I'm not an idea. I'm not a shadow of myself.

[TteFAboB]

When we find things that appear to be silly, irrelevant, we usually let them go and end up missing a sign of an epoch. Knut's story, among other things, shows a symptom of the Neoplatonism of our time.

Knut is a German Polar Bear who has been rejected by his mother. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/liv...n_page_id=1770
Because of that, the handlers took care of him instead. Activists campaigned for his death claiming that since he is being raised in captivity, he can no longer be considered a bear as Knut now believes that the handlers are his parents. So he must be sacrificed in the name of our domestic love for "bear bears", in detriment of "humanized bears".

What makes a bear a bear? Four legs? With a white furry coat (if it is a polar bear)? Bear habits? Would a bear born without one frontal leg still be considered a bear, even with such a drastic imperfection?

In the mind of the activists there is an ideal bear, the perfect bear form, the bear as an idea, of which the real bear, the one we know, is but a shadow. If a bear denies a characteristic considered essential, given the theses about bears, nothing more reasonable than applying a final solution: kill the thing, that in its imperfection, conspurcates our ideal world. It must not be considered worthy of life.

These activists have a very defined concept of what a life is. A handled bear doesn't deserve to live. The only accepted life form is one ideally established. Who are these people, these militants, who mobilize to kill a polar bear?

Platonics believed that they could reach pure ideas. Neoplatonics forge by force the "purity" of their own ideas as they base themselves on a consensus that is historically and socially determined, and as such, subject to controversies.

"I don't consider it appropriate for the species that the little polar bear is being raised on a bottle." The animal will be fixated on his keeper and not be a "real" polar bear, he says. However he feels it is now too late to put Knut out of his supposed misery. "The mistake has been made. One should have had the courage to put him to sleep much earlier."

Raising him by hand is not appropriate to the species but rather a blatant violation of animal welfare laws," [laws created by whom? Man-made laws? Gaia's laws? Divine laws? Universal laws?]

"In actual fact, the zoo needs to kill the bear cub,"

"Making bears into humans has to stop as soon as possible, but we cannot put him to sleep. He has a right to live."

The controversial:

"You can't domesticate a wild animal," Rüdiger Schmiedel, director of the German Bear Foundation told SPIEGEL. "When Knut reaches puberty, his keeper is going to get a whack upside the head." ...two polar bears in Bremerhaven Zoo badly injured a keeper last September while playing.

"As a polar bear, he is programmed to be a solitary animal," says bear expert Udo Ganslosser. "So he won't suffer when his parental figure isn't able to visit him any more."

The zoo reports that little Knut is starting to become a bit of a handful as he gets bigger -- suggesting that the bear is maybe not as human as people fear. "The many bruises that his keeper has show that Knut has discovered he is a bear," Klös told dpa.

Those from the first block of quotes, note how they reject dissent by their imperative tone, while those on the second block prefer stick to known facts. In the end, they reject the imperfections and precariousness of life to stick to and to recognize the pure identities. A bear must reproduce all the characteristics of their ideal "bear" to be considered as such. They accept nothing outside what they consider to be the integral truth.

Remember the PETA story? (http://www.consumerfreedom.com/news_...?headline=2833) To protect dogs from mistreatment, we must kill them.

And so we go from bears to men. Some days ago, maybe a week, homossexual militants were arrested in the USA while aggressively protesting against the Armed Forces policy of "Don't Ask, Don't Tell". The men and women are not required to reveal their sexual condition to Command, which by its turn is forbidden to ask. Nope. They don't want that. A Bear must be "a Bear". Life must be "Life". Gay must be "Gay". Etc. Everything must be made clear, all zones of ambiguity must be eliminated, to establish all the differences so that all things can be exercised in their absolute purity, each demanding their own "rights". Each needing a law to protect them from the right to universalism.

We no longer accept the impure, the imperfect, the sinner, the undecided, the precarious men. Each person must declare what they are in absolute form, full, whole, total, unquestionable. Like an illustration of a Polar Bear.

[SUBMAN1]

Great - More animal crackers

[joea]

Originally Posted by SUBMAN1

Great - More animal crackers

:rotfl::rotfl::rotfl:

[Skybird]

No more Knut, please. we get feeded with it every day in the news on the first channel, second channel, several private channels, at midday, in the evening, in the late night magazines.

Will be glad when he has grown up and will not be any cute anymore.
If you ever come to Berlin, not so much visit the Zoo, but the Aquarium. It's 25 years ago for me, but back then it was impressive (including a free walk on a rope bridge a la Indy Jones - just some feet above a bunch of crocodiles).

the worldwide interest into this and other comparable "news" probably is just a compensation for the many bad news people get to see on TV. when Knut was let out into the outer compund the first time, crowds and some hundred camera teams stood by the fence.

[Skybird]

Originally Posted by TteFAboB

Each person must declare what they are in absolute form, full, whole, total, unquestionable. Like an illustration of a Polar Bear.

that'S nothing. You never sat in a supervision-round of psychologists. Glad I am out of that. If you had nothing to report and no questions from a patient case of yours, then you were made to report something about yourself. Anything, no matter how small and unimportant. It then was turned into a big issue. And when you expressed your doubts about that procedure, you were "resisting" and Bang! - freash meat for the wolf pack. you resist! Biiiig problem, let's talk about it. Ever did a therapy ypurself, maybe? you must become aware of your inner resistences...