Did you see Avatar? If not, there's no question why it's a blockbuster - one of the most entertaining films I have seen in years.Of great interest to many is the story of the film - what it is telling us.
In India today - a company wants to blow the top off of a Holy Mountain to gain the 70 million tons of bauxite inside of it - and therefore destroy the sacred homeland of the Dongria people who have called this mountain their home for millenia. Something isn't working here.
This story is not isolated, it has played out over many generations, the most well known was the how the "conquistadors" - Columbus, etc. "discovered" America. Our culture's world view and related stories of history taught in our schools continue to allow for this destruction of life by framing the stories and celebrating the destroyers as leaders and heroes.
Survival International is following and highlighting a number of these real life "Avatars" of real people, with kids, pets, homes, worries, needs, feelings, just like you, and me, all over the world. Some of the beautiful people they profile are Penan in Borneo, Bushmen in Africa, Awa in the Amazon, Pygmies in Africa, etc.
I was talking with some friends yesterday, who happen to be a successful venture capitalist and serial entrepreneur, about the perspective and psychology of connectedness to all life that informs the culture, world views and lives of these people.
I pointed out that our modern culture, especially the three Abrahamic religions of Judaism, Islam and Christianity had long lost the historical and mythological roots to the reality that we are connected to all life. One of my buddies asked me if there was a major religion which still holds this view near and dear, and I pointed out the main religion holding this is the one practiced by all of the indigenous cultures distributed around the world. That they have not lost connection with this essential reality, and reality it is. It is not a belief. We discussed that Buddhism holds these values high as well, and at their core, all major religions are based on a loving reality represented based on a benevolent divinity of one sort or another. We are intimately connected to all life. Period. If you have any doubt, next time you eat something, it is either alive or was just recently alive. We depend on living beings all around us for the most essential ingredients for living on this planet - food. In other words, without the thriving and success of offspring of species all over the planet, we would not survive.
That said, since our modern industrial civilization has stories, and selective history which justify our existence based on a false premise of disconnection from life, and each other, we can proceed based on a a world view that grants philisophical impunity to destroy life and other peoples' lives, cultures, existence. Since we believe we're separate from such people, and all the life around such people, there's no issue in our justification, and our world view. On the other hand - this choice of behavior to get our needs met is a desecration of one of the fundamental laws of life and nature - we are all connected. We must find a new way, a new operating system which takes into account important realities which we have long lost connection to.
Here's a beautifully presented short video which Survival International put together about the real life Avatar experience of the Dongria people in India - the most populous democracy in the world.
2 comments:
"We must find a new way, a new operating system..."
The SLDI Code™
http://www.sldi.org/images/Research/sldi%20in%20focus%20-%20world%5C%27s%20first%20sldbp%20system%20introduced.pdf
The World’s 1st Sustainable Land Development Best Practices System is symbolized as a geometrical algorithm that balances and integrates the triple-bottom-line needs of people, planet and profit into a holistic, fractal model that becomes increasingly detailed, guiding effective decisions throughout the community planning, financing, design, regulating, construction and maintenance processes while always enabling project context to drive specific decisions.
Avatar & Deepening Perspectives on Sustainable Land Development
http://www.sldi.org/newService/SLDIJan2010.html
...Opening to critical acclaim and unprecedented commercial success, James Cameron’s 3-D movie spectacle Avatar has become the fastest film to reach $1 billion in box office receipts. Here’s the plot set up - In 2154, the profit-focused RDA corporation is unsustainably mining Pandora, a lush, Earth-like moon of another planet. Pandora is inhabited by the Na’vi, a sapient species who has adapted to integrate their lives in ways that sustain their planet. The Na'vi resist the colonists' expansion, which threatens the continued existence of the Na'vi and their ecosystem - sort of like Dances with Wolves meets Star Wars.
Meanwhile, back on Earth, Charles C. Mann sets the record straight with a new nonfiction book released this past month that provides a fascinating look at the real lives of ancient Meso-American people – Before Columbus: The Americas of 1491. This is an adaptation of Mann’s best-selling nonfiction book 1491, which turned everything I had previously learned about American history on its head by demonstrating that a growing number of anthropologists and archaeologists now believe that the Western Hemisphere before Columbus's arrival was well-populated and dotted with impressive cities and towns - one scholar estimated that it held a hundred million people or more – more than lived in Europe at the time. The Indians had transformed vast swaths of landscape to meet their agricultural needs by using fire to create prairies for increased game production, and had also cultivated at least part of the forest, living on crops of fruits and nuts.
The contentious debate over what the ecosystem looked like before Columbus arrived has important ramifications for how we sustainably manage the landscape of the future – one which many environmentalists may not like to hear. According to Mann -
"Guided by the pristine myth, mainstream environmentalists want to preserve as much of the world's land as possible in a putatively intact state. But 'intact', if the new research is correct, means 'run by human beings for human purposes'. Environmentalists dislike this, because it seems to mean that anything goes. In a sense they are correct. Native Americans managed the continent as they saw fit. Modern nations must do the same. If they want to return as much of the landscape as possible to its 1491 state, they will have to find it within themselves to create the world's largest garden."
Your participation and comments are welcome.
Terry Mock
Executive Director
Sustainable Land Development International
www.SLDI.org
I too love the movie. I'm a bit of a film buff and immediately said to my family, "Dances with Wolves on Pandora."
It does highlight the utilitarian nature of man toward his dwelling place. Some sci-fi films like Fantastic 4, mock extraterrestrial life forms intent on consuming our planet that differ from homo sapiens only in their ability to do it quickly. As such, underdeveloped qualities can be just as culpable as world powers but without the means to slam on the proverbial brakes and do a 180.
It does also make one lament the symbiotic void and utter lack of appreciation or gratitude for the great, resilient gift we have been given. Hopefully we will wake up before it's too late.
Thanks for sharing.
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