I made it about halfway this through before bailing. Yet another "western civilization is so bad" articles. Ho hum.<p>The problem here is, as mattmaroon put it, if you buy into this logic we'd all still be chasing down antelopes on the savannah. At some point some civilizations, for whatever reason, start developing things like private property, the wheel, common law, reading, the printing press, etc.<p>It's become fashionable to say something like "well, that doesn't make them any better than other civilizations" but I think that's soft-headed horseshit. Anybody who lives in a civilization with private property, contract law, medicine, literature and art is living in a better place, and in a better way, that somebody who doesn't have it. Some cultures are demonstrably better than others, like it or not.<p>The interesting question, especially with alien stories, is "How do two wildly diverse cultures interact in a way that is respectful of both?"<p>I've thought about this for some time, and using all the earthly examples I can come up with, the fact is they don't. If we ever meet another primitive species and interact with them? It's going to be very traumatic on the part of the other species. Likewise, if Cebulons from the Osari System arrive next week with technology five thousand years ahead of ours? You can say goodbye to a lot of what people think of when they talk about human culture.<p>And I guess I'm okay with that. If the Cebulons show up, I'm going to be first in line learning to speak Cebulonese, watching all the Cebulonese TV shows, and taking my kids to Cebulonese high schools. We will learn, adapt, and overcome, and the human species will continue. To me that's a lot more rational that sitting around moaning about how things might have/would have been had things not changed. I just hope the Cebulons come to trade and exploit our resources in a manner respectful of private property, so we can go to their system and do the same one day :)<p>I really did not like Avatar. Gorgeous, magnificent movie. Terrible hackneyed, one-dimensional plot. Ugh. I think a quote from Cameron's other movie is most apt: I vote we nuke it from orbit. It's the only way we can really be sure.