claiming racism because drag listens to Aboriginal elders. Drag's got sources for what drag says, and it seems like you don't. So you're just making stuff up.

Besides, the noble savage trope is about thinking indigenous societies were pure an untainted by evil. Aboriginal Australians knew what evil was. They had policies in place within their governments to prevent ecological devastation. That's not innocence, it's technology. Aboriginals aren't savages and drag didn't say they are. You're the one denying their advanced environmental policies. Sounds like you're the one calling them savages.

FuglyDuck

You're intelligent. Or at least, well read/educated.

I didn't say it was a good plot-device. The entire movie was hamfisted from the world building through the dialog, the character development, and those hamfists evolved into bulldozers to bring the moral home.

The only thing it had going for it was the CGI... which was obsequious.

Regardless, it's their fictional world. They designed it to be stupid and boring so they could make some sort of moral superiority bullshit statement about capitalism while grossing 2+ billion.

Also, I'm just gonna say it. It wasn't even sci fi. sure, sure. it had ships and stuff. but that's not what makes sci fi sci fi.

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Next you'll listen to some hip hop and start calling black people removeds?

FuglyDuck

I fall back to my original thought: is well thought sci-fi so hard to achieve nowadays? If seems there is a fixation about misery and destruction nowadays.

considering that mass media will slap a space ship into anything and call it "Science Fiction".... yes, actually. Because they're idiots who will only copy what's already been done because it's a reliable way to make money.

FuglyDuck

allow me to play the idiot-younger-sibling of said devil's advocate and just point out you can absolutely touch electricity, which is why we put safety plugs in them to keep toddlers from licking electrical outlets.

lad

Drag is correct, but it's fantasy evolution we're talking about

qyron

From what I took from the movie, there was a knowledge that such a collective overarching conscience existed. It wasn't a figment of imagination nor a collective (de)illusion. It was tangible in that way.

And being cheeky: electricty can't be touched? i disagree. Every single time I put my fingers where I shouldn't, it reminded me in very tangible way I wasn't looking at what I was doing.

qyron

Sad but true.