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First of all any article referencing Brian Herbert as an authority on Dune is suspect as a result. Those atrocious fanfiction additions are best used as cat li

First of all any article referencing Brian Herbert as an authority on Dune is suspect as a result. Those atrocious fanfiction additions are best used as cat litter box liner, period. Secondly, if you read the Appendices of Book I of Frank Herbert's Dune series, you'll see that he more or less invented the concept of 'planetologist', which in the late 1990s became a recognized academic discipline under the umbrellas of 'planetary sciences' and 'earth system sciences'. This was in response to a sense that the academic study of the subject had been too fractured, i.e. disciplines such as oceanography, geology, ecology and atmospheric chemistry and physics were actually highly interrelated, to the point that the historic divisions didn't make as much sense as they once did. This is now seen in, for example, the scientific study of Jupiter's moon Europa. As far as the current impacts of human civilization on Earth's climate and ecology, see the original Dune book: > "The thing the ecologically illiterate don’t realize about an ecosystem is that it’s a system. A system! A system maintains a certain fluid stability that can be destroyed by a misstep in just one niche. A system has order, a flowing from point to point. If something dams the flow, order collapses. The untrained might miss that collapse until it was too late. That’s why the highest function of ecology is the understanding of consequences - Pardot Kynes in "Appendix I: The Ecology of Dune" Finally, am I the only sick of these stereotypical images of 'native indigenous cultures living in simple harmony with nature' a la Avatar? One real refreshing aspect of the film and the book is that the Fremen were often more technologically advanced than offworlders, having superior stillsuits and so on, and they had their own long-term agenda - i.e. slowly terraforming the planet to make it more suitable for human life. Note also that the infantilization of native cultures was often used as a justification for enforcing 'civilization' on them, as well. Enough already, they were people with goals just like all other peoples.

