Wednesday, April 20, 2011

Behavioral Psychology 101

If you start with a cage containing five monkeys and inside the cage, hang a banana on a string from the top and then you place a set of stairs under the banana, before long a monkey will go to the stairs and climb toward the banana.

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

Now, put the cold water away.

Remove one monkey from the cage and replace it with a new one. The new monkey sees the banana and attempts to climb the stairs.

To his shock, all of the other monkeys beat the crap out of him. After a few more attempts and attacks, he knows that if he tries to climb the stairs he will be assaulted.

Next, remove another of the original five monkeys, replacing it with a new one. The newcomer tries to climb the stairs and is attacked by all the other monkeys. Even the previous newcomer takes part in the punishment... with enthusiasm !

Then, replace a third original monkey with a new one, followed by 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 up have no idea why they were not permitted to climb the stairs.

Neither do they know why they are participating in the beating of the newest monkey.

Finally, having replaced all of the original monkeys, none of the remaining monkeys will have ever been sprayed with cold

water. Nevertheless, none of the monkeys will try to climb the stairway for the banana.

Why, you ask? Because in their minds... that is the way it has always been!

This is how our U.S. Congress operates... and is why, from time to time,


ALL of the MONKEYS NEED to be REPLACED AT THE SAME TIME.



No comments: