Avatar: Thinking like a Na'vi

The lines of avatar are drawn early in the film when Jake Sully arrives on Pandora and peers out of the shuttle and sees an industry spreading like a virus across a tropical landscape. James Cameron wanted there to be a thick defined line between the natural world of Pandora and the invading industry of earthly values. It is almost a perverse tale of the arrival of Europeans to the Americas in the early 15^th century. Numerous dualisms can be seen such as the na’vi themselves have been given. They have primitive weapons and clothing and they have been given tails and large soft eyes as to anthropomorphize them even more. They have been given characteristics to give them more of a natural alien look but it is the similarities in their looks and behavior and give more meaning to the underlying message given by the film.

Dualisms are drawn even on the intellectual level as it is the scientists are viewed as the ones with logic and compassion while it is the overwhelming military forces that are the brutes who will drive out the primitive race of the na’vi. It is the perverse anthropocentric view that also adds to the many questions of morality that the movie leaves the viewer. It is one thing to view humans as the center of importance which can be found in the majority of people, but to view an entire race of people on another planet as expendable would be considered by most people today as not only brutish but also primitive and inefficient. The way that story was written and presented was meant to give the audience that viewing the world that way is wrong because of the consequences and perspective given. It can also be seen in numerous scenes that nature will fight back against invading forces like a single organism fighting off a disease. When Jake goes missing the forest turns on him because he has not realized his place in nature’s natural system that has been already laid for him. He quickly learns his place when he is forced to adapt and survive in the natural environment of an alien world. The same thing is seen at the end when all of the creatures attack the invading military forces. This ecocentrism is forced and portrayed as a world defending itself instead of wild animals attacking.

Another dualism is in the master narratives of both cultures. Humans for the majority view the higher power as being a strong willed man. The na’vi view their supreme being as the entire world of interconnected species creating one giant system known as Eywa and she is the guiding light that they follow. God is a powerful man and Eywa is more of a loving and nurturing mother. The Na’vi also have a symbiotic relationship with a massive tree which they refer to as “Hometree” and throughout the movie is referred as a female. There is a paradigm shift as Jake Sully infiltrates deeper into the Na’vi and when people are watching the movie they humor themselves by replacing the protagonist with themselves because he is widely viewed as the “good guy”. Jake’s character is reinvented in the time he spends with the other Na’vi, “All ethics so far evolved rest upon a single premise: that the individual is a member of a community of interdependent parts. His instincts prompt him to compete for his place in the community but his ethics prompt him also to cooperate.” (page 141 Aldo Leopold: Ecocentrism: The Land Ethic) Jake earns his place among the people through many acts such as the capture of his ikran and the riding of t’urak mak tau. And through the teachings of the Na’vi he learns that he is a part of a system of interconnected organisms that covers the entire planet. This paradigm shift is meant not only to happen to the protagonist but to ourselves when we replace Jake with our own character.

Avatar: Romanticism for Dummies

At first glance, the film Avatar seems like another Romeo-and-Juliet-esque love story with fancy special effects and a happy ending. However, beneath the surface lies environmental as well as ethical symbolism for the world we live in: past, present, and future. Directed by James Cameron and released in 2009, Avatar tells the story of paraplegic Marine Jake Sully and his journey to fulfill a unique mission on the distant moon Pandora, where he finds he must choose between following the orders of a greedy corporate typhoon or protecting a newfound love and the place he feels he truly belongs.

         

The film embraces two different worldviews, the Mechanistic (first presented by Carolyn Merchant “The Wilderness Idea”, 2005) which is represented in the film by the corporate figurehead Parker, the Colonel, and the human soldiers – a paradigm through which nature is seen through the metaphor of a machine that can be dismantled and reduced for better understanding, and therefore exploited to progress society’s economic well being. The converse view – the Romantic worldview – is represented by Pandora's native race and is one that values the beauty and freedom of nature over scientific rationalization, a holistic outlook that holds everything in nature as being interconnected and intrinsically valuable.