rgrieselhuber 5y ago
One question I’d ask is why there would be an inherent conflict between superior technology and harmony with nature?
- noisy_boy 5y ago
  I think that with sufficiently advanced technology, there would be immense understanding of nature resulting in elimination of any need to be in conflict with the nature because one would simply solve their needs by enveloping or integrating with nature instead of going against it.
  - jollybean 5y ago
    Yes, but 'Enough Tech and Knowledge to do Whatever Whenever at Planetary Sale' ... that's a million years away. In the meantime, to answer the OP's question, the issue is that there is an inflection point at which man has enough tech to start changing nature, by disrupting parts of those systems. That's probably huge distinction between most of Europe/Asia and the rest of the world in the Columbian era. Aboriginals cultures mostly did not have the ability to shape the land (and where they had they tech, they did disrupt). Forget narratives one way or the other - they were by and large 'way behind'. And things took a an even bigger, massive jump when we harnessed fossil fuels. The glamorization of 'In Concert With Nature' is I think mostly just the fact that they didn't have the power to do anything otherwise.
- smsm42 5y ago
  It's not inherent, but having a powerful technology you understand may tempt you into applying it to things you don't understand to force them be more understandable. Sometimes it works, but sometimes it does not, and one has to have a measure of humility, so that having a powerful hammer not to start treating everything as a nail. European civilization, unfortunately, fell into this failure mode not once (maybe others too, we just know about European failures the most). We still can observe it in hi-tech where "we just add some ML and big data to it and it's solved" led people astray many times. Sometimes it worked, surely, but sometimes the amount of subject domain knowledge required to deal with the problem was vastly underestimated. One example just from recent days is the Zillow fiasco. It doesn't have to be on the planet Pandora, we can see it everywhere, both in history and around us right now.
- photochemsyn 5y ago
  There's no inherent reason superior technology would lead to the destabilization of an ecosystem (aka 'harmony with nature'). A good example is the introduction of the hunting rifle to Inuit culture, as I understand it. Prior to this hunting near the Arctic Circle was a far more difficult endeavor, as sneaking up on seals and caribou is not easy even with a high skill level. As a result, famine became much less common and hunting took much less time. Now, if the Inuit had tried to get extremely wealthy by using their rifles to hunt seals and caribou as the basis of a large and ever-growing export industry, they'd have indeed destabilized the ecosystem and there would have been a collapse in the population of seals and caribou, as seen with European hunters of wildlife in North America with beavers and bison and passenger pigeons. If that had happened, the Inuit themselves would most likely have followed the local animals into extinction. [edit] Note with bison, there was a deliberate extermination policy pursued by the US government as a means of destroying the food supply of various indigenous tribes that relied on bison for sustenance (aka the genocidal starvation program). This doesn't explain the extermination of beaver and other wildlife populations, however.
madrox 5y ago
I don't think fiction is Brian Herbert's gift. If you haven't, I encourage you to read Dreamer of Dune. It's his biography of Frank Herbert. While I loathe his contribution to fiction, I found his biography of his dad well done and rather touching.
- hef19898 5y ago
  To be honest, having Kevin J. Anderson as co-writer doesn't help. He wrote some of the worst Star Wars, now Legends, books out there. And given how bad some of those Legends books are that is something. I loved those books back the day when I was younger, they just don't compare well against Timothy Zahn's books, the original Han Solo series and the short stories about small characters from the original movies. What is sad so, is that the IMHO brilliant Dune encyclopedia was declared non-canon... EDIT: The quote from Dune about ecology rings true for all kinds of very complex and large systems. Especially those that are of the self-maintaining kind.
  - cgriswald 5y ago
    > What is sad so, is that the IMHO brilliant Dune encyclopedia was declared non-canon... I hold my own counsel on what is canon: Anything explicitly and directly written by Frank Herbert. That excludes The Dune Encyclopedia, but I don't think that diminishes it. We shouldn't pretend that it was declared non-canon for any reason other than Brian Herbert and Anderson selling pablum as Dune universe novels.
    - hef19898 5y ago
      Wasn't Frank Herbert heavily consulted the Encyclopdia's author? Would have to locate my copy to check... And yes, the Anderson books were the only reason the Encyclopedia was thrown out. Still damn great content, so.
      - cgriswald 5y ago
        My understanding is that he was somewhat involved and also approved of the Encyclopedia. My interpretation is that his objections to it weren't really objections so much as making clear that he wouldn't be bound by anything in it; and that this is being used to re-write history and make it sound like he disliked the Encyclopedia. > Still damn great content, so. Exactly. It doesn't really matter what a couple of hacks have to say about it.
throwaway984393 5y ago
> Finally, am I the only sick of these stereotypical images of 'native indigenous cultures living in simple harmony with nature' a la Avatar? It's called the Noble Savage [1] [2] trope. It's at least as old as the Romans. It's also probably the reason so many of our sports teams bear the images of peoples we committed quasi-genocide [3] against. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noble_savage https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noble_savage [2] https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/NobleSavage https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/NobleSavage [3] https://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/2016/08/24/real-history-native-american-team-names/89259596/ https://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/2016/08/24/real-histor...
- par1970 5y ago
  > It's also probably the reason so many of our sports teams bear the images of peoples we committed quasi-genocide [3] against. Who is “we”? You weren’t alive for the so-called genocide and neither was I nor anyone else on hn for that matter.
  - throwaway984393 5y ago
    Ah, I see you're an adherent of the "finders-genocide, finders'-grandkids'-keepers" sociopolitical philosophy.
    - par1970 5y ago
      > Ah, I see you're an adherent of the "finders-genocide, finders'-grandkids'-keepers" sociopolitical philosophy. Are you saying that I and every other human are owed for any and all unrecompensed wrongs committed against any and all members of our ancestries and that governments should go about facilitating this “business”?
      - SamoyedFurFluff 5y ago
        I think it’s more like should be deep consideration on how can the United States of America as a country acknowledge that it committed genocide against several nations and discussion on how to best support the survivors of that genocide. There are living people now who are survivors of genocidal policies like forced sterilization and family separation; how is the United States acknowledging and supporting them?
