Kalev Pehme's Blog: Poetry, Philosophy, Slow and Close Reading

Kalev Pehme has decided to blog. This doesn't mean that he will tell us every detail of his life. Rather it means that he will provide rich reflections on philosophy. He has offered an initial taste of what it means to blog in Pehmeian manner. Indeed, that manner is something he calls "anti-blogging."

What is an anti-blog? Mr Pehme has already indicated what it is with four slow and close readings of Leo Strauss' account of Plato's Republic--from The City and Man. In these posts he addresses important things Socratic and Platonic. In his running commentary, he stops to ask some obvious questions that are rhetorically implicit in Strauss' writing. For instance, the first piece has some instructive remarks about irony and the nature of Platonic and Socratic speech--a theme which Strauss himself makes explicit.

In sum, Mr. Pehme is providing some worthwhile blogging--or anti-blogging as he would have it.

I also like the picture of the tree lined path that he uses as the masthead. This picture is indicative of the kind of contemplative thought that one can only have while on a journey.

Check it out.

Thoughts on Our Present Discontent

The first thing that should be said in debates regarding what is good these days is that no argument is authoritative, and hence anyone bearing credentials of authority is merely another instance of the game of garnering authority through power. To be sure, one should always argue in terms of the Constitution if one is arguing a serious issue in American politics. As Tocqueville said, in America all political questions become legal questions. Likewise, if one is arguing in terms of the Catholic Church, then one should rely on doctrine, canon law, and the authority of the church, which in the end relies on papal encyclicals. But these things have become mere historical curiosities these days. One wonders if the constitution and the church as authoritative institutions are merely regnant of some antecedent belief in morality that has been destroyed by the belief that all men are created equal--or at least by a bastardized version of equality understood as relativism which is nothing other than the application of democracy to moral thought itself. This relativism, it seems, is the truth of things today.

But to return to the first thing, if the polity or the church are no longer authoritative these days then neither is anything else. This includes science--even with its demonstrative rhetoric of "studies show." It is true that the church, the polity, and the modern research institution--in terms of their own definition--allow for disagreement within themselves (and serious disagreement at that). They provided in the past the very place of disagreement. They provided a place of legitimacy for argument itself. However, nowadays those places no longer exist as a place. The polity, the church or the university are riddled with self-seeking placement, and they replicate this reality through sophistical reasons defending their power as truth. Instead of loci for serious debate and discussion, disagreement within and between these institutions has been these days securely been placed under the aegis of Hobbes's notion of the state of nature. This is a place with no common judge, and a place where each and every one can say and do what is what. Who are you to tell me what to do? becomes the mantra of this age as each person figures out what is right for his or herself. Following this Hobbesian logic, each sector of former institutional authority must Leviathan-like subdue the other children of pride. It goes without saying that in this scenario there is no truth without aspiration to absolute power.

At this point--enter the mass media. The media have become the definition of debate. They are a marketplace of ideas as Holmes had it. This situation becomes the contemporary understanding of democracy as one reads it from the New York Times--the religious ritual of those who are correct thinking as Thoreau had it. John Rawls, the good liberal that he was, tried to make a theory of democracy on this basis. He argued that there can be a modus vivendi amongst these different institutional worldviews without at the same time endorsing any comprehensive doctrine. Behind a veil of ignorance one can still come up with a common good that makes for an overlapping consensus. Yet, this consensus--overlapping or otherwise (general will?)--is merely a way of restating Hobbes's Leviathan in the technocratic language of the higher journalism, e.g. The New York Review of Each Other's Books.

I recognize that many--like Marx and Nietzsche and Freud and Foucault in their different ways--point out the impossibility of this "market" which allows for a "self" that can say what is what in relation to others. Each of these writers in his own way points out that no one is saying what is said. As Nietzsche put it, I don't think. It thinks. Perhaps this is true--but it is still the I that thinks that the I doesn't think. All these proto post-modern thinkers simply carry over the Hobbesean state of nature to new and future circumstances. What remains central to their project is that there is no common judge and each and every one can say and do what is what.

So this brings me to a conversation I had the other night with my friend Roger. We were drinking a few beers at the local watering hole. We got onto the question of happiness and how one finds it--especially in terms of human sexuality (or eros). Is there a a solution to human erotic longing? It came to light in a discussion about movies, but it was also a discussion that was interspersed with saying hello to various acquaintances, as well as to occasional comments about the typical clientele at this bar. It was a privileged position, which if the first thing is to be remembered, has no authority. In other words, we were bullshitting.

