JG and PK Interview: Discussion and Inclusion of the Parable of the Hundredth Monkey

So about this time of thinking globally and acting locally, and trading cassette tapes, I heard a tape of an interview between Paul Krassner and Jerry Garcia from 1985. Since it seemed intellectual at the time, the convergence of music and ideas and the philosophy that one person could make a difference, the interview resonated with me. A portion of the interview between Paul and Jerry is reprinted below and the parable is denoted in bold.

Paul Krassner 1985 Interview of Jerry Garcia
PAUL KRASSNER Home Page

PAUL KRASSNER is the editor of "THE REALIST" and a purveyor of Free Thought, Criticism and Satire. "The Realist" #131 (Autumn, 1995) reprinted the opening portion of an interview of JERRY GARCIA by Paul Krassner that first appeared in "The Realist" #99 (September-October 1985). #99 was called a Premiere Issue because #98 had been published in February 1974. The FINAL ISSUE of "THE REALIST" by Editor Paul Krassner has been published as #146 Spring 2001.

From "THE REALIST" #99 (September-October 1985)
JERRY GARCIA interviewed by PAUL KRASSNER

Q. Does the world seem to be getting weirder and weirder to you?

A. Yeah. The weirdest thing lately for me was that thing of the Ayatollah and the mine-sweeping children. In the war between Iran and Iraq, he used kids and had them line up like a human chain, holding hands, and walk across the mine fields because it was cheaper than mine detectors.

Q. That's just unfathomable.

A. It's amazingly inhuman. And people complained about the Shah - a few fingernails and stuff - but this is kids walking across mine fields. It's absolutely surreal. How could people go for that?

Q. But how do you remain optimistic? There's 48 wars going on now simultaneously - and yet the music is joyful - even "Please don't murder me" is a joyful song.

A. Well, when things are at that level, there's kind of a beauty to the simplicity of it. I wrote that song when the Zodiac Killer was out murdering in San Francisco. Every night I was coming home from the studio, and I'd stop at an intersection and look around, and if a car pulled up, it was like, this is it, I'm gonna die now. It became a game. Every night I was conscious of that thing, and the refrain got to be so real to me. "Please don't murder me, *please* don't murder me..."

Q. Oh, so it came out of a literal truth - it wasn't even metaphorical.

A. No, not really. It was a coincidence in a way, but it was also the truth at the moment.

Q. And, if you extend that logically, statistics show that more than half of young people today think there'll be a nuclear war in their lifetime - but they also are concerned about whether they want a career or marriage.

A. Well, you've got to do something in the meantime. Nuclear war - that's *easy* to see, because it's true that most of the energy is still going to the old arms buildup. It hasn't changed a bit, and it's more horrible than ever, and not only that, but we haven't done anything to get rid of all the *old* shit, so that thing has been growing and growing for the last 40 years. If you're a kid now, that's what you see, that's the immediate past, 40 years of this shit, and nobody's made any serious effort to turn it in any direction. I'm scared too, frankly.

Q. It used to be there was one weird old man with a sign saying, "The world is coming to an end," but now you've got it embossed on bumper stickers. Still, you know that new age parable of the 100th monkey - about these monkeys on an island that have subsisted on sweet potatoes and they've always eaten them with the sand on.

A. Oh, I know about those monkeys. They wash the sweet potatoes in the salt water now.

Q. But one young monkey started it.

A. A young female monkey.

Q. And then other monkeys started following suit, and when there was a certain critical mass - and that's the metaphor of the 100th monkey, it could've been the 97th or the 108th - when enough young monkeys were doing it, then the first adult monkey started. Reverse generational influence. Then other adult monkeys started doing it.

A. Yeah, there was a moment when all of a sudden it seemed as though all the monkeys knew how to do it.

Q. And then, even on adjoining islands - a psychic connection. And how that applies to human behavior, no matter what we're doing on an individual or a group basis, if we take ourselves as the 100th monkey, we could be the one to change the tide.

A. Absolutely. It always did seem like it was a matter of numbers, like you really only needed a percentage of people kind of pulling psychically in the right direction in order to just avoid the worst possible scenario, and it always seemed that the positive had some kind of natural inclination to get the weight. Destroying things lacks a certain element of organization, it's operating at a disadvantage essentially, because the idea of building things always requires some kind of agreement. Destroying things doesn't require that, it kind of works against itself in the long run.

Yeah, I *believe* that idea. I always believed that psychedelics meant that in a certain way. I always felt that if enough people got turned on, there would be sort of a consciousness jump, a paradigm shift in reality somehow. It's much slower than anybody imagined. That's the way I've chosen to deal with it philosophically, to avoid getting too discouraged in the meantime, just to think, well, it's gonna take a long time.

"THE HUNDREDTH MONKEY" 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 monkeys like 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 seen 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 sweet potatoes.

Let's further suppose that when the sun rose one 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 book is not copyrighted and the material may be reproduced in whole or in part.