Paul Goodman

Before Theodore Rozak defined the counter culture as the social movement of the Sixties and identified it with the libertarian philosophy of self regulation, self development, there was Paul Goodman.

It really was his book Growing Up Absurd that inspired many of us to look at creating a counter culture.

He was seen as one of the fathers of the New Left, giving it a libertarian flavour that the Old Left had rejected.

He was also an accomplished beat poet, thus coming in contact with the likes of Kenneth Patchen and Allen Ginzberg.

An article in Gestalt Review from 1999 has an excellent biography and appreciation of Goodman, his anarchism , and his importance as founder of Gestalt Therapy. The first anti-psychiatry movement in North America.

Here is an exerpt for those unfamilar with Goodman and his work. I have previously published his SOME REMARKS ON WAR SPIRIT

The Contributions of Paul Goodman to the Clinical, Social and Political Implications of Boundary Disturbances

Jack Aylward, Ed.D.

As we approach the millennium, we continue to grapple with
increasingly toxic threats such as environmental pollution, political
tyranny, and corporate domination of the human spirit. Currently, we
are witnessing the development of a health-care delivery system that not
only threatens our professional identities, but ultimately could create a
repressive definition of mental health that replicates the one against
which Perls, Hefferline, and Goodman originally rebelled. Gestalt therapy
theory places importance on creativity, novelty, spontaneity, and
risk in a society that is moving ever closer to repetition, obedience, and
the illusion of security. To meet the challenges, we need not say or do
anything new but simply restate (perhaps more loudly) what is already
present in our literature. To do so, it is imperative that we once again
apply our theoretical model to sociopolitical issues and realities that
contribute to the individual boundary disturbances we deal with in our
psychotherapeutic practices. In this spirit we will sequentially review: (1)
the theoretical and clinical definitions of contact boundary phenomena,
(2) the social nature of self-functioning, and (3) the political implications
in the writings of Paul Goodman.

Given a psychological model that views the individual as innately
healthy and capable, with pathology as a secondary disruption of an
otherwise natural homeostatic equilibrium, Goodman's anarchistic
philosophy is especially resonant with Gestalt therapy theory. This
connection between philosophy and therapy is not unlike Erich Frornrn's
belief in Marxist socialism. For him this philosophy "meant a society
which provides the material basis for the full development of the
individual, for the unfolding of all his human powers, for his full
independence" (Fromm, 1956, p. xiv). In both Fromm and Goodman we
see the belief that society should provide the support for an individual
who is and can be much, rather than one who has much. Optimally,
Goodman envisioned a dynamic unity of human need and social
support, implying as McLeod (1993) does that "the natural hierarchy of
needs arising to seek their fulfillment in the contact that is our very self
means Gestalt is a profoundly social therapy, envisioning and declaring
the naturalness of social and environmental harmony" (p. 28).

In subsequent essays and articles, Goodman focused on political realities
and how such phenomena affected contact boundary functioning.
Far from a utopian view Goodman's view of formal governmental
bureaucracy was that less was more with respect to social and political
structure and its impact on the quality of individual life. Susan Sontag
(1988) described Goodman's social outlook as "a form of conservative
humanistic thinking-doggedly sensitive to everything repressive and
mean while remaining loyal to the limits that protect human growth and
pleasure" (p. xvii). In this sense, Goodman saw that contact boundary
disturbances emanating from repressive and overly developed social
organizations have the potential to sap the spontaneity from human
functioning. Goodman (1994) stated that "society with a big S can do
very little for people except to be tolerable, so they can go on about the
more important business of life" (p. 53). Given that human selfhood was
primarily a social process supported by communication within a community,
political structures were realities needing to be reckoned with.

Mead's conceptualization of self-functioning parallels Goodman's
thinking in this area:

the "I" requires that we protect the rights and freedoms of individuals
as extolled by liberalism, while the "ME" imposes those moral
duties, commitments, and obligations advocated by cornrnunitarianism
[Odin, 1996, p. 371.

