The Monkey and the Monk: Why being human can be so hard.

-
 



‘One of the biggest tragedies of human existence is that we have the potential to decipher the greatest 
mysteries of the universe, but would much rather kill one another for shiny yellow rocks’  
    - Chirag Roy

 

 

For a long time, I was extremely curious about the decision making process of the human mind. I never really got the whole ‘follow your heart’ line of thinking. The hearts just a muscle pumping blood, why blame it for all the stupid crap we pull. The human mind is an extremely shrewd operator; successfully transferring the blame for all of its biggest failures on a muscle to busy keeping us alive to raise a voice in protest. One must resist the temptation to agree with everything the brain tells you, instead take a moment and think a bit more deeply. Or even better, overthink about it for months to the point of insanity. You might get answers, you’ll definitely get content for a pretentious blog post.
The trick to understanding ourselves is to realize that we are at the end of the day,monkeys. (Apes for you nit picky know-it-alls). Our DNA is merely 0.1 percent off a Chimpanzee and 1 percent of a Dolphins. Heck, genome sequencing shows a 50 percent match with bananas. And so in the illusion of humanity we forget that we share a lot of the same brain structure and decision making abilities of our wild cousins. It shapes our instincts and biases, our subconscious behavior and our most primal and fundamental urges.It’s our default state, the brain in autopilot. I have a much more technical term for this section of our conscious-one based on long standing research and in adherence to scientific nomenclature.
I call it the monkey.
‘But, we aren't animals ! We have humanity. Kindness, co-operation, philosophy, arts, sciences and religion. You can't club humans with animals, we are surely special.’
Well, yeah but you know who’s telling you that, a particularly interesting part of the brain called the prefrontal cortex (PFC) by neurologists. An extremely entitled bugger who never misses a chance to toot its horn and give into self preserving masturbation. It’s where our consciousness and humanity lies. I'll call it the monk. (See what my PFC did there, making itself seem all wise and sorted.)
The challenge therefore when questioning our decisions ,actions and general life choices is to find the right balance between the two- the monkey and the monk. When to let go and follow your instincts, let the monkey roam free and have its banana, and when to stop, pause and let the monk meditate.The monkey will always aim for pleasure and leisure, that next big dopamine hit, the quick high and those good vibes. It fails to make long term plannings, account for others feelings and can be a self serving prick- but it has its purpose. It’s the source of passion and creativity, euphoric joy and those wonderful highs of human existence.Neglect the monkey and life becomes dull and depressing. Feed it too much and it will throw it’s poop on your face.
The monk, on first glance, is the more sorted of the two. It’s what motivates us to be good human beings, delay pleasure for long term goals and live with kindness and generosity- 
(Not a natural human traits by the way. The cave man who showed mercy on the gazelle died away long back).
 
But the monk can also be dangerous, feed it too much and the full weight of human existence will hit you. 
The cold hard fact is that life is an endless tirade of harsh challenges and the greatest burden of human consciousness is our ability to fully grasp it; for the past present and future. The monk will always be privy of this fact, make you scared, nervous and insecure. The monk has the gift of creating problems which can easily transcend the physical. -'Yes you have food and shelter but what if you spend the rest of your life in a dead end corporate job never being able to find the purpose of your life, going through the days a mere slave of the system until you finally find the courage to put a bullet in your head'. 
See how dark the monk can get.
So what's the big takeaway here, frankly I do not know.  You have two contrasting personalities in your mind both serving their own purposes and with their own set of problems.The big trick is to find the balance between the two, the middle path as the Buddha would call it. Hey, maybe that's what made him the enlightened one.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Grind, mindset and sheer dumb luck: How I blundered my way into business school.

-
Image
January 2020:  The CAT scorecard flashed on my screen. 96.x percentile was the final score. Not great, but certainly not bad. For a guy who gave the exam just to complete his bingo book of floundering through engineering (at least once try and raise funding for an idea doomed from its inception, flunk one placement interview so bad you go underground for at least a week and spend a semester flirting with the idea of dropping everything for Civil Services are few more honorable mentions). But it planted a seed in my mind that perhaps I should come again later, with better preparation and more conviction of thought. June 2021:  I join work straight out of graduation. And it’s fun. Nice team, cool colleagues, and a very relaxed work environment. No real stress or anxiety of any kind as I begin to learn the nuances of IT. But at the back of my mind, a niggling thought was ever present- What next? Like any self-respecting son of middle-aged Bengali parents, I knew I was expected to...
Read more

GAS: The art and science of bullshiting your way through B-School

-
Image
I have often viewed bloggers who would write exclusively about their college or work experience with immense contempt. They’ve infested platforms like Quora and Medium with their one-dimensional paper-thin analyses and rationales and yet built massive followings by preying on the aspirations of an ever-desperate populous. I had actively avoided doing the same throughout my undergrads on this blog. The trick I realized was not to let the college you were attending become your entire personality. It’s a little harder now than it was in my undergrads, partly because the entire curriculum is designed to take up every waking moment of your existence and partly because Jamshedpur is for the most part, ‘not very happening’. I am thus confined to my 40-odd-acre campus for the most part, and with grudging disdain, I must admit that I’m letting it consume my entire personality. That being said:  B-Schools are an absolute circus filled with every type of clown imaginable and that makes for ex...
Read more

The Joy of Writing About Nothing in Particular

-
Image
Language was invented for one reason, boys — to woo women — and, in that endeavor, laziness will not do.   - John Keating.  Dead Poets Society. I first heard these lines when I was 19 years old. It was a lazy Sunday afternoon and after a heavy lunch, I was lying on my bed with this seminal piece of modern film playing on my laptop. As a generally impressionable young man who naively believed everything he read and saw(to be honest, I’m still guilty of this), I was left deeply impacted by these lines and the apparent depth of their wisdom.  I was convinced that the point of all writing, of prose, poetry, and spoken verse to impress and inspire. Going forward merely talking will not do, I must move people with all that I say. I held long-standing visions of aping Antony with my voice, holding the sway of entire crowds. I dreamt of moving generations with my writing in the ways of the great Russians of yesteryears.  I managed to achieve neither but rather came across as...
Read more