Grant_us_eyes
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User ID: 1156
Grant_us_eyes
19hr ago
Is this where we start bitching about how the two Avatar movies make no goddamn sense whatsoever and how James Cameron is a fucking hack who doesn't know how to write?
Because I'll do it. I'll fucking well do it.
Props for the essay, but it's stuff I've seen before. Hell, it's pretty much my original take away from the first movie.
And Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri did it all better anyways.
Grant_us_eyes
3d ago
It's times like this I wish I could toss myself into stasis for a decade or two for this technology to hit mainstream.
Not that I'd use it myself, but I really want to see what people's revealed preferences would be if they have the option to pick and choose their offspring's traits.
Grant_us_eyes
3d ago
Straight guy as well, and I'd consider her pretty mid for a normal woman, much less a starlet.
Grant_us_eyes
5d ago
I find it more interesting that this is a statement I've seen voiced by others in the past few years, that's only come up recently. That we have the Vice President of the United States voicing this aloud indicates... well, it certainly indicates something.
Part of the issue, I feel, with modern immigration is that people have bought into the myth and propaganda, and if you question this, you're, well, a bad person. 'Give us your tired, your huddled masses, your poor' is basically good advertisement, but it doesn't reflect the reality on the ground. 'Melting pot', too, was a statement by a visitor from Europe to describe New York City, and I can't help but feel trying to make all of America look like New York City makes my skin crawl.
As far as mythology goes, again, I feel that people have this mistaken assumption that people just came into the US during the heyday of 20th century immigration and merely stayed and settled. Not true. In truth, it was a two-way free-flow of people that came to the US to make their fortune and then left if they couldn't do so.
Many European migrants who moved to the United States in the early twentieth century eventually returned to their home country. The US government collected official statistics on both in- and out-migration from 1908 to 1923. In those years, the United States received 10 million immigrant arrivals and lost 3.5 million emigrants, a return migration rate of 35% (Gould 1980; Wyman 1993: 10–12; Hatton and Williamson 1998: 9). Return migration rates may have been even higher than the aggregate statistics suggest. Bandiera et al. (2013) found that in order to reconcile micro data on migrant inflows to the stock of migrants remaining in the United States during census years, the return migration rate may have been as high as 70%
More, was serious concern over said glut of immigration, to the point where moratoriums came down to stifle said flow of people because of concerns regarding the people that actually lived there.
More, as someone whom considers himself... well, I can't say 'amateur', I won't grace myself with such a title, so let's call me a 'dabbling fumbler of a historian' - someone who's looked into the past on this topic, the one thing I never see brought up in regards to early 20th century immigration is the one of distance and time. I go to local places that were settled as ethnic enclaves and I put myself back in the days of yore, both in terms of distance and logistics, and I come to a stark realization - people talk of this 'founding myth' of immigration for America as if it perfectly applies to the modern age, and, no, it doesn't - because these were groups of people who basically came to America, staked out a section of land days travel from others in the middle of nowhere, and lived their lives, alone and away from others and not causing any trouble.
We don't have that today. Travel from port city to said settlements take days back then of hard travel now take a few hours at worst. We have a free flow of people undreamt of in the past, over vast distances and in a fairly trivial fashion. What would take places in another section of your own county could be ignored with a fair amount of ease if you so wished - now we need to pay attention to what occurs in other states because the people over there could very easily come over here with all their issues and there isn't a damn thing you can do about it.
Talk of meritocracy and individualism applied to Immigration is a bad argument from the get go, I feel, because it's based on a host of assumptions that are not historical truth. America was never a melting pot, it was a crucible - one that people could leave and did so. And even if they stayed without being a success, they were not necessarily a failure, as they could simply live their lives without bothering anyone and not being bothered in turn.
That age of history is done and gone. We no longer have that luxury. The myths of yesteryear may speak of something that people want to be true, an ideal to aspire to, but the set of circumstances that allowed for that myth to flourish no longer exist, and it's time people acknowledge that. We can't look to the past for solutions, because the past people expect to find never existed, and the solutions that did exist people don't want to use.
TLDR: While I'm sure there are applicable arguments about Meritocracy and Individualism, I feel this is a bad one built upon bad assumptions and so I'm dismissing it entirely in favor of focusing on other aspects.
Grant_us_eyes
6d ago
Personal antecedent; A friend of mine(who eventually married) confided to me part of the issue with dating he had was potential gold-diggers who were more interested in his and his family's wealth than an honest relationship.
Another personal antecedent; The same friend finally married a nice brain surgeon who's the only one I've seen capable of keeping up with said friend in all areas, and once she got settled into her job, her paycheck meant they could indulge in all their hobbies.
I think there's a hidden factor not accounted for; that rich, successful men don't have options - not really. That if they're trying to build a family, that their options are actually very limited - someone with a similar outlook, ideas for the lifestyle they want to lead, with a pleasant(or at least compatible) personality. So, while the data is interesting(and I'm not disagreeing with it), I think the host of assumptions are off and thus make things skewed when trying to apply it to the real world.
Well, see, that's the problem.
It's the exact opposite.
The reason the first movie drew so many nerds and geeks to it, despite the majority of them actively disliking said movie and it's resolution is that James Cameron actually put in the work to build verisimilitude. The entire setup and world-building of the first movie - if you do the background research - is actually really, really good. He basically sets up a cyberpunk dystopia in a very subtle way to explain the whys and wherefores.
Some of the background aspects that always stuck with me was the brutal albeit realistic risks that people signing up for a tour on Pandora would take. You weren't signing up for a tour on a vacation world, but a potentially deadly mission to what amounted to a remote Antarctica Research facility, only ten times worse. If your cryo-pod failed during transit, they would quietly euthanized you, as they couldn't spare the resources to keep your sorry ass alive for several years, and you just weren't that valuable. If you got injured past a certain point, again, they just euthanized you. It spoke of a ruthless business with very limited resources that treated thier employees like replaceable cogs, and with the same care. Brutal, albeit realistic and understandable.
And then there's the ISV Venture Star, which is one of the most gorgeous ships in movie history. Beautiful thing.
The second movie basically takes all the world-building in the first movie and throws it in the trash. Turns out, no, full-brain uploads and backups are a thing, and can be done in a trivial fashion. Whoops, the head security guy knocked up someone and the resultant child got left behind, despite the previous attitude toward RDA's own employees meaning said child likely would have been aborted without so much as a raised eyebrow or blush.
Avatar 2 basically went full Eclipse Phase without working out the implications of what going full Eclipse Phase actually means. Given all the homework done to make the first Avatar movie reasonably work(compared to other movies, atleast), it points overall that James Cameron likely had nothing to do with the writing/worldbuilding and is basically making shit up for the second movie without thinking it through and going all in on selling a message.
Granted, that's what the first movie did, but it atleast did the work to make it actually interesting.
Whoof. Okay. Glad to get that off my chest. All right, I'm done.
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