by Matt Rozsa | Dec 30, 2024 | Salon.com
Jimmy Carter lived longer than any other American president, passing away on Sunday at the age of 100. Given that he devoted much of that life to serving others, it is fitting that Carter was blessed with so many years.
During his extra time on earth, the 39th president was involved in charities all over the world, from the peacemaking and disease-fighting Carter Center to Habitat for Humanity, which constructs affordable housing. He also remained politically active. During Donald Trump’s first term, Carter told Salon that “the government is worse than it has been before.” He added that it was the first time during his life that “the truth is ignored, allies are deliberately aggravated, China, Europe, Mexico and Canada are hurt economically and have to hurt us in response, Americans see the future worse than the present, and immigrants are treated cruelly.” These words are an accurate encapsulation of his legacy, for in so many ways Carter fought against every single value he saw violated during Trump’s administration. Jimmy Carter was the anti-Trump.
Born in the small Georgia town of Plains on Oct. 1, 1924, Carter was the son of a successful small business owner and a registered nurse. After serving in the United States Navy, he expanded his family’s peanut-growing business by utilizing the latest advances in agricultural science and technology. Carter started his political career in 1962 by being elected to the state senate in a hotly contested election. After serving two legislative terms, he campaigned for governor — first without success in 1966, and then eventually winning in 1970. Shortly after his victory, Carter declared an end to the Jim Crow era in Georgia politics, announcing in his inaugural address that “the time of racial discrimination is over.” He later installed portraits of African-American Georgia leaders Martin Luther King Jr., Lucy Craft Laney and Henry McNeal Turner in the state capitol.
Carter quickly developed a reputation as the leader of a so-called New South, a moderate governor who focused on honesty and integrity in a notoriously corrupt region. This image later became crucial to his presidential ambitions in the 1976 election. During the Democratic primaries, Carter pioneered innovative grassroots campaign tactics, overcoming a crowded field despite being an underdog. Once nominated, Carter faced off against the incumbent president, Republican Gerald Ford. Carter entered the campaign with a major advantage: Ford was still politically struggling from his controversial decision to pardon disgraced ex-president Richard Nixon after the Watergate scandal. Famously promising that he would always tell the truth if he won, Carter defeated Ford in a close election in which the Democrat eschewed ideology and instead cultivated an anodyne image as a folksy populist.
It is at this point that the reality of Carter’s life conflicts with the myth. According to the spin promulgated by conservative Republicans after Carter’s presidency, he was an ineffective leader who was sent packing by an angry electorate when Ronald Reagan beat him in the 1980 election. While the second half of this statement was true, for Carter was indeed electorally humiliated by Reason, the Georgia peanut farmer was also an accomplished president in both foreign and domestic policy. His legacy was stymied by his shortcomings as a politician rather than by any serious weaknesses as a policymaker. Journalist Theodore H. White perhaps best captured this dichotomy between Carter’s accomplishments and his image in the book, “America in Search of Itself: The Making of the President, 1956-1980.”
Jimmy Carter was always a mystery, this man with the straw-colored hair and clear blue eyes, whose enemies came to despise him while those who would be friends could not understand him. Carter fit no mold nor any of those familiar journalistic diagrams by which political writers try to explore the nature of a presidency through the personality of the President. He could not describe himself, as Roosevelt so jauntily did, as having passed from being “Dr. New Deal” to “Dr. Win the War.” Nor could he be described, as was Richard Nixon by so many of us, in the twenty years of Nixon’s eminence, as being the “Old Nixon” or the “New Nixon,” with new Nixons succeeding one another every two or three years in the public print. The personality of Jimmy Carter was the same from the day he decided to run for the presidency until he lost it. And that personality, rather than changing from an “old” to a “new” Carter, had to be examined as a set of layers of faith, of action, even of unpleasantnesses.
