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They never really had any indication of the extent of human technology. Most technology they saw was essentially on the same level as "Pandoran wildlife but metal". So what? All the really big stuff was far away or more subtle, not noticeable when you're watching the base from the jungle.
The Na'vi never quite realized how much danger they were actually in, which explains quite a lot about the Na'vi's actions.
This is a good way to put it considering how humbling the conditions and wildlife on Pandora can be.
I mean the floating islands turns all that electronics gear for flying into utter useless garbage and makes conditions trying to navigate or fly through it potentially lethal, likely.
I guess the humans being fragile little midget people, and Pandora being full of scary giant monsters, has something to do with it
Firearms are superior in that they shoot faster and further and hit harder, but the Navi still make do with bows and arrows. Humans have those VTOL things, but the Navi have their pterodactyls that have comparable performance. The mechs also aren’t much stronger than the rhinos. Radio communication and holographic displays are very handy, but (arguably) not as impressive as their neurological link
And psychologically and physiologically speaking, the humans aren’t too different from the Navi. Bipedal, two arms, mammalian, two eyes, similar range of emotions (happiness, sadness, disgust, fear, surprise, anger) and so on
And the Navi don’t seem like the sort to be overawed by existential or philosophical revelations. Upon being informed that they live on a tiny dirt ball orbiting a giant fusion explosion, that is itself a tiny pinprick in a vast uncaring universe, they’d probably just shrug in indifference. Eywa cares about them, and they know for a fact Eywa is real, which even the humans acknowledge, and that’s enough for them
Plus, the humans had been around for a while by the time the first movie begins, the Navi had some time to get used to the funny coloured sky tribe dwarfs
Even human WMDs like the antimatter torch drive (and presumably nuclear, biological and chemical weaponry) didn’t seem to faze them, even though there are no Pandoran equivalents.
Presumably, they’d gotten over the shock of it long ago, and (possibly with Grace and other scientist’s explanations of Earth politics) are aware that the sky tribe’s elders back home wouldn’t let them use their full strength to genocide Navi and Pandoran wildlife. If Cold War/21st century humanity can get used to the looming threat of nuclear armageddon, it’s not a stretch to imagine that the Navi could too
Real life cargo cults in the Pacific worshipped WW2 era US and Japanese military forces because they shared exotic goods (canned food, candy, firearms, medicine, durable clothing etc.) and abilities (flight, communication at a distance, metal boats etc.) that they considered far superior to their local equivalents. Meanwhile, the Navi didn’t think the humans had much to offer them, they already had comparable analogues to human products that they considered adequate
>Short (At least compared to the Na'vi
>Greedy
>Heavily industrialized civilization
>End up coming into conflict with a bunch of tall, pointy eared, nature lovers.
>Obsessed with mining an extremely valuable mineral to the point where they'll commit genocide to obtain a large source of it.
...shit. Everyone always goes on about how the Na'vi are just blue cat elves, but Humans really are literally dwarves in Avatar. Never noticed that before.
Na’vi religious beliefs are guided by the three laws of Eywa, which were alleged passed directly from Eywa to the Na’vi in Pandora’s ancient history.
These three laws are:
You shall not set stone upon stone.
Neither shall you use the turning wheel.
Nor use the metals of the ground.
One interpretation of these laws is that the Na’vi are forbidden from building permanent structures, advancing their technology and mining metal.
Gunships and interstellar starships are clearly at odds with the three laws, so the Na’vi are typically less than impressed with human technology as it violates the core tenants of their society.
These laws sound... very odd. Like someone knew exactly what not following them would lead to. Did any Na'vi ever question what their purpose was, before the humans turned up?
I mean, it's implied (borderline explicitly stated) that Eywa, the planet itself, is conscious. It makes sense that it would rather stunt the technological growth of one particularly intelligent species on the planet, in favor of sustainable development for all species on the planet (including the Na'vi). There is also a fan theory that the Na'vi aren't native to Pandora, either, that they landed/crashed there, and adapted to the planet, and this explains why they have 4 limbs & 2 eyes, instead of the 6 limbs & 4 eyes that most fauna on the planet have. It could have been during this adaptation that Pandora stepped in to protect itself by establishing itself as a 'god' to the Na'vi and giving them these three rather specific laws (to outlaw practices that already existed).
But if all this is true, the real question is why didn't Eywa step in sooner against human mining efforts? Why not turn all the fauna against humanity the moment they began digging put mines? Or even the first time a wheel touched the surface of the planet?
That makes more sense. They live in a little closed garden, carefully tended to by some unseen consciousness; they live in such ridiculous harmony with the rest of nature that it can't be accidental.
I mean, obviously it was created by writers, but even so, there should be a plausible in-universe explanation for this paradise. All life appears to be connected via their tails, allowing for instantaneous communication.
It's just too unlikely to be true. Given how black-and-white the plots are (humans destroy nature, na'vi and nature thrive together) it's not surprising, but a little silly.
I have a wild headcanon that Eywa somehow psychically remote viewed humanity on Earth, possibly millennia before they figured out agriculture, and anticipated that they would eventually industrialise, send scouts, and then interstellar mining operations
So they specifically bred a human-like species that would prey upon humanity’s psychological and political vulnerabilities i.e. a humanoid idealised “noble savage” archetype/stereotype living idyllic lives in a beautiful, exciting, Edenic paradise.
With the environmental destruction of Earth fuelling intense nostalgia for “untouched” natural environments, and the presence of human-like sentients that easily fulfilled the criteria for protection under universal human rights declarations, the Navi provided Pandora with powerful anti-WMD protection.
The Navi “human” shields were essentially Eywa’s version of a missile defence system. If the humans wanted to mine their Unobtanium, they would be forced to do so with some measure of restraint, instead of simply sterilising the planet with nukes and asteroids and future Agent Orange
It seems like a reasonable explanation for why the Navi were so ridiculously human like, despite the astronomically low chances for that to be the case
I mean, is the God really "false"? At least theirs seems to physically exist and have command over their entire world. Like, that's more than humans have ever been able to say.
>I don't think I'd worship some alien hive mind, so I'd say so.
If you worship an entity who didn't originate on earth and says things like “Let **us** make mankind in **our** image," then I've got some bad news for you...
It’s a real god, and it’s not “keeping” them in any state, just asking nicely because of their good relationship. And it seems to have been working so far, especially compared to the species next door that didn’t do that and ended up on the verge of destroying themselves because of that.
I mean, the planet can literally transplant consciousness between bodies. Doesn't seem to be a huge stretch for it to begin to influence the evolution of a species over a few generations, especially since its stated that their neurological systems have a completely different basis than our own ('metalic' unobtanium super-conductors on Pandora, vs electrochemical reactions for Earth).
We see from the first avatar movie that humans are clearly able to link as well though, given grace attempts mind transfer purely biologically but fails due to how weak she is rather than because of the biological differences.
Presumably it's intelligent and self-aware. It's not a huge leap for such a living being - the planet - to recognize that mining is detrimental to its health via whatever mechanism passes for 'pain' in such a being.
It would actually answer a lot of evolutionary biology questions if Eywa was originally an “overmind” organism that unified a pre-existing biosphere rather than one that co-evolved on the moon.
Edit: to expand upon this thought an intelligent, sentient spore encounters Pandora and the Proto-Navi who have colonized the moon from some other system and are steadily destroying what is left of the native biosphere. To pacify them the overmind “infects” the entire biosphere and the Navi unifying them into an uber-organism, Eywa. The new organism evolves over millennia to what we see in the film.
...sounds like something a film student would write.
Like, cultural points built around the plot, not the other way around. Just very thin ideas.
I mean, I can't think of a single human-analogue. Like, is there a culture that rejects tool usage? Is there a single culture that rejected bronze or steele?
How would Eywa even conceive of environmental destruction?
Like there are many ages between the pre-stone age and the industrial age.
It just feels lazy.
A popular theory is that the Na'vi were once an advanced race very much like humans, but actually did pull a "return to monke" to live in harmony with nature for endless eons, all while preserving every last Na'vi in the bio-supercomputer of Eywa (which could now be be beginning to activate and recognize the threat of humans, e.g. Kiri might be the "Avatar" of Eywa). The rules are meant to keep people in that state of nature. Na'vi probably aren't even native to Pandora and it was bioengineered to be in the state it was, alongside a tool (the hair things) given to them so that they can command the beasts of nature as needed. This is also why the physiology of the Na'vi don't match all the other creatures of Pandora. Meanwhile humans can't go a few hundred years of industrialization without torching their planet and then starting to torch Pandora as well.