         Jake Sully was assigned a mission to replace his recently deceased brother; he’s told that he is the only person suitable for the job for a special reason – he needs a certain biological makeup to be put into the body of an avatar that’s identical to Pandora’s native race, the Na’vi. And so, when Jake Sully is set out on the mission of infiltrating the Na’vi society and convincing them to give over their land to the humans so it can be mined, he soon realizes that the sublime, breathtaking beauty of Pandora is not worth the typhoon Parker’s final goal of dominating the frontier and exploiting it for its instrumental value. In fact, through personally embodying a Na’vi avatar and his relationship with a female Na’vi, Neytiri, Jake Sully’s narrative self embraces the Na’vi mindset of Romanticism. Neytiri introduces Sully to an organic worldview – seeing all people and plants of Pandora as deeply interconnected, such that they cannot exist independently of the whole. While Parker and gung-ho commander Colonel carelessly rip through Pandora with chemical gas, guns and bombs in pursuit of what lies beneath, Jake Sully and his comrades try to convince their leaders not to do so. Sully and his human allies realize that displacing the Na'vi people is wrong, and destroying their invaluable planet for an economic venture isn't worth the catastrophic effect it would cause on Pandora.  Yet, Parker and Colonel see the Na’vi people as different, and thus uncivilized and savage. Parker and the Colonel exemplify anthropocentrism – regarding their own kind as the most central and important element of existence. They view the Na’vi people as sub-human beings with no rights to the land they occupy. To the two leaders, the trees and plants on Pandora are all the same, homogeneous units only needed for their economic value. They follow the Master Narrative that they've inherited growing up on Earth, which leads them to believe that the Na'vi people are  a small, useless obstacle standing in the way of their ultimate goal: economic progress (at any cost). Although Jake Sully was originally sent to negotiate the Na’vi people off their land so it could be destroyed and mined, he realizes that the essence of the Na’vi people relies completely on their relationship with nature and therefore rebels against his own kind to save Pandora from destruction and the Na’vi from displacement. The film ultimately creates a dualism between Human versus Na’vi & Mechanistic Worldview versus Romanticism. The humans in the film, mainly Parker and the Colonel, think of Pandora as a potentially profitable machine, while Jake Sully, his comrades, and the Na’vi see Pandora as a priceless life-giving land of sublime beauty.

         Avatar also presents the paradox of the romantic worldview that is explained by William Cronan (1995) in “The Trouble With Wilderness”:

                  “…the central paradox: wilderness embodies a dualistic vision in which the human is entirely outside the natural. If we allow ourselves to believe that nature, to be true, must also be wild, then our very presence in nature represents its fall…We thereby leave ourselves little hope of discovering what an ethical, sustainable, honorable human place in nature might actually look like.” (pg. 17)

         In the film, this is seen when Jake Sully tells the Na’vi people of human behavior on Earth:

                  “See the world we come from. There is no green there. They killed their mother. They will do the same here.”

         Logically, If humans destroyed their mother, their planet, to the point where there is no green – the symbolic color of nature – then humans must be entirely unnatural beings that did not learn how to sustainably and ethically exist in nature through the course of their history. Through their presence in nature on Earth they caused its demise. Thus it is then implied that by allowing the human race to invade and control Pandora, history would repeat itself and the human race would ravage the planet for its valuable resources to the point of destruction. Pandora would become as barren and desolate as the planet Earth that Sully describes to the Na’vi people. Therefore, human presence on Pandora must not continue in order for Pandora to remain in its natural state and retain its sublime beauty and goodness.

         This holds true when the final battle against the humans and their vicious machines proves victorious for the native Na’vi people. With the exception of a select few, humans are ordered out and never to return to Pandora. The Na’vi people are left to continue with their way of life – living ethically and peacefully within nature. 

