Na'vi - the flawless people?

[Toruk Makto]

That might be , but humanity still is responsible where it ended up , they could have gone a better way but they decided to go the way of decay , so they actually deserved to go down with the world they exploited .

Wow, that is a harsh judgment call there. I bet there were at least a few humans that were trying to fight the destruction of Earth. Did they deserve to go down too?

[fkeua vrrtep]

That might be , but humanity still is responsible where it ended up , they could have gone a better way but they decided to go the way of decay , so they actually deserved to go down with the world they exploited .

Wow, that is a harsh judgment call there. I bet there were at least a few humans that were trying to fight the destruction of Earth. Did they deserve to go down too?

Of course they don't , but they allowed  what has been done to their world , they were far more and able to stand against such a selfdestruction of their home but they decided to just keep watching and do nothing , that is almost the same as helping those who did it .

this selfestructing element lies in almost every human , it seems like it became a everyday part of us just like our greed .

[Hawnuyu atìtse'a]

Question: flawless as a whole or as individuals? As a whole, the Na'vi pretty much win at being flawless. Scale it down to individuals, and things start to show up. I'll use the shoot-on-sight example: when neytiri sees jake alone in the forest at dusk, she has to have some idea about his chances of surviving the night, but a mentally flawless person (or na'vi for that matter) would have the decency of helping him return without even hesitating to help him. Jake never caused any harm to their race, but I can see that she would consider him just another slaughtering marine. The flaw in this case is lack of equal opportunity to survive.

[Coyote]

Let's ask this:

What if the humans took their amazing technology at Hell's Gate and dug underground; a tunnel, all the way to underneath Hometree, and quietly took the unobtanium without bothering anyone? Would that have been okay? I mean-- suppose they did this without bothering the Na'vi, without attacking them, without killing anyone... in fact, what if no one knew, and the only presence of humans the Na'vi saw had been Grace's Avatar program, with Avatars trying to learn and interact with the Na'vi?

Would that have been more ethical? Ethical enough to be acceptable?

[fkeua vrrtep]

Question: flawless as a whole or as individuals? As a whole, the Na'vi pretty much win at being flawless. Scale it down to individuals, and things start to show up. I'll use the shoot-on-sight example: when neytiri sees jake alone in the forest at dusk, she has to have some idea about his chances of surviving the night, but a mentally flawless person (or na'vi for that matter) would have the decency of helping him return without even hesitating to help him. Jake never caused any harm to their race, but I can see that she would consider him just another slaughtering marine. The flaw in this case is lack of equal opportunity to survive.

The thing is that they do not have to think about if someone is a truely good person , as in the example when she is putting her bow in action and aiming at jake she gets a sign from her goddess to let him go ,or even to help him , she doesn't have the weigh it up , she got an answer which was undenyable correct , if you can't trust your goddess and your ancestors ,what are you going to find trust in ?
Humans have to weigh up in such a situation because the only way to make decisions is to use their own moral which lies in each individuals heart which is used to make decisions , if it was the right one has to be decided by itself and that's how personalities form ,and this can be transferred on your people and even on your culture , the Na'vi are only taking what they need , humanity does not know any limits , everything they want to possess , they just gotta have it even if its in abound  they don't value things they are given and that's why the Na'Vi are the flawless ones , maybe they are not completely perfect but at least they try to understand things and specially live them and be thankful for the opportuity they were given and it's also the reason why humanity just keeps going the same way it's going for ages ,a small road with no or barely lights ,being blind for what happens around them .

[Toruk Makto]

Of course they don't , but they allowed  what has been done to their world , they were far more and able to stand against such a selfdestruction of their home but they decided to just keep watching and do nothing , that is almost the same as helping those who did it . this selfestructing element lies in almost every human , it seems like it became a everyday part of us just like our greed .

I will have to agree to disagree with you on that. I believe people should be judged individually, not as a whole. If you condemn an entire race for the actions of some (or even many), it is easier to kill the individuals without any regard. War may be necessary as a final solution to conflict, but it should never be easy. Killing anything should never be easy.

[fkeua vrrtep]

Let's ask this:

What if the humans took their amazing technology at Hell's Gate and dug underground; a tunnel, all the way to underneath Hometree, and quietly took the unobtanium without bothering anyone? Would that have been okay? I mean-- suppose they did this without bothering the Na'vi, without attacking them, without killing anyone... in fact, what if no one knew, and the only presence of humans the Na'vi saw had been Grace's Avatar program, with Avatars trying to learn and interact with the Na'vi?

Would that have been more ethical? Ethical enough to be acceptable?

No it would not , because it's equal to stealing , not that it has such an overwhelming worth to the na'vi as for the humans but humanity would still take something from their planet which is all alive , maybe the unoptanium is living too in some way and connected to the planet and important for it , have you thought about that possibility yet ?

[Toruk Makto]

Let's ask this:
What if the humans took their amazing technology at Hell's Gate and dug underground; a tunnel, all the way to underneath Hometree, and quietly took the unobtanium without bothering anyone? Would that have been okay? I mean-- suppose they did this without bothering the Na'vi, without attacking them, without killing anyone... in fact, what if no one knew, and the only presence of humans the Na'vi saw had been Grace's Avatar program, with Avatars trying to learn and interact with the Na'vi?
Would that have been more ethical? Ethical enough to be acceptable?

Wow, what a great question! I would have to say 'yes' to that, as long as the ecosystem of Pandora wasn't adversely affected. The Na'vi live there, but they don't own the moon.

[Coyote]

Also: once you issue a blanket condemnation to an entire people, with no chance of redemption, then what possible motivation do they have to ever learn from their mistakes and choose a better path? I mean, if they're condemned no matter what, then why would they bother trying to improve?

[Hawnuyu atìtse'a]

Let's ask this:

What if the humans took their amazing technology at Hell's Gate and dug underground; a tunnel, all the way to underneath Hometree, and quietly took the unobtanium without bothering anyone? Would that have been okay? I mean-- suppose they did this without bothering the Na'vi, without attacking them, without killing anyone... in fact, what if no one knew, and the only presence of humans the Na'vi saw had been Grace's Avatar program, with Avatars trying to learn and interact with the Na'vi?

Would that have been more ethical? Ethical enough to be acceptable?

Cost prohibitive too. Expensive enough to run a deep space mining operation, but then to tunnel under the earth for miles, big enough to fit the machines through and deep enough to not disturb anything? Idk about you but it sounds darn expensive

[fkeua vrrtep]

Of course they don't , but they allowed  what has been done to their world , they were far more and able to stand against such a selfdestruction of their home but they decided to just keep watching and do nothing , that is almost the same as helping those who did it . this selfestructing element lies in almost every human , it seems like it became a everyday part of us just like our greed .

I will have to agree to disagree with you on that. I believe people should be judged individually, not as a whole. If you condemn an entire race for the actions of some (or even many), it is easier to kill the individuals without any regard. War may be necessary as a final solution to conflict, but it should never be easy. Killing anything should never be easy.

I understand your point , but I guess humanity will never uprise and fight for what it really believes into , everythign has just fallen way too deep into corruption , we are tampered with false illusions and false ideals that keep us deep under that glassy bell with its opaque surface which we call "life" , if we get a "chance" (which there actually is not since the system doesn't want you to act freely and as a free being ) that really is promising to us and gives us "opporunities" why should we try to get out of our glass bell and discover the outer world and the way it could be ?

[Roiki]

I hope you aren't serious with that , you just can't go to someones homeplanet and be like "oh there's some f*** stones underneath your holy tree which is at the same time your home and a sacred place to you and your ancestors , besides it links you up with everything that's living on your planet but f*** that we'll burn it down if you don't move away ,do you agree to us non agressive humans invading your home and threatening you and your children ?".

