I saw the movie Avatar last night. Beautiful film visually. It really did feel like I was entering the world of the Na’vi. But it was a stupid movie story-wise. The villains are technology, the greedy mining officials, and their hired mercenaries.
James Cameron wanted to paint the mining corporation, the military, and advanced technology with the brush of moral bankruptcy. But does he really expect us to believe a civilization that has attained space travel to distant planets, the fusion of human consciousness with alien bodies, and mechanical warrior robots that can jump from hover crafts can’t manage to drill down below and then over to get at the mineral wealth they were interested in extracting beneath the sacred tree? This presumption exposes I think a flaw in environmentalism’s hostility to technology as technology. Some assume technology is incapable of doing any moral good simply because it is technology, and that the more advanced it is the more heinous the moral consequences of using it.
This is certainly not the Catholic view of technology, at least as I understand it. Technological know-how is a tool that can be used for moral or immoral ends. Certainly blowing up the sacred tree was wrong, but wasn’t there a better, cheaper way to get at the mineral wealth and respect the environment portrayed in the film? I realize that wouldn’t make the point Mr. Cameron wanted to make. But the writer’s claim that technology is intrinsically evil is simply unbelievable.
