IDEA! Avatar 2: Ava-Tarrer

[Ryan Thunder]

What is wrong with the Borg or the Strogg?

Well for starters they aren't human...

[madd0ct0r]

ahhh, so your position is that which ever side the humans are on, we should support?

not just shit slinging - i'm honestly confused. You started with the assertion Industrialisation was better. just becuase.

and then confronted with the borg, you argue that they're not human?

so human trumps industrialsation?

so, if we go back to shrooms OP, you'd prefer if the sky whales just sent us back to the stone age with eywa around us, then turned us into Navi?

[Shroom Man 777]

What if those sky whales were actually human whales, like huge ass fat slobs floating in the ether from their intergalactic planetoid couches?

[Oni Koneko Damien]

What is wrong with the Borg or the Strogg?

Well for starters they aren't human...

I can't help but notice that your position changes from post to post, depending on what's most convenient for you at the time. I mean first off, we have this from you:

If they don't want or realize that they need anything we have then it would be out of ignorance. Which is understandable.

They just need education (like many people.) Then they'll understand.

Then this:

Oh, I'm not even going to touch that discussion. I'm under no illusion that the RDA are somehow good guys.

Now with a little stretching I could understand how the two stances aren't hypocritical, but I'm sure even you can understand how the former immediately comes across as "Industrialization is an ends that justifies almost any means".

But then we have this:

Well, Shroom, you assume that exploitation is endemic to technological civilization and not something that technological civilization can correct through the presence of authority and public education--neither of these are things the Na'vi would have due to problems that are endemic to subsistence living. Like a lack of free time to do things besides hunt/gather for anybody who isn't in the upper echelons of the tribe (hello, chief's daughter), lack of a reliable information storage medium (paper, magnetic discs/tapes, and the like), etc.

The short version; they're primitives. Of course we're going to be the ones teaching them. What are they going to teach us that we can't figure out on our own? Maybe they can tell us in general about the local flora and fauna, but they don't understand biology, chemistry, physics, neurology, etc. like we do. All they can do is point out the obvious and wonder at it. They don't seem to have any drive to go any further than that. It's tragic, really.

Furthermore, there's nothing to be learned from your retarded fantasy other than that some people think "I can turn any situation around and pretend its the same goddamn thing and the only reason you don't see that is because you're prejudiced or something."

Get off your goddamn high horse. Go take your goddamn car for a drive or ride the train or something. Go play a symphony on your goddamn fucking MP3 player and hear it in high quality through your goddamn headphones without disturbing the goddamn neighbours. The only reason you can share your poorly formed argument in the first place is because of that technological civilization you so greatly abhor. Go ahead. Give it up for a while. See if you like it so much when you don't have something as simple as goddamn 2-ply toilet paper. You won't, because even with all the shit going on in the world, science and technology make it better, and no amount of your useless whining about 'simpler lifestyles' or how 'ignorance is bliss' is ever going to change that.

Which puts you quite firmly back in the 'industrialization by any means is good and superior' camp, and marks you as a severe hypocrite here. It's the entire basis for your argument: When a situation is presented where humanity is forcefully taken over by something they don't stand a chance against, and given a much higher standard of living, your counterargument wasn't, "That's bad because the invaders aren't human", your counterargument was, "That's bad because it isn't industrial, and thus innately inferior".

Yet when I came along and modified the argument to address the industrial concerns, you immediately jumped to "That's bad because they aren't humans".

Which was kind of exactly what I was expecting: You aren't holding onto some great reverence of industrial and technological progress. You don't give half a shit about it unless it's there as a convenient prop for human superiority and no one else. Thank you so much for blundering right into the trap and proving your own hypocrisy for everyone.

[Ryan Thunder]

[...] and given a much higher standard of living [...]

... The comedy writes itself.

[Darth Tedious]

[...] and given a much higher standard of living [...]

... The comedy writes itself.

What comedy?

How do the Borg not have a higher standard of living than humanity?