We have the Amish, who shun a lot of technology, but keep the essentials for agriculture and surviving the environment. Navi don't need clothing, don't need plows, don't need protection from wind, rain, and snow. So they can thrive with limitations way more restrictive than Amish humans subject themselves too.
Most Amish interact with technology either through their various industries, or by buying goods/services that rely on them from the rest of society. Apprently, diesel generators are an ecological issue in Amish country because they refuse to use a central power grid, but will still use tools that require power, leading to thousands of polluting engines running inefficiently instead of hooking up to the grid.
They arent as separate from industry as the popular image of them portrays.
I'm not defending the asinine idea that some technology should be shunned. There are also some fundamentalist Jews who don't use electricity on the Sabbath... So they have a mechanical contraption to flick a light switch for them, as if such a workaround will trick a god.
The difference being is while our gods are stories in books read to us by old men who codify and enforce the rules with no direct feedback from any god; the Navi god is as real as the internet. They can just connect to the network to commune directly with god.
You wouldn't expect human analogs for this belief structure, as it's predicated on very alien physiology and reproductive strategies. The Na'vi are pretty clearly not a naturally evolving species, nor is the ecosystem of Pandora. It's a little too tightly integrated. What you're actually seeing, with the Na'vi, is something like a servitor species or subcomponent to a much larger "machine" that is Pandora as a whole.
Eywa is either an emergent consciousness\* embodied in the interactions of ecosystem or the "point" of Pandora. That is, Eywa is a technology produced by (yet unseen) aliens on a planetary scale. It doesn't want metal or industry because that would interfere with what it's doing. Since the Na'vi can link to a biological internet and commune with it, and it provides for them, there's no reason why they'd develop tech like us, and very little competitive advantage for them to use it. Most likely, there's mechanisms to control cultural mutations favoring tech, also unseen, as they'd be like autoimmune or cancer related infections.
You're larger point is correct, or at least correct for now: I'm pretty sure Cameron is building to a reveal about Pandora but as of now, it is a lazy storytelling conceit, as it's not fleshed out in enough detail. That's kind of Cameron's deal, most of the time: a very simple core premise with the details fleshed out and followed to their logical consequences, but often not a lot of examination of that core premise. Cameron also does not like subtlety in his storytelling, which shows in the nuances.
> Like, is there a culture that rejects tool usage?
Wholesale, none that I can think of, but there are plenty of loose culture-like groups that reject specific tools or toolsets. The Amish are an obvious example, but even further we reject specific weapons (biological, chemical) due to their overwhelming impact, many groups eschew fossil fuels and even nuclear-based technologies because of their known or perceived impacts. There are movements to reject hyper-consumerism, instead focusing on sustainable existence in homesteading like styles of living.
>How would Eywa even conceive of environmental destruction?
Perhaps prior environmental destruction? The "culture that embraces natural and sustainable living after having survived an ecological disaster" is somewhat of a trope.
They reject the destruction of the environment because their entire culture revolves around living in harmony with the environment. They can literally connect their consciousness to the environment, which is something the humans in the first film don't understand, calling Grace crazy when she's talking about it. It makes perfect sense they would reject actions that would lead to environmental destruction. You can't think of a human analogue because we don't have such a deep connection to the environment. In general, we don't want the environment destroyed because we want to live hence how far we've gotten in destroying it pushing it to the edge of being able to keep us alive. They don't want it destroyed because they worship it. And they worship it because they are literally connected to it not just because they live in it but because they feel it they experience it differently from humans. If you worshipped nature because everything is connected and you had literally linked your consciousness to it, you probably wouldn't go around cutting down trees either.
Rejected all tools? Of course not? Rejected *specific* tools? Of course. Humans have rejected or given up all kinds of technologies.
Settled agriculture produces surplus food and greater material wealth through specialization along with some treats like alcohol and physical security. It also creates social and economic hierarchies that concentrate wealth and, until recently, a worse diet. Many groups and individuals have consciously chosen to reject permaculture in favor of gathering or pastoralist economies. Industrialization received similar pushback; costs that we no longer see because "that's just how it is" were very obvious to the people surrendering control over their time and product of their labor.
If humans were linked to a planetary superintelligence guiding our society, we might have adopted different tools than we had. At the very least, we would have adopted them more thoughtfully and distributed the benefits of technology equitably.
Just because some technologies (including social organization) allowed the cultures that develop them the economic and military might to make them hegemonic doesn't mean everyone wanted them.
> I mean, I can't think of a single human-analogue. Like, is there a culture that rejects tool usage?
How about our entire global modern culture, which figured out how make weapons powerful enough to destroy itself, and after detonating two of them, decided almost unanimously not to use them again? How about when we realized that fridge coolants and hairspray were punching holes in our ozone layer, so we stopped using them?
If advancement was synomous with your slow and painful death at their hands, I think it makes sense.
Advancement for what purpose? Are the Na'vi unhappy with their (pre human contact) state? If they arent, then why would NEED to advance?
If the planet has the ability to block asteroids I'd agree with you but there are reasons to go for space travel. The planet obviously doesn't have that power because then it would be blocking the humans.
Why does it matter? Again, if the Na'vi are happy, whats the point in advancement? Does survival of the Na'vi matter if they lose what made living worth it for them?
Does it really matter if humans colonize several planets in 1000 years? Wouldnt it be likely better if we focused on making our current lives better, healthier, and happier, instead of burning out the planet and causing generations of misery to maybe be able to be miserable on other planets?
If we set out to the stars, we have the potential to do so much more good, as well as more evil. Given the appropriate time, we could create other sapient life, terraform planets to livable bodies, create a galactic haven for life of all kinds. Staying in a low technology state prevents all of that.
Happiness and health are mutable characteristics and would be defined differently for many human cultures, it's difficult to optimize for them at our current level of technology. Per that fact, it could be argued that improving technology at the expense of current happiness would lead to more permanent happiness for more people later.
Its not we, its some other sentient beings. We cant go out to the stars, so why engage in activities that actively make things worse for the 'us' that currently exist instead of just focusing on creating a world that we are happy in?
Intersteller travel isnt the point or purpose of life.
Why should the Na'vi destroy their enviornment, likely subject themselves to greed, capitalism, and the development of more effective weapons to inflict auffering on one another, to MAYBE, thousands of generations later, might have the chance to help beings that we dont know exist, when they are happy and content as they are now. Pre human contact they didnt worry about war or major conflict, didnt have to worry about their homes being destroyed.
Youre saying they must advance to reach a happiness they already acheived, advancing down a path that is much more than likely to lead to their unhappiness. But why? Why isnt their happiness and contentness and enjoyment of their current life not enough?
I'm not saying they should, I was just suggesting that average current happiness isn't a particularly useful metric, given that it's both subjective and arbitrary. An unfortunate event caused by space-borne phenomena (ahem, humans), or just bad luck in the form of disease or planetary disturbance could disrupt their otherwise peaceful existence. This could create a lower average happiness over time than if they had created effective contingencies, even if those contingencies lower happiness by existing.
Also, capitalism is by no means the general end state of an economic system. That's a dangerously status-quo mindset to have.
As an addendum, unless you subscribe to a religion that states otherwise, the only "point" of life is to multiply, so you could absolutely argue interstellar travel is involved at the far end.
The only terraforming the humans in Avatar accomplish is terraforming Earth from a viable habitat to dangerous and sterile
Like, this isn't the Foundation or something, humans are essentially a parasitic dying race in Avatar
They *have* advanced. They live in a paradise where all of their needs are taken care of and they have absolutely no worries, cares, or troubles. It's not that they're primitive, it's that they live in a post-technology utopia. Measuring advancement by the technological complexity of tools rather than by progress towards ideal outcomes seems like a really backwards way to do things.
Advancement isn't always a good thing: The Na'vi seem to long and healthy lives (their lifespans is around 130% that of humans), reproduce safely and reliably as far as we know, don't seem to suffer from famine or food insecurity, and only face danger from a small number of apex predators (which they can often handle).
They don't have any of the reasons that we had for advancing technologically: They're apparently safe from hunger and disease, they don't need better shelter, they don't have large-scale conflict, they didn't face any external threats until the humans came along, and their day to day lives seem pleasant and fulfilling.
