©2011, UrbisMedia
Note: a while back (before the last November elections) a DCJ reader from Florida sent me a comment that included this scenario. The reasoning it contains intrigued me, so I held onto it and dug it up recently when I saw a piece on Jane Goodall on TV. I repeat in below in italics as received, and then of course, mouth off about it. I never knew what people meant when they uttered the exclamation “well I’ll be a monkey’s uncle,” but maybe I’m getting closer.
Start with a cage containing five monkeys. Inside the cage, hang a banana on a string and place a set of stairs under 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 the other monkeys with cold water. After a while another monkey makes the attempt with same result, all the other monkeys are sprayed with cold water. Pretty soon when another monkey tries to climb the stairs, the other monkeys will try to prevent it. Now, put the cold water away. Remove one monkey from the cage and replace it with a new one. The new monkey sees the banana and wants to climb the stairs. To his shock, all of the other monkeys beat the snot out of 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. Likewise, replace a third original monkey with a new one, then a fourth, then the fifth. Every time the newest monkey takes to the stairs he is attacked. Most of the monkeys that are beating him up have no idea why they were not permitted to climb the stairs OR even why they are participating in the beating of the newest monkey. Finally, after replacing all of the original monkeys, none of the remaining monkeys have ever been sprayed with cold water. Nevertheless, no monkey ever again approaches the stairs to try for the banana. Why not? Because as far as they know, that is the way it has always been done around here. And that, my fellow monkeys, is how our political system operates – And, precisely why we need to replace ALL of the original monkeys this November.
This is just the sort of nonsense you get from, well, I won’t name a political faction, so let’s say people who are inclined to believe simplistic nonsense. Of course, often these people are the same people who oppose the knowledge of evolution that Charles Darwin has provided us. Darwin would say that natural selection has taught us that there will likely be one monkey who tolerates cold water better than the others, and he will grab the banana in spite of the dousing (or maybe one who will have the balls to find who is spraying the cold water and beat the snot out of him). Anyway, his offspring will carry this trait.
Ironically, the assumptions of the original monkey parable assumes the downward dumbing of a population, which is precisely what those who propound such “theories” of human behavior are heir to. The fallacy they are incapable of understanding is that the response they propose to their scenario is–and assuming that bananas are good for monkeys to eat–they can never figure out who and why they are being sprayed with cold water in the first place. They just accept it as a meta system. (Most) humans wouldn’t tolerate that, and I am not sure monkeys wouldn’t either.
Another assumption is that the cage (Congress) is a “closed system” of monkeys in/monkeys out without any new information entering the system. In some ways our legislatures might look like closed systems, but they are not, and the scenario itself presupposes that it can be changed, but that you have to clean the entire system out so that none of the erstwhile “bad behavior” will remain and taint the new monkeys (members). The assumption here is that something taints the behavior—does it come into the system (cage) by way of the character traits of the monkeys, or is it some aspect of the system (legislature) that breeds the problem (the old question of whether systems corrupt people, or people corrupt systems).
People perhaps are inclined to use scenarios about monkeys because they are such close evolutionary relatives, and even the ant-evolutionists who refuse to be a “monkey’s uncle” fall into this class. We share all but less than 4% of a Chimp’s DNA (or vice versa, if you can bear it to be put hat way). Chimps set up their own social systems, as do other monkeys and apes. They do this so that Jane Goodall can have something to do (just kidding). But in fact Jane, and other animal behaviorists have provided a lot of information about how monkeys behave, although to my knowledge, there have been no experimental protocols involving spraying them with cold water. What we do know is that fractional strand of DNA seems to make a rather large difference between humans and simians, although perhaps such a large difference as the anti-evolutionists like to believe. I am no authority on these differences but from what I have observed and read monkeys are not very democratic. In fact, they seem to have evolved mostly rather hierarchical social systems run by dominant males (there are exceptions to this), and pecking orders with rather rigid social positions (classes). Indeed, as I have expressed in other essays, this might be a better description of what we humans have allowed our corrupted putatively “democratic” social system come to be.
So this leads to another possible message from this scenario. Its universally dumb monkeys (is this a smack at Darwin, by the way?) must wonder that the cold water is coming fromsomewhere? But since they are not rationally interested it its etiology, they are subject to a simplistic belief in a mystical origin for it. Aha! it must come from the great Prime Simian in the Banana Land of Beyond who must like to spray cold water as some sort of punishment for our monkeying around and masturbating in front of people viewing us at the zoo. They will supplicate the Prime Simian and, lo and behold, He will tell them that some of the monkeys (the dumber/weaker/sinful ones) must endure the cold water to retrieve the bananas, the better part of which must be “shared” with the monkeys who have access to this special “knowledge.”
I am not sure that the scenario at the top has ever been an experimentally attempted. If you happen to know I would appreciate your informing me. But even so, it is interesting to imagine what that experiment would render to render if replicated with human subjects (assuming a university humans subjects committee would pass on it). Take a random selection of congressional legislators and place them in a cage; dangle a bag with a substantial campaign contribution from a lobbyist from the top of the cage; place a ladder to reach the bag and; when a congressman climbs up to get the bag spray the rest of the congressman cold water; and so on . . . Is this a potential solution to earmarks and deficits?
My hypothesis is that little bit of DNA would make a difference, but how significant, I can’t be sure. You might have a different hypothesis. Anyway it would be fun to run the experiment with our legislators. And if your hypothesis proves out, well you get a banana . . . and I might just be a monkey’s uncle.
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© 2011, James A. Clapp (UrbisMedia Ltd. Pub. 2.22.2011)