The Straw That Broke the Camels Back.

YES:) Wil, I feel you are on to something big here.

So very pronoiac of you!

OK, you're on … I'll be the 100th monkey!

Wil………..I love your contemplations :-)

Heidi

Rob Brezsny's book, Pronoia is the Antidote  for Paranoia is a wonderful, uplifting read. Pronoiac is someone who is the opposite of paranoid and who bleieves that there is a vast, universal conspiracy geared towards the complete enlightenment and happiness of each sentient being in the universe…

I want to be pronoiac too!  Sounds cool.  And, I LOVE the 100th Monkey.  Definitely a story to contemplate each and every day.  Thanks for the great blog, Wil.

Um, except – and  I hate to say this – the 100th Monkey was later admitted to be an apocryphal story. At the very least, the spread of behavior of the potatoe washing monkeys was much exaggerated. Accordiong to Wikipeida at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hundredth_Monkey:

In 1985, Elaine Myers re-examined the original published research in “The Hundredth Monkey Revisited” in the journal In Context. In her review she found that the original research reports by the Japan Monkey Center in vol. 2, 5 and 6 of the journal Primates differ from Watson's story in significant ways.

 In short, it contains no evidence that the 'Hundredth Monkey' phenomenon exists; the published articles only describe how the sweet potato washing behavior gradually spread through the monkey troop and became part of the set of learned behaviors of young monkeys. There is no evidence at all of a critical number at which the idea suddenly spread to other islands, and none of the original researchers ever made such a claim.

Despite the lack of supporting evidence for the story as told by Watson and Keyes it is still popular among New Age authors and personal growth gurus and has become an urban legend and part of New Age mythology. As a result, the story has also become a favorite target of the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal and was used as the title essay in The Hundredth Monkey: And Other Paradigms of the Paranormal published by them in 1991.
In his book Why People Believe Weird Things Michael Shermer, Ph.D., explains how the urban legend started, was popularised, and has been discredited.
It is often claimed that the truth or falsity of the “Hundredth Monkey” story is a secondary issue, and that its true value and significance is as a sort of “transformative myth” that encourages those who believe in it to have an optimistic view of the possibility of positive change, particularly in human society.

 —-

Now, this isn't to say that non-continuous, sudden, change isn't possible. Here's what I've previously written about the 100th Monkey and inflection points on Enlightenment.Com in my “Classic Journals” (spiritual blogging back in the old days…) at http://www.enlightenment.com/blogs/j/jordan/archives/2003/06/reprint_js_clas_11.html

 June 06, 2003

Reprint: J's Classic Journals # 12

Date: 04/28/97

Topic: The Inflection Point

Type of Entry: A Musing About A Confusing Scientific “Principle”

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The Inflection Point

Imagine a line on a graph rising slowly, slowly, slowly and then suddenly shooting up, giving us the familiar “J” curve. An early popularizer of this notion was Thomas Malthus, who, in his 1798 “An Essay on the Principle of Population,” predicted that human population would increase geometrically (on a J-curve). Unfortunately, said Malthus, human food resources could (at best) only increase arithmetically, thereby leading to massive famine.

More recently, we've seen the notions of the 100th monkey effect (based on an apocryphal tale of yam-washing monkeys learning new behaviors by reaching a critical mass), and just last month the book Net Gain – which puts forth what is perhaps the first coherent business model for how virtual communities might make money on the web – relies heavily on the notion that if you just “invest, invest, invest” for several years, then there will then suddenly be an “inflection point” (i.e., where the “J” turns upwards) after which your revenues and profits will skyrocket. (Writing in 2003: would it were so…)

Then, too, there's the dissemination of memes, information units that supposedly spread through a human population as viruses spread through any other animal population. One minute hardly anybody knows or cares about the Beatles, the next minute Shea Stadium is overflowing with hysterical teenagers.

Uh, What's Up, Post Hoc?

On the one hand, we know that these surges actually do happen, both in the physical world (e.g., phase shifts, or even that last straw that literally breaks the camel's back) and in the psycho-social world (e.g., when a peaceful demonstration suddenly erupts into a mob scene, or when someone experiences a gestalt breakthrough and suddenly groks something that had previously been far beyond his or her comprehension).

On the other hand, throwing around the notion of inflection points too loosely reminds me of that famous cartoon (the Far Side?) where a lab-coated scientist is writing a very complex formula on a chalkboard and then, at the end of the formula, adds “and then a miracle happens.”

