How A Paradigm Is Formed

Growing up, I heard the word "New Paradigm" (El Nuevo Paradigma) many times from my father.  He continues to use the word as a hope for a better present and future.  I agree with his optimistic view as the world around us has dramatically shrunk due to our new virtual interconnectivity.

However, the creation of a Paradigm, doesn't always mean something positive... as you can see below.

I received the following story from our CEO, Ed Schipul, to keep our minds open to ideas outside the norm.

A group of scientists placed 5 monkeys in a cage and in the middle, a ladder with bananas on the top.

Every time a monkey went up the ladder, the scientists soaked the rest of the monkeys with cold water.

After a while, every time a monkey went up the ladder, the others beat up the one on the ladder. After some time, no monkey dare to go up the ladder regardless of the temptation.

Scientists then decided to substitute one of the monkeys. The 1st thing this new monkey did was to go up the ladder. Immediately the other monkeys beat him up. After several beatings, the new member learned not to climb the ladder even though never knew why.

A 2nd monkey was substituted and the same occurred. The 1st monkey participated on the beating for the 2nd monkey. A 3rd monkey was changed and the same was repeated (beating). The 4th was substituted and the beating was repeated and finally the 5th monkey was replaced.

What was left was a group of 5 monkeys that even though never received a cold shower, continued to beat up any monkey who attempted to climb the ladder.

If it was possible to ask the monkeys why they would beat up all those who attempted to go up the ladder. I bet you the answer would be..."I don't know - that's how things are done around here."

Does it sound familiar?

I found this humorous and sad at the same time... first, imagining the monkeys not knowing any better and beating each other to a pulp and then I thought of how this can be so true in life. 

We keep going round and round thinking we will get different results as we do the same thing.... it seems silly and dumb from an outsider's view, but it happens to all of us.

Are we all monkeys?

Comments

[moo]

I think you need to be less pessimistic about the world.

If those scientists were still there, poised and ready to spray the 5 new monkeys, then those monkeys were actually correct in living by their learned paradigm. Yes, they didn't know why. But one monkey will eventually just try it and the other monkeys will suffer the consequence - getting wet. Then they'd all know why, and remember that sometimes, just because you don't know the reason for doing something, it doesn't mean there isn't a very good one.

On the other hand, let's take a situation where the scientists are no longer there, yet the monkeys still beat each other up for climbing up the ladder.
One day, one monkey will just go for it and reach the bananas before getting beaten up. And the monkeys will learn. Or maybe not, they're monkeys.

We are human however. We are creative creatures. We learn. We try. We seek out improvements. If we reached the bananas, and saw the benefits of climbing the ladder, we'll try to find a legitamate reason as to why we were beating each other up for climbing the ladder.
And in that way, we learn.

In our world, some things change, and some things don't.

Therefore, it's good to keep an eye out, but living by learned paradigms isn't bad, as long as you remain inquisitive.

Take this century for example. In western society, many of the "old ways" have been dropped.

Yet we have a ridiculous amount of.. depression, broken families, broken hearts ... societal suffering shall we say. Did we really need HIV/AIDS to spread as much as it did? Didn't we already have rules about not having sex with whoever/whenever?

Hope you get my point.

[Javier Avellan]

Moo, thank you for your comment. I put your response as a new blog-post and responded to it. Thank you for engaging in the conversation. Here's the link:
http://japiblog.typepad.com//japiblog/2007/08/response-to-a-c.html

[Moeen]

Hi
Can you please give me the scientific source of this interesting story if you have, or can you tell me how to find it?
Tnx