         Overall Avatar presents two different ways of viewing nature, the Mechanistic worldview and Romanticism. It shows the tales of both views and their outcomes. It implies that if you view the world like a machine with interchangeable, meaningless parts and exploit it, you will drive the planet to its breaking point, turning it into something empty and lifeless. The storyline favors the Romantic worldview because those who represent it, the Na’vi, respect their planet as a delicately balanced living organism, intrinsically valuing every individual and therefore existing sustainably in nature. Conversely, the film gives a bad connotation to the Mechanistic worldview, showing that the humans who think this way are bound to destroy nature despite its beauty for the sake of greediness and profitability. In turn, the humans destroy the very thing that they rely on and fail to find an honorable way to exist within nature. Overall, when it comes to living within nature, the moral of the story seems to be that the Romantic worldview is the way to go. If we can learn to intrinsically value every plant, animal, and human on Earth without homogenizing or exploiting them for economic progress, we will live as honorably and sustainably on this planet as the Na’vi do on Pandora.


- Meredith Whittier

Altering Nature

Altering Nature.

It is said by some that “what is unnatural is evil.” The same statement could be said for GMO’s. GMO is short for genetically modified organism. Now this does not mean some sort of Frankenstein walking about but some genetically modified organism that has been given some sort of gene therapy to better suit our needs. There have been many successful thriving GMO’s some of which we eat every day. Herbicide resistant and BT toxin expression are 2 FDA approved GMO’s that are on the market now. The number one argument among protestors today is that it is unnatural. The counter argument I have is what is Natural? John Stuart Mill said that you can never act against nature. One must ultimately choose “what particular law of nature they should make use of.” We are so quick to argue the unnaturalness of something and we choose to ignore everything unnatural around us. If what is unnatural is evil then are the clothes on my own back evil? There is no cotton that can be found in the shape of a shirt or pants. Are the medicines we give our children when they are ill evil? The author of the article Who’s afraid of GMO’s?ME! begins his article with a sarcastic demeanor with condescending remarks belittling the very means of her work. http://www.saynotogmos.org/ud2005/ujun05b.html#afraid He makes one very good argument though that there has never been an actual study supporting or disproving GMO health risks. GMO’s in our food have only been around for a short period of time but the FDA saw that the benefits outweighed the possible risks thus allowing them to go public. Long ago when the banana was first being cultivated, it was not unnatural to strategically pick out which bananas we wish to grow which are the seedless ones. No use of gene therapy was used, yet we are the reason why they cannot naturally reproduce by means or normal pollination. The actual steps to gene therapy for a GMO can be seen on the video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jAP6ZtfP9ZQ. The actual video itself is educational but the only problem about the young girls argument is where is the data for these studies? Who did the studies? Under what circumstances were they done? “If we are not important, not central, not the apple of Gods eye, what is implied for our theologically-based moral codes?... the significance of our lives and our planets is then determined only by our own knowledge and courage. We are the custodians of life’s meaning… If we crave some cosmic purpose then let us find ourselves a worthy goal.” Carl Sagan’s views on the natural world can be used to answer the question: what is natural? The definition of nature can be put Nature, in the broadest sense, is equivalent to the natural world, physical world, or material world. "Nature" refers to the phenomena of the physical world, and also to life in general. It ranges in scale from the subatomic to the cosmic. (courtesy of Wikipedia) what is natural is not determined by us nor a higher power. What is natural can be associated with what is possible. When we begin to separate ourselves from nature that is when the views of what is natural comes to play. The master narrative widely accepted by many is that what is natural is good and what is unnatural is either indifferent or evil. In modern times there are paradigm shifts every day due to the increased number of ways to communicate information whether it be television or the internet. Someone is publishing some study that proves or disproves something else and it is up to the people who are in charge of these means of communication that are responsible for what gets published and heard. This is not in support of any side of the argument about GMO’s I have no say in disapproving of them considering I eat them every day. Nor can I approve of them because of the lack of studies observing the long term effects of genetically modified organisms. The real question that should be asked is what is natural and who determines whether it is or not?