Nursie 5y ago
> First of all any article referencing Brian Herbert as an authority on Dune is suspect as a result. Those atrocious fanfiction additions are best used as cat litter box liner, period. Haha. It's nice to see this opinion written out. I read a few of the Herbert/Anderson books (I had a lot of time on my hands) and came to similar conclusions. I was most disappointed with the post-Chapter House stuff they did. It was allegedly based on extensive material left behind by Frank Herbert for the seventh book, but it very quickly tied in material and tropes from the prequels that Brian Herbert and Kevin Anderson had written, clearly being their creature and not the father's. I was somewhat disappointed to learn that Anderson had been a consultant on the new film.
- bllguo 5y ago
  as much as I love the series, to me everything post god-emperor was terrible.. it's actually a bit hard for me to blame Brian with that in mind
  - Nursie 5y ago
    Honestly I think if people stop reading after 'Children' they're doing OK. I don't think Heretics and Chapter-House are badly written, they just feel a bit lost and pointless. Whereas to me the Brian Herbert/Anderson books are just not well written books.
    - cgriswald 5y ago
      I tell most people to try God Emperor and if they hate it, they might as well be done. In my experience it's a rare breed that enjoys Heretics and Chapterhouse. I'm part of that breed, but I have also read them through many times; and I can't say that I was part of that breed before I had read them through many times. It could also be a rare breed because I don't think most people make it through God Emperor. Anderson wrote crappy Star Wars books, too. I'm really not sure what the breakdown is of Brian Herbert and Anderson actually doing the writing. I gave the two of them two or three trilogies, so more than a fair shake. Painfully dull is the first adjective that comes to mind. They really took some of the most interesting places and concepts in sci-fi and made them flat. Hunters and Sandworms were the least bad books by the pair, and there was certainly some hint of Heretics and Chapterhouse in them, but they were still not well written and the ideas lacked the substance of Frank Herbert's works.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
Karishma1234fff 5y ago
[flagged]
culi 5y ago
> Finally, am I the only sick of these stereotypical images of 'native indigenous cultures living in simple harmony with nature' a la Avatar? One real refreshing aspect of the film and the book is that the Fremen were often more technologically advanced than offworlders, having superior stillsuits and so on, and they had their own long-term agenda - i.e. slowly terraforming the planet to make it more suitable for human life. Note also that the infantilization of native cultures was often used as a justification for enforcing 'civilization' on them, as well. Enough already, they were people with goals just like all other peoples. While I agree with this sentiment, I think it's still really important to recognize the deep ecological knowledge that indigenous peoples have of their environments. The Cahuilla people, who are indigenous to where I live, for example have always had botanical experimentation deeply integrated in their cultures. Some of the most important people in their cultures were botanists. They had many complex rules around patches of certain plants growing and these important people (who I'll just call "doctors" as an insufficient translation) would claim certain patches and study them for years. Some of this knowledge was shared with the rest of the communities, while some was protected and only shared with their close family members or apprentices. Their "folk taxonomy" had names for every single species of oak that is recognized today in the area. An extremely impressive task given how readily many species hybridize The same can be said of many indigenous peoples around the world. There's an increasing recognition that the Amazon isn't just some pristine wilderness but rather a "manufactured landscape" that has been deeply shaped by the indigenous caretakers of it. In fact there's also an increasing recognition that oftentimes "conservation" ends up hurting the environments it's trying to protect because it kicks out the indigenous people that the landscape relies on. This can also be seen in California where so much of the ecology is dependent on the cultural burn practices of native Californians
- sriku 5y ago
  I recently started reading the book titled "Seeing like a state: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed" by James C. Scott [1] which talks about how starting with a simplified idea of how to structure a complex system (i.e. a system with many interdependencies) without taking into account details at the ground level end up in disaster. Using that idea of "legibility" that Scott proposes, not accounting for indigenous "tribal knowledge" in planning for their "betterment" does not work. Common language that reflects this happening is when such knowledge is trivialized or rejected using words like "unscientific". [1] https://www.amazon.com/Seeing-like-State-Certain-Condition/dp/0300078153/ https://www.amazon.com/Seeing-like-State-Certain-Condition/d...
enaaem 5y ago
Another mist opportunity is that in fantasy stories indigenous people always wear drab brown. In the real world indigenous people, like everyone else, do care about fashion and how they look. In the real world indigenous people often wear colourful clothes with very complex patterns. People's clothes can say a lot about their culture, religion and hierarchical structure. Spending some effort on clothes can add a lot of depth into stories world building. https://www.jenmansafaris.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/Angola-Bantu-Culture.jpg https://www.jenmansafaris.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/Ang... https://vietnam.travel/sites/default/files/inline-images/vietnam%20ethnic%20groups_0.jpg https://vietnam.travel/sites/default/files/inline-images/vie...
gerbilly 5y ago
> Finally, am I the only sick of these stereotypical images of 'native indigenous cultures living in simple harmony with nature' a la Avatar? This is a valid criticism of the depiction of aboriginal cultures. But I've come to believe that there is a subtle racism in not accepting that aboriginals intentionally chose to develop cultures which were durable and in 'harmony with nature.' They are the same homo sapiens with the same intelligence and nature as the homo sapiens of Europe or from other more 'advanced' societies. They could have chosen to develop their culture in such a way that led to being 'out of harmony' just as easily as some other peoples did. Aboriginals in say, Australia, had plenty of time to develop a more advanced society (some estimates say they've been there 40k years). When western people depict them as living close to the land, I smell a whiff of the subtext 'because they couldn't do any better'. Yeah they could have done otherwise, but they chose not to! I work with a group of engineers and lately because of attending a conference, we have started to talk a lot about climate change. Some of the ideas our group initially came up with are really ridiculous, like some kind of machine to extract carbon from the atmosphere and to sequester it. It's called a tree, they are everywhere, and they do it for free. They will propagate by themselves if we just had the patience to let them do so.

