March 21, 2012 at 11:48pm
During thought experiments, I’ve often turned to my fictional idea of a poor little monkey being chased through the jungle by a tiger. Heart pounding, looking over his shoulder and running for his life; any false step or missed tree branch could be the one mistake meaning the grisly end to this little fellow. It’s a real horror show for me since I can easily identify with the monkey. Nothing focuses the mind like fear. I find this scenario useful because it seems to strip away most of the variables and the multiple levels of abstraction most of us face in the complicated society we work our way through today. Life is not as simple as a monkey running from a tiger in a jungle but I think this anecdote captures something special about the human condition we all face. This story captures most of the fundamental elements contained in our daily fight for survival, and can serve as a tool to advance our understanding when distilling the complex down to the understandable.The monkey is completely outmatched in terms of power and force, and both the monkey and the tiger are completely aware of this simple fact. The monkey is terrified and has everything at stake; in fact, he has the most to lose. And so he is completely committed to the task at hand; he is focused and will do whatever it takes to succeed. He will do the best job he is capable of doing at that particular point and time. In human terms, this is not a practice session, proof of concept or a computer game. This is real. This is up close, in your face and very personal.
We could say that the monkey has a primary interest in the outcome and the tiger has somewhat less than a primary interest since if he doesn’t catch this monkey he may go hungry but most likely won’t lose his life in a grisly act of violence and maintains the future opportunity of catching another monkey or maybe a nice Wild Boar later on.
So, if the monkey is primary, his mother or any immediate dependents might be secondary and the other members of his troop might be considered tertiary, and so on. We might call primary p1, Secondary p2, Tertiary p3 and everyone else p(n); where “n” is a variable depending on how far removed one’s interest is from the nexus of our story about our monkey, Mr. Primary.
While those in his troop who are not in the primary position might be interested in the outcome, it is doubtful that they would be as focused or animated by the immediacy of the moment or fear or concern to assure a positive, beneficial outcome as Mr. Primary.
So when I look at some of the complex problems facing our country today, I think about our little monkey story and how it might be used to see clearly through the foggy layers of unintelligible political, social and financial decisions & agendas that smother us in controversy. It seems that the further we get away from the primary, the more waste and malfeasance we create for ourselves and our fellow citizens; since those who are not primary, are not as focused on a positive outcome as those of us who have so much at stake.