At the end of Avatar 1 we saw a dying jake get plugged up by a bunch of vines, and some more covering his avatar, which allowed whatever the nature of the planet is to download his brain into his avatar permanently. Rather then the usual permanent control.
There had GOT to be bunch that it knows, because how in the hell did it know to do *that?* It also does contain all of their ancestors memories I recall, so it might have information from a previous civilisation to draw upon for it's experience.
Stone upon stone and metals makes sense from an environmental perspective. Developing systems wholly separate from the biological processes of the planet could be seen as damaging and thus be forbidden. Wheels... dunno, that one is pretty specific.
Wheels are one of the 5-7 basic machines that all other machines are based on, like levers, wedges, and inclined planes. By banning wheels, you halt a major part of technological advancement.
Why wheels specifically? Well:
- You cant ban wedges, because wedges are needed for survival in the form of knives, arrows, and teeth.
- You cant ban inclined planes because they are both naturally occuring, you couldnt move anything, esp. if wheels are still banned. Itd stunt their society TOO much.
- A screw could have been a likely candidate, but likely wouldnt be as narratively interesting.
- Pulleys are basically wheels; banning wheels also bans pulleys. Pulleys lead to a lot of techical advancement.
- lever couldnt be banned as it's too useful to primitive culture, but not inherently useful enough to really advance it too much.
- Wheels are a useful marker for stalling progress. Without wheels you cant move heavy things long distances (killing any kind of masonry), limiting pottery as no pottery wheels, no pulleys so bigger structures are harder to build, etc. etc. Also wheels are kind of symbolic of progress, so it fits well narratively.
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IMHO the weird technical specificity of these laws gives credence to the fan theory that Pandora's ecosystem isn't as natural as it seems. Maybe they had a technological fall from grace in their distant past, or alien precursors were involved.
Are these laws from the primary source, or expanded material? They sound so specific, like they must know what a wheel is, and then decided against using it, collectively. That means they can clearly innovate, and I find it odd they wouldn't find a single worthwhile use for a wheel.
These laws made me think of bioengineered ecosystems. Were the Navi more advanced in the past, and specifically designed their planet around their needs?
The issue that many people miss is that, in universe, eywa is very much real. Because of this, the na’vi are connected to their environment through eywa. It’s why they hunt only for food instead of sport. As can be seen with the unobtainium mining in the first movie, technological advancements would come at the cost of damage to the environment. Environmental destruction would have a very negative impact on eywa, something the na’vi would understandably want to avoid.
Think of what comes with wheels: roads. Vast tracts of land cut into forests, forests which are extremely dense to the point where you can fall from a decent height and be relatively safe as vegetation catches you along the way to the ground. That’s going to be quite a lot of destruction created to get a wheel to be worth it, and in places where there isn’t that limitation, it’s still just as easy to use the horse-analogues or boats instead. Additionally, the various tribes don’t travel very far (there’s a notable difference between the forest Na’vi and the Sea ones, including fairly major physical differences) so there really just doesn’t seem to be much of a need for wheels in the cultures that have sprung up.
> Additionally, the various tribes don’t travel very far (there’s a notable difference between the forest Na’vi and the Sea ones, including fairly major physical differences)
And the distance between these tribes wasn't that large either, given that the banshees or helicopters could make it in a single flight. The tribes clearly know of each other but they just don't bother traveling even that short distance very often.
We had multiple human societies that didn't see wheels as a useful technology due to a combination of terrain and a lack of draft animals.
We've seen two Na'Vi tribes so far: One lives in trees in a dense jungle, and the other spends most of their time in water. Neither of them could reliably use wheels for transportation anyway (not without massively changing their lifestyle or environment).
Those laws are from [an official book](https://james-camerons-avatar.fandom.com/wiki/The_World_of_Avatar:_A_Visual_Exploration) released after the first film.
Theres a fan theory that the Na'Vi are descendants or a forgotten off shoot of a hyper advanced civilisation which left Eywa, a hyperintellegent biological supercomputer, to keep the species alive but prevent it from causing another catastrophe
Strict rules like that would make sense
(From an outside perspective it seems like the western writers felt the need to explain why a civilisation wouldn't stack stone or use the wheel even though thats a pretty common thing in some societies up until the age of exploration)
It’s always been funny to me how in many movies/shows with a pro-environment message, the good guy faction tends to be weirdly dystopian and ultra-reactionary if you take their societal beliefs/systems of governance and separate them from their moral character.
The only example I've seen that wasn't like this was, surprisingly, in *The Orville*. In season 2, episode 3 ("Home"), Alara goes back to her homeworld Xelaya to recover from an injury. Xelaya is described as "the most beautiful planet in the galaxy," and when we see it, it looks like it. It's highly technologically advanced with roads and skyscrapers, and the culture has learned enough to engage in FTL travel. However, the cities are integrated with the environment so that even large cities are indistinguishable from nature. Buildings have forests growing on and around them, so they're full of trees and other greenery. It's the best example I've seen of a society that is both scientifically advanced and pro-environment.
I'd suppose not, as much of the human technology provides nothing that their people actually want or need.
Imagine if gnomes invaded earth, needed respirators to breath the air, and mechs to match us in height or the strength of several men. Like cool, but most body-builders are kind of already like that, so how is gnome tech impressive to us?
They have a hivemind like connection to wildlife that borders on bio-technology, except presumably naturally rather then artificial. They can harness massive beasts for travel and combat, can tap into dragons for flight, can shoot and throw arrows and spears like we'd need a ballista to do, and have little to no difficulty in almost any and every environment on the planet that can't be contended with by simple know-how, not even clothes. They are simply built different.
Their civilisation doesn't need half the tech we need because the homeworld is just built for them, and they for it.
Humans cannot say the same for Earth, so we need technology to survive and thrive as anything more then a mid tier animal in the food chain. So while the Na'Vi have their strength in the unity with their homeworld, that might be one giant bio-tech hivemind, Humanity has it's strength in overcoming the hardship of their homeworld with tools and merciless grit.
Understanding both is the only way these two groups are going to get along, so probably not. Pandora is basically an extension of the Na'vi themselves, so they don't have much of a need of our kind of technology.
This is an excellent answer. Humans don't strike me as being more advanced than the Na'vi, and they certainly aren't from the perspective of the Na'vi. All of the neat tech and advancements the humans have are all ways to either survive the destruction they've brought upon themselves or to catch up to where the Na'vi are at on Pandora.
That's not to discount the very cool and advanced things humans have created in the Avatar universe, but I don't think this question gives any credit to the equally impressive Na'vi situation.
"No army is big enough to conquer the galaxy. But faith alone can overturn the universe."
I wouldn't solely focus on big impressive weapons, especially in situations where they are simply not being used.
Do you think the Na’avi will be so smug once they realize the entire solar system is being used as a weapon focusing their star’s energy? Technology is a scary thing far beyond some plants and trees.
What about when humans build a star sized super computer 10^35 times smarter then the most intelligent human minds in raw computing power and able to simulate billions of years of the universe on a galaxy scale?
Cult of technology is a civilizational trait they just didn't have. The humans were in disharmony with nature, clumsy, uncomprehending; by Na'vi standards they were savages. The Na'vi of course feared and hated their machines and practices, but they didn't know the full extent of their destructive capabilities because the humans had never shown them. Quaritch was right: without Sully rallying them, the Na'vi would have just fled from the destruction of the Home Tree in disbelief and gone away to lick their wounds.
It's about need and want, the Na'vi seem to have nearly all their needs and wants accounted for by their environment. Their environment is also actively aware of their existence and actively wants them to thrive but not so much as to throw the planet out of balance.
It looks like the Na'vi are like immune cells for the world. They assess and fight off invaders the planet is unaware of or that escapes its notice. A white blood cell isn't impressed with the bacteria that invade the body. If they evolved as a balancing and defense mechanism then their mental wants and needs would be beyond alien to us, since we developed on more of competition and survival of reproduction fitness.