Dude the RDA bombed their home and shot it into little pieces, fathers ,mothers and children died at that place , were smashed by tree parts falling on them, burned alive, or shot by any kind of projectile and you say that the humans can't be traited as agressors ? You must be insane my friend , I wonder how you would react if someone came to our planet and wanted our properties or else they will kill us if we don't move away , I guess you won't be too happy about it .


Besides humanity has driven itself into the misery it's living in , it doesn't authorize you to kill people to get what you need to keep your machinery alive .

I'm dead serious, otherwise there's no point in discussion.

Again, since we don't know enough i can only speculate why things moved to the direction that they did. Remeber that Pandora has had human settlers for close to two decades, if they just wanted to kill them they could've done it right off the bat and with a more effective way, rather than establish schools and avatar programs and wait that s*** hits the fan. And we don't know how many na'vi died at hometree, they did gas it first to evict them, they didn't simply shove missiles through the front door and kill everyone. They also said that it was the richest deposit inside 200km, they could've just find a new place and relocate, why they didn't i don't know but it can be the fact that the Na'vi didn't give that peaceful or civilized picture of themselves. Neither party can be praised for their willingness to cooperate.

If you are in a dire need, and you come across a person/place who could help/save you and they don't purely for the fact that they don't agree with your opinions or like what you represent, surely you are tempted to go and take it since it's essentially your life against their convenience. And again, we don't know what drove humanity to such a dire situation, was it wars, terrorism, tyranny or what but it seems highly unlikely that every country of the world(all +100 of them) would just chop up their natural resources without a good reason, no, profiteering isn't a good reason since they don't do that now even though they could.

He's trying to justify the annihilation of people in case of greed , I think that's quite a reason to set that straight , the same thing happened here on earth before , europeans came to america and did just the same thing , "give us your land , your properties and everything else you own or we will straight away annihilate you" , and that's what they did , today there are only small leftovers of the culture and the people of indians in america , a sad example for the coldbloodedness of humans .

Understanding both sides is't necessarily justifying what they did. I understand what the nazis did in second world war but as sure as hell don't agree with them. The ones that started to opress the native americas where americans themselves(europeans true, but you can't blame europe for what an independent nation did). Before the U.S started to expand to the west there was very little conflicts between natives and settlers since most of the natives live in the middle parts of the continent and settlers remained closer to the coast because of the shipping routes. Also disappearance of certain cultures can't be attributed to exclusively to a expansionist exploitation, many native tribes on other countries have managed to maintain their unique culture, so have the native to a certain extent, the reason it is wainig is normal mixing of cultures, they carry some of their own and adopt something new, it's entirely normal when different culture meet.

According to the Survival Guide, humans needed unobtainium to keep Earth habitable and also needed other resources from Pandora to start reversing the environmental damage. I mentioned somewhere else that survival is the ultimate natural selector. One of the processes of natural selection is aggression, and anything else becomes a moral discussion. It occurs to me that the humans on Pandora did try a 'non-annihilation' route with the avatar program, but it didn't work because it was accompanied with machine guns by the aggressive 'security forces' that were tasked by the RDA to get the goods at any cost. We are back to the moral failure of the humans' refusal to respect the Na'vi as a people and Pandora as an ecosystem.

Thank you for this, since i don't have the Survival Guide so i didin't know this. Glad that my thoughts about their "necessity vs. greed" has some merit at least. I also agree about the moral dilemma this presents.

To be fair, the man chooses the woman he wants to pursue, but she is the one that determines whether she will agree or not, and she decides whether or not they make tshaylu. So she has a veto on his desires. That way they both have input on the decision.

Unless the survival guide says otherwise, we don't have that much insight into it, remember that Tsu'teys and Neytiris "marriage" was arranged and judging his reactions towards jake, Neytiris feelings weren't with Tsu'tey. I don't think they'd force it but it's more of a peer pressure, he chose you so according to tradition you have to comply. It's not impossible though.

