Animal Ethics Embodied in Mixed Media

In the spirit of our Animal Agri-business unit, I decided to make a public statement on animal cruelty with paint, paper and colored pencil. My inspiration for this piece was a number of Disney animated films in which cutesy animated animals are depicted as always there to assist princesses in need. A trend I noticed in these films is the tendency of these animals to conduct a miraculous rescue of the helpless female character. I decided to twist that around and have the opposite: a young girl rescuing animals from certain death. I was reminded of Val Plumwood’s writings on dualism and the juxtaposition of not only strong male vs. vulnerable female, but also that of human vs. nature. In my piece I wanted to show humans as the brutes and the animals as the innocents, yet also include the idea of humans as the only beings with the power to fix what they’ve broken.

My artwork shows a Disney-style caricature of a young girl carrying a pig, a sheep, three chickens, a cat and a mouse. It’s a comical image, as the “factory farm” is distorted to an absurdly sinister level and the “farmers” are weilding giant weapons, seemingly on a mission to reclaim their stolen “property” and violently punish the thief. The girl herself is attempting to rescue all these animals alone. This is reflective of the current fight against animal cruelty. When compared to animal agribusiness, the movement is rather like a little girl with a lot of courage on a seemingly futile mission to fix the world. I think that, by raising awareness and providing more information to the public we can gain some ground. There is an element of sadness in the piece in the lower left-hand corner, where a line of cow carcasses can be seen traveling into the factory for processing. At first glance, the girl appears to have rescued as many animals as she can carry, but in the context of the magnitude of the factory itself she has barely made a dent in the problem. The mistreatment of animals is an enormous issue to argue against, especially with 8 billion animals a year being slaughtered for consumption.

The animals themselves, unlike their musical Disney predecessors, appear confused and unable to be of much help to their rescuer. I thought it necessary to emphasize the docility and innocence of the pig, since often pigs are the most mistreated animals on a modern farm. Indeed, Upton Sinclair describes a pig’s life perfectly in “The Jungle” with, “what they wanted from a hog was all the profits that could be got out of him;”. Peter Singer describes it in greater detail, discussing how factory farming “inflicts suffering on sows who spend most of their lives in crates that are two narrow for them to turn around in;”. I included the cat and the mouse because, as Plumwood says, “beings may be selected for oppression in arbitrary and random ways” (Plumwood 42).  We as a society certainly have “selected” certain beings to be designated inferior. Why do we as a society revere cats and dogs but dismiss pigs, chickens and cows as “food”? In addition, the image of the cat and mouse staring at each other is a nod to Peter Singer’s assertion that “we would not, for example, justify tearing a cat to pieces because we had observed the cat tearing a mouse to pieces.” As humans, represented by the little girl, we have a duty as the most advanced species to exercise the most empathy and moral responsibility. Animals are and have always been the vulnerable ones, and I tried to depict them as such to elicit sympathy from the viewer. The chickens, you may notice, have sawed-off beaks. This is just one of the instances of animals being “mutilated in various ways without pain relief” (Francione 109). The purpose of my piece was to remind viewers of the vulnerability and the innocence of animals, and to remind them of where their food comes from. That is the reason for placing it over the window of a vending machine. Instead of seeing the pristinely packaged food they want to buy, the viewer is confronted with a comical but sinister propaganda piece reminding them of the contents of what they’re eating. Many of the products in the vending machine contain dairy products like cheese and eggs, all of which are linked to animal cruelty. Indeed, anyone who stops at a vending machine is at least peckish, so food will be on their minds as they encounter this image.

I made sure to include a sufficiently cartoony amount of pollution to drive home the point that this kind of agriculture is unsustainable. Giant, oily clouds billow out from the factory, and smoking piles of trash litter the ground. This was my attempt at kairos, implying a threat to the viewer, if they cannot be swayed by pathos or compassion for animals. This piece is 18′ by 24′, took about 7 hours of layering colors and used up two black colored pencils.  It took some nerve to leave it there in the Art Building for an entire day. Amazingly, it wasn’t taken down, though I imagine it hampered people who wanted Doritos.

