The Hundredth Monkey Revisited
Going back to the original sources
puts a new light on this popular story
by Elaine Myers
- IN CONTEXT
MAGAZINE
Is there some magic key that
provides a short cut to cultural transformation?
Elaine Myers has had articles
in issues #2, #5, and #7. She lives in rural southwest Washington state.
Macaca
Fuscata Japanese Snow Monkey
THE STORY OF "The Hundredth Monkey" has recently become popular in our
culture as a strategy for social change. Lyall Watson first told it in
Lifetide (pp147- 148), but its most widely known version is the
opening to the book The Hundredth Monkey, by Ken Keyes. (See
below.) The story is based on research with monkeys on a northern
Japanese Island, and its central idea is that when enough individuals in
a population adopt a new idea or behavior, there occurs an ideological
breakthrough that allows this new awareness to be communicated directly
from mind to mind without the connection of external experience and then
all individuals in the population spontaneously adopt it. "It may
be that when enough of us hold something to be true, it becomes true for
everyone." (Watson, p148)
I found this to be a very appealing and
believable idea. The concept of Jung's collective unconscious, and the
biologists' morphogenetic fields (IN CONTEXT #6} offer parallel
stories that help strengthen this strand of our imaginations.
Archetypes, patterns, or fields that are themselves without mass or
energy, could shape the individual manifestations of mass and energy.
The more widespread these fields are, the greater their influence on the
physical level of reality. We sometimes mention the Hundredth Monkey
Phenomenon when we need supporting evidence of the possibility of an
optimistic scenario for the future, especially a future based on peace
instead of war. If enough of us will just think the right thoughts, then
suddenly, almost magically, such ideas will become reality.
However, when I went back to the
original research reports cited by Watson, I did not find the same story
that he tells. Where he claims to have had to improvise details, the
research reports are quite precise, and they do not support the
"ideological breakthrough" phenomenon. At first I was disappointed; but
as I delved deeper into the research I found a growing appreciation for
the lessons the real story of these monkeys has for us. Based on what I
have learned from the Japan Monkey Center reports in Primates,
vol. 2, vol. 5 and vol. 6, here is how the real story seems to
have gone.
Up until 1958, Keyes' description
follows the research quite closely, although not all the young
monkeys in the troop learned to wash the potatoes. By March, 1958, 15 of
the 19 young monkeys (aged two to seven years} and 2 of the 11 adults
were washing sweet potatoes. Up to this time, the propagation of the
innovative behavior was on an individual basis, along family lines and
playmate relationships. Most of the young monkeys began to wash the
potatoes when they were one to two and a half years old. Males older
than 4 years, who had little contact with the young monkeys, did not
acquire the behavior.
By 1959, the sweet potato washing was
no longer a new behavior to the group. Monkeys that had acquired the
behavior as juveniles were growing up and having their own babies. This
new generation of babies learned sweet potato washing behavior through
the normal cultural pattern of the young imitating their mothers. By
January, 1962, almost all the monkeys in the Koshima troop, excepting
those adults born before 1950, were observed to be washing their sweet
potatoes. If an individual monkey had not started to wash sweet potatoes
by the time he was an adult, he was unlikely to learn it later,
regardless of how widespread it became among the younger members of the
troop.
In the original reports, there was no
mention of the group passing a critical threshold that would impart the
idea to the entire troop. The older monkeys remained steadfastly
ignorant of the new behavior. Likewise, there was no mention of
widespread sweet potato washing in other monkey troops. There was
mention of occasional sweet potato washing by individual monkeys in
other troops, but I think there are other simpler explanations for such
occurrences. If there was an Imo in one troop, there could be other
Imo-like monkeys in other troops.
Instead of an example of the
spontaneous transmission of ideas, I think the story of the Japanese
monkeys is a good example of the propagation of a paradigm shift, as in
Thomas Kuhn's The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. The truly
innovative points of view tend to come from those on the edge between
youth and adulthood. The older generation continues to cling to the
world view they grew up with. The new idea does not become universal
until the older generation withdraws from power, and a younger
generation matures within the new point of view.
It is also an example of the way that
simple innovations can lead to extensive cultural change. By using the
water in connection with their food, the Koshima monkeys began to
exploit the sea as a resource in their environment. Sweet potato washing
led to wheat washing, and then to bathing behavior and swimming, and the
utilization of sea plants and animals for food. "Therefore, provisioned
monkeys suffered changes in their attitude and value system and were
given foundations on which pre-cultural phenomena developed." (M Kawai,
Primates, Vol 6, #1, 1965).
What does this say about morphogenetic
fields, and the collective unconscious? Not very much, but the
"ideological breakthrough" idea is not what Sheldrake's theory of
morphogenetic fields would predict anyway. That theory would recognize
that the behavior of the older monkeys (not washing) also is
a well-established pattern. There may well be a "critical mass"
required to shift a new behavior from being a fragile personal
idiosyncrasy to being a well-established alternative, but creating a
new alternative does not automatically displace older alternatives.
It just provides more choices. It is possible that the washing
alternative established by the monkeys on Koshima Island did create a
morphogenetic field that made it easier for monkeys on other islands to
"discover" the same technique, but the actual research neither supports
nor denies that idea. It remains for other cultural experiments and
experiences to illuminate this question.
What the research does suggest,
however, is that holding positive ideas (as important a step as this is)
is not sufficient by itself to change the world. We still need
direct communication between individuals, we need to translate our ideas
into action, and we need to recognize the freedom of choice of those who
choose alternatives different from our own.
The Hundredth Monkey
by Ken Keyes
The Japanese monkey, Macaca fuscata, has been observed in the
wild for a period of over 30 years.
In 1952, on the island of Koshima,
scientists were providing monkeys with sweet potatoes dropped in the
sand. The monkeys liked the taste of the raw sweet potatoes, but they
found the dirt unpleasant. An 18-month-old female named Imo found she
could solve the problem by washing the potatoes in a nearby stream. She
taught this trick to her mother. Her playmates also learned this new way
and they taught their mothers, too. This cultural innovation was
gradually picked up by various monkeys before the eyes of the
scientists.
Between 1953 and 1958 all of the young
monkeys learned to wash the sandy sweet potatoes to make them more
palatable. Only the adults who imitated their children learned this
social improvement. Other adults kept eating the dirty sweet potatoes.
Then something startling took place. In
the autumn of 1958, a certain number of Koshima monkeys were washing
sweet potatoes - the exact number is not known. Let us suppose that when
the sun rose one morning there were 99 monkeys on Koshima Island who had
learned to wash their sweet potatoes. Let us further suppose that later
that morning the hundred monkey learned to wash potatoes.
THEN IT HAPPENED!
By that evening almost everyone in the
tribe was washing sweet potatoes before eating them. The added energy of
this hundredth monkey some how created an ideological breakthrough! But
notice. A most surprising thing observed by these scientists was that
the habit of washing sweet potatoes then jumped over the sea - Colonies
of monkeys on other islands and the mainland troop of monkeys at
Takasakiyama began washing their sweet potatoes!
“Catch The Name
Game”
Frederick William
Henry Myers
The Hundredth Monkey
Revisited by Elaine Myers - IN CONTEXT
MAGAZINE
The Hundredth Monkey
by Ken Keyes
KB:
Science has yet to
figure out how this was possible and actually tries to deny/question
that transference actually happened. Yes, it did and does happen. How?
The answer is Telepathy and Mind Control, yes animals are under control
as well as people, (ask Roy Horn’s Tiger)…
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