Why the Avatars should not have been made
 

Has anyone actually thought over how the Avatars are made?

First the alien scientists take genetic material from (dead?) Na'vi (possibly killed by SecOps); the gene-harvesting itself would likely be regarded by the Na'vi as graverobbing and theft of sacred essence.

Then the scientists mash Na'vi and alien (human) essence to make strange hybrids, mostly Na'vi but with quite a few human (that is, alien) features. They are grown not in a mother but in a glass tube. This whole process might well be considered a blasphemy against Eywa (not to mention showing a striking disrespect for the People).

Finally, at some stage of the hybrids' development they are lobotomized; their minds killed to make an empty shell that the "driver" can possess without trouble. Starting to see why this is wrong?

Imagine the horror and anger of the Na'vi, upon discovering how uniltirantokx are made. They would probably kill every last one on their world, every single user of one, and every Sky Person vrrtep who helped make them. And yes, they would include Mr. "I've gone completely native" Jake Sully in that judgement--he still, in effect, killed and replaced the Na'vi person that should have lived in that body.

Really, really unethical. This is Mengele-scale mad science, yet the science branch are supposed to be the good guys. Moral dissonance anyone?

No Avatars, no movie.

/thread.

No.

More like "/copout".


1) You can obtain genetic material from any portion of the organism you wish, and then you have the code to make that organism. Considering how advanced genetics are supposed to have come by 2154, it would not be infeasible to simply use the Na'vi genetic material (they do not have DNA; DNA is a specific compound, deoxyribonucleic acid, that is exclusive to Earth organisms and probability says that the existence of the exact same compound in organisms from other worlds is extremely unlikely) as a blueprint (uh...no pun intended...) to make whatever cell or organ they want to. If you think about it, they'd have to have some ridiculously advanced technology to pair DNA with Na;vi genetic material in the first place.

2) They don't lobotomize them...I have no idea where you got that from, but a lobotomy is when a portion of the frontal lobe of someone's brain is removed, rendering them mentally incapable of many higher functions. The Avatar is grown from cells whose genetics are a mixture of Na'vi and Human DNA, and therefore so is all of the tissue. The drivers can only bond with the brain because the Avatar brain is stimulated (therefore allowing it to develop properly) and genetically "hardwired" to it's driver. The brain is the "most human" part of the Avatars, because if it was "too Na'vi" the drivers would never be able to link to them. The Avatars are held in suspended animation and are genetically built to be unable to form the intricate neural complexes that form conciousnesses, so that they have "empty" minds, with enough room for a driver to occupy them.

The answer to your question is that yes, we have thought, but we also know, because much of the info is sort of out there already.

I'm sorry, but your post came off as rather foolish and wildly speculative. Maybe you should ask more questions instead of just posting what you think you know?

People already raised a lot of points I was going to, but I should point out again that you don't have to die to give genetic material. (Although, the Avatars themselves DO creep me out when I think about them too much, thanks original script where Jake/Josh's Avatar was MOVING without him in it, although I've read an EXCELLENT fic from the POV of Jake's Avatar, so, la).

But also, um, you forgot to mention that HUMANS would likewise regard the Avatars as strange, immoral. Leaving aside the potential personality loss, Dr Lovecraft practised on primates and "condemned criminals" before the Avatars were ready for their Ph.D-owning 'proper' drivers. Hello animal and human rights abuse, right there, and THAT'S where I think the actual moral dissonance comes into it.

I don't think that the Avatars are 'lobotomized' either. It's my belief that only the parts of the avatar brain corresponding to the brain stem and hypothalamus are ever fully operational.

Never in the film I saw something that would suggest that the Na'vi have a concept of blasphemy, or have an issue with “graverobbing.” All the time they were only concerned about real things, about protecting the wealth of their world. (In fact, with their lifestyle, you can say that they have little issue with animals eating the remains of their dead, and since they don't see themselves as much superior to the animals, one form of “graverobbing” is pretty much already accepted.)

We tried to level their forests. We treated them worse than they treat their supper. We killed many of them with the most nasty of guns. We cut one of their Tree of Voices. We burnt their village to the ground. We tried to bomb the Tree of Souls. I'm certain that in their eyes, the fact that we took some of their DNA to make a few avatars is the least significant issue. People on Earth would have more issue with it than the Na'vi.

I think it's definitely feasible that the Na'vi would object to Avatars, since they're definitely unnatural. Of course they might not either.

