“Betrays humanity” is debatable. Arguably we can see that both humanities treatment of the Nav’i(sp) and general socioeconomics as portrayed could be seen as an inherent betrayal of humanity. On the whole, the humans are portrayed as greedy, calculating, and placing little value in human or alien life. Despite the insane level of technology and resources we see leveraged in the future the film depicts, Jake, a veteran, cannot get a surgery to restore his mobility without resorting to such extreme measures as going to a far off and dangerous planet and undergoing a questionably safe “mind transfer” type procedure to “earn” the surgery. It appears despite all their technology that the best prosthesis they have as well is still a wheel chair. Or that they deemed it too costly to transport anything other than a manual wheel chair etc.
<minor spoilers follow>
So we can argue that Jakes actions, which showed compassion and reason and ethics, in standing up to the greed and betrayals of the concept of humanity which the corporation were involved in- was in fact in service of humanity- that regardless of personal cost of risk Jake was going to stand up for what is right and not allow them to go against humanitarian values any further with the nav’i(sp). In point of fact, Pandora in theory represented a chance for humans to take an option which might allow us to alleviate or even solve many of the problems that drove the need to acquire resources to begin with by simply learning from the nav’i and finding more sustainable ways to live in the environment. A plot point of the second film revolves around a shift from ore mining to the harvesting of a “youth serum” that could only make humanities problems worse reasonably. So we see a strong theme in the rejection of nature- literally trying to break the inevitability of..
.. death for example, but obviously greed and hate and the destructive natures of people and such are played as well.
<end spoilers>
So I mean- really what Jake was up to in the films could be easily said to be in the best interests of humanity- that they need to “wake up” and perhaps not change entirely, but find their humanity and get aligned to how humanity can fit better into a sustainable system. Long term Jake Sully may have prevented the extinction of humanity or bought us millions or billions more years as a species.
So we can argue that Jakes actions, which showed compassion and reason and ethics, in standing up to the greed and betrayals of the concept of humanity which the corporation were involved in- was in fact in service of humanity- that regardless of personal cost of risk Jake was going to stand up for what is right and not allow them to go against humanitarian values any further with the nav’i(sp). In point of fact, Pandora in theory represented a chance for humans to take an option which might allow us to alleviate or even solve many of the problems that drove the need to acquire resources to begin with by simply learning from the nav’i and finding more sustainable ways to live in the environment. A plot point of the second film revolves around a shift from ore mining to the harvesting of a “youth serum” that could only make humanities problems worse reasonably. So we see a strong theme in the rejection of nature- literally trying to break the inevitability of..
<end spoilers>
So I mean- really what Jake was up to in the films could be easily said to be in the best interests of humanity- that they need to “wake up” and perhaps not change entirely, but find their humanity and get aligned to how humanity can fit better into a sustainable system. Long term Jake Sully may have prevented the extinction of humanity or bought us millions or billions more years as a species.