"random update"

During the time i wrote this around 9 replies came. I didn't think my view of the matter would stir up such a conversation. The text might be incoherent since i wrote it about an hour and added some other posts to it. Lots of thing go unexplained but i have to take a break and come back shortly.

"end"

[Toruk Makto]

No it would not , because it's equal to stealing , not that it has such an overwhelming worth to the na'vi as for the humans but humanity would still take something from their planet which is all alive , maybe the unoptanium is living too in some way and connected to the planet and important for it , have you thought about that possibility yet ?

I mentioned damage to the ecosystem... It is the unobtainium that make the Iknimaya mountains float. And although it has never been specifically officially stated anywhere I have seen, I believe it is the superconducting ability of unobtainium that maintains the electrochemical structure that allows Eywa to exist as a global entity. So taking it would be dangerous to the ecosystem. Extremely dangerous.  In that regard then the humans would be wrong to take it in any fashion.

Excellent observation, ma tsmukan!

[fkeua vrrtep]

I hope you aren't serious with that , you just can't go to someones homeplanet and be like "oh there's some f*** stones underneath your holy tree which is at the same time your home and a sacred place to you and your ancestors , besides it links you up with everything that's living on your planet but f*** that we'll burn it down if you don't move away ,do you agree to us non agressive humans invading your home and threatening you and your children ?".

Dude the RDA bombed their home and shot it into little pieces, fathers ,mothers and children died at that place , were smashed by tree parts falling on them, burned alive, or shot by any kind of projectile and you say that the humans can't be traited as agressors ? You must be insane my friend , I wonder how you would react if someone came to our planet and wanted our properties or else they will kill us if we don't move away , I guess you won't be too happy about it .


Besides humanity has driven itself into the misery it's living in , it doesn't authorize you to kill people to get what you need to keep your machinery alive .

I'm dead serious, otherwise there's no point in discussion.

Again, since we don't know enough i can only speculate why things moved to the direction that they did. Remeber that Pandora has had human settlers for close to two decades, if they just wanted to kill them they could've done it right off the bat and with a more effective way, rather than establish schools and avatar programs and wait that s*** hits the fan. And we don't know how many na'vi died at hometree, they did gas it first to evict them, they didn't simply shove missiles through the front door and kill everyone. They also said that it was the richest deposit inside 200km, they could've just find a new place and relocate, why they didn't i don't know but it can be the fact that the Na'vi didn't give that peaceful or civilized picture of themselves. Neither party can be praised for their willingness to cooperate.

If you are in a dire need, and you come across a person/place who could help/save you and they don't purely for the fact that they don't agree with your opinions or like what you represent, surely you are tempted to go and take it since it's essentially your life against their convenience. And again, we don't know what drove humanity to such a dire situation, was it wars, terrorism, tyranny or what but it seems highly unlikely that every country of the world(all +100 of them) would just chop up their natural resources without a good reason, no, profiteering isn't a good reason since they don't do that now even though they could.

He's trying to justify the annihilation of people in case of greed , I think that's quite a reason to set that straight , the same thing happened here on earth before , europeans came to america and did just the same thing , "give us your land , your properties and everything else you own or we will straight away annihilate you" , and that's what they did , today there are only small leftovers of the culture and the people of indians in america , a sad example for the coldbloodedness of humans .

Understanding both sides is't necessarily justifying what they did. I understand what the nazis did in second world war but as sure as hell don't agree with them. The ones that started to opress the native americas where americans themselves(europeans true, but you can't blame europe for what an independent nation did). Before the U.S started to expand to the west there was very little conflicts between natives and settlers since most of the natives live in the middle parts of the continent and settlers remained closer to the coast because of the shipping routes. Also disappearance of certain cultures can't be attributed to exclusively to a expansionist exploitation, many native tribes on other countries have managed to maintain their unique culture, so have the native to a certain extent, the reason it is wainig is normal mixing of cultures, they carry some of their own and adopt something new, it's entirely normal when different culture meet.