I almost thought this thread was a troll.

If you think sampling DNA kills a creature, then you honestly have no understanding of how it works (and for that matter, it was never said that the avatars used a specific Na'vi individual's DNA, it could be sequenced from a mapping of their genome in order to make it more likely to be a match).
Indeed, it seems very unlikely that a use of specific individual's genetic code is the case, since avatars have to be carefully created to be compatible with their user then creating a genetic profile from a map of the Na'vi genome would be far more likely to allow compatibility with the human.


Secondly, I don't think the Na'vi share human concepts (and indeed, how do you apply an abstract concept to a living organism?) - Eywa didn't do anything specific with the Na'vi, they just coexist with her. Applying human mythological concepts to a biological organism doesn't work.

Again, nobody ever said that anything was done to make the avatars dormant - indeed, the nervous system modifications mean they would likely have never been viable as an autonomous lifeform. A lobotomy would not would not actually produce an effect like that. It is perfectly possible to engineer an organism to have no higher functions but a functioning autonomic system, this would likely be an effect of matching the nervous system to the human operator's too.

What REALLY pisses me off is people calling the Na'vi stupid. I'm sure they know what avatars are and the basics of the process much like they know the basics of the neural network. Making ridiculous assumptions with no base like this is pointless - Jake IS a Na'vi now, the Na'vi are not like the humans at all. Sure, some humans might, but there are differences in how the two think. Jake didn't kill anyone, neither did he replace anyone (I would have wondered if you had even watched the film if you were new at this point).

Actually, I wouldn't be so sure about that - not because the Na'vi are 'stupid', but because I have no idea how on Earth Grace and Co would explain the process given different tech-levels, the language barrier and terminology. But, that's a very minor issue.

I didn't even mean in the school, I meant the Na'vi already knowing it - everything form the role of the tree of souls to individual plants.

*blinks* I was talking about the processes involved in creating the Avatars, not the neural network.

hmm, I didn't get that impression from you quoting my part about Na'vi not being stupid, and talking about explaining it in the school...

Edit: I meant the OP claiming that the Na'vi do not know what Avatars are, when it was made clear in the film and even more so in the script that that is total crap, they certainly do know.

Well, that's what I thought you were talking about, hence my comment. So, looks like we both just misunderstood each other.

sorry i have nothing to add to this discussion....but i couldn't resist :awesome:

what iron jones said above,
No avatars=no movie
Also
No Avatars=All the Na'vi are slowly wiped out by the humans

Nah, it'd be a different movie, it'd just lack the fantasy of being one with the Na'vi. I've seen an EXCELLENT fic run through Avatar without the Avatars, it could have been done really well.


...how on Earth could the the humans wipe out the Na'vi? They are wildly, wildly outnumbered, can't call in reinforcements, and once they run out of ammo, they are scr*wed.

Well, obviously, by destroying Pandora's ecosystem.

In order for them to run out of supplies, they'd need to completely use up all the capacity of the stereolithography plant, which would be very unlikely.
Someone has probably written a fanfic about it, but it still makes it a lot less plausible even if it did work in the story.

The....what, four hundred odd humans at Hell's Gate can't destroy an entire planet/moon's eco-system. And they've only got a limited number of people, the plant itself would need supplies - granted, in the movie they've just been restocked, but if the Na'vi banded together and fought back, the humans probably wouldn't be able to hold out for that long, or else be utterly restricted to being indoors. Ammo and weaponry would rapidly start to run out, as would trained people.

Should an open battle occur, the humans would probably win one, maybe two - after that, they'd just run out of people. It'd take the Na'vi longer than in canon, and with more fatalities, but there is nothing really to stop them kicking the humans off if they really banded together and worked at it . For similar reasons that the humans can't simply reclaim Pandora, as I believe you've argued before.

If the RDA had had sufficient time to prepare (several years maybe) and were truly hell bent on committing a global scale massacre I think they could have. Any species capable of accelerating masses to 0.7c for the purposes of spaceflight could use those same masses as devastating relativistic weapons more powerful than any hydrogen bomb.

And why would they want to do that? In addition, according the extra material, the RDA are banned by the UN from using weapons of mass destruction. And given how big they are? They would have so many people and companies and countries just itching to take them down, so the political repercussions of USING weapons of mass destruction - the point of destroying the entire life on another moon/planet - would be enormous and very probably fatal for the RDA itself.

