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< 8 Books ~ 8 Books - Part 2 - Grey Owl - Primitivism as Escapism |
| Peter Hercules |
 Posted: Thu Feb 22, 2007 11:48 pm |
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Grey Owl - Primitivism as Escapism
The second book on my list of eight is also a biography, in this case that of a somewhat legendary Canadian conservationist figure of the first part of the twentieth century. ‘The Many Faces of Archie Belaney - Grey Owl’ by Jane Billinghurst clearly and concisely presents the interesting story of a man born in England in 1888 into an upper middle class family but who, as a child, fantasized about becoming a ‘red Indian’ in the ‘Wild West’ and then fulfilled his fantasy.
Archie Belaney was so successful in this regard that at the time of his death in 1938 he had convinced millions of people (those who had read his books romantically portraying life in the wild, seen the documentary movies recording his experiences sharing his cabin with a den of beavers, and listened to his hundreds of speeches advocating a reverence of nature to huge crowds on both sides of the Atlantic (including a young Princess Elizabeth of England and her family)) that he was a ‘half-breed’ aboriginal native, named Grey Owl. His true identity was revealed to the world only upon his death, to much shock and controversy.
His story was revived with the 1999 release of the Richard Attenborough-directed motion picture entitled ‘Grey Owl’ starring Pierce Brosnan (Attenborough and his brother David, the world renowned naturalist, saw Grey Owl speak at the London Palladium in their youth and were very affected by his talk) - presenting a very sanitized image of this sad and severely flawed individual. It was this film that stimulated me to further explore his story by buying and reading Billinghurst’s book.
While there is no doubt that Archie Belaney had a genuine love for the wild, that he truly became a very capable woodsman, and that he influenced many in this regard with his stirring prose and performances, what I found most interesting from the perspective of human untaming was his personal and psychological story.
His father was an alcoholic ne’er-do-well and his mother was almost a child herself when he was born. He was taken into the care of his paternal grandmother and aunts at age two to get him away from his two hapless parents, and stayed there until he moved on his own to Canada at the age of eighteen to begin his life in the wilderness. While it is clear that he found the world of his childhood stultifying, it would appear to me that what was even more important in his development was his abandonment by his parents and the emotional damage that this caused him.
Archie Belaney was an escape artist and, above all else, seeking refuge in the magical and radically different world of being an ‘Indian’ in the wild was his escape mechanism from the pain of his early childhood rejection. He became an accomplished liar and alcoholic, went from one failed relationship to another, never bonded meaningfully with his own offspring, and in the last ten years of his life created and hid within a completely false persona that was worshiped by the masses while he simultaneously sank deeper and deeper into a state of depression and self-destruction.
Despite his rock-star-like success, as a human being he was an abject failure. He developed a fictionalized version of his life and of himself to try to avoid the internal pain of his youth. None of his various coping mechanisms enabled him to truly escape this pain and instead he ended up living with growing fear and suffering and died a physically broken man at just fifty years of age.
He only became a noteworthy figure at all because his dramatic portrayal of life in the pristine green wilderness enabled him to tap into a societal-wide yearning for an escape from the dismal grey failure of industrial society that was being experienced by the masses during the Great Depression. Until he was forty years of age he was essentially one of many poor trappers, barely making ends meet between drunken binges.
The life story of Grey Owl / Archie Belaney demonstrates for those interested in untaming themselves that even if they choose to live in a wilder environment, unless they free themselves from their internal prisons they will remain caged/domesticated animals. These prisons, typically established very early in their personal domestication process, even before a time in their lives that they can remember, will haunt and block them and prevent them from enjoying what being in the wild can bring. Moreover, the poison that they will bring with them into the wild if they do not dismantle their internal cages will inevitably pollute that purer external environment as well.
Furthermore, unless these underlying issues are dealt with, the pursuit of wildness will often be simply another escape/coping mechanism and a dead end with respect to the process of self-actualization. I suspect that for many involved in the primitivism/wildness movement such is the case. As a result, they operate from a position of weakness rather than one of strength in a very unforgiving environment. They will experience the wild like an animal caught in a trap - limited, suffering, and doomed.
Instead, in order to free oneself from one’s internal cages, rather than running away from one’s true identity and history, one must confront and integrate them, using the perspectives and resources that one can acquire over the course of one’s life - an ongoing process driven by the commitment and courage to dedicate oneself to the optimal expression of one’s unique genetic program. Doing so will inevitably lead one into the world of wildness, which will then be enjoyed with well-being and vitality. |
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Dr. Peter Hercules
http://www.untamedlife.com/ |
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