[Oni Koneko Damien]

Maybe it's the part where the Strogg have medical technology leaps and bounds beyond the best humanity can do, and it's applied evenly across the entire populace. Or maybe how the Strogg have done more to eliminate starvation in their society by creating a literal omni-nutrient in Stroyent that addresses pretty much all their biological and medical needs while still being able to be recycled with near 100% efficiency. Or perhaps its the fact that the Strogg are a near perfectly unified society who show a common fellowship and near fanaticism in the defense and expansion of their culture and way of life that we have never seen in humanity. All of this can also be applied in varying degrees to the Borg.

tl,dr: Concession accepted.

[Ryan Thunder]

Dude, accept whatever you want. You're loonier than a coin bin if you think the Borg and the Strogg are anything to be aspired to.

Anyway, the point of all that was that RDA can't trade any of our superior stuff with the Na'vi in good faith because the Na'vi don't understand what they're being offered. They need to be educated before any of that can be allowed so they know what they're getting themselves into.

[Oni Koneko Damien]

Dude, accept whatever you want. You're loonier than a coin bin if you think the Borg and the Strogg are anything to be aspired to.

I see that, like the freshman twerp, the point of the thread is flying over your head as well.

[Ryan Thunder]

I see that, like the freshman twerp, the point of the thread is flying over your head as well.

Not really. You are pretending that humanity being conquered and obliterated by the Borg or the Strogg is somehow comparable to humanity helping the Na'vi to progress beyond their current state of primitivism. Because its desirable that they remain that way until they get lucky and figure it out on their own, or something. Somehow. It'd be nice of you to elaborate on that.

Sure, I suppose its possible that they might see us the same way we see the Borg. But they're wrong--and don't try to feed me that horseshit argument; even you don't believe that what you've said in favour of the Borg and the Strogg is sufficient to make up for the utter destruction of culture and creativity that they represent.

You're just grasping at straws because I have the unmitigated gall to suggest that tribal subsistence in a jungle full of things that won't hesitate to kill you if you misstep might be inferior to our modern situation, and the imbeciles who think we should obliterate the Na'vi for daring to fight back against RDA happen to agree with me on that particular point.

It's like arguing with a scientist because a Klansman said the sky was blue. What the fuck, man?

[Cesario]

Dude, accept whatever you want. You're loonier than a coin bin if you think the Borg and the Strogg are anything to be aspired to.

I see that, like the freshman twerp, the point of the thread is flying over your head as well.

Let me know when you're ready to respond to my arguments.

It's like arguing with a scientist because a Klansman said the sky was blue. What the fuck, man?

You know, that's not actually a bad way of putting it.

[weemadando]

Thunder, can't you see that it's the same thing? The Strogg/Borg see us as primitives who they can help by lifting us up put of our squalor and idiocy and integrating us into their form of society. RDA want the NaVi to do the same, become good little humans because we perceive ourselves as being "better".

Meanwhile retards amongst the humans are all for destroying a planetary organic super computer because it will break the will of the savages and let them earn more money. If we are talking purely about savage v spurned enlightened technocrat saviours as you and Cesario seem to be trying to frame it, surely the ecosystem of Pandora is a far greater treasure to such an advanced culture than the monetary value of the unobtanium.

I've complained in the past that RDA display stupidity on an epic scale by destroying an ecosystem which has far greater potential for development of knowledge (and long term profit) than the simple unobtanium cash grab. It's like mining companies on earth going into a completely unknown biosphere in deepest darkest nowhere and demanding the natives who have had no contact prior, move on and let them strip mine their known world and then burn down the whole place destroying unknown flora and fauna as well asban undocumented culture just because there's oil in the ground there.

Is that acceptable? Why or why not?

After ten pages I still cannot get a clear read on the philosophies of those who believe RDA were in the right.

[Darth Tedious]

You are pretending that humanity being conquered and obliterated by the Borg or the Strogg is somehow comparable to humanity helping the Na'vi to progress beyond their current state of primitivism.

Emphasis mine. Nice strawman there.

The Borg have never tried to obliterate humanity.
They only wish to improve our quality of life (they spend a decent chunk of their time giving exposition on this).
The Borg wishing to improve humanity's quality of life is directly comparable to humanity wishing to improve the Na'vi's.