Service Learning Project-Nicholas Petrey

As I was planting some new plants and seeds, and tending to the gardens, I was thinking about the “Land Ethic” reading.  In this reading there were things called symbioses, “…tendency of interdependent individual or groups to evolve modes of cooperation.”(Leopold, 140), I thought about this and realized how far humans and plants and animals have come.  Relationships with and between the three have changed so much from long times past. I think a lot, especially when  I am doing something hum drum as planting.  But thats not all I did, or all I got out of this.

Well right off the bat I will tell you what I did.  I went back to my old elementary school where my mother teaches, I asked if I could do some volunteer work around the school grounds and the landscape.  We have many commemorative gardens throughout the campus so I started there.  I cleaned all the leaves and trimmed the surrounding plants to open up some space.  After tending to all those gardens I went to the newest one they have made and I planted some flowers and a few seeds off on the side. At the end I walked to school and campus for trash to pick up.

I have been in Catholic school my whole life so I was required to have service hours done in high school.  Since I have done a lot more volunteer work than that, I did not have any new or exciting expectations.  Once I got there and started working, I was alone by the way, I started to think about the class and all our talks and discussions on the land.  Now to continue from paragraph one, all plants, animals, and humans have learned to live together for thousands of years.  We have been in a symbiotic relationship for a long time.  Now, as I pondered the three living together for all this time, I thought of hums living together.  How we act together and interact, society, and communication. Bringing my brain up to the Social Justice portion of the semester.  In the reading “Eat Pollution” Summers states “[Social]Justice can be understood as the first principle of social and political philosophy: How should we live together?…” (Summers, 225).  Humans have always struggled with society and interaction. Thats the whole point of Social Justice, to learn and teach the right and wrongs of humans.  It’s for those big questions that only philosophy can answer. Human interaction has and still is in the making, we have not quite got that perfected yet.  Neither have we perfected our interaction with the land.  We have developed an Environmental Justice to help us develop more ideas and thoughts on interaction with the land.  The land is the only one we have, yet we treat it like its completely disposable.  Environmental Justice helps us figure out what is the proper treatment of the land, there many sides and many ideas on the topic. “Environmental justice encompasses a variety of notions of justice: distributive, participatory, political, and cultural.” (Figueroa, 1)  By learning all the purposes and what entails each of the five justices, I learned more and more.

All these things were going through me head the whole day, it was very cleansing and relaxing.  Good to get all this out in the air and have a stress free zone to contemplate it all.  Overall volunteer experiences always do the same for me, alway make me feel good.  For the fact that I helped someone who needs help, because we all need a little help sometimes.  The other reason, is a little selfish, it males me feel better as a whole. Humans love to give, whether it be love, gifts, or care, all humans have a love to give in them.

Bibliography:

-Leopold, Aldo. “The Ethical Sequence.” Also Leopold: Ecocentrisim:The Land Ethic. 140+. Print.

-Summers, Lawrence. “Environmental Justice and Social Ecology.” Print.

-Figueroa, Robert M. “Environmental Justice.” The Encyclopedia of Environmental Ethics and Philosophy. Print.

-Nicholas Petrey

Great American Cleanup

 

Aldo Leopold supported the idea that the creation of a land ethic widens the community than man participates in and has a responsibility to treat ethically.  He said that the land itself, water and animals all have a right to exist in their natural state in some places.  (Leopold, 141) Leopold believed that man should demonstrate respect for the land. 

One way to demonstrate that respect is to keep trash and debris from affecting the land, creeks and animals. The city of Plano, Texas has a history of setting aside land for parks, preserves and green space for the enjoyment local citizens.  As part of maintaining local resources the city participates in the Great American Clean-up every year. For my service-learning project I signed up to participate.

I picked up trash in the Oak Point Park and Nature Preserve near our house and at the sports complex at Russell Creek Park where my brother plays baseball. I had to pick up supplies at the Plano Environmental Center. Since I had registered my family online I had a paper bag ready with my name on it.  I got a mix of useful and wasted items.  On the useful side I received two trash grabbers, plastic trash bags, surgical gloves in various sizes, a trash collecting tracking list, pencils and instructions and waivers for the four of us. I also received stickers, rubber bands, and bookmarks that were definitely for younger kids. It seemed strange to get unnecessary items as part of a trash pickup especially since my 12-year-old brother was not likely to want “Don’t be a litterbug” stickers. 