I never said that they were so inclined, merely that they had the technical capability. Of course, Selfridge was well aware that "killing the indigenous looks bad"

Well actually, the Na'vi DNA taken was combined with Human DNA, resulting in an avatar. Therefore, the avatar is a completely new body (not belonging to anyone else), and as it is part Human, no Na'vi could actually live in it.

Simply, the body is a shell for it's Human counterpart. It's built to be a shell. Therefore, it was never alive by it's own will. And so, the science of Avatars can be argued as completely ethical, at least by the standards of modern science and morals. Of course, the means of extracting that DNA, and the resources needed to create the body may be immoral.

One might say it is spiritually immoral, as in possessing a body. However, the body is Jake's technically (as it used his DNA), and never had a life on it's own to begin with.
In short, I find absolutely nothing unethical with the technology of Avatars.

Heh, I also thought that this was trolling for a second. :P

Imho, I don't see a point in this. As far as I can make out from the movie, the Na'vi don't care, Avatars aren't engineered with higher brain functions, and, as Neytiri explained: "All energy is only borrowed"; so a body is just a body to a Na'vi, and genetic material could be obtained easily from just about anything the Na'vi touch, no dead body needed. So, either way, this argument is irrelevant.

In response to you and the other posts...


The part where Josh/Jake's avatar moves on its own, noted here: [url=http://ruinofdarkness.livejournal.com/675.html[/url] , drew me to this conclusion:
Since the driver and the avatar have years to subconsciously get to know one another, they are eternally tied. Josh/Jake's avatar identifies with Josh/Jake, and it may even know what it was made for in its subconscious. Once it sees Josh/Jake, it calms down. Once Josh/Jake enters into its mind for the first time, Josh/Jake's experiences in the avatar become its experiences, its life. It wouldn't reject Josh/Jake, for since before it was 'born', and since its creation, Josh/Jake has always been a part of it. If you look at it how Mr. Cameron originally wrote it, no, the avatars are not as immoral as you think. It kind of becomes a symbiotic relationship.
The canon avatars, however, are on a different level of immorality, for they never had their own consciousness to begin with, seemingly. I can only gesture that maybe they're simply a result of something similar to the original avatars, albeit they never "awake" on their own, for their purpose keeps them sleeping. Phew...Did this make any sense?

Btw,

Where's that Jake's Avatar POV fanfic at? It sounds interesting.

You linked just to ruinofdarkness's journal, not any post, BTW.

And yeah, that does make sense. But people were still killed in order to create and develop the Avatars WITHOUT having a choice in the matter, which no one seems to be addressing. THAT I would think is inarguably immoral, no matter the debates on the Avatars themselves (although I do still think a bit sus).

And sure! It's an excellent, excellent fic. Come Into The Light, or SelfNotSelf.

Link fixed.
Yes, that is the truth, sadly. The avatars never had a say. They are still lost in the end. :'(

Thanks for the fanfiction link :D


Edit:
Thank you for posting that fanfiction link! It was wonderful...The ending was even, sort of, 'happy'. I hope that's the way it really was >.<

The avatars...and, like I said, the people killed while Dr Lovecraft was perfecting it all. I get the impression they were prisoners sentenced to be executed ("condemned criminals" being the phrase used to describe them), but instead of that he got do to Mad Science on them instead. Not very moral, really. And yet, everyone in the Avatar program has to be okay with using the fruit of said Mad and Cruel Science.

Never, EVER seen that addressed, though, anywhere.

No problem! I love it so very much, so I'm happy to share :) and, yes, I loved the ending.

Maybe they said "if you survive the experiment you get to live" and got them yo volunteer for it.
Also DNA could be retrieved with cheek swabs or blood draws so no na'vi had to be harmed to sequence their DNA, it wouldn't even hurt by then drawing blood could even be painless.
And they don't seem as judgmental and labeling as us I don't think they have concepts of "blasphemy" or "unholy" or any of our "it's evil even if no one gets hurt" stuff

Yes. Definitely right on that. Dr. Lovecraft (literary reference, much?) did some seriously questionable stuff on both worlds. The final result, the whole point really, of the experiment was the half-Na'vi hybrids though.

And yes, I may have been a little hasty and overeager there. Stupidly forgot about the fact you take a gene sample from just a few cells, no death required. Still, I think the whole Avatar making thing is an interesting hypothetical exercise in medical ethics, yes? Start thinking about these issues now before we actually can do it in real life. Since we're on our way to being the godlike aliens. ;P