Column: History informs future projections
By Charles Jeanes
“What “the generation of materialism” succeeded in doing was to debunk and help render less and less visible and credible that “moral and metaphysical part” of the human person in the interest of the “gladiatorial” individual, national, class, and racial strife, brutal realpolitik, cynical ‘realism.’ This had — and has — of course always been, a human possibility — “homo homini lupus,” man the ruthless, wolfish devourer of man, who-whom? subject-object, exploiter-exploited…” — M.D. Aeschliman
The reason for this epigraph about human savagery and materialism, will become clear as I tell you about our species as seen in popular movies.
Movies and the Mind
I believe we learn something about public consciousness when a certain story is very widely known and becomes a source of public imagery and metaphor. I think the sudden phenomenal cultural popularity of J. R. R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings trilogy tell us something about the 1960’s wealthy ‘developed’ world. (Sixties youth on college campuses in the West loved the books and were convinced they would live to see the Age of Aquarius, peace, and love.)
And in 2025, a trilogy of films by James Cameron, each film with the word Avatar in the title, are proving hugely popular, and among the most expensive movies ever made. The first was in 2009; at least two more are planned. (I trust readers know the films I am referring to.)
I wonder, does his vision have relevance to humans’ sense of a future? This is my topic, the reflection of our consciousness of human history in the depiction of our future in these films. What future do we imagine collectively?
History and Scriptwriting
Human history is viewed backward, looking behind us from the present; we “understand” our human record backward. Yet we must live forward from the present to minutes and centuries ahead. Is the Past a map for our futures?
History is put to use trying to tell the shape of our future from the shape of our past. Director/writer James Cameron has plagiarized our recent history in the West and across planet Earth, to project what our future might look like. Colonial and racialist historical patterns in recent world history are the solid foundation of Cameron’s Avatar narrative. We have a sense of what that history meant for natives and aboriginals of the lands where white Americans and Europeans came to dominate, exploit, rule, and try to impose copies of Western society, economy, law, and order. (It meant something to Europeans too.)
“The story of Indigenous resistance—its history, goals, forms, successes, and failures—is the book’s backbone, which allows [historians] to range broadly, illuminating how racism, colonialism, capitalism, genocidal policies, religious and cultural persecution, and vile stereotyping have marginalized, dispossessed, and impoverished Indigenous societies over the centuries.”
—Pekka Hämäläinen, New Mexico Historical Review
https://sammatey.substack.com/p/unpaywalled-book-review-indigenous
One certain feeling provoked by viewing Avatar films is harsh judgment upon our human species for things we have done in the past and might do in the future. The human drive to dominate, to impose Might as Right, is just so dismal. Breaking this pattern, evident in all our history, seems unlikely.
[Note: I wrote the foregoing paragraph days before the US military struck Venezuela, an attack pretending to have Law-enforcement motives and “justification”.]
The Na’vi and Homo Sapiens: when story is Sermon
However, speaking as a humanist wanting to see some good in my species, I have to say that Cameron’s directorial hand lies too heavily on his story, with an irritating intention to sermonize. He clearly sides with the indigenous dominant species of the planet Pandora, a people called Na’vi; he doesn’t like humans. His bias lacks nuance, and his human flaws infect the Na’vi too.
The redeeming feature of homo sapiens in the films is that some of us are scientists with fine moral sense, unwilling to destroy Pandora and its people for our uses. The two actors in the films who best represent Good Humans are Sigourney Weaver and Sam Worthington, sensitive human individuals who oppose corporate and military power. But on the whole, we encounter nasty human beings behaving badly. Earth’s invasion is marshaled to kill, plunder, and lay waste to Pandora; the actors Giovanni Ribisi and Stephen Lang portray the corporate and military minds so well, one cringes to admit it — their portrayals are so dead-on accurate and condemnatory of what we are.
Genesis 22: Avatar steals a biblical scene
There is an obvious absence in the Avatar story. It is an absence among the human characters: not one of them has a religious faith. It is never a topic of conversation. It just does not exist among humans. No religion, just science.
And then there is this curious fact: Cameron has shamelessly plagiarized a very famous incident in the Bible, the first book, Genesis, chapter 22, v.1 – 19 https://www.hebrew4christians.com/Scripture/Parashah/Summaries/Vayera/Akedah/akedah.html
I think it a safe bet that a great many modern Western individuals who will view the film know virtually nothing about the Bible or Christianity. Secular, non-religious minds dominate our culture now. That seems self-evident.