To be sure, Carter had more than his share of disappointments — his tax reform agenda, national health insurance plan, labor law proposal, instant voter registration bill, energy mobilization board and many other ambitious ideas never became reality. Yet as White was quick to point out, Carter was hardly a failure. In foreign policy, Carter is perhaps best known for negotiating the longest-enduring Middle Eastern peace agreement of all time — namely, the historic deal struck between Israel and Egypt after Carter’s delicate negotiations between Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin and Egyptian President Anwar Sadat. This was not his sole geopolitical achievement of historic magnitude: Despite the staunch opposition of conservatives in Congress, Carter unequivocally denounced white supremacist African governments such as those in Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) and South Africa, unlike previous administrations. In stark contrast to the antisemitic Nixon, Carter prioritized the rights of Soviet Jews facing antisemitism when shaping his Cold War policies. Finally, he defied American jingoistic tendencies and returned the Panama Canal to the people of Panama, despite (once again) the protests of many conservatives. In doing so, he articulated a humanitarian rationalization for all of his foreign policymaking that could not be in starker contrast to the bellicosity and imperialist aspirations of Trumpism.
“This agreement with Panama is something we want because we know it is right,” Carter explained, after reviewing the history of the Panama Canal in detail. “This is not merely the surest way to protect and save the canal, it’s a strong, positive act of a people who are still confident, still creative, still great. This new partnership can become a source of national pride and self-respect in much the same way that building the canal was 75 years ago. It’s the spirit in which we act that is so very important.”
By contrast, President-elect Donald Trump is talking about trying to reacquire the Panama Canal.
On domestic policy, Carter was also far ahead of the curve. He passed landmark ethics legislation in response to the Watergate scandal and avoided any serious scandals during his own presidency. He also doubled the size of America’s national park system, created tax incentives for families to install solar panels (while putting them on the White House) and established a so-called Superfund to clean up contaminated factory and mining sites. Economically Carter endorsed the Federal Reserve’s decision to raise interest rates and thereby “squeeze out inflation.” (This ultimately worked, but the benefits were not seen until after Carter left office.) When it came to promoting diversity, Carter appointed more women and more Black people to senior positions and to the federal bench than all 38 presidents before him put together.
“The energy security we enjoy today is due to the energy bills he passed,” former Carter domestic affairs adviser Stu Eizenstat told Salon in 2018. “The ethics legislation, more important than ever today, all was done during his time. He was the greatest environmental president, doubling the size of the National Park System with the Alaska Lands bill.”
Perhaps most importantly, the Carter administration was alarmed by the existential threat posed to humanity by climate change. In an era before the fossil fuels lobby had successfully blanketed Washington with fear at the mere thought of effectively addressing global warming, American government officials recognized the need for reform and had started working on clean energy policies. Before any meaningful policies could be implemented, however, the 1980 election rolled around. Americans’ eyes were on Iran, where 52 Americans had been held hostage by radical Islamists since 1979. The military mission attempting to rescue U.S. hostages in Iran was a disastrous failure, albeit through no fault of Carter’s own. Meanwhile, the economy struggled with spiking oil prices, causing Carter’s approval ratings to further tank. It didn’t help matters that he had become a dull and listless speaker, in sharp contrast to both his early homespun style and the sparkling rhetoric and optimism the former actor Reagan regularly supplied.
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Reagan’s subsequent defeat of Carter in the 1980 election proved a watershed moment in not just American history, but world history. Most prominently, it ushered in the so-called “Reagan Revolution,” a period in which the Republican Party became staunchly associated with ideological conservatism and dominated the political landscape. On a deeper level, though, it marked the end of a period of hope. After Reagan weakened labor unions, income inequality skyrocketed; when he did the same thing to civil rights legislation, systemic racial barriers were left even harder to surmount. Many promising Carter initiatives, such as orienting foreign policy to prioritize human rights and supporting an Equal Rights Amendment for women, died along with his dreams of re-election. Perhaps most importantly, if there had been a chance that the human species could have reversed the effects of severe environmental pollution — in particular, climate change — and avoided ecological catastrophe, that slender reed broke once Reagan’s reactionaries took over.
Rick Perlstein, an American historian and journalist who has penned acclaimed books on the 1960s and 1970s like “Before the Storm,” “Nixonland” and “Reaganland,” has been critical of Carter, but speaking with Salon last year he acknowledged that Earth as a planet would be better off today if Carter had defeated Reagan in 1980. Although Perlstein argued that Carter’s progressive energy programs were motivated more by economic nationalism than environmentalism, they still would have included the essential environmental regulations humanity needs.
“Carter’s policies, had they continued, would have been bad,” Perlstein told Salon at the time. “But Reagan’s were downright cataclysmic. He and his advisors simply despised the notion of using the power of government to regulate environmental harm.”