Anthropogenic impact on The Wild Next Door

When looking through the readings to pick one to use as a cross reference for analyzing a common day environmental issue, i could look past cronans TROUBLE WITH WILDERNESS. He makes such a valid point as the deeper meaning of the message that nature is a man made concept subject to change as our society evolves. Trying to find a good environmental issue that was directly relative to the writing i realized that their isn't a single example that fails to link the bridge. cronan makes the point that the common thought on neutrality is a state of being without the taint of a human impact. "It is an island in the polluted sea of urban-industrial modernity, the one place we can turn for escape from our own too-muchness. Seen in this way, wilderness presents itself as the best antidote to our human selves, a refuge we must somehow recover if we hope to save the planet.". What a satirical way to get at a very true statement. wilderness is a mental refuge that is always on the other side of the fence. in fact we as humans create this dualism subliminal that puts nature and the 'unnatural living style" of humans on the same field of play with not enough room for the two to coexist.

Co-author Dr Andy Radford of a late study, who leads a major project to investigate the impact of anthropogenic noise on marine animals, said: "Noise pollution is a rapidly increasing issue of global concern, especially underwater. Although lots of research has considered the potential impacts on marine mammals, we know relatively little about how.....

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/02/110228183849.htm

This is sort of a weak example is the sense that this is not one of the biggest topics for environmental decay, but i think because such a non beaten path subject matter displays the issue just as well it makes the point work. what Radford is getting at here, is that we as people are corrupting the so called wilderness. is their not fish that live in ponds around some of the biggest cities in the world? is their not noise distractions created by other bigger animals in the so called wild? (Go back 250 years in American and European history, and you do not find nearly so many people wandering around remote corners of the planet looking for what today we would call “the wilderness experience.” As late as the eighteenth century, the most common usage of the word “wilderness” in the English language referred to landscapes that generally carried adjectives far different from the ones they attract today. To be a wilderness then was to be “deserted,” “savage,” “desolate,” “barren”—in short, a “waste,” the word’s nearest synonym. Its connotations were anything but positive, and the emotion one was most likely to feel in its presence was “bewilderment” or terror.) cronan qt 2 trouble with wilderness. There is no better way to evoke though that ponders what something truly means than reminding your self how a “simple” concept has changed so vastly over a couple hundred years.

The sum total of all the mumbo jumbo is that the dualism between this man made wilderness and human living needs to done away with… the struggle to save the separation between man and nature needs to be put to rest…. And the fight to make our foot print on the earth needs to be brought to the next level because we can never truly get away from nature. It is the world, the air we breath, the grass we walk on… it is us.

The Violent Truth About Nature

For centuries, members of our society have perceived nature to be a romanticized entity, disregarding the inevitable dangers that exist. One individual that shared this mindset was Timothy Treadwell, known to many people as the “Grizzly Man”. Treadwell lived among the coastal grizzly bears of Katmai National Park in Alaska for 13 summers. At the end of his 13th summer in the park in 2003, he and his girlfriend Amie Huguenard were killed and eaten by a grizzly bear. Treadwell's life, work and death were the subject of the 2005 documentary film by Werner Herzog titled Grizzly Man. The film tackles numerous deep issues about man's role in the world and his place in nature. (See Trailer Below)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ogYDUmIigw0

The ideas and issues of this film are similar to William Cronon’s The Trouble With Wilderness. At one point in the reading Cronon explains, “Among the core elements of the frontier myth was the powerful sense among certain groups of Americans that wilderness was the last bastion of rugged individualism.” This is a perfect example of Timothy Treadwell and his relationship towards the environment in which he found refuge. Throughout the documentary, Herzog explains to the viewer that Treadwell had an individualistic mindset when in regard to nature within the Alaskan wilderness. Treadwell used nature as an escape from his life back home, and he saw nature as a place where he could be free from all of society’s restrictions and judgments. Treadwell never looked at nature from a realistic standpoint where nature is actually violent because its inhabitants have to fight and struggle to survive. Humans aren’t adapted to that type of life and never will be.