I made the point that there are no rules regarding love and lust these days. Male or female, romantic or cynic, gay or straight, traditionalist or liberationist--it is an open world. If there is a rule, it seems to be the central command of contemporary culture that we must enjoy this situation (cf. Slavoj Zizek). However, there used to be a time when the command was to follow the unwritten rules handed down from time immemorial. This old fashioned way led to all kinds of pain and suffering. The young woman had to choose safety over love. The young man had to divest himself from his charm for the boredom of matrimony. The homosexual was forced to live a life of lies. I could add others, but regardless, this is where the unwritten but nonetheless inscribed rules left one. It led to all sorts of unhappiness--and who knows if it led all kinds of "mental illness" (to use the invented term that the very last generation which seriously dealt with these tensions called it). Nonetheless, the folks that lived in terms of the old rules were the ones who fought wars, worked hard, raised families, and didn't bitch too much about their unhappiness--though their grievances were easily read between the lines in the best of their literature.

This sense of old fashioned rules is obviously not our scene these days. Old fashioned rules are shunned, even if they are missed as indicative in the various retro arty scenes. However, let me submit that it is a good thing that the old rules are gone. They led to all sorts of--once again to borrow the lingo of that last generation--neuroses. That said, the old rules prescribed behavior that was known by all, whereas the new way is anything goes. There was a good reason to get rid of the old rules, it seems to me, even if their rejection wasn't thought all the way through. The old rules required duty, self-sacrifice and hard work. The new rules were simply pleasure, freedom, and doing your own thing. The old rules made doing the right thing painful. The new rules allowed you to follow your bliss, and this was considered to be the right thing. To be sure, this following of bliss did not mean irresponsibility, but it allowed you to make it up as you went. This led to the beautiful array of human types to show themselves, but in the absence of rules there was a problem without a form to give them a material sense of what made one complete. It led to arbitrariness (on a side note, if you wonder why the TV show Lost ultimately sucked it was because of the application of the new rules of pure potentiality as arbitrary decision to things like plot and character). The new good was pure pragmatism--and on the most intimate and erotic level. The sexual revolution destroyed the old rules in the name of a free making of the rules. It wrought--amongst other things--feminism, abortion, two member working households, single moms, broken homes, doing your own thing, latch-key children, and the sensitive new age guy (i.e., the SNAG).

So, it seems to me, the sexual revolution is part and parcel of Hobbes's notion of each and every one being his or her own authority (or should I say following Nietzsche/Freud "its" own authority).

We are free to do so many things today. We have demolished those old rules. However, are we happier? I suspect that we are more confused and insecure. Those who say otherwise have either not heard the news, or are willfully blind. No one or no thing has authority over another. Remember, this is the first thing, but it is also the last thing.

The true question--given this circumstance--is whether the Leviathan has made such a situation possible (my opinion), or whether the Leviathan is our one and only future (the opinion of those who think their opinions still matter).

One must seriously study ways out of this predicament--i.e., Plato or the Bible. Either way would be better than this contemporary nonsense, but most these days would rely on their belief in therapy. Studies show, as it is said, that only therapy works. Or even better, the Prozac Nation of psycho-pharmaceuticals. If this is the solution, send me to the madhouse now!

For the time being, here the Modern Lovers speak of a norm (all irony included) with which I'm willing to live.

Beneath My Pay Grade or Above My Gay Parade?

I wonder about figures of speech. I refuse to let speech become some abstract realm above my capacity to speak meaning, but perhaps my refusal has no point. Structuralist theorists speak of polysemeny. In this way anyone's personal meaning means as much as anyone's else. This is a shame bcacuse one cannot mean what one says. It is always determined by the other. Relativism becomes the democracy of thought or vice versa.

This leads to a situation where meaning is understood in terms of what is other than intended. It is irony as way a life--like Charles Williams spoke of in The Figure of Beatrice. Regardless of one's own irony, postmodern life has become a conflict of theological perspectives none of which a thinking man wishes to hold. One has one's reason or revelation as absolute moral truth. Fuck you, if you disagree with ME--but I only mean this ironically (surely not in some Polemarchus or Carl Schmitt kinda way).

Where is the philosopher who can defuse and diffuse such dogmatic assertions of the day? No one will let you alone, but no one gives you the tools (as if they existed) to defend yourself, and all of those tools would be (as if they existed) subjective preferences anyway. When everyone is equal there is no meaning other than what the crowd speaks--as Tocqueville would have it. The crowd is impressed with what one can say above one's pay grade. If you don't like this then you can at least stick to your specialty. At the least, it will get you a job. If you can't do any of this then you must be gay.

