• robinoberg@feddit.ukOP
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      3 months ago

      It’s a motif as old as time. Foreign invader getting Stockholm Syndrome with the natives. Another famous example is Dances With Wolves. That film called The Great Wall as well. Some versions of Robin Hood has it. Anthropologists call it Going Native, which is what Carlos Castañeda did.

      But they’re not all about economic expansionism

  • Rhaedas@fedia.io
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    3 months ago

    The realization that we probably wouldn’t change how we are make me a bit glad we missed the chance to be a spacefaring civilization and are screwed here. The universe didn’t need that, one planet ruined is enough.

    • Scrubbles@poptalk.scrubbles.tech
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      3 months ago

      I’ve found peace recently thinking about our blue planet. We may cause chaos for a bit, but in the grand scheme, it’ll be fine. The rivers will run, the oceans will be blue, plants and animals will eventually, over tens of thousands of years and longer will be fine.

      Humanity is fucked, we destroyed our chances because we as a society could never get over our greed, but the problems we cause will be temporary. Over time the planet itself will heal. We just won’t be here for it.

      That being said, it’s why I’m choosing not to have kids.

    • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world
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      3 months ago

      The take on immortality in Avatar 2 is really interesting, because both sides get to have it.

      spoiler

      But on one side of the fence, you’ve got a familial connection that echoes through eternity with the spirits of one’s family forever surrounding you and offering guidance.

      On the other side of the fence you just have Eternal Employment, in which your immortal mind is a captive instrument for the profit of your masters.

      One is this transcendent euphoric existence and the other is an allusion to hell itself.

  • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world
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    3 months ago

    I’m torn, because there’s an idea that industrial capital only knows how to consume and destroy what it touches. And there’s ample evidence to that effect.

    But there’s this other more naive notion that life never changes, species don’t compete for habitat, and doing anything to alter the local ecology is this unforgivable sin. This, despite the fact that everything in the area is itself a product of eons of speciation and evolution and carnivorization.

    The impulse to preserve has to be balanced with the expectation for change. The goal should be symbiosis, not stasis.

    • thawed_caveman@lemmy.world
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      3 months ago

      The idea that nature is precious and must be preserved is human-centric.

      Trees caused an extinction event when they appeared by absorbing all the carbon dioxyde and radically changing the atmosphere. But we feel bad when we’re the ones doing it

    • FooBarrington@lemmy.world
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      3 months ago

      The issue is that you’re changing the ecosystems and environments so much that all those eons of evolution are simply lost. The only other times this happens is during natural catastrophes. Sure, in the long run this allows new life forms to take the old ones places, but it’s still a massive loss of diversity and evolutionary knowledge - and unnecessary suffering for millions of living beings.

      When species compete for a habitat, they rarely destroy it - and those species that do either don’t survive for long, or they wipe out large swaths. We’re actively killing almost anything in our habitats, and destroying them for almost all previous species.

  • LibreHans@lemmy.world
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    3 months ago

    What do you mean? Communists didn’t mine minerals and didn’t exploit indigenous people? Lol…

      • MBM@lemmings.world
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        3 months ago

        The word you’re looking for is imperialism, and that’s definitely not unavoidable human nature

      • optissima@lemmy.ml
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        3 months ago

        “It’s human nature,” okay bud and what about all the groups in history that prove otherwise? You’re just washing history with capitalist mindsets.

    • Dragon Rider (drag)@lemmy.nz
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      3 months ago

      That’s right. For example, Australian communists lived in balance with nature for 60,000 years. Then capitalists came and started breaking stuff.

        • Dragon Rider (drag)@lemmy.nz
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          3 months ago

          Aboriginal Elders have told us we are a reflection of the Country: if the land is sick, so are we. If the land is healthy (or punyu), so are we. Wik First Nations scholar Tyson Yunkaporta says our collective wellbeing can only be sustained through a life of communication with a sentient landscape and all things on it.

          https://theconversation.com/if-the-land-is-sick-so-are-we-australian-first-nations-spirituality-explained-230872

          You wanna go tell Tyson he’s being racist against his own people?

            • Dragon Rider (drag)@lemmy.nz
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              3 months ago

              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.

              https://oxsci.org/conservation-through-the-eyes-of-indigenous-australian-culture/

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

                • Dragon Rider (drag)@lemmy.nz
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                  3 months ago

                  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.

      • essell@lemmy.world
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        3 months ago

        I guess those megafauna who vanished about 59,500 years ago were really messing with the balance.

