Monkeys and Bananas - what does this remind you of?

Question

Start with a cage containing five monkeys. Inside the cage, hang a
Banana on a string and place a set of stairs under it. Before long, a monkey will go to the stairs and start to climb towards the banana.

As soon as he touches the stairs, spray all of the other monkeys with cold water. After a while, another monkey makes an attempt with the same result - all the other Monkeys are sprayed with cold water. Pretty soon, when another monkey tries to climb the stairs, the other monkeys will try to prevent it.

Now, put away the cold water. Remove one monkey from the cage and replace it with a new one. The new monkey sees the banana and wants to climb the stairs. To his surprise and horror, all of the other monkeys attack him. After another attempt and attack, he knows that if he tries to climb the stairs, he will be assaulted.

Next, remove another of the original five monkeys and replace it with a new one. The newcomer goes to the stairs and is attacked.

The previous newcomer takes part in the punishment with enthusiasm! Likewise, replace a third original monkey with a new one, then a fourth, then the fifth.

Every time the newest monkey takes to the stairs, he is attacked. Most of the monkeys that are beating him have no idea why they were not
permitted to climb the stairs or why they are participating in the beating of the newest monkey.

After replacing all the original monkeys, none of the remaining monkeys have ever been sprayed with cold water. Nevertheless, no monkey ever again approaches the stairs to try for the banana.

What does this remind you of in human society?

Answer 1

I thought that we're all being held back by others who have been held back by their predecessors.. (dunno if spelt right) basically we're jus followin other peoples beliefs and not knowin why.. basically.. well there's more but goin shower lol take it easy

Answer 2

It reminds me of political correctness. It is how one person will be stopped saying something due to a past occurance.

It reminds me of when i was in a critical thinking lesson and we were assesing data about peoples nationality and their grades within education. Now the question asked was ' which nationality appears to be doing the worse' and in the data it appeared that african people were doing the worse and the japaneese were doing the best. When our teacher asked us the question i gave it a think and put up my hand as the answer was obvious in the data shown. Upon answering the question i asked why no-one else put their hand up. And the answer was they were afriad of sounding racist. This is an example of how political correctness is effecting out world for the worse. It is taking away our freedom of speech and bringing fourth censorship.

Answer 3

Religion. I grew up in a middle class protestant community where anyone that isn't a devout christian is a outcast.
School as well, some peer decides something is "uncool" and soon no one does it, but no one really knows why.
Drug culture, marijuana was banned because of some corpirate scam (I dont smoke, but lets face it, smoking banana peels can be bad for you're health, and it's not illegal)

Answer 4

i couldn't really say, but do you know a chimp painted a picture that was once mistaken for a jackson pollock and valued at thousands of pounds?

Answer 5

Sheep.

Answer 6

It remind me of the current 'anyone who isn't a white anglo saxon, straight, middle class, church of england male' bashing culture currently pervading Britain- we're the monkeys and the British Government, the American Government and The Daily ***** Mail are the water sprayers.

Answer 7

Religion, my friend.
And Millwall football fans, if you happen to be British.

Answer 8

monkey see monkey do ..the former new one just pays back what he got ...

Answer 9

racisim, first drug use, abuse in school, hazing, so many things happen by conditioned ignorance. incredible. the list is long...

Answer 10

Sums us all up very nicely I think.