In this way, the democratic relativistic song enjoins you to follow the gay parade because everyone else knows what this means anyway. It is simple. This is where the sexual revolution has left us. I can't speak above my pay grade--what Weber (borrowing from Goethe) called specialists without spirit--but if I must I will speak my heart, which must in advance always mean that which is idiosyncratic--which is to say that I must announce my pay grade as the gay parade. Strangely, I think such heartfelt speech is what Weber meant by the voluptuary without heart. This sucks.

Needless to say, contemporary mores are fucked up. To say the least, if you are happy today then you are part of the tyranny which assigns roles to that which you do not know. Socrates, on the other hand, spoke of eros as a god. He had a wise woman--Diotima--teach him his wisdom regarding eros. Socrates was always beneath his pay grade, and so he would be forced into the gay parade these days. Aristophanes is surely a part of this, what with his perfect halves meeting each other--this is the ideology of straights and gays alike. Socrates is truer with a ladder that rises above oneself. Aristophanes was the first accuser of Socrates--before Meletus and Anytus. Given such a scenario, no wonder Socrates was sentenced to death.

Few these days understand the erotic desire for the infinite of which Socrates speaks in Plato's Symposium. To sound unfortunately like Heidegger, the many (or the One) only know what has been taught in the detailed everyday education of stupid music. The many (or the One)--the THEY/das Man--seems not to know the music that teaches the beauty of the infinite--to borrow David Bentley Hart's felicitous phrase. One should look for music above one's pay grade and outside of the gay parade.

I hate to end with such snobbery, but where else can one end?

But who am I to speak? Please give me suggestions for music that is open to the infinite in terms of beauty rather than sublimity--and asininity.

As Husker Du sings, I'm hardly getting over it. But then I have a Lust For Life too. However, if you see me I may just Walk On By.

Thoughts on The Republic

Over at The League of Ordinary Gentlemen, one Rufus F. has some interesting thoughts on Plato's Republic. He offers good introductory reflections on important issues in the dialogue. These are hardly the most noteworthy or scholarly remarks, but Rufus demonstrates that a person can turn to a classic, albeit immensely difficult text, and see it as provocative of thought on issues of immense importance--issues such as the question of human flourishing and the difficulties that lie in the way of its achievement.

I thought I'd direct your attention to them.

The first post discusses the role of poetry in the city and in the education of the soul, as well as Socrates' call for censorship. The second post discusses the role of men and women in the city in speech. The third post discusses the analogy of city and soul, the divided line and the philosopher kings. (If you read the comments to the third post you will see some thoughts by a certain John.)

The Best Defense is a Good Offense

HERE IT IS! (Thanks Garett.)

It is Super Bowl Weekend. Who'da thunk that that who 'dat team the Saints would have ever made it this far? Here are some thoughts on football from several years back. Please remember the context of several years back in which they were written.

The best defense is a good offense.

From a football perspective, it is a hard truth to swallow. We have heard for years that the best offense is a good defense. One team must stop the other from scoring. This is the key to victory--we hear it over and over again. "Defenses win championships," it is often said.

Hence we have Pittsburgh's "Steel Curtain" (redolent of Cold War rhetoric) and the Dallas Cowboy's "Doomsday Defense" (an ambiguous name which proves that offense is somewhat important, but which is nonetheless defensive to the bitter end--and which is also a throwback term to the Cold War). Recently the Baltimore Ravens won the Super Bowl on the basis of their defense, or so said the commentators.

I think "the best offense is a good defense" adage is simply a remnant of the Cold War--what with all its first strike and second strike strategic mentality. After all, this was the age that gave us MAD--mutually assured destruction. We must survive at all costs in a cave with scientists and big titty hot chicks, as Dr. Strangelove had it. No wonder football has such good looking cheerleaders!

To be sure, the best defense is the best offense makes a kind of sense, in that he who can survive will survive. It becomes survival at all costs, but I wonder if that is not a pyhrric victory. A football game requires victory for the team that has the most points at the end, and that is hardly pyhrric. In other words, one team wins the Super Bowl or the NCAA championship, and the other team loses. The team that was able to put up the most points wins. That team probably had the best offense.

Everyone remembers Vince Young. Who were the defensive stars on USC or UT? I'm sure they were there, but I can't remember their names. However, Matt Leinert (quarterback for USC and Heisman Trophy winner) lost the game.

