Using the Avatar Experience to Improve Yourself and Improve the World

[auroraglacialis]

Originally Posted by redpaintednavi

So it seems that the free life of the natives for many were preferred before the less free life in the colony.

Originally Posted by Benjamin_Franklin

The proneness of human Nature to a life of ease, of freedom from care and labour appears strongly in the little success that has hitherto attended every attempt to civilize our American Indians, in their present way of living, almost all their Wants are supplied by the spontaneous Productions of Nature, with the addition of very little labour, if hunting and fishing may indeed be called labour when Game is so plenty, they visit us frequently, and see the advantages that Arts, Sciences, and compact Society procure us, they are not deficient in natural understanding and yet they have never shewn any Inclination to change their manner of life for ours, or to learn any of our Arts; When an Indian Child has been brought up among us, taught our language and habituated to our Customs, yet if he goes to see his relations and make one Indian Ramble with them, there is no perswading him ever to return, and that this is not natural to them merely as Indians, but as men, is plain from this, that when white persons of either sex have been taken prisoners young by the Indians, and lived a while among them, tho' ransomed by their Friends, and treated with all imaginable tenderness to prevail with them to stay among the English, yet in a Short time they become disgusted with our manner of life, and the care and pains that are necessary to support it, and take the first good Opportunity of escaping again into the Woods, from whence there is no reclaiming them. One instance I remember to have heard, where the person was brought home to possess a good Estate; but finding some care necessary to keep it together, he relinquished it to a younger Brother, reserving to himself nothing but a gun and a match-Coat, with which he took his way again to the Wilderness.

from The Writings of Benjamin Franklin, Volume II: Philadelphia, 1726 - 1757 -- The Support of the Poor

That simply says it all - What Avatar stirred up in many of us was around loooong before. Presenting this not in reality, but in a virtual 3D vision allowed many people to see this in a time in which few real life examples exist.

Sadly, civilization has gotten the upper hand on things a bit - it deliberately takes away ways to leave it, to run away, to join the natives or the circus. We have to make it possible again, create new ways, fight for them if we have to. If some make it the Daniel Quinn way by forming tribal businesses or some make it by forming ecovillages or others make it by actively protecting native peoples lands - that probably does not matter, as long as that way empowers and strenghtens these people and they feel better by doing so and meanwhile leaving part of the darkness behind.