I wrote this on 31st January, but I didn’t get around to publishing it out, for various reasons:
[Edit: there's a lot of waffle here. I think you might just want to jump to the conclusions at the end
]
Well, I finally saw Avatar, yesterday night. My girlfriend paid for me
She said that if I walked out early I’d have to pay the price of the ticket back, but that turned out not to be a problem…
Avatar was a fairly standard story, but I never found myself bored. I think the romance aspect was really well done, I really liked the female Navi, and I thought the hero was pretty cool, in a somewhat-cavalier but not overly-so sort of way, I felt.
I think I was fairly curious to see what the solution to the problem would be. After all, it’s a common problem that many groups of people are confronted with on a number of occasions throughout history, and I guess if I thought about it, maybe in everyday life.
At the time when the solution became military, I was somewhat skeptical, and after having put a few minutes thought into it I still am.
But first, a comment on slashdot was ‘The navi would be less lovable if they strapped suicide belts on themselves’. I’m not sure if that’s really the case. The French resistance didn’t use suicide bombers but I’m not sure how a suicidal act of the French resistance would garner less sympathy from the other French people, under the German control, than a non-suicidal act would. Now, one could argue that remote bombs against civilians would not garner sympathy, and I think that point is pretty solid on balance, but I’m less certain about French resistance people carrying out suicidal acts against military checkpoints, barracks and such.
That said, I think a key-point is that the Navi acted as a group, a community, one country against another, not as something that could be perceived to be, or really was, a few isolated individuals acting on some mentally-unstable whim.
Perceptions in wars, especially nowadays, are I feel important, are a key part of winning one.
In Yugoslavia’s fragmentation wars a decade or two ago, one hears rumors that all sides were, had ethical issues. However, there was one side that apparently had massive military might, and another side that some argue used the media as a weapon of sorts, played the ‘victim’ card, and ultimately, I mean I didn’t study it myself in any depth at all, I just heard these rumors, but the concepts I heard were that the side that used the media and played the ‘victim’ card won out, won the war, against the militarily dominant side that won the battles.
Back to the Navi, and Avatar. I felt really skeptical, whilst watching, that a military solution would work out.
I feel that in reality the situation would be more like ‘Zulu’: they can band together as much as they want, but bows and arrows are no match for fire-arms, and thousands of them are no match for a few tens of men with small-arms.
I think the situation would end more like, well, Zulu, and so on I guess…
I guess where there is a situation like Avatar, there are three main possibilities, off the top of my head:
- assimilation
- annihilation
- trade
In the case where a group chooses neither trade nor is open to assimilation, I feel their life is going to be short-lived. It is in some ways analogous to a loner-strategy for an individual within society as a whole.
Assimilation: I feel certain conquering cultures are pretty good at this, and grow larger and stronger as a result. Certain countries when they dominate another militarily may treat the conquered as slaves, and certain might provide more opportunities for assimilation. It is a hazy line. A key point I feel is genetic mixing: some societies, organized along ostensibly racial lines, might have a very loose definition of belonging to their central race, with the most tenuous blood connection being accepted. Others might choose a harder, stricter line on this.
I feel that countries that make it nearly impossible for conquered peoples to become ultimately assimilated within them will later re-fragment. Europe, I’m looking at you to some extent. French war against England. English war against France. Wars upon wars. Neither side ever managed, nor perhaps wished, to treat the other side as their own, and they are separate countries.
Annihilation. I guess off the top of my head, I’m thinking native Americans in the united states. The remnants had little choice but to assimilate, though I get the impression that they did this more through having no choice than through being open to it. I guess I’m trying to keep it objective, but a certain amount of bias showed through in the last couple of sentences, which is possibly explained by the final option: trade.
Two countries which trade together will tend to protect each other to some extent. They develop a symbiotic relationship. They may be happy with the trade situation, and anything that threatens that is likely to cause at least short-term problems for both.
The Navi have something that the sky-people wanted. In theory they could be rich beyond their wildest dreams. But they refused to adapt, to accept that things were going to change, whether they liked it or not, and it was really a case of adapt or basically die.
The Navi didn’t want anything from the sky people, but the point of trade might not be always to get something you want, so much as to set the basis for an amicable, somewhat civilized, relationship, with neither side resorting to guns and so on.
Sure, within a few years, the Navi would likely be destroyed by excessive tourism
but let’s leave that aside temporarily. At the very least, if the Navi provide the unobtainium to the sky people themselves and obtain sky people currency in return, there will be no war, and no reason for their tree to be destroyed.
That said, I was intending this to be the conclusion to my post, but clearly it isn’t… because this naturally leads to discussions of corruption :-/ Nigeria for example was, I heard, a pretty civilized country to start with, and then, from brief rumors I have heard, the presence of oil in the country meant that those who owned the land profited, became rich, along with their friends, and that pretty much set the scene for corruption.
Let’s back-pedal a little…. since the 18th century or so, it has I feel been possible to make significant amounts of money simply by providing brain power to society, by being creative, by being ‘intelligent’. This wasn’t I think so possible much prior to the 18th century. Everyone was broadly a unit, ‘one person’, everyone had basically the same economic value to society, whether they were farmers or soldiers, whether they were whipped into obedience, or encouraged with carrots.
Then in the 18th century or so, intellectual resources became valued, and it became … noticed? … obvious? … that it is more effective to motivate intellectual resources with carrots rather than sticks, and so, cutting a long story short, democracy was I feel born, not necessarily created by the poor as protection against the rich, but perhaps by the rich as a way to motivate the poor to create.