I have done this clean up before; however, this year it was handled differently.  There was no kickoff at the park, no trash trucks at the end of the day to haul the trash away, and no picnic for the volunteers.  I talked to the coordinator and she said there was no funding for this project.  Each group had to pick up and return their own supplies.  Each group was asked to carry off all the trash they collected and place it in their own trash cans either at home or their organization location. She said there were 70 groups registered throughout the city.  While it was no doubt cheaper for the city I wondered if as much trash would be picked up.  I remember a mountain of trash being hauled away in earlier years.

It was typical April weather with the wind blowing and the clouds covering and uncovering the sun.  Although it was supposed to rain it never did.   In the Nature Preserve I dug out trash from the underbrush finding candy wrappers, food wrappers, Styrofoam parts, pieces of plastic, plastic and paper bags, cigarette butts, and newspaper. We climbed down to the creek bottom and picked up lots of glass pieces, a garden hose, bottles and cans and even part of a tire. We had to use the hose to help pull my brother and the trash bag up the side of the creek bed. 

Over at Russell Creek Park the trash included more bottles for water and drinks and candy wrappers from the concession stands.  Water bottles in particular rolled across the fields.  According to Vandana Shiva in “Water Wars Privatization, Pollution and Profit” environmental waste is a key byproduct of bottling and selling water (100). At today’s games, instead of kids using a water fountain they all bring or buy their own bottle of commercialized water.  Unfortunately a lot of those bottles end up on the ground instead of in the trash bins in the park or recycle bins where they really belong.

William Cronon recommended that we stop the dualism where we see a tree in the wilderness as natural and the one in the backyard as artificial. (Cronon, 24)  Local spots that encompass nature need concern and care just like the big national parks and wilderness located in isolated areas.  Picking up after ourselves and protecting resources within our cities are simple contributions that can be made to protect the “wilderness” that can be found anywhere.

Works cited

Cronon, William. “The Trouble with Wilderness: Or, Getting Back to the Wrong Nature”.  Environmental History, Vol. 1, No. 1. Jan 1996, pp. 7-28.

Leopold, Aldo. “Ecocentrism:The Land Ethic”. except from A Sand County Almanac: And Sketches Here and There”. 1948, p 201-225. Reprinted by Oxford University Press. 1977, p 140-148.

Shiva, Vandana. “Water Wars Privatization, Pollution and Profit”. South End Press: Cambridge MA, 2002.

posted by Megan Morrison

Is Immigration Hurting Our Environment?

A new friend has joined the ranks of all those who hold anti-immigration beliefs dear and near to their hearts.  It may make for an unlikely combination but environmentalists are now jumping on board this campaign and not only are they adding their support but also are conducting new studies that will prove that immigrants are as bad for the environment as pollution. A group called Californians for Population Stabilization have recently started creating pro-environment anti-immigration commercials.  Each commercial has a different point about the downfalls of immigration.  One explains that if we continue to allow immigration at the same pace our carbon footprint will grow because immigrants produce four times the carbon footprint that they do in their home countries.  These ads are inadvertently or perhaps purposely promoting institutional racism.  They make it seem as though without immigration we could have global warming under control, but is this really the case? Susan Gibbs, author of People on the Move, doesn’t think so.
Susan Gibbs believes that global warming isn’t necessarily being caused by immigration.  She thinks it is immigration that is being caused by global warming.  So then what is causing our global warming if not increased immigration?  She believes it is  our own patterns of unsustainable consumption of products that is the main cause for global warming.  In the article, Environmentalists say: stop ALL of Arizona’s anti-immigrant law, by Joshua Kahn, he points out how our country is promoting institutional racism by passing the Arizona anti-immigrant law and also his disagreement in the large negative reaction of immigration recently stirred up by large environmentalist groups.
So, what is the answer?  How can we possibly balance anti-immigration laws and global warming.  Susan Gibbs believes the answer is through globalization.  If we can communicate and share our ideas without passing so much blame perhaps we can look to ourselves to see what each of us individually and as a country can do to better our environment.