I have seen football games won by defense. The sad story that is the Houston Texans actually has had several shining moments. One of those was a victory over the Pittsburgh Steelers from about two years (I almost said two tears) ago. They won the game because they were able to run two (!) interceptions back for touchdowns. In this case the offense did nothing and the defense did everything.

However, I would argue that, in this case, the defense became the offense. Offense scores points, defense prevents points from being scored. This game was an anomaly. At best, it is not wise to rely on your defense to be offense, i.e., to rely on it to win games. Better to have a good running and passing game.

It is a wonder that people still think the best offense is a good defense. I know that it is more nuanced than this, given the necessity of good field position and all that that entails. Nonetheless, the typical adage is asinine.

Football fans don't see it that way, but these are people who think (if one is to believe the commentators hired to give expert opinion) that a good analysis of a typical game is one where it is said that the reason a particular team won was because they were able to get the most points on the board. That is the very definition of victory in football. It's tautological. It's like saying the reason the equation equalled four was because there was a an antecedent two plus two.

I don't know why football fans (and commentators) try to translate real life into a game that is intransigently zero sum. It doesn't work. No doubt, in real life there is something to be said for mere survival, but in a football game victory is everything. People who spout off the usual nonsense about a good defense are trying to make football into life. They are able to do this because there is "always" next season. Moreoever, on "any given" Saturday or Sunday any team can win. But more often than not, the team that wins is the one with the best offense.

Now in real life, I think that the survivors who have mastered their defense may ultimately win out in the end. Hegel and Marx call it the victory of the slaves. The slaves have perseverance, and besides they are the ones who have made themselves through making the world as we know it. The masters just sat on their fat asses drinking mint juleps. This may all be true.

It's one reason why "democracy" is the only legitimate form of government in the world these days.

Nietszche claims that the victory of the slaves is the victory of the "last man." He's the man who only needs and desires to be entertained during Super Bowl Weekend. Is this what millennia of history have wrought? Once the world that we have built is free for the building, once the world that we live in is a world where defense is the same as offense, there need not be any more victory. At that time, we can then sit around and bitch about whether a running game or a passing game is more important. Just as long as no one scores a touchdown. But in the meantime...

what happened to the big titty hot chicks?

I think these cold warrior sons of bitches who sit around and talk about defense and such things, are no better than your run of the mill Marxists. Good Americans and Good Communists both want a world without risk. As a consequence, we get a Terrell Owens instead of a Lynn Swan, a Jerry Rice, or even a Michael Irvin. We get a Tom Brady instead of a Joe Montana or a Brett Favre. In this light, Terrell Owens is a "voluptary without heart," and Tom Brady is a "specialist without spirit." Last men all.

This is probably old age and bad taste speaking, but I had to say it. If you're still reading at this point, bravo!

All of this is a way of saying why I was against the Iraq war from the beginning. We think we can win with defense. We may have called the initial bombing campaign "Shock and Awe," but look where it has left us, viz. looking for exit strategies. We're playing defense in a game that we think is zero sum, but that our opponents think is one of survival. All the big titty bitches must be in Iraq.

I suppose in the real world defense can be a pretty good offense--but not in football.

Meanwhile the commentators speak of defense to a country that thinks the best offense is a good defense. It's time to pull out, but we've already blown our load on the belly of the middle east.

There will be an evil spawn from this fuck up.

Luckily, there is "next" Sunday!

Okay, so much of this is crudely overstated, and recent events could prove (and probably have proved) it wrong. Nonetheless, regarding football it is still correct.

Geaux Saints! Especially Drew Brees and everyone else on their offense. (Yet, one must admit that Peyton Manning is one of the best OFFENSIVE players ever to play. It will be a tough match. Let's hope for a close, high scoring, offensive game.)

Nick Lowe spoke of the best defense as a good offense when he sang "Cruel to be Kind."

Update: Here's an interesting acoustic version of the same song with Nick Lowe and Daryl Hall (alas, no Oates).

Update II: Frank Caliendo not doing what you'd think, but he says "Careful defendant, flattery will get you everywhere."

Holiday--Madonna and the Season

It is strange that in later life I take Madonna's song "Holiday" as worthwhile a post. After all, when Madonna first came out in the '80s I was in high school and jaded beyond belief. To my artificial worldly wisdom, Madonna seemed to be the mere passing parade (which remains the case today, except her huge influence over decades makes her more parade and less passing). Back then, what did I have to gain from being wiled by Madonna's obvious gifts? Nothing. It was the nerd in me or at least the unpopular guy's music of the day--such things as Husker Du and Black Flag--that made me deny Madonna's true excellence. But all this is a lie, because I was as virile as the next young man. Looking back I see that I was incapable of admitting that Madonna excited in me passions of which I wasn't sure what to make in my sixteen year old body. I secretly loved Madonna, but this was not considered to be cool as a male who listened to "serious" music outside the mainstream. Madonna was obviously popular amongst the girls in my circles, and cool guys didn't listen to popular music like that. Only gay guys admitted to listening to Madonna. So, given these factors, how could one ever listen to Madonna?

