Humans wish they could live like the Na’vi.  There is some deep carnal desire to live in tune with nature, taking only what you can give back, using only what is necessary to survive.  Humans want to be able to scientifically prove that God exists, even if that God is a neural network housed inside a planet called Pandora.  Everyone wants to fly.

Everyone enjoys absorbing the visually stunning landscapes that make up Pandora.

The thing is: Earth is not too far off.

…if we just know where to look.  Humans want these things, but humans are notoriously lazy, easily distracted, and naive.  Your average human is a slave to whatever is put in front of him: a television, a drink, a market that obscures how much is lost to produce what we throw away in minutes.

How are humans broken from their lazy, distracted naivete? Basically: they’re not. Hit them with what they’re slave to to make them move in a direction that’ll hurt them less than their current one.  A quote of which I’ve lost the source and exact wording says essentially: “Give me your music and I will drive the future of your society.”  The path humans take is inevitably driven by the things that entertain them.  Politicians are just along for the ride.

How do we bring humans back to what they need, on their base level? Remind them what they need through what they don’t, or to put it another way, create more movies like Avatar, where the pain felt by the imagined Na’vi on screen when a small animal dies reminds people that what they see is a distant echo of the pain that should be felt by those who see the state of the Earth today.

Global warming, buzzword2 or buzzword3 etc. etc. whatever.  This is the nth state beyond the state of a healthy, balanced world.  We shouldn’t be discussing whether now is the right time to stop destroying Earth.  We should be in full action with the understanding that we passed the point of “too much” well before our current generation.

After all: compare the effectiveness of Avatar to telling people to get rid of their dog: http://bit.ly/6ILylE

Discuss: #avatar @bluepojo