The Hunger Games: Catching Fire

Went to see this movie this evening with darling daughter. It's a great story and a fine film, but the bit about revolutions bothers me. Seems to me I heard something once upon a time about how revolutions never succeed, or always fail, which is the same thing. There must have been some caveat because our American Revolution succeeded, didn't it? Perhaps because we had the French helping us. In any case, this year (in the movie) marks the 75th year of the successful suppression of the last revolution, the one that resulted in the "destruction" of District 13. And here we are, starting another one. This can't be good, but maybe we'll get to beat up the bad guys.     I'm beginning to think people just like to kill people. I was reading earlier today about Israel invading Lebanon some 30 years ago. I've always thought it was the Arabs against the Jews, but evidently there are multiple factions which are all against everyone else. In this stew-pot we call the Mideast, the Jews are just another faction, a faction that happens to have a large and vocal group of friends in the USA.     I'm wondering if the reason the West has been so successful is because we took Christ's lessons about turning the other cheek to heart. As you go through life eventually everyone will piss you off in some way. You can hang onto that anger, nurse it along, let it fester, and save it up until it finally boils over and you pick a fight. Or you can let it go, forgive them their stupidity and pray that they will forgive yours, and try and do better next time.     I don't like dragging Christ into this because I am not a particularly religious person, but I do wonder how it is that Christianity got to be such a powerful force. I think this might be part of it. People's emotions get the better of them and they do things they regret, and here's a guy telling you it's okay if you screw up, everybody does it, just try and do better in the future, that's all anyone can do.     The Chinese had an empire that covered half the world a zillion years ago, but one day they stopped their exploring and pulled back to their original country. Something similar happened in the Arab world. They were going great guns and then for some reason they decided to just stop. I wonder if there is something fundamental in their philosophy that led to that.