Avatar Is About Our Broken Wholes
The movie, Avatar, is a significant film. It is the most expensive movie ever made and one of the most beautiful and attractive films produced. Technological breakthroughs were required to make the stunning picture.
The film has opened to big box office receipts. It won the Golden Globe as Best Picture of the Year. It is was nominated for Best Picture at the Academy Awards.
Avatar strikes a chord with us. We are attracted to this fantastic world. Not only for its surreal beauty and creativity but also because this world provides something else: It is a Memory. Avatar is both new to us but at the same time, it is not new at all. Avatar echoes something that we all miss, something we all have experienced. It is déjà vu of sorts, we have been here before but we do not know when, where or how.
Avatar is a psychologically significant film for it comes at a time when the Human race, we must admit, is at a low point. And the film reminds us when we once were higher beings. We once were Avatars but have long since forgotten who we are. We have become lost in the modern world in the amnesia caused by all of our distractions.
Our response to Avatar is quite deep, it is hardwired it seems, though some will not admit this. Avatar is about “wholes”, it is about social wholes and mental wholes that have long since perished in our history. In the modern world we feel this loss of a whole in our personal lives.
Our brains are designed to operate as wholes. In the modern age, we only use certain selected mental regions and neglect much of the rest of our neurological equipment. But we have a dim memory of another kind of psyche that art retrieves for us for a few shining moments.
At the same time, our cultures are disintegrated. We are alienated or at war with others though we have been conditioned for millennia to live as wholes, to have relationships with people, to be a part of a close community. The social whole is also a vague memory.
Avatar reminds us of our loss of connection, the loss of direct connection not mitigated through middlemen or bureaucracies or pure logic or science. The physiology, our basic psychology, and our hardware wants wholes and connection. Unfortunately, the world provides only bits and pieces and disconnection and chaos. So we do not operate at full capacity and we miss this. Mental tools are unemployed, sub-minds are bored, discs are empty, and the vacuum calls out to be filled with activity and association and goals. We feel this and we miss this and we pine for this, but we don’t understand what this phenomenon is. Because we have no curriculum that teaches us what we have lost.
Many of us act poorly. We may fall into obsessive behavior and repeat some little thing over and over to find joy and security because all we have is little things and no whole. Others may just accept that life is empty and lonely. Still others will fill the vacuum with “ME”. The compensations are manifold because we have no whole, no connection, no joint goals, no variety and diversity.
Avatar points to a seminal event in Human history, the dissolution of the original tribal village, the break up of the great unity. In the 5,000 years since the break up of the communal origin, many wholes have fragmented. Let’s examine the many issues below:
Mythology
Avatar is a mythology that points us back to mythology itself. A mythology is a big story, the biggest of stories, a complete story that addresses many issues -- our goals, behaviors, personalities and nature, our strategies, our powers and talismans, our mentors and helpers and allies, our enemies, our inner battles, our moral codes, our views of creation, our views of life, proportion and place, our social vision and more.
Science and history are only chapters in a mythology. A myth rises above all because it is about living life. It is highly personal and yet must be very social too. Myth is neither fiction nor nonfiction, neither science nor fantasy, neither religion or empirical fact, neither dream nor immediate reality. Myth is a collection of many things. It can be very complex but in the end it is very simple because it is about living life as a Human being.
The people in Avatar have such a myth that binds, protects and guides them. Where is our myth? Do we have a mythology of our local community, our nation, for the whole world? Does the Human race have a common myth? No, we are a planet without a mythology speeding through space. From a gray moon one can see a blue planet of whirling confusion and war, we are the planet without a clue.
And where is the mythology for an individual? Each person needs one, a self identity, a complete story to get through life’s many twists and turns. Identity is the key thing a myth can give you. But we get no help from schools, jobs, media or leaders on this. What we do receive are products to shop for, and entertainment stories that do not provide us material for personal myth and try to substitute someone else’s myth for the development of our own. Reality shows provide the myth of celebrity and the derision for the myths of others.
