What is the Monkeysphere?

What is the Monkeysphere and what does it have to do with war, oppression, and crime? A lot, apparently.

From a Cracked article by David Wong, here is the Monkeysphere:

First, picture a monkey. A monkey dressed like a little pirate, if that helps you. We'll call him Slappy.

Imagine you have Slappy as a pet. Imagine a personality for him. Maybe you and he have little pirate monkey adventures and maybe even join up to fight crime. Think how sad you'd be if Slappy died.

Now, imagine you get four more monkeys. We'll call them Tito, Bubbles, Marcel and ShitTosser. Imagine personalities for each of them now. Maybe one is aggressive, one is affectionate, one is quiet, the other just throws shit all the time. But they're all your personal monkey friends.

Now imagine a hundred monkeys.

Not so easy now, is it? So how many monkeys would you have to own before you couldn't remember their names? At what point, in your mind, do your beloved pets become just a faceless sea of monkey? Even though each one is every bit the monkey Slappy was, there's a certain point where you will no longer really care if one of them dies.

So how many monkeys would it take before you stopped caring? That's not a rhetorical question. We actually know the number.

Despite the humorous tone of the article, it's actually a very interesting and thought-provoking one. Find out what the "magic number where you stop caring" is: Link - Thanks Emily!


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I like this Monkey Sphere theory. It explains why I don't give a rip about the starving peeps in Africa, and I'm tired of feeling guilty like I should care about them, even though there's absolutely nothing I can do to help them. Even sending money is useless. It just doesn't help any. Plus i don't know them so outta site. Outta mind.
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I find myself severly underwhelmed. This essay lacks supporting evidence in a profound way, and fials to address the insightful arguments that previous thinkers have put forth on the subject in any serious way. Perhaps the book does a better job at this, but I found the level of discourse to be closer to a Chick Tract than a meaningful contribution to the way we understand human soceity.
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i will always box broken glass(if un-recyclable)just for this reason,I don't think its unusual,but mebbes my "monkeysphere" is a bit bigger than the writers!i.e having done some manual labour and had a grounding in socalist pragmatism from family and society at large.
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Wow really interesting.
It's not often that you find something on the internet that really makes you think about life.
But it's true- when it comes down to it, we're all just monkeys, no matter how advanced we become.
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