Much of Goodman's thinking was influenced by his association with
communitarian philosophers such as Randolph Bourne, Van Wyk
Brooks, and Lewis Murnford. Along with these dissenters within the
progressive intelligentsia of the time who were disappointed in contemporary
liberalism, Goodman was wary of the alienation resulting from
the bureaucracies of advanced industrialism. He, along with Dwight
Macdonald, Dorothy Dey, and C. Wright Mills, supported Brooks's ideal
of "the crafted or interactive self, which found its autonomy by participating
in a public world of culture and experience" (Blake, 1990, p. 141).

Consistent with the process functioning of self-formation in Gestalt therapy
theory, Brooks saw the "crafted self" as a kind of conversation with
the social and natural environments. Social and political realities
provided an ongoing ground for the alienation/identification processes
of contact functioning. In Confusion and Disorder" (197%) Goodman
outlined the potential impact that social structure can have on human
distress.

But if advanced peoples have indeed been colonized by their own
advances, they are confused and have lost their ability to pick and
choose what they can assimilate. We certainly manifest a remarkable
rigidity in our social institutions, an inability to make inventive
pragmatic adjustment. And perhaps worse, the sociology and politics
that we do think up have the same technological, centralizing,
and urban style that is causing our derangement [p. 2351.

The importance Goodman placed on organismic self-regulation and
social functioning also reflected the political thinking of such anarchists
as Mikhail Bakunin and Prince Peter Kropotkin. To Goodman, anarchy
epitomized the absence of authority, not the absence of order. In his
introduction to Kropotkin's Memoirs of a Revolutionist Goodman (1968)
points out the potential for disruptive contact functioning that can result
from an overly organized and impersonal political structure:
The real enemies have proved to be the State (whose health is war),
over-centralized organization, the authoritarian personality of
people. The call is for grass-roots social structures, spontaneity and
mutual aid, direct action and doing it yourself, education for selfreliance
and agitation for freedom [p. xxi].

Goodman was sensitive to the dehumanization of the industrial
revolution, to the accompanying division of labor and, to anything that
smacked of tyranny over someone else's body. Like other anarchist
thinkers, Goodman was fanatic in his defense of the untrammeled person
whom he felt to be best nurtured by an innovative way of life and a
nonrepressive political doctrine.

In Anarchism and Revolution (1977) he wrote:
In anarchist theory, the word revolution means the process by which
the grip of authority is loosed, so that the functions of life can
regulate themselves without top-down direction or external
hindrance. The idea is that except for emergencies and a few special
cases, free functioning will find its own right structures and coordination
[p. 2151.

As a bisexual and free love advocate in the closeted fifties his conservative individualism, as Alyward calls it, is reflective of the need to defend individual liberty in light of a society that was intolerant of homosexuality/bisexuality. Hence his critique of Society with a Large 'S" as being as repressive as the State with a big "S".

Like Wilhelm Reich who influenced him, he can be considered a father of the sexual revolution. And he offers a good counterbalance to Reichs cultural heterosexism.

Through a Columbia professor he was invited to teach at the University of Chicago while he earned his Ph.D in Literature, but he was fired from his job (as he was fired from every teaching job in his life) because he insisted on his right to fall in love with his students. He was never in the closet about his bisexuality and saw no reason to hide it even in the face of the trouble it caused him in that less permissive time.Paul Goodman's Biography

Along with education, Goodman expounded on themes of alienation, community, and sexuality. He opposed censorship of pornography, believed monogamy was oppressive, and advocated sexual freedom for children and adolescents. Goodman also challenged the boundaries between public and private, consistently linking his political and psychological theories with his personal experiences. In "The Politics of Being Queer," an essay written near the end of his life, he addressed both societal homophobia and his own bisexuality. PAST Out: Who was Paul Goodman?