By and large we are diverted by financial stress that causes us to fixate on money in order to relieve the anxiety. All the while, politicians exhort us to rely on them and forget about myth because your myth is about your self action, and they do not want that.
But our Mythology can be retrieved and will be retrieved because our souls demand it. No one can exist without a story, a Human being and Human society without a story is lost.
Spirit
The idea of a whole is a fundamental theme of “spirit”. Spiritual refers to a state of mind, a special perception that takes us to the higher and more revered issues. Spirit is a whole that connects you to the vast cosmos, to Mother Nature and planet Earth, to the origin of all things, to other Human beings, to the beginning of our race. But spirit flags in this age because our associations and relationships are weak and tentative. The soul is the spirit’s vehicle, it travels to all these places of origin and connection, but the modern soul has little mileage on it, it ventures not far in ethereal and inspirational miles, though in terms of geographic miles or electronic internet miles we are veteran travelers.
The transcendent emotions of love, caring, brotherhood, home, family, community, self sacrifice are expressions of spirit. They are rare for we are driven by mundane feelings about economic interest. We get our thrills from shopping. We are distracted by computer games. And we use drugs, alcohol, pharmaceuticals, food, sex and so on, but these do not offer us connection to a whole. We cannot reach the transcendent emotions this way though we may try.
Our spirit yearns for better days; our hardwiring will bring us back to this whole of ourselves. Once again we will be connected to the greater.
All Minds
The mind is a whole, it is one organic device; it is interconnected in many ways.
But we are frozen in this age in a realm of logic, facts and science.
Our brain is vast inner world of creativity, memory, the subconscious, wisdom, morality, a mind of doing, emotions and reason, as well. The tribal mind revels in all minds, the Avatar mind is interconnected, one state passes to another, and no sub-mind dictates its narrow interests to the rest. We have a democracy, a federation of perceptions and personalities. We do not have a domineering chairman who rules without a quorum.
In modern culture, we teach the logical and we are quite skilled at this. But we have no understanding of the rest of our mental toolbox; we have no curriculum to learn the use of all our latent talent.
Mother Nature gave us all our perceptions and skills for a purpose: To Survive. Why else would they be there? Vast sections of the brain are today abandoned. The Human species is again in period of crisis, and we need all of our evolutionary inheritance to endure.
Because we do not understand our emotions we suffer, because we do not understand our dreams we do not know our deepest needs, because we do not understand the difference between wisdom and logic we behave stupidly, because we have no knowledge of the techniques of imagination and innovation we can’t solve problems, because we do not know the uses of both objective and subjective memories we have no grounding, and because we don’t know how to just behave spontaneously without a plan or script we cannot grapple, act and react, risk and adapt.
We are personally aware of our failures at mental management, we feel it – the malaise, bad feelings, surprises, paralysis, confusion, nervousness and fear.
We also know it because of what is called “culture war” which rages in the modern world, but at root a culture war is not about culture, it is a mental war between mind types, between spheres of the mind.
The mind can be made whole again. Our dysfunction is at an apogee, we cannot go much further.
Alienation and the Community
In the world of Avatar there is intimate and direct contact between beings, in our modern society we have alienation. We live in a world of great complexity but without connections in that complexity. There are millions of people but not “One people”. We have affluence and many things, but we do not have relationships in our treasure chest.
We are disconnected from all others, and are in conflict with all others. We are lonely, we are depressed, we become egotists trying to boost our forever flagging egos. We lie, dissemble and do not trust.
Consumerism keeps us apart, modern media and entertainment disconnects us too. Our cars, our suburbs wall us off from others. Community and brotherhood are ancient memories. The modern city is united by things like mass media something we all plug into but it speaks only one way. We are also united by leaders, they speak to us all, and thus through them we are united in a sort of way. We have all these centralizing institutions that connect us but they substitutes for real Human connection.
We use the internet to connect but as we expand one type of contact, we lose another type of contact, that of intimacy, directness. This type of Human relationship is more powerful than that of electronic connection (though we need the electronic; it is essential in this age). The amount and quality of communication in a direct Human-to-Human relation is for superior to that of the virtual one – the tone of voice, the looks, the eyes, the body language, the transparency, sincerity, the longer periods of contact, the wandering but total range of a dialogue. This is total communication and it leads to honesty and trust, we open up and move beyond acquaintance to true friendship, and then to partnership in some important project, and thus we have more direct Human-to-Human contact.