It would be unfair to close a tribute to Carter’s life on such a bleak note. When I had the privilege of interviewing him for Salon back in 2018, he offered inspiring words of wisdom. We mostly focused on the administration of then-President Donald Trump — and needless to say, Carter wasn’t impressed. Yet we did not only talk about what was wrong with America. We also discussed Carter’s role in advancing disability rights by supporting Section 504, a provision of the 1964 Civil Rights Act protecting disabled individuals from discrimination. Because I am autistic and physically disabled, this is why I personally admire Carter, and why I thanked him for his work. Reflecting on his legacy, I asked Carter what advice he had for younger Americans who also look up to him. His response is extremely appropriate to the America we enter as Trump commences his second term. Carter may have lacked Trump’s bombast and charisma but made up for that with a sincerity and substance that we are guaranteed to sorely miss in the years ahead. Whereas Trump left his first term without a single notable foreign policy achievement, and only a pair of impeachments (plus an unsuccessful coup attempt) to distinguish him on the domestic front, both during and after his presidency Carter made America and the world a better place. That is why his parting words to me hit so hard: “Never give up, and follow the advice of my school teacher: ‘We must accommodate changing times but cling to principles that do not change.'”
Originally from Salon.com
by Matt Rozsa | Dec 30, 2024 | Salon.com
Last month the Copernicus Climate Change Service, an organization run by the European Union to monitor global heating, revealed that Earth was on track to surpass the 1.5º C threshold. This manifested throughout 2024 in so-called “weird weather,” from unusually extreme hurricanes and floods to intense heat waves, parching droughts and unprecedented wildfires. It’s little wonder this year was the hottest in recorded history, breaking the record shattered in 2023.
A recent study even found that 2024 experienced 41 days of extra dangerous heat because of human-caused climate change. To make matters worse, recent data suggests that climate change is accelerating even faster than scientists predicted, meaning we’re rapidly entering uncharted territory. International conferences to address environmental issues like climate change (such as COP29) consistently ended in disappointment.
Why are continuing to go backward on this issue? It’s certainly not from a lack of awareness or passion for the environment. Many people understand the stakes: climate change threatens to kill billions of humans and wipe out millions of species, pushing the definition of “habitability” to the brink. Top climate scientists say there’s still reason to hope and time to act, explaining why humanity has failed to meet its climate goals — and what we can do from here.
“The obstacle isn’t technology,” University of Pennsylvania climate scientist Dr. Michael E. Mann told Salon. “We have the technological knowhow and infrastructure to decarbonize our economy on the needed timescale. What we’re currently lacking — globally, and certainly now in the U.S. under the control of Trump and Republicans — is the political will.”
Mann said humanity needs to rapidly decarbonize our economy. The overwhelming scientific evidence demonstrates humanity’s overuse of fossil fuels is the primary cause of climate change, as doing so releases greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.
“We need governmental incentives that will massively incentivize renewable energy and phase out fossil fuel energy as soon as possible,” Mann said. “It won’t happen, however, if young people in particular don’t turn out to vote for climate-forward policymakers.” He added that many did not turn out in sufficiently large numbers during the 2024 election, “and too many fell victims to dishonest tactics of the Republicans and even voted for them out of ignorance of their true agenda. As a result, we elected the most pro-fossil fuel, climate-adverse government in modern history.” Going forward, Mann hopes people who prioritize climate change turn out to vote in larger numbers.
Dr. Kevin Trenberth, a distinguished scholar at the National Center for Atmospheric Research, explicitly argued for three specific policy measures: “Cut emissions and use of fossil fuels; promote renewables; prepare for the consequences,” Trenberth said. He also noted that growing trees, carbon capture and storage and direct air capture of carbon dioxide emissions tend not to work.
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In general, it appears like humanity has failed to make limiting greenhouse gas emissions a priority, according to Tom Knutson, a senior scientist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory, said that it appears humanity as a species has not “decided that strongly limiting future emissions of greenhouse gases is a top priority goal that should be pursued and treated as a critical ‘pass or fail goal.’”
Knutson, who has contributed to the scientific efforts behind reports for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change or the U.S. Fifth National Climate Assessment, views his job as providing relevant scientific information rather than offering policy prescriptions. Regardless of the specific measures that people choose to democratically decarbonize our society, it will be essential that they establish realistic goals and reliably follow through in implementing them.
