I was thinking about this while watching Avatar, but please bear with me anyway.
I was struck by the source of the Na’vi’s strength: their lack of desire. Earlier in the movie it’s made clear that humans were frustrated in their attempt to buy off the Na’vi by offering wealth in various forms; the Na’vi simply weren’t interested.
Satisfaction is a powerful thing. To have desires makes one weak against those that can fulfill those desires. This is the essence of the middle-class economic slavery that’s so prevent today. A family might have enough wealth to satisfy their needs, to live a comfortable lifestyle. But desire for a nicer car or bigger television leads to ever growing credit card debt, to overtime and ambition, searching for a raise at work, and to a lifestyle of stress and depression. This is slavery to material desire and, more insidiously, perhaps slavery to manufactured desire, but that’s for another post.
John Ralston Saul writes, in his book Voltaire’s Bastards:
Of the great world myths, only Buddhism is centered on the reduction of desire in the individual.
Depending on how you choose to define “the great world myths”, this statement is either an overgeneralization or an outright falsehood, but it does accurately point to the way our societies value and encourage desire and ambition for more, endless expansion and change.
The desire for growth, expansion, and constant improvement has become axiomatic in our culture, but that doesn’t mean that it shouldn’t be questioned. In Wade Davis’s book, The Wayfinders, he explores how many of the world’s indigenous cultures have different value systems – often valuing satisfaction with things as they are over desire for more. It’s a shame that we haven’t been better able to learn from those who came before us.
And another perspective:
“Freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose”
- Janis Joplin
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