the Monkey and the Green Garden Hose... of Eden

HI!  This is from Bob.  Visualize Penn Jillette of Penn & Teller.  That is who I wanna grow up to be.

I like the following illustrative thought experiment.  I hope it never really happened.  I know this has been blogged a dozen times before and I don't care where it originated.  It goes like this:

You have a big cage with 10 monkeys.  You have a green garden hose.  You hang a bunch of bananas high in the cage and throw in a ladder.  Why would you do these things?  Just go with it...

The monkeys figure it out quickly enough and prop up the ladder and go for the fruit.  However, when the first monkey reaches the bananas, you spray the other 9 monkeys with freezing cold water.  You bastard.  Keep doing it in the interest of Science.  After a while, any monkey that reaches out for the bananas gets whacked by the other 9.   Sometimes somebody gets some bananas but they quit trying after a while.  You feed them, but not bananas.  [see there? you are not totally evil.] 

After this behavior is established, you take out a conditioned monkey and put a new one in.  Of course, the new monkey tries for the bananas, and the others do their best to dissuade him.  They might like to explain courteously about the water, but there is likely to be violence.  You don't have to spray them as often now and can go back to twisting your mustache with an evil chuckle.

Give it another week.  Take out another conditioned monkey and put a new one in.  Again, the new ambitious monkey gets whacked by 9 of the monkeys.  Maybe even the new guy whacks him.  Each week, swap out a new monkey.

OK so after about 7 or 8 monkeys, stop with the water.  Keep swapping monkeys 4 more weeks or so.  [This has been blogged with 5 monkeys but I heard it first from a guy with no shortage of imagination.]

Soon the cage holds 10 conditioned monkeys.  They are conditioning each other now, and you are saving on the water bill and on bananas.  Now have we learned anything Scientific or are you just a bitter old monkey squirter?

Well, the most recent monkey has a valid reason for not grabbing the fruit.  He gets his ass kicked.  He has no idea about the water of course.  He is just being pragmatic.

Here is the part that bugs me.  A lot.

The veteran monkeys who know How Things Are, are keeping the new guys down.  They also have no idea about the water.  But nobody gets no banana no how.  Why?  Why does this behavior persist?  {here it comes… I hate this next phrase.  I don’t hate much, but when I do, it is this next phrase.}

     Because that’s the way we have always done it.

If you don't hate that phrase, you are not a right thinking person and you are not like me.  Go away.  

There are social conventions that do work.  Sleep over here, poop over there, eat in the other place.  Drive on the right side of the road.  Why?  Because you don't get your license if you are too creative with lane position.  There is maybe something in history about horse carriages or swords and right handed people if you google the heck out of it.  But that is one I took for granted for a long time without fussing.  

OK so those stay.  But on everything else, think for yourself!

Have you tried cream cheese and jelly on a bagel?  You might get a squint from the waitress but try it.

From my pubescence or around then, I had the official Guy brainwashing about what was attractive in women.  Barbie doll, cheerleader, playboy bunny, not necessarily in that order.  But around 25, I started having my own preferences.  I like bigger women.

They advertise beer and trucks during football games.  The ads on saturday morning are for toys and cereal.  This has been happening all my life but I had not really thought about it until lately.  You are being brainwashed and not just by ads.  The govt art council or somebody got in trouble a while back for subsidizing sitcoms that had anti-drug messages in their plots.  They would not subsidize your show if it had drug content that was not negative.  It was not a written policy, very smooth.  [No I am not going to cite this or support my claims with research.  If you remember this, just nod and smile.  If not, let's move on.] 

"In a civilised society, it is the duty of all citizens to obey just laws. 
But at the same time it is the duty of all citizens to disobey unjust laws." 
- Martin Luther King Jr.

Take the monkey experiment to work with you in your head.  [Just in your head.(but if you can get ten monkeys into your cubicle farm, I wanna work there too.)]  You will start seeing chimps everywhere like in that ad a while back.  There will be something that jumps out at you as "that's the way we've always done it."  Choose your battles.  If the conventional way works, fine.  Don't change things just to stick out.  But if you see a stupid convention based on outdated issues, challenge it.