On the balance sheet of our personal communications, do the direct and tactile relation outweigh the electronic? If the internet and cell phone dominate then we have more liabilities than assets. Overall, it is the job of the electronic to assist the tactile and direct,
for the technology to assist the Human.
Economic Misery
The economic whole has long since broken. Economic classes have evolved, the rich rule for their narrow interests. The current mortgage and financial crisis has proven this sociological fact once again for us, as we tend to forget in periods of boom and relief. When all the boats rise we are lulled, when the tide moves out and we see that some vessels are floating out to sea while we are grounded and listing, the basic fact our economic reality is revisited – we are not rich and because of that we are tricked and robbed.
Further, the Human community has been at war with itself in many other ways –genders, ethnic groups, nationalities, religions, sexual orientations etc.
Economics has separated itself from the community, it operates as a power unto itself; the whole is broken. Economics attacks all individuals and all other social institutions from government to healthcare to education. The goals are abuse, neglect, manipulation or exploitation. Our economics also attacks ALL other values, for our system only respects one value and wants only one power, and certainly not a culture of multiple values and multiple powers.
Work was once a mixed and varied activity in the ancient tribe; it is now a narrow economic practice that has nothing to do with the needs of the modern village. Career itself often has nothing to do with true personal desires and identity.
Consumption at one time was limited by other issues such as environment and overall social needs. Today we have consumerism, the excess of consumption, consumption for the sake of consumption.
The essential problem is that business, industry and finance operate without a care for the social whole. Economics is important but we live in a Social Diverse of values and needs, so economics can only ethically and practically be one component of a diverse social whole.
Government
Government has long since separated itself from the community; it exists as thing for itself. Bureaucrats, politicians and parties operate in a world of strange laws and sectarian interests. They contend with each other but unite against the populace.
Representative democracy has become a system where representatives represent themselves. The cardinal rule for the politician is the double agenda -- what he tells you and what he really intends to do.
A direct democracy is a very simple idea, it would fix this broken whole by putting the people in power and relegating politicians to functionaries who help us develop, study and decide on legislation.
The big justification in history has been “professionalism” but professionalism is a modern way of denying mass democracy, of garnering power for a select few who monopolize access and information. The citizen has the potential to become a professional of sorts too, informed and active. “Amateur” is the term thrown at ordinary people by elites who want a convoluted democracy, but amateurism is really only a stage in the evolution of skill and knowledge and responsibility. Mistakes will be made on the way to a true democracy but individuals will learn.
International Relations
Relations between nations become an extension of our domestic alienation and strife.
Rather than a planet of cooperating tribes and the practice of world brotherhood, we are at war with each other. Here is another whole that desperately needs fixing.
The Family
The old extended family of the village is now gone, poor mother and father are forced to carry all of the burdens of child rearing when before the whole of the community helped. Now appears the next stage of the family -- a brave new world for the woman, for she is the sole head of the family, fully responsible, as the father is absent. Where is the new extended family for the modern age?
Communication
Communication and media are now separated from the needs of the community. In a village there is direct, continuous and two-way communication. In our complex world of hierarchies, communication for the citizen is indirect, sporadic and not two-way.
On the other hand, communication for leaders, media firms, corporations, and big institutions is quite satisfactory -- for it is a direct broadcast to TVs and computers, it is ever present, and it is one-way, from the top down to the nether regions of the mainstream.
Modern Communication is “de-communication”. It is manipulative, tainted with marketing and consumerism, it provides constant distraction, it is overly theatrical, it is bombastic and tabloid, it constantly pushes for lower standards.
We are in dire need of new principles of communication. Our very first principle should be that communication is the primary means of connecting a social whole. The very first stage of a relation is communication, it precedes all else. So without proper communication we cannot form relationships of any value. When de-communication reigns, not only are we not informed and cannot influence, but we have no possibility of connecting with another Human being to form a bond, association or partnership of any sort.
