Outer Diverse by Nina Munteanu

My latest book, Outer Diverse, is coming out this fall and we are launching it at Con*Cept in Montreal in October and Hal-Con in Halifax in November.

I'm really excited about this book. It's the first of the Splintered Universe Trilogy. Here's a bit about it:

…Splintered Events, Single Destiny…
…An entire spiritual sect is inexplicably wiped out by Eclipse, the largest crime syndicate in the galaxy…
…Glitter Dust, a new seductive but dangerous contraband narcotic of mysterious origin and sold on the slipstream, is used by certain spiritual fanatics to travel to another dimension and “experience God”…
…An elite Eclipse assassin, known simply as the Rose, is entrusted with an eclectic hit list of prominent galactic citizens, including spiritual leaders, information pirates and dust traffickers…
…One of the Rose’s targets, an eccentric priest, prophesies the Suntelia Aeon, a catastrophic End of Age, triggered by the joining of twin souls…


Galactic Guardian, Rhea Hawke, fears that this dire resurgence of an ancient prophesy may be fulfilled at last. She suspects that these latest moves by Eclipse are linked to the return of the cruel extra-galactic Vos. The Vos invaded thirty years ago and would have destroyed Earth if not for the intervention of a benevolent but arrogant alien race, the Eosians, who have now claimed Earth for themselves as their price.

This is going to be Rhea’s hardest case yet—particularly since she’s been taken off the case and fired by her Eosian boss for her most recent in a legacy of bungled missions. And Eclipse is gunning for her.

Rhea’s desperate race to expose their plan before the galaxy falls again to the cruel Vos catapults her on a journey to the far reaches of the galaxy, where she will discover the shattering truth about duel twin worlds and her ultimate role in preserving or destroying them both.

Outer Diverse is scheduled for release October 15th 2011 on Amazon and other quality bookstores near you.

Celebrating the Bitch: Thelma & Louise

Twenty years ago Susan Sarandon and Geena Davis drove off a cliff into movie lore in Thelma & Louise. This “ground-breaking female buddy movie cum road-trip, crime spree and chase flick … deals with rape, a fatal shooting and sexual awakening, all to a country-rock soundtrack,” says Linda Diebel of the Toronto Star in her recent tribute to this Ridley Scott motion picture and its Academy Award-winning screenwriter Callie Khouri. Thelma & Louise hit many firsts for women. It was one of the first movies to portray women using violence as an alternative form of action; it was the first to effectively show the raw power of women locked in friendship; and the first to depict a passionate choice for liberty in death vs. a compromised life.

From introducing Brad Pitt as a sex symbol to portraying women as independent and powerful, Thelma & Louise still resonates with a visceral message two decades after their iconic leap into the Grand Canyon. The ending, in which the pair lock hands and sail over the canyon in Louise’s 1966 T-bird convertible, remains controversial even now.
“People complained about our suicide,” said Sarandon in an interview with Richard Ouzounian of the Toronto Star. “But I didn’t hear a peep when Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid did pretty much the same thing.”

Author/activist Judy Rebick, president of the feminist National Action Committee in 1991, liked the movie for its portrayal of a powerful female friendship. “They fought back…they were free. They liberated themselves,” she said in a telephone interview with Diebel. The movie showed Melanie Caplan, fragrance consultant in her 50s, that you can be powerful and not give in. “They controlled their destiny when women were [and still are generally] being portrayed as victims.” In a world where they are expected to be rescued by men, I might add. Near the end of the movie, the sympathetic Arkansas police detective played by Harvey Keitel—their shining knight—does try and fails to “rescue” them.

That’s what the controversial ending was about: not giving in. Not giving in to a false “god”. Not giving in to the imposed rules and strictures of an androcratic* world. Not giving in to feelings of unworthiness and victimization. Not giving in to the oppression of the sacred feminine wisdom, the goddess in all of us. Celebrating The Bitch.