Sure, I suppose its possible that they might see us the same way we see the Borg. But they're wrong--and don't try to feed me that horseshit argument; even you don't believe that what you've said in favour of the Borg and the Strogg is sufficient to make up for the utter destruction of culture and creativity that they represent.

How were the Na'vi wrong? It has already been demonstrated multiple times ITT that the Na'vi's quality of life is = or > humanity's. Particularly given that the humans of the Avatarverse all subsist on fucking algae.

Again, your position comes down to humanocentrism.

Can you actually prove, in any measurable terms, that the quality of life for humans in 2154 is = or > the quality of life enjoyed by the Borg?

[Cesario]

Thunder, can't you see that it's the same thing? The Strogg/Borg see us as primitives who they can help by lifting us up put of our squalor and idiocy and integrating us into their form of society. RDA want the NaVi to do the same, become good little humans because we perceive ourselves as being "better".

Actually, the RDA want nothing of the sort. The Borg are on an uplift mission, but the RDA are just here to mine the place. They might be willing to trade an uplift for the right to do that mining, but the mining is really all they want to do.

Meanwhile retards amongst the humans are all for destroying a planetary organic super computer because it will break the will of the savages and let them earn more money. If we are talking purely about savage v spurned enlightened technocrat saviours as you and Cesario seem to be trying to frame it, surely the ecosystem of Pandora is a far greater treasure to such an advanced culture than the monetary value of the unobtanium.

I've complained in the past that RDA display stupidity on an epic scale by destroying an ecosystem which has far greater potential for development of knowledge (and long term profit) than the simple unobtanium cash grab.

And if anyone except Grace knew about and believed in the planetary supercomputer's existence, I'm sure Selfridge and his ilk would have seen dollar signs and ordered an immediate stop ot the mining precisely because the profit oportunities from this new technology would outweigh what he's getting for his space-gold that is in no way important to human survival whatsoever.

It's like mining companies on earth going into a completely unknown biosphere in deepest darkest nowhere and demanding the natives who have had no contact prior, move on and let them strip mine their known world and then burn down the whole place destroying unknown flora and fauna as well asban undocumented culture just because there's oil in the ground there.

Is that acceptable? Why or why not?

Except the RDA weren't destroying the ecosystem. The sentient ecosystem hardly noticed their presence until that whole "well of souls" incident. I'm going to have to go with Eywa's judgement on what point the RDA were actually starting to cause problems worth worrying about.

After ten pages I still cannot get a clear read on the philosophies of those who believe RDA were in the right.

The RDA could wipe out this biosphere with contemptuous ease. They haven't done so. They continue to send people to this death trap of a planet to get murdered by everything from the air to the trees to the animals to the natives, and their response to this is to bring along some armed guards to escort their miners rather than to blow the crap out of everything in an area to secure a safe green zone for their people. The RDA are deliberately getting humans killed rather than disturb the natives or the ecosystem more than they have to.

Said natives have decided to stop talking to the humans and instead instituted a kill-on-sight policy while the RDA are apparently just now getting to the point of not parking their bulldozers every time one of the natives is too stupid to step out of the way of one of the things.

My position is that there are a lot of key differences between what's going on with the Na'vi and what's happened all over the planet earth.

[Ryan Thunder]

Thunder, can't you see that it's the same thing? The Strogg/Borg see us as primitives who they can help by lifting us up put of our squalor and idiocy and integrating us into their form of society. RDA want the NaVi to do the same, become good little humans because we perceive ourselves as being "better".

Of course the RDA are going to be the same. They don't want to give the natives a fair deal. Please, by all means, tell me where I stated that I want them to be successful in that.

[...] Is that acceptable? Why or why not?

I don't think that's acceptable because it does more harm than good and causes unnecessary pain and suffering. I know, its shocking; I'm human supremacist to a degree rather than a convenient strawman caricature of one.

After ten pages I still cannot get a clear read on the philosophies of those who believe RDA were in the right.

That's just it, though--I don't believe the RDA are in the right at all.

I suppose its my attitude to the effect that we can 'help the Na'vi' do better that's confusing you, though I don't understand how "educating them about technology" in any way requires that I also believe that the RDA was justified in burning down the Home Tree for unobtanium.

