Don’t believe everything

Don’t believe everything you read, hear, see – and I’m not talking about the pack of lies disseminated by Sarah Palin and other agents of greedy insurance companies which deny us health benefits when we need then while charging us exorbitant fees – I’m talking about good things said by decent well meaning people.

There are a lot of unchecked data in the “new age” alternative medicine fields. People hear or read things over and over and end up believing and repeating. Eventually the misinformation becomes “Gospel truth.” I want to give a couple of examples of things which are wrong:

The hundredth monkey phenomenon – you may have heard the story. Some Japanese researchers were investigating the behavior of some monkeys. I’ll give a small quote from Ken Keys book on the subject:

The 100th Monkey
A story about social change.
By Ken Keyes Jr.

The Japanese monkey, Macaca Fuscata, had 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 monkey 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 1952 and 1958 all 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’s further suppose that later that morning, the hundredth 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 somehow 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.

Thus, when a certain critical number achieves an awareness, this new awareness may be communicated from mind to mind.

Although the exact number may vary, this Hundredth Monkey Phenomenon means that when only a limited number of people know of a new way, it may remain the conscious property of these people.

But there is a point at which if only one more person tunes-in to a new awareness, a field is strengthened so that this awareness is picked up by almost everyone!
From the book “The Hundredth Monkey ” by Ken Keyes, Jr.

The actual facts were totally different. There was no breakthrough point. The adults learned earlier than the youngsters and most importantly there was no magical transference of this behavior from one island to the otters and yet the story is a great myth as applied to human beings.

In fact given normal communication between people fads start and if enough people smile and talk about peace we are likely to have more people smiling and talking about peace. By the way I love Ken Keyes Jr. and his ideas. I love his books especially these two:
Handbook to Higher Consciousness : by Ken Keyes Jr.
Handbook to Higher Consciousness: The Workbook : A Daily Practice Book to Help You Increase Your Heart-To-Heart Loving and Happiness by Ken Keyes Jr.

I have bought many copies of the first book and given them away to friends and was not criticizing Ken, but just saying that there is a lot of nonsense in the new age movement as well as a lot of good. You have to learn to use your brain and think for yourself. That is healthy skepticism.

While I’m writing about blindly accepting something because you read it in a book, internet, hear it in a seminar or something I want to give a couple of examples of how wrong facts can be disseminated by the best and most well meaning people.

I was listening to one of my favorite authors Wayne Dyer when I heard him talking about the hundredth monkey phenomenon described above. I had already done some research on this and knew that the real research was different. At first I became angry at my hero Wayne for not doing his research.

Then I thought that the best way is to accept the good and forget the problematic parts of an authors work. Here are some excellent books by Wayne Dyer:

Excuses Begone!: How to Change Lifelong, Self-Defeating Thinking Habits by Wayne W. Dyer.
No Excuses!: How What You Say Can Get In Your Way by Wayne W. Dyer.
Change Your Thoughts – Change Your Life: Living the Wisdom of the Tao by Wayne W. Dyer.

Later, I heard about one of my other mentors Anthony Robbins say that the word desire comes from the Latin De Sire “from the father.” Now even with my high school Latin this sounded a little fishy to me. so I looked up the etymology of desire. In fact it is derived from: Middle English, from Anglo-French desirer, from Latin desiderare, from de- + sider-, sidus heavenly body.

I was wondering where did Tony get this wrong idea. I heard another new age guru say this same statement in a cassette published in the seventies. My own guess is that she got it from someone much earlier.

Time of Your Life: 3 Ways to Take Control of Your Life by Anthony Robbins.

Actually this repetition of wrong data happens everywhere. When I was doing my bachelor degree in chemistry in the sixties I heard about a mistake in a major text book which had been known about since 1914 but kept being repeated in edition after edition of the text book and copied into other text books.

So all these undergraduates would learn the wrong equation only to discover the truth if they did graduate studies in chemistry. I would not be surprised if the mistake did not still exist in undergraduate texts nearly s century after being first discovered.

This problem is even worse today with internet and the democracy of information. Buyer be aware really comes into its own in case of information derived on internet. Here, a lie or unintentional factual mistake is passed from site to site to site until it takes a life of its own and becomes “true.”

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