Thelma & Louise stirred a controversy of duality and sexism that still boils today. Several critics condemned Thelma & Louise “as a man-hating film because [Louise] shot and killed a rapist,” said Sarandon. But, “how come they don’t call men ‘man-hating’ when they shoot and kill each other in hundreds of films?” she challenged. It’s like they’re saying they can do it because they’re MEN, but if women do it, then they’re unnatural, bitches, and man-hating. “A woman today is still seen as a bitch if she’s strong or in a powerful position.” Caplan confided.

Ariane deBonvoisin of the Huffington Post suggested that many women live with the "fear of not being relevant ... of not making a difference ... of working on things that don't really matter in the important times of transition we live in. We're hungry to be part of making things better. We want to create, we want to do what we love again and find our voice. We sense intuitively that we have a critical role to play in shaping the future of our world. And yet, so many of us give in to excuses of not being good enough, young enough, wealthy enough, creative enough ... we still play small, still give in to the "victim" archetype.  

The conclusion of Thelma & Louise provided a potent metaphor of women’s power to choose and the liberating nature of exercising that power. Some literalists saw the end as a simple act of desperation; it was, in fact, a powerful victory over the mundane roles women often feel forced to play and endure. “They were taking it for all women,” Caplan said. “They stood for all women who had been made to feel not worthy and not as good as men…It was a rite of passage.”

Media often promotes rivalries among women at the expense of solidarity. This is where Thelma & Louise triumph: a kiss, a look, two intertwined hands and two women riding off a cliff into history. It is one of the best examples of powerful friendship and solidarity. Solidarity against conformity. Solidarity against subservience. Solidarity against victimization.

The end was indeed mythic. “We all know what gravity is,” a York university literature professor shared with Diebel of the T-bird’s final seconds over the abyss. “But they’re frozen there at the end, soaring” into the light.

“The film and that image electrified people around the world,” says Ouzounian. But did it change anything? If it did, it wasn’t obvious. “We’re never able to build up any momentum,” laments Davis. “Research shows that the percentage of female characters on screen has been the same since 1948. The percentage of female directors and writers is abysmal, still stuck in the single digits.”

Momentum requires that three things co-exist: 1) vision; 2) drive, and 3) solidarity. If we are going to change the world for the better, we need to do it together. Here are the steps:

Step 1: Vision and self. Find your passion and follow Gandhi’s maxim: “Be the change you seek in the world.”


Step 2: Drive and staying power. Fuel the drive of your passion by sharing your vision with others of like-mind.


Step 3: Solidarity and community. Find and create a community of like-minded people and share it with the world. Think BIG.

* androcracy is defined by the Merriam Webster Dictionary as a system characterized by the political and social supremacy of men. In a previous piece entitled “Spiritual Ecology and the Lesson of Crete” I write: "[Riane] Eisler provides examples of sociobiologists who draw on nineteenth-century Darwinism by citing insect societies to support their androcratic (social and political rule by men) theories. If we are to truly rise victorious over the scourge of climate change—a function of our current lifestyle and paradigms—we will need to adopt a cultural evolution that embraces a partnership society heralded by new and renewed symbology, language and “myth”.

Spiritual Ecology and the Lesson of Crete

If Gaia is our “Natural Mother” then Ecology is her language—Nina Munteanu

In a time when North American scientists and politicians are debating the pros and cons of a new carbon tax, theologian Sallie McFague contends that climate change currently poses a greater danger to the globe than Nazism prior to the Second World War (See my postscript at the bottom of this post). In a previous post, I described the debilitating psychological condition called solastalgia, a response to the loss felt in climate change-related impacts. McFague goes so far as to embrace a militant approach to the problem, urging citizens to dedicate themselves fully and be willing to sacrifice to save the planet’s eco-system. In her recent book, A New Climate for Theology, McFague espouses a spiritual attitude of gratitude and praise toward the natural world while adopting a radical war footing against global warming.

