Are You a Monkey?

What means ''normal'' to you? How people label you? How would you like to label yourself? What characteristics determine who you are? Would you give up your beliefs when meeting other culture? Do you have rights to impose your ideas and values on other culture, even if this other culture accepts and fosters violence? These are just some of the questions that I tried to answer in last few days. Being with people from different countries and cultures helps you to become more aware of who you are, where do you belong and how do you want to live. And from time to time you meet differences in values or interests whose co-existance is indeed complicated. Therefore I wonder if it will ever be possible to have a world free of war and violence? Perhaps it is mission impossible but still there is something we can do to make our surroundings a bit safer place. And one of the important contributions we can make as youth workers and educators is creating and maintaining all kinds of programs that would help children and young people to develop their critical thinking abilities. It is nothing new, I guess, we all are aware that critical mind matters. And still we can find so much examples of lack of critical thinking - in consuming media, in relations with religions, in relations with your own culture... Even formal education tends to limit development of critical thinking - at least in Latvia it rather gives ''correct'' answers than provoces discussion and encourages us to challenge current ways of living.

I would like to share a story from a book about creative thinking ''Thinkertoys''. Its author Michael Michalko asks the reader to imagine a cage containing five monkeys. A banana is then hung on a string inside the cage and a set of stairs placed in the cage leading up to the banana. Whenever a monkey goes up the stairs and grabs the banana, ice-cold water is poured on all the monkeys in the cage. Very soon, as the monkeys begin to associate touching the banana with being sprayed with ice-cold water they will try to prevent one another from trying to get the banana.

The cold water is then turned off and one monkey removed from the cage and replaced with another that doesn’t know anything about the cold water. This new monkey will inevitably try to get the banana, but the other four monkeys will attack him to stop him from doing so. 

 

If another of the old monkeys is removed and replaced with a newcomer, this newcomer will try to grab the banana. The previous newcomer will gladly take part in beating him up together with the other monkeys in order to prevent him from climbing the stairs to the banana. 

 

Slowly, all the original monkey can be replaced with new monkeys in this manner. The cage will now be totally filled with monkeys that know nothing about the ice-cold water, but they will all not try to get the banana and continue to attack any monkey that tries to do so. No monkey ever again approaches the stairs. Why not? Because as far as they know, that's the way it's always been around here.

We often use cultural norms and traditions as excuses of certain behaviours and actions. Often we do not even give a chance for ourselves and others to explore different ways of living and doing things. Do you also accept everything you were taught at school, family and your society just because ''that's the way it's always been around here''? Don't be a monkey! Challenge all assumptions!