I’ve just seen Avatar. I liked it, except for one thing.

In Avatar there are two societies, one is technologically advanced and believes in science; the other is religious. Of course they gave some consistency to the religion, but it remains a religion. The technological society, the humans, are warmongers; while the spiritual society is peaceful. They go to war and the religious society wins. I don’t think that’s the right message.

I’m a geek. I believe in reason. I believe in science. I believe in technology. I believe the human race will only survive if it stops taking myth and legend seriously and start seeking proof, learning, studying, researching, building. Look at medicine, people were dying of very simple deases a hundred years ago. Today we conquered a lot of them!

The life expentansy is growing at the rate of one year every two years. If today the life expectancy is 80 years old, by the time I’m 80, it’ll be 106 years old. And that’s consider the growth of the life expectancy linear, it’s actually accelerating.

The previous generation of science fiction authors dreamed of supercomputers in our pockets, being able to pick up a microphone and talk with anyone on the planet. We are living that and it’s great.

Back to Avatar, for me a story that is much more worthy of being told is the one of Rama. In Rama there’s an alien civilization, extremely advanced and technological, and at the same time very pacific. They inhabit part of a huge ship while the humans inhabit another part. One day the stupid humans decide they want the whole ship. Maybe they were procreating too much and were overpopulated, go figure!

Stop reading know if you intend to read Rama, spoilers ahead.

They start invading the technological civilization. A selected group of the technological civilization gathers to save their race, they develop a virus that would kill adult human males; the group that was actually attacking them. In a couple of hours, the war is over, every human adult male is dead and peace returns.

The individuals of the advanced civilization who participated in the extermination, all commit suicide. It’s part of their law: those that participate in war must kill themselves at the end, even the leaders. Nobody that causes the death of other beings is fit to return to the society.

How many soldiers would enlist if they knew that after returning from a tour, what awaits them is suicide? Very few. How many wars would we have in the world if those declaring them would have to blow their brains out at the end of it? None.


3 responses to “What I didn't like about Avatar”

  1. random Avatar
    random

    Good idea! And like Aztecs’ Tenochtitlan, we could also sacrifice the winner team of each football match (both if the outcome is null), that would free the waves for more interesting things :-)

  2. Richard Avatar
    Richard

    AVATAR,

    You said you are a GEEK ! You said you want to ridicule
    MYTH.

    My answer for you brother is GIVE PEACE A CHANCE….
    I had a science teacher a nice fellow who thought and wondered why religion and science were like two parallel rail tracks that never met.

    The illusion/or power of the Mind is to create duality out of oneness. Spirituality is all about rediscovering the oneness. So, in a sense science and religion are like two sides of the one coin. The mystery is how many sides does the coin have? Some say the answer is twenty ! Heh??? What is the question? Hence the mystery of the dodecahedron. Science can help us to start asking the right questions.

  3. JDintheOC Avatar
    JDintheOC

    Well, I’m pretty sure I just saw another version of How the West was Won…or nearly so. Native Americans (of which I am one) have lots of land when gold is discovered. The Europeans decide to relocate them. Failing in that, they try to kill them off to get at the gold. The end fight was a retelling of Custer’s last stand. Beautiful CGI scenery but a paper thin plot.

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