Connections: The Blindness of Cultural Arrogance

OPEN YOUR EYES By too-easily dismissing its “racist” portrayals we may be missing the world-bridging lesson of Avatar‘s protagonist, Jake Sully (Sam Worthington).

Cultural Blindness Cuts Both Ways

The same unquestioned faith afflicts those involved in studying the mysterious language of the Amazon’s Pirahã tribe. Sherlock Holmes famously said we should first gather all possible facts before devising a theory or we run the risk of forcing the facts to fit the theory instead of the reverse.

In this case, linguist Dan Everett drew criticism for calling Chomsky’s theory into question, despite the lack of much tangible evidence to support it. Chomsky’s “universal grammar” theory became accepted simply because it made sense. But the Pirahã’s utterly different language broke that theory. Despite Chomsky’s brilliance, Everett compares him to Aristotle. “He has dug a hole for linguistics that it will take decades for the discipline to climb out of!”

For their part, the Pirahã appear to be physiologically capable of learning language the way the rest of humanity does; they simply choose not to. If by choice you mean that their culture, born of a hunter-gatherer subsistence, has so constrained their interest in speaking or thinking as we do. And why should they? Their ways work for them. They are the supreme survivors of the Amazonian environment. They are also uniquely ill-suited to deal with the potential for conflict with Western culture rather than its current academic curiosity. Literally, if you are not in front of them, you don’t exist. If you don’t exist you can pose no danger to them.

In this we find something in common between David Brooks, the intellectual Chomskyites and the primitive Pirahã: Once we put our faith into one way of perceiving reality, everything else ceases to exist. Maverick linguist Everett came to understand the Pirahã because he questioned the conventional wisdom of Chomsky’s theories.

Fables have played a long and rich role in human cultures, to embed an important moral lesson amid a rousing tale. For Brooks to condemn Cameron for telling a modern fable is like trying to assign blame to a cobra for striking its victims: It’s easy to call the cobra evil but it’s really just its nature. These are the tales Cameron tells, like a modern Aesop. Are they high drama? No, nor do they pretend to be. Not your cup of tea, Mr. Brooks? Switch to Oolong.

Culture shapes language; language shapes culture. Together they determine the way we interpret reality. Unless we’re willing to question the foundation of our culture and our language we can blind ourselves to ideas, concepts — even as basic as color! — and our own history. We can’t afford such blindness if we’re to weather the clashes of cultures that have so defined human history.

As with most conflicts, blindness and arrogance aren’t confined to just one side. Perhaps the lesson we should draw from the fable that is Avatar isn’t natives good, white people bad at all. It’s telling that the two images at the beginning and end of Avatar are both versions of Sully’s eyes opening wide.