What is the real crisis?

://www.iphonewallpapershome.com/images/2009/04/grain-fields-iphone-wallpaper.jpg

 

 

What is the real crisis?

 

If you watch the publicity pieces on the internet created by Monsanto you would think there is a major food crisis.  The pieces make Monsanto look good by implying that that they will save the day.  On the Farm Industry News website, a short video clip posted in March of this year introduces a new educational display developed by Monsanto to be taken to community fairs to provide education on the role of the American farmer. In their 53-foot trailer, they present the challenges of farming, a video interview with a Missouri farm family and the new tools of farming including new seeds, and biotechnology required to increase crop production and conserve resources.  The company is presented as the middleman that is trying to help out the farmer with his interest at heart.  They identify as a major issue that the world’s population is going to grow from 6 billion to 9 billion by 2050 and the American farmer has a critical role in feeding the world. The second video is from the Monsanto channel on You Tube.  Posted in January 2011, it is basically a commercial for the Monsanto image.  It uses pictures of sunlight and pretty green crops intermixed with a large world population needing to be fed. The message is that we are all in this together and Monsanto will provide agricultural innovations that can be used to improve lives and reduce resources needed like land and water and energy.

According to Food First there is no shortage of food that Monsanto is required to fix.  In 12 Myths about Hunger, Holly Poole-Kavana says, “Enough food is available to provide at least 4.3 pounds of food per person a day worldwide.” The Green Revolution, helped by companies like Monsanto, did produce more productive crops but did not eliminate hunger because it did not get the food to the people that need it. Unfortunately, companies like Monsanto are trying to control the seeds available to farmers by patenting them and creating new GMOs (genetically modified organisms). This keeps the farmers tied to the company and does not allow for trade, local experimentation and collection of seeds.  This creates a debt treadmill, especially in third world countries, where the farmer borrows to buy the seed, then the pesticide to help the seed grow and if his crop fails or cannot generate enough money to cover his costs he must borrow again to start over.  He is always tied to the company that loaned him the money to buy the “new and improved” biotechnology.

Companies like Monsanto encourage monoculture.  According to Vanda Shiva “industrial breeding actually increases pressure on the land, since each acre of a monoculture provides a single output, and the displaced outputs have to be grown on additional acres.” (The Hijacking of the Global Food Harvest, 13) The focus on cash crops such as cotton, which cannot be eaten and must be sold to provide money to buy food from somewhere else, leads fewer food resources and higher prices.  This creates a situation where people cannot afford to buy food to feed their families.

Monsanto’s technological innovation will not save the world.  It will actually hurt people by restricting their ability to save and trade their seeds and provide crop diversity.  The technology will benefit the Monsanto Company and other large corporations that control the commercial seed market and collect a premium for their product.  The technology creates more capital gains for the company.  They operate within a mechanistic worldview because they see all crops as the same, interchangeable units that they can manipulate to control profits rather than supporting diversity for it own sake.  The inheritance of all people is at stake as well as the biodiversity of nature. Focusing on a single version of a particular plant, the crops no longer have the variety to adapt to the differences in the world.  Reducing the diversity in nature only reduces the adaption opportunities that might be needed in the future.

Monsanto video links

http://farmindustrynews.com/business/monsantos-mobile-display-teaches-how-americas-farmers-will-feed-world

http://www.youtube.com/user/MonsantoCo#p/c/F73BF62D77F199EB
Works cited

Grain Fields IPHONE Wallpaper. April 18, 2009. Web Photo. April 14, 2011. http://www.iphonewallpapershome.com/images/2009/04/grain-fields-iphone-wallpaper.jpg

Halton, Mark. “Monsanto’s Mobile Display Teaches How America’s Farmers Will Feed the World”. Farm Industry News, March 30, 2011. Web Video. April 14, 2011. http://farmindustrynews.com/business/monsantos-mobile-display-teaches-how-americas-farmers-will-feed-world

“Monsanto Company: Committed to Sustainable Agriculture, Committed to Farmers.”  You Tube Monsanto Company MonsantoCo’s Channel, January 10, 2011. Web Video. April 14, 2011. http://www.youtube.com/user/MonsantoCo#p/c/F73BF62D77F199EB

Poole-Kavava, Holly. “12 Myths about Hunger”. Food First Backgrounder Institute for Food and Development Policy,Volume 12, Number 2. Summer 2006.