This became a problem for me because, as I've admitted, I secretly loved Madonna. She was obviously the version of some woman for whom I would have been willing to submit. There was something about Madonna that truly aroused my nascent sexual passion. No wonder I hated her so much--she introduced a pain in my life that would never know requite. Like Don Quixote in his argument that all knights errant require a fair lady, I felt that Madonna was a cruel mistress who would never know of my own noble love for her. To defray the costs against the Manchegan, I thought of her as some cheap slut, albeit with obvious charms. So I listened to Meat Puppets and Dead Kennedys because Madonna was beyond me and my desire, and following my interest in her would only cause me pain. The agony she would have caused me was beyond belief. It was best to deny it.

I suspect I'm not alone in this--i.e, straight white males who like to think of themselves as listening to "punk" or "college" music (later called "alternative"), but who secretly comprise a tribe of Madonna lovers encompassing every nerd from Portland, Maine to Portland, Oregon. I have no empirical basis from which to make such a remark, but Madonna was secretly loved by me in Galveston, Texas. Maybe most nerds are happy with Marillion, but Madonna's song "Holiday" was and is a truly joyous song. To be sure, it's not a Christmas song, but it may as well be. Every time I've ever had a party with males and females of the human species in one room, the dance floor gets full fast when I put on "Holiday." Madonna's "Holiday" is truly a party song--and this happens twenty years after the song's release. I would call this feat brilliance.

As I listen to Madonna sing "Holiday"--with Jelly Bean Benitez providing his superb production--I think that there needs to be more music like this. And this comes from a guy who would rather admit to listening to Husker Du or Black Flag (as great as they are). Hell, I'd rather admit to listening to Marillion (at least in some moods).

That being said, Madonna's "Holiday" is superior to any of that so-called "deep" rock that I compare it to. In fact, in a minor respect Madonna's song suggests the same freedom that these Christian holidays provide for us. With the holiday's joy and blessings there is a moment in this song of Madonna that speaks to the most hopeful aspirations. While it may remain unspeakable, it represents a beautiful means to escape from our own insignificance. "If we took a holiday...just one day out of life. It would be so nice." I can't agree more, especially coupled with that song's funky beat.

Update: As is typical with Madonna, the live version is not as good as the studio/album version (pace Elton John on her lip-synching), but at least here you get a pre-concert prayer for the song which, in typical Madonna fashion, is ambiguous regarding her own humility or hubris--let alone narcissism.

Oh You Pretty Things--Random Thoughts on Avatar

So I could not resist the hype, and went to see James Cameron's new flick Avatar. To state the basics, it was a decent film as an entertainment, and in 3D it was beautifully filmed. The back and forth between CGI and "real" filmed cinema flowed nearly seamlessly. It must be said that at over three hours in length, it was far too long. It almost ruined the entire film for me. Not being a fan of James Cameron in the first place (Terminator is decent, Aliens is overrated, and Titanic is sheer nonsense), I can see why the movie was hyped to such a great extent, viz. its production must have been so damned expensive that only hype could hope to recoup the costs. However, that is an unfair criticism because the film is in many ways remarkable even if it is merely decent as a whole. I'm glad I saw it.

Let me start with the title Avatar. The name for an incarnation of a divinity in Hinduism, it is also a term used by video gamers for their on-screen personae. This is problematic for the film. We are never clear if we are watching a video game, or rather if we are to understand the humans--the oft mentioned "sky people"--as being, from the point of view of the Na'vi people who live on the ominously titled planet Pandora, a manifestation of the divine. For in terms of the film, we are to believe that through the prowess of biotechnology, humans have become capable of genetically engineering actual body doubles which are similar in shape and form to the actual Na'vi. Each particular Na'vi double can be operated and controlled subjectively by its particular human genotypic original. When a particular human original lies in some futuristic version of a tanning bed (albeit a tanning bed with all sorts of fancy electronic wiring) he becomes fully functional as an other to himself, i.e., as a Na'vi. In terms of the film, as you lie in a futuristic tanning booth, you can also live in cyber reality (but in this case the real planet of Pandora) through the genetically engineered body double of yourself as a real Na'vi. This is the dream of all gamers--a dream that was well expressed (if more darkly) in William Gibson's novel Neuromancer. James Cameron has put such a dream to film in Avatar with different but just as dark implications. Either way, Cameron appeals to the longing for divinity of all video game players--the player becomes a veritable Jesus minus the cross and with restart functions and everything else to boot. So once again, I must ask if we are watching a video game or the incarnation of some sort a divinity (Christian, Hindu or otherwise)?