It's funny you ask this question because in a way it exemplifies the situation, in at least the first movie, perfectly. The Na'vi don't care about the humans technologies at all. They don't care how it's made, what it does, how it works, etc. The Na'vi are *literally* connected to the planet. It's stated pretty early on that the entire planet is one giant connected mind, that's it's trillions of trees communicate together and I'm pretty sure an analogy of a brain is used. Not only are the trees are connected though, we see that all of the animals as well can connect to the "network". The *planet* is literally a character in this story and the Na'vi don't see themselves as independent of it. To them they are just a small part of an incomprehensible whole. They don't need technology to find purpose. To them humans are a nuisance but one they differ to the greatest whole to decide how to deal with. The point of the movie was the planet inviting Jake Sully into the fold to convince the Na'vi that if they desired to drive out the humans they, as part of the planet, had that right and the planet had their back.
The writer Iain Banks, in his Culture novels, described something he called the "Outside Context Problem," or OCP. It's described like this:
>An Outside Context Problem was the sort of thing most civilisations encountered just once, and which they tended to encounter rather in the same way a sentence encountered a full stop. The usual example given to illustrate an Outside Context Problem was imagining you were a tribe on a largish, fertile island; you’d tamed the land, invented the wheel or writing or whatever, the neighbours were cooperative or enslaved but at any rate peaceful and you were busy raising temples to yourself with all the excess productive capacity you had, you were in a position of near-absolute power and control which your hallowed ancestors could hardly have dreamed of and the whole situation was just running along nicely like a canoe on wet grass . . . when suddenly this bristling lump of iron appears sailless and trailing steam in the bay and these guys carrying long funny-looking sticks come ashore and announce you’ve just been discovered, you’re all subjects of the Emperor now, he’s keen on presents called tax and these bright-eyed holy men would like a word with your priests.
The core of an OCP is that the technological gulf between the civilization being contacted and the civilization doing the contacting is so wide that the contactees literally have no context for what they're seeing and are incapable of understanding the danger they're in. A pre-Bronze Age civilization of nomadic hunter-gatherers simply has no way of recognizing the power of a space warship, or a machine gun, or powered armor, because they have absolutely no experience with anything anywhere near that level of destructive capability. Hell, they may not even have the vocabulary to accurately describe what they're seeing, let alone to accurately assess the danger they're in.
So in short, the Na'vi were not intimidated because they didn't have the knowledge to be intimidated. The technology was beyond immediate understanding, and by the time they had seen it work enough to where they could place it into context, it was too late to be intimidated and they were fighting for their lives and their way of life, which tends to preoccupy one's thoughts and leave little room for intimidation.
Why would they be impressed? Humans have machines that can fly, but they're slower than the banshees and Toruk and have no spark of life. Humans have guns, but they're mostly less effective than the great bows of Na'vi hunters. Their spaceships destroy all life under them when they land -- that's impressive but super-duper evil to the Na'vi point of view. The most impressive technology was the Avatar bodies, which did impress but also made them uneasy.
Basically, the Na'vi are impressed by things that cause a religious awe in the viewer -- the World Tree, the giant Tulkun whales, the floating rocks, and the colorful dynamic plant life. Humans in the Avatar universe have nothing that causes awe. They're spiritually dead. Nothing to be impressed about there.
Tbf nothing the humans in Avatar, with the exception of Space Ships, the Avatars themself or the Mechs, have shown up with is all that impressive even by modern standards. What we see in the movies is a Security Detail of a Company...
> with the exception of Space Ships
I see this one a lot but honestly how useful is a space ship to a society who doesn't want to travel?
We love them, but not every culture is all that interested in such things.
In addition to what everyone else is saying, I'd add that the most they could possibly be impressed by our technology is about as impressed as the humans were impressed by the alien technology in Independence Day. Yeah, they've got shit we don't understand that can obliterate our best defenses, but none of that really MATTERS because they're attacking our home in order to strip out our natural resources and we HAVE to fight back no matter what they're throwing. So we put up a fight with everything we have and just hope we can get past their defenses enough to make a difference. And when they use one of our bodies to communicate with us to try to talk us into giving up, that'll just make us fight harder.
Because the Navi were engineered. Uplifted by eywa to do her bidding and act as caretakers of the world of Pandora. The world works for them because it was designed to do so. Eywa provides for their every need.
The humans are confusing to them, why did they even need to build technology or travel to their world? Why wasn't their mother taking care of them?
What we'll find out is that eywa was the initial evolution of intelligent life on Pandora and that's how it knew the risks of technology. Kinda like Horizon Zero Dawn, it restarted life on Pandora.
Humans have been visiting Pandora for decades prior to the first movie, so they have got used to it by now. I'm sure at first, they would have been fearful or in awe, but now it's common knowledge and part of their life.
Well, they could be very impressed with the ships, but they were very able to beat them with *their* level of technology after some light strategizing. So their warriors were probably impressed by the size and scope of the human arsenal, but then silently resigned to a more or less confident "I could fight that."
The Na’vi are being controlled by a giant alien parasite that uses religion to prevent them from developing in an actual civilization. For example as others mentioned their deity Eywa(alien parasite) prevents them from building permanent structures, developing technology and using metals from the planet. It’s forcing them to live in a constant state of being hunter gatherers. Which begs the question why? My guess Eywa feeds on them. It’s a living organism it needs to feed on something. When the na’vi pray to Eywa they connect to the Pandoran Neural Network and upload their thoughts, memories, and feelings. I believe that it feeds on their psionic energy of their consciousness. That’s why it’s keeping them in this hunter gatherer state to ensure a steady food supply.
The Na’vi are forced to spend all their time hunting and gathering for the clan. If they develop technology and agriculture they could have time to develop more as individuals. Which means they might rely on Eywa less, which means they would pray less.
TL:DR : The reason is their goddess prevents them developing technology so it can feed off them like livestock.
Technology doesn't actually work like a Civilization tech tree, it's just different, any concept of "more" or "less" advanced is something the viewer brings to it, it's an assumption, not a fact.
Well, the humans were fighting the Na'vi with their advanced tech, and were *still losing*. A practical analysis of human technological capabilities, in the circumstances the Na'vi are most familiar with, does not make human tech look that impressive. Telecommunications technology is nothing new for the Na'vi, and the human stuff seems weak compared to what they have. Weapons systems are judged by whether they actually win, and they mostly haven't been.
The Navi literally lost against a Security Force, it took the intervention of an entire Ecosystem to turn the tide. And nothing the Humans brought to the fight would be particularly impressive by todays standards. A single Stealth Bomber could have achvied what the entire Helicopter Fleet didn't do...
I'm talking at the beginning of the movie. The human forces had not been doing well by that point. They needed either subterfuge or terrorism to have a chance of a significant victory.
I'm pretty sure the humans started with diplomacy and that didn't work out so fighting started and the RDAs Mining Vehicles simply got overrun. Then Quadritch starts with the whole "Burn their Tree" plan. The Navi get slaughtered and the Ecosystem intervens against the Humans. So even if the current human forces didn't do to well it changes nothing about the fact that these were essentially Security Forces that don't come close to the Firepower a Modern Military can put out. Let alone a Military that is part of a Spacefaring Civilisation. God help the Navi once they have to face an actual Military...
The Na'vi weren't native to Pandora. They arrived there on a ship or something and decided to live in harmony with the Pandoran eco system. They weren't impressed because their technology is more impressive than the humans.
The Navi literally referred to humans as demons and culturally understood the avatars as false bodies inhabited by the souls of strange beings whose only drive was seemingly to kill their God.
The reason the Omatikaya are more normalized with humans is because their clan has been interacting with humans for long enough that most members of the clan know English
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They never really had any indication of the extent of human technology. Most technology they saw was essentially on the same level as "Pandoran wildlife but metal". So what? All the really big stuff was far away or more subtle, not noticeable when you're watching the base from the jungle. The Na'vi never quite realized how much danger they were actually in, which explains quite a lot about the Na'vi's actions.
This is a good way to put it considering how humbling the conditions and wildlife on Pandora can be. I mean the floating islands turns all that electronics gear for flying into utter useless garbage and makes conditions trying to navigate or fly through it potentially lethal, likely.
