The Monkeysphere. What? Never heard of it? Yeah I know, I hadn’t either until now:

What do monkeys have to do with war, oppression, crime, racism and even e-mail spam?

You’ll see that all of the random ass-headed cruelty of the world will suddenly make perfect sense once we go… Inside the Monkeysphere.

And off we go:

Picture a monkey. A monkey dressed like a little pirate, if you wish. 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. You’d be sad if Slappy died, wouldn’t you?

Now, imagine you get five more monkeys. Tito, Bubbles, Fluffy, Marcel and ShitTosser. Imagine personalities for each of them. Maybe one is aggressive, one is affectionate, one is distant and quiet. And so on. They’re all your personal monkey friends.

Now imagine a hundred monkeys. Then a thousand.

How long until you can’t tell them apart? Or remember their names? At what point, in your mind, do your beloved pets become just a faceless sea of monkey? If you get enough monkeys, you’ll eventually have enough that you no longer even care if one of them dies.

Now, each of these monkeys is every bit the monkey that Slappy was. It’s just that you don’t give a rat’s ass any more.

That, my friends is the Monkeysphere.

You must go read the entire essay. Everything makes perfect sense now. Basically it boils down that we can only really know/relate to about 150 people. Those people make up our Monkeyshere. Anyone not part of that group is just a faceless shape in the crowd. Not that we do not like our fellow man, but that we can only relate to so many people. For example:

Or think of it this way: Which would upset you more, your brother dying, or a dozen kids across town getting killed because their bus collided with a truck hauling killer bees?

Which would be bigger news to your neighbors, those dozen mutilated bus children across town or 15,000 dead in an earthquake in Iran?

They’re all humans and they are all equally dead. But the closer to our Monkeysphere they are, the more it means to us.

Mr. Wong offers some very good life pointers. You may be the funniest, smartest, coolest person in your Monkeysphere, but to other people outside of your Monkeysphere, you could be the biggest, dumbest jerk in the world. It is a matter of perception and of being able to relate to someone, rather than just seeing them as some jerk who cut you off in traffic.

Also, we all have the capacity for abject failure. I know I have done many a thing that I am none to proud of. Buy me a beer one day and I may tell you. Keep that in mind when you idealize your heroes. Remember:

Don’t pretend politicians are somehow supposed to be immune to all the backhanded f**kery we all do in our daily lives and don’t laugh and point when the preacher gets caught on video snorting cocaine off a prostitute’s ass. A good exercise is to picture your hero — whoever it is — passed out on his lawn, naked from the waist down. The odds are it’s happened at some point. Even Gandhi most likely has hotel rooms and dead hookers in his past.

Amen brother. Now, my monkey friends, go forth and read the entire essay. You WILL thank me. Oh yes, you WILL.

Cross posted over at WILLisms