E. Spat posted recently that she was going to go see the movie Grizzly Man, about Timothy Treadwell. For those who do not know, Timothy Treadwell used to come up to Alaska and hang out with the bears, talking to them, singing to them, cooing at them, etc. He claimed that he understood the bears and that he appreciated him.
I debate about whether I want to see this movie. Part of the reason is that the state medical examiner, Franc Fallico (I'm not making up his name), is in the movie. Let's just say that my professional opinion of Dr. Fallico is not particularly high. I am not sure that the 30 point rise in my blood pressure of seeing his weasely little face on the screen would be worth seeing.
I could make some quasi-intellectual statement like, "Timothy Treadwell symbolizes the alienation of modern humanity from raw nature", but the simple fact is that he was a naive fool. I suppose that would not be so bad, but he was held up as an example of how people ought to interact with bears. This whole idea of anthropomorphizing animals is ultimately pointless. and it is dangerous.
Ideas have consequences and they sure did for Timothy Treadwell. The fact of the matter is that a full-grown brown bear is an unpredictable animal and anybody that says otherwise is simply walking scat. This does not mean that the only good bear is a dead bear, but it does mean that you pay attention to what goes on around you and stay out of the bears' way. If Treadwell's idiocy had only cost his own life, I would have chalked it up to natural selection. Instead, it also cost his girlfriend her life and it cost the life of two bears, deaths that were pointless and unnecessary.