Media is the nerves and spinal chord of the social whole, today our nerves and spinal chord are largely severed. We are getting signals of delusion from some hyper active part of the brain, while the rest of our body is cut off, the whole is not in communication with itself.
To get a grip on the problem we must think in terms of wholes, and seek communication that allows mass access and expresses democracy, thus uniting the social whole and creating a fully informed citizen. We need communication that speaks to all Human needs and seeks to create a whole Human being.
And we should recognize that the internet has created a watershed condition where an individual now is a multimedia publisher. This causes the ordinary citizen to not only develop content and learn techniques and manage technologies, but very importantly, to develop an overall theory, policy and ethics of communication. A new communication whole has arrived where the citizen is moved to develop a self-aware thesis of communication and a full set of skills in self publishing, and is now wholly responsible for the results of her or his communication. This has never happened before.
Directness
Another theme of a broken whole is “directness”. What connects us to a whole? Directness is the idea that each of us as individuals must learn about ourselves, life and society by direct experience. Direct knowledge, direct contact, direct participation, direct action: These are key concepts when dealing with a whole of any sort.
We learn about a complexity by direct contact with its many parts. We are just one part of a whole too, and to learn of a whole, we must wander about and experience many things.
When “indirectness” reigns, we do not journey through a whole; we take someone else’s word for the reality. We then set ourselves up for manipulation by middlemen who will interpret the world for us. They will spin, substitute and omit information to control us.
We are the heroes of our own lives; we are the actors in our story. Only through direct action can we know the world, interact with the world, and change the world.
This is how the social whole is known by an individual. In addition, your psyche is a whole, and this is how it is known, through directness. You must journey through your own mind to learn how it works. If you stay in one compartment of your brain and do not venture out because teachers or academics have told you to avoid the lack of objectivity of other regions, then you will suffer from your ignorance.
Directness creates the whole, it connects it up as one. Indirectness, disconnection, apathy, dependency and myopia, these break up your whole.
Time
Time itself is another whole. We tend to not see time in this way.
In modern culture, there is no past, there is no connection to a beginning; we live only in “now” which is a succession of forgettable moments. We float in a river of the timeless.
We have no sense of continuity in our view of time. Our feeling of time is like some semiconscious haze where consciousness and amnesia interpenetrate like warm and nebulous gases.
Media, entertainment, consumer trends, obsession with the “new”, all of these cause us to focus on the “now”. And the power of currency also drives us to fixate on the immediate as we relent that only those who are popular right now are important, while the past performance is of no relevance today.
The now is disconnected from the past. We are looking for continuities, for threads that run from past to present to future, if we are to get out of our pleasant malaise.
Important themes ground us, big issues in our lives, the fundamental ones -- family, love, ethics, principles, community. Otherwise, we are lost in a sea of triviality and momentary thoughts and desires. We are stuck in moments. And some will want to reprise them over and over to hang onto some sort of solidity and stability.
In addition to continuities, we need plans and goals. Because we have no grounding, we have no future. The past is important for us, it may be that the past is full of bad things, but it is our reality, we will want to move beyond it. So we need to know where we have been and where we are going, then we can direct ourselves, we can analyze, plan, set goals.
Without strategies and targets there is no future. Our energy is released toward the future by plans and goals; otherwise we have no energy at all. We will float aimlessly, when aim is what we desperately need.
The past gives us a footing, something to push off of. The past even extends way back to our ancestors, so history itself can give us grounding.
When you live in a “now”, you have no sense of the whole flow, the whole direction, the whole story of yourself or a society. Time is a very important whole to reconstruct in the modern age.
The clock of the 21st century is broken and we don’t know what time it is, what time is, and what time was.
Nature
A major broken whole concerns Nature. We have lost all touch with animals and the environment. We have increased immensely the suffering of Nature and are increasing our suffering as the global ecosystem breaks down.
As in Avatar, the blue and green gradually turn brown and gray matching the dull colors of dead minds who seek only status, power and money.