rgrieselhuber 5y ago

One question I’d ask is why there would be an inherent conflict between superior technology and harmony with nature?

noisy_boy 5y ago
I think that with sufficiently advanced technology, there would be immense understanding of nature resulting in elimination of any need to be in conflict with the nature because one would simply solve their needs by enveloping or integrating with nature instead of going against it.
- jollybean 5y ago
  Yes, but 'Enough Tech and Knowledge to do Whatever Whenever at Planetary Sale' ... that's a million years away. In the meantime, to answer the OP's question, the issue is that there is an inflection point at which man has enough tech to start changing nature, by disrupting parts of those systems. That's probably huge distinction between most of Europe/Asia and the rest of the world in the Columbian era. Aboriginals cultures mostly did not have the ability to shape the land (and where they had they tech, they did disrupt). Forget narratives one way or the other - they were by and large 'way behind'. And things took a an even bigger, massive jump when we harnessed fossil fuels. The glamorization of 'In Concert With Nature' is I think mostly just the fact that they didn't have the power to do anything otherwise.
smsm42 5y ago
It's not inherent, but having a powerful technology you understand may tempt you into applying it to things you don't understand to force them be more understandable. Sometimes it works, but sometimes it does not, and one has to have a measure of humility, so that having a powerful hammer not to start treating everything as a nail. European civilization, unfortunately, fell into this failure mode not once (maybe others too, we just know about European failures the most). We still can observe it in hi-tech where "we just add some ML and big data to it and it's solved" led people astray many times. Sometimes it worked, surely, but sometimes the amount of subject domain knowledge required to deal with the problem was vastly underestimated. One example just from recent days is the Zillow fiasco. It doesn't have to be on the planet Pandora, we can see it everywhere, both in history and around us right now.
photochemsyn 5y ago
There's no inherent reason superior technology would lead to the destabilization of an ecosystem (aka 'harmony with nature'). A good example is the introduction of the hunting rifle to Inuit culture, as I understand it. Prior to this hunting near the Arctic Circle was a far more difficult endeavor, as sneaking up on seals and caribou is not easy even with a high skill level. As a result, famine became much less common and hunting took much less time. Now, if the Inuit had tried to get extremely wealthy by using their rifles to hunt seals and caribou as the basis of a large and ever-growing export industry, they'd have indeed destabilized the ecosystem and there would have been a collapse in the population of seals and caribou, as seen with European hunters of wildlife in North America with beavers and bison and passenger pigeons. If that had happened, the Inuit themselves would most likely have followed the local animals into extinction. [edit] Note with bison, there was a deliberate extermination policy pursued by the US government as a means of destroying the food supply of various indigenous tribes that relied on bison for sustenance (aka the genocidal starvation program). This doesn't explain the extermination of beaver and other wildlife populations, however.

madrox 5y ago

I don't think fiction is Brian Herbert's gift. If you haven't, I encourage you to read Dreamer of Dune. It's his biography of Frank Herbert. While I loathe his contribution to fiction, I found his biography of his dad well done and rather touching.

