“The Avatar Blues” -or- “Caution: 3D CGI can lead to suicidal thoughts”

take for example, did you know Abraham lincoln, a republican was a socialist? He and Marx we're good friends and corresponded in letters

Oh, they were not! Marx sent Lincoln a letter congratulating him on his re-election in 1864. Ambassador Adams (To London) sent Karl a polite acknowledgement that the letter was received and read, but not endorsed. That's where it ends. They weren't friends, Lincoln never wrote back, nor would he have had much opportunity: he was dead within a year.

You can read the whole thing here http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/iwma/documents/1864/lincoln-letter.htm

@nwkeys01 True environmentalism is not liberal or conservative but the means and ends can be. Lincoln signed the law that created what became Yosemite national park and Teddy Roosevelt helped create Yellowstone.

The problem with the modern green movement is that it tries to pretend that man is not part of the natural world and that animals and nature are more important than human lives. There will always be people that will destroy things for short term profit that is why we make laws to protect things. But sometimes you have to make a chose between the greater good and conservation. There needs to be a balance not the all or nothing stand that many people in the green movement take both modern life and the natural world can live side by side but we need to stop thinking that it is a zero sum game and use some forethought and planning. The banning of DDT has not saved the bird population like the greens of the 70’s thought but it has cost millions of human lives by stopping and reversing the progress made in the control of Malaria in Africa, Asia and parts of South America.

I do not want to see the world paved over and become one large planet wide city like Trantor in the Foundation stories but I have no desire to live like the Native Americans of 600 years ago either. I am one of those people that believe we could save the Earth not by removing technology but by using it to harness the energy and resources of the solar system. This would remove the need to use the resources of Earth and give people room to expand and find new ways to live.

The problem with a movie like Avatar is that it is a fantasy that has no real relation to the problems of the real world. The people in the poor nations of the Earth see the green movement not as a good thing but as the industrialized nations trying to stop them from getting a better life. Instead of telling them no you can’t we should be showing them how to come to our level without making the mistakes we did. The third world should be helped to jump over the messy industrial age straight to the information age but that takes money and education and it does not lend itself to snappy bumper sticker slogans.

we've all both liberal and conservatives
(except for a few crazies)

have noticed something is really screwy with our weather. enviromentalism is not inherently conservative or liberal. It just is enivromental. because of this, whichever group gets in first has the run of it.

Ideas are not inherent to a party; take for example, did you know Abraham lincoln, a republican was a socialist? He and Marx we're good friends and corresponded in letters

enviromentalism is tagged as Liberal mainly only because of Al Gore. If a well known conservative that was popular had done it first , it would have been labeled conservative

All the same, We should be caring for our enviroment or else we'll wind up killing ourselves because we didn't. Same message as Jurassic Park and various other movies, don't screw with Mother Nature, don't play god, etc

that was the whole point of the movie,
maybe it would get to thinking about caring for the enviroment

Oh, undoubtedly. It's total environmental propaganda, interwoven with some hokey, idealized "Noble Savage" nonsense. As R1 said in his review, it's basically covering the same ground as "Ferngully: The Last Rainforest." <G> It is entertaining propaganda.

Here's the thing I don't get: A lot of conservatives recognize the movie for what it is, and are boycotting it, as if that'll make any difference. A lot of us keep talking about the "Culture Wars" and how the media is opposing the right and so on, and yet no one I talk to has any interest in actually making any high-glitz media-savy conservative entertainment as a counterpoint. I mean, would it be hard to come up with right wing propaganda to counter left wing propaganda? No, of course not, but rather than work towards something like that, we mostly just sit around and talk about football and gainsay the other guys.

It's hard to fight an entertainment war if you're deliberately avoiding using the media, you know?

that was the whole point of the movie,
maybe it would get to thinking about caring for the enviroment

but some people who are over-empathic (people who pretty much soak up emotion around them like a sponge) have to be on the extreme watch. They are even more severely tied to the emotions they are feeling

Kit's not 'erstwhile', he's right there!  See!

Well, he wasn't when I wrote that.

Ok, ok, I'm an idiot. I used the wrong word. The one I was looking for was...uhm...uhm...bilaterally symetrical? No, no, that's not it...uhm...uhm....prolific? no, no, it wasn't prolific. Uhm...gorilla? No, no, no, it wasn't gorilla. Uhm...aardvark? heh, heh. No, it wasn't aardvark. Funny, though. Uhm...was it a rabbit? No, no, no, it wasn't a rabbit. Was it...uhm...

For D-Day vets having problems watching SAVING PRIVATE RYAN, I can understand. That was not just a movie, it was reality, Their reality. Their hell.

oh, I totally agree. You live through the worst day of your life, you spent forty years trying to get over it, and then you go to a movie that slaps you back in the meat grinder again. that's totally understandable.

I've long been of the theory that certain things function as lures for certain kinds of people more strongly than others.  Star Trek has always seemed to appeal unusually strongly to Aspergery people, Star Wars always seems to appeal unusually strongly to otherwise-normal kids from broken homes, and so on. Presumably, then, Avatar might be appealing unusually strongly to...i dunno...environmentalists with feelings of hopelessness? Prog Rock fans who always wanted to go live inside album covers? I don't know what. Something, though.

Kit's not 'erstwhile', he's right there!  See!

For D-Day vets having problems watching SAVING PRIVATE RYAN, I can understand. That was not just a movie, it was reality, Their reality. Their hell. So for them, it was very real.

On Star Trek, I am a bit of Trek-fan, but I do not obsess about it. While I may get into a show (MONK), at the end of the day I know that it is just a show. Written and produced by people who have an incredible ability to kill it with the sheer weight of their egos, pride, vanity, and idiocy.

Only two movies have really bothered me: FIGHT CLUB and MYSTIC RIVER. The first one was too nihilistic for me to get 40 minutes in. The second had an ending that just, well, sucked.

yup. you'll note i called these folks 'weak minded.' it's sad that i wasn't just being snarky.

We have seen this problem develop for the last 10 years or so in the online game genre. People have taken World of Warcraft, Everquest, and Eve online to extremes. It was just a matter of time when this happened in a mass scale with a popular movie. It is even older than online computer games there was some people that took the old pen and paper Dungeons and Dragons game too far.

In fact the use of film as propaganda to move the masses is as old as film. The problem is not the games or films but the people, they are not taught critical thinking or any form of logic so why should they be able to distinguish reality from fantasy. The producers of Avatar are getting the reaction they wanted, an unthinking reaction that nature is good and humans are bad. The whole green movement has devolved into that simple thought. It is the reason that many people are still pushing the man made climate change agenda even though it is now known that the UN reports are trash science.

Education is the most important thing to a democracy but we have removed the aspects that would build strong critical thinking minds and substituted self esteem and correct political thinking. Many people will just accept what ever is shown them as truth instead of searching for it themselves. Most people are programmed to believe what they are told so why should they know the difference between fiction and reality.