Clash of Cultures

On page 11 of the Rousseau reading, the second to last paragraph compares the civilized mans and savaged mans way of life “The Savage and the civilized man differ so much in the bottom of their hearts and in their inclinations that what constitutes the supreme happiness of one would reduce the other to despair” This passage can be tied into a number of scenes in Avatar, this is the idea behind the entire movie. In the very beginning of the movie when the humans arrived on Pandora they immediately did not understand the Na’vi’s way of life. When the Colonel gave his briefing telling the crew about how he got his scar he said something about how everything on this planet wants to kill you. From the beginning of the movie the two cultures clashed so greatly that the lives of the civilized man and the inhabitants of Pandora’s ways of life differed to such great extent that from the start neither of the two cultures even tired to understand the others ways of life. The Na’vi tribe would have never taught Jake their ways of living if they would have known where he came from from the start. The human’s didn’t see the Na’vi as being anything but animalist savages and as a culture that needed our help in becoming civilized such as learning our ways and our language. This is one of the ways in which the Na’vi differs from our culture. We depend on material objects and technology for our way of life; the Na’vi have been able to adapt to their world and live in a culture that was able to coexist with the nature of their world without these things; unlike us where there are so many buildings there is not much natural beauty left. On the second paragraph part one of Rousseau’s article this passage also supports this idea “if the savage man had had an axe would he have been able with his naked arm to break so large a branch from a tree? If he had had a sling, would he have been able to throw a stone with so great velocity? If he had had a ladder, would he have been so nimble in climbing a tree?”