Shiva, Vandana. Stolen Harvest The Hijacking of the Global Food Supply. South End Press, Cambridge MA, 2000, p 5-19.

Posted by Megan Morrison

Vegetarianism and the Masculine Stereotype

The article “Wall Streeter sues employer over vegetarian taunts” explores the social construction that equates meat consumption with masculinity. The story follows an ex-Calyon employee who faced torment and persecution at the hands of his boss due to his vegetarian lifestyle.

Ryan Pacifico is a 28-year-old Long-Islander who worked for three years under boss Robert Catalanello as a junior foreign-exchange trader in Manhattan before being fired on trumped-up charges. According to the article Pacifico was constantly attacked  by his boss with homosexual slurs and unfair critiques of his job performance, all because he declined to partake in the consumption of animals. In the United States the stereotypes surrounding veganism and vegetarianism as they relate to masculinity can be traced back to the biblical verse in Leviticus 6 that states, “the meat so delicately cooked by the priests, with wood and coals in the altar, in clean linen, no woman was permitted to taste, only the males among the children of Aaron” ( Adams 37).  Christianity’s influence on modern thought coupled with the fact that Americans eat twice the amount of meat as the rest of the world, approaching approximately 200 pounds per person per year, reinforces the idea of meat-eating as a necessary masculine venture (Bittman).

Pacifico himself is happily married, yet his boss finds his vegetarianism to not be in keeping with the male gender characteristics. The reductionist techniques utilized by Catalanello to justify his treatment of Pacifico included referring to him as a “vegetarian homo”. Not only does this dualism falsely equate vegetarianism with homosexuality, but the mass terms “vegetarian” and “homo” also neglect to take into account Pacifico’s individuality. By categorizing him in such broad terms, Catalanello was able to view his employee as nothing more than an object. Pacifico’s boss attempted to dehumanize him further by excluding him from consideration when the office went out to a steakhouse. When questioned about this, Catalanello simply said, “Who the f— cares?” Pacifico’s emasculation directly relates to Carol J. Adams’ The Sexual Politics of Meat, in which she states that “meat-eating societies gain male identification by their choice of food” (Adams 36) and that “men who decide to eschew meat eating are deemed effeminate” (44). Adams cites nutritionist Jean Mayer, whose conviction that “the more men sit at their desks all day, the more they want to be reassured about their maleness in eating those large slabs of bleeding meat which are the last symbol of machismo” (44) can be applied to desk-worker Robert Catalanello’s own biases. By ridiculing his employee, Catalanello is attempting to reassure himself of his power over others as a meat-eating male. However, the idea of the association between meat and masculinity is unfounded because, as Adams says, “men’s protein needs are less than those of pregnant and nursing women”(37). In the United States the average person eats double the amount of recommended protein per day (Bittman). It can therefore be concluded that males’ increased meat consumption is a social construct and not biologically driven.

Pacifico’s vegetarianism was not the sole driving force behind his boss’ perceived hatred of him. In addition to being taunted for not eating meat, Pacifico was ridiculed for wearing tight shorts. When the abuse culminated in his being fired from Calyon, Pacifico sued the company with nine pages of discrimination complaints.

In this instance the choice to abstain from eating animals was absurdly linked to emasculinity of the subject. We are all vulnerable to bias in favor of our own lifestyle choices, but most are able to recognize that a person’s identity is not defined by a single, all-encompassing title. Instead of seeing Ryan Pacifico as a “vegetarian homo”, Robert Catalanello could have looked past their lifestyle differences and seen him as a co-worker and an equal.

Photo url: http://www.easyvegan.info/2009/07/09/sexy-meat-no-2-flirty-fish-and-beefy-chicken/

Adams, Carol J. The Sexual Politics of Meat: a Feminist-vegetarian Critical Theory. New York: Continuum, 1990. Print.

