Reps get spit on, windows broken, mysterious powder–and Palin blames the “lame-stream media”.

House Minority Whip Eric Cantor (R-VA) excoriated DNC Chair Tim Kaine and DCCC Chair Rep. Chris Van Hollen, for “dangerously fanning the flames” in using recent acts of violence and intimidation by anti-health-care reform opponents, “as a political weapon.”

Was there spittle? Or, was there not?

There is so much spin going on all over the place it’s a wonder the number of car-wrecks don’t go up due to a permanent condition of dizziness afflicting the populace.

A friend of mine I play B-ball with said, “Don ‘t complain about Glenn Beck, the left’s got Keith Olbermann–the Republicans, Bill O’Reilly–and Democrats, Chris Matthews.”

It’s clear television news today is not your father’s nor mother’s fav journalist broadcaster. The days of Howard K. Smith or Walter Cronkite are gone.

So we have these ratings machines — FOX News, CNN, MSNBC — stoking reactionary stimulus throughout the neural networks of many a head, whipping folks up in their respective corners only to meet in the real world with shouting, disconnects, and yes, even acts of violence.

What are the solutions? I mean, quite possibly, there’s as much wrong with American media appetites as there is with our real eating habits of sugar, salt, carbs.

Maybe we’re just in the dark ages of the information revolution. Does that make sense?

I just finished a mentorship program with sixth grade students in Wellston, Missouri. We were helping students with projects for a Science Fair, and teaching them what the scientific method is. You come up with an idea–you test it–and appreciate knowing if you were right or wrong.

Teaching the method in simple terms gave me a clue as to what might be going on as the nation further fractures, polarizes and chasms, politically.

Scientific evidence shows that people like to be “right” and actually get a chemical lift from the experience, kinda like what a Ding-Dong and Coke’ll do to ya.

In fact, people like to be right so bad, that they will actually rearrange and distort facts to reach emotionally satisfying conclusions, as opposed to accurate ones. This is the filter of an addiction to the false sense of security in knowing you’ve got it all figured out; a comfortable and safe place, to be sure. Media venues pump a light-and-sound show that tweak this addiction to be “right”, and profit off of being pushers of self-reinforcing arrogance.

What I shared with my students was the fact that, as scientists, we have to lean against this propensity to always want to be right, and to embrace revealing facts and statistics that might–god forbid–actually disprove our theories, ideas or concepts. After all, as the story goes, Thomas Edison did not invent the light bulb as much as found thousands of light bulbs that didn’t last until they discovered a carbonized bamboo filament that lasted lit-up for over a thousand hours. The point is, objective evidence may not feel good all the time, but an individual or community or nation that celebrates it, will be less prone to ego-satisfying folly or self-destructive cultural battles.

The problem with our political system resembling more of a sporting contest than a thoughtful democracy is that a sort of “March-Madness” begins to creep in (nothing against the beautiful B-ball we’ve been witness to recently). A large portion of folks are just hell-bent upon winning–delivering “Waterloos” to the other side at any cost–including damaging the better interests of the American people.

To think that not a single Republican voted for health-care reform is emblematic of the Napoleon-like mentality that has polluted our political universe.

Our nation is 233 years old, a youngster as compared to other cultures; adolescence can be difficult.  As America grows up, let’s make sure her citizens have access to the liberating mindset of the scientist seeking solutions, and move past the “I’m right, you’re wrong” political theatre that plays out more like a Greek tragedy, than the story of a modern, mature and manifest leader in the world.

This is why education is the investment in our future like no other. And making sure the education for future generations is the best we can deliver.

I think the last flick I’ve seen more than three times in theaters was Star Wars in 1977 when I was a sprite 11 years old. Yesterday, I saw James Cameron’s “Avatar” for the third time eagerly sharing each viewing with family and friends. Avatar’s latest box office has it ranked as the second highest grossing film of all time behind Titanic, another film directed by Cameron.

