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Netflix's Three Body Problem is Unwatchable
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this post was submitted on 26 Mar 2024
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Here's a list of tons of leftist movies.
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I'm really loving the three body problem but I'm completely unfamiliar with the original novels. The show at least got me greatly interested in the premise. Was going to read the novels anyway but this post might convince me to pick them up sooner rather than later.
The books are great, though expect some brainworms from a boomer Chinese nationalist. Otherwise I always tell people that if you want to understand how Chinese people think about the world (generalizing here of course), read the TBP series.
There have been so many times throughout the books that the author totally nailed how the Chinese society would typically respond to foreign threats or global events, and I just had to nod my head along and said, “yes, it truly is a very Chinese story”, though this layer of meaning would certainly be missed by the vast majority of Western readers.
Very relevant to the current US-China relationship as well. It worries me that Obama liked the books - if he truly understands China and how naive it could be, then we’re screwed.
Is total utter nihilism and misanthropy that common?
Which characters were nihilistic and misanthropic? Luo Ji was probably the one arguably to be borderline nihilistic (which made him a great Wallfacer), but most of the characters were naive and optimistic to a fault.
Then theres Cheng Xin whos stupid choices makes her one of the most hateable fictional characters in arguably all of sci-fi history.
You’re missing the point. Hated as she was, it doesn’t change the fact that she represented the face of Humanity. The book literally made the point that Humanity would not have chosen Wade, even though his iron-fisted approach could have saved Humanity. They chose Cheng Xin because she embodied the core values of Humanity, even if it meant great sacrifices and regrets (the people only hated Cheng Xin after they themselves had elected her, but even then, that hatred did not last long).
The point is that even under such harsh and hostile environment as the Dark Forest state, Humanity (i.e. China) will always choose compassion over atrocity, cooperation over conquest, and kindness over hatred.
This has been the case for China for a long time. Two to three generations after the Imperial Japanese invasion, the young people have all but forgotten the atrocities of Japan and now loving Japanese culture and their animes and their video games. Same thing for American culture (until very recently with Trump and then Biden), even though America never stopped seeing China as an adversary.
This is our cultural trait, and you cannot change that.
Yeah that is really something amazing. Why would a demographic embrace the cultural artefacts of a nation that, to this day, has never apologized for its atrocities against their grandparents? Not even being sarcastic here, guess it really shows how much China bounced back from WW2 due to the CPC's guidance.
It probably helps that almost the entire generation that committed or suffered under these atrocities has been dead for a while
Living memory is so much more potent than history
Right? Everyone who did it has been dead for a long time and the geopolitical situation is radically different. What would be the value or purpose in hating a person because people three generations ago did something horrible?
Fighting to neutralize the state? Opposing still existing aspects of the culture that lead to the violence in the first place? Hunting down survive criminals? Sure, all that makes sense.
But regarding Ouran Host Club or Pikachu or whatever with hatred and disdain because of Imperial Japanese violence in the 20th century is a little unhinged.
Because nations aren't people, they're not monolithic, they're barely even real. Afaik the idea of ancient, durable enmity between nations rarely if ever happens unless they're constantly at war, and even then it breaks down as soon as people start talking to each other.
Warfare and international violence are games played by capitalists and kings. Normal people mostly don't identify the world that way, and the second they start to actually interact with each other the walls start breaking down. An excellent example would be the US invasion of Grenada. Afaik the very explicit danger Grenada represented to the US was an English speaking communism that could talk to Americans directly.
Defection and fraternization, basically learning, tolerance, and acceptance, have always been critical threats to imperial and colonial projects. The kind of blind hatred and ignorance required to keep up colonial and imperial relations usually has to be enforced by the state.
Luo Ji is such a badass character. How could you not be a fucking mess with everything he was put through and the weight on him, but he kept on keeping on.
The author. He seems to think that the only direction for humanity is inevitable self annihilation. The story is just relentlessly misanthropic. Sci fi is always about contemporary life one way or another, and he portrays the only outcome of Terran politics as pathetic and inevitbale self destruction, or something. Idk, i'm having a hard time mapping it on to real geopolitics and the more people talk about it the more it seems like it's just a silly old misanthrope ranting and less like any kind of cogent analysis of geopolitics.
Just gonna quote myself here
As far as I can tell China's foreign policy towards America since Deng has been purchasing rope from the capitalists while keeping a completely straight face and it's starting to pay off
As I understand it, this is the plot of the books too, with humanity reverse-engineering Trisolaran technology and building a stockpile of weapons to ensure Mutually Assured Destruction.
It all turns out to be utterly pointless and everyone dies miserably having achieved nothing, since the author apparently doesn't understand how MAD, nuclear deterennce, and second-strike weapons work. The deterrence in tbp fails because the retaliation system has a single point of failure with no second strike ability. The entirety of modern nuclear deterrence is designed around making sure that the situation that happens in tbp doesn't happen.
Or maybe the author contrived a scenario to explore what would happen if MAD thinking failed? As a cautionary tale on an over-reliance of that strategy in the face of a technologically superior opponent?
I dunno just spitballing here haven't finished book 2.
In the books the deterrence (broadcasting our location so some powerful alien civilization will blow us both up) does have second strike capability though.
book spoiler
One of the ships that fled the doomsday battle ultimately uses its radio to send the MAD broadcast, leading to the Trisolarans fleeing Earth and a third civilization sending a magic superweapon at the solar system.I see that I have been unfair to Mr. Liu. Thank you for correcting me.
(literal) spoilers
The last scene in the Tencent series is literally motivational music playing over the cop character getting two other characters to quit drinking themselves to death and railing against hopelessness in the face of insurmountable odds.They stole the ending from my book!
I wouldnt equate Cixins views as Chinese or Communist beliefs, hes kind of out there with some Malthusian ideas and his stories have some misogyny within them. We wouldnt call Frank Herbert a leftist because he did acid at some sand dunes and had a better understanding of the Middle East than most westerners. Three Body Problem is same deal, we must recognize its not an inherently leftist story. Arguably anything that is not utopian sci-fi is not truly leftist.
I never said it is leftist. I said it is a very Chinese story.
some
I got pretty miffed that the book would do our boy Norman Bethune like that.
I understand the cultural implications of referring to that westerner who is a Doctor "Bethune" but Norman Bethune was a heroic, kind, and extremely generous man who risked his life—ultimately to lose it—in the efforts to provide healthcare to the people who desperately needed it, first on the frontlines of the Spanish Civil War and later in Mao's China.
They did him dirty by associating him with a crackpot.
In Memory of Norman Bethune by Mao (6:28)
I found a YouTube link in your comment. Here are links to the same video on alternative frontends that protect your privacy: