There is a kind of religion in Hollywood, Roth Douthat opines and it’s on full display in James Cameron’s latest opus:
“Avatar” is Cameron’s long apologia for pantheism — a faith that equates God with Nature, and calls humanity into religious communion with the natural world…
(Pantheism) has been Hollywood’s religion of choice for a generation now. It’s the truth that Kevin Costner discovered when he went dancing with wolves. It’s the metaphysic woven through Disney cartoons like “The Lion King” and “Pocahontas.” And it’s the dogma of George Lucas’s Jedi, whose mystical Force “surrounds us, penetrates us, and binds the galaxy together.” Hollywood keeps returning to these themes because millions of Americans respond favorably to them.
Douthat goes on to follow that train of thought to the end of the line:
Traditional theism has to wrestle with the problem of evil: if God is good, why does he allow suffering and death? But Nature is suffering and death. Its harmonies require violence. Its “circle of life” is really a cycle of mortality. And the human societies that hew closest to the natural order aren’t the shining Edens of James Cameron’s fond imaginings. They’re places where existence tends to be nasty, brutish and short.
Religion exists, in part, precisely because humans aren’t at home amid these cruel rhythms. We stand half inside the natural world and half outside it. We’re beasts with self-consciousness, predators with ethics, mortal creatures who yearn for immortality.
This is an agonized position, and if there’s no escape upward — or no God to take on flesh and come among us, as the Christmas story has it — a deeply tragic one.
Pantheism offers a different sort of solution: a downward exit, an abandonment of our tragic self-consciousness, a re-merger with the natural world our ancestors half-escaped millennia ago.
But except as dust and ashes, Nature cannot take us back.
Increasing entropy is a fundamental characteristic of the physical universe, and increasingly a characteristic of the moral one. Rapaciousness and greed are everywhere on display, with some content to get all that may be gotten in this life against the chance that actions have objective meaning and choices are appropriately rewarded in a next. Vast, unsettled majorities have begun to think that they have been had, that the game is rigged, that the social compact was always a fraud, or has at any rate become one. A game of winners and losers, a restless struggle for advantage – a zero-sum scheme with a ticking clock. As much as anything else, this, I think, divides us because all of life’s choices and preferences devolve from our understanding of the nature of the universe.
We all yearn for freedom and chafe at restriction, at least until the bigger man with his own notion of freedom comes by with a baseball bat in his hand, sizing up our shoes. “Jungle law for me, but not for thee” has a liberating ring, but there are few who will willingly partner with us in that bargain. So we count on government to step in and fill the space once defined by self-discipline, at least in a polite society. But when we are unable to count on our neighbors to exercise self-restraint against our interests – the end result of any truly faithless society – we may in the end have freed our minds, but lost all other liberties for the sake of security.
Between our giving and our getting over the next few days we have a chance to celebrate an alternate take on reality. After that?
Slouch on.
Fortunately, God sent a saviour, His Son, to die so that a way would be open to communion with Him, and lead to life eternal. We have to live with a fallen world for now, but it won’t be much longer when that will be brought to an end.
Oh please. Folks need to just take a break from all this “seeing” anti-militarism, racism, left-leaning drivel and various and assorted other bullsh*t in … wait … a movie.
It’s a story people; a made up piece of triviality. If your mind can get rotted in span of 161 minutes that you engaged in voluntarily AND at cost … well, you got bigger issues that this. Please, let’s just get over it, shall we?
Ok, so it’s been bugging me for a bit … maybe.
Rant ends
Satch, the dams Beavers build are nothing but a series of small and middling size twigs/limbs–but taken together over time they are woven together to build a formidable edifice. Or consider the drip, drip, drip of water eroding rocks. Each drop by itself seemingly insignificant, but over time collectively it and millions of others create things like the Grand Canyon. This movie is all of a piece of the tapestry–another fiber–that the left uses to weave their picture/depiction of their distorted version of reality. Just another sound added to the drum-beat of leftist propaganda. It is not everything to be sure, but be assured, it is not nothing either….
Satch,
This movie is “Dances with Wolves” set in soace. More like “Dances with Smurfs”, where the Smurfs are 10 foot in height.
The entire premise if this film is a reaffirmation of “white guilt”, and it’s the same cr@p that Hollywood has been dishing out since their rapture with leftist dribble became complete.