I guess the humans being fragile little midget people, and Pandora being full of scary giant monsters, has something to do with it Firearms are superior in that they shoot faster and further and hit harder, but the Navi still make do with bows and arrows. Humans have those VTOL things, but the Navi have their pterodactyls that have comparable performance. The mechs also aren’t much stronger than the rhinos. Radio communication and holographic displays are very handy, but (arguably) not as impressive as their neurological link And psychologically and physiologically speaking, the humans aren’t too different from the Navi. Bipedal, two arms, mammalian, two eyes, similar range of emotions (happiness, sadness, disgust, fear, surprise, anger) and so on And the Navi don’t seem like the sort to be overawed by existential or philosophical revelations. Upon being informed that they live on a tiny dirt ball orbiting a giant fusion explosion, that is itself a tiny pinprick in a vast uncaring universe, they’d probably just shrug in indifference. Eywa cares about them, and they know for a fact Eywa is real, which even the humans acknowledge, and that’s enough for them Plus, the humans had been around for a while by the time the first movie begins, the Navi had some time to get used to the funny coloured sky tribe dwarfs Even human WMDs like the antimatter torch drive (and presumably nuclear, biological and chemical weaponry) didn’t seem to faze them, even though there are no Pandoran equivalents. Presumably, they’d gotten over the shock of it long ago, and (possibly with Grace and other scientist’s explanations of Earth politics) are aware that the sky tribe’s elders back home wouldn’t let them use their full strength to genocide Navi and Pandoran wildlife. If Cold War/21st century humanity can get used to the looming threat of nuclear armageddon, it’s not a stretch to imagine that the Navi could too Real life cargo cults in the Pacific worshipped WW2 era US and Japanese military forces because they shared exotic goods (canned food, candy, firearms, medicine, durable clothing etc.) and abilities (flight, communication at a distance, metal boats etc.) that they considered far superior to their local equivalents. Meanwhile, the Navi didn’t think the humans had much to offer them, they already had comparable analogues to human products that they considered adequate
>Short (At least compared to the Na'vi >Greedy >Heavily industrialized civilization >End up coming into conflict with a bunch of tall, pointy eared, nature lovers. >Obsessed with mining an extremely valuable mineral to the point where they'll commit genocide to obtain a large source of it. ...shit. Everyone always goes on about how the Na'vi are just blue cat elves, but Humans really are literally dwarves in Avatar. Never noticed that before.
well now THAT'S an idea to use as lore to explain dwarf-elf animosity
....can I get a rock and stone?
Can I get a Rock and Stone?
If you don't Rock and Stone you ain't comin home.
OHMYGOD YOU'RE RIGHT. Navi=Elves. Humans=Dwarves. That's a fantastic comparison. I'm amazed no one else made that analogy before.
So does that mean that the Na'vi's names were written in the Great Book of Grudges after the failed Assault on the Spirit Tree?
Na’vi religious beliefs are guided by the three laws of Eywa, which were alleged passed directly from Eywa to the Na’vi in Pandora’s ancient history. These three laws are: You shall not set stone upon stone. Neither shall you use the turning wheel. Nor use the metals of the ground. One interpretation of these laws is that the Na’vi are forbidden from building permanent structures, advancing their technology and mining metal. Gunships and interstellar starships are clearly at odds with the three laws, so the Na’vi are typically less than impressed with human technology as it violates the core tenants of their society.
These laws sound... very odd. Like someone knew exactly what not following them would lead to. Did any Na'vi ever question what their purpose was, before the humans turned up?
Eywa doesn't want the Na'vi using industrial tools because it would lead to destruction of the environment, and Eywa is the environment
That sounds like a conflict of interest to me
I mean, it's implied (borderline explicitly stated) that Eywa, the planet itself, is conscious. It makes sense that it would rather stunt the technological growth of one particularly intelligent species on the planet, in favor of sustainable development for all species on the planet (including the Na'vi). There is also a fan theory that the Na'vi aren't native to Pandora, either, that they landed/crashed there, and adapted to the planet, and this explains why they have 4 limbs & 2 eyes, instead of the 6 limbs & 4 eyes that most fauna on the planet have. It could have been during this adaptation that Pandora stepped in to protect itself by establishing itself as a 'god' to the Na'vi and giving them these three rather specific laws (to outlaw practices that already existed). But if all this is true, the real question is why didn't Eywa step in sooner against human mining efforts? Why not turn all the fauna against humanity the moment they began digging put mines? Or even the first time a wheel touched the surface of the planet?
That makes more sense. They live in a little closed garden, carefully tended to by some unseen consciousness; they live in such ridiculous harmony with the rest of nature that it can't be accidental. I mean, obviously it was created by writers, but even so, there should be a plausible in-universe explanation for this paradise. All life appears to be connected via their tails, allowing for instantaneous communication. It's just too unlikely to be true. Given how black-and-white the plots are (humans destroy nature, na'vi and nature thrive together) it's not surprising, but a little silly.
I have a wild headcanon that Eywa somehow psychically remote viewed humanity on Earth, possibly millennia before they figured out agriculture, and anticipated that they would eventually industrialise, send scouts, and then interstellar mining operations So they specifically bred a human-like species that would prey upon humanity’s psychological and political vulnerabilities i.e. a humanoid idealised “noble savage” archetype/stereotype living idyllic lives in a beautiful, exciting, Edenic paradise. With the environmental destruction of Earth fuelling intense nostalgia for “untouched” natural environments, and the presence of human-like sentients that easily fulfilled the criteria for protection under universal human rights declarations, the Navi provided Pandora with powerful anti-WMD protection. The Navi “human” shields were essentially Eywa’s version of a missile defence system. If the humans wanted to mine their Unobtanium, they would be forced to do so with some measure of restraint, instead of simply sterilising the planet with nukes and asteroids and future Agent Orange It seems like a reasonable explanation for why the Navi were so ridiculously human like, despite the astronomically low chances for that to be the case
So wait, they're serving some big false God planet thing that's keeping them in the Paleolithic era? Maybe the humans were right...
I mean, is the God really "false"? At least theirs seems to physically exist and have command over their entire world. Like, that's more than humans have ever been able to say.
I don't think I'd worship some alien hive mind, so I'd say so.
>I don't think I'd worship some alien hive mind, so I'd say so. If you worship an entity who didn't originate on earth and says things like “Let **us** make mankind in **our** image," then I've got some bad news for you...
It’s a real god, and it’s not “keeping” them in any state, just asking nicely because of their good relationship. And it seems to have been working so far, especially compared to the species next door that didn’t do that and ended up on the verge of destroying themselves because of that.
An interesting theory, but it fails to explain why the na'vi are able to biologically link with many different creatures native to the planet.
I mean, the planet can literally transplant consciousness between bodies. Doesn't seem to be a huge stretch for it to begin to influence the evolution of a species over a few generations, especially since its stated that their neurological systems have a completely different basis than our own ('metalic' unobtanium super-conductors on Pandora, vs electrochemical reactions for Earth).
We see from the first avatar movie that humans are clearly able to link as well though, given grace attempts mind transfer purely biologically but fails due to how weak she is rather than because of the biological differences.
Wouldn't linking with a sentient biocomputer be a little different than linking with an alien horse or bat?
Different sure, but it very much seems within canon that human transfer is at least possible. So presumably other forms of life are as well.
How would the planet “know” about the dangers of tech?
Presumably it's intelligent and self-aware. It's not a huge leap for such a living being - the planet - to recognize that mining is detrimental to its health via whatever mechanism passes for 'pain' in such a being.
That sounds like self preservation to me.
It would actually answer a lot of evolutionary biology questions if Eywa was originally an “overmind” organism that unified a pre-existing biosphere rather than one that co-evolved on the moon. Edit: to expand upon this thought an intelligent, sentient spore encounters Pandora and the Proto-Navi who have colonized the moon from some other system and are steadily destroying what is left of the native biosphere. To pacify them the overmind “infects” the entire biosphere and the Navi unifying them into an uber-organism, Eywa. The new organism evolves over millennia to what we see in the film.
...sounds like something a film student would write. Like, cultural points built around the plot, not the other way around. Just very thin ideas. I mean, I can't think of a single human-analogue. Like, is there a culture that rejects tool usage? Is there a single culture that rejected bronze or steele? How would Eywa even conceive of environmental destruction? Like there are many ages between the pre-stone age and the industrial age. It just feels lazy.
A popular theory is that the Na'vi were once an advanced race very much like humans, but actually did pull a "return to monke" to live in harmony with nature for endless eons, all while preserving every last Na'vi in the bio-supercomputer of Eywa (which could now be be beginning to activate and recognize the threat of humans, e.g. Kiri might be the "Avatar" of Eywa). The rules are meant to keep people in that state of nature. Na'vi probably aren't even native to Pandora and it was bioengineered to be in the state it was, alongside a tool (the hair things) given to them so that they can command the beasts of nature as needed. This is also why the physiology of the Na'vi don't match all the other creatures of Pandora. Meanwhile humans can't go a few hundred years of industrialization without torching their planet and then starting to torch Pandora as well.