McFague widely defines “spiritual” to include the secular appreciation of nature. Rather than regarding God as a “being, McFague subscribes to the idea that God is the source of life, love and hope. A spiritual approach would provide the inner strength to tackle the worst effects of changing climate patterns, says Douglas Todd of the Vancouver Sun, who added, “I have been re-convinced of the necessity of a spiritual response to environmental problems.”

A spiritual connection with nature is nothing new. First Nations peoples have practiced it for millennia.

Riane Eisler, author of The Chalice & the Blade, writes of the ancient Bronze Age culture of Minoan (later Minoan-Mycenean) Crete (1,000 to 1,500 BCE), who still revered the Goddess. Citing Nicolas Platon, an archeologist who had excavated the island for over fifty years, Eisler writes of a society in which “the whole of life was pervaded by an ardent faith in the goddess Nature, the source of all creation and harmony”; this in a time when art extolled the symbols of nature—such as the serpent and butterfly, both symbols of transformation, rebirth and wisdom.

“In Crete,” writes Eisler, “for the last time in recorded history, a spirit of harmony between women and men as joyful and equal participants in life appears to pervade [in] a tradition that is unique in its ‘delight in beauty, grace, and movement’ and in its ‘enjoyment of life and closeness to nature.’ ” Despite the fact that they were surrounded by threats from an increasingly warlike and male-dominated world, Cretans remained an “exceptionally peace-loving people” and their art did not idealize warfare. Cretans maintained “an ardent faith in the goddess Nature,” writes Platon. “This led to a love of peace, a horror of tyranny, and a respect for the law. Even among the ruling classes, personal ambition seems to have been unknown; nowhere do we find the name of an author attached to a work of art or a record of the deeds of a ruler.”

“The differences between the spirit of Crete and that of its neighbors,” writes Eisler, “are of more than academic interest.” The lack of Cretan military fortifications and signs of aggressive war—in sharp contrast to the walled cities and chronic warfare that were elsewhere already the norm—provides a confirmation from the past that peaceful human co-existence is not just a utopian dream.”

Cretan art reflected a society in which power was not equated with dominance, destruction and oppression. I think it is no coincidence that gender equality and harmony is linked to the pantheistic value of nature. The appreciation of beauty, grace and harmony is a “feminine” characteristic, one that ambitious warlike and highly competitive exploitive societies have no time to cultivate.

Eisler notes that a “recognition of our oneness with all of nature” lay at the heart of both the Neolithic and Cretan worship of the Goddess. She adds, “Increasingly, the work of modern ecologists indicate that this earlier quality of mind, in our time often associated with some types of Eastern spirituality, was far advanced beyond today’s environmentally destructive ideology. In fact, it foreshadows new scientific theories that all the living matter of earth, together with the atmosphere, oceans, and soil [and I would add the universe] forms one complex and inter-connected “life” system.” Quite fittingly, scientists James Lovelock and Lynn Margulis called this the Gaia Hypothesis—Gaia being one of the ancient Greek names of the Goddess.

At the same time that Riane Eisler was writing The Chalice & the Blade, Lynn Margulis developed her theory of endosymbiosis and suggested that evolution advanced through cooperation more than the Darwinian paradigm of competition (surely a “masculine” outlook).

Eisler provides examples of sociobiologists who draw on nineteenth-century Darwinism by citing insect societies to support their androcratic (social and political rule by men) theories. If we are to truly rise victorious over the scourge of climate change—a function of our current lifestyle and paradigms—we will need to adopt a cultural evolution that embraces a partnership society heralded by new and renewed symbology, language and “myth”.

For a few years I co-taught an environmental education course for primary and secondary school teachers. The course was intended to help teachers introduce environmental precepts and general awareness in all aspects of the primary and secondary school curriculum, such as creative ways to infuse environmental stewardship in courses from math to art. As much as I liked the integrative approach to this program, it is my belief that the “soft” science of Ecology should be taught as a basic course throughout a student’s entire school career (from Grade 1 to 12), giving it the prominence it deserves as a life-lesson mandate not unlike the three Rs.