Bah, can’t shut up on this one either. Little white guilt probably not misplaced. Us white folks done some mighty BAD stuff to the not so white folks over last several hundred years … pretty bad stuff to OTHER white folks too. I’m not so proud of that history (and it IS history), are you? The point of the exercise is to have a bit of humility and learn so that history doesn’t repeat itself (again).
So what is it, satch? A triviality or a reminder of white guilt? If it’s a triviality, it’s a damned expensive one at nearly $500 million. If it’s a reminder of white guilt, I believe we got the message years ago.
Some folks go to movies to be entertained, and it’s certain that any number have and will be by Avatar. But important film makers want to make money off producing important works, and I think it’s fair for those of us whose culture is being shaped to ask what it is the culture-shapers are trying to push.
In my opine only, clearly a triviality. That being said if folks want to weave Avatar into a morality play, I’m will comment on that perception, even if I don’t share it.
As for Avatar being a significant work, personal opinion is that it is far more important for its technical merit than its moral one, but that’s just me.
Given that James Cameron has explicitly endorsed that the film has a leftist political message, I’m not sure I would dismiss it as a triviality. The one weaving it into a morality play is Cameron.
Satch, would appreciate your showing more PC awareness and usint the term “Caucasian-American”, as you apparently are into guilt (hair shirts are available on eBay). Any African-American guilt applicable? Hmm, how about American-Indian (or Native-American) guilt? Muslim-American guilt? Oriental-American guilt?
I suppose you get to pick and choose the terminology and historical context that makes you “feel” comfortable.
As we speak (well, write/read), IMO the American Culture is being most destructively affected by BHO and his minions:
Barack Hussein Obama -Christian (purportedly)
Nancy Pelosi -Roman Catholic
Harry Reid -Mormon
Chris Dodd -Roman Catholic
Rahm Emanuel -Judaism
Barney Frank -Judiasm
Dick Durbin -Roman Catholic
Joe Biden -Roman Catholic
Steny Hoyer -Baptist
Jim Clyburn -African Methodist Episcopal
Not a Pantheist or Wiccian among them, at least that we know of.
Darned if I can read the tea leaves to show any correlation between religion and actions regarding the above suspects. I am more concerned with what a person does than what they believe.
Yep, only ‘dem ebil wah’t debils’ EVER did bad things to others. In all human history and pre-history, it wasn’t until Europe was solidly settled by persons of non-colour that anything bad happened to anyone.
Yep, blacks never butchered other blacks, or arabs, or whites. Arabs never butchered blacks, europeans, asians, persians, or kurds. See where I’m going?
More a case of “liberal guilt” (small L on purpose) than white guilt. Or maybe liberal self hate.
Yes, it is only one movie. And in a wild fire it is only one manzanita bush. As others have pointed out, the cumulative effect is, or can be, huge.
Douthat wrote:
It isn’t anything to wrestle with. God gave us free will, right from the get-go. Creation was pure, immortal, uncorrupt – until man exercised his free will to reject the will of God. Even the fall of Lucifer was not equal to this, since the angles, while created beings, are incorporeal.
Once this happened, all creation became corrupted and subject to death. As Quartemaster pointed out, God gave Himself in the form of His Son, to overthrow death.
From the Paschal Homily of St. John Chrysostom:
Avatar takes that to a new level – and from what I’ve heard it’s very disturbing. It was noted in several premiers and previews that the American military are portrayed as so evil and debauched that the audience actually applauds when they die.
Imagine – being in an American audience in America and seeing Americans clapping and cheering when American soldiers die.
These people have taken a hefty dose of Kool-Aid – served to them by Hollywood.
But…it looks pretty.
Oh bullsh*t … have you seen it? Ah … no, just from “what you’ve heard”. Look, I’m politically slightly right of Attila the Hun and I call out the loons when and where I see ‘em. You’re tilting at windmills here.
satch: Not too thrilled to be called a loon here, when I’ve only shared my own opinion. If you don’t like it, go elsewhere where they practice group-think.
As for white-guilt. Get over it – if there is any white-guilt it is that practiced by people who want to continually stir the pot, claiming they are more compassionate than others or claiming some sort of higher moral ground because they are so sorry for what their ancestors did.
Ah, this I WILL apologize for … in no way calling you a loon. Point, albeit badly phrased, is that I have no problem calling out the loons. My sincere apologies.
Thank you.
BTW, have you seen it?
I have. ‘Meh’ story wrapped in really incredible technology. I’ll probably go get indoctrinated again just to pick up some if the techie goodnes I missed first time through.
Heads up from my daughter though, if you were glasses or have other than minor eye issues, 3D nonsense may cause headaches / eye fatigue.
