Bear-Naked Emperor
After walking around the pool at RRR, casually listening in on conversations, not with intent, but rather picking up bits here and there, there seems to be a self-awareness that is not sanctioned by the Book of Woof.
While the same sense of "Thou Shalt Act in Excess" comes into play as it has always come into play with sex, with "making out" (very 'high school'), with eating, with drinking, with mirth, with girth; a new way to be excessive is on the rise: steroid use.
The evidence of the so-called musclebear is clear. So much so that someone I met today, who is a friend of friends of mine, offered up the prediction of a backlash against the musclebear and all other non-bears.
The definitions of 'Bear' will be reigned in, he said. A Fundamentalism will grow. The standard-model bear will react, calling a bear a bear and not-a-bear no-longer-a-bear, and the core Bear Image will contract (hold your irony) and the musclebears will be on their own, a sub-sub-sub-culture in search of an organizing principle, likely the one to be found in a syringe full of juice and the attending 'cycling': more standard behaviors!
Other folks made other comments which convinced me I was wrong in my previous postings. Wrong that there was a majority blind-obeisance to the group mentality. There is critique, wry or vulgar, and a healthy sense of humor about it all.
I guess we each take from the phenomenal those actual things that suit us, and discard the rest. I wonder if it can ever be more than that: can we change the phenomenological by assaulting its conscious elements?