'Avatar' theme can make you blue

Avatar: An incarnation of a Hindu god; an embodiment of a view of life; a personification of a computer user; and, now, a science fiction movie.

Emory biologist Alexander Escobar interprets "Avatar" the movie this way: “The perspective that the natives have and the perspective that the miners have is very different. The technological perspective is that you can take something apart, and you can put new parts into it, just like any machine. It’s pretty much the dominant reality we have in the western world. In the movie, the natives see (mining) as taking apart their mother. And if you think about something that is a system, a whole, that works together, you can’t go in and start taking pieces out. It begins to fall apart. I think part of the reason that this movie has become so popular is that this sort of clash between these two world views is playing itself out in our world. “

Escobar is the author of a new book, “Mythology for the New World: A Synthesis of Science and Religion.”

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