War, Colonialism, and Industrialism | The Worldbuilding of Avatar

the fire nation was a colonialist power bent on conquering the earth Kingdom water tribes and wiping out the air nomads though we tend to think of the hundred year war as beginning in 0bg with the air nomads genocide it could be seen as truly beginning 37 years earlier with the establishment of U Dow as the fire nation's first colony on the western coast of the earth Kingdom with the time in between being something more of a cold war the Fire Nation would go on to establish many more colonies and taking more land and the story explores how the Fire Nation diminishes native peoples to better its economy and society in the comics that come after the last airbender ask how they mean to deal with these colonies in the post-war post-colonial scenario today we are going to take a look at these three fascinating geopolitical questions that the last airbender asks and its unexpected answers and cheers to the writing and world building software campfire for sponsoring this video especially and I do mean this if you're inventing languages magic systems or you're a world building gamer it - the link down below in the description to go get ten days free the first question is what justifies colonialism the regeneration of the inferior or degenerate races by the superior races is part of the providential order of things for Humanity countries which like China are crying aloud for foreign conquest Nature has made a race of workers the Chinese race who have wonderful manual dexterity and almost no sense of honor govern them with justice living from them in return for the blessing of such a government in ample allowance for the conquering race and they will be satisfied can I get a yaks I don't think I've seen more red flags at a USSR military parade that was Joseph Ernest Renan quoted him expert on civilization yeah you can kiss in the Avatar in the Fire Lord Sozen argues for the expansion of the Fire Nation state on altruistic grounds our nation is enjoying an unprecedented time of peace and wealth our people are happy and were so fortunate in so many ways I've been thinking we should share this prosperity with the rest of the world in our hands is the most successful Empire in history it's time we expanded it though phrased perhaps in a more child-friendly way sozin here offers the same justification that Renan does that it's an altruistic effort to give others the economic and governmental benefits that your state has experienced by forcibly expanding your role over them and avatar offers an interesting analysis of this justification necessarily these efforts result unambiguously in genocide cultural oppression and intellectual degradation not only of the other nations but of the fire nation itself as well the fire nation sages and intellectuals are oppressed if they don't agree with state propaganda and the history itself is hidden from the population the air nomads were murdered to protect the colonization effort earth benders are enslaved in service of the Empire's economy taking them away from local industry and removing vital skills from the native immunity decreasing their population standard of living it was an incredibly common colonization tactic in our world and places like India that they would allow the indigenous people to earn but then tax it out of them to be used by the Empire and cultural practices are lost with those who remember them and teach them killed or communities not having the time and resources to live as they should after all nearly all of the waterbenders in the Southern Water Tribe were imprisoned or killed all of us happened in the last airbender and all of it happened in our world - the writers unequivocally say that this justification doesn't work and this is all because there simply isn't the economic or political incentives to altruistically share the wealth like sozin supposedly wanted a secret he didn't especially when there's an imbalance of Technology like there is between the Fire Nation and the earth Kingdom as there was between the Europeans and basically everyone else returning that wealth and workforce to the native people would simply make them more able to rebel weakening the homeland and threatening retribution the incentives are always towards repression fundamentally revealing colonization as an endeavour of the idealistically cruel and blind the writers then build on this deconstruction of colonial justification by looking at its aftermath in a post-war world let's turn to Katara in the comic North and South Qatar arrives back in the southern want trying to find it different it's bigger more technologically advanced and it's been socially evolving the rapid change is the result of the proliferation of Fire Nation technology and the village wanting to re-establish itself after a century of isolation and depression this is often the space a colony finds itself in after colonization ends the question the story asks is how best do a people reestablish themselves in this new kind of world Katara believes that the priority of her people in this post-war post-colonial world should be protecting and revitalizing their heritage including those parts that may not be as practice Lord may cost time and money to protect her concern is with losing the authentic Southern Water Tribe culture as they develop calling an hour just an imitation of the Northern Water Tribe weathered setting up restaurants with their northern food architecture designed to look like it's from the earth Kingdom or the northerners instead of these simpler igloos that she was used to she notices that the children of the Water Tribe were also no longer learning the cultural stories that she was brought up with the social and economic environment is entirely different and Katara is right in the scenes in New Zealand a huge amount of money time and effort has gone into protecting and revitalizing the Maori language at the cost of other things even though other languages are more global there's also a commentary here on the way we think about reconstruction ISM that is how we help countries that emerge from war or colonialism I mean it's not subtle but they're literally bringing democracy to the country with oil so you've just got out of a war congratulations and we're going to help get you back on your feet you'll need democracy office buildings bombs I mean low barriers to international trade you're now ready to join the rest of us modern first world nations we look forward to buying your oil at XI I mean working with you in reconstruction efforts emphasis is often on bringing certain styles of government particular economic models and globalization to the country but even though those efforts to rebuild and revitalize can help they can also be harmful in different ways like Katara says the wari is turning post-war post-colonial countries into imitations rather than their own identity consider the reconstruction effort in Japan following World War two with the USA poured a huge amount of resources into a country in