Maybe Lately

I've spent the last few days watching most of the first season of the West Wing. It is amazing. Like my new favourite TV series. Better than CSI? Quite possibly.

Other than that, a lot of Christmas-ing has been going on. Got some cool stuff, such as a ukulele. A dark purple one. Oh yes. I'm learning to play it now, it's kind of difficult because I keep going to play guitar chords, and then realising it only has 4 strings.

Today I went to see Avatar - in 2D, because I don't think I could cope with 3D. It was really good, but I kept thinking that the Na'vi were a lot like the American Indians. Killed because they were in the way of something white people wanted but didn't need. Except (not to ruin the ending, but it's pretty obvious how it ends anyway) this time the supposedly "lesser race" won. Is it strange that films have to try and teach us to respect other peoples way of life?

A few months ago I read this book called 'Ishmael' which was about how our people basically have purged the earth of all its resources out of unnecessary greed, and that if we lived how people we considered 'primitive', just taking what we needed, letting nature take its course, then the world wouldn't be on the edge of death, and we wouldn't need to find alternative ways to feed our greed. It actually made a very reasonable point, and put me in a strange state of mind, like you never see things from that kind of point of view. But despite the valid point the book makes, it would be hopeless trying to implement a reversal of everything we've built - or at least slowing the growth. We will always produce food surplus to requirement, there will probably always be people having children they can't afford to feed because they are impoverished, and we will continue to destroy our world piece by piece.

We slaughter what is in our way, and when it still refuses to move, we wipe it out. That's a sad way of living. But it's exactly how Avatar paints us. And by the end I felt disgusted by those men who wouldn't give up until the Na'vi were out of the way - dead or alive. And whilst I personally wouldn't be one of those people - I am unquestionably a member of that race. It's sad that in both fiction and reality we have little respect for other cultures, for people who live their lives differently to us.

hmm.