“Broadly speaking, humanity can decide, based on the above scenario information (with uncertainties) provided by IPCC and other scientific sources, what future emission pathway to set as a goal,” Knutson said. “Then society and policymakers can enact policies in an effort to reach the emission goal that is set. If they decide collectively that scenario X is the goal, and they fail to enact or implement the policies to achieve scenario X, or the policies are not followed as desired by the policymakers, then that would constitute a failure in my view.”
As humanity swims against the tide of rising temperatures, they will also need to solve lingering mysteries regarding these scientific facts. At the time of this writing, Knutson and his colleagues are researching issues such as why current climate models are not able to reproduce the observed pattern of sea surface temperature trends (1980 to 2022) in the tropical Pacific and southern Pacific Ocean. Other scientists are examining why climate change has been accelerating even faster than previous models anticipated. Because climate science includes many variables that humans do not know, experts cannot precisely anticipate or explain every phenomenon that ensues as people continue global heating through greenhouse gas emissions.
Yet Knutson does have his own hypothesis about why climate change seems to be getting worse at an ever more rapid rate.
“I would speculate that natural variability may be creating temporary trends (either ‘hiatus’ periods of little warming or temporary ‘spurts’ of accelerated warming) lasting up to a few decades,” Knutson said. “Maybe that is part of the explanation for the recent changes.”
Citing his 2016 paper for Nature Communications on possible future trajectories for global mean temperature, Knutson said that this “suggests to perhaps just be patient for now to see if the recent acceleration we have seen is just a temporary effect of internal variability or temporary forcing change, or if it really does represent an accelerated long-term warming rate, relative to the trend we’ve been on since about 1970.” He added that these are his personal views and do not necessarily represent those of NOAA or the U.S. government.
Mann emphasized that the most recent peer-reviewed scientific research does not find any acceleration of warming itself.
“Some impacts of climate change are proceeding faster than expected,” Mann said. “Examples are ice sheet melt and sea level rise, and the rise in extreme weather events. The longer-term warming itself is steady and is proceeding as predicted by the models.”
Perhaps the bottom line in all of this is that human beings must stop relying on fossil fuels. Dr. Friederike Otto, the lead of World Weather Attribution and an Imperial College climate scientist, put it bluntly when announcing the extra 41-days of extreme heat that occurred in 2024.
“Climate change did play a role, and often a major role in most of the events we studied, making heat, droughts, tropical cyclones and heavy rainfall more likely and more intense across the world, destroying lives and livelihoods of millions and often uncounted numbers of people,” Otto said during a media briefing. “As long as the world keeps burning fossil fuels, this will only get worse.”
Originally from Salon.com
by Matt Rozsa | Dec 30, 2024 | Salon.com
Human brains are not computers, in spite of how often such a comparison is made, but a recent study in the journal Neuron reveals our gray matter is quite pokey even when compared to Wi-Fi speeds.
Researchers from the California Institute of Technology calculated the speed at which humans performed tasks that can be quantified as “information processing.” For example, they figured out the speed at which people can solve a Rubik’s Cube, memorize numbers, play Tetris and remember random orders in a deck of cards. Reducing this data into “bits,” wherein quantities are measured through a binary code (0s and 1s), the scientists then calculated the overall “speed” at which the brain processes this information.
Ultimately they concluded that the average rate of human thought is roughly 10 bits per second. By contrast, Wi-Fi speeds are usually measured in hundreds of millions of bits per second, while the human eye processes information at 100 million bits per second.
“The brain seems to operate in two distinct modes: the ‘outer’ brain handles fast high-dimensional sensory and motor signals, whereas the ‘inner’ brain processes the reduced few bits needed to control behavior,” the authors write. “Plausible explanations exist for the large neuron numbers in the outer brain, but not for the inner brain, and we propose new research directions to remedy this.”
It may seem counterintuitive to refer to a large number of neurons in the outer brain after learning that humans think so slowly, but in fact the experts believe our speed of thought is more than sufficient for our evolutionary needs. The earliest creatures to develop central nervous systems did so in order to move toward food and away from predators. From there, the brain simply continued to develop using this linear mode of thinking, as a kluge rather than a rationally designed machine. When our brains process abstract concepts, it is engaging in the same basic activity that it employs when navigating. For these purposes, 10 bits per second does the job.