Like the anarchist educators, starting with Francisco Ferrer, and Summerhill founder A.S. Neil, Goodman opposed formalist, institutional education. He saw it for what it was programing the individual for the needs of the State.

"In all societies, both primitive and highly civilized, until quite recently most education of most children has occurred incidentally. Adults do their work and other social tasks; children are not excluded, are paid attention to, and learn to be included. The children are not "taught." In many adult institutions, incidental education is taken for granted as part of the function …" (Essay: "The Present Moment in Education," April 10, 1969.)


For listing of his writings available on the web see Paul Goodman

Further Bios:

The Radical Individualism of Paul Goodman by Richard Wall

Nature Heals: The Psychological Essays of Paul Goodman ...

Anarchist Encyclopedia: Paul Goodman (1911-1972)

Paul Goodman (writer) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Workshop to decipher Paul Goodman




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Capitalists Fail To Invest In Canada

No tax breaks for corporations until they actually invest all of their capital in productivity; that is workers and technology. Currently they are being funded by tax breaks by provinces like Ontario, Federal tax breaks, unionized pension funds, CPP pension funds, and shucks workers concession bargaining. Instead of investing in productivity, they are hiding their capital away in Income Trusts, which are tax avoidance schemes. All their moaning, groaning and whining is just that.

Canada as a country is failing to equip its workers as well as counterparts elsewhere in the world, and Ontario is a major reason for that failure.The average worker in the OECD will benefit from some $11,200 in new plant and equipment in 2006, and the average worker in the United States will get $13,000.The average Canadian worker, by contrast, will get $9,800 of new plant and equipment, and the average Ontario worker only $8,400. This means that for every dollar of new investment enjoyed by the typical U.S. worker in 2006, his or her Ontario counterpart will get only 65 cents, even less than the Canadian average at 75 cents.Ontario's dilapidated toolbox


Also See:

You Are Worth More Than You Earn



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Right To Work No Thanks

Housefrau and editor of the Financial Post Diane Francis proposes Right To Work laws as a solution to the current labour shortage in Canada. No surprise there, this is typical of the right wing, and you can expect more lobbying from the right for RTW with the Harpocrite government. Already Monte Solberg is expanding the use of temporary worker status for the big Tar Sands companies to break union contracts. But in her article she quotes a union worker from the UK.

What follows is a thoughtful letter from union member John Gilmurray:

The real problem with labour policy in Canada is the union "local" system. On a recent visit to England and Ireland I was surprised that there are no locals, just one trade union congress for each country.

Everybody is hired directly by a construction company based on their resume. There are no grandfather clauses, no middle-aged white guys hanging around a union hall dishing out jobs to friends. Supply and demand are the rule. Thousands in Dublin have vacated jobs as teachers and bank clerks to become carpenters and electricians. No wonder they have one of the the best economies in the world.

What they have in Europe is Industrial Unions, and one should be careful of what one asks for. While Frau Francis may think this is a good idea, she would do well to remember that those of us in the Revolutionary Workers Movement also agree that industrial organizing is better than the outdated craft/trade unionism of the construction and building trades.

One Big Union, is the call to smash the old craft union monopolies in the work place that divide workers and create one big union for all workers. Including those who work in the offices, etc. that are often overlooked by the craft unions. Including temporary and immigrant workers. It was the temporary and immigrant workers exploited by the bosses at the turn of last century that built the most radical union in North America; the Industrial Workers of the World, IWW, the wobblies.

What needs to be done in Alberta is One Big Union of all workers, an end to craft/trade and competing union organizations. Since the orginal Canadian OBU began here in Alberta it makes sense that it should rise again from the ashes during this labour crisis.

Then we could build the General Strike to overthrow capitalism and its state. I don't think that is quite what Frau Francis had in mind though.



Also See:

The Return of Right To Work

Canada's Right Wing Union

This is Class War

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You Are Worth More Than You Earn

Every Canadian is worth $141,000 That is the surplus value you produce regardless of your wages and benefits. So where do we go to claim our bonuses? Why from the corporations who by the by are going into debt faster than the government, despite record profits and increased worker productivity.