        • Flying Squid@lemmy.world
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          3 months ago

          Regardless of megafaunata, just by being in Australia, humans became an invasive species and did all sorts of damage that invasive species do.

          Worse, indigenous Australians brought the dingo with them. Two very intelligent predators where two didn’t exist before did a lot of damage. Colonizing Europeans also did a lot of damage and nothing that the indigenous people in Australia did justifies what Europeans (basically just the British, let’s be fair) did, but pretending that indigenous humans aren’t as flawed as all other humans does them a disservice. It does not help indigenous people to put them up on pedestals and treat them as noble savages.

  • bleistift2@sopuli.xyz
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    3 months ago

    Don’t forget about the part from the intro (might have been cut from the theatrical release):

    They can fix a spine, if you have the money. But not from a VA check. Add $5 and you get yourself a cup of coffee.

  • some_guy@lemmy.sdf.org
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    3 months ago

    I saw the film in a theater with someone who wanted to impress upon me that someone pointed out to her how alike it was to what happened to indigenous peoples in the Americas (someone else had pointed that out to her, so she assumed I wouldn’t get it on my own). I was like, if you think that’s a novel observation, you really need to be hit in the face with concepts to understand things. It couldn’t have been more obvious.

    But maybe that highlights how much some people just aren’t observant or introspective or whatever else. It would explain a lot.

  • egrets@lemmy.world
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    3 months ago

    I can picture in my mind a world without war, a world without hate. And I can picture us attacking that world, because they’d never expect it.

    - Jack Handey

    • stupidcasey@lemmy.world
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      3 months ago

      That’s just Evil, if we build an industrial park there where will the slaves forced labor work bit*hes

      *Due to recent very public events our Public relations officer has been sent on leave with pay instead Nataly will complete this statement.

      That’s just Evil, if we build an industrial park there where will the (Checks Notes) Employees park there cars?

      • corsicanguppy@lemmy.ca
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        3 months ago

        Nataly needs a spelling-checker. Also, a quick tutorial on comma splices wouldn’t be wasted.

        You know: grade school stuff.

        • stupidcasey@lemmy.world
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          3 months ago

          Thanks, I’ll remember that when I go to school… oh wait, I’m not in school anymore. I’m gainfully employed, get paid plenty, and nobody cares. Huh, it’s almost like the hyper-educated imposition placed on us by society is simply a form of control, gatekeeping, and self-aggrandizing and the people who spent more time studying than forming relationships wasted their time and are now disgruntled because they have to work harder than those who aren’t overly anal grammar Nazis.

  • Ech@lemm.ee
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    3 months ago

    Avatr is about capitalism

    That wasn’t glaringly obvious to everyone?

      • gandalf_der_12te@discuss.tchncs.de
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        3 months ago

        Well acschually oxygen is a corrosive chemical and probably damages your lungs (since that’s the tissue that comes in most contact with it). And also the Great Oxydation Event is probably one of the greatest - if not the greatest - mass extinction of all times, so …

      • FuglyDuck@lemmy.world
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        3 months ago

        Some people are dense enough that “the point” is the name of a baseball bat you have to go get to get it across.

        It was also about the poor soldiers getting used to further capitalism.

        Honestly, though…. That military wasn’t very credible. Half their aircraft you could disable by dumping buckets of pebbles into the fans.

      • pyre@lemmy.world
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        3 months ago

        you forget the kind of people who complain that wolfenstein games or the x-men animated series “became” political

    • pressanykeynow@lemmy.world
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      3 months ago

      Well it’s literally Pocahontas in space so more obvious comparison is to the colonialism. They could grow gardens and farms while destroying the natives, the movie would have been the same.

      • Ech@lemm.ee
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        3 months ago
        1. Colonialism was driven by capitalism

        2. They weren’t settling land - they were setting up a mining operation.

        • AppleTea@lemmy.zip
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          3 months ago

          It was just one line of dialog, but the sequel did mention that the company is expanding from just resource extraction to selling settlements to the wealthiest who are fleeing a dying earth

    • ZoopZeZoop@lemmy.world
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      3 months ago

      It’s true, but when I play games like Terraria, I try to preserve beautiful features of the map and even incorporate them into my builds. Like those surface cave things where it’s basically floating dirt/rock with grass and trees growing on them. I often make those into the entrances of underground homes. Same with the deserts. When you get the actuators, you can make sand entrances. I also enjoy making houses in the leaves of the living trees.