Recently I had the chance to watch Avatar. The film is very rich on many levels, however, all straight through the movie the viewer gets an comprehension of the of the Na’vi people’s appreciation of the power between us all. It is very difficult to work out if in fact the Na’vi are meant to be developed people or a race that hasn’t developed as far as our contemporary community here on earth.
Western culture is very individual. My family didn’t have any comprehension of a association of power between people or between people and other living things as far as I am aware. However, my mum has a very strong association with her two daughters. Often I will call Mum and Dad and if they are out, then Mum will often say that one of us is trying to call. So, a association is evident. However, it is often explained as a coincidence. Maybe out of purely lack of understanding, but also to avoid knowledge of a kind of superstition or maybe a black art connected with witch craft.
Dog
In Avatar, the Na’vi people connect with other living things and they connect straight through a marvelous universal source. Jake links to a Toruk (dangerous flying predator) via fibres that run from his hair into a kind of antenna on the Toruk. At first the Toruk resist taking a rider when they are broken from the wild. However, once the Na’vi people bond with a Toruk, they are able to delineate with that animal as if by thinking telepathy.
There is an fascinating parallel between the very bodily link between the Na’vi rider and the Toruk and natural horsemanship or natural dog handling. In horsemanship, the association between rider and the horse is so literal, and subtle that the rider only has to think the command in their mind and the horse will know. I have been on highly sensitive horses and given a leg command that was too bodily and had the horse buck and kick as if to protest my ignorance! Similarly, when there is a bond between a dog and a handler, there is transportation that in the case of working dogs has no bodily link but the dog and the handler understand each other perfectly. My father understands this relationships very well.
Deepak Chopra explains the power and the connections the best I think when he talks about how the basic particles, the power that moves straight through us all, at some time has moved straight through so many other parts of our environment. When you look at the world from that view, it seems naive even to think of each personel as an isolated part of the universe.
When I first came to New Zealand, I was confused by the Maori comprehension of shared being and I would have said that this was a representation of a less developed culture. Now, some 10 years on, I am revising my comprehension to one of knowing that straight through some of contemporary societies technical revolution, we are losing some of that important comprehension that was known by previous generations.
Observations From Avatar – Are the Na’vi Prehistoric Or Advanced?
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