With a new compact with Nature, we can pledge to reconnect with all of Nature. We must know that because we are connected as one, we cannot break the whole. Our survival and sustenance depends on this.
We must also know that if we appreciate the suffering of Nature then we can care for Nature. We can empathize because we too are fragile and vulnerable as living beings. If we suffer then we can understand the suffering of others, of all others in the cosmos. And because we enjoy Nature we should grasp that we are too a part of Nature, for Nature makes us happy, it is our original Home and we do find joy in it even today at our advanced state.
In one sense the Human race is moving out of Nature into a realm of “Ex-Nature”, our culture is taking us on a long evolutionary adventure. However, we are like a tree that is constantly evolving, putting out new buds and shoots, and eventually branches and spires, but we are ultimately rooted in Nature. We cannot transcend this fact, we cannot leap from this Ground, the Sequoia of Humanity will tip and fall, and we will be no more.
We are living things breaking out of Nature. There two children of the cosmos -- one child is us, the other child is Nature. We are two siblings in a sense; our parent is the cosmos of singularities and galaxies. The young one is bright and curious and frenetic, the older one is wise and slow and unconscious. One needs the other; one does NOT need the other. How will this family fare?
Subsume Mind
We have a mind within us that perceives wholes. This mind is not the logical mind; this mind has been suppressed and unhappy.
This unhappy mind merges and submerges, confuses and fuses, links and locks. This is its nature. It subsumes all things.
This mind fights with the everyday mind of the discrete and distinct and separate and divergent. This type of rational perception breaks up the outer and inner world. It separates things and analyzes things independently, and gains knowledge about an entity. The problem is that this persona only knows phenomena as parts and elements but not as combinations or systems.
On the other hand, the Subsume mind rushes to put all together. Its personality is the opposite of the discrete mind. The Subsume mind stresses the connections, the oneness, the whole, the unity. All tends to merge in its perceptions, actions and emotions.
Logic opposes this mind because it finds that these behaviors are somewhat mystical or supernatural or intuitive. Logic says that this mind sees ghosts in machines, sees supernatural spirits here and there, sees a whole when there is really only a collection and so on. But this rational discrete mind perceives only one half of existence. While the Subsume mind sees the other half of it. This is its job.
The Subsume mind has been suppressed in our time. Why? Because the whole is a danger to the culture of today. This Subsume mind is radical and revolutionary for it advocates things that will destroy the present “whole” which is actually not a whole, because it has the fantasy that a part is the “essence” of the whole.
The broken whole is the way of modern society, we have a multitude of institutions, practices, theories and personnel that defend and develop it. It is vast delusion that benefits an elite few. And unfortunately for many it feels “natural”.
But some of us are aware, self conscious of this problem. We live in our Subsume mind. We find the logical mind cannot dive into the pool and swim below the surface. We find that we prefer sloppiness, vagueness, generality, intuition, apparitions, and feelings. And we cannot grasp precision, disconnection.
The Human race has many sub-minds in its psyche -- reason, creativity, emotion, memory, doing, wisdom. Here is another one to add, one that is absolutely essential in this age. One that was essential in the original tribal village, in the dream time when we were one.
All of these wholes and more have been broken up today and are in need of mending --
mythology, spirit, community, economics, government, time, Nature etc.
The wholes we are seeking are Diverse Wholes for we do not want any systems of authoritarianism and group think. The mind becomes a Diverse Whole, an economy becomes a Diverse Whole, government becomes a Diverse Whole and more.
Fusing these wholes will be a creative act and a major creative task of this age. Acquiring our lost creativity will be another important whole to mend.
Avatar strikes a deep chord because it plucks the secret strings that we are not supposed to have. We resonate and sing, and we are not sure why.
We are wholes and yet we are not whole, we were wholes but we are no longer wholes, we want to be wholes, but we do not know how, and we rebel to be wholes but some oppose our dream to be wholes.
Many wholes have been destroyed in history and must be recreated.
Remember that these wholes are YOUR wholes. They belong to you as much as anyone else. They directly affect you.
Avatar tells us it is time to reclaim YOUR whole.