Corporations also took on more debt in the quarter putting the brakes on what has been a long downward trend in their debt-to-equity ratio, leaving it at about 59 cents of debt for every dollar of equity. In contrast, the debt-to-GDP ratio of governments continued to edge down to a new 20-year low of 47.2 per cent, as governments as a whole registered another surplus in the quarter, although the size of the surplus eased. Canadians' worth rises to record

So where is all that debt and deficit hysteria of yesteryear?! And why in this boom economy are we being asked to continue to tighten our belts, accept outsourcing, and job losses?

And those who say Marxism is dead, well the corpse of capitalism still shambles on and long as it does Marx will be relevant.


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Corporate Profits at 50 Year High

And your salary is still on par with thirty years ago.

Corporate profits are at 50-year highs, the unemployment rate is at a 30-year low, and Canada is sporting the best government finances in all of the G7,

And these guys say they need tax cuts. Gimme a break. They continue to fail to invest their capital in technology and tools. Relying instead on matching tax breaks, government investment, union pension funds and union give backs.

Of course we are better off than the U.S. which has given business tax cuts, only to face job cuts, offshoring, and a trillion dollar deficit. The basket case that is the US economy is relying on the housing boom and personal debt.

Meanwhile Goldman Sachs, the Wall Street investment bank, suggested yesterday Canada's fatter household savings could help it "decouple" from an expected slowdown in the United States. The bank noted U.S. household spending was 1.3% more than income in the first quarter while the savings rate has been negative for more than a year. Canada, meanwhile, has a 1.9% savings rate -- all the better to spend.

Inflation in Canada is the creation of one province, the same one that boomed in the late seventies and early eighties.

"There are increasing signs that Alberta's white-hot economy has morphed into a classic boom, replete with labour shortages, surging real estate prices, and thus very real inflation pressures," Douglas Porter, deputy chief economist at BMO Nesbitt Burns, said in a report.
And with every boom comes a bust.

As we begin trading in the summer of 2006 I can't help but observe the remarkable resemblance between equity markets today and those of the summer of 1984.The bear of 1984 began when worries about rising interest rates caused a "correction" in the Dow Jones industrial average only days after the market hit an all-time high just shy of 1,300 during the week of Jan. 13, 1984. That so-called correction, unfortunately, persisted for months. I was an adviser at a downtown investment dealer and I sat with my peers feeling lost, adrift and without direction. One adviser nearby kept repeating, "There'll never be another up day, there'll never be another up day."Time may be right to limit exposure to Canadian currency

That was the day the market collapsed, oil prices dropped, and from Huston to Calgary the sound of petro capitalists hitting the streets was thunderous.

The good news is that while the boom is on, those in manufacturing and exporting who are crying the blues, will get no satisfaction from Sherriff Dodge.

Clement Gignac, chief economist at National Bank Financial, said Dodge kept his options open yesterday for the July 11 rate decision but sent a strong message that worries about the dollar won't dictate monetary policy. "He put in a little bit of uncertainty about his next move," said Gignac, who attended the speech. "But make no mistake, he was loud and clear that he does not control the Canadian dollar, so corporate Canada has to adjust to the new environment."
Won't clip loonie to suit exporters

More on Dodge

Also See

Loonie

Petro Dollar

Monopoly

Monopolies

inflation, loonie, dollar, jobless-report, workers, credit, credit-card, debt, Canada, employment, unemployment, interest-rates, Bank-of-Canada, labour, labor, Dodge, 1974, productivity, consumer-debt, housing-boom, competitiveness, Canada, economy, loonie, David, Dodge, Bank-of-Canada, inflation, dollar

Black Hole

Ah the trials and tribulations of the rich and those who would be our new aristocracy. Like little Lord Black