I say this because the movie, at least from the perspective of the scientists in the film, want you to believe that the the Na'vi theology or religion has a basis in science. Sigourney Weaver--back from the dead past of James Cameron--tells her unbelieving higher ups that the Na'vi religion is not "paganism" but instead "biology." So while we play this video game of a movie, we have no need to worry about the unfortunate changeableness of the Greek gods. You may have always thought that paganism was natural--well so much for St. Augustine. No Leda and the Swan here. Rather, in this film we are dealing a new age "force" a la George Lucas that apparently can be explained by biological science. Thank god there are no gods, because this would ruin the whole premise of the film in terms of its science (more on this later). It would be an insult to thinking audiences that god was god. Avatar, like most literal science fiction, avoids the age old question regarding how life emerges from not life. It's biology. For that matter, it's chemistry before it's biology. Of course if one is honest, it's physics before its chemistry. It seems that the question of life or soul can't be answered in terms of the science asking it. Nonetheless, Avatar sticks to its biology. It's like the proverbial Descartes with the cadaver on the autopsy table asking where's the soul. Luckily we live on Pandora which has proof of the biological basis of divinity which is nature itself (Pandora must be where Christopher Hitchens lives in his ode to the Burgess shale). In this view, the higher emerges from the lower, and you're an ignoramus to question it. This movie throws this argument in your face with its inexorable imagery and argument. To me it weakened the film in many ways.

Nonetheless, let's move beyond such polemics, and let's remind ourselves that in terms of the film bodies can be doubled--human and Na'vi. With this premise, the movie presents Jake Sully, a paraplegic Marine and war veteran, as the protagonist. His human body (and soul?) operates as a Na'vi double. We "miraculously" see him running, jumping and flying in a Na'vi replicant version of himself while he lamely lies in his tanning bed. Like a wheelchair bound Jimmy Stewart as the voyeur to his neighbors in Rear Window, our protagonist lives vicariously as a Na'vi. Except in this case, the villain is not Raymond Burr but you yourself--or more abstractly stated, the villain is the species being human who resembles yourself in the tanning bed. On these terms, it was odd to hear the audience applaud the defeat of human beings by the non-human Na'vi (more on this later).

In the end Avatar has us believe that the Na'vi are not truly alien. They are completely at home in their world and live with justice and peace until the humans invade. No humans have ever had this luxury. Instead, the humans have set up a mining camp on planet Pandora, and in so doing they become the true aliens. The film doesn't initially state this theme, but it becomes obvious pretty early on. I can't remember the exact name of the mined mineral the humans seek after, but it is ridiculously titled something like "unobtainablite." The humans have invaded the Na'vi idyll on Pandora, and they seek this mineral with a pecuniary lust that knows no bounds. The human military is there to protect the procurement of this mineral with the most extreme prejudice. It is a frontier, and humans represent an immense danger to the way of life of the Na'vi, and likewise the Na'vi stand in the way of the "quarterly" bottom-line statement of some large and humanly owned greedy mining corporation back on Earth. This frontier may be a distinction between civilization and savagery, but in good revisionist western style the film presents the humans as the savages (as if the Indians were ever presented in film as being as ruthless as this bunch of humans).

However, it must be said that the scenes with the human soldiers show them to be a multiracial bunch--at least by human standards. So apparently race relations have improved, but then again in this movie the business and military leaders are still white. That doesn't matter because whether black, white, or brown the soldiers remain all too human and other than Na'vi. This is the main problem with them--their humanness not their race. At least the Na'vi supply an answer to the mere human problem of race relations.