The story is of enormous power and significance in our cultural history up until the waning of religion in public life. That began 300 years ago. What is called The Western Enlightenment was the beginning of the end of religion as the kind of pervasive force it had been in our civilization for millennia.
Now that Christianity is a minority faith in the West, religion is a private matter rather than public — any informed Canadian ought to know that in Quebec this is still a hot political topic. Cameron, in writing his Avatar stories, relies on the cultural ignorance of his audience, I think. He does not expect that people will recognize that he has outrageously stolen a plot element from the Bible.
One other theft by Cameron: His great goddess is named ‘Eywah’. In Genesis, the God of Moses, and of Abraham, is YHWH, or ‘Yahweh’. Cameron is sly.
Materialism and Soul in Collision and in Symbiosis
Re-read my epigraph: “man the ruthless, wolfish devourer of man, subject-object, exploiter-exploited… render less and less visible and credible that “moral and metaphysical part” of the human person in the interest of the “gladiatorial” individual, national, class, and racial strife, brutal realpolitik.”
This is the human Cameron shows us. He tells us something important about his materialist and physicalist view of what is real. Cameron is a modern mind unable to conceive of the “moral and metaphysical part of the human person.”
He cannot imagine that the Na’vi religion might be no more based in truth than any human religion has been, and so his aboriginal people are biologically and materially connected to their Goddess Eywah by an organ called the “kudu.” This is an extension of the native person’s spinal column; the neural and brain biology reach to one another as tendril of plant roots do.
With the actual touch of two conscious beings, linked by material to one another directly, the belief in the divine Mother and the interconnectedness of all living beings is made concrete. Cameron could not be more obvious: he does not believe that an immaterial, intangible soul might exist.
And the Na’vi’s Goddess too is real — and proven to be so — by the manner in which the Na’vi can see her and encounter the spirits of dead loved ones beyond the veil of death. But the humans do not believe in mysteries, this is clear. Proof of a god’s power must be physical, available to our senses: Soul is not credible; it’s not tangible. On Pandora, humans maintain their atheism.
The Na’vi say that “demons rule in the minds of pinkskins” (humans) — and it is easy to see why they feel that way. Can humans be redeemed?
Redemption is a word with resonance, particularly for Christians. I use the word intentionally; I have more to say about religion and the Avatar mythos.
Eisenstein on Separation and Control
Charles Eisenstein must feel that the Avatar story pleasantly confirms his own insistence that the next big Story for humans must be “Interbeing:” conscious living things everywhere will know their Unity; the human illusion of separating from other life and driving to control the outside world, is our original sin.
https://charleseisenstein.substack.com/p/what-is-the-next-story
Eisenstein has made this argument the keystone of his entire worldview.
War is Hell, but so Entertaining
I am compelled to confess my own fascination with war, its history, and its stimulation of my interest when war news is current. Something is wrong with me*. I share the malady with a large majority of humans; I feel certain of that. And I recommend, again as I have in previous Arcs, a marvelous meditation on war by the Jungian-archetypal psychologist, the late James Hillman – A Terrible Love of War.
Homo sapiens is a war-making animal. Entertainments about war, such as Cameron’s and Tolkien’s epics, will never want for an audience. War is as much part of us as love, ego, or death. It’s damned sad.
*[see appendix for more about this.]
Here’s a spoiler alert, if you have not seen Avatar Fire and Ash. The tribe of Na’vi called the Ash People are infected by the demons in human brains. They are atheists in relation to Eywah, and they quickly join the humans. Allies of Earth militarism, the Ash Queen sells out her Na’vi brothers and sisters without compunction so she can obtain human weapons and tech.
It gets worse. A species of marvelous ocean giants called tulkun are committed to a kind of Gandhian pacifism and spiritual aversion to violence and killing. Yet – you knew this – the tulkun go to war with the humans, persuaded by a teenaged tulkun and his Na’vi/human half-breed friend. And more: the girl with a human mother but Na’vi in all else, sends other sea-monsters to fight the humans. “Go to the Sky People. Kill them. Kill them all!” And it happens.
