I watched Avatar and The Matrix (1999) over the weekend. Both films had similar themes: an SN-type entity was in control and looking for fuel. In Avatar, the SN-led crowd was on Pandora, a moon of a gaseous giant in another star system. Here they were planning to extract a valuable mineral for use back home. Unfortunately, the mineral rested on the natives’ sacred grounds, but of course that did not stop the SN. The indigenous “people” were very much like the San tribe of Africa whose existence was based on harmony with nature and each other.
In The Matrix, humans had been taken over by machines which used them to “feed” and power the machines. The “agents” of the machines were ruthless and powerful, and they stopped at nothing to protect the “status quo” and their positions. A small group had managed to escape to “freedom” and they were looking for the “promised one” who could save the human race from its bondage to the machines.
There is a lot of the IMPACTS concept in these 2 movies but still there are important omissions. No one has figured out who the IMPACTS are and what role they play in human affairs. They really are the determiners of the future of humanity because they are the fuel–the fuel that the SN has “taken” for itself–to drive its machine. IMO, our situation is not that different from the Matrix theme. The machines are using us to sustain themselves–we have lost much of our original humanity, a humanity developed over tens of thousands of years by the San tribe of Africa.
There is hope. In Avatar, a few humans managed to side with the natives as “avatars” and helped defeat the SN, sending them back to their “dying world”. They defeated the SN with the help of the Goddess and nature as animals also joined in the fight. In The Matrix, the “promised one” was found and there was hope that humanity could be saved. In each case, only a tiny few had stood up to the SN machine and yet they had managed to neutralize it. Each case had the required antidote to the SN–and that was LOVE–with action. LOVE wasn’t enough–it had to be combined with movement toward equality between the SN and the “Goddess” forces.
As Margaret Mead said–”The world has always been changed by a few committed people.” And those were certainly IMPACTS. That is how it will be changed this time as well.
The 2 major forces are always dueling–the SN and the IMPACTS. The battle is really only 6,000 years old or so among humans. In the universe, the same duel has been ongoing for almost 14 billion years–we are merely a manifestation of the universal struggle. It is time to make a more concerted attempt to balance the forces within humanity.