Ok, that would be ‘wear’ not ‘were’ …
Well, I’ll still be tilting at my windmills because I have no interest in seeing it.
Haven’t seen it, but my sense from the reviews is it’s mostly special effects in search of a story.
VERY much so … that’s why I’m surprised at hulabaloo.
You could say that the Nuremberg Rallies were special effects pieces with not much story too. Look how they stirred things up.
Look at the State support given to various eastern mystic/shamanist religions. All the classes sponsered by community colleges and parks and recreation departments in yoga, feng shui, qi gong, and such. “But they aren’t religions!” you may say. Garbage, I say. They all deal with mysticism, propitiating nature through arrangements of objects, or a connection to the Tao, great spirit, nature. These my friend, are religious practices. And all the more insidious since they are being passed off as exercise or interior design. If I call a gun a fire extinguisher, it doesn’t change it from being a gun.
Imagine what would happen if they were to offer classes in Hesychasm – the ACLU would be on them like white on rice shouting about ‘establishing’ a religion.
But Joe, a rifle CAN be said to be a fire extinguisher, just not of the blazing sort.
A good Confederate would know that, I expect
QM, I would say that it can stop fire. And may extinguish a fire-er.
Sorry Satch, but the problem is that the values espoused in that movie were running amok in Copenhagen last week. And although one could look at that (Copenhagen) as entertainment (dark comedy or the danse macabre maybe), the anti-capitalist, anti-freedom quest for more power by our betters is a genuine cause for concern.
I’m quite surprised, however, that Avatar came out after the conference, rather than before it. Can’t believe they screwed that up.
Oh wait – yes, I can!
The values espoused in the movie? Wha?
This is a plot-line as old as the hills, dare I say ripped from AMERICAN history as well? (go visit your local american Indian reservation lest you think we’re pure as driven snow).
Or how about the American Revolution? This is OUR land? Sound familiar? We’ll throw out the evil aggressors trying to suppress a supposedly inferior tribe? Hmmm … chock full of anti-military sentiment there … oh, wait, that’s HOW WE GOT HERE.
Look, good (or even marginal) stories need conflict. Conflict requires the artificial creation of good vs. evil. I’m stickin’ to ‘get over it’.
My problem with the movie is as in Robert A. Heinlein’ st The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, all that needed to be done is drop rocks until the goal is achieved. Of course doing it that way the movie would have been a lot shorter.
Sorry, friends … None of the diminishing minutes of my lifetime are going to be spent viewing Avatar, another magnum opus/technological marvel with little genuine content of faith and respect for the Almighty and the sometimes amazing sometimes appalling achievements of my fellow humans. If a book or a movie doesn’t leave me a little wiser about my fellow humans in our arduous path through life I don’t, at 81, have enough time to read or see it.
Marianne
Lex,
I’m not normally one for sycophancy but this was a truly exemplary post, on par with what you could get from Krauthammer or Sowell. I concur with the connections you make, and how atheism is at the heart of it. But you drew the line tying it all together so much more clearly and elegantly than I’ve seen before.
Thank you, I’ll be sharing this with friends and family.
In C S Lewis’s fantasy novel “The Screwtape Letter,” looks forward to the emergence of The Materialist Magician among humans:
“I have great hopes that we shall learn in due time how to emotionalise and mythologise their science to such an extent that what is, in effect, belief in us, (though not under that name) will creep in while the human mind remains closed to belief in the Enemy. The “Life Force”, the worship of sex, and some aspects of Psychoanalysis, may here prove useful. If once we can produce our perfect work—the Materialist Magician, the man, not using, but veritably worshipping, what he vaguely calls “Forces” while denying the existence of “spirits”—then the end of the war will be in sight.”
A very signficant % of “progressives” seem to be believers in astrology, magic crystals, a conscious Gaia, and so forth.
That seems to be the belief system of those that describe themselves as “Spiritual”. That way to can pat youself on the back, without really believing in anything. What a load of toads.
“Load of Toads.”
I’ll have to steal that one.
Anti-militarism, racism, left-leaning drivel are the gospel according to the new left that took over Hollywood in the 60′s and 70′s. Many Canadians became part of the Hollywood left. Of course they hate America, they’re not from here.
I’m gonna skip this one. I can’t stand the “noble savage” Earth Mother tripe anymore.
Roger that, Chockblock. And why put money in the pockets of the enemy?