When the film begins, there has already been much conflict between the humans and Na'vi on Pandora. Since our protagonist is a war veteran thrown into this frontier landscape, I am almost of the opinion that Avatar is another version of Dances With Wolves--albeit one that takes place in the future and on another planet instead of the post American Civil War western frontier. After all, about ten minutes into the movie, you know Jake is going to side with the Na'vi over his own human kind. What does he have to lose? He is a forgotten, wheelchair bound veteran. He suffers ridicule from all sides, but the scientists eventually come to respect him. His military superior lays down an ultimatum whereby Jake must give him secrets of the Na'vi way of life in exchange for a paraplegic rejuvenation surgery, which apparently exists at this time. Jake will allegedly play a video game, cyber-bio-technological-body-double, "fifth column" in order to provide the necessary information to facilitate the further mining of "unobtainablite." This doesn't happen. The predictability of the plot was another big problem in this movie, especially given its length. Of course Jake will side against his superior military hard ass. To indicate his excessive humanness, the superior even has scars on his head like Captain Ahab. Avatar would have been more interesting if it had upset these expectations, but it followed them to a tee.

In spite of their apparent alienness, the Na'vi are quite human. They are humanoid. Throughout the film we come to learn much about the Na'vi. These nonhumans have speech--a language which a bunch of "tree-hugging" (as the film terms them) human environmentalist scientists have mastered over years of study. We see the Na'vi communicate and deliberate with each other and with themselves. In fact, speech provides them the opportunity for choice. With speech, they exhibit all sorts of virtue, where they make distinctions between the right way and the wrong way. Furthermore, with speech they recognize their ancestors, as well as a tradition that has been handed down to them. They have concern for the preservation of their progeny, as well as handing down the way of life which the present generation holds in custodianship. When confronted with the presence of humans--the "sky people"--the Na'vi also express love of their own and hatred for the threat that is posed to it. They defend their own way of life with a "human" spiritedness. Consequently, it is no surprise that they live in political communities, and that they even make a distinction between public and private in terms of distinctive families. While primitive by human standards, they even exercise technological prowess. They make tools, use animals for their own ends, and even hunt some beasts in order to kill and eat them. Lastly, being aware of their mortality they are pious, and worship a divinity (or natural force) called Erya (or something like that).

Apart from the fact that they are aqua blue in color, three times the size of humans, and have tails, it makes you wonder what makes the Na'vi truly alien to humankind. They are simply strange, but oddly beautiful human beings. They have all of the attributes of Rousseau's so-called noble savages, uncorrupted by the vanity of civil society (albeit they have tails). In fact they exhibit many of the qualities that civilized humans ordinarily praise in speech and seek to make real in their own corrupted lives. However, in this film humans (with the exception of a few scientists, a paraplegic former Marine, and an ambivalent helicopter pilot) are completely corrupted. They are shown to be a godless race of savage insects bent on unlimited domination. The cruel Captain Ahab character exhibits all the vices of civilization--let alone the America of George W. Bush--in his speech of "pre-emptive strikes," "shock and awe" campaigns, and fighting "terrorism with terror" (the latter claim Bush never made). All these modes were to be used against the blameless Na'vi. Horrifically, the Na'vi are defeated in one battle when the humans blast out their giant tree home with missile after missile. The tree falls in a manner eerily reminiscent of the falling twin towers on 9/11. While the Na'vi lose this battle, they win the war (at least up to the end of the movie).

Throughout the film we hear of the Na'vi religion, and the human military and business leaders do nothing but ridicule it. The Na'vi religion is an Earth (or Pandora) religion. In this religion there is a hierarchy whereby the Na'vi hold a superior relation to all that exists on Pandora, but it is a superiority held in a way that shows their complete enmeshment with nature. Na'vi and nature are one--there is no distinction between beast and Na'vi. For instance, in order to win over and ride a particular "gorgon" flying fighter (or whatever it is called), one Na'vi fighter must be chosen by it. It will try to kill you, but then if you can make it submit to you as a Na'vi, then you have a "St. Francis of Assisi-type" pony tail that when you connect it to the beasts' similar extended receptacle you become one with nature (albeit, this tail is entirely natural not supernatural). When joined together, you and it unite in a mother Earth/Pandora gaia harmony. No wonder this movie was released simultaneously with the Copenhagen conference.

Unfortunately nature was not so kind for the humans as it was for the Na'vi. Humans cannot speak with the animals. As a consequence, humans in their ontological poverty must come to Pandora in order to extract all the "unobtainabalite" as standing reserve for their own use. The Na'vi may be at home in pantheism, but humans (with their "sky" gods) must ultimately rely on techne to bring about their own self-sufficiency. They have no tail with which they can commune with nature. Avatar suggests that humans are a dying breed on account of this theological need that results in their technological world picture. In contrast, Avatar advocates some sort of extra-planetary pantheistic religion.

