"Avatar" Blues Can Be Cured with Real Life Activism and Radical Lifestyle Change

This CNN article, "Audiences Experience Avatar Blues" http://www.cnn.com/2010/SHOWBIZ/Movies/01/11/avatar.movie.blues/index.html about moviegoers becoming depressed and suicidal after watching Avatar is troubling yet strangely hopeful. It is curious as well as shocking that people have been so asleep for so many centuries that only now that they have seen a computer generated movie have they become depressed by, shocked, outraged and aware of the severity of the loss of human life, of the loss of the natural, luscious beauty of our planet and of the loss of the joyous, symbiotic cultures that once inhabited the continent of North America. 

I think it is testimony to how dull, arduous and downright painfully boring public school has presented history-- in attempts by our government to deter people from deeper inquiry and research into the truth behind the atrocities and genocide that our government has committed against the indigenous peoples of the world. A People's History of the United States by Howard Zinn is the real-life "Avatar" that every American should be reading.

I suggest and hope that the mass numbers of depressed and suicidal viewers use their angst to rally together to save our very real life planet and the remaining peaceful indigenous cultures from further destruction and seriously rethink our society, our culture, our Government, our Capitalism and our worship of money and material objects. 

Life does not have to be hurried, routine, difficult, painful, impersonal, mechanical, apathetic, media-obsessed, money obsessed and a struggle just to exist- We allow it to be that way by being part of a machine-like system that feeds off of money, compliance, ignorance, consumerism and apathy. This machine-like society that we have allowed to keep regenerating is the antithesis of everything  we need in order to be truly happy, joyful and free. Read Daniel Quinn's Ishmael  and Jean Liedloff's The Continuum Concept after you finish A People's History of the United States by Howard Zinn. 

If you have seen Avatar and are depressed by it, try to refrain from wasting your time doing Google searches to drown yourself in fictional musings about the movie- Instead take real action to research the violence our society has been built on, the violence that it continues to do, how we have become the way we've become and how we as individuals can make an accumulative difference by doing something different- Returning to more natural, connected, authentic communities and ways of living.

We can start to create a new way of life by removing our children from the clutches of the public school system and allowing them to grow up joyfully and free through unschooling or in schools like The Sudbury Valley Free School. We can join or create intentional communities, eat organic, unprocessed foods and "kill" (or atleast subdue) our television sets, our Blackberries and our endless, insatiable greed for material objects. We can put our children's needs as our first priority, cease punishing them and parent them for connection and attachment, whether they are infants or older adolescents. We can participate in real life activism for the planet, for trees, animals, for children, for the remaining indigenous cultures, for our communities and neighbors, our families and for the rest of humanity.

We can't retreat in blissful escapism to "Pandora", but, as Ghandi challenged, "We must be the change we wish to see in the world" --This world. Earth. Our world.