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#4 06 Oct 89 14:23:58 [3]
From: Rick Moen
To: All
Subj: Hundredth Monkey
Rod Schmidt (lll-winken!riacs!rutgers!mentor.com!rods) recently
wrote to me:
> I read somewhere that the Bermuda Triangle was invented
> by a reporter who had a deadline to meet, but no story.
> 1. Have you heard of this and can you point me to a source?
> 2. Do you know of any other examples of popular notions
> whose history is easily traced back to something with
> obviously low credibility? The story about the reporter
> is the most powerful debunking I can imagine for the
> Bermuda Triangle. I would like to apply the same technique
> to other things. "Pyramid power" was discovered by someone
> who visited Egypt and found a dead, dessicated cat in a
> trash can in the Cheops Pyramid. (Yes, in the desert.)
> I think the current SiO2-crystal business is due to a
> crystal miner who wanted to boost the price of otherwise
> worthless quartz.
To the best of my knowledge, the "Bermuda Triangle" story
emerged full-grown from the imagination of Charles Berlitz
(of multi-lingual fame). I'm unaware of any prior source.
Crystals have been in vogue before - it comes and goes. I don't
know of any one particular avaricious rock-hound behind the
current fashion.
Hmm. Example of popular notion traceable to an untrustworthy
source.... Have you heard of the "Hundredth-Monkey Phenomenon"?
It approaches the status of holy writ among some New Agers.
According to Lyall Watson's widely-quoted (1) book "Lifetide"
(2), in 1952-2, young monkeys on the Japanese island of Koshima
figured out how to make sweet potatoes (provided by
primatologists) more edible by washing them. They then taught
their peers and parents, until by 1958, this behaviour was found
among widely-spread members of the troop.
So far, so good. Then in that year, a sort of group
consciousness developed among the monkeys, when, say, the
*hundredth* monkey began washing potatoes. Suddenly, almost
*all* the monkeys began so doing. Further, "the habit seems to
have jumped natural barriers and to have appeared spontaneously
... in colonies on other islands and one the mainland in a troop
at Takasakiyama."
This anecdote has been used to provide ideological support to
such diverse notions as telepathy and nuclear disarmament -- you,
the reader, could be the "hundredth monkey" necessary for global
transformation. What gets lost in the shuffle is the evidence
for Watson's factual claim. Like many New Agers, Watson voices
the sentiment that "when a myth is shared by large numbers of
people, it becomes a reality". Ron Amundson of the Hawaii
Skeptics, who investigated Watson's claim (3), suggested that
this latter statement could be rephrased as "Convince enough
people of a lie, and it becomes the truth". (Amundson found that
ALL of Watson's claimed documentation was grossly misrepresented,
and in fact contradicted the - now famous - claim.)
Whether one buys this philosophical stance or not, the notion
that this alleged mass consciousness is somehow politically
progressive is a curious one. Per Watson's vision, "Peace, love,
and a taste for brown rice and tofu", as commentator Tim
Farrington (4) put it, "will at a given point instantly envelope
the planet, and humanity will live happily ever after....
Neuroses, bad habits, ignorance will all be dissolved in a flash,
without effort on the part of the rest of us." Let's savour, for
a moment, this balmy image, before allowing ourselves to think
about it.
Back in 1933 there must have been some hundredth German monkey
who joined the Nazi party, mustn't there? The mass consciousness
of the society was transformed. As the "Herrenfolk"[1] myth became
shared by large numbers of people, it transformed the reality of
Europe.
Farrington continues: "There is no guarantee that the hundredth
monkey will be any wiser than the first, and no assurance that
the first will be wise at all. The myth of critical mass, and
its magic, is double-edged."
Farrington suggests that, rather than admire the hundredth
monkey, brainlessly falling in tune with the mass consciousness
of the other 99, we instead take our hats off to the one-hundred-
first monkey's "individual acts of conscience and reason, acts
not effortless, nor particularly inspired, acts not necessarily
validated by the herd nor telepathically obvious; but acts simply
that are steps, one by one, on the difficult, intricate,
sometimes ambiguous, rewarding path of a single human life."
----
References:
(1) - "The Hundredth Monkey" by Ken Keyes, Jr., 1982. Vision
Books, Coos Bay, Oregon.
- Article: "The Hundredth Monkey" in "Updated Special Issue:
'A New Science of Life'" of "Brain/Mind Bulletin", 1982.
- Film and videotape: "The Hundredth Monkey", Elda Hartley,
producer, 1982. Hartley Film Foundation, Inc., Cos Cob,
Conn.
(2) "Lifetide" by Lyall Watson, 1979. Simon and Schuster, NY.
(3) Article: "The Hundredth Monkey Phenomenon" by Ron Amundson,
in "Skeptical Inquirer", Summer 1985, pp.348-56. Follow-up
in Spring 1987 issue, pp. 303-4. Watson had alleged, in
"Whole Earth Review", Fall 1986 (the "Fringes of Reason"
issue) that his citations weren't really citations, and that
the whole story, although contradicted by his supposed
evidence, is nonetheless true. See also article "Spud-
Dunking Monkey Theory Debunked" by Boyce Rensberger,
"Washington Post", July 6, 1989).
(4) Article "The 101st Monkey" by Tim Farrington, in "The Node"
magazine, Winter 1987, San Francisco.
Rick Moen, Secretary
Bay Area Skeptics
Sysop, The Skeptic's Board (415-648-8944)
FidoNet 1:125/27 and 8:914/207
Internet Rick_Moen@f27.n127.z1.fidonet.org
"A skeptic, not a cynic."
"All spelling errors subject to change without notice!"
[1] In this article as I originally published it, I got the
German-language word wrong. Apologies for that error.