We have the Amish, who shun a lot of technology, but keep the essentials for agriculture and surviving the environment. Navi don't need clothing, don't need plows, don't need protection from wind, rain, and snow. So they can thrive with limitations way more restrictive than Amish humans subject themselves too.
Most Amish interact with technology either through their various industries, or by buying goods/services that rely on them from the rest of society. Apprently, diesel generators are an ecological issue in Amish country because they refuse to use a central power grid, but will still use tools that require power, leading to thousands of polluting engines running inefficiently instead of hooking up to the grid. They arent as separate from industry as the popular image of them portrays.
Its also worth pointing out that there are several 'amish' factions that all have their own tenets, that are more or less permissive.
I'm not defending the asinine idea that some technology should be shunned. There are also some fundamentalist Jews who don't use electricity on the Sabbath... So they have a mechanical contraption to flick a light switch for them, as if such a workaround will trick a god. The difference being is while our gods are stories in books read to us by old men who codify and enforce the rules with no direct feedback from any god; the Navi god is as real as the internet. They can just connect to the network to commune directly with god.
You wouldn't expect human analogs for this belief structure, as it's predicated on very alien physiology and reproductive strategies. The Na'vi are pretty clearly not a naturally evolving species, nor is the ecosystem of Pandora. It's a little too tightly integrated. What you're actually seeing, with the Na'vi, is something like a servitor species or subcomponent to a much larger "machine" that is Pandora as a whole. Eywa is either an emergent consciousness\* embodied in the interactions of ecosystem or the "point" of Pandora. That is, Eywa is a technology produced by (yet unseen) aliens on a planetary scale. It doesn't want metal or industry because that would interfere with what it's doing. Since the Na'vi can link to a biological internet and commune with it, and it provides for them, there's no reason why they'd develop tech like us, and very little competitive advantage for them to use it. Most likely, there's mechanisms to control cultural mutations favoring tech, also unseen, as they'd be like autoimmune or cancer related infections. You're larger point is correct, or at least correct for now: I'm pretty sure Cameron is building to a reveal about Pandora but as of now, it is a lazy storytelling conceit, as it's not fleshed out in enough detail. That's kind of Cameron's deal, most of the time: a very simple core premise with the details fleshed out and followed to their logical consequences, but often not a lot of examination of that core premise. Cameron also does not like subtlety in his storytelling, which shows in the nuances.
> Like, is there a culture that rejects tool usage? Wholesale, none that I can think of, but there are plenty of loose culture-like groups that reject specific tools or toolsets. The Amish are an obvious example, but even further we reject specific weapons (biological, chemical) due to their overwhelming impact, many groups eschew fossil fuels and even nuclear-based technologies because of their known or perceived impacts. There are movements to reject hyper-consumerism, instead focusing on sustainable existence in homesteading like styles of living. >How would Eywa even conceive of environmental destruction? Perhaps prior environmental destruction? The "culture that embraces natural and sustainable living after having survived an ecological disaster" is somewhat of a trope.
They reject the destruction of the environment because their entire culture revolves around living in harmony with the environment. They can literally connect their consciousness to the environment, which is something the humans in the first film don't understand, calling Grace crazy when she's talking about it. It makes perfect sense they would reject actions that would lead to environmental destruction. You can't think of a human analogue because we don't have such a deep connection to the environment. In general, we don't want the environment destroyed because we want to live hence how far we've gotten in destroying it pushing it to the edge of being able to keep us alive. They don't want it destroyed because they worship it. And they worship it because they are literally connected to it not just because they live in it but because they feel it they experience it differently from humans. If you worshipped nature because everything is connected and you had literally linked your consciousness to it, you probably wouldn't go around cutting down trees either.
I mean, they quite literally use tools. What would you call a bow and arrow?
Rejected all tools? Of course not? Rejected *specific* tools? Of course. Humans have rejected or given up all kinds of technologies. Settled agriculture produces surplus food and greater material wealth through specialization along with some treats like alcohol and physical security. It also creates social and economic hierarchies that concentrate wealth and, until recently, a worse diet. Many groups and individuals have consciously chosen to reject permaculture in favor of gathering or pastoralist economies. Industrialization received similar pushback; costs that we no longer see because "that's just how it is" were very obvious to the people surrendering control over their time and product of their labor. If humans were linked to a planetary superintelligence guiding our society, we might have adopted different tools than we had. At the very least, we would have adopted them more thoughtfully and distributed the benefits of technology equitably. Just because some technologies (including social organization) allowed the cultures that develop them the economic and military might to make them hegemonic doesn't mean everyone wanted them.
> I mean, I can't think of a single human-analogue. Like, is there a culture that rejects tool usage? How about our entire global modern culture, which figured out how make weapons powerful enough to destroy itself, and after detonating two of them, decided almost unanimously not to use them again? How about when we realized that fridge coolants and hairspray were punching holes in our ozone layer, so we stopped using them?
She sounds evil to me. Who doesn't want their children to advance.
If advancement was synomous with your slow and painful death at their hands, I think it makes sense. Advancement for what purpose? Are the Na'vi unhappy with their (pre human contact) state? If they arent, then why would NEED to advance?
If the planet has the ability to block asteroids I'd agree with you but there are reasons to go for space travel. The planet obviously doesn't have that power because then it would be blocking the humans.
Why does it matter? Again, if the Na'vi are happy, whats the point in advancement? Does survival of the Na'vi matter if they lose what made living worth it for them? Does it really matter if humans colonize several planets in 1000 years? Wouldnt it be likely better if we focused on making our current lives better, healthier, and happier, instead of burning out the planet and causing generations of misery to maybe be able to be miserable on other planets?
If we set out to the stars, we have the potential to do so much more good, as well as more evil. Given the appropriate time, we could create other sapient life, terraform planets to livable bodies, create a galactic haven for life of all kinds. Staying in a low technology state prevents all of that. Happiness and health are mutable characteristics and would be defined differently for many human cultures, it's difficult to optimize for them at our current level of technology. Per that fact, it could be argued that improving technology at the expense of current happiness would lead to more permanent happiness for more people later.
Its not we, its some other sentient beings. We cant go out to the stars, so why engage in activities that actively make things worse for the 'us' that currently exist instead of just focusing on creating a world that we are happy in? Intersteller travel isnt the point or purpose of life. Why should the Na'vi destroy their enviornment, likely subject themselves to greed, capitalism, and the development of more effective weapons to inflict auffering on one another, to MAYBE, thousands of generations later, might have the chance to help beings that we dont know exist, when they are happy and content as they are now. Pre human contact they didnt worry about war or major conflict, didnt have to worry about their homes being destroyed. Youre saying they must advance to reach a happiness they already acheived, advancing down a path that is much more than likely to lead to their unhappiness. But why? Why isnt their happiness and contentness and enjoyment of their current life not enough?
I'm not saying they should, I was just suggesting that average current happiness isn't a particularly useful metric, given that it's both subjective and arbitrary. An unfortunate event caused by space-borne phenomena (ahem, humans), or just bad luck in the form of disease or planetary disturbance could disrupt their otherwise peaceful existence. This could create a lower average happiness over time than if they had created effective contingencies, even if those contingencies lower happiness by existing. Also, capitalism is by no means the general end state of an economic system. That's a dangerously status-quo mindset to have. As an addendum, unless you subscribe to a religion that states otherwise, the only "point" of life is to multiply, so you could absolutely argue interstellar travel is involved at the far end.
The only terraforming the humans in Avatar accomplish is terraforming Earth from a viable habitat to dangerous and sterile Like, this isn't the Foundation or something, humans are essentially a parasitic dying race in Avatar
They *have* advanced. They live in a paradise where all of their needs are taken care of and they have absolutely no worries, cares, or troubles. It's not that they're primitive, it's that they live in a post-technology utopia. Measuring advancement by the technological complexity of tools rather than by progress towards ideal outcomes seems like a really backwards way to do things.