Here’s the big mistake in the review: Pantheism is NOT a worship of nature, but a worship of many Gods, some of which MAY be based upon natural objects and/or occurences. Thus PAN-THEISM. If the reviewer wants a nature-based religion, then Wicca, created by a British Civil Servant in the mid-20th century is more appropriate.
Tim, it simply means everything is god. Even you. Don’t you like your promotion?
Tim, I think you may be conflating pantheism (“god is everything”) with polytheism (“they gots lots of ‘em!”).
“a faith that equates God with Nature, and calls humanity into religious communion with the natural world”
Lessee, would that natural world be the one with the predator-prey thingie going on? Food chains? Only the strong survive? natural selection? – bad news for the homos there ya know.
I’m thinking there are quite a few of Lex’s Legions that would do just fine fine in a world like that. But I will gladly defer to QM’s post and let the Good Lord handle. of course, if He does turn it over to us, well ….
Too bad Cameron is Shakespeare with a camera and a sap as a writer. Previous commenter was right when he said this is a remake of Dances With Wolves.
It is a sad truth that:
People who don’t believe in anything
Will believe in ANYTHING!
Slouch on, Lex? Towards Gomorrah?
Lex is moving to San Fransisco?
Just so, mon professeur. For a final, inevitable destination, it is at least preferred to Sodom.
How is SF different from Sodom?
SF is Sodom. Its sin is repeated daily.
What does that make Oakland?
Capt..one of your very best..thank you so much..
As for satch..I haven’t been to a movie since John Wayne died..and I am still a proponent of Manifest Destiny..lol
Lex, you need to get a second job. Way too much time on your hands if you can stir up this much sh@t.
Satch, go sit in the truck and don’t play with the buttons.
Got that backwards … everything on the center console and left belongs to me, buddy … keep your feet flat on the floor and don’t touch the stick either!
By odd coincidence I read the following just before reading this post and comments.
It seems biology (not religion) equals morality.
http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/hauser09/hauser09_index.html
“. . . Recent discoveries suggest that all humans, young and old, male and female, conservative and liberal, living in Sydney, San Francisco and Seoul, growing up as atheists, Buddhists, Catholics and Jews, with high school, university or professional degrees, are endowed with a gift from nature, a biological code for living a moral life. . . .”
Cool. Who put that in there?
If that’s true, then you have to wonder what happened to people like Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, Clinton, Obama, and most of the Democrat party.
I think human history pretty much shows that the concept of biological morality is a chimera. If it wasn’t God would not have needed the flood to check evil. Nature is red is tooth and claw, and that includes mankind, alas.
Not having read the link (which may answer my question) I find it odd at first blush that if we naturally inherit a moral code in our genes, why are the morals of so many different cultures so radical different? Reference Lex’s Kumbaya post for a rather stunning example. Perhaps the Singh was an alliteration too far for the mostly westernized list of Seoul, Sydney and San Francisco.
Of course, this same argument could be made against a single God, since so many different religions developed significantly distinct moral codes. As an apologia I would offer that man is fallen and cannot truly understand God, including his perfect morality. We can thus only strive in relative degrees of darkness towards more true moral codes. As evidence one can compare the societies organized around different moral codes, be they Protestant, Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, Jewish, Buddhist, Confucian, etc. From such an exercise, at least as far as political freedom and standards of living go, I have to say the Calvinist/Protestants seem to have gotten it most right so far. And as mentioned previously, I say this even as a baptized Roman Catholic.
I find it odd at first blush that if we naturally inherit a moral code in our genes, why are the morals of so many different cultures so radical different?
An interesting list of human universals. Not same as moral code, but something I think about when I see people tending to focus on the differences between us.
http://condor.depaul.edu/~mfiddler/hyphen/humunivers.htm
Taxi
An interesting link, but wonder if you are trying to go anywhere with it.
Probably popping a total non-sequitur on you, but IMHO perhaps focusing on significant differences isn’t all that bad an exercise. Can anyone tell me of a period of time during which the Islamic world, from its inception until now, wasn’t at war in some fashion or another with every other civilization it bordered? (I know, I know, Muslim Spain was supposed to be a wonderland of religious harmony, but never mentioned is that Jews and Christians indeed paid the Jizya and basically bought the right to be second class citizens with next to no rights every year.) Protestants and Catholics eventually learned to bury the hatchet, but the fact that all humans make jokes (according to your list, but as Khamanei once said “there are no jokes in Islam), belive or believed in magic at some point, and all are supposed to be born with 10 fingers doesn’t seem to have any practical or significant impact in the world of international relations and politics. Focusing on that could just literally be a total waste of time outside of the academic realms. Focusing on differences lets us sort out who are our friends, who can we do business with, who we can and should just leave alone, and who won’t leave us alone and we need to at least contain/be vigilant against.
