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There is the parable about an experiment involving five monkeys in a cage containing a ladder and a banana. The story has been told many times with slight variations and so you may have heard it before.
Inside the cage hung a banana on a string with a ladder under it. Before long, one of the monkeys spotted the banana and started to climb the ladder. As soon as it did, all of the other monkeys were sprayed with cold water.
The banana was replaced and after a while another of the monkeys climbed the ladder to get the banana. Again all of the other monkeys were sprayed with cold water. Monkeys are fairly smart, so pretty soon whenever one of the monkeys tried to climb the ladder all the other monkeys prevented him (or her) from doing it. Then the water hose was put away and one monkey was taken out and replaced with a new one. Another banana was placed at the top of the ladder.
The new monkey spotted the banana and made for the ladder. To his surprise, all of the other monkeys attacked him. After a couple more attempts resulted in further beatings, the new monkey made no further attempts to go for the banana.
Again another of the original monkeys was replaced with a new one. The process was repeated: new monkey goes for banana and the others stop him. And so one at a time, all of the original monkeys were gradually replaced with new ones. Most of the new monkeys have absolutely no idea why they were not allowed to climb the ladder, or why they are participating in the assault on the newest monkey.
When all of the original monkeys have been replaced, none of the remaining monkeys have ever been sprayed with cold water. Nevertheless, no monkey ever approaches the ladder. Why not? Because as far as they are concerned, that’s the way it has always been done around here.
Now this story is a parable about why we act in certain ways in group settings, whether in a martial art school or inside a company. It’s usually a story told to explain how organisational politics and organisational cultures are formed. As I said earlier, you may have come across it before. But as it turns out, the story is based on real experiments (although not exactly as told in the parable).
In Progress in Primatology, Stephenson (1967) conditioned a group of adult male and female rhesus monkeys to avoid manipulating an object. He then placed individual untrained monkeys in a cage with a trained individual of the same age and sex, as well as the object in question. In one case, a trained male actually pulled the untrained monkey away from the object, whereas in other instances trained males exhibited what were described as “threat facial expressions while in a fear posture” when one of the untrained monkeys approached the object. Subsequently, when placed alone in the cage with the object, the untrained males that had been paired with trained males showed greatly reduced desire to manipulate the object in comparison with controls.
There are many experiments (for example, Galef, 1976) that confirm humans exhibit the same conforming behaviour, although none involving bananas and cold water as far as I’m aware! Conforming behaviour has significant survival value so it is a positive characteristic; but it has a downside, which is my point here.
I see it as one of my missions to ‘corrupt’ the conformance thinking of as many as I can, to avoid blindly follow the thinking of any one ‘master’ or system. Yes, learn from those who are more experienced, but also think for yourself. When logic or other evidence starts to indicate something you were told is not true, don’t be weak and stay following the herd. You are potentially holding yourself back from realising your own truth.
Graham Kuerschner is a 44-year veteran of the martial arts and can be contacted through his website at
www.sdtactics.com.au
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