First The Ax, Then Missiles? Why Does Man Hurt Nature?

"While the earth was left to its natural fertility and covered with immense forests, whose trees were never mutilated by the axe, it would present on every side both sustenance and shelter for every species of animal. Men, dispersed up and down among the rest, would observe and imitate their industry, and thus attain even to the instinct of the beasts, with the advantage that, whereas every species of brutes was confined to one particular instinct, man, who perhaps has not any one peculiar to himself, would appropriate them all, and live upon most of those different foods which other animals shared among themselves; and thus would find his subsistence much more easily than any of the rest." ~Jacques Rousseau

What Rousseau is referring to is the fact that nature should be left alone and that man takes/steals from both nature and the creatures that inhabit nature. Man tends to destroy things in order to please himself. The ax was used to pave the way for the settlers to build their homes, towns, villages, cities, and eventually countries. If man left things alone, there would be a NATURAL balance on earth. In ‘Avatar’, we see that man has infiltrated Pandora and has been trying to take over. At first it seems that man cares for nature, but we soon realize that man only wants what nature has to offer (Unobtainium). We also learn via the Colonel that man tends to want to destroy, for no apparent reason mind you, the creatures that nature cares for…in this sense we see the Colonel’s hatred for theNa’vi as well as his hatred for Jake as an Avatar. The Colonel hates the Na’vi because they pose as a threat to his power. He hates Jake because Jake turned on his race, so to say. Towards the end of the movie there is a scene in which the Colonel resorts to destroying the beautiful nature on Pandora just to take out the Na’vi and Jake. Instead of the axe, he uses missiles and helicopters and bombs to pave the way for the race of men and man’s lust for what nature conceals, which in this case is Pandora. Man wants to steal from nature, not borrow. Man wants to injure and destroy the creatures that are supported by the balance of nature by any means applicable simply because MAN CAN AND MAN WILL!!! MAN WILL DO WHAT HE WANTS BECAUSE MAN IS THE SUPREME SPECIES!

Wordsworth’s poems dealt with many scenes in nature, which I find truly beautiful to behold in my mind’s eye because he is able to paint a picture in your brain of the scenery and you in turn are able to dwell and rely on your own experiences and images to help paint that picture. This deals with intertextuality in the sense that we see the images he produces by our own experiences and what we have seen in magazines (National Geographic), TV, and on our travels. The most amazing thing is that no one’s image will be the same as another’s mental image.

In Wordsworth’s poem, ANIMAL TRANQUILLITY AND DECAY, he speaks about how birds pay no attention to the man who travels in deep thought and doesn’t do harmful actions to nature…the man in the poem seems to respect nature because “He is by nature led to peace so perfect that the young behold with envy.” This is how man SHOULD be with nature….man should leave nature the way it is and if he takes from it or any of the animals within nature, he must also GIVE back in some way (planting a tree to replace one that is cut down, etc.)

Finally, we see in Thomas Kinkade’s paintings how man’s dwellings are WITHIN and ONE with nature. Nature seems to have produced these cabins because Kinkade makes his paintings so picturesque and perfect…he makes you feel that it IS a real place and that YOU SHOULD GO there. In this sense, it seems as if man has taken and chopped at nature with the ax, BUT has also beautified nature and hence given back to it.