In a court filing that drips with sarcasm, U.S. prosecutors accused media mogul Conrad Black of failing to disclose millions of dollars in assets -- including nearly $6 million prosecutors said they learned about in the past few days. "Black's assets mysteriously increase in value without his knowledge, his debts diminish overnight, his business partners want to give him millions of dollars he never even realized he was owed, and he is able to take all the accolades for charitable distributions from a $3.1 million foundation, despite claiming no direct or indirect control over the foundation's assets," prosecutors wrote. US: Black failed to reveal assets

Of course our poor Lord Black pleads innocent. Poor being a relative term.

A "problem with the government's motion is that it assumes Mr. Black's guilt," said a document filed on behalf of the former media mogul. "Mr. Black, however, is presumed innocent."

Well if they presumed he was innocent they wouldn't be prosecuting him of course. But Lord High Mucky Muck of course presumes that they are not prosecuting him for crimes but persecuting him for his fame and fortune.

Ironically Blacks partner who pled guilty is still his partner. Black, Radler remain partners

After all this is a guy who has Al Capone as his hero. Who also tried to use Canada as a place to hide out from the IRS.

Also See:

Conrad Black

Criminal Capitalism: Black Lord Dodges Tax Man

Criminal Capitalism: Black & Radler,Thick as Thieves

Criminal Capitalism: Lord Black Fugitive

Criminal Capitalism: Black gets his comeuppance

Criminal Capitalism: Hollinger's Black Eye

Criminal Capitalism: Black Out






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Hiding In Quebec

The Harpocrites would rather hide in Quebec during the nationalist festival of St. Jean Baptiste, hidden in the old Quebec Fortress than appear anywhere near Toronto this weekend.

Conservatives, anti-gay sentiment colour this year's pride parade ...

They would rather trust their fete to hoards of Quebec Nationalists than appear anywhere near Queer Street in Toronto.

The homophobia of the Conservatives is not limited to their attempt to over turn Same Sex Marriage but in the Harpocrites refusal to attend the International Aids Conference in Toronto next month.

Bloc Québécois MP Christiane Gagnon argued that Mr. Harper is willing to move mountains to attend events when aimed at gaining electoral ground, but his absence as leader of the conference's host country shows he does not act like a statesman.She said AIDS cannot be linked solely with the gay community, but the fact Mr. Harper is also skipping this summer's Outgames, a gay and lesbian athletic event in Montreal, leads her to ask about the message he is sending. Harper's plan to skip AIDS forum ‘baffling'

Once again the dim witted conservatives, whose collective brain would leave a dinosaur ashamed, fail to realize that AID's is NOT a gay disease but a sexually transmitted disease that affects more heterosexuals world wide. And in particualr women. But then again the conservatives figure women wouldn't get AIDS if they maintained monogamous marriages, stayed home and took care of the kids. Except that is exactly how they get it in Africa.

Of course if the Harpocrite dressed like this he would be sure to be hit on if he did show up at the Gay Pride parade in Toronto.

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Define Nation

Huh? Does this make any sense....

Mr. Harper said that he respects the National Assembly's declaration that Quebec is a nation, but that Ottawa has no need to enter the debate."I recognize that the Quebec National Assembly has adopted that position. I don't know quite frankly what its legal significance is," he said, adding later that "it just seems to me to be a semantic debate that doesn't serve any purpose."

Nope but then again Mr. Haprocrite can claim not to be a lawyer which is good because even as an economist he is a failure. And he says Ottawa doesn't have to enter the nation state debate with Quebec. Gee I thought that was the debate. And considering repatriation of the Constitution, Meech Lake, the Charlottetown accord, it is far from semantic.