Humans can't be pantheistic like the Na'vi, but ironically Avatar shows that Jake Sully not only overcomes his own paralysis, but also his humanness through the human technology that makes his body double. Yes the "tree of ancestors" (or whatever it is called) helps him to become Na'vi, but he would have never become Na'vi in the first place if it weren't for human technology. His Na'viness is a product of human technology. It is human technology that provides him with a fully functioning Na'vi tail. So at the end of the movie, while he may be fully at home in nature when he is transformed completely into a Na'vi, one wonders if he has nonetheless not retained his human memory (and Marine training).

The Na'vi likewise have surely not forgotten the recent past. They remember being almost conquered by the humans. They now realize that they need a foreign policy. They will need to learn of Jake's human technology, as well as about the "sky" god that allows him to manipulate the earth to his own ends. If the Na'vi don't learn these things, the humans will come back with full force. So like Twain's Connecticut Yankee, Jake will teach the Na'vi about the uses of gun powder. At which point, the typically "human" spiritedness of the Na'vi will find new outlets to not be at home on Pandora. The Na'vi will then fight each other to the the death, and over time some of them will master the arts of war. Hopefully, when the humans come back, there will be a fair fight even if escalated on a massive scale. Otherwise the humans will come back with a renewed vigor and a more advanced technology. Either way, it doesn't look good as long a humans remain. After all, the humans need their "unobtainablite." This would not occur if humans only knew how to direct their technology toward obtainable ends, but that would require a new religion and theology.

One last note of the religion in Avatar. It is true that the god or goddess Erya (sp?) responds to a personal prayer for a personal end. However, this all seems to be smokescreen to me. All of a sudden the god (or force) which was merely a biological "god" of nature--a god that was an abstract force holding and maintaining the balance of all things--becomes a personal god taking the Na'vi side in the war against the humans. This god judges their human lust, greed, violence and lack of attunement with nature. In being personal, it is like the Christian god, but god forbid it be the Christ himself. In Avatar one must simply have faith in nature, human technology, and the wise post-human scientists who will guide it to its proper ends. One's own subjective faith that all things will turn out for the best with this arrangement seems to me the definition of the stupidity of faith for James Cameron.

Faith to mean anything must be of something greater than oneself. James Cameron may be imaginative, but with his film he can't even distinguish between a human being and a dog. In his pride, he doesn't have a standard greater than himself. Human technology, like his own filmmaking, reveals the truth and goodness of the posthuman future described by himself. Since Cameron doesn't know what a human being is, he thinks the Na'vi are not human simply because they have tails. Lord knows what he thinks of people who aren't white like himself (yes, this is an unfair statement). This is the stupidity of his whole film.

So it is strange that the humans in my local theater all applauded the defeat of the humans. As their asses sat in the theater munching on popcorn and artificial butter, who did they think they were rooting for? As they drove home in their gas guzzling SUVs on the mega-highways, who did they think was the bad guy? Are they the ones who Jimmy Stewart like (or Jake Sully like) must remain voyeurs to their own obsolescence. (On a side note, Jake Sully's name could be an allusion to the Jake Scully character in Brian De Palma's Body Double--another cinematic weak and ineffectual voyeur. Like Body Double, it seemed to me that Avatar was an elaborate set-up intended to make the viewer an unwitting witness to the murder of his own species).

Avatar was ultimately bad because it was so overtly partisan. In this movie, the humans as we now know them are presented as nothing but bad. Apparently we must use technology to overcome our own corruption which is only our own fault anyway. This technological fix to the human problem is dehumanizing, and besides humans (including Americans) are not actually as godless and lacking in virtue as James Cameron would have us believe. Sometimes the "sky" god shows himself as a personal loving god--a god that offers an example for individual virtue and for salvation. This is in part what Christianity is about. Christianity reveals a God made man who is of such virtue that he points toward individual self-government as the true basis for any righteous life. This is the true avatar. To Cameron, on the other hand, humans remain chained to their belief in "sky" gods, and this accounts for all their "human" brutality, their confusion and their injustice.

So I'm glad I saw Avatar, but it was three hours of bad politics, bad theology, and a dubious belief in the possibilities of the technological fix. The best to be said is that it gave me something to think and write about. William Gibson's Neuromancer is more realistic to human nature. So if you want to read a book about avatars as doubles of oneself, then read it.

In the meantime, David Bowie sang about this post-humanism way back in 1972 when he said, "Homo Sapiens have outgrown their use."

UPDATE: Peter Suderman has a good take down of Avatar at Reason, and James Poulos has this interesting comment. The NYT review is here. Roger Ebert here. Ross Douthat here. John Podhoretz here.