JacobBlog!

I think that the movie Avatar was profound in part because of a certain element of the aliens’ anatomy – the neurological fibers coming out of their ‘hair’ that they could hook up anything. As a result, even our classical Western viewers could clearly, intuitively understand that when 2 people or 2 creatures hooked their nerve fiber bundles together they would share consciousness in some way or another. Just the same, when they connected to Eywa, the spirit-network, the mechanism by which shared consciousness occurred was clearly perceivable. It was an axiom that such a phenomenon could exist given their anatomy. But what is really profound about that metaphor is that when we drill down into the mechanisms of information transfer that neurological fibers would allow, it’s fundamentally no different then what could happen through wireless media, such as speech, or touch, at lower bandwidth. In this way, this plot element clearly brings out our deep intuition about the potential for the unity of consciousness in the ordinary world, which was a central theme in the movie. I am you, and you are me.

In this way the story reenchants the real world, as does all fiction.