Nation hmm lets look that up shall we;

Nationalists define individual nations on the basis of certain criteria, which distinguish one nation from another; and determine "who is a member of each nation". These criteria might include a shared language, culture, and/or shared values which are predominantly represented within a specific ethnic group. National identity refers both to these defining criteria, and to the shared heritage of each group. Membership in a nation is usually involuntary and determined by birth. Nationalism sees most human activity as national in character. Nations have national symbols, a national culture, a national music and national literature; national folklore, a national mythology and - in some cases - even a national religion. Individuals share national values and a national identity, admire the national hero, eat the national dish and play the national sport.

and it should not be confused with the Nation as State;

Historians Benedict Anderson or the Communist author Eric Hobsbawm have pointed out that in fact, the nation-state precedes nationalism. According to their conception, nationalism is a creation of the nation-state, and not the reverse. For example, French nationalism emerged in the 19th century, once the French nation-state already constituted through the unification of various dialects and languages into the French language, and also by the means of conscription and the Third Republic's 1880s laws on public instruction. However, in countries divided into multiple states such as Germany or Italy, the sense of a common membership to the same cultural movement, as in the Volkisch movement, can be said to be nationalism, and in this case precedes the unification of the various states into the German or the Italian state.

One of the earliest, and perhaps oldest example of a nation state was the Dutch Republic (1581 and 1795).The Eighty Years' War that began in 1568, triggered a process of what we would now call "nation-building", the following circumstances/events were very helpful in this process:

And Quebec nationalism does not mean the end of Canada.It is the source of the greatest classic liberal (as in Thomas Paine the Rights of Man) political critique of the Canadian State that originated in the great Con that was the federation of 1867.

Coincidently both founding ruling classes in Pan-Canada; the English/Scottish and Irish Freemasons, and the French and Irish Catholics celebrate the summer solstice with St. Jean Baptiste/St. John the Baptist celebrations. They are the rites of Bourgeoisie nationalism.

'Fete nationale' a Canadian holiday: Harper As in Les Canadiens. Since the Canadian National anthem originated in Quebec as part of its St. Jean Baptiste celebrations.

And Quebec and Canada are federated nations, who also share a common colony; Haiti. That makes them both bourgeoise nations and Imperialist.

And behind the Harpocrites dismissal of the Quebec Nation as semantic, is his self professed status as autarch of the Canadian State.

And we know how anarchists feel about the State, and nationalism. They are last refuge of the scoundral.

The ever growing power of a soulless political bureaucracy which supervises and safeguards the life of man from the cradle to the grave is putting ever greater obstacles in the way of the solidaric co-operation of human beings and crushing out every possibility of new development. A system which in every act of its life sacrifices the welfare of large sections of the people, yes, of whole nations, to the selfish lust for power and the economic interests of small minorities must of necessity dissolve all social ties and lead to a constant war of all against all. This system has been merely the pacemaker for the great intellectual and social reaction which finds its expression today in modern Fascism, far surpassing the obsession for power of the absolute monarchy of past centuries and seeking to bring every sphere of human activity under the control of the state. Just as for the various systems of religious theology, God is everything and man nothing, so for this modern political theology, the state is everything and the man nothing. And just as behind the "will of God" there always lay hidden the will of privileged minorities, so today there hides behind the "will of the state" only the selfish interest of those who feel called to interpret this will in their own sense and to force it upon the people. Anarchosyndicalism by Rudolf Rocker - Chapter 1