hef19898 5y ago
To be honest, having Kevin J. Anderson as co-writer doesn't help. He wrote some of the worst Star Wars, now Legends, books out there. And given how bad some of those Legends books are that is something. I loved those books back the day when I was younger, they just don't compare well against Timothy Zahn's books, the original Han Solo series and the short stories about small characters from the original movies. What is sad so, is that the IMHO brilliant Dune encyclopedia was declared non-canon... EDIT: The quote from Dune about ecology rings true for all kinds of very complex and large systems. Especially those that are of the self-maintaining kind.
- cgriswald 5y ago
  > What is sad so, is that the IMHO brilliant Dune encyclopedia was declared non-canon... I hold my own counsel on what is canon: Anything explicitly and directly written by Frank Herbert. That excludes The Dune Encyclopedia, but I don't think that diminishes it. We shouldn't pretend that it was declared non-canon for any reason other than Brian Herbert and Anderson selling pablum as Dune universe novels.
  - hef19898 5y ago
    Wasn't Frank Herbert heavily consulted the Encyclopdia's author? Would have to locate my copy to check... And yes, the Anderson books were the only reason the Encyclopedia was thrown out. Still damn great content, so.
    - cgriswald 5y ago
      My understanding is that he was somewhat involved and also approved of the Encyclopedia. My interpretation is that his objections to it weren't really objections so much as making clear that he wouldn't be bound by anything in it; and that this is being used to re-write history and make it sound like he disliked the Encyclopedia. > Still damn great content, so. Exactly. It doesn't really matter what a couple of hacks have to say about it.

throwaway984393 5y ago

> Finally, am I the only sick of these stereotypical images of 'native indigenous cultures living in simple harmony with nature' a la Avatar? It's called the Noble Savage [1] [2] trope. It's at least as old as the Romans. It's also probably the reason so many of our sports teams bear the images of peoples we committed quasi-genocide [3] against. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noble_savage https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noble_savage [2] https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/NobleSavage https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/NobleSavage [3] https://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/2016/08/24/real-history-native-american-team-names/89259596/ https://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/2016/08/24/real-histor...

par1970 5y ago
> It's also probably the reason so many of our sports teams bear the images of peoples we committed quasi-genocide [3] against. Who is “we”? You weren’t alive for the so-called genocide and neither was I nor anyone else on hn for that matter.
- throwaway984393 5y ago
  Ah, I see you're an adherent of the "finders-genocide, finders'-grandkids'-keepers" sociopolitical philosophy.
  - par1970 5y ago
    > Ah, I see you're an adherent of the "finders-genocide, finders'-grandkids'-keepers" sociopolitical philosophy. Are you saying that I and every other human are owed for any and all unrecompensed wrongs committed against any and all members of our ancestries and that governments should go about facilitating this “business”?
    - SamoyedFurFluff 5y ago
      I think it’s more like should be deep consideration on how can the United States of America as a country acknowledge that it committed genocide against several nations and discussion on how to best support the survivors of that genocide. There are living people now who are survivors of genocidal policies like forced sterilization and family separation; how is the United States acknowledging and supporting them?

Nursie 5y ago

> First of all any article referencing Brian Herbert as an authority on Dune is suspect as a result. Those atrocious fanfiction additions are best used as cat litter box liner, period. Haha. It's nice to see this opinion written out. I read a few of the Herbert/Anderson books (I had a lot of time on my hands) and came to similar conclusions. I was most disappointed with the post-Chapter House stuff they did. It was allegedly based on extensive material left behind by Frank Herbert for the seventh book, but it very quickly tied in material and tropes from the prequels that Brian Herbert and Kevin Anderson had written, clearly being their creature and not the father's. I was somewhat disappointed to learn that Anderson had been a consultant on the new film.

bllguo 5y ago
as much as I love the series, to me everything post god-emperor was terrible.. it's actually a bit hard for me to blame Brian with that in mind
- Nursie 5y ago
  Honestly I think if people stop reading after 'Children' they're doing OK. I don't think Heretics and Chapter-House are badly written, they just feel a bit lost and pointless. Whereas to me the Brian Herbert/Anderson books are just not well written books.
  - cgriswald 5y ago
    I tell most people to try God Emperor and if they hate it, they might as well be done. In my experience it's a rare breed that enjoys Heretics and Chapterhouse. I'm part of that breed, but I have also read them through many times; and I can't say that I was part of that breed before I had read them through many times. It could also be a rare breed because I don't think most people make it through God Emperor. Anderson wrote crappy Star Wars books, too. I'm really not sure what the breakdown is of Brian Herbert and Anderson actually doing the writing. I gave the two of them two or three trilogies, so more than a fair shake. Painfully dull is the first adjective that comes to mind. They really took some of the most interesting places and concepts in sci-fi and made them flat. Hunters and Sandworms were the least bad books by the pair, and there was certainly some hint of Heretics and Chapterhouse in them, but they were still not well written and the ideas lacked the substance of Frank Herbert's works.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