Focusing on our differences can even let us know if someone out there is doing it better than we are and whether or not we should copy them too, if you want something a little more positive sounding.
Probably popping a total non-sequitur on you, but IMHO perhaps focusing on significant differences isn’t all that bad an exercise.
This is a real topic of interest to me. BLUF is I think it is a bad exercise in general.
When not in uniform, I work at a major university, which means surrounded by liberals. Which means we are supposed to celebrate Diversity. Which I think is dumb. People have been hating and killing each other based on their differences since differences were identifiable. Even if the differences aren’t the reason, they are enablers. To try and turn the differences positive flies in the face of a millenium of history.
So at our Diversity Day discussion at my lab, I said I don’t celebrate diversity, period. I celebrate the commonality between the different peoples, the fact that a pygmy cannibal from Borneo has so much in common with a pink-haired WASP from Chicago (other than their tastes in foods.)
That one flew like an E-2 at ground idle. So instead I get to watch our homecoming day parade with all of these diversity groups marching, each one manned by 20-40 students that all look like. Indonesian Interest Group. GLB group. Etc. Pretty funny when you think about it.
Hey Taxi
I appreciate the spirit of what you’re trying to do, but thinking you’ll decrease war or hatred (especially between nations/civilizations) by focusing on our commonalities . . . well, good luck with that. Honestly. Please excuse me if I don’t find it worth my time though. The differences are still there, they’re still significant, and sometimes they are legitimate (at least in some people’s views) reasons for going to war. (Differences by the way do not necessarily lead to war either.) Yeah, Nazis tended to have the husband as the older partner in a marriage just like every other culture. Whoopdi-doo. I don’t really see in there a worthy peace mechanism. If man’s nature were as beneficent as I wish it were and the world a providentially kinder place, would that History some day prove me wrong, but I’m just not counting on it.
Trying to cement people within a single civilization/nation/etc. is a noble and necessary thing, but that’s usually done with things unique or felt to be unique to that group, such as holidays, religious rites and ceremonies, reinforcing the values most endeared by that society (a lot of societies do hold the same values, but the pecking order is frequently very different, consider martial virtues in Sparta vs. Athens for example), folk-tales that everyone recognizes, etc.
The parish I was heavily involved in for about 18 years, until I had to move away. We had Americans, Russians, Serbs, Italians, Greeks, Romanians, Greeks, Arabs, Eritrians, a few Georgians (eastern hemisphere), some Ukies, a Dane, and a few I can’t remember. Every year there is a multi-ethnic food fair. Everyone from the county who came to spend money and eat and dance marveled at the unity we had. The local diversity council came to us to ask how we did it, displaying our diverse ethnic backgrounds, yet working in harmony. They had been trying for a few years to get a “Celebrate Diversity” festival going. We tried to explain that we were not ‘celebrating diversity’ but showing our unity in the Holy Orthodox Church. They didn’t get it.
Joe
Sadly not surprised. Some people believe what they see, while others can only see what they believe. As a result the world perpetually confounds them. Or at least it does so even more than it confuses the former.
So many of you are so ignorant.
I love it when a character in the film says that “you [sky-people (humans)] do not see.”
Do you understand it’s significance? Regardless, you exemplify this very well.
If you consider it, if you look for a positive meaning in this film (there are multiple), you may find an overwhelming and universally essential significance. Such as the character Jake Sully.
But You do not see
Thanks for the education. I totally see it now.
Where would we ever BE without people like Hannah to enlighten us, Lex? Just flailing around in the void, I guess….
Where to begin?
I just saw the movie tonight.
The visuals are amazing. You could practically throw out the whole storyline and it would sill be worth the price of admission.
As far as the story goes, some (apparently) see it as being about religion, some (of those I went with) as how we interact with the environment. Personally, I thought it was much more political. Really an anti-war, anti-Iraq movie. And yet (surprising even to me) I enjoyed it. The story didn’t turn me totally off (most of the time anyway) and it was well worth it for the technology.
JUst to be clear, the reason I made the Iraq connection was that there were way too many lines that just fed it to you. Way too many to be coincidental. Everything from “shock and awe”, to “winning their hearts and minds” to lines like “When people have something we want, first we make them the enemy. Then we go in and take what we want.”