[weemadando]

Sorry if I've missed it previously Cesario, but what about native title?

Aren't the NaVi owners of their land and free to tell RDA "no thanks"?

[weemadando]

And if anyone except Grace knew about and believed in the planetary supercomputer's existence, I'm sure Selfridge and his ilk would have seen dollar signs and ordered an immediate stop ot the mining precisely because the profit oportunities from this new technology would outweigh what he's getting for his space-gold that is in no way important to human survival whatsoever.

Prior to the hometree attack she's arguing about the potential damage to the neural network.

THEY DON'T GIVE A SHIT BECAUSE IT'S NOT UNOBTANIUM.

But hey, she's only the highest ranking scientist on the planet getting overruled in the face of easier profit.

[madd0ct0r]

But I'm not sure we can help the Nav'i do better.

In the film, humanity isn't doing very well by the Nav'i s standards. I think I remember a funeral early on of an Nav'i who died of old age. They have enough to eat, plenty of space per person, no evidence of disease or crap living conditions and can talk directly to most of the other species around them.

Seriously, why would they want roads, Humvees, drive through McDonalds, day time tv or any of the actual benefits of human life? they don't need them, hence they don't want them.
When half the forest glows it's not like electric light is that useful.

another real life anology:

Should we have the right to force Montgarre Minority groups off their land to allow us to build a rubber plantation? They'll be moved to a new village with permentant homes, a toilet every 10 families, occasional running water and menial jobs at the rubber plant.
Has their quality of life got better?

Should we have the right to force entire fishing villages off the coast to allow us to build a fancy 5* resort (time to payback 5 years, estimated working life, 25 years). They'll get a compensation house elsewhere and a fat cheque as a thankyou. Of course, in two years when the money runs out they're kind of stuck without a livelihood, but hey, good beach is a precious commodity wasted on them yeah?

both of these are happening up the road from me.

[weemadando]

How about we apply Cesario's argument to Battle Los Angeles:

Hey, we tried to negotiate with you guys in 1941, but you just fired at our ship. We tried all around the world in a bunch of different years after that, but no one ever responded to us.

So clearly you dumb monkeys don't understand what's good for you and we need your water. So too bad, we're going to wipe you out to ensure we have unrestricted access to your resource which you have attacked us over and then failed to engage in discussion with us about.

Is this not your point of view?

[PeZook]

No, advocating for that sort of thing comes in at number 8. This is why I gave you those numbers.

You've said yourself that you wouldn't mind at all if they were murdered, ergo you would not protest if it were cops who dragged them out into the street and shot them in the face.

So you do think death is just punishment for aggravated assault, and no amount of obfuscation and evasion is going to conceal that fact.

The native american tribes did murder eachother over land and hunting rights. They were every bit as human as their european invaders.

And? Therefore? Concluding?

It's still "they have warriors = they deserve to die (unless they concede their ancestral land to us)". So if you are to stay consistent, you must conclude Poland was just as much in the wrong in 1939 as Germany for having the gall to tell Germany to fuck off. Poland had soldiers, after all, who are much worse than part-time warriors who actually do useful work (getting food) most of the time.

Two weeks ago, I said, "Hey, Lu, stick this up your ass!" and I gave him finger. Otherwise, I haven't talked to him in twenty-five years.

There's only so much communication necessary for a rejection.

Even discarding the fact they posed for photos with Grace and all, how is this wrong or morally repulsive? Just how much communications would you demand they maintain in order to stop being morally reprehensible racists, by your standards?

Or, more accurately, Jake was a dumbass and assumed that, when someone competent in his place would have found something to give Selfridge.

Why? Why do you assume "someone competent" would have necessarily come to a different conclusion? Why even bother sending Jake if you don't accept the possibility there might legitimately be nothing the Omaticaya would want from you?

In Cesarioworld, diplomacy means demanding what you want and going to war if you don't get it. In the real world, diplomats are known to have done this thing called "compromise" when it becomes obvious a proposal is utterly unnaceptable to the other side.

Tell me, would it have been different if the Na'Vi had fuckoff space battleships and thousands of nuclear weapons?

