Not On My Watch!

I keep getting this inspiring little story about the monkeys on an island off Japan that learned to wash their sweet potatoes and after a number of them learned the behavior, it mysteriously finally JUMPED to another island. Those monkeys began washing their potatoes too!

I guess it is all supposed to be heartwarming in some way. After all, wouldn’t it be nice if we could all just sort of get along on the planet? This sort of thing just depresses me, and I’ll tell you why.

• The story is 100% crap – totally untrue. Yes, monkeys were washing potatoes. Researchers left the potatoes on the beach to lure the monkeys into the open where they could be more easily observed. It was not a natural situation. No they didn’t all pick up the habit, not by a long shot. It was mostly the young ones – trained by mothers etc, and it took a long time – years, and years.
• The facts are distorted. The behavior didn’t dramatically catch on elsewhere. While it was observed, the numbers were small and more than likely coincidental. There was no Monkey Epiphany on or off the main island. Alas! At least one of the monkeys from the main troupe, “Jugo”, swam to another island where the behavior was later observed. No, it is not conjecture, the researchers observed and documented it.
• The story is usually rendered with a covertly smug air of dewy-eyed wonder, as if the reader is to pause – jolted out of their materialistic fixation and ponder the possibility of a Utopian Dawn. It is unclear why this sugary-simplistic type of imagery is seen as positive, or inspiring.
• People are so willing to repeat stuff like this without even lifting a finger to do even cursory fact-checking. This particular airy-fairy rotter was completely debunked in 1985! Unbowed, it still thrives!

All this really makes you wonder about all the stories, myths and beliefs that people love to repeat as truth. Now that we have better access to information, investigation is easier, yet people are still so ready to accept things with little or no critical thinking.

The puzzling part of all this is watching people immerse themselves in mystery and worlds of wonder. I think some of them do it because, they want to feel special. Others, perhaps want more of a sense of power – a way to believe that things around them are more than what they seem. The wonderful belief we can change ourselves and perhaps maybe even the world.

The sad thing is that all these things are just not true. I am not sure what makes me feel worse: The fact that people go around spinning a fog around each other. Or perhaps that so many seem to need to be in a fog. Or perhaps the suspicion that vast numbers are incapable of telling the difference.

I guess not too many people really stop to think about Occam’s razor. It would seem that in the end, falsehood – even in the service of didactic, remains falsehood nonetheless. I cannot say I think it is a good thing…

So remember – If it quacks like a duck…..