James Ostrich Cameron

A species advanced enough to explore and inhabit a faraway planet doesn’t have the technical know-how to extract subsurface minerals without clearing forests! That’s taking temporary suspension of disbelief a little too far. But this is not a trivial inconsistency in the plot of the movie, it is essential to defending the very philosophical premise of Avatar. The premise that ‘nature’ has to be saved irrespective of the wellbeing of humans and that if saving ‘nature’ means everyone on earth dies, so be it (Recall the climax of the movie)!!

The philosophical premise put into practice is the religion of environmentalism. A religion which doesn’t have the benevolent motive to provide purer air and water for men but which worships ‘nature’ upholding it as the highest value, with absolutely no regard for human life. For those who are not aware of the flaw in the environmentalist’s philosophy let me present it to you briefly.

An environmentalist sunders the value (environment/nature) from the valuer (human beings). The guinea pigs have to be saved even if it means not developing life saving drugs, the pelican eggs have to hatch even if it means millions die from malaria; upstream flora can not be inundated by reservoir even if it means men die alternately from droughts and floods, coal cannot be burned even if it means the human civilization regresses back to prehistoric times. As is quite clear from the examples, for the environmentalists ‘nature’ is an intrinsic value and has no relation whatever to human life !

But what if the environmentalist realizes the flaw in his logic that the a man’s actions have to be guided by understanding what is good for him that human life and not ‘nature’ is the standard for valuing anything? What if the environmentalist realizes ‘nature’ can not be intrinsically valued? And what if even after the realization has dawned upon him he chooses to defend environmentalism? - He makes Avatar!

Since he realizes that the professed aim of environmentalists – cleaner air and water is fundamentally a technological issue and that only technological progress and not religious fervor will ensure more hospitable living conditions for humans, he goes on to create a make believe world where this causality just doesn’t apply. He creates Pandora (where the minerals have to lie right under the mother tree) and throws in a bunch of people who both technologically advanced and stupid (to not figure out a way of neatly extracting the minerals) at the same time!

It is not a case of honest error of judgment for James Cameroon. He is consciously perpetuating a false and evil philosophy which he knows cannot be justified without making inconsistent representations or portraying blatantly unrealistic scenarios.