Isn't it sad for your case that Quaratch's plan was working until idiot Jake decided to rally them to a hopeless battle that required litteral divine intervention for them to win.

How was the plan working? Because they were shell-shocked barely a day after their home got destroyed?

And you have the gall to say I'm the one who has problems with long-term thinking

How, when there's nothing the Na'vi want, exactly?

There's nothing they want in exchange for their livelihood. Until the machinegunning incident at the school, relations were cold but there was no war or shoot on sight orders, therefore mining elsewhere is at least somewhat acceptable, therefore it might be possible to negotiate for mining rights in places that are not their ancestral home.

It should be easy to understand, really.

Ah, but according to you, these magical blue space elves don't have violent incidents between eachother. They're all so perfect they're using warrior to mean athelete instead of its transparently obvious meaning.

And where have I said that they don't have violent incidents between each other? Hey, I even admitted their warriors both hunt and fight when necessary! In a previous thread, I said Tsu'Tey was violent and quick to draw his knife!

There's a difference between "they are fallible and occasionally fight wars" and "they are repulsive racists who deserve to get murdered en masse unless they give us what we want". I mean, holy shit, degrees of gray etc etc etc.

Yes, they obviously wanted that. What with Selfridge explicitly saying he doesn't want that, Quaratch needing to perform a coup in order to be able to make a pre-emptive assault on a force that's actively massing to murder every human on the planet, and all the effort spent using the narrow window of divine intervention to try to find out how to negotiate with these people. Obviously those are the acts of people who want a full scale war.

Selfridge shrugged when his security forces massacred a school full of kids, and negotiated by sending his killdozers to a mining site he hadn't secured the rights to. He might not have consciously wanted war, but he didn't mind inflaming the natives one bit.

It would be like Germany sending their ambassador with a request for the Danzig corridor and then before receiving the answer, sending in troops to set up new border posts.

They'd get fired upon by Polish soldiers and nobody sane would say Germany was somehow in the right here.

The RDA's behavior is like the old joke about a guy who prevented rape once.

How?

He convinced her!

You consider that a horribly despicable practice, don't you?

If it's "you will have sex with me one way or another, so you better come willingly" then yes, it is.

I mean, jesus christ, dude.

You know, if I'm going to get a world named after me, you should really give me more detailed information on its history.

God. You really are dense, aren't you?

Here's a breakdown of this incredibly obvious analogy:

Thanasia = Germany
Pollackistan = Poland.

Whoa. Mind blowing!

Who said anything about without violence and destroying them as a nation? I'm just asking how about everything except not bombing them. Rest of the outcome is still as intended.

And I replied: if they could be moved without violence and death and destruction of their way of life, it would have been great!

Earth would get the precious space rock, and the Na'Vi would lose nothing.

But it's like me eating cake every day and not getting fat: ain't gonna happen.

IF humans just needed some more time to institute conservation policies AND they absolutely needed the unobtainium to buy them time for these policies to work AND they absolutely couldn't afford the shipments to be reduced in volume...then they have justification to assault the tree.

Now all you have to do is prove the last two assumptions are true in the context of the movie, and you are golden.

Just the last two? You're conceeding the third one, or did you just lose track of how many assumptions you were putting there?

The first one cannot be proved one way or another, so sure, let's be generous towards you (again) and say that yes, the humans are trying to make things better on Earth (P.S. they use gigantic lasers to accelerate starships to fractions of C, and dying species are being overhunted. Yeah...)

So just prove the humans needed unobtainium to buy some time for these policies to work, and that a reduction in the volume of earthbound shipments would have triggered a mass die-off.

I love how you bring in information they didn't know at the time to justify your assertion that they made an immoral choice rather than an ignorant one.

They made an immoral choice unless you can prove unobtainium shipments slowing down would have caused mass starvation. Let's say it's starvation that's going to be avoided in the future via institution of draconian policies aimed at saving the environment.

Selfridge was also an idiot, since he obviously wasn't following Grace's research and thus dismissed her revelations out of hand. But hey, it's an unknown and strange alien environment, so something that looks like a tree is obviously just a tree!

Onwards, for profit!

One minor difference is that the RDA didn't give a fuck what happened to the Na'vi so long as their resource exploitation continued apace.