“Our ancestors have chosen an ecological niche where the world is slow enough to make survival possible,” the authors write. “In fact, the 10 bits per second are needed only in worst-case situations, and most of the time our environment changes at a much more leisurely pace.”
Originally from Salon.com
by Matt Rozsa | Dec 28, 2024 | Education, Salon.com
Seemingly no one wants a low IQ. People with self-reported low intelligence quotients describe struggling with self-esteem issues and romantic hardships. The Environmental Protection Agency is reevaluating its support for fluoridation because of reported drops in IQ scores, while the Supreme Court is reconsidering death row cases on the basis that certain inmates’ low IQs might be mitigating factors in their sentences. “Low IQ” is a common insult from online forums to mainstream political debates.
All of these news stories are linked by one assumption: The idea that IQ is synonymous with a person’s intelligence. This is a widespread belief, but is it based on scientific evidence? Like an emperor has no clothes situation, do we fearfully accept IQ tests as the primary means of measuring intelligence so we will not have our own intelligence challenged?
Psychologist Howard Gardner, a research professor at Harvard University, who argues that the famous so-called “intelligence quotient” tests pioneered by French psychologist Alfred Binet and French psychiatrist Théodore Simon do not capture the full breadth of humanity’s cognitive abilities. He also says his ideas are more relevant today than ever — especially as Americans develop an anti-science culture that, among other things, drastically overrates the significance of IQ tests.
The original IQ test tried to measure memory, attention and problem solving, while modern versions focus on spatial perception, language abilities and mathematical skills, which sounds pretty thorough. But as demonstrated in two recently published collections of papers — “The Essential Howard Gardner on Education” and “The Essential Howard Gardner on Mind,” both from Teachers College Press — he shows we need more than that to truly understand human intelligence, especially as artificial intelligence enters the classroom.
IQ tests assess human intelligence in much the same way that a Polaroid captures human beauty; it captures objective details, but only from a single snapshot in time and mitigated by the eye of the beholder. In contrast to this simplistic method for measuring the mind, Gardner identifies seven distinct types of intelligence: Linguistic intelligence, which is utility of language; logical-mathematical intelligences; spatial intelligence, which is used to shape the physical world; musical intelligence; bodily-kinesthetic intelligence, such as the physical skills displayed by surgeons, athletes and dancers; interpersonal intelligence, or the ability to understand others; and intrapersonal intelligence, or the ability to honestly and accurately understand one’s self.
Not everyone agrees with Gardner. Conservative commentator and psychologist Dr. Jordan Peterson has dismissed the concept of multiple intelligences as being a “fad” and “rubbish,” and in his own popular videos seems to take for granted that IQ tests accurately measure intelligence. Even though scientific evidence consistently shows IQ tests are not reliable, the notion that IQ equates with high intelligence seems to be embedded in our political and educational culture. If nothing else, Gardner hopes his books can stem that tide. Salon spoke with Gardner about how to make that a reality.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
People commonly associate IQ with intelligence. How do you feel about our culture’s obsession with this particular test as a metric for measuring intellect?
[Alfred] Benet had no interest in anything genetic. He was interested in predicting who would do well at a certain kind of school. If you and I were parents, and we wanted to know how our kid would do, the IQ test does as well as anything else you can do in 15 minutes or an hour. But at schools, where AI [artificial intelligence] will be much more important every month, the less good an instrument we have. We need to develop different ways of assessing people’s intelligence or talents.
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I gave an important talk to colleagues less than a month ago, and I said, “Look, we all use the word ‘smart’, but if you’re trying to decide whether somebody in physics should get tenure, you’re going to have entirely different criteria then when it’s somebody who’s teaching Shakespeare or Homer. “
Even within the university, and even within an Ivy League school like Harvard, we distinguish between different kinds of intelligence. Everybody distinguishes between different kinds of talents.
Some people like Jordan Peterson say that IQ predicts “success” and has described your ideas as rubbish.
I don’t use words like that, and the answer is if you want to predict who will do well in a certain setting in a certain time, and you only have a few minutes to do it, an IQ test will do as well as anything.
