It's a little late, but...

Modern Thought

                The humans in Avatar have a very mechanistic worldview, and they exploit the resources of Pandora to make money, not out of any altruistic sense of compassion for their fellow man. This mechanistic worldview is shown almost immediately in the film during Jake Sully’s flight to the human base on Pandora where there are shots of a huge piece of industrial equipment that appears to have some agricultural purpose. Also displayed are many smokestacks around the base, polluting the virgin world. It’s likely that the majority of humans on Pandora have this viewpoint and goal of progress because of the incredible expense involved in interstellar travel, even in the suture setting of Avatar, though it is probably not a stance echoed by the rest of humanity. Pandora’s scientists appear to simply want to observe how Pandora works as scholarly pursuits.

Parker Selfridge, as executive of the human presence of Pandora, displays a lack of deontological ethics and an exclusive view of humanism when he talks about trying to bring medicine, education, and roads to the Na’vi, in that he implies that all these attempts at good deeds are only to convince the natives to move the home tree because it rests atop a large deposit of a valuable mineral, rather than helping the Na’vi just to help them. He also engages Grace Augustine numerous times about the inner workings of the creatures of Pandora and uses dualisms to justify his behavior to himself (calling them fly-bitten savages, blue monkey, etc.) One memorable exchange occurs when Grace is attempting to explain to Parker the bonds in the trees, which are analogous to neurons of the human brain and can even contain memories, though this is at best Reductionism, because the neural network of trees on Pandora can account for many more feats than simply retaining memories, such as listening to and answering prayers, and moving a consciousness (such as Jake’s) from one body and into another. When Selfridge explains that “killing the indigenous looks bad,” this line implies that most of humanity on Earth still shares “A homocentric ethic (grounded in the social good) [that underlies] ecological movements whose primary goal is social justice for all people” (Merchant 64)

                The Na’vi, and Neytiri in particular, have a view that their world cannot be broken into parts, that everything is connected and there is a universal network of energy that flows between all living things. This is echoed by the fact that the individual Na’vi can form a biological link with other animals on Pandora and share some thoughts and nervous sensations. This notion is at odds with the human paradigms of anthropocentrism and atomism, because the Na’vi do not make much distinction between themselves and the animals, because they can literally share experiences with one another. These bonds are part of their master narrative, and their deity Eywa is the result of all this pairing between separate organisms. Though within the Na’vi’s master narrative there are accounts of a few individuals: the Riders of Last Shadow, a few Na’vi that have tamed the large flying beast that preys on the banshees of Pandora.

AVATAR MIDTERM

In the movie Avatar, the aliens(humans) landed on the planet Pandora, invading the lands of the Na'vi. The humans were looking for a rock called Unobtainium in order to improve upon humankind's existence. However their search for Unobtainium was devastating the lands of the native Na'vi and threatened their very existence. The rock was located under a tree that housed all the Na'vi population and the human invaders were determined to uproot it in order to obtain the rock which is in the soil. The team of scientist came up with these Avatars that acted and talked and walked like the Na'vi using the brain waves that were synced into the Avatar body. The point was to get the Na'vi to trust Jake which is the main character. In hopes to that Jake could talk the Na'vi in relocating or conform to the aliens. In the process Jake falls in love wit Neytiri which is the princess of Omaticaya and Jake falls in love with the land as well. Jake then "betrays" the humans the humans by helping the Na'vi keep their land from the humans. In the movie the word "see" comes up a lot. The meaning behind "see" is to understand and be knowledgeable of the land and to view things from their viewpoint. Humans felt that their superiority gave them the right to deem a lesser species (the Na'vi). This is an example of a master narrative. The humans wanted more and more in order to ensure that their existence continued. They felt that humankind needed more certain traits and saw that the Na'vi did not posses the traits, therefore they deemed them savages. (Anthropocentrism) Self narrative falls in to play when Jake and Grace along with their team differed from the humans because they saw value in the Na'vi's culture where the others only saw primative existence. The dualisms I found were between the colonel and Grace. The colonel holds rank over the scientsit, Grace and he is considered a male dominate and views Grace's sympathy and need to understand the Nav'i as more silly female whims that he had no time for. Deriving them to be frivilous. The humans saw the Na'vi as savages becausw they did not want to accept their "advanced" ways. The Na'vi saw their "advanced" ways as evil and destructive. Solidarity was shown when Grace and her team of scientist including Jake felt for the natives and didnt want the humans to destroy their land. Also the woman that flew one of the helicopters had a change of heart. When she she seen how they were lettig of missles to destroy the land she turned around and said "I didnt sign up for this." After that she began helping Jake and Grace with saving the land and the Na'vi. World traveler concept shows in this particular view of it with Jake being able to play both sides as being human and also taking form of his Avatar body. Coming into his Avatar body he didnt have any concept of how the Na'vi felt about their land. Neytiri took him under her wing and basically transformed him into one of the natives by teaching him the way of life. Colonialism in this matter was not reached fully, because the humans were not able to take control over the land. They did, however offered them roads, schools, hospitals, and so on, butthe Na'vi refused. I see partial colonialism in the force of trying to invade Pandora by destroying and killing the Na'vi and animals. Truncated narratives shows the same concept as the Europeans coming to the Americas and forcing the Indians off the land. So the Europeans can settle and start civilization. Just as the humans tried to do on Pandora against the Na'vi. Jake only seen half of the problem with what was going on with the Na'vi. He didnt grasp the full concept that Pandora was more than just a place to live, it was their way of life. He started this expierement helping the humans move the Na'vi off the land, but once he fell in love and learned that forest gave out much more than a place to live, but it was also spiritual. They communicated with the forest and all the things that lived in it.
"Inevitably, in the translation of ethical perspectives between cultures with
differential power, something will be lost, what Ofelia Schutte calls "a residue
of meaning" that is so important that it may be "'a principle of cross-cultural
incommensurability'"(Gaard 19).

Living with Wolves

In this particular video, the people of Bozeman speak about the wolf hunting issue in their state of Montana. Some of the townspeople objected the idea of wolf hunting. While others embraced the idea of wolf hunting. Joan Montagne a wolf hunting supporter said "They will learn just like the bison. They will quickly learn that someone holding the stick, the hunter is someone to avoid. I'm in favor of hunting." Her idea of this is displaying the concept of a master narrative. The hunter is the dominant force over the wolves. Since he is holding the gun which gives pure dominance over the wolf society. Another wolf supporter, Mike Prester commented "I've been coming here since 1987 and enjoyed a large population of elk and developed an elk hunt. I've seen my elk hunt being disrupted tremendously." After reading Leopold's Thinking Like a Mountain, I feel as though we shouldn't hunt for wolves. According to Leopold if we kill all the wolves that lived on the mountain then the deer will overpopulate the mountain. The deer will eat all of the vegetation and plants that the mountain has to offer and by doing that the mountain would eventually die. Die in the sense of its beauty and view. Leopold " I now suspect that just as a deer herd lives in a mortal fear of its wolves, so does a mountain live in mortal fear of its deer." In other words hunting wolves will eventually destroy the system. Everything is like a domino effect or has a chain reaction. For example if we start chopping down all of the trees and plants then we will no longer have clean oxygen to breathe. In conclusion, the symbiosis is in this case the elks need the wolves to some of them to help balance out the population so neither one would have the greater population. Like Dean Fraley argues (opposed of wolf hunting) "If man would have left it alone a long time ago instead of got it out of balance we wouldn't have this huge problem."