Bittman, Mark. “Rethinking the Meat-Guzzler.” Nytimes.com. 27 Jan. 2008. Web. 17 Apr. 2011. <http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/27/weekinreview/27bittman.html&gt;.

The Wilderness Idea in Avatar

                 Avatar encompasses an age old battle that humans know altogether too well: an inferior race being dominated by another. There’s nothing new to the plot besides that it is wrapped up brilliantly in a spectacular new light. Neytiri, the daughter of the chief of the Na’vi, teaches Jake (a soldier turned Avatar) about the wonders of the Na’vi life on Pandora. Jake begins his journey as an Avatar only to figure out how to get the Na’vi off of the land that is wanted by American soldiers and scientists. In a specific scene where Jake goes in for a savage kill, Neytiri tells Jake that “all energy is borrowed, and one day we give it back”. All of these beliefs stem back to their deity Eywa who speaks to them through nature and more specifically the “tree of voices”. These beliefs are their master narrative, the dominate explanation for all that they do and that happens. This organic worldview or holistic idea shows how to the Na’vi civilization everything is interconnected and every animal and being is reliant on the other, that they borrow energy and one day everyone/thing is responsible for giving it all back. No one being is able to be without the functioning of another, thus a lacking idea of anthropocentrism.
                     With this comes an idea of romanticism as well; the Na’vi function off of feeling, “seeing”, and freedom from restrictions that plague the human race. The colonel and Parker are so enthralled in moving the Na’vi so that they can get to the massive deposit of unobtainium, that they completely overlook the life and spirituality that drives the Na’vi people. The Colonel and parker see Pandora, and more specifically the land of the Na’vi, as a frontier, a land that is undeveloped and free for them to research and do as they please. They ignore the sublime that Jake and a few others have obviously experienced. Cronin quotes “Among the best proofs that one had entered a sublime landscape was the emotion it evoked.” (pg 5) This emotion was evident in Jake as he became attached to the Na’vi people, nature, and the land of Pandora. The beauty of Pandora and the life that encompasses it drives Jake and his followers to support the Na’vi against the ensuing destruction of the Colonel and Parker. The Colonel and the Na’vi function from two different paradigms, which cannot exist side by side thus one will end up ruling over the other.
                Dualism appears in Avatar through the exalting of the spiritual world in Pandora, and the material word in America. There is a strong distinction between materialism and spiritualism present. The Na’vi live off of their feelings and attachment to nature through their spiritual world and deity while the Colonel and Parker along with their army are solely focused on getting the objects they want so that they can cash in and live richly. When dualism divides the realistic world into the spiritualistic and the materialistic, one comes out as more important because there is no reason for the two to be held together. Thus, in the world of Avatar…the spiritualistic reality ultimately became dominant.

-Elisabeth McClain

Ethics & the Other in Avatar

In the film Avatar, the scenes in which Jake Sully is becoming one of their own, the audience is shown the ways and values of the Na’vi’s culture.  As soon as Jake Sully starts his initiation we are bombarded with the cultures master narrative.  Their master narrative is that all life is interconnected and that they are connected to the land around them.  The Na’vi have a profound respect for all life and for all living things on their planet.  Thats why the humans do not belong their.

In this story the humans are mining on Pandora for an element that sells for high price.  The humans destroy the land and have no regard for it.  This is why the two cultures do not get along.  We hurt the land while they strive to preserve it.  Since we are on a planet that is not our own, Anthropomorphism fails.  We try to make ourselves the dominant species on the planet but we can not be.  We can see this in the scenes where Jake Sully is separated initially from Grace in the forest.  He is chased off a waterfall by a large animal and is hunted later that night by smaller creatures.  He is rescued by Neteri because of his lack of knowledge on how to fight them.  He learns the hard way that he is not in command like he is on Earth.  Just like in Plumwood’s writing “Surviving A Crocodile Attack”.  She learns after her encounter with the beast that “For the first time, it came to me fully that I was prey”(Plumwood, 2).  Like Plumwood, Sully knew he was no longer the predator.