Here is the important point: I don’t think that my theory can ever be tested by a short-answer kind of test, a short-answer kind of instrument. In the late ‘80s, we created a preschool environment which provided food — that is, intellectual food — for the range of intelligences. We watched the kids over the course of a year to say what they were interested in, where they spent time, and importantly what they got better at. A useful analogy for you is if you take a kid to a children’s museum, you see his or her interests once, but if you take them there a number of times, you see what really interests them.
I can’t count how many letters and emails I’ve gotten over the last decades from people who say, “I thought I was dumb, or the teachers told me my kids were dumb, or I applied for Mensa and I didn’t get it. But then I learned about your theory and I explored things to find out what I was good at, what I was average at, what I was not good at. And that’s been liberating for me or for my children or my grandchildren or whatever.”
If Jordan Peterson were here, I would say to him, what do you do with the people who aren’t smart on your testing day? Do you just throw them away? Do you pitch them away or do you say, and here we get to the important educational stuff, the kid may not do well in a certain kind of test given in a certain way, but how can I reach that child who wants a child to understand science? What are the right experiences? What are the right teachings? What is the right media What are the right games to play with?
I’ve written many times, if you just tell people they’re smart or dumb, you’ve crippled them. But if you say, this is what your profile of strengths and weaknesses are, how should we work on them, you get people to work on them. That’s where you progress, and that’s the humane thing to do.
Let’s talk about the widespread scientific illiteracy in this country. People in the public seem to not be able to understand concepts like climate change, evolution and vaccines in an educated way. Based on your theory of multiple intelligences, what suggestions do you have to promote scientific literacy within the public?
Number one, we don’t actually know whether scientific literacy is worse in this country than in other countries. It may be or may not be, but I’m not sure that it’s scientific ignorance that is at the heart of the problem. Just take the current Congress, which is turning quite right wing. There are many people there who have very good education and they could certainly pass tests of scientific literacy. But to be technical about it, they don’t give in politically because they would rather make it anti-scientific.
Let’s use Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as an example. They’d rather embrace him because it fulfills their political goals.
As a scholar, and especially an interdisciplinary scholar, I want everybody to love and want to increase their knowledge and to respect knowledge. Ever since the 16th and 17th century, scientific knowledge has grown exponentially. If your question implies the fact that we have more knowledge than ever and it can be approached and picked up in many ways, it doesn’t mean that people care about it when they want to achieve certain political goals.
Now let’s get to the heart of your question. I think it’s important, number one, for everybody to have some experience doing science. And that means finding a problem, guessing how it can be answered or solved, and then mucking around. I went to the schools in Scranton, Pennsylvania and then I went to college, and having some experience in actually doing experiments and seeing how they come out and sometimes changing your mind on the basis of how they come out, I think is very important.
Certainly in any affluent country like America, there’s no reason why everybody can’t have some experience in puzzling about something. Does this projectile fall more quickly than this one? And if not, why not?
Here is where I think the new technologies have profound effects for teachers and learners. I’m going to use a word, which unfortunately isn’t perfect if you come up with a better one and it has the double disadvantage that it’s also what Facebook is called now, and that is meta. I think teachers and students, all of us will need to have less technical and specific knowledge and more meta knowledge. “Meta” here means it’s knowledge about knowledge and it’s understanding how something got found out, and whether it’s reliable, and how we could test whether it’s reliable or not, and what might enable us to change our mind about this.
Originally from Salon.com
by Matt Rozsa | Dec 26, 2024 | Matthewrozsa
I’ve watched “Avatar” so many times that, according to some reports, it could be unhealthy.
It all starts with my childhood. Growing up as an autistic kid in the late ’90s, I went through a phase in which I obsessed over box office statics. This included that period in late 1997 and early 1998 when director/writer James Cameron’s “Titanic” became the highest grossing movie of all time (that is, unadjusted for inflation; it landed at No. 2 when adjusted for inflation, after the 1939 Civil War epic “Gone with the Wind”). I vividly remember following each week’s returns, poring through data points like a sports fan analyzing the latest game statistics.
By contrast, I was much less enthusiastic when Cameron released “Avatar” in 2009. It was predicted to join “Titanic” in earning unprecedented quantities of money, which it’d need to do to recoup its $237 million budget ($349 million in 2024). Based on the trailers I thought “Avatar” looked derivative and preachy, and only relented to see it in theaters after a friend urged me to connect to the zeitgeist.
