Word: naturalist
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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Destruction artists try to draw their esthetic justification on an odd mixture -the theories on aggression propounded by Austrian Naturalist Konrad Lorenz, Aristotle's idea of dramatic catharsis, and pop-psych. "We're all very hostile," says Ortiz. "The guy who beats his kid, the wife who has affairs. But art becomes a place where one can deal with the most chaotic problems without threatening one's emotional and physical well-being." Whatever the merits of destruction art, Ortiz's grasp of psychology is clearly sketchy, at least by Freudian lights. The master taught that both...
Konrad Lorenz, the Austrian-born naturalist, believes that human aggressiveness is the instinct that powers not only self-preservation against enemies but also love and friendship for those who share the struggle. Overcoming obstacles provides selfesteem; lacking such fulfillment, man turns against handy targets-his wife, even himself. Polar explorers, deprived of quarrels with strangers, often start to hate one another; the antidote is smashing some inanimate object, like crockery. Accident-prone drivers may be victims of "displaced aggression." The once ferocious Ute Indians, now shorn of war outlets, have the worst auto-accident rate on record...
...photographs are monochrome and offset-reproduced, and the prose is conservationist and sternly isolationist, not to say jaunty in a scoutmasterly fashion. However, 65 of the 375 species of mammals in America-north of the Rio Grande-are given knowledgeable biographies by an industrious naturalist. Leonard Lee Rue III knows more than other authorities, including Larousse, will let on about the American opossum: Did anyone else know that an infant opossum is the size of a pencil eraser, while a whole litter of 16 would not fill a teaspoon? Most backward and unfortunate of all American mammals, Mother usually...
...fact is that if violence is not innate, it is a basic component of human behavior. The German naturalist Konrad Lorenz believes that, unlike other carnivores, man did not at an early stage develop inhibitions against killing members of his own species-because he was too weak. As he developed weapons, he learned to kill, and he also learned moral restraints, but these never penetrated far enough. Writes Lorenz: "The deep emotional layers of our personality simply do not register the fact that the cocking of a forefinger to release a shot tears the entrails of another...
...corncob jelly and descriptions of what it is like to shoot the narrow, roaring rapids on the Rio Grande. After 20 books (Beyond the High Himalayas, A Wilderness Bill of Rights), Author Douglas has proved that he is a more beguiling travel writer and a far more gifted naturalist than one expects from an Associate Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court. This account of his meanderings through the wilderness areas of Texas has one major flaw: the Justice gives such a fascinating picture of the glories of the bayous and the wonders of the baygalls that one almost ignores...