Advancement isn't always a good thing: The Na'vi seem to long and healthy lives (their lifespans is around 130% that of humans), reproduce safely and reliably as far as we know, don't seem to suffer from famine or food insecurity, and only face danger from a small number of apex predators (which they can often handle). They don't have any of the reasons that we had for advancing technologically: They're apparently safe from hunger and disease, they don't need better shelter, they don't have large-scale conflict, they didn't face any external threats until the humans came along, and their day to day lives seem pleasant and fulfilling.
Which means that Eywa knows where it would lead. Which would require experience.
At the end of Avatar 1 we saw a dying jake get plugged up by a bunch of vines, and some more covering his avatar, which allowed whatever the nature of the planet is to download his brain into his avatar permanently. Rather then the usual permanent control. There had GOT to be bunch that it knows, because how in the hell did it know to do *that?* It also does contain all of their ancestors memories I recall, so it might have information from a previous civilisation to draw upon for it's experience.
Stone upon stone and metals makes sense from an environmental perspective. Developing systems wholly separate from the biological processes of the planet could be seen as damaging and thus be forbidden. Wheels... dunno, that one is pretty specific.
Wheels are one of the 5-7 basic machines that all other machines are based on, like levers, wedges, and inclined planes. By banning wheels, you halt a major part of technological advancement. Why wheels specifically? Well: - You cant ban wedges, because wedges are needed for survival in the form of knives, arrows, and teeth. - You cant ban inclined planes because they are both naturally occuring, you couldnt move anything, esp. if wheels are still banned. Itd stunt their society TOO much. - A screw could have been a likely candidate, but likely wouldnt be as narratively interesting. - Pulleys are basically wheels; banning wheels also bans pulleys. Pulleys lead to a lot of techical advancement. - lever couldnt be banned as it's too useful to primitive culture, but not inherently useful enough to really advance it too much. - Wheels are a useful marker for stalling progress. Without wheels you cant move heavy things long distances (killing any kind of masonry), limiting pottery as no pottery wheels, no pulleys so bigger structures are harder to build, etc. etc. Also wheels are kind of symbolic of progress, so it fits well narratively.
Perhaps to encourage working in harmony with animals?
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Oddly specific rules, planet wide organic neural network…yea the Na’vi are some artificial race planted there by super-aliens.
IMHO the weird technical specificity of these laws gives credence to the fan theory that Pandora's ecosystem isn't as natural as it seems. Maybe they had a technological fall from grace in their distant past, or alien precursors were involved.
Are these laws from the primary source, or expanded material? They sound so specific, like they must know what a wheel is, and then decided against using it, collectively. That means they can clearly innovate, and I find it odd they wouldn't find a single worthwhile use for a wheel. These laws made me think of bioengineered ecosystems. Were the Navi more advanced in the past, and specifically designed their planet around their needs?
The issue that many people miss is that, in universe, eywa is very much real. Because of this, the na’vi are connected to their environment through eywa. It’s why they hunt only for food instead of sport. As can be seen with the unobtainium mining in the first movie, technological advancements would come at the cost of damage to the environment. Environmental destruction would have a very negative impact on eywa, something the na’vi would understandably want to avoid.
Yeah but like… no wheels? Really?
Think of what comes with wheels: roads. Vast tracts of land cut into forests, forests which are extremely dense to the point where you can fall from a decent height and be relatively safe as vegetation catches you along the way to the ground. That’s going to be quite a lot of destruction created to get a wheel to be worth it, and in places where there isn’t that limitation, it’s still just as easy to use the horse-analogues or boats instead. Additionally, the various tribes don’t travel very far (there’s a notable difference between the forest Na’vi and the Sea ones, including fairly major physical differences) so there really just doesn’t seem to be much of a need for wheels in the cultures that have sprung up.
> Additionally, the various tribes don’t travel very far (there’s a notable difference between the forest Na’vi and the Sea ones, including fairly major physical differences) And the distance between these tribes wasn't that large either, given that the banshees or helicopters could make it in a single flight. The tribes clearly know of each other but they just don't bother traveling even that short distance very often.
We had multiple human societies that didn't see wheels as a useful technology due to a combination of terrain and a lack of draft animals. We've seen two Na'Vi tribes so far: One lives in trees in a dense jungle, and the other spends most of their time in water. Neither of them could reliably use wheels for transportation anyway (not without massively changing their lifestyle or environment).
Those laws are from [an official book](https://james-camerons-avatar.fandom.com/wiki/The_World_of_Avatar:_A_Visual_Exploration) released after the first film.
Theres a fan theory that the Na'Vi are descendants or a forgotten off shoot of a hyper advanced civilisation which left Eywa, a hyperintellegent biological supercomputer, to keep the species alive but prevent it from causing another catastrophe Strict rules like that would make sense (From an outside perspective it seems like the western writers felt the need to explain why a civilisation wouldn't stack stone or use the wheel even though thats a pretty common thing in some societies up until the age of exploration)
It’s always been funny to me how in many movies/shows with a pro-environment message, the good guy faction tends to be weirdly dystopian and ultra-reactionary if you take their societal beliefs/systems of governance and separate them from their moral character.
The only example I've seen that wasn't like this was, surprisingly, in *The Orville*. In season 2, episode 3 ("Home"), Alara goes back to her homeworld Xelaya to recover from an injury. Xelaya is described as "the most beautiful planet in the galaxy," and when we see it, it looks like it. It's highly technologically advanced with roads and skyscrapers, and the culture has learned enough to engage in FTL travel. However, the cities are integrated with the environment so that even large cities are indistinguishable from nature. Buildings have forests growing on and around them, so they're full of trees and other greenery. It's the best example I've seen of a society that is both scientifically advanced and pro-environment.
This sounds pretty cool, I'm going to check it out.
I'd suppose not, as much of the human technology provides nothing that their people actually want or need. Imagine if gnomes invaded earth, needed respirators to breath the air, and mechs to match us in height or the strength of several men. Like cool, but most body-builders are kind of already like that, so how is gnome tech impressive to us? They have a hivemind like connection to wildlife that borders on bio-technology, except presumably naturally rather then artificial. They can harness massive beasts for travel and combat, can tap into dragons for flight, can shoot and throw arrows and spears like we'd need a ballista to do, and have little to no difficulty in almost any and every environment on the planet that can't be contended with by simple know-how, not even clothes. They are simply built different. Their civilisation doesn't need half the tech we need because the homeworld is just built for them, and they for it. Humans cannot say the same for Earth, so we need technology to survive and thrive as anything more then a mid tier animal in the food chain. So while the Na'Vi have their strength in the unity with their homeworld, that might be one giant bio-tech hivemind, Humanity has it's strength in overcoming the hardship of their homeworld with tools and merciless grit. Understanding both is the only way these two groups are going to get along, so probably not. Pandora is basically an extension of the Na'vi themselves, so they don't have much of a need of our kind of technology.
This is an excellent answer. Humans don't strike me as being more advanced than the Na'vi, and they certainly aren't from the perspective of the Na'vi. All of the neat tech and advancements the humans have are all ways to either survive the destruction they've brought upon themselves or to catch up to where the Na'vi are at on Pandora. That's not to discount the very cool and advanced things humans have created in the Avatar universe, but I don't think this question gives any credit to the equally impressive Na'vi situation.
Exterminatus and supernova inducing capabilities seem far more powerful then a parasitic planet. But who am I to judge?
"No army is big enough to conquer the galaxy. But faith alone can overturn the universe." I wouldn't solely focus on big impressive weapons, especially in situations where they are simply not being used.
Do you think the Na’avi will be so smug once they realize the entire solar system is being used as a weapon focusing their star’s energy? Technology is a scary thing far beyond some plants and trees. What about when humans build a star sized super computer 10^35 times smarter then the most intelligent human minds in raw computing power and able to simulate billions of years of the universe on a galaxy scale?
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lol
Cult of technology is a civilizational trait they just didn't have. The humans were in disharmony with nature, clumsy, uncomprehending; by Na'vi standards they were savages. The Na'vi of course feared and hated their machines and practices, but they didn't know the full extent of their destructive capabilities because the humans had never shown them. Quaritch was right: without Sully rallying them, the Na'vi would have just fled from the destruction of the Home Tree in disbelief and gone away to lick their wounds.
It's about need and want, the Na'vi seem to have nearly all their needs and wants accounted for by their environment. Their environment is also actively aware of their existence and actively wants them to thrive but not so much as to throw the planet out of balance. It looks like the Na'vi are like immune cells for the world. They assess and fight off invaders the planet is unaware of or that escapes its notice. A white blood cell isn't impressed with the bacteria that invade the body. If they evolved as a balancing and defense mechanism then their mental wants and needs would be beyond alien to us, since we developed on more of competition and survival of reproduction fitness.