No point coming up with different words with which to repeat myself for the slower members of the audience.

So if there was no genocide, Thanasia (P.S. it's a stand-in for Germany) would be entirely justified in invading Pollackistan, yes?

EDIT:

In response to the whole "Ryan wants to educate the natives" thang, excluding his comments about the Pandoramakers not having industry, therefore not being superior.

I don't think Ryan actually wants to go "learn our ways or die you disgusting blue fucks". At least I didn't get that from his posts, and I can't really see anything wrong with sharing our knowledge with the Na'Vi (you know, like Grace was doing) and letting them decide if they want our stuff or not.

At the very least they will probably like the ability to write down their legends and folklore, unless they have ideological objections to stuff like paper (but they do fashion wood into bows, so it's unlikely).

[Oni Koneko Damien]

Let me know when you're ready to respond to my arguments.

Oh you're just begging to get stuffed into a locker again, aren't you?

<snip backpedaling>

Yeah...

If they don't want or realize that they need anything we have then it would be out of ignorance. Which is understandable.

They just need education (like many people.) Then they'll understand.

What is wrong with the Borg or the Strogg?

Well for starters they aren't human...

Is this, or is this not your stance?

"Well, Ryan, you assume that exploitation is endemic to technological civilization and not something that technological civilization can correct through the presence of authority and public education--neither of these are things humanity would have due to problems that are endemic to untranscended living. Like a lack of communal thought to do things besides fight eachother for reasons stemming from residual animal instinct (hello, religion and racism!), lack of advanced medical technology (Stroyent, biomechanical-conversion, and the like), etc.

The short version; humans are primitives. Of course the Strogg are going to be the ones teaching them. What are humans going to teach the Strogg that they can't figure out on their own? Maybe humans can tell them in general about their hilarious, primitive cultural quirks, but they don't understand biology, chemistry, physics, neurology, etc. like the Strogg do. All humans can do is point out the obvious and wonder at it. They seem to be too crippled by animal, religious fear to transcend and make the advances the Strogg have. It's tragic, really."

[Metahive]

The Na'vi allowed their children to be taken care of by aliens which wore Na'vi skinsuits and slightly off-looking ones at that. I'd say that this is ample evidence that before those aliens started shooting at their kids relationships were quite positive. Would you have allowed your children to be educated by aliens in human disguises resting somewhere in the uncanny valley? Heck, if aliens presented themselves to Earth like that it's quite probably massive outbreaks of hateful xenophobia would immediately occur even faster than if they had come in all their space-starfishy glory.

Insinuating that the Na'vi were acting in bad faith from the very start towards humanity is supported by nothing.

[Ryan Thunder]

"Well, Ryan, you assume that exploitation is endemic to technological civilization and not something that technological civilization can correct through the presence of authority and public education--neither of these are things humanity would have due to problems that are endemic to untranscended living. Like a lack of communal thought to do things besides fight eachother for reasons stemming from residual animal instinct (hello, religion and racism!), lack of advanced medical technology (Stroyent, biomechanical-conversion, and the like), etc.

The short version; humans are primitives. Of course the Strogg are going to be the ones teaching them. What are humans going to teach the Strogg that they can't figure out on their own? Maybe humans can tell them in general about their hilarious, primitive cultural quirks, but they don't understand biology, chemistry, physics, neurology, etc. like the Strogg do. All humans can do is point out the obvious and wonder at it. They seem to be too crippled by animal, religious fear to transcend and make the advances the Strogg have. It's tragic, really."

... Yeah, loonier than a coin bin. A dishonest little troll of a coin bin who has the hubris to pretend he's so insightful that he knows my position better than I do, at that.

[Shroom Man 777]

The Na'vi allowed their children to be taken care of by aliens which wore Na'vi skinsuits and slightly off-looking ones at that. I'd say that this is ample evidence that before those aliens started shooting at their kids relationships were quite positive. Would you have allowed your children to be educated by aliens in human disguises resting somewhere in the uncanny valley? Heck, if aliens presented themselves to Earth like that it's quite probably massive outbreaks of hateful xenophobia would immediately occur even faster than if they had come in all their space-starfishy glory.