War and Afterlife: on a likely path of the Avatar story
To my knowledge – admittedly, this is a substantial qualifier on my words – there has never in history been a writer who showed us the future. Plato did not predict politics with his book The Republic, More did not show real social possibilities with his Utopia, nor did U. K. LeGuin forecast the future with her Hainish sci-fi novels, although all of them were writers of first-rate intelligence.
Cameron is no more insightful. His Avatar narrative will end with “peace” for Pandora and some kind of salvation for Earth and humans that is not a victory for their imperial plans. I predict he will find some formula that transforms our species into something better than we have been; but Cameron is human and will not have a real, substantive blueprint for it.
Cameron’s denouement will involve the Goddess Eywah and humans on Pandora. Magic, miracle, mystery – not materialism – will write the script.
Divinity only, not humanity, can solve evolutionary defects of homo sapiens.
Conclusion: Does the Universe care? or is it indifferent?
Humans have much to be thankful for and much to feel shamed by. The angry misanthrope focuses on the latter. But humanists hold fast to the faith that we are capable of amelioration. Radical humanists assert we will do exactly that.
Albert Einstein spoke about solving problems at the level of their construction: it cannot be done. One must transcend levels and solve from a higher plane.
Einstein said an interesting thing, he said, ” The world that we have made as a result of the level of thinking we have done thus far creates problems that we cannot solve at the same level as the level we created them at.” That is, the only way we can solve them is by creating a new way of consciousness… a new level of thinking about them”.
[I have to note that no one has actually found the precise quote from Einstein, merely paraphrases. What I cite above is from a lecture by Ram Dass.]
Any regular reader of the Arc knows my perennial, evolving, quasi-obsessed entanglement with mysteries of human consciousness. I incline spiritually to an identification of the soul with consciousness. Mind is not just brain-matter nor neural energies inside the grey. It is not “emergent,” in my opinion.
I propose this hypothesis about consciousness – that it is as much an independent phenomenon, and cosmic foundation, as Energy and Matter.
Consciousness flows throughout ‘reality’ and gestates in life, metaphorically like an oceanic organism opportunistically finding convenient habitat to deposit itself and unfold. Any life can be habitat for consciousness and the form of the life determines the properties of the consciousness. A tree, a cat, a microbe and I enjoy a quality of consciousness. I offer no ‘proof’. I’m unlikely ever to do so.
What my contemplation amounts to is, that old question about the Cosmos we live in: Does it care about life and consciousness? Or is it without an opinion or attitude on the subject? I am opting for the first alternative. “It” cares.
The question – i.e. a caring or indifferent universe — has provoked many minds.
https://dark-mountain.net/is-the-world-living-or-dead-or-the-trouble-with-science/
Again, a sci-fi movie has already played with the question’s implications… https://reactormag.com/m-night-shyamalans-signs-is-two-movies-in-one-and-theyre-both-kind-of-great/ Rush to see this film if you have not already.
Since the Avatar films are so popular, I have an intuition most people are lining up with the idea that the Cosmos is not indifferent to us. [see ** appendix]
Humans have good reason to wish that we could be saved from ourselves and our apparent dysfunctions by an Intervention.
Appendix
* A tangent on human nature: our species’ origin according to sci-fi ideas
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC2921885/
Is it really humans who are the problem? Or, is it really just male humans?
I ask because, if the human default were to female behaviours, the hateful, murderous colonialism and pillage and war we see in Avatar, simply would not happen. The films are more a condemnation of male humans than of female. Mind you, they also have women warriors and queens, but in general, war is a male thing and war is the driving engine of the Avatar story.
Evolution, or Darwinian “natural selection” has made males aggressive and females much less so. Men choose fight-or-flight, women will tend-and-befriend, is the latest thinking on gendered differences.
I am leaning to a perspective that male behavior has an excess of down-sides.
“Sexual selection is an important evolutionary force in mammalian species because of one simple fact – males are a glut on the market. From the females’ point of view, there are more males than needed to meet their reproductive requirements. And from the males’ point of view, there are not nearly enough females to go around to satisfy their reproductive potential. The relative abundance of males generates strong intrasexual competition among them.”
Humans in the Avatar future are like we are today, apparently still patriarchal and led by male alphas, as seen in the military and corporate human society on Pandora. I read human history as a pretty convincing empirical record of the defects of male leadership, and like many I wonder if we would have done better with women in charge.
