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Devoted
Donor
Location: New England
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I started to read this when it was first posted, then realized I'd have to put some time aside to give it attention. Ben, is there a reason you didn't include the second page? (Cervantes, here's your remaining steps.)
Quote:
8. Stop using the word 'Monkeysphere!' Humans are completely different from monkeys!
Legendary monkeytician Charles Darwin would disagree.
It was Darwin's observation of primates along with his assistant, Jeje (pronounced "heyhey") Santiago that caused him to deduce that humans and chimps were evolutionary cousins. As sophisticated as we are (compare our advanced sewage treatment plants to the chimps' primitive technique of hurling the feces with their bare hands), the inescapable truth is we are just as limited by our mental hardware as that tragic figure of American lore, Terminator 2.
The primary difference is that monkeys are happy to stay in small groups and rarely interact with others outside their monkey gang. This is why they rarely go to war, though when they do it is widely thought to be hilarious. Humans, however, require cars and oil and quality manufactured goods by the fine folks at 3M and Japanese video games and worldwide internets and, most importantly, governments. All of these things take groups larger than 150 people to maintain effectively. Thus, we routinely find ourselves functioning in bunches larger than our primate brains are able to cope with.
This is where the problems begin. Like a fragile naked human pyramid, we are simultaneously supporting and resenting each other. We bitch out loud about our soul-sucking job as an anonymous face on an assembly line, while at the exact same time riding in a car that only an assembly line could have produced. It's a constant contradiction that has left us pissed off and joining informal wrestling clubs in basements.
This is why I think it was with a great burden of sadness that Darwin turned to his assistant and lamented, "Jeje, we're the monkeys."
9. Well, Monkeysphere or no Monkeysphere, some groups deserve our sympathy and some don't.
No, I'm not talking about sympathy. That was a stupid, stupid comment and you're a fool to have made it.
I'm not asking anyone to sympathize with the terrorists, for instance.
But think of Osama Bin Laden. Did you just picture a camouflaged man hiding in a cave, drawing up suicide missions? Or are you thinking of a man who gets hungry and has a favorite food and who had a childhood crush on a girl and who has athelete's foot and chronic headaches and laughs when a friend farts, a man who wakes up in the morning with a boner and loves volleyball and fusses over his spoiled children and haggles over the price of a car and who goes on Seinfeld-esque rants about too much ice in his drinks?
Something in you, just now, probably was offended by that. You think I'm trying to build sympathy for the murderous bastard. Do you see the equation? Simply knowing random human facts about him immediately tugs at our sympathy strings. He comes closer to our Monkeysphere, he takes on dimension.
Now, the cold truth is my Bin Laden is just as desperately in need of a bullet to the skull as the raving four-color caricature on some redneck's T-shirt. The key to understanding people like him, though, is realizing that we are the caricature on his T-shirt.
Go ahead, try it with any bad guy. I heard a 16 year-old kid I know, one just getting into politics, go on and on about how Washington doesn't give a shit about us and how greedy politicians are and so on ("what's FICA?!?!" he screams as he looks at his first paycheck).
I also saw this same kid, at his job, drop a hamburger patty on the floor, pick it up, and slap in on a bun and serve it to a customer. Well, there's your key to understanding your government, kiddies. Those politicians see you in the exact same way you see the customers lined up at the burger counter. Which is, just barely. Want to guess how the CEO at your company sees you worker bees?
In both cases, for the guy making the burger and the guy running Exxon, getting through the workweek and collecting the paycheck are all that matters. No thought is given to the real human unhappiness being spread by doing it shittily (ever gotten so sick from food poisoning you thought your stomach lining was going to fly out of your mouth?) Why? Because that many customers or employees just can't fit inside the Monkeysphere.
If you've just now protested that you shouldn't have to care for the customers for minimum wage, let me assure you that if you don't feel sympathy for your fellow man at $6.00 an hour, you won't feel anything at $600,000 a year.
Or, look at it the other way. If you're allowed to be indifferent and even resentful to the masses for $6.00 an hour, just think of how angry the average Pakistani man is allowed to be when he's making the equivalent of six dollars a week. And so on.
10. The Monkeysphere will surely be the end of us all!
Well, maybe. There is a reason why all of the really phat-ass nations with the biggest SUV's with the shiniest 22-inch rims all have some kind of representative democracy (where you vote for people to do the governmenting for you) and all of them are, to some degree, capitalist (where people actually get to buy property and keep some of what they earn). It monkeys out like this:
A representative democracy allows a small group of people to make all of the decisions, while letting us common people feel like we're doing something by going to a polling place every couple of years and pulling a lever that, in reality, has about the same effect as the darkness knob on your toaster. We can simultaneously feel like we're in charge while being contained enough that we can't cause any real monkey mayhem once we fly into one of our screeching, arm-flapping monkey frenzies (a woman showed her boob at the Super Bowl! We want a boob and football ban immediately!)