Cronon expands further on this issue, saying, “Idealizing a distant wilderness too often means not idealizing the environment in which we actually live, the landscape that for better or worse we call home,” along with, “The romantic sublime was not the only cultural movement that helped transform wilderness into a sacred American icon during the nineteenth century. No less important was the powerful romantic attraction of primitivism, dating back at least to Rousseau—the belief that the best antidote to the ills of an overly refined and civilized modern world was a return to simpler, more primitive living.” Cronon’s explanation on romanticizing nature is similar to Werner Herzog’s thought on this issue. (See Video Below 2:08 – 4:08)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3xQyQnXrLb0

In a segment of the video (2:08 – 4:08), Herzog explains that nature is “violent” and is not the romanticized image of the wilderness that most people see as harmonious. He also describes nature as “lacking order” and "chaotic". However, in the end Herzog makes clear that he “loves the jungle, but he loves it against his better judgment”.

Conclusively, Timothy Treadwell’s story epitomizes the fact that humans cannot successfully live in a wild and primitive environment without repercussions. Cronon and Herzog exemplify this fact through their works, and suggest that while people can enjoy the wilderness, it is necessary to acknowledge the very real dangers that nature entails.

Animal Smuggling Exposes Illegal Wildlife Trade

An Indonesian man was stopped at Suvarnabhumi International Airport last week with dozens of rare wildlife stuffed into three suitcases. This would-be smuggler was caught at Thailand Airport with animals including snakes, squirrels, and tortoises. He had purchased the wildlife at Bangkok's Chatuchak Market and was attempting to smuggle them out of the country. According to Traffic - the organization that fights wildlife trafficking - the man was found with "88 Indian star tortoises, 33 elongated tortoises, seven radiated tortoises, six mata mata turtles and four Southeast Asian narrow-headed softshell turtles. He also had three Aldabra tortoises, one pig-nosed turtle, and one ploughshare tortoise, which Traffic described as the world's rarest tortoise". However, the list doesn't stop there. Authorities also found "34 ball pythons, two boa constrictors, several milk snakes, corn snakes and king snakes and one hog-nosed snake, 19 bearded dragon lizards, four spiny-tailed lizards, two Sudan plated lizards and six Argentine horned frogs", and to top it all off, "there were 18 baboon spiders, 22 common squirrels and one African grey parrot inside the suitcases, Traffic says". 

"Suspected smuggler stuffed squirrels, tortoises into suitcases"

Reported by CNN Wire Staff on CNN.com - February 11, 2011

http://www.cnn.com/2011/WORLD/asiapcf/02/10/thailand.wildlife.smuggling/index.html?hpt=T2





These Indian Star Tortoises were one breed of many found and seized in the smugglers suitcases.


Sadly, this seems to be one of many cases like this, as Chatuchak Market (located right down the street from wildlife protection and nature crime police offices) is widely known for its illegal mass sales of rare animals.


What this man was planning to do with these animals? We may never really know - but my guess is his plans were to smuggle them out and sell them on the black market; a case that can be directly related to man's anthropocentrism. This man, like most others, holds the belief that because he is human he has the right to treat animals as subhuman beings - capturing them, detaining them, and selling them as if their existence is worthless. Beliefs such as this are so widely held, that CNN doesn't even recognize that what he is doing - holding animals in captivity and treating them as subhuman - is wrong. The only issue addressed by CNN is how this man tried to do what he did, buying the animals illegally and stuffing them all in a suitcase. Society has selfishly interpreted Darwin's "survival of the fittest" and used it to justify doing just about anything to any being deemed subhuman, and in doing so has exploited nature for economic purposes. The man trying to smuggle these animals probably thought that once sold, the money from his acts would bring him great happiness - a type of metaphor that is held as truth in today's society. These types of metaphors are addressed in Nieztzsche's On Truth and Lies in a Nonmoral Sense - "Truths are illusions, we have forgotten are illusions- they are metaphors that have been worn out and have been drained of sensuous force, coins which have lost their embossing and are now considered as metal and no longer as coin" (pg 5). In closing, the "truth" that money brings happiness quickly followed Nieztzsche's priciple and revealed itself as an illusion... this man is now in prison and faces wildlife smuggling charges. 