Once we dive into their society we learn about the chain of command.  Right away we see that their is a chief which is Neteri’s father.  He commands the entire village, so we see elements of a masculine society.  But we are then introduced to the Netris’s mother, who is the Spiritual leader in the village.  Since the culture is very spiritual, it is essential to have someone who guides them.  So they both are at the top in the society.  Although the village is primarily a Patriarchy, they all refer to the land in a feminine way.  They respect it and treat it very delicately as if the land itself were female. One of the things Jake learns while becoming one of their own.  One linking postulate in their culture is that one can not become a man until he has passed all of the necessary challenges.  If these are not completed one can not become “born again” as a man.

Throughout the entire film there are many dualisms, such as the Na’vi and the humans, the land and the people, the people and the animals, and the people and their ancestors.  All these things play out throughout the film and show through the characters dialogue and interactions.  This also a paradigm that the Na’vi follow or believe in.  They all believe that “energy is borrowed, and that someday we will all have to give it back”.  They refer to this as a circle and use lots of words like circle, ring, and halo.  All refereeing back to their belief of borrowing and returning.  The Na’vi have great respect for the land and great unity with it as well.  Jake learns this at the end, he becomes a man in their eyes and sees that the humans are wrong.  He sides with the Na’vi and pushes the humans away, so that their world can be theirs again.

Nicholas Petrey

Sources: Avatar. Dir. James Cameron. Twentieth Century Fox, 2009. DVD.

Plumwood, Val. “Surviving A Crocodile Attack.” The Ultimate Journey. Print.

Avatar: Cross-Cultural Conservation

In James Cameron’s movie Avatar, the humans that came to Pandora came in a spirit of colonialism.  They built schools and taught the Na’vi English in an attempt to use the resources of Pandora for their own society.  Pandora had unobtainian, a grey rock that sold for 20 million a kilo back home. 

The master narrative of the Na’vi people is that everything is connected and all life is valuable.  They believe that all that went before them is still present in their world.  This is different from the anthropocentrism displayed by the humans in the movie who believed that only their interests were important. Colonel Miles Quaritch’s directions to Jake Sully were to “ Find out what the blue monkeys want.”  When shooting at the Na’vi he said, “That is how you scatter the roaches.”  By referring to the Na’vi in a derogatory way as an animal or insect he makes them seem like an object rather than people of worth. Life only mattered to the Colonel if it was human life.

There was conflict between the military and the scientists. The heroic ethic displayed by the military saw one solution – drive the Na’vi out by using firepower to get them out of the Hometree.  The military’s truncated narrative of the importance of the Hometree made it simply a tree where they lived rather than a integral piece of their life and a tie to their ancestors and the entire planet.  The scientists’ paradigm was to study and learn from the Na’vi to gain understanding of how Pandora worked.  They saw the planet as a brain with everything interconnected.  They were not interested in the monetary value of the minerals, they just wanted to understand the culture and the environment.  The scientists tried to promote an ethical dialog about how to treat the Na’vi. The different perspectives led to the military taking over when they believed a crisis had been reached.  This dualism made enemies amongst the humans.

Jake Sully was a world traveler.  He defined his narrative self as a warrior when he was a human and when he was in his avatar form as a Na’vi. Because he moved between the human and Na’vi world he had a unique perspective in both.  He transitioned from being a former Marine with a military mindset to follow orders to being a leader of the Na’vi.  His understanding of the Na’vi culture led him to seek out the Toruk banshee after he had been kicked out of the tribe.  This allowed him to build solidarity amongst all the natives of Pandora and oversee the plan for battle against the human invaders.

As Jake was exposed to the Na’vi culture he had the opportunity to experience the same things that Na’vi growing up in the culture would experience.  One example of a cultural inheritance experience was when the hunters came of age and sought out their own banshee to fly with through the sky.  It seemed to be common that the Na’vi bonded with their animals that they rode.  Forming a bond, with the animals, with the people, with a mate was a cultural essentialism of the Na’vi.