The 3D and CGI technological leaps Avatar entertains scatters a little pixie dust over one’s eyes summoning the sparkling magic of the movies we experienced as film-going adolescents. Words like “immersive” and “consuming” have been used to describe the digital deluge of artistry washing over the audience when literally bounding about the alien landscape of Pandora; a life-lush moon orbiting a gas giant planet in the Alpha Centuri tri-star complex. It is a “must-see” in big screen 3D.

There have been passionate criticisms of Cameron’s latest epic, but to me, these negative responses have not been a function of the film’s narrative per se, as much as subjective expectations projected upon one of the most expensive and anticipated movies in years. Avatar is like the “President” of feature films, and being situated at the top of Hollywood’s heap, has a difficult time pleasing everybody. But in many ways Avatar is living up to its role becoming bigger and grander than just about any other Hollywood film. Not only is it spearheading a revolution in consumer electronics and television with 3D flat screens and channels springing up (Sony, ESPN, DirecTV, etc), but it also represents one of the most penetrating and multi-faceted social commentaries to be delivered through a mainstream vehicle in years — without a doubt James Cameron’s most progressive offering.    

With Hollywood stick-figure simplicity and in no uncertain terms, Avatar’s plot revolves around a set of political propositions:

* the transcendent value of life’s interdependency

* anti-corporate exploitation

The story follows a paraplegic ex-Marine, Jake Sully (Sam Worthington), who has been offered a gig with a multi-stellar corporation bent upon mining a rare mineral on the moon Pandora. However, in order to gain access to the biggest lode of “unobtanium”, the corporation needs to displace an indigenous population of hundreds of ten-feet tall lithe and quasi-feline blue humanoids; known as the “Na-vi”. Sully is an Avatar Driver who remotely controls a genetically grown ten foot tall Na’vi body with his nervous system. Jake’s Avatar is able to breathe Pandora’s exotic atmosphere and interact with the endemic flora and fauna; eventually, enabling him to “relate” more effectively with the Na’vi natives as one of their own.  

Interdependence of all living beings and environmental stewardship  

We learn that the Na’vi practice a religion of connected harmony with their Mother, the life essence of Pandora, or perhaps all life, called “Eywa”. It is explained both scientifically and through religious narrative that there is a network of energy connecting all life, and that this energy cannot be possessed; it is only borrowed and returns to Eywa after the natural cycle of life and death. Like Native Americans, when the Na’vi hunt, a “clean kill” has the Na’vi hunter praying to the soul of the dying animal expressing gratitude for the sustenance provided to The People. Unnecessary death, destruction and environmental degradation are all considered an abomination to that which is sacred; harmony with nature and the preservation of the balance of life are principle tenets practiced by the Na’vi.

Jake Sully is taught the native ways, a la Kevin Costner in “Dances with Wolves”. He is torn between two cultures: his mercenary Marine brethren doing the bidding of a profiteering conglomerate — and his new family and way of life with the Na’vi. The human invaders are chasing down profits and resources for a healthy quarterly business report back home at the expense of utterly desecrating the embodiment of Na’vi life, their towering living lair in the form of an acres tall “Home-tree” and, in the process, killing many members of the Na’vi clan. Sully chooses to defend the Na’vi “good guys” versus the militaristic corporate “bad guys”.

This first layer of story in Avatar recalls many scenes from our colonial history of conquering Empires and overrun indigenous peoples, indeed, we are still beset by the depredations of resource and human exploitation whether oil politics in the Middle East or sweatshop servitude in Asian factories supplying $3 t-shirts to the West. As I have expressed in the past, there are moral and spiritual inconsistencies with having our dollars dictate to the manner in which we treat other human beings, beyond that which we would tolerate for ourselves. As professed in a classic 60’s Star Trek episode, the values set forth in America’s founding documents must apply to all — or they mean nothing. Of course it would be unwise and currently impossible to extend the reach of Constitutional protections to all humanity, but purposefully participating and benefiting from the subjugation and exploitation of other peoples is anathema to any conception of moral consistency.    

