MONKEYS WITH POTATOES, AFOOT IN THE LAND…
by Gloria R. Lalumia
June 30, 2002
A thread on the Democratic Underground site brought me back to it again. It’s a little paperback book with yellowing pages that has been traveling with me for about 20 years. I have no idea where I got this book, but I’ve clung to it. It was being sold back then for $2.00 (“Priced to give copies to your friends”), but I got mine for free and I kept it. And I’m glad I did, because its title has stared steadily at me from the shelf and kept me hopeful over the years.
The author is Ken Keyes, Jr., author of the Handbook to Higher Consciousness. I have that one, too, and it’s well underlined. I don’t really remember much from that book, but I do remember the little, yellowing paperback’s message.
The book is called “The Hundredth Monkey” and I now want to pass its message along to my Internet friends.
A hunt around the web brought me to many sites about this little book, including this one from which one may download the full text: http://www.nonviolence.org/amhvigil/100Monks.html.
From the above site, here’s a brief summary of this little book: “Ken Keyes, Jr. first published this book about the dangers of nuclear power and weapons in 1981; this internet-friendly copy is based on the 10th printing (Vision Books, 1985). The "Hundredth Monkey Phenomenon" refers to a possibly mythical study conducted in 1952 in Koshima, Japan: One monkey learned to wash its food, and then taught other monkeys in its troop this new skill. Still more monkeys in the troop learned to wash their food until one day one last monkey, arbitrarily labeled the "hundredth" monkey, learned the skill... at which time, the entire troop suddenly learned how to wash their food, and monkeys from across the sea learned as well. The point of this story is to illustrate that when enough members of a group are aware, their society can be changed. This book is still valid today. Even though the Cold War is over, nuclear war and nuclear power plant failure are still very real and frightening possibilities.” [Author’s Note: the food was potatoes.]
Which brings me back to that DU thread which reminded me of Keyes’ book. The thread involved a Washington Post article by David S. Broder which appeared on Sunday, June 30 entitled, “A New Questioning of the War.” http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A64313-2002Jun28.html
Broder writes “The fresh questioning of the war on terrorism is also a phenomenon of the Democratic left. But if I have learned anything in four decades of covering politics, it is to pay heed when you hear the same questions -- in almost the same phrases -- popping up in different parts of the country…I am not sure where this skepticism comes from or which media voices are spreading it. But the consequences can be guessed… But if Democrats begin hearing doubts about the costs of the war -- and its consequences for civil liberties -- from some of their most vocal constituents, that support may not last long… Developments in the war will slow or accelerate this change. But you can feel it happening.”
Perceptive DU posters immediately picked up on Broder’s comments about how he “wasn’t sure where this skepticism comes from or which media voices are spreading it.” Not sure? The posters on this website and many others are sure…it’s the Internet community that is spreading the word, from site to site and through mailing lists. Hidden stories that are picked up from the rapidly scrolling news across the bottoms of TV screens or from the overseas press are being passed around right under the mainstream noses of the Broders and Russerts who hog the media machine.
Elaine Myers in an article entitled The Hundredth Monkey Revisited--Going Back to the Original Sources Puts a New Light on This Popular Story (IC #9 Strategies For Cultural Change, Adapted from IN CONTEXT #9, Spring 1985, Page 2) http://www.context.org/ICLIB/IC09/Myers.htm states that the original conclusions of the story about the monkeys may not be entirely accurate, but there still is a valid point. “Instead of an example of the spontaneous transmission of ideas, I think the story of the Japanese monkeys is a good example of the propagation of a paradigm shift, as in Thomas Kuhn's The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. The truly innovative points of view tend to come from those on the edge between youth and adulthood...
..There may well be a "critical mass" required to shift a new behavior from being a fragile personal idiosyncrasy to being a well-established alternative, but creating a new alternative does not automatically displace older alternatives. It just provides more choices...
...What the research does suggest, however, is that holding positive ideas (as important a step as this is) is not sufficient by itself to change the world. We still need direct communication between individuals, we need to translate our ideas into action, and we need to recognize the freedom of choice of those who choose alternatives different from our own.”
Certainly not only young people use the internet, but the internet is now coming into its own as the young, alternative network of choice as people barred from open dissent and access to real news in the mass media flock to its rapid and free-flowing stream of ideas and its ability to make easily available the means to protest to media and government. Isn’t it functioning in just the manner Mayer describes, filling both the “need for direct communication between individuals” and “the need to translate our ideas into action”?
The monkeys washed potatoes in the sea; we wash our potatoes every time we visit sites like Buzzflash, Democratic Underground, American Politics Journal, Bartcop, Media Whores Online, Smirking Chimp, Online Journal, Common Dreams, and so many others or when we listen to Internet radio. And then out in the world we pass along our message, sometimes even in silence.We put our Buzzflash The UnDrudge Report and Democratic Underground and Bush Knew stickers up on our cars and weave our message through traffic. We make silent commentary to ourselves every time we see a SUV with a flag flying and launch our thoughts out into the universe. And if people around us are praising the resident in the White House, our silence speaks volumes. And isn’t ironic that the object of our potato washing is himself likened to a primate?
All the time, whether it’s telepathy or paradigm shift, we pass along the message of questioning the “older generation” reinstalled in Washington. We’ve already passed the hundredth monkey. We’re on our way to becoming millions and millions tied together by common thoughts. And as the late Ken Keyes said, “When enough members of a group are aware, their society can be changed.”
We just must keep to our business of washing our potatoes...
Copyright 2002, Gloria R. Lalumia
More potatoes at: http://www.zianet.com/insightanalytical