I think it was Sigmund Freud who observed that there have been three separate discoveries that have rattled man's beliefs about nature.
For Freud, these shocking breakthroughs were Galileo's discovery that Earth is not the center of the universe, Darwin's theory of evolution which submitted that mankind was not divinely inspired and Freud's own findings that our conscious minds do not control much of what we do.
This summer, the British newspaper The Daily Mail informed us of a fourth devastating, life-changing revelation: Bear Grylls is a fraud.
For those of you who don't know Bear Grylls, he is a British adventurer and current host of the Discovery Channel's widely popular program, Man vs. Wild. In the show, Grylls is dropped into a wide range of perilous environments and must survive on his own-building his own shelter, finding his own food and protecting himself from any dangerous animals. Episodes have featured Grylls cutting off the fur of a dead deer for warmth during the night, drinking water squeezed from elephant dung and eating a living frog-all in an effort to simply stay alive.
Grylls does seem like quite the impressive man. He served for three years in the U.K. Special Forces. At 23, he was the youngest British man to ever scale (and then de-scale) Mount Everest. What's more, despite the fact that he's British, there are currently more than 1,000 people on Facebook who believe that Bear Grylls should be the next president of the United States.
I guess this kind of stuff just naturally happens when you name your kid "Bear."
However, the grand illusion that is Bear Grylls came crashing down over this past summer. In a July 23 article titled "How Bear Grylls the Born Survivor roughed it-in hotels," The Daily Mail revealed that not only did Grylls occasionally sleep in hotels while filming, but he even "choreographed parts of [his show], with many of his spectacular stunts carefully set up by the production crew."
Apparently in one episode, Grylls said he used the raw materials around him to construct a raft when in fact his production crew had actually dismantled a raft for him to rebuild in front of the cameras.
One week later, in perhaps the show's most egregious violation of viewer trust, The Daily Mail published photos of a man in a bear suit that had been used to simulate an attack from a real grizzly.
What does this all mean? Why, you might ask, am I so distraught by such news? True, celebrities get exposed all the time. But, you see, Bear was different. Bear was proof that, even without all of our modern technology and air conditioning, if we absolutely had to make it in the wild, we could. In Bear, we could still be tough, strong and resourceful-not afraid to eat a live snake for breakfast if necessary.
Unfortunately, Bear turned out to be a bit of a wuss. Although he has done some incredibly inspiring and courageous deeds, even Bear could not survive by himself in the wild. Just as Darwin's work doubted whether man was divinely created, Bear's failure questioned whether we can even survive in nature anymore. Now I know that if Bear can't make it alone in the wilderness, there is absolutely no way I can.
Even worse, Bear's outing only reaffirms the undeniable truth that not only could I never make it by myself in nature, I still cannot do a lot of things that are needed to survive in our own modern world. I cannot use a power saw. I have never built my own furniture. And while I can write a passable essay on gender inversion in Victorian literature, I cannot even change a tire.
None of this seemed to matter when I could watch Bear Grylls dastardly weather the unforgiving elements. In Bear, I had reassurance that I hadn't been completely neutered by my comfortable, first-world lifestyle. But now, I'm not so sure. Bear didn't just lie to his viewers, he traumatized them. And the world will never be the same.
Jordan Axt is a Trinity junior. His column runs every other Friday.
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