According to the Survival Guide, humans needed unobtainium to keep Earth habitable and also needed other resources from Pandora to start reversing the environmental damage. I mentioned somewhere else that survival is the ultimate natural selector. One of the processes of natural selection is aggression, and anything else becomes a moral discussion. It occurs to me that the humans on Pandora did try a 'non-annihilation' route with the avatar program, but it didn't work because it was accompanied with machine guns by the aggressive 'security forces' that were tasked by the RDA to get the goods at any cost. We are back to the moral failure of the humans' refusal to respect the Na'vi as a people and Pandora as an ecosystem.

Thank you for this, since i don't have the Survival Guide so i didin't know this. Glad that my thoughts about their "necessity vs. greed" has some merit at least. I also agree about the moral dilemma this presents.

To be fair, the man chooses the woman he wants to pursue, but she is the one that determines whether she will agree or not, and she decides whether or not they make tshaylu. So she has a veto on his desires. That way they both have input on the decision.

Unless the survival guide says otherwise, we don't have that much insight into it, remember that Tsu'teys and Neytiris "marriage" was arranged and judging his reactions towards jake, Neytiris feelings weren't with Tsu'tey. I don't think they'd force it but it's more of a peer pressure, he chose you so according to tradition you have to comply. It's not impossible though.

"random update"

During the time i wrote this around 9 replies came. I didn't think my view of the matter would stir up such a conversation. The text might be incoherent since i wrote it about an hour and added some other posts to it. Lots of thing go unexplained but i have to take a break and come back shortly.

"end"

Maybe I got you the wrong way , if you just analyzed the situation and didn't try to justify it it's ok , I just wanted to make my point of view clear , since it's a clear aggressor - defenders situation and I am always on the side of those who are defending their property and their home .
Besides , how do you explain to yourself that there are only a few percent of the population of native americans left , their number obviously decreased the more the europeans moved towards the west and you just can't deny that there have been countless massacres among the native population done by the intruders .

[Roiki]

Besides , how do you explain to yourself that there are only a few percent of the population of native americans left , their number obviously decreased the more the europeans moved towards the west and you just can't deny that there have been countless massacres among the native population done by the intruders .

It's called assimilation of the peoples, as some of them leave the reservations and go into the outside world, they might find a spouse there, bloods get mixed and heritage becomes unclear, that too is entirely normal and unavoidable if you don't want to segregate people.

And i would like you to stop referring the American colonial expansion as something done by the Europeans, we had no part in that. In fact, many Europeans admired the "golden age" and "free society" so they weren't in any way "anti-native", on the contrary. Still, they were arrogant and supremacist. What wiped out large portions of at least northern native tribes were diseases(mainly smallpox) that were brought over here by settlers, since they were harmless to us we couldn't imagine that it would be to them. Realising this took over a hundred years.

And during the Seven Year War between French and Brittain, native fought on both sides, only after America was established that there were any form of "forced assimilation"

I don't deny that what was done to the natives was wrong, but it wasn't completely unfounded for, after all it was common for the natives to attack bordering settlements and settlers that came into their territory.

I mentioned damage to the ecosystem... It is the unobtainium that make the Iknimaya mountains float. And although it has never been specifically officially stated anywhere I have seen, I believe it is the superconducting ability of unobtainium that maintains the electrochemical structure that allows Eywa to exist as a global entity. So taking it would be dangerous to the ecosystem. Extremely dangerous.  In that regard then the humans would be wrong to take it in any fashion.

As the origins of unobtainium are a mystery, it's impossible to say what kind of an impact it would have if they did mine it from the planet in the parts where there are no settlement. Since it is a superconductor it's quite plausible that it did play a hand in the development of eywa but do the trees require it to be present in the soil or did it simply affect the evolution of the flora and fauna. Since it's highly magnetic it can have an impact to the planets magnetic field but mostly it comes from the planets core. I don't believe that it plays a significantly active role because of its crystalline structure which makes it similiar to graphite, a semimetal that doesn't appear in plant life. This is purely speculation and based on personal hypothesis around the few facts that we know, so don't take this so seriously, k?