Conversely, some people in the distant past naively thought they could sit all of the millions of monkeys down and say, "okay, everybody go pick the bananas, then bring them here, and we'll distribute them with a complex formula determining banana need! Now go gather bananas for the good of society!" For the monkeys it was a confused, comical, tree-humping disaster.
Later, a far more cynical man sat the monkeys down and said, "you want bananas? Each of you go get your own. I'm taking a nap." That man, of course, was German philosopher Hans Capitalism.
As long as everybody gets their own bananas and shares with the few in their Monkeysphere, the system will thrive even though nobody is even trying to make the system thrive. This is perhaps how Ayn Rand would have put it, had she not been such a hateful bitch.
Then, some time in the Third Century, French philosopher Pierre "Frenchy" LaFrench invented racism. This was a way of simplifying the too-complex-for-monkeys world by imagining all people of a certain race as being the same person, thinking they all have the same attitudes and mannerisms and tastes in food and clothes and music. It sort of works, as long as we think of that person as being a good person (those Asians are so hard-working and precise and well-mannered!) but when we start seeing them as being one, giant, gaping asshole (the French, ironically) our monkey happiness again breaks down.
11. So we should kill the French?
It's not all the French's fault. The truth is, all of these monkey management schemes only go so far. For instance, today one in four Americans has some kind of mental illness, usually depression. One in four. Watch a basketball game. The odds are at least two of those people on the floor are mentally ill. Look around your house; if everybody else there seems okay, it's you.
Is it any surprise? I just watched a whole news special on the Obesity Epidemic. I've had this worry laid on my shoulders about millions of other people eating too much. What exactly am I supposed to do with that information? I know what to do about the fact that I'm fat, but why am I getting upset about 80 million other people whose diets I don't control? You're harshing my buzz with the pork-laden plight of people outside my Monkeysphere and now I carry that useless weight of worry around like, you know, some kind of animal on my back.
12. So how can we defeat the Monkeysphere? Would it help if we cut all of the carbs from our diet? What if we were more proactive?
You can start by implementing a little three-step plan I like to call The TriMonkey or... the T.R.Y. Monkey:
First, TOTAL MORON. That is, accept the fact THAT YOU ARE ONE. We all are.
That really annoying person you know, the one who's always spouting bullshit, the person who always thinks they're right? Well, the odds are that for somebody else, you're that person.
So take the amount you think you know, reduce it by 99.999%, and then you'll have an idea of how much you actually know regarding things outside your Monkeysphere. Once you accept this you can no longer smirk over other people just because you think they're morons.
This way you won't, for instance, snidely dismiss all religious faith as ridiculous and in the next breath solemnly share your experiences with the conspiracy of reptilian overlords who secretly run society.
Second, UNDERSTAND that there are no Supermonkeys. Just monkeys.
Those guys on TV you see, giving the inspirational seminars, teaching you how to reach your potential and become rich and successful like them? You know how they made their money? By giving seminars. For the most part, the only thing they do well is convince others they do everything well.
No, the universal moron principal established in No. 1 above applies here, too. Don't pretend politicians are somehow supposed to be immune to all the backhanded fuckery we all do in our daily lives and don't laugh and point when the preacher gets caught on video snorting cocaine off a prostitute's ass. A good exercise is to picture your hero -- whoever it is -- passed out on his lawn, naked from the waist down. The odds are it's happened at some point. Even Gandhi most likely has hotel rooms and dead hookers in his past.
And don't even think about ignoring advice from a moral teacher just because the source enjoys the ol' Colombian Nose Candy from time to time. We're all members of varying species of hypocrite (or did you tell them at the job interview that you once called in sick to spend a day leveling up on Final Fantasy X?) Don't use your heroes' vices as an excuse to let yours run wild.
And finally, DON'T LET ANYBODY simplify it for you. The world cannot be made simple. Anyone who tries to paint a picture of the world in basic comic book colors is most likely trying to use you as a pawn.
This is not a world of us vs. them, of home vs. away teams and animal mascots. It is not a world of step-by-step success plans and clever slogans.
So just remember: T-R-Y. Go forth and do likewise, gents. Now you've got
MONKEY MOMENTUM!
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It feels right. It also reminds me of Dance, Monkeys, Dance by Ernie Cline (spoken word performance).
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I can't read your signature. Sorry.
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