Ecology is considered a “soft” science, because it integrates all other sciences and, as such, is more the study of relationships, links and consequence. As the study of ecosystems and the environment, Ecology lets us look at ourselves and how we relate to all other things, living and non-living, on this planet and ultimately the universe: the approach is only limited by our own perceptions. Ecologists study natural systems, which include all the systems in our society such as our economic systems, our social systems, business and financial models, cultural interactions and technological use. It behooves us to look to Nature’s Wisdom, to Gaia (our “mother”) for Her timeless lessons in our evolution.

If Gaia is our “natural mother” then Ecology is her language.

~~~~

Post script:

Nazi Germany, contends Riane Eisler, demonstrated the most violent reaction to the gylanic (e.g., society in which there is balance and equality between the sexes) thrust, proving to be the modern regression to the earliest and most brutal form of proto-androcracy and a foreshadower of a neo-androcratic future.


Like the Kurgans before them, the Nazis killed, plundered and looted—particularly in their wholesale slaughter of Jews. Likewise, they saw a woman, idealized by the Nazis as the hausfrau, as an “often pleasant domestic animal” (Nietzsche) to be used by men for sexual enjoyment, personal service, entertainment, and procreation. It was, in fact, Hitler’s plan to reward decorated soldiers with the right to have more than one wife as a warrior’s booty. According to the Führer, not only women but “weak” and “effeminate” men like Jews were the natural inferiors to his new race of “supermen”.


References:


Eisler, Riane. 1989. The Chalice and the Blade: Our History, Our Future. Harper & Row. New York. 296pp.


Castell, Alburey. 1946. An Introduction to Modern Philosophy. Macmillan. New York. 357pp.

National Day of Prayer

Today is the National Day of Prayer in the United States. I know because, as I was driving through Detroit, I tuned into WMUZ Radio and heard it from Bob Dutko, host of "The Bob Dutko Show". The National Day of Prayer is an annual day of observance held on the first Thursday of May and designated by the United States Congress: people are asked “to turn to God in prayer and meditation.”

I was intrigued to listen to Dutko’s show because he was about to ask listeners of the program what they were praying for today. Dutko began by reading President Obama’s proclamation, who honored the service and sacrifice of the men and women of the United States Armed Forces “we recognize that it is because of them that we continue to live in a Nation where people of all faiths can worship or not worship according to the dictates of their conscience…As we observe this day of prayer, we remember the one law that binds all great religions together: the Golden Rule, and its call to love one another; to understand one another; and to treat with dignity and respect those with whom we share a brief moment on this Earth…Let us also use this day to come together in a moment of peace and goodwill…Our varied beliefs can bring us together to feed the hungry and comfort the afflicted, to make peace where there is strife; and to life up those who have fallen on hard times.”

Dutko launched into a passionate invective of what constituted “appropriate prayer” and by whom. Dutko proclaimed that only prayers delivered to our One True God delivered by true Christians were appropriate and beautiful. He did not consider prayers by Muslims or Hindus appropriate for today (reserved for true Christians) nor did he consider them beautiful because they were prayers to a false god. In fact, he considered this act of prayer “ugly”.

“The One True God is a jealous God,” Dutko reminded us, invoking the first of the Ten Commandments in Exodus 20:1-3: thou shalt have no other gods before me.

After taking several calls from listeners, Dutko proceeded to give us his prayer for today, which ran along the same lines as his introduction: he prayed that so-called enlightened Christians would change their misguided false beliefs that included Darwinian evolution, unconditional love, respect and inclusion of marginal groups like homosexuals and different races. Duco advocated a revival of the old fundamentalist Christianity that invoked Jesus as the savior of our sins.

Not only is this very unsporting of Dutko; it lacks respect for the majority of humankind (who are NOT fundamentalist Christians or Creationists).