Also since the floating mountains are the richest deposit of unobtainium the most effective way to gather it was to mine them, they didn't do that which indicates that they had at least some concideration for the environment of the planet.

[Toruk Makto]

Again, back to the Survival Guide... They named them the "Hallelujah Mountains" because of the potential riches from mining the unobtainium there, so I assume that had plans, if not the ability to do so.

[Kretän]

I think, given the situation where the earth is in dire need of unobtanium for survival, i think it would justify the decision to a certain point. However, this is not made evident in the film, and so if this is truly the case (as stated in the survival guide) then I would say I'm a little dissapointed by the one-sidedness of the film. Also, if Jake knew the importance of unobtanium for the survival of his people, then sending them back would be dishing out destruction to his entire planet!

This makes me think this is not the case, as it is surely too big of a fact for the film to miss?

Mining for greed does not justify the decision at all, IMO. People should not be forced out of their home so some outsiders can destroy them to make riches. The Na'vi refusing to leave is understandable. I wouldn't leave.

I think it comes down to how necessary the unobtanium is to the humans. If it really is a necesity for the survival of mankind, then I think I agree with them. They tried to reason with the Na'vi and were patient... But in this case they would surely speak with the leader of the Na'vi and explain the situation. For some reason I don't believe any kind of diplamatic reasoning on a conversational level took place, but thats just my speculation, without evidence.

However I am seriously skeptical of the idea of Unobtanium being a necesity for human survival. Seriously, how could this have been missed in the film? And Jake would not send his whole planet into the pits of destruction, surely?

Is there there any chance that the survival guide is wrong? And if it is official, is it possible it was added in after the film to try and make the humans decisions more justifiyable? If this is the case I would think it a very poor decision.

[Doolio]

then, i presume that it's a matter of priorities.

situation 1 [in this situation i will assume that unobtanium mining does not interfere with nature ballance]:
humans come to na'vi, explain that they are on a brink of destruction and that their only hope is to mine for unobtanium and then leave (or at least stop mining). if i were na'vi i would point point to a place where is good to dig and not to disturb na'vi or other fauna.
i really doubt that this was the case, given the fact that the price of unobtanium is the main reason humans are on pandora and that they are corporation mercs and employees, working for corporation, which is, again, working for profit. i think that is pretty obvious, given the context.

situation 2 [same as situation 1, so no harm in mining unobtanium]:
humans come to the planet with their vehicles, dozers, tools, dig for unobtanium, consider na'vi as a nuissance and do not try to reason with them, at least not in a matter of discussion, but merely ignoring them or not giving them reasons behind unobtanium mining. if i were na'vi in this situation, i would consider this act as an aggresion, rude at least, and try to drive away the unwanted guests from my home with all power i got. (the scientists are most probably not a factor here, they are on pandora because of other things, study, interaction, communication, not unobtanium, so i am not mentioning them in my examples).

situation 3 [unobtanium mining interferes with natural ballance, making instabilities in magnetic flux or eywa or whatever]:
humans come to na'vi, like in situation 1, they politelly point out their problem and their dire need of unobtanium. if i were na'vi here, i would say sorry, find another planet, you simply can't dig here. in reply to human's 'but we must, we'll all perish if we don't' i would say sorry again, but we can't help you, you can't mine here and we won't let you.

situation 4 [unobtanium mining interferes with ballance yadayada]:
like in situation 2. pretty self explicable:)

[Doolio]

i am pretty sure that terrans were planning to make one big unobtanium mine of pandora and eventually kill all living things by reckless and greedy mining. i mean, it's not their planet after all...

[Unitìranyu]

Flaws? Maybe.

But let me tell you one thing, They aren't as arrogant, cruel and dumb as humans.