an effort to help it recover but also with the secondary intention of making it a useful global Ally which they did a similar thing happened in Germany so it happens in the post-war scenario but this has also happened in post-colonial countries like Korea and many of the Pacific Islands after World War two ended as empires relinquished their control fundamentally the way we help can be oppressive to alternatively soccer views this rapid globalization and development as progress a Northern Water Tribe some points out they found a massive oil reserve in the South Pole that is quote key to finally lifting up of the south and then allowing the Southern Water Tribe to evolve like this will make everyone's lives better it's even called the southern reconstruction if it no points for subtlety they are either there in the wake of colonization and war the standard of living and equality on a new world stage for everyone is what matters most even at the cost of some heritage after all cultures still evolve with technology you can't just hold them back forever the writers also complicate this question in a scene when a non-bender tells Katara that this is hard for you to understand because you're a bender the kind of power you possess just hasn't been available to us non-benders until now Touma lincoln soccer machinery and industrialization gives them equal opportunity in a way Katara didn't consider because the traditional way of doing things gave her status and influence in society much of the culture elevated Katara and other water benders like the Southern Water Tribe a lot of decolonized countries emerged with industrial technology in the 20th century colonial power and culture was still very linked to industrial power but it also had the potential to help what were they to do that was the struggle to give a real-world example the Meiji Restoration began in 1853 when the USA came knocking at the Japanese doors and to quote the words open stuck having it be closed Japan here realized to the very real threat of colonization and mobilized to become an industrial power reforming their government their military and their economy it was brutal but it worked at the same time there was a sizable noble class of samurai who had previously held a lot of land wealth power and their traditions and this is the important bit they were culturally important there was a lot to do with them and their religion much of that heritage throughout the Meiji Restoration was diminished or entirely lost but it came with substantial economic and social benefits for the lower classes the most surprising finding is that the rice wages since the Meiji era showed up consistently and significantly during the Meiji period of the welfare ratio and Tokyo shut above that in Milan in other words both with benders and Samurai diminishing their influence and status as a class was almost required for the betterment of those beneath them this complicates the question of protecting culture the writers of The Last Airbender by no means say the colonization here is an enlightening force that liberate smaran alized groups they clearly represented as a malevolent genocidal force but it does acknowledge that the cross-cultural cross economic merging of groups throughout the colonization period will mean that sometimes a better way of organizing wealth and power in society will emerge for the post-colonial world that doesn't necessarily fit with the indigenous culture the colonial way of exploiting and subjugating indigenous populations certainly ain't it chief but we have to be more realistic when dealing with post-colonial societies to take the example of Hong Kong an old British colony it inherited the Western emphasis on political self-determination even though much of its culture remained Cantonese even we know is handed back to Chinese ownership that evolution isn't a bad thing and it deserves to be protected but avatar further complicates this discussion in the promise where it explores the post-war world and asked what should we do with the leftover colonies now the answer might seem simple on the face of it return the people to where they belong and the promise opens with the characters working towards that goal with the Harmony restoration movement basically it's returning fire nation citizens to the fine and the land to the earth Kingdom but they challenge this answer when Zuko learns that you down now makes the finest middle work produced using both Fire Nation and earth Kingdom expertise making it one of the richest cities in the world it's hard to give an exact parallel to the you Dao colonization experience but Hong Kong was a British colony forcibly ceded in 1842 through to 1997 but it's incredibly rich with a much higher standard of living than nearly all of its surrounding country counterparts this is partly because it operated as an open economy and was used as a hub for Western trade in the East due to its status as a British colony however the promise then makes the point that even in cities like you Dao that economic prosperity isn't necessarily evenly distributed the native people are often putting in just as much work but reaping far fewer benefits to which duco says it's not perfect but all of the city's people including the earth Kingdom people are now better off than they were a hundred years ago that is forcing a significant part of the population to leave would in this case lower the standard of living for all there's an economic argument here and I want to be clear none of this makes the forced and brutal takeover of you Dao or in our world Hong Kong anymore justified but it makes the question of what we do afterwards a lot harder that returning things to the way they were before may not be the best option economically for either group after so long the answer just isn't as simple as removing all colonists influence the writers then complicate the discussion even more with a social and ethical question who does the land Allah - it's easy to think of land as belonging to state entities the fire nation the earth Kingdom China or Britain this is a communal way of looking at land ownership but avatar offers an individualist way of looking at land and resource ownership Zuko points out that it'd be disrespectful to take them from a life that they spent generations building their home I won't let you do it because the truth is that those state entities order colonization it's individuals who live and work in these colonies you Dao is like most real-world colonies and that the people who live there and have links to colonial power like me in New Zealand did not choose to be here we didn't participate in the atrocities of the past nor did our parents and the life we have built here is entirely our own the ethical problem here being that it would punish individuals for something they had no control over the state's action from an age past in any just system that wouldn't be okay they didn't build on this I may be an earthbender but through my father's bloodline I am a Fire Nation citizen my father taught me to