{"id":5752,"date":"2022-12-31T14:54:20","date_gmt":"2022-12-31T12:54:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.jonathan-cook.net\/blog\/?p=5752"},"modified":"2022-12-31T14:59:19","modified_gmt":"2022-12-31T12:59:19","slug":"avatar-navi-murderous-humans","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.jonathan-cook.net\/blog\/2022-12-31\/avatar-navi-murderous-humans\/","title":{"rendered":"Avatar makes us long to be Na\u2019vi, while dooming us to remain murderous humans"},"content":{"rendered":"

Had we looked inwards rather than so aggressively outwards, we might live in a Pandora, not the last stages of the Anthropocene<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Watching Avatar 2: The Way of Water<\/em>, I was reminded that there is nothing new under the sun, ours or Pandora\u2019s. James Cameron\u2019s three hour-plus epic tells us little more than The Tables Turned<\/a><\/em>, a short poem written more than 200 years earlier by William Wordsworth. One verse observes:<\/p>\n

Sweet is the lore which Nature brings;
\nOur meddling intellect
\nMis-shapes the beauteous forms of things:-
\nWe murder to dissect.<\/em><\/p>\n

Another points out:<\/p>\n

One impulse from a vernal wood
\nMay teach you more of man,
\nOf moral evil and of good,
\nThan all the sages can.<\/em><\/p>\n

But while Cameron and Wordsworth share a pressing concern that we are losing our connection to \u2013 murdering \u2013 Nature, including our own natures, their visions differ on what it is to actually be<\/em> a modern human.<\/p>\n

With two centuries of additional historical experience to draw on, Cameron\u2019s view is much bleaker than Wordsworth\u2019s.<\/p>\n

On Pandora, humans don\u2019t just murder through their compulsion to understand and master their surroundings (Wordsworth\u2019s \u201cdissection\u201d). They murder to make money, they murder in the pursuit of vanity, they murder simply because they can. Power has no higher purpose than its own self-promotion.<\/p>\n