The Ursine and the Asinine

This humorous and insightful post over at the Toilet Paper Blog complements Werner Herzog's droll documentary, Grizzly Man, which made for captivating viewing last night on the Discovery Channel.

The film's protagonist, Tim Treadwell, was a very unusual individual- clearly embodying both supra-normal, and sub/ab-normal, qualities of character. His temerity well-illustrated the observation that courage and recklessness are near kin.

The overriding, thematic impressions which Treadwell's story left me with were:

1. He had a sort of "shaman's complex" - he aspired to be a beast- and lore-master. Thus was disclosed his "will-to-power."
2. His rise and demise almost perfectly embody the fundamental ambivalence which must govern a comprehensive view of "Nature." Paraphrasing something I wrote in a different context, we are both attracted to  Natura as the realm of boundless beauty, innocence, and order; and repelled by it as the senseless domain of "red tooth and claw" - the coldest of all cold indifference, in which death is ubiquitous.