I’ve since had a falling out with that friend, but all of the grief he caused in our friendship was worth it for the single act of him making sure I saw “Avatar” in a movie theater. It truly is a marvel for the senses, the pinnacle of what the art of cinema can achieve on a visceral and emotional level. My life would be worse if I did not have the memory to cherish of seeing “Avatar” in a theater, and then remained an “Avatar” fan ever since.
As I am wont to do, I talked with fellow moviegoers once the credits began to roll, and the three I spoke to all loved it. Yet I struggled as the years passed because — while fans of superheroes or “Star Wars” had countless movies to turn to for sustenance — I just had one. While some created communities or learned the Na’vi language (I’m too shy to do either), I contented myself with rewatching “Avatar” whenever I could.
The bad news is that, as reported by some media outlets at the time, I sometimes felt depressed after doing so. The good news is that I felt this way because I missed the lush visuals of Pandora and the intense experience of joining human protagonist Jake Sully (Sam Worthington) on his adventure as he explores an alien world. I enjoyed letting the bright colors wash over me, examining details in the fictional fauna and flora and gleaning what I could about “Avatar” universe lore.
Yes, the story is formulaic. Specifically it follows the formula of somber revisionist Westerns like “Dance with Wolves” and ecological fables like “Fern Gully.” Given Cameron’s political agenda and need to innovate new technology to realize his artistic vision, he perhaps could not have done this any other way. Certainly executing his ideas while being precedent was easier if the ideas themselves were somewhat conventional.
“Conventional” is not the same thing as “irrelevant,” though, and “Avatar”‘s conventional story remains more relevant than ever. Take the scene when Sully prays to Eywa, the super-intelligence that connects all living themes in the Pandoran biosphere.
“If Grace is there with you — look in her memories — she can show you the world we come from,” Sully says. “There’s no green there. They killed their Mother, and they’re gonna do the same here. More Sky People are gonna come. They’re gonna come like a rain that never ends. Unless we stop them. They chose me for something. I will stand and fight. You know I will. But I need a little help here.”
“Avatar” never shows our ecologically blighted former home, but those 74 words paint a picture as potent as anything special effects can create. At its core, “Avatar” is a warning against environmental exploitation and the colonialist ambitions, with the latter getting a proper roasting in a defiant Sully monologue translated by one of the alien leaders (Laz Alonso as Tsu’tey). Bear in mind while reading this that Worthington’s delivery of these lines are apparently what convinced Cameron to cast him over better known actors like Chris Evans and Chris Pratt. (I also included the Na’vi translation.)
Na’vi: Fpole’ sawtutel ‘upxaret.
English: The Sky People have sent us a message…
Na’vi: Ayoeri tsat new.
English: …that they can take whatever they want… (lit. Regarding us, (they) want that)
Na’vi: Tsun mivunge.
English: …and no one can stop them. (lit. can take)
Na’vi: Slä awngal ‘upxaret fpìye’ for.
English: Well, we will send them a message.
Na’vi: Kämakto nìwin, ayngati spivule hufwel.
English: You ride out as fast as the wind can carry you.
Na’vi: Ayolo’ru alahe peng ziva’u.
English: You tell the other clans to come.
Na’vi: For((u)) peng syeraw toruk makto.
English: Tell them Toruk Makto calls to them.
Na’vi: Tswayon set oehu!
English: You fly now, with me!
Na’vi: Ma smukan, ma smuke!
English: (My) brothers, (my) sisters!
Na’vi: Sawtute wìyintxu ayoeng.
English: And we will show the Sky People…
Na’vi: Ke tsun fo fìkem sivi!
English: …that they cannot take whatever they want!
Na’vi: Fìtsenge… l(u) awngeyä!
English: And that this… this is our land!
While I cast no shade on “Titanic” and its fans, that movie never achieves the eloquence and prescience of these two monologues. For all of the criticism of the “Avatar” plot, the “Avatar” story (by which I mean the execution of that plot) is as close to perfect as anything ever put to screen. This is why I regularly rewatch it at home; because “Avatar” is a great movie, rewatching it in any format is superior to most other viewing experiences.
“Avatar” deserves to be the highest grossing movie of all time, replacing “Titanic” as No. 2 when adjusted for inflation.