Karishma1234fff 5y ago

[flagged]

culi 5y ago

> Finally, am I the only sick of these stereotypical images of 'native indigenous cultures living in simple harmony with nature' a la Avatar? One real refreshing aspect of the film and the book is that the Fremen were often more technologically advanced than offworlders, having superior stillsuits and so on, and they had their own long-term agenda - i.e. slowly terraforming the planet to make it more suitable for human life. Note also that the infantilization of native cultures was often used as a justification for enforcing 'civilization' on them, as well. Enough already, they were people with goals just like all other peoples. While I agree with this sentiment, I think it's still really important to recognize the deep ecological knowledge that indigenous peoples have of their environments. The Cahuilla people, who are indigenous to where I live, for example have always had botanical experimentation deeply integrated in their cultures. Some of the most important people in their cultures were botanists. They had many complex rules around patches of certain plants growing and these important people (who I'll just call "doctors" as an insufficient translation) would claim certain patches and study them for years. Some of this knowledge was shared with the rest of the communities, while some was protected and only shared with their close family members or apprentices. Their "folk taxonomy" had names for every single species of oak that is recognized today in the area. An extremely impressive task given how readily many species hybridize The same can be said of many indigenous peoples around the world. There's an increasing recognition that the Amazon isn't just some pristine wilderness but rather a "manufactured landscape" that has been deeply shaped by the indigenous caretakers of it. In fact there's also an increasing recognition that oftentimes "conservation" ends up hurting the environments it's trying to protect because it kicks out the indigenous people that the landscape relies on. This can also be seen in California where so much of the ecology is dependent on the cultural burn practices of native Californians

sriku 5y ago
I recently started reading the book titled "Seeing like a state: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed" by James C. Scott [1] which talks about how starting with a simplified idea of how to structure a complex system (i.e. a system with many interdependencies) without taking into account details at the ground level end up in disaster. Using that idea of "legibility" that Scott proposes, not accounting for indigenous "tribal knowledge" in planning for their "betterment" does not work. Common language that reflects this happening is when such knowledge is trivialized or rejected using words like "unscientific". [1] https://www.amazon.com/Seeing-like-State-Certain-Condition/dp/0300078153/ https://www.amazon.com/Seeing-like-State-Certain-Condition/d...

enaaem 5y ago

Another mist opportunity is that in fantasy stories indigenous people always wear drab brown. In the real world indigenous people, like everyone else, do care about fashion and how they look. In the real world indigenous people often wear colourful clothes with very complex patterns. People's clothes can say a lot about their culture, religion and hierarchical structure. Spending some effort on clothes can add a lot of depth into stories world building. https://www.jenmansafaris.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/Angola-Bantu-Culture.jpg https://www.jenmansafaris.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/Ang... https://vietnam.travel/sites/default/files/inline-images/vietnam%20ethnic%20groups_0.jpg https://vietnam.travel/sites/default/files/inline-images/vie...

gerbilly 5y ago

> Finally, am I the only sick of these stereotypical images of 'native indigenous cultures living in simple harmony with nature' a la Avatar? This is a valid criticism of the depiction of aboriginal cultures. But I've come to believe that there is a subtle racism in not accepting that aboriginals intentionally chose to develop cultures which were durable and in 'harmony with nature.' They are the same homo sapiens with the same intelligence and nature as the homo sapiens of Europe or from other more 'advanced' societies. They could have chosen to develop their culture in such a way that led to being 'out of harmony' just as easily as some other peoples did. Aboriginals in say, Australia, had plenty of time to develop a more advanced society (some estimates say they've been there 40k years). When western people depict them as living close to the land, I smell a whiff of the subtext 'because they couldn't do any better'. Yeah they could have done otherwise, but they chose not to! I work with a group of engineers and lately because of attending a conference, we have started to talk a lot about climate change. Some of the ideas our group initially came up with are really ridiculous, like some kind of machine to extract carbon from the atmosphere and to sequester it. It's called a tree, they are everywhere, and they do it for free. They will propagate by themselves if we just had the patience to let them do so.