Oil wars and destruction of Earth’s environment

This film is clear about where our current problems, if unaddressed, will thrust humanity in the near future. Our hero protagonist, Jake Sully, was wounded and paralyzed from the waist down while serving with a Marine Recon Battalion in Venezuela; and our villain, Colonel Miles Quaritch (Stephen Lang), also with Marine Recon, was wounded years earlier in Nigeria (read: oil wars). After destroying all the green on planet Earth and killing their “Mother”, the humans are out and about the universe threatening other ecosystems. The implied takeaway, let’s not destroy our environment and export a corporate driven cancer of consumption into the universal community.    

Without revealing too much of the plot’s twists and turns and ups and downs, some observations that sets Avatar aside for special reflection deserve mentioning.

Newscorp as ecological evangelist?

There is a deep irony in the fact that Rupert Murdoch’s Newscorp and Twentieth Century Fox have heavily promoted Avatar and its anti-corporate exploitation message, being that many times Newscorp and FOX News often cast political subjects in a very self-serving and corporatist light. Everyone is familiar with the “spin-zone” that is FOX News, but not so aware that FOX’s parent corp proliferates varying degrees of political spin throughout every time zone on planet Earth.

I am all too familiar with the breadth of Newscorp’s global holdings — satellites, newspapers, networks, publishers, studios — and the ramifications of all those venues consolidated and helmed by one political viewpoint are profound. The proof is in how Newscorp has lead the way in transforming news and objective journalism into a sensationalized circus of commentator clowns. The red noses are cute (Beck) but not when the circus tent collapses (ecosystem). While working for 20th in a past life, I helped produce a special project for Mr. Murdoch detailing the myriad tendrils and tentacles wrapped around virtually every media market around the planet, back then, we affectionately referred to him as “Darth”. It is awesome to behold the collection of corporations that make up Newscorp, one of a handful of consolidated media behemoths.  

Kudos have to go to Cameron for demanding the creative independence to frame his opus in exactly the way he wanted, and although Newscorp profits will have been lifted by Avatar, the meaning and message is clearly at odds with Newscorp religion. Good news is, making positive messaging profitable combined with real action on the ground will help us surmount the environmental and economic challenges facing humanity today. Surprisingly, Newscorp is doing its part with Avatar.  

Avatar’s technology as a gateway to understanding compassion  

Another deeper symbolic layer in Avatar is the manner in which Jake Sully’s evolution takes place, his character arc. As an Avatar Driver, Sully’s mind and nervous system is projected into another body, physicalizing the notion of empathy, literally embodying the concept of “getting out of yourself”. This aspect of showing empathy through a technological device that handholds the audience into what it really means to look through the eyes of another has great educational value for young minds. Sully “sees” the injustice looking through the eyes of the oppressed, and makes the choice to fight it. Kids and teenagers today are enraptured with real avatars through online chat rooms, websites like Second Life and first-person video games; they are all too familiar with the abstraction that takes place in projecting the first person perspective into second and third person. What Cameron’s film does so subtly for his audience is connect the experience of ego projection into a morally and socially responsible message and all the while makes it entertaining. It’s fun to do the right thing, a mythology worth promoting.

Responsible media  

Avatar joins the ranks of a handful of feature films over the years that have shaped public opinion and culture. Influential works like Gabriel Over the White House (1933), It’s a Wonderful Life (1946), Apocalypse Now (1979) or The China Syndrome (1979) have all had significant social impact. This is filmmaking at its finest, unfortunately a rare breed in an entertainment sphere that has largely been shown to degrade values more readily than build them up. Avatar reports for duty on the other side of this trend, and fosters a responsible and timely worldview in a roller coaster of a fun ride.

Don’t miss this milestone in movie making, I highly recommend it. Six stars.