Black bear attacks in Alaska are quite rare. They are not impossible, yet they are rare. Black bear are of a different genetic origin that brown bear and are far less agressive toward humans.
When I camped in the Juneau area for a few years, on Douglas Island across Gastineau channel I was visited by a black bear fairly regularly. A large black bear had a circuit I suppose looked for anything that smelled good to replace the lost access to fish from so many home going in over the years, within the range of bear.
I never had to do anything besides hit the tent door to send a black bear into paninicked flight. Once while camping north of Auk Bay I caughta tent with his nose in a bag of flour and the poor 250-300 pounder ran uphill (a steep hill) like a sprinter.
So I was surprised to read that a Douglas homeowner shot a larger black bear this year, of more than 300 pounds. Why shoot them? Kowee Creek (named for the deceased Tlingit Chief) next to the bridge has returning chum salmon that are rather too dangerous from cars buzzing about for bear to get to, though they may try. Living on skunk cabbage and blueberries and no fish for bear is forced poverty.
When two Alaskans were killed by black bear shortly after the killing of the large black bear on Douglas for some reason I wasn't too surprised. It seemed as if the black bear might have wanted humans to know to leave them alone to go about their business. Black bear aren't the dominant bear in Alaska. They have learned contriteness because of their need to defer on all territorial issues to the larger, fearsome brown bear or get knocked about or killed. Yet black bear are not willing to be debearmanzed so far as to be erased. Maybe targeted human killings was a political statement.
THe interpretation of events may offer a range of possibilities. A wikipedia entry states that, "The anagogical is a method of symbolic interpretation of spiritual statements or events, especially scriptural exegesis that detects allusions to the afterlife. Certain medieval theologians describe four methods of interpreting the Scriptures: literal/historical, allegorical, tropological (moral), and anagogical. Humanity ought to find ways other than killing to solve things when it can rather than using it as a first application of will.
Yes that all sounds as spaced as aliens have made contact reporting. Look at the U.S> Senate and its ideas about health care for the rich that trasheds the poorest of the poor; the Senate could be possed by alen transmissions even now!
About
the Theory of an Intelligent Super-Organism
Pierre
Telhard De Chardin wrote of a layered life approach and of a
noosphere. The cosmogenesis approach is interesting. Telhard was a
World War One French Army officer who got so drunk on Armistice Day
that he couldn't get the key into the lock on his door. He was also a
priest and theologian. It is impressive that he could view stomachs
hanging in trees and later write such interesting and optimistic
philosophy.
http://www.bizcharts.com/stoa_del_sol/plenum/plenum_2.html
James
Lovelock and the Gaia hypothesis argued that the world ecosphere
behaves like an intelligent organism. The complex feedback mechanisms
of which there are a zillion act together. One can consider Elton's
research on the way bare post-glacial era northern island became
populated with vegetation and other, larger life as guano from
seabirds and seabirds themselves as food and in other capacities
helped to reinforce an increase population of life forms. If bees
were taken out of the life equation on Earth that would present quite
a few problems.
Regarding
the web of life as an integral whole is a fundamental parameter of
contemporary ecospheric research I would guess. Several books have
been published on ecosystems integrity from the requirement that
large predators exist to the harm done to the American southwest by
the removal of mammoths of the elephant family whose footprints
allowed seed to grow.
Human
beings are too a part of the ecosphere as are their intellect such as
exists outside the beltway. Some of the intellects are daft regarding
the ecosphere and do their best to exterminate much of it en mass
instead of conserving it while they advance science and technology to
the purpose of knowledge and human well being. The ecosphere isn't
just an aesthetic luxury.
Inevitably
the political trail returns to the oval of NASCAR and high-octane
automobile pollution-that may not change soon.
Lovelock
wrote in 'The Final Warning' that the human population may drop to
about 200 million in the future as a result of global warming and
other issues. At that point the global temperature may stabilize.
Lovelock conjectures that if humanity continues its usual greenhouse
gassing at that point Gaia will simply remove the remnant of
humanity.
Life
may act on Earth as a giant organism. G.W.F. Hegel believed that life
on Earth is a process of God realizing awareness of Himself in
history that fits rather well with the Gaia criteria.
There
are additional ways to consider an ecosphere in larger, intelligent
organisms in discrete or monistic guise. Ant colonies sometimes seem
to act as intelligent collectives-one must consider the Borg
obviously as a future mode of ultra-right-wing or left wing
consumerism.
Of
even more concern to some is the potential that some of those giant
fungi discovered now and then to be the largest organisms in the
world have as much intelligence as federal budget planners. Then
there are whales and ravens-seemingly happy creatures of moderate
intelligence in tune with the temporal times even as they decline.
The
entire quantum universe could be a super-intelligence, quantum
computer or God running this Universe as a sub-routine.
