Yesterday I was told by Jenny that I overthought Groundhog's Day way too much. And then, watching Lost, she said that again. My musings were more along the lines of the persistence of souls (if they existed) and the metaphysical consequences of certain occurrences in both the movie and the TV show. But you know, as annoying as those sorts of thought experiments can be, I still find they make me enjoy a movie more.
I don't think you're giving the Na'vi enough credit here. Even if we assume your premises - (1) that the humans desperately need the mineral otherwise millions will die and (2) they have tried earnestly to negotiate in good faith and have offered generous compensation - do the Na'vi have a moral obligation to hand over their planet? I'd still find it hard to root for the humans if they decided to just come and take it.
If aliens showed up tomorrow and said, "Our species is dying. To save it, we really really need Manhattan," I don't think it'd be unreasonable to say, "Sorry, we're kind of using it right now."
I think that scenario, at least for me, would depend on a) whether or not they could establish that their species was, actually, dying, and b) whether they would assist in the relocation of the Manhattanites. I mean, it's just New York :D But I tend to be a pragmatist.
Course, Europeans did technically "buy" Manhattan. While Jake implied that humans were on Pandora to stay, I really couldn't help but get the feeling that they were there just to obtain a resource, what with there being a different atmosphere, wildlife that was both hostile and gigantic, and the humans generally referring to it as worse than Hell itself. If aliens came and were willing to pay for Manhattan and help relocate people, I'd imagine we might take them up on it, depending on what we'd get out of it. The Na'vi had a nice thing going for them with the Giant Tree, but its not like they made it, or couldn't live in another area. Course, the humans in Avatar are cheap bastards, and the Avatar natives have a very extreme, and slightly justified concept of the sacredness of nature. I'm surprised that they couldn't find some way of mining without strip mining the area, and avoiding damaging the big tree like they did. Course the humans were the bad guys, but I still felt that the Na'vi were a bit jerky too, since we went to
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Well, let's not lose sight of the fact that this is cultural imperialism (or actual imperialism) at the end of a gun. The question is: do the humans have a right to force the Na'vi to do [anything]? Do they have a right to force them to give up land? Do they have a right to force them at accept new technologies? Do they have the right to force them into a free exchange of ideas
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If aliens showed up tomorrow and said, "Our species is dying. To save it, we really really need Manhattan," I don't think it'd be unreasonable to say, "Sorry, we're kind of using it right now."
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But I tend to be a pragmatist.
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