The Na’vi in the film and the Makah Indians of the Northwest U.S. are similar in that both have dealt with colonialism.  The Na’vi have few traces, some people that speak English and a school. The Makah have many white cultural impacts including religious, social, governmental and language.  As Greta Gaard states in Tools for a Cross- Cultural Feminist Ethics: Exploring Ethical Contexts and Contents in the Makah Whale Hunt, (10) “…ethical decision making might include an exploration of all three aspects, the ethical content, the ethical context, and the interaction between the two.”  In considering the relationship with the Na’vi and the ore that lies under their land, ethical decision-making would seem to support leaving them alone.  The ethical content would be that the Na’vi were the indigenous people.  The ethical context would be that the Na’vi believe that the land and life is sacred and interconnected.   They have no use for the ore and would never consider tearing up the land to get it.  So the relationship between the content and context would support an ethical decision that the Na’vi should be left alone.  Unfortunately, that is not the decision the human’s made in the movie.  This led to them being forced at gunpoint to leave Pandora.

Sources

Avatar. Dir. James Cameron. Twentieth Century Fox, 2009. DVD.

Gaard, Greta. “Tools for a Cross- Cultural Feminist Ethics: Exploring Ethical Contexts and Contents in the Makah Whale Hunt.” Hypatia 16.1 Winter 2001: 1-26. Web.

Modern Thought: Analyzing ‘Avatar’

Avatar and the Organic Worldview

James Cameron’s Avatar is a commentary on the human condition and an attempt to challenge the master narrative that underlies much of the world today. The master narrative is currently that of mankind’s dominion over all other life forms and the exploitation of the earth’s resources for human benefit.  A prominent theme in Avatar is the glorification of the organic worldview, which is the tendency of a more primitive society to ascribe to the earth motherly characteristics, viewing it as a “beneficent, receptive, nurturing female.” (Merchant 42) In the case of Avatar, the organic worldview manifests itself as a deity called Eywa, who is to the Na’vi what Mother Nature is to humanity. The paradigm of the Na’vi is great reverence for the earth, as evidenced by their devastation at the destruction of the Tree of Voices. The funeral scene, wherein the Na’vi bury one of their recently deceased, reveals to the viewer their belief in life as a borrowed thing. This is consistent with the organic worldview, as, like a mother figure, Eywa births and nourishes all life forms with her energy.

The film challenges anthropocentric thinking by portraying many of the human characters as unlikeable and opportunistic. One of the central antagonists in Avatar is Parker Selfridge, the corporate administrator of the company that is attempting to conduct mining on the moon Pandora. Parker is staunchly adherent to the mechanistic worldview. Instead of seeing nature as a living, breathing entity, he sees rocks and trees as resources, not individual things. His entire rationale for being on Pandora is the acquisition of resources without regard for the sanctity of the forest, which the Na’vi value for all its complexity. At one point in the film, Parker angrily declares that he can “see a lot of trees, they can move,” in reference to the Na’vi’s unwillingness to leave their home.  Parker doesn’t see a tree as distinct from others of its kind, and the Na’vi’s worldview is “incompatible with the new ideals” he holds. (Merchant 45) When Grace challenges his atomism with a plea that the soil is a network of interconnected energy, he scoffs and asks the team what they’ve been smoking. Even Grace’s attempt at a reductionist explanation for the value of the trees will not sway Parker’s resolve to extract the resources. Her conviction that, biologically, the organic worldview held by the Na’vi is more than just superstition is met with hostility from those interested only in profit. Like many followers of the mechanistic worldview during the Enlightenment, Parker sees the world through a fog of utilitarianism. His cold and calculated rationalization of the murder of the Na’vi can be explained by his statement that, “killing the indigenous looks bad, but there’s one thing shareholders hate more than bad press- and that’s a bad quarterly statement.” This consequentialism neglects to take into account the feelings of the Na’vi, whose individuality the humans don’t acknowledge. Empathy with the natives of Pandora would be inconvenient, as the measures taken by the humans later in the film turn out to be ethically questionable. The humans in Avatar use dualism and racial slurs to lessen the plight of the Na’vi and to withhold from them the application of the narrative self. Parker himself calls them “blue monkeys” and states, “we try to give them medicine and education. Roads! But no — they like mud.” This dualism implies that their reverence for Eywa and their disinterest in human materialism equates them with savages.

In many ways Avatar is an attempt to unify the organic and mechanistic worldviews. By exploring the idea of the organic as “a network” through which information can be uploaded and downloaded, the mechanization of nature only reinforces its godlike complexity.