An Experiment in Society

a reply to: Flyingclaydisk

Well you can't really blame society...

We're like the monkey in a cage experiment.

Put 5 monkeys in a cage with a ladder and some bananas hanging from the ceiling. Every time they go for the bananas you punish them by hosing them down.

Put 5 new monkey in with the original monkeys and they won't be allowed to climb the ladder by the original monkeys because they know about the punishment.

Now take out the original monkeys and place 5 new monkey in with the 5 that remained.

Now no monkey will climb the ladder but not one will know why they actually can't climb the ladder.

Everybody is just doing what everybody else is doing.

If you were to throw in a fresh batch of "monkeys" everybody would be quick to pound them into submission because of culture, tradition etc without actually knowing why.

a reply to: Flyingclaydisk

Children can still be raised without cutting them off from media and they grow up to be be genuinely "good" people. It happens, and may or may not be as rare as some may think.

I guess it's about the values they are truly taught, and how much dedication the parent is willing to provide to instilling those values. Things always backfire, and sometimes instilling certain values might not actually be the best thing, lest we have a working definition of "traditional values".

What you describe sounds more like "sheltering" children, which absolutely impedes their ability to function in society to a large degree, and often creates more problems than it's worth, IMO.

a reply to: keukendeur

Apparently, that 5 monkey experiment never happened the way it is described and was never designed as a group behavior study.