Avatar, the movie, illustrates all that is wrong with multiculturalism and shows how it threatens Western civilization. This film is easily summarized. It is the good indigenous people fighting the bad U.S. military. But, beyond the highest globally grossing film of all time having audiences cheering the killing of U.S. Marines, the film reflects even deeper multicultural truisms that we must combat with culturism or die.
This film provided a perfect representation of multiculturalism. At heart multiculturalism says to respect all cultures, except the West. This is because we are, as the film explains, seen as imperialist. And, as we have transformed the world, we have disproportionately disrupted the indigenous cultures multiculturalism celebrates. Culturism, by way of contrast, supports the West and recognizes progress.
In indigenous cultures, on average, Lawwrence Keeley and other anthropologists tell us, 25% of the male population died in warfare. And, there was yearly war. The population stayed low because of starvation and death in childbirth. And, while the men fought, women were beasts of burden. In 20th century Europe, by contrast, with its two World Wars, only 1.9% of males died in combat. Most Americans never go to War. Nearly none of us die in War. We live long lives with lots of comforts and food. If you are anti-War you should support the West.
Indigenous populations were not the angelic environmentalists of left leaning Hollywood minds. As the indigenous population spread across North America, it wiped out 85% of the large mammals. Jared Diamond, in Collapse, tells us that Arizona used to be forested. The locals used all the trees and descended into cannibalism, before Columbus arrived. And remember Easter Island? Science solved the Ozone problem. To abandon the West and rationality is to destroy the hope of environmental management.
The film backs an array of pathological leftist multicultural thoughts. This film, as multiculturalism generally, denigrates progress and the West for having made it. The lead character says the indigenous will not give up their way of life for "lite beer and blue jeans." The West is more than that. We have taken the world from one of scared superstition and constant warfare to a place with comfort and progress. Thanks to the West, slavery is nearly gone and the world population is booming.
It was significant to me that the lead character had a "tribal" tattoo. These tattoos show disaffection with the rational West and sympathy for a more emotional primitive past. In several scenes the indigenous people all chant or sway in unison. They have a sense of community. The West is an alienating place as it stresses individualism. But, we could again find cohesion in the fact that we are the cutting edge of technology and freedom in the world. By claiming that we have no majority culture or connection with western civilization, multiculturalism drives people to look for it in fairy tales and get tribal tattoos.
In Avatar the left's hatred of America was on display. Though it happens in a remote time and place, a protagonist calls the marine's destruction "Shock and awe." A Marine leader says "we must fight terror with terror." And, as a central trope, the Marines attack their tallest structure, a tree. This covertly justified the indigenous people's attack on our tallest structure, the World Trade Center. When you couple this with Avatar's asking us to root for the killing of American soldiers, we have a fairly anti-American film.
In reality, whether Hollywood's left or Obama want to admit it, we are currently fighting for the survival of western civilization. Our Islamic enemies, like all indigenous folks, are war like, irrational, and oppressive. When the Taliban took over parts of Pakistan last year, they immediately destroyed nearly two hundred girl's schools. They are attacking Thailand. It is not because of Thai crimes. It is due to the rabid, irrational, drives that their form of theocracy unleashes.
Lastly, the film sinks to its lowest multicultural level with its invocation of racist themes. The angry Marine leader, before and in the ultimate showdown between good and evil, asks the lead protagonist to stick with his own "race." The correct word would have been species. But the choice parallels the multicultural blurring of race and culture. The multis label all mention of negative aspects of cultural diversity "racist." Ultimately, in this film, to be for the West is, in the Marine's words, to be racist. That optimizes the multicultural left's position.
We must use the words culturism and culturist to help distinguish between race and culture. Racism is stupid. But cultural diversity, like progress, is real. If we cannot talk about the negative aspects of some cultures, and if to root for our side continues to be demonized as racist, we are in trouble. Avatar's overtly saying those who side with Western civilization are racist reflects a common multicultural tactic of the left that should not be taken lightly.
Perhaps even scarier, the film constantly evokes the use of the word, "the people." In Avatar, to be for western civilization is to be against, "the people." This is the sort of black and white thinking that leads to genocide. When leaders start doing things in the name of "the people" we are on our way to demagogic authoritarianism. To be good, the lead protagonist must show is he not part of the West, disdains it, and has converted to being one of "the people." This is a bad trope.
For the West to thrive, it must replace multiculturalism with culturism. We must know we have a valuable and vulnerable civilization and strive to protect it. This will give us a much-needed sense of pride and community. We must recognize that progress has happened and we can revert to something much worse. While we have a war on terror, films that subtlety justify the 9/11 attacks and overtly justify the killing of Marines, sap our defense of civilization. The West must stand against theocracy. To do so we must side with and strive for the success of the West. We must adopt a culturist, rather than a multiculturalist, perspective. Avatar shows us why.
John Press, Ph.D is the author of Culturism: A Word, A Value, Our Future.