always be loyal to the Fire Nation to my people in the hundred plus years of colonization a new culture has emerged it has evolved in a way that has neither holy earth kingdom nor holy fire nation there are hints of this in the series as well what the story doesn't do here is really interrogate whether that new culture is as legitimate as the two that came before nor does it really interrogate how that came to be and how much was brutally taken to get it to this point which is a fair question to ask but some evolutions are legitimate and worth protecting consider those democratic influences that we see in Hong Kong but the writers then posit that our focus in decolonization should be on the individual responsibility for unequal social conditions in society that they are loud and can change earthbenders were still a disadvantaged class like many indigenous groups have been historically or are still today hints whether solution is not forcing citizens to leave but creating a multicultural Council to rule with equal earth Kingdom and fire nation representatives now you may actually disagree with this analysis in any number of ways he may believe in the way of communal ownership and that's okay or you may believe in the overall good of collective responsibility more than individual responsibility this is just these writers take on it oddly enough avatar is actually giving a federalist answer here lemme explain the US Senate represents each state equally with two senators regardless of the population the two different cultural groups were the new Dow also have equal representation regardless of population New Zealand does also sort of have this with four seats in parliament reserved for the indigenous Maori the point being to represent the cultural groups equally which is somewhat adults were there otherwise individualist approach but it acknowledges that you can kind of have a mix of communal and individualist responsibility and fault three fascinating answers to three fascinating questions but what I want to know is what your thoughts are let me know down in the comments below and once again cheers guys our campfire for sponsoring this video and I want to do a bit of a review because the program is for writing and world building which I know a bit more about and I want to be more careful when recommending though to start I do want to say that I wholly recommend campfire Pro and the world building pack for certain writers especially if you're world building languages magic systems species or building your character profiles and if that is all you want to know my opinion then go get the 10 day free trial at this link down in the description below but otherwise let me persuade you as to why you should do that in my first review in the mentors video I said that it wasn't so much for world builders but kem fire has certainly revamped and expanded since then infant tastic ways and just the ways they needed they gave me the new world builders Peck which gives you pages for species cultures religions philosophies magic systems and items there are some basic details for you to fill in on all of these pages but you can add whatever features as you like the magic systems page though in particular has clearly had a lot of effort put into it and for the better clearly following Sanderson's rules it's got areas for costs limitations exceptions the source how you channel it as well as a history and guidebook to all of it all of which are a really good way to structure it and I know a lot of work builders focus on this kind of stuff the language page is also incredibly well done I really want to highlight it for you calling us out there it's got pages for phonetics vocab grammar pragmatics and a visual dictionary it is clearly designed for you the way that most of these kind of programs just aren't the timeline continues to be a great way of either laying out your world history or the plot of your story with dividers that can be say major world-changing events or as I've used them divisions for X 1 2 & 3 you can do both have multiple timelines now on a whole I would say that there are kind of three groups who use these kinds of software writers who like to organize and Kellog their stories in depth were builders and role players like Dungeon Master's the good thing is that camp fire is definitely aimed at world builders as well now but I think it's got an edge towards role players D&D Player's Dungeon Master's with a world built in mind for example the items and species page both clearly have the layout and interface designed for giving stance and attributes even with numerical values which is a great choice on their part however because it also has and depth character profiles a whole section for developing character arcs relationship webs useful for things like noble houses chem fire is definitely designed for writers as well someone more like me which some world building software's I know aren't so much they can be a bit clunky if you're really just into the writing side of things I personally struggle with keeping track of details like hair color and glasses and so on so the character profile stuff really works for me though it'll still be really helpful if you're not one of these you'll definitely get the most out of it if you are one of these two types of writers I think there are some things I think the map interface could do a little bit better it allows you to create articles for locations but you also have an encyclopedia and I think it'd be clearer and simpler if clicking on a location brought up that encyclopedia article rather than having two different library of sorts there are also some tweaks I'd like to see may to the character arc feature that allow you to create star points and end points without events being placed on your timeline but overall I highly recommend campfire Pro and the word building pack to role players well builders gamers and writers especially in fantasy and science fiction there are tons of useful organization tools for those large unwieldy universes and I think it really helps to kind of know certain things but before you start writing and it really prompts you with those so you're not going in blind also top marks for the aesthetics the font and the theme all of which you can customize is beautiful even if you're not sure do go get a 10 day free trial do it for me do it for yourself and the links down the description I don't think you'll regret it and even if you don't use it right now I reckon you'll come back and use it someday in the future so yep I really like campfire I hope this video and the sort of you has been helpful in the meantime stay nerdy and I will see you in the future

Channel: Hello Future Me

Views: 907,357

Keywords: explained, theory, lore, analysis, how to, campfire, worldbuilding, writing, avatar, the last airbender, airbender, legend of korra, korra, zuko, katara, sokka, scene, waterbending, bending, firebending, colonialism, industrialism, philosophy

Id: wB-GCLkAoyg

Length: 22min 15sec (1335 seconds)

Published: Sat May 16 2020