It saddens me to hear that this very closed-minded exclusionary sentiment continues to prevail in the world during a time when peoples and cultures need to communicate with one another respectfully and with compassion. Such exclusionary sentiment is predicated on fear and fear-mongering and a hubristic sense of righteousness. God is not exclusively your God or exclusively my God; God is all things to all people. God may come to one culture as the personification of a wise man and to another as the divine Universe of Intent. They do not exist in mutual exclusion. Because God is God. Like so much in the Bible, God’s commandment to Moses—do not worship other gods before me—is best read metaphorically.

What did God really mean by “false gods”? How many of us cherish our personal possessions? How many of us worship our material wealth? How many of us obsess over our outward image (“It’s all about optics, Nina,” my old boss used to tell me)? How many of us are ruled by lust and other desires? How many of us vigorously compete for status (often at the expense of others). So, Mr. Dutko, what are our real destructive false idols? Allah? Yahweh? Vishnu? Shiva? How about greed, power-mongering, lack of compassion, and obsession over physical beauty—to name a few.

When we judge someone else’s faith as ugly, or exclude another’s reverence in a divine presence as less worthy than our own, we are judging and excluding ourselves from our own divine nature. For they are us.

Dutko mocking Hinduism or the Muslim faith as false or Florida pastor Terry Jones publically burning a copy of the Quran are not just the immature antics of bullies; they represent the most insidious form of terrorism on world peace.

So, here’s my prayer…

I pray that humanity may be graced by the wisdom to love purely, to look beyond the surface and the literal and see that deep down at the metaphoric level we are the same and all deserve respect and compassion. ALL OF US: Muslim, Jew, Christian, woman, man, child, animal and plant, water and mineral.

Our beloved Earth and her home, the Universe, deserve better. We all do.

Beam Me Up, Scotty: Teleportation, Schrődinger’s Cat and Quantum Entanglement

What do the terms squeezing, photon subtraction, entanglement and homodyne detection have in common? Together, they represent the quantum manipulation that researchers used to achieve the first documented case of successful teleportation of quantum light.

In the journal Science last Friday, researchers reported that they had successfully transferred quantum information from one place to another without having to physically move it. It was destroyed in one place and instantly resurrected in another, “alive” again and unchanged. A notion exploited in the film Prestige, based on a teleportation invention by Nikola Tesla. It’s also pretty much what happens in the SF show Star Trek in which an object is “destroyed” atom by atom in one place then built or "beamed" back with the same pattern elsewhere.

It starts with entanglement of the quantum kind and an Austrian physicist named Erwin Schrődinger. In 1935, Schrődinger came up with a thought experiment in response to a paradox paper by Einstein, Podolsky and Rosen (called the EPR article). Schrődinger’s scenario of a cat that might be alive or dead inside a box, depending on an earlier random event became known as Schrődinger’s Cat. Schrődinger coined the term “entanglement” (Verschränkung) to describe a property of a quantum mechanical system (paired particles) that act together and behave like one object but remain two separate objects—like two ends of a teeter-totter. If entangled, one object cannot be fully described without considering the other(s). They remain in a quantum superpostition and share a single quantum state until a measurement is made. He proposed the notion that said cat remains both alive and dead (to the universe outside the box) until the box is opened.

In the Science paper, researchers from Japan and Australia led by Noriyuki Lee of the University of Tokyo studied wave packets of light that existed in a state of quantum superposition—in other words, they existed in two different phases at the same time. They successfully transferred quantum information without losing its integrity.

Superposition permits computers to solve multiple problems at once. This new, faster teleportation process lets scientists move blocks of quantum information around inside a computer or across a network. This will potentially revolutionize quantum communications and computing. Researchers say it will make high-speed, high-fidelity transmission of large volumes of information, such as quantum encryption keys, via communications networks a reality.

