Lady in Red.
Can you remember when you were young and you were inquisitive? I can remember both my mother and my father asking me why I asked so many questions? I suspected it was either they were fed up answering them or they di not know the answer.
It went something like this. "Mum, why do people say that something is bad?" "For goodness sake will you stop those continual questions." "Why?"
But there are times when you are just forced to ask why. Read the slowly and carefully and tell me you were not tempted to ask the question, why?
This is an instruction from an army handbook and it is as I found and read it.
"Tent pegs, aluminium, 9-inch, NSN 8340-00- 261-9749, must be painted orange. The bright colour provides an easy means of locating the pegs under various light and climatic conditions during field use. When bright orange pegs are used, they must be driven into the ground completely out of sight."
Now, why did they have to be orange in the first place please remind me.
I am sure I have never shared the story of the three monkeys probably because I have always thought it might be a bit too wordy. But today I want to do just that.
Imagine his surprise (not to mention that of the other two monkeys) when suddenly a fire hose washed down the cage, blasting all three monkeys over to one side. Cold and shivering, the three monkeys regrouped and thought about what had happened.
Monkeys don’t have a really long memory and, after a while, a second monkey thought again about the bananas and headed up the ladder. The same thing a fire hose washed all three monkeys over to the side of the cage. They picked themselves up, shook themselves off and hoped the sun would come out to warm them up.
After another couple of hours, the third monkey couldn’t resist and he went for it. Sure enough, same result—fire hose and cold, wet, miserable monkeys.
Finally, all three monkeys became convinced that going for the bananas was a bad idea, and went on with the rest of their lives.
At this point, one of the monkeys was exchanged for another. The new monkey arrived, looked up at the bananas, looked over at the ladder and couldn’t figure out why the other monkeys hadn’t gone for the bananas. He headed for the ladder and got about 1 rung up when the remaining "experienced" monkeys tackled him, dragged him to the floor and pummeled him into submission. He quickly concluded that climbing the ladder wasn’t a good idea.
A week later, another of the monkeys was replaced. So now thee were two new monkeys and one of the original three.
Monkeys are somewhat single-minded. The new monkey spied the bananas, headed for the ladder, and the remaining two monkeys tackled him and pummeled him into submission.
Finally, the third monkey was replaced and, you guessed it, the same thing happened. So life went on among the monkeys and after some time the first of the "new" monkeys was replaced with yet another monkey.
Sure enough, the new one saw the bananas, went for the ladder and his two peers then tackled him and beat him into submission.
Why was that? None of these monkeys knew anything about the fire hose. None of them had ever got wet for having climbed the ladder in the quest for bananas. Yet the monkeys had been fully indoctrinated to know that it was a bad idea. You could likely go on individually replacing monkeys one at a time forever and expect the same result.
WHY?
The Parable of the Monkeys can be readily applied to just about every organizational community structure in the human sphere.
We can laugh at the silly monkeys, but we humans are the only creatures on Earth capable of amassing and arming themselves to fight and die by the tens and hundreds of thousands because another human claims yet another human is building firehoses to keep all the bananas for himself.
They have no evidence they it happens. WHY?
Have a thoughtful day.
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