Meredith Whittier

Board of Regents Approves Wind Turbines-EDITED

///EDITED///

Article in the North Texas Daily
Friday November 12, 2010
written by Isaac Wright

WIND POWER = HAPPINESS

In our society, the way that we think about having control over nature, as discussed in the Merchant reading, is always represented in a bad way. The reading discusses nature being a "motherly" figure that we take advantage of and treat badly. But there are a great deal of ways that society as a whole can take control of the nature that surrounds us and help to preserve it for the future. We have great technology (that most believe can be the demise of nature) that we can use in order to, in a way, shape nature to help us; as well as also helping itself to survive and persevere. We can use technology to help save the nature and create better living conditions for ourselves. Control and power do not always bad or harmful things; there are ways to use them to make things better for our beautiful mother nature.

In a way to cut energy usage in out new UNT football stadium, UNT has proposed and had approved a plan for installing three new wind turbines near the stadium that will provide much of the energy needed to power it. In my opinion, this is a great idea and very much needed. Since the start of the construction, I have been very against the idea of destroying a great deal of nature and land in order to build a new multi-million dollar stadium for the purpose of luring better football players to our school. But the addition of wind turbines to aid in powering the stadium makes the idea a little bit more comforting. Though these three turbines are not able to provide all of the energy that the stadium will require, it is certainly a good start (and absolutely better than nothing). I feel that the best part of this whole proposition is that this idea was solely brought about by the students here at UNT. The students felt strongly about the new stadium and this proposition and have pushed for change and improvement. This shows that we all, as students, can truly make a difference in this University as well as have a slight impact on the world, but it does require people to step up and speak out against what others are doing.

I believe that UNT is taking a great step away from coal power and is perhaps leading the way in making changes for a better future.


http://www.wfaa.com/news/turbines-108251249.html



The Merchant reading describes a point where mother nature and all its glory was compared not to a living organism, but to a machine, "dead, inert, and insensitive to human action." This is much like a mechanistic worldview. In Francis Bacon's eyes, nature harbors secrets about technology that can be used for improvement of human condition. Nature can help us to improve our technology, to in the end, improve life for humans. This represents nature in a way that its purpose is to be used at the humans expense. In actuality, a machine is nothing compared to nature. Nature is so complex and giving, it can do many things and has an abundance to offer all living organisms. Nature is universal. It affects everyone, and the idea of humanism is destroying it.
While reading Radical Ecology Science and Worldviews, one quote particularly stood out to me. "Because the needs and purposes of society as a whole were changing with the commercial revolution, the values associated with the organic view of nature were no longer applicable" (pg. 44, Merchant). All of the technological and cultural advances within society have caused a giant commercial tsunami to sweep over an organic nation, much like Katrina did to New Orleans, destroying much of what it is known for. This commercial tsunami swept over us destroying the many views, ideas and values of nature making it to where they are no longer able to be fully applied in our society.

With UNT bringing this new stadium into this BEAUTIFUL Denton environment, and destroying alot of nature and land along the way, the idea of something being put in place concerning the preservation and conservation of nature makes the thought much more bearable to me. Thinking of nature as an organism rather than a machine to provide for us has helped UNT to propose a plan for wind turbines to help power the large new stadium. Though at first glance it may seem as though we are using nature to benefit humans, in the long run it is actually to benefit nature as well. This is a great example of humans working alongside nature "hand in hand" to each better each other. :)

-Allison Williams