According to most scientists, what we won't see soon — or ever — is something that will ‘beam’ a person from one place to another. "There are way too many atoms," says Christopher Monroe of the Joint Quantum Institute. "At the other end of the transporter, you need to have some blob of atoms that represents Captain Kirk but has no information in it. I mean, what would that look like?"

NikolaTesla’s notion over a hundred years ago of light as both a particle and a wave formed the basis of what we now call quantum physics. Tesla also investigated the creation of a "wall of light" by manipulating electromagnetic waves in a certain pattern, which he claimed would enable time, space, gravity and matter to be altered at will and engender anti-gravity airships, teleportation and time travel.

So, here’s my question: is our imagination limited by our reality or our reality limited by our imagination?

Photos:
1. Noriyuki Lee and colleagues Teleportation Device
2. Transporter in the science fiction TV series "Star Trek"
3. Quantum Cat

What is Your Avatar?

Have you seen James Cameron’s recent blockbuster fantasy, Avatar?

I first watched this visually stunning motion picture in the theatre with some close family friends. What first blew me away about Avatar was how beautifully and thoughtfully the jungle planet and its people were portrayed. I'm an ecologist and I recognized great expertise and detailed effort in the complex designs of the planet’s ecosystems. Upon further reflection, I realized how the simple theme of connectivity and respect was reverently and elegantly portrayed in a fractal relationship from environment to culture to story and from the opening frame of story promise to its eventual story fulfillment at the end. This was no simple action fantasy based on the simple plot of being at one with nature.

The choice of movie title and planet name, Pandora (see Pandora myth below) all figured into the subtle fractal-layered messages buried beneath the obvious tale,
 aptly described by reviewer Anne Thompson as “disarmingly sincere.” The film’s opening sweeps us into a breathtaking panorama of Pandora’s lush and exotic jungle to the haunting notes of James Horner’s tribal score.

What struck me about the reactions of my friends, others I spoke with, and many reviewers, was that several panned the movie as cliché. “More impressive on a technical level than as a piece of storytelling,” was the consensus of many critics. “Except for the great special effects, there was nothing new,” many lamented. “It’s an old story,” they said. What’s wrong with that? Isn’t everything an old story, which tells a metaphoric rendition of some universal truth? Aren’t the very best stories we tell based on ancient tales of morality? Which brings me to clichés. In Writing 101 we all learn to avoid clichés like the plague (oops, there’s a cliché!). But let’s look at clichés… A cliché is really a ubiquitously recognized metaphor (like the one I just used). Clichés arise, like stereotypes, from cultural and historical truths, told metaphorically through story. Essentially, a cliché is a metaphor. If you think about it, a cliché is a cliché because it represents a core truth in our culture that is repeated over and over because of its relevance to who and what we are. So much so that it becomes ingrained in our cultural expression. The best stories recognize elements of cliché in the telling of story. This does not mean that they avoid the cliché, per se. In fact, the best stories embrace cliché but use it in a refreshing way to provide a new perspective on an old story; one that deserves to be told over and over. This is the case with Avatar.

So, what’s the cliché in Avatar? The core story, of course. It is an ancient tale that explores the emptiness of greed and its cousin, fear. It shows the consequence of lack of connectivity (among ourselves and to all other things), and lack of compassion and openness to the unknown. In some important ways it is also about identity, honor and loyalty; how in choosing how we live our lives—whether risking our identity through obedience or risking safety through dissent—we create a legacy that we leave to our children and the world. On the surface the story is simple and clichéd: humans come to the jungle planet of Pandora inhabited by simple primitives, the Na’vi, who possess little technology (the quick assumption is that because they are not technologically advanced, they are simpletons). Showing the common disrespect and lack of compassion that many of us show animals, the humans willingly set out to destroy the Na’vi land and their homes to exploit the planet’s resources for themselves.