Insinuating that the Na'vi were acting in bad faith from the very start towards humanity is supported by nothing.

This only means that the Na'vi were complicit in Stolen Generations and it was through bad parenting on part of the Na'vi that got their kids machinegunned. If such parental neglect is endemic to their culture, then that also makes them reprehensible. And also no less racist or arrogant or arracisogrant!


I had a great idea. Okay, so we're more industrialized than them. And we're also human. So this means we cannot apply the plight of non-industrialized non-human peoples (caused by industrialized humans) on industrialized humans. People utterly refuse to accept the whole "what if we turned this situation around and made us the subject to this treatment" and utterly disregard it because... I don't know, what we do to others cannot be applied to ourselves? Double standard because of some perceived superiority in our ways, and inability to grasp that differing views and differing ways and differing lifestyles - particularly in vastly differing environments on, dig this, an entirely different planet - may not automatically be inferior or lower than our own preconcepts. Okay.

So here's another horrible anal-ogy.

We, all seven billion of us, wake up to find the sky blotted out by a destructor fleet. A destructionator fleet. They are blaring that we are to be evacuated from Earth, and placed into decent accommodations, while they begin the process of mining the entire planet Earth. Those who refuse to be evacuated, sign waivers to stay on the planet, or actively resist, will die in the process of destroying our home tree world.

And the people doing things aren't grotesque not-humanoids. They're human. 100% homo sapiens. But they're from another reality, a reality where humanity has exceed any and all limitations imposed upon it by nature. They rule the cosmos with inconceivable technologies that let them transgress upon the very boundaries of reality itself. Their industries incorporate whole planets, even suns. Transdimensional travel for them is the corner stone of their solid singularity society.

Yet it comes at a price. To provide the unimaginable power needed to maintain their greatest civilization, they have turned to truly esoteric energy sources. They scour the omniverse seeking for other, alternate-reality, Earths, much like our own. They typically vacate the denizens there as best they can. And then they destroy these Earths. The process of creation through world-destruction releases a surge of orgone energy that they absorb with their orgone-accumulators, which is used to fuel the cores of their greatest machineries.

This orgone-energy can only be gathered from the destruction of Earth. Not only in the corporeal sense, but in the arcane and esoteric sense. In destroying another reality's Earth, they erase its past, its present, and its future - and all these potentials are then siphoned to their Earth, invigorating it and giving it even greater strength.

Think of the movie The One, but instead of Jet Li killing Jet Li killing Jet Li to become nobody's bitch, it's planet Earths doing this.

Maybe that alternate super-Earth needs the destruction of our world to survive. Or maybe they don't need it to survive, but it only provides greater energy at greater values to power super-machines that aren't really vital to survival. Maybe they could've mined another Earth devoid of life, but our Earth was nearer in the interdimensional neighborhood.

The cold calculating and vast intelligences far greater than ours, orchestrating this great plan, don't really care about that though. We're a bunch of primitives who haven't even gotten over our dependence of mineral slimes and fossil fuels, in the thousands of years our civilizations have existed, we haven't even been able to thrive on other worlds. What are we to such as they? What do we have to offer?

Consider, what these great over-mans have to offer, in turn. They will shelter us if we vacate our world, introduce us to sciences and technologies heretofore unimaginable to our primitive minds, they will give us knowledge and understanding of the way the universe - and the other universes around it - function far beyond what we currently know. Our way of life under their benevolent guidance will be free of the troubles that plague us today. They will give us wealth, they will give us the power cosmic, they will posthumanize and transhumanize us to be gods like they.

All we have to do is to leave our world, our way of life, and everything we have lived for on Earth our entire lives, behind and watch as the whole planet - and all those who choose to stay on it - is all put to the flame.

Sounds fair, right? The great voidships open their vast maws, waiting for the cities of Earth to empty themselves into their cavernous holds, and then they shall bring us... to infinity and beyond.

[Ryan Thunder]

Jesus Christ, am I really such a poor communicator that you all still think I'm suggesting we forcibly industrialize the NaVi, rather than suggesting that if we educate them and give them a hand they'll industrialize on their own?