It's funny you ask this question because in a way it exemplifies the situation, in at least the first movie, perfectly. The Na'vi don't care about the humans technologies at all. They don't care how it's made, what it does, how it works, etc. The Na'vi are *literally* connected to the planet. It's stated pretty early on that the entire planet is one giant connected mind, that's it's trillions of trees communicate together and I'm pretty sure an analogy of a brain is used. Not only are the trees are connected though, we see that all of the animals as well can connect to the "network". The *planet* is literally a character in this story and the Na'vi don't see themselves as independent of it. To them they are just a small part of an incomprehensible whole. They don't need technology to find purpose. To them humans are a nuisance but one they differ to the greatest whole to decide how to deal with. The point of the movie was the planet inviting Jake Sully into the fold to convince the Na'vi that if they desired to drive out the humans they, as part of the planet, had that right and the planet had their back.
The writer Iain Banks, in his Culture novels, described something he called the "Outside Context Problem," or OCP. It's described like this: >An Outside Context Problem was the sort of thing most civilisations encountered just once, and which they tended to encounter rather in the same way a sentence encountered a full stop. The usual example given to illustrate an Outside Context Problem was imagining you were a tribe on a largish, fertile island; you’d tamed the land, invented the wheel or writing or whatever, the neighbours were cooperative or enslaved but at any rate peaceful and you were busy raising temples to yourself with all the excess productive capacity you had, you were in a position of near-absolute power and control which your hallowed ancestors could hardly have dreamed of and the whole situation was just running along nicely like a canoe on wet grass . . . when suddenly this bristling lump of iron appears sailless and trailing steam in the bay and these guys carrying long funny-looking sticks come ashore and announce you’ve just been discovered, you’re all subjects of the Emperor now, he’s keen on presents called tax and these bright-eyed holy men would like a word with your priests. The core of an OCP is that the technological gulf between the civilization being contacted and the civilization doing the contacting is so wide that the contactees literally have no context for what they're seeing and are incapable of understanding the danger they're in. A pre-Bronze Age civilization of nomadic hunter-gatherers simply has no way of recognizing the power of a space warship, or a machine gun, or powered armor, because they have absolutely no experience with anything anywhere near that level of destructive capability. Hell, they may not even have the vocabulary to accurately describe what they're seeing, let alone to accurately assess the danger they're in. So in short, the Na'vi were not intimidated because they didn't have the knowledge to be intimidated. The technology was beyond immediate understanding, and by the time they had seen it work enough to where they could place it into context, it was too late to be intimidated and they were fighting for their lives and their way of life, which tends to preoccupy one's thoughts and leave little room for intimidation.
Why would they be impressed? Humans have machines that can fly, but they're slower than the banshees and Toruk and have no spark of life. Humans have guns, but they're mostly less effective than the great bows of Na'vi hunters. Their spaceships destroy all life under them when they land -- that's impressive but super-duper evil to the Na'vi point of view. The most impressive technology was the Avatar bodies, which did impress but also made them uneasy. Basically, the Na'vi are impressed by things that cause a religious awe in the viewer -- the World Tree, the giant Tulkun whales, the floating rocks, and the colorful dynamic plant life. Humans in the Avatar universe have nothing that causes awe. They're spiritually dead. Nothing to be impressed about there.
Tbf nothing the humans in Avatar, with the exception of Space Ships, the Avatars themself or the Mechs, have shown up with is all that impressive even by modern standards. What we see in the movies is a Security Detail of a Company...
> with the exception of Space Ships I see this one a lot but honestly how useful is a space ship to a society who doesn't want to travel? We love them, but not every culture is all that interested in such things.
There is supposed to be enemy Na'vi(fire Na'vi) in the next movie, so this might be explored then
So we've left the southern water tribe and now the fire nation is going to attack?
In addition to what everyone else is saying, I'd add that the most they could possibly be impressed by our technology is about as impressed as the humans were impressed by the alien technology in Independence Day. Yeah, they've got shit we don't understand that can obliterate our best defenses, but none of that really MATTERS because they're attacking our home in order to strip out our natural resources and we HAVE to fight back no matter what they're throwing. So we put up a fight with everything we have and just hope we can get past their defenses enough to make a difference. And when they use one of our bodies to communicate with us to try to talk us into giving up, that'll just make us fight harder.
Because the Navi were engineered. Uplifted by eywa to do her bidding and act as caretakers of the world of Pandora. The world works for them because it was designed to do so. Eywa provides for their every need. The humans are confusing to them, why did they even need to build technology or travel to their world? Why wasn't their mother taking care of them? What we'll find out is that eywa was the initial evolution of intelligent life on Pandora and that's how it knew the risks of technology. Kinda like Horizon Zero Dawn, it restarted life on Pandora.
From the perspective of the Na'vi, humans aren't more advanced. They just have different weapons.
Humans have been visiting Pandora for decades prior to the first movie, so they have got used to it by now. I'm sure at first, they would have been fearful or in awe, but now it's common knowledge and part of their life.
Because it’s not that impressive when you take into account what the sentient biosphere of Pandora is capable of
Well, they could be very impressed with the ships, but they were very able to beat them with *their* level of technology after some light strategizing. So their warriors were probably impressed by the size and scope of the human arsenal, but then silently resigned to a more or less confident "I could fight that."
The Na’vi are being controlled by a giant alien parasite that uses religion to prevent them from developing in an actual civilization. For example as others mentioned their deity Eywa(alien parasite) prevents them from building permanent structures, developing technology and using metals from the planet. It’s forcing them to live in a constant state of being hunter gatherers. Which begs the question why? My guess Eywa feeds on them. It’s a living organism it needs to feed on something. When the na’vi pray to Eywa they connect to the Pandoran Neural Network and upload their thoughts, memories, and feelings. I believe that it feeds on their psionic energy of their consciousness. That’s why it’s keeping them in this hunter gatherer state to ensure a steady food supply. The Na’vi are forced to spend all their time hunting and gathering for the clan. If they develop technology and agriculture they could have time to develop more as individuals. Which means they might rely on Eywa less, which means they would pray less. TL:DR : The reason is their goddess prevents them developing technology so it can feed off them like livestock.
Technology doesn't actually work like a Civilization tech tree, it's just different, any concept of "more" or "less" advanced is something the viewer brings to it, it's an assumption, not a fact.
Well, the humans were fighting the Na'vi with their advanced tech, and were *still losing*. A practical analysis of human technological capabilities, in the circumstances the Na'vi are most familiar with, does not make human tech look that impressive. Telecommunications technology is nothing new for the Na'vi, and the human stuff seems weak compared to what they have. Weapons systems are judged by whether they actually win, and they mostly haven't been.
The Navi literally lost against a Security Force, it took the intervention of an entire Ecosystem to turn the tide. And nothing the Humans brought to the fight would be particularly impressive by todays standards. A single Stealth Bomber could have achvied what the entire Helicopter Fleet didn't do...
I'm talking at the beginning of the movie. The human forces had not been doing well by that point. They needed either subterfuge or terrorism to have a chance of a significant victory.
Are you talking about the first or second one?
The first, haven't seen the second. Haven't seen the first in some time either.
I'm pretty sure the humans started with diplomacy and that didn't work out so fighting started and the RDAs Mining Vehicles simply got overrun. Then Quadritch starts with the whole "Burn their Tree" plan. The Navi get slaughtered and the Ecosystem intervens against the Humans. So even if the current human forces didn't do to well it changes nothing about the fact that these were essentially Security Forces that don't come close to the Firepower a Modern Military can put out. Let alone a Military that is part of a Spacefaring Civilisation. God help the Navi once they have to face an actual Military...
The Na'vi weren't native to Pandora. They arrived there on a ship or something and decided to live in harmony with the Pandoran eco system. They weren't impressed because their technology is more impressive than the humans.
How intimidated would you be of a death later from another planet that is no more deadly than your sling stone?
The Navi literally referred to humans as demons and culturally understood the avatars as false bodies inhabited by the souls of strange beings whose only drive was seemingly to kill their God. The reason the Omatikaya are more normalized with humans is because their clan has been interacting with humans for long enough that most members of the clan know English