Enter our hero, Jake Sully (Sam Worthington), a paraplegic ex-marine who was recruited to replace his dead twin brother in the Avatar program—in which they are meant to inhabit an avatar native to gain the trust of the Na’vi to push them off a coveted mineral deposit. Jake takes the job for the prize of winning his legs back. He ends up getting their trust but at the cost of also falling in love with their culture and place and the chief’s daughter, Neyteri (Zoe Saldana) at the cost of his legs (I’m reminded of Kevin Costner’s Dances with Wolves). This propels Jake on a collision course with his concepts of loyalty, honor, and justice. And, ultimately, his identity. Okay, so you’re recognizing more plot clichés. Another cliché is the pristine “Nature wisdom” embraced by the natives that strongly reflects our North American native peoples. The Na’vi also worship a “mother” goddess (Eywa; Mother Nature) like many of our ancient pagan cultures.

Cameron’s intention was to create an action fantasy that was both visually stunning and mindful. “The Na’vi represent something that is our higher selves, or our aspirational selves, what we would like to think we are,” said Cameron. And even though there are good humans in the film, the humans “represent what we know to be the parts of ourselves that are trashing our world and maybe condemning ourselves to a grim future.” He acknowledged that Avatar implicitly criticized the United State’s role in the Iraq War. “We know what it feels like to launch the missiles. We don’t know what it feels like for them to land on our home soil, not in America,” said Cameron. “I think it’s very patriotic to question a system that needs to be corralled.”

The human scientists of the film discover that the natives are harmoniously linked to one another and to their environment through Nature’s intelligent “network”. Words like “download” and “link up” suggest another “living” network: the Internet. Which brings us back to the name of the movie and all that it entails: Avatar.

Avatars aren’t anything new (see below). Today, anyone who writes a blog or belongs to Facebook, MySpace or any other online social network has an avatar. Perhaps you have several. If you play 3-D games in virtual worlds, you deal with one to many of them. Avatars are an icon or persona that represents you or an aspect of you on the internet and is usually represented graphically. Mine is SF Girl, which stands for science fiction girl—you guessed it, I write science fiction. Because I’m a writer and speaker, I use a head shot for my image. Many people choose something less “real” to represent their presence on the internet. My friend, Margaret, for instance, uses a little blue alien (Geez! I should have thought of that! LOL!). The point is, your avatar—both image and name—communicates your chosen persona to billions of people in cyberspace. This is how you’ve chosen to be recognized.

What is your avatar?

Meaning and History of Avatar:


In storytelling, an avatar is basically an archetype, representing a concept or quality. Avatar originates from the Sanskrit language in sacred Hindu texts, and is a term for divine beings sent to restore goodness to Earth such as Vishnu, the ever peaceful preserver of the universe, who maintains the cosmic order, Dharma. It translates as “incarnation” or “appearance” or “manifestation”. According to the Hindu texts, good and evil forces are usually evenly matched in the world; but at times the balance is destroyed and evil demons get the upper hand. Vishnu then incarnates in a human or animal form to set the balance right. Cameron’s Avatar (Jake Sully) basically “reincarnated” from one form to another to set the balance right.

The Myth of Pandora:


Cameron chose the name of the planet, Pandora, with deliberation. In Greek mythology, Pandora was the first woman on earth. Zeus ordered Hephaestus, the god of craftsmanship, to create her, so he did—using water and earth. The gods endowed her with many talents: Aphrodite gave her beauty, Apollo music, and Hermes persuasion. Her name Pandora means "all-gifted."


When Prometheus stole fire from heaven, Zeus gave Pandora to Prometheus' brother. Pandora had a jar which she was not to open under any circumstance. Curiousity got the better of her and Pandora opened the jar. All evil escaped and spread over the earth. She quickly closed the lid, but the entire contents of the jar had escaped, except for one thing at the bottom: Hope. Pandora was deeply saddened by what she had done, and feared Zeus' wrath. But Zeus didn’t punish her. Eventually, Pandora heard a voice from inside the jar pleading for her to open it a second time. Pandora did, and fixed her earlier mistake by giving humanity the greatest gift of all: Hope.