But it is Rudolph Rocker (1873-1958) who, in Nationalism and Culture (1937), provides the fullest anarchist discussion of nationalism. To Rocker it is clear that 'The nation is not the cause, but the result of the state. It is the state which creates the nation and not the nation the state.' (28) This assertion becomes more plausible when he proceeds to distinguish between a 'people' - what Proudhon had called a 'folk-group' - and a 'nation'. 'A people', he explains, 'is the natural result of social union, a mutual association of men brought about by a certain similarity of external conditions of living, a common language, and special characteristics due to climate and geographic environment. In this manner arise certain common traits, alive in every member of the union, and forming a most important part of its social existence. The nation, on the other hand, is the artificial struggle for political power, just as nationalism has never been anything but the political religion of the modern state. Belonging to a nation is never determined, as is belonging to a people, by profound natural causes; it is always subject to political considerations and based on those reasons of state behind which the interests of privileged minorities always reside.' And in a passage relevant to the manifestation in recent years of both 'sub-nationalisms' and the nascent 'supra-nationalism' of some ideologists of the EEC, Rocker insists: 'A people is always a community with narrow boundaries. But a nation, as a rule, encompasses a whole array of different peoples and groups of peoples who have by more or less violent means been pressed into the frame of a common state.' 'National states' (he concludes) 'are political church organisations...All nationalism is reactionary in its nature, for it strives to enforce on the separate parts of the great human family a definite character according to a preconceived idea...Nationalism creates artificial separations and partitions within that organic unity which finds its expression in the genus Man.'Resisting the nation state

Also See: Quebec

A History of Canadian Wealth, 1914.

Rebel Yell

Origins of the Captialist State In Canada

Voting for Capitalism On January 23

The Neo Liberal Canadian State

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The Headline Says It All

Public Service Alliance of Canada reaches tentative agreement for striking Ekati diamond mine workers with Ekati owner BHP Billiton; union recommending yes vote to end strike that began April 7 to win first-ever contract at a Canadian diamond mine

Yep thats the headline from the press release. Talk about a run on sentence. PSAC has a lot to celebrate so in all the excitment I guess they just couldn't say enough about their victory at Ekati.

And they should be they faced scabs and union busting AFI private security.
Proving that we need Federal Anti-Scab legislation. Without scabs this would have been a far shorter strike than eleven weeks.



Also See:

Diamonds and Rust

Union Busters Update

The War For Chocolate

DeBeers versus the Bushmen

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The Great Escape

Theme song from the Great Escape, prisoners whistling. Recaptured Steve McQueen enters Stalag Luft 3 and the commandant simply orders; "Kooler".

It was a commendable escape by any measure: Patiently wait until the staff calls it a day; dig a tunnel under a fence; then, make a dash for love.

But after 19 days on the lam, Boo, a four-and-a-half-year-old grizzly bear that made a bid for freedom after catching the whiff of a sow, is back behind his electric fence at a refuge in British Columbia.It's just the simple bear necessities of Boo's love life

Or perhaps like the journalist who wrote this I am simply anthropomorphizing the bear story. Nah, bears are people too.

THE GREAT BEAR MOTHER

A major cult of the Bear Mother has been traced from the earliest times throughout the colder northern hemisphere, from Finland to Siberia to North America. Ritually arranged skulls of herbivorous cave bears have been discovered in caves in France and in the German Alps, which date from the time of Neanderthal humans, at least 75,000 years ago. The Great She Bear, whose animal fur, skins and body gave warmth and food to the northern peoples was revered as an awesome Ancestor Mother of human beings. The Ainu of Japan, who are descendants of early Siberian migrations, still retain their veneration of the Bear in both legend and ritual. For Native Americans the Bear is one of the guardians of the Four Directions. (Primitive Mythology by Joseph Campbell, Penguin)

The Great She Bear also reigned in the heavens. She was named in the constellation of Ursa Major which cycled then as now, around the night-time skies of the northern hemisphere each year. In Altaic, Siberian and Tibetan mythology there was said to be a direct connection between Ursa Major and the Earth via a Universal Tree, which was rooted in the earth at Shambhala. Shambhala itself is a mythical realm which lies somewhere to the north of Tibet. It is believed to be a source of the 'Ancient Wisdom'. (See 'Dawn Behind the Dawn' by Geoffrey Ashe, Henry Holt, 1992).

Also See:

Bears

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boo, bear, grizzly, love, escape, zoo, recaptured, Great-Escape, Steve-McQueen
Canada, B.C.,
Great-Bear-Mother, Russia, Europe, Paleolithic, religion, spirituality, paganism, shaman