100 Monkeys Tales
Do you believe in collective consciousness? That on a subconscious level, we all share the same primal feelings, driven by a universal force of action?
Well i dont. That was why when i first heard this amusing story, i was understandably a skeptic. I mean monkeys sharing thoughts?
The story , or some claim legend, goes like this. Once upon a time, there lived monkeys in 2 islands off Japan. These monkeys must hv been charmers because the people who lived in a third island developed a liking for them. These good people started throwing plums for the monkeys to snack on. The monkeys on both islands loved the plums, but they found the sand that stuck to the plum to be annoying and hard to remove. One day a smart monkey on one of the isalnd(a female, of course), found that she could enjoy the plum without the sand by washing it in the water. She taught her mates (who i bet claimed later on that the idea was theirs, typical) and family. The word spread and very soon a lot of monkeys followed suit.
Now lets say there were already 99 monkeys on the island who washed the sand off the plum. When monkey number 100 learned this trick, something extraordinary took place. Very soon all the monkeys started washing the plums. And whats more, all the monkeys from the other island who never knew of this trick berfore were washing their plums too. It was as if all the monkeys in both islands developed an ideological breakthrough.
The theory is that once a critical number of members of a species acquires a knowledge this knowledge is somehow communicated to the collective mind of the species. You gotta admit, real or hoax this is an interesting theory. Imagine if it were true. If there were enough smart ppl in the world, we all would know be nuclear scientist. Enough dumb people and we all would be George Bushes.
But what if there were a critical number of smart people, but also a critical number of dumb people? Would we all be nuclear scientist who were Gearge Bushes? Now thats a scary thought.
posted by Nashenee at 9:49 AM
3 Comments:
Think the concept is unlikely. There were many theories or inventions that were put forward by people in the past that were similar or almost identical with each other. For example, person A and person B came up with the same inventions at a similar time, but A nor B had any contact with or direct influence to each other (this includes plagiarism). They just happened to figure out the same thing at a similar time. Maybe it was a result of numerous indirect minute influences that we wouldn't normally consider it to be important but does impact the outcome of the whole population.
As in the case of the monkeys, it's interesting that the theory cleverly states that they were on separate islands, indicating a detached medium; but even islands are not independent from variables such as the environment, people contact, and population distribution.
There you go, a long comment for an equally long post. And even if my lame ass comment was on the Discovery Channel, it would've put the dorks to sleep. Hope that self-sarcasm trick at the end worked. But now sinced i mentioned it; totally ruined. Maybe i should just fucking shut up. And i assure you, don't have to fucking agree with that.
You put forward a reasonable explanation for this phenomenon. But wouldnt it be too much of a coincidence if everyone immediately possesed the very same knowledge at a given point if time?
If , like you said, it was just an A and a B, that could very likely be coincidence, but we are talking about a few hundred monkeys, on 2 seperate islands. And accordin to the thoery, the monkeys on both islands had no means of communication.
Bogus theory, probably.Sounds like X file meets Animal Planet.
Like I said, it has happened before, so it's not something new. Coincidences are just homeruns in the probability of a situation.
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