But the Na’vi are patriarchal too, to a point, with cultures apparently like North American natives replete with a lot of male warriors and chiefs.
Is horrible behavior as Cameron shows it in his Avatar story, due to some interference with human nature? Hard to know what he thinks, but clearly his research into indigenous histories showed him that matriarchal societies almost never are able to stop war when the youngblood warriors – in Avatar 3 they are called “bucks” — are at hand to be led by chiefs into war against bad enemies. That many Na’vi chiefs and warriors are women changes nothing.
It’s good that the Na’vi persuaded the matriarchal tulkun to give up pacifism. WAR is OK. War is good; it protects your babies; the great Matriarch of the tulkun sees the wisdom of that at last — thus the nasties from Earth are beaten once again.
In a film I am sure my readers know, 2001: A Space Odyssey, author Arthur C. Clarke hypothesized that hominid ancestors began our long “rise to civilization and dominance of outer space” when an alien Black Monolith altered an ancestral species and began our militarism and aggression.
Picture a killer primate, fresh from prehistory’s first-ever ‘murder’, tossing his bone weapon into the air, with the quick image-shift of bone-to-spaceship – you remember this wonderful bit in Kubrick’s movie? It makes the point.
We rise to dominate because we’re killers. From that murder to the conquest of space… progress. Just maybe there is some kind of truth in the imagery. Males among humans are too violent. History is the record of that. I wonder if the Y-chromosome that determines a human is male – a chromosome notoriously short therefore unable to carry some significant genetic information – was deliberately mutated by the aliens who put the Black Monolith on our planet?
The question of male violence generates an enormous scientific literature. Do a little reading on it. Violence is no longer adaptive for human flourishing.
Total War is a new norm on Pandora; this is humans’ gift to Pandora’s conscious living creatures. We are a long way from Captain Kirk’s ethos.
# # # # #
** The question about a caring or indifferent universe
Carl Sagan and Richard Tarnas hold opposing views on whether the cosmos “cares,” a question that hinges on the existence of intrinsic meaning or purpose in the universe.
Carl Sagan: A Universe Not Made For Us
Carl Sagan argued that the universe is indifferent to humanity, operating solely by natural laws. He cautioned against projecting human desires for meaning onto the cosmos, viewing such desires as “reassuring fables” or a longing for a “Parent”.
Absence of inherent purpose: Sagan contended that natural processes, like natural selection, create apparent order but do not imply any intrinsic purpose or design. The universe is not “made for us”.
Human-assigned meaning: In Sagan’s view, the responsibility for creating meaning rests solely with humanity. “We are the custodians of life’s meaning”.
Awe and responsibility: Despite the lack of cosmic care, Sagan found profound beauty and a moral imperative for humanity to cherish our “fragile planet” and explore the universe with wonder and curiosity. The famous quote, “The cosmos is within us. We are made of star-stuff. We are a way for the universe to know itself,” highlights our physical connection to the universe, not a mystical consciousness.
Richard Tarnas: A Re-enchanted Cosmos
Richard Tarnas, in contrast, argues for a meaning-saturated, purposeful cosmos in which the human psyche and the cosmic psyche are deeply entwined. He critiques the modern scientific worldview for “disenchanting” the world and voiding it of spiritual significance.
Archetypal intelligence: Tarnas proposes that the universe is informed by a “powerful, creative intelligence” and an ordering principle he describes as both Einsteinian and Shakespearean.
Meaningful patterns: He uses C.G. Jung’s concept of synchronicity (meaningful coincidence) and the study of archetypal cosmology (astrology as a map of archetypal dynamics) to argue that events in the outer world correspond to inner psychological states.
Participation in the mystery: For Tarnas, human consciousness is not an accidental anomaly but an essential part of the universe’s self-expression. He suggests that we participate in a cosmic unfolding, a world rich with signs and symbols that communicate intentions beyond simple human projection.
In essence, Sagan sees a grand, beautiful, but ultimately indifferent universe where humanity must create its own meaning, while Tarnas sees an intelligent, purposeful cosmos that communicates with the human soul and in which we play an integral, meaningful role.
Note:
**Appendix two was composed by Google A.I. in response to my question about Sagan and Tarnas on the subject of the Cosmos and the soul. I edited it a bit but find it makes the worthwhile points.