So, is it really useful to talk about inflection points, J-curves, memeflows, 100th monkeys, and all the rest? Are there underlying mechanisms that can be separated out and tested, or is what we have here merely different ways of describing similar sorts of observed phenomena? Do we have ways of predicting, testing, and controlling what's going on here, or do we merely have a variety of terms for describing them post hoc ?

This last question, of course, is a red herring. In some cases we do know or at least begin to understand the causal mechanism; in other cases we don't have a clue. In either case, the point is that we are excited by the fact that all of a sudden something really intense and unexpected happens.

We're The Novelty Lovers And We're OK

As humans, we love change. We love suddenness. We love unexpected, inexplicable, organic growth yielding novel patterns of information and beauty. And, naturally, when we see such patterns arising at certain times and in certain ways, we tend to name those times and ways. We call them J-curves, inflection points, hundredth monkeys. We know something *happens* here, something special, something that seems to go beyond our normal understanding. Novelty erupts into being and we, with our advanced monkey brains, stare slack-jawed as some of us who have (or who think we have) bigger-than-usual brains try to figure out what the heck is going on.

Something genuine does happen at the inflection point. It happens in love; it happens in art; it happens in music; it happens in politics; and it sure happens at death.

Something genuine does happen at the inflection point. Genu-flection, bowing down to the reality that generates these wild and woolly, fractally resonant, chaotically holographic, resonance vectors. Is it magic? You bet. Is it consciousness? Far as we know. Does it happen all the time? We'll have to watch for it. Is it beyond good and evil? As long as it's not on the Fritz.

A Gentle Warning

So what do we do about it? Not a whole lot, or rather, we keep on doing what we've been doing. (To quote The Roches: “Keep On Doing What You Do.”) But when somebody tells you that “suddenly there's this tremendous unexplained change right at point x,” you might want to look carefully at exactly what he or she is talking about, whether he or she has a clue as to why it actually happens, and why he or she might want you to think that he or she understands something that he or she doesn't (or does) actually understand.

Otherwise, they might be able to inflect a lot of damage upon you.

Have a good week.

Well, if you are asking, Wil, whether it “matters,” that brings us back to a whole ‘nother line of inquiry, which is the term “matter” as a homophone. “Matter” both refers to “inert stuff” (atoms, molecules, and smaller and bigger) as well as to “what’s important” (does it mean something to us).

So, do stories matter? Does truth matter? I would agree with you that there is a mythological level of truth (Leary’s 7th circuit), that in some ways is just as important as the logical world of nuts and bolts. I just don’t think we should confuse them. If something didn’t happen, let’s not say that it did. But if something did happen – including something that gave rise to an important teaching or inner revelation – then let’s herald it far and wide.

An example: I’ve experienced full-on, no-doubt-about-it, weather “magic,” a completely impossilbe synchronistic event that in my mind proves the existence of subtle energies and the interactin with the Gaia-field. Now, you may think that this is just a story on my part, but I can assure you it isn’t. It “matters” a great deal to me that this really happened – I have a whole different world view because of it. For you, though, because you don’t know me, and because you weren’t there, and because you may (or may not) think that what I say is impossible, it will at most be a story (perhaps a story about gullible ol’ Jordan).

Not sure exactly where I was going with that example, except to say that I think that we should, at least in our own minds and experiences, keep seperate that which is “real,” that which actually did happenin the physical world, and that which may have happened or was said to have happened.

Kind of a storied approach…

And I’m glad you liked the synchronicity from my previous journal entry. You can take synchronicity out of the country, but, you can’t take the country out of synchronicity.

Sorry, but if I am following your drift, we may both be warped.

That’s cool about Wikipedia having that definition. I’m wondering if Rob B. knows about it.

For really warped, see my bad essay on homophones: The Prophets Sea at http://www.enlightenment.com/b_archives/2005/12/thanksgiving_ne.html (you may have to scroll down)

Hey Wil, You guys are too good, i am so enjoying this whole paranoia, pronoia thing and am learning so much through your banter. I loved your story and would tend to agree with “the end justifies the means” theory although most wouldn't. I just am happy to see such “warped” brain at work, because unless warpedies work, this world would come to naught….wouldn't it?
As a warpedie, i feel the world can never come to naught since we are all desperately trying to climb out of the Matrix, and often are able to , only to return to the illusory ground realities…hee hee. Cheerio Kay (from Hyderabad, India)