The Lesson of the 5 Monkeys
A Zen Thing . Articles of InterestWe begin to learn the lesson of the five monkeys but putting five monkeys in a cage and in the cage hang a banana on a string and put stairs leading up to it.
Before long, a monkey will go to the stairs and start to climb towards the banana.
As soon as he touches the stairs, spray all of the monkeys with cold water.
After a while, another monkey will make an attempt at the bananas; again spray all of the monkeys with cold water. Keep this up for several days with every attempt at the banana.
Now we turn off the cold water and observe.
If, later, another monkey tries to climb the stairs, the other monkeys will try to prevent it even though no water sprays them.
Now, remove one monkey from the cage and replace it with a new monkey.
The new monkey sees the banana and wants to climb the stairs. To his horror, all of the other monkeys attack him. After another attempt and attack, he knows that if he tries to climb the stairs, he will be assaulted.
Next, remove another of the original five monkeys and replace it with a new one. The newcomer goes to the stairs and is attacked. The previous newcomer takes part in the punishment with enthusiasm.
Replace the third original monkey with a new one. The new one makes it to the stairs and is attacked as well. Two of the four monkeys that beat him have no idea why they were not permitted to climb the stairs, or why they are participating in the beating of the newest monkey.
After replacing the fourth and fifth original monkeys, all the monkeys which have been sprayed with cold water have been replaced. Nevertheless, no monkey ever again approaches the stairs.
Why not?
“Because that’s the way it’s always been done around here.”
———————————————————–
There are many lessons to learn from this story. Tome the first is that we should always question and seek to understand the reasons for things, regardless of the push back we get. Fortunately I live in a society where you can (to a lesser extent) still do this. There are more places (countries) then not however where this is not the case and asking questions or questioning the norm or expecting more can get you into trouble or killed. Unfortunately those who don’t question are no different then the monkeys and often deserve the cages they live in because they are not willing to take a chance or question in favor of security and comfort. History shows us that most people are sadly like the monkeys.
Another lesson here is an examination of the effects of trauma and/or stress on our reactions and beliefs. Your own reflection or discussion on that idea is left to the comments section (a challenge?!). Why can/does trauma or stress lead to otherwise irrational behavior being viewed as rational? Just to get you started…
9 comments
Leave a Reply to albert deoge Cancel reply
This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.
M | T | W | T | F | S | S |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 |
8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 |
15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 |
22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 | 27 | 28 |
29 | 30 |
Awareness (52) Beliefs (22) Celebrity (38) Christmas (10) Confidence (13) critical thought (18) Diet (17) Entertainment (28) Exercise (16) Failure (13) Fitness (46) Freedom (21) Fun (50) Funny (41) Gun Control (16) Guns (20) Health (26) History (31) Holiday (49) Jokes (12) Karate (38) Kyokushin (28) Liberty (18) Mas Oyama (27) Meditation (21) News (66) Patriotic (17) Perspective (82) Politics (19) Questions (13) Quotes (39) Recruitment (13) Religion (24) Self-Control (11) Self-Defense (48) Site News (10) Sparring (19) State of Mind (29) Style (17) Success (18) Technique (28) Training (111) Video (49) Weapons (13) Zen (26)
Well-all I can say is that “I” just like our primal buddies get picked on all the time for going against what Ive been told NOT to do-but-sometimes this is the only way humans can advance-the difference between humans and animals is that animals DO NOT have the ability to ‘reason’-and just think- that if they did-boy, we’d have bloody cats and dogs pissed off and eating you alive cuz’ you came home late from work and they are ‘reasoning’ why. With the banana-they only understand a primitive version of ‘repetative’ cause and effect-but they can’t ‘reason’ as to ‘why’
Two words, Religious dogma
Melva,
Excellent point about post traumatic stress disorder a topic I have done some reading on but would love more information if you have any. I’ve done some reading about post traumatic stress disorder in assault cases which is an interesting subject.
Ouch, Midnight skuller you are right! But the picture of the Chimp was to good not to use!
Another lesson is; most people think chimpanzees are monkeys.
And I see it that starving a total of ten chimpanzees in a cage would not really be humane and they would just either rebel against you or kill each other. i think most people would do that, too, so we don’t really have a realistic story here. But, as you say, irrtational can sometimes be rational, especially when someone’s hobby is violence.
In humans it’s called post traumatic stress disorder. It seems almost like you are being irrationally scared except that life experiences have taught you the world is a randomly viscous violent place. The sad part is that this fear is communicated to my children without an event to heal from ……………….
This is such a great post. I really enjoyed reading it… Isn’t it just amazing how none of the original monkeys were left in the cage, but yet they carried on with the no-banana-getting tradition. This really makes one think… if we, as humans, didn’t follow this rule too, who knows where’d we be… just amazing.
so would work on us humans which proves what i have all ways said we are nothing more than dirty animals