If Jake Sully existed in our world I’d nominate him as a Change Agent on Changents. If you haven’t seen Avatar—I highly recommend checking it out—Jake’s a human turned humanoid who realizes the implications of human greed, and sense of entitlement, on the Avatar world Pandora and its indigenous population.  

I don’t want to ruin the plot, but if you saw Treehugger’s article today then you might have a sense of what the movie is about. I’ll tell you this— it’s about people from two very different worlds with very different value systems, both environmental and social.

The movie highlights the contrast between an untarnished world where there is utter respect for every aspect of nature and our world.

I would say the Avatar world Pandora is a place where most of us “bona fide treehuggers” wouldn’t mind living, I wouldn’t.  It’s a place where their earth is cherished and appreciated in every aspect. It resembles a world many of our Change Agents are trying to make a reality.

In the movie, a Change Agent helps restore things and ends the human invasion driven by greed. Change Agent Jake Sully took matters into his own hands and decided he was one person who could make the change needed to save the planet. Even though he wasn’t originally part of their race or culture, he was able to see its value, connect with the people and see there was more to life than money and material things.  He choose a harder path because he knew it was right.

Jake Sully, like Christopher Swain, Scott Harrison, Nate Bastien, Dylan Mahalingam, Chris Nicola, Organic Nation, 5 Gyres and I can go on, took matters into his own hands. Change Agents make the decision to change things and take action to make their vision, mission happen.

Beyond the Change Agent aspect of the film, it touches on a number of social and environmental issues.  We see the impact of negative actions on an innocent and indigenous people who are truly connected to their world. It’s an eye-opener connecting us to the emotional response of the people affected by a disregard for human rights, imperialism and colonialism, destruction of their land, deforestation, etc. I teared up because of it's poignat reality, but I also was happy because we have thousands of Change Agents in our world.

If you could, would you live in a world similar to Pandora? What types of themes did you see? I have a few in mind...