ATTENTION "DARK SHADOWS" FANS

[NeverMore]

I never saw Avatar. My older son saw it twice in the theater. He said the story was cliche but that the special effects were dazzling. Because I didn't want to pay to see it in the theater, I never saw it at all. I figured, on DVD, all I would be getting was the story, and he said that was predictable.

It was basically a remake of 'Dances With Wolves' taking place on another planet. Great visuals though.

[Pumpkin_Man]

It was an interesting story, but what saddened me about "Avitar" was that it portrayed humanity as an opressive race. I realize that was true through out History, but I would like to think that on the day we are enlightened enough to develop interstellar space travel, we would be enlightned enough not to exploit other beings who are not as advanced as we are technologicaly.

Mike

[NeverMore]

I beg to differ with you Mike. While I would love to see a Star Trek future I think mankind has a tendency to repeat it's past mistakes. As mentioned in the other thread it will most likely be the corporations that will take us into space and we know their current track record.

[Murfreesboro]

Well, I agree that human nature doesn't change, and we are likely to see the same mix of good and evil in future generations that we've seen for centuries past. Technology itself is neutral. It's how it gets used that makes it good or bad.

Personally I get fed up with the insinuation that all "simpler," more "natural," or more "primitive" cultures were/are perforce superior to modern civilization. I think that is a myth created by modern people who want to believe that things were better in the past. Every era, every society, has its deep-seated problems. As a wife and mother, I certainly wouldn't want to go back to the lack of medical knowledge we suffered in earlier generations, for example. I am grateful to be living now, even though we have a world of problems. But people always did. (This comment is not so much a disagreement with you, Mike, as it is an observation prompted by what I perceive to be the "message" of Avatar.)

[Boogeyman]

The message of Avatar was America bad, earth good. The director, James Cameron is a extreme environmentalist hypocrite. Look at the size of the houses he own and the way he travels.

http://virtualglobetrotting.com/map/jam ... ons-house/

[scareviewzombies.com]

Avatar was a long movie wasn't it? lol it was good though

[Murfreesboro]

The message of Avatar was America bad, earth good. The director, James Cameron is a extreme environmentalist hypocrite. Look at the size of the houses he own and the way he travels.

http://virtualglobetrotting.com/map/jam ... ons-house/

Well, nobody wants a bad, unclean environment, of course, but I do think there are lots of people who have somehow made environmentalism into a pseudo-religion.

[Pumpkin_Man]

NeverMore, I said I would like to think that we would be more enlightened, but that doesn't necessarily reflect the reality. You make a very good point about what huge corporations are like, too. Dating clear back to the infancy of the Industrial Revolution, the corporate giants have exploited women, children, ethnic minorities and many other human beings in the name of making a proffit. But it's nice to dream, as they say. It is my hope, and I do believe it is actualy possible, though not very probable, that by the time we have advanced our technology enough to travel to other solar systems, we will have advanced ourselves socialy as well.

Murf, you are absolutely correct. A car is neither good or bad. It can be used by a family person to give their kids a ride to school, or it can be used by a Mafia hit man to kill some one. An airplane can be used to put out forrest fires, or to drop napalm bombs on innocent people. As for ancient times being more "civilized," let's take a look at some of the ancient civilizations. The ancient Babylonians INVENTED execution by crucifixion. That method was embraced by the Ancient Romans and others to punish anyone who oposed the emperor. The ancient romans fed men, women and children to lions, for being Christians, and the spectators cheered and jeered. That was actualy a form of entertainment as were gladitorial games. Many a gladiator was a slave, so he had no choice to be a gladiator. In ancient times, the Native Americans had many barbaric forms of punishment, which included but was not necessarily limited to skinning some one alive. In Great Britain during the 1500s and 1600s, the infamous tower of london was the place of some of the most horendous tortures, and executions were often done by decapitation.

I can go on and on. The point is, I think that if anything, people were much more savage in ancient and mideavle times then they are now. When we execute a criminal, he h as to be a real monster like John Wayne Gacy, and then we put him down by lethal injection like you would to a dog. In ancient times, you could be beaten to a bloody puplp, nailed to a cross and left for hours or even days to die a slow agonizing death, for saying "I don't agree with the king."

Mike