Which is fine. Whatever the motives, it seems to me to be a bit of a win-win for all.
Still, the foundings of democracy are I feel that each individual can contribute intellectual resources to society, that those resources are useful to society, and thus that in return society does good things for each person, in order to obtain those intellectual resources.
Now, going back to a country that is rich in some mineral resource. That country sells that resource to another country. Intellectual resources are not what is being traded here, but some material resource that already exists. The money goes to those that own the land where the resource is. Whether the owner is dumb, academically intelligent, funny, boring, or whatever, if they have the land, they have the economic resources. And their friends. And they can use those economic resources to purchase protection to maintain their position. And their children’s position, and their children may be less intelligent and funny than the original owners were. I mean, the original owners probably had to do *something* to get into that position. But once a family owns that land, there is no longer any requirement by them particularly to do anything creative to maintain it.
And so: corruption: their friends and they become rich, and everyone else has no value to them, and will likely fall into poverty. Except those who contrive to become friends with those in power.
Going back to the Navi… if they sell the unobtainium it would seem likely unfortunately that the same thing would happen. Their society would become an unequal corrupted one, with a few very rich people who control the entire forest and tree.
That is unfortunate but I wasn’t really intending to discuss that in this post. My real point of this post was intended to be that if the Navi wishes to avoid being assimilated or annihilated their best choice of action is something like:
- adapt: realize the future does change, the world does change, and refusing to recognize this is essentially a route to dodo-like annihilation
- trade with their wannabe-conquerors
If the sky-people can get the unobtainium through trade, they have less reason to go to war.
Now, obviously there are years of history trying all these possible strategies, and I am not a historian, just a computer scientist, so I guess I’m being horribly naive here, but it still interests me.
Next up: I think the South Americans tried trade with the Spanish to provide the Spanish with gold? but I’m not sure, a little hazy on this… I don’t think it ended terribly well though… but still wherever there is asymmetric military power, it’s not going to end well for someone most likely. Are there examples of where someone has something another person wants, and the other country is stronger, and yet they get on?
Saudi Arabia perhaps? United Emirates?
Still, corruption is the issue…
Ultimately, I feel that if the people of a society have ways of contributing significantly to the society using their intrinsic personal resources, then the society will be asymptotically relatively ‘fair’ whereas if the people of a society have little to intrinsically add to it, then it will tend to be asymptotically corrupt.
In the Navi’s society, at the time where we see it, its members gain respect through ability to hunt, ability to tame the wild beasts around them.
Sale of unobtainium would change the situation where those who dominate the land become wealthy and respected. There would be a tiny amount of money available to miners, in dirty dangerous conditions, and one or two people might be architects or engineers, designing the mines.
That said, all is not doom and gloom: the leaders have to spend their money on *something* otherwise what is the point, of having it? And therefore there is likely to be a set of industries existing ultimately to provide entertainment and privileges to those in power.
Film-making, story writing for example. Stories that make those in power feel good about themselves, happy, ethical.
Architecture for those in power to make cool palaces for themselves.
Genetic engineering to create the ultimate cool flying beast, controllable only by those in power, very powerful and formidable, none of this having to fight the thing: it’s automatically programmed to be loyal to those in power, and only to them.
Computer games I guess, but why not just hunt the poorer Navi? For that matter, just invite the sky people to join in, become friends with the sky people, and gain more power.
The Navi in power can send their children to university in the sky people’s country…
I think I’ll stop. This is becoming far too political
Conclusions:
Ok, so to try to make some sort of conclusion, after re-reading:
- I feel military solutions to the Navi’s problems are doomed. The sky people will ultimately come back with bigger guns and weapons, just nuke the tree from orbit or whatever
- ultimately if the Navi cannot adjust to forge a place for themselves within the Sky People’s world, that is beneficial for both, ie trade, then the Navi are obsolete, and will be annihilated. Cold, but I feel: true
- trade for unobtainium will probably cause massive corruption and inequalities within the Navi, essentially destroying their current society
- however, in its place, there will ultimately be I feel a certain trickle-down effect as those who own the unobtainium, and have lots of money, try to figure out ways to spend that money
I feel the conquerors can make life smoother for the conquered in a few ways, this is not really a conclusion I know, but a few additional speculations
:
- provide education for free to members of the conquered / traded-with society
- be structured culturally in such a way that the Navi can ultimately assimilate, without too much discrimination on the basis of skin-color, height, and so on
Providing education for free to members of the conquered / traded-with society is important I feel because:
- it allows the non-leader members of that society to contribute usefully to their own society, building genetically engineered beasts for the leaders for example, rather than just dieing from cancer in the mines
- it provides significant opportunity for cultural mixing and assimilation, which is ultimately going to I feel increase the power, resources and reputation of the conquering society
Concrete proposition:
- in place of spending lots of money on sending food to poorer countries, we spend significant amounts of money providing professional training, or at least decent basic education, for free, to members of such countries
- a lottery can be created to allow certain members of the subservient society to obtain an education for free in the richer country.
There is a country that does this actually, sort of, and it is the United States. Prior to an arguable throttling of the borders in 2001, this country was arguably the most powerful country in the world. Coincidence?
Additional PS
, after re-reading this, do you know who carried out this policy somewhat in Avatar? Yes, the Navi: they took Jake under their wing, educated him, allowed him to assimilate entirely into their society, and a direct result was that Jake became loyal to them, and protected them.