Bruce DePalma and Spinning Fields

The precise application of Newton’s laws … have to be restricted to non-rotating mechanical objects in field-free space. In a gravitational field, the possibility of extraction of greater energy by a new mechanical dimension [rotation] opens up the possibility of an anti-gravitational interaction—Bruce DePalma, March, 1977

Some consider Bruce DePalma a 20th Century “Galileo”; in a single experiment involving rotation and spinning fields, he refuted Newton’s idea of inertia and Einstein’s theories of gravitation. But like many gifted, intuitive and visionary scientists before him, DePalma’s work was met with skepticism and censure by the traditional scientific community. Despite his recognized brilliance and MIT/Harvard background, DePalma’s exotic physics is considered subversive by his mainstream peers and has been ridiculed. It didn’t help that he led an equally exotic life that included experimenting with psycho-active drugs and that he harbored a rather volatile temper. DePalma’s work was applauded by the free energy community; however, he died unexpectedly in his early 60s in 1997 and his theories have remained unverified.

Was DePalma another misguided scientist or a misunderstood visionary? It took twenty years for Lynn Margulis to vindicate her theories and it took over 200 years for Lamarck’s work on soft inheritance to rise victorious from the darkness of scornful condemnation.

DePalma’s experiment with steel balls in 1972 showed that certain physical properties of an object are radically altered—both its mass and inertia—if it is rotated. According to DePalma, rotation produces a force field, specifically around the main axis of the rotating object, that he measured and called a torsion field or spin field. Time-lapse stroboscopic photographs revealed that the steel ball rotating at ~27,000 rpm flew higher and fell faster than the companion ball that was not rotating. DePalma had since conducted experiments on “bodies in rotation” including massive objects (e.g., over 30 lbs), spinning at very high velocities (~7600 revolutions/minute).

The phenomenon that DePalma observed—if verified—refutes Einstein’s theories of gravitation and Newton’s notion of inertia, which state that all objects, no matter what their mass, fall at the same rate because their inertia (the tendency to remain at rest when at rest and the tendency to remain in motion when in motion) is constant. "The behavior of rotating objects is explained simply on the addition of free energy to whatever motion the rotating object is [already] making. [Thus] the spinning object goes higher and falls faster than the identical non-rotating control.”

The phenomenon “presents a dilemma which can only be resolved or understood ... on the basis of radically new concepts in physics,” wrote DePalma in May 1977. Altering the properties of mechanical objects (i.e. changing their inertia) contravenes the conservation of energy, added DePalma, “because we have associated the properties of an object with the space which contains the object. The space which contains the object also contains energy.” DePalma contemplated that “we can attempt to extract the energy without worrying where it came from, or we can attempt to understand physics, ourselves, and the Universe by a new formulation of reality.”

Richard C. Hoagland “DePalma realized that the spinning ball was not about anti-gravity at all. That, instead, it represented a unique window into a far deeper reality ... re the very energy structure of space and time itself and the extraordinary possibilities of extracting that unlimited, free energy via a variety of appropriate technologies,” said Richard C. Hoagland of The Enterprise Mission. “One of our unfinished, on-going discussions (abruptly cut short by Bruce's tragic and untimely death, in 1997 ...) was a resolution of exactly where this free space energy was coming from,” added Hoagland. Perhaps, added Hoagland, " it is not really coming from 3-Space at all—but literally from a higher dimensional reality, made available in this dimension as a propagating torsion field distortion.”

DePalma claimed that the rotation phenomenon and its force field could be used in a number of different ways—the vibrations from the force field can be a cure for cancer; the rotating effect may be harnessed for the creation of an antigravity device and a 200-mile-per-gallon automobile. He suggested that it could eventually produce a world free from hunger, war and poverty. So, what happened?

Other Lost Magicians & Altruists in Free Energy: Nikola Tesla
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