Climate change and why we should stop monkeying around: "Robert Pirsig's monkey trap really is the most amazing metaphor for understanding failure to deal with global warming."

In his regular Guardian column, Oliver Burkeman recently made an interesting analogy:

Don’t get caught in the monkey trap

‘The monkey is trapped not by anything physical, but by an idea, unable to see that a principle that served him well has become lethal’

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• • Oliver Burkeman
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  • The Guardian, Friday 14 November 2014 14.59 GMT
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Illustration: Paul Thurlby for the Guardian Illustration: Paul Thurlby for the Guardian

In Zen And The Art Of Motorcycle Maintenance, Robert Pirsig’s bonkers-but-brilliant philosophical novel that turns 40 this year, he describes “the old South Indian Monkey Trap”. (I’m pretty sure it was never used to trap monkeys, but that’s par for the course with Pirsig; he doesn’t teach you much about motorbikes, either.) The trap “consists of a hollowed-out coconut, chained to a stake. The coconut has some rice inside which can be grabbed through a small hole”. The monkey’s hand fits through the hole, but his clenched fist can’t fit back out. “The monkey is suddenly trapped.” But not by anything physical. He’s trapped by an idea, unable to see that a principle that served him well – “when you see rice, hold on tight!” – has become lethal. I’m not the first to note what a great metaphor this is for our paralysis in the face of climate change: we’re so rigidly attached to a certain notion of progress that we can’t let go when it turns against us. “The difficulty,” as Keynes put it, “lies not in the new ideas, but in escaping from the old ones.”

One striking example of Keynes’s point is what psychologists call the Einstellung effect, describing the way preconceptions can blind us, in almost a literal way, to better ways of doing things. 

Don’t get caught in the monkey trap | Life and style | The Guardian
Ray Fisman on Twitter: "Robert Pirsig's monkey trap really is the most amazing metaphor for understanding failure to deal with global warming http://t.co/TLKxJLlgcZ"

See also:
Eating Our Way to Civility: Pirsig and the rigidity of our values
Will The End of Oil Mean The End of America? By Robert Freeman
A monkey trap of our own construction | ThinkOrSwim (the Climatechange.ie Blog)

And:
Futures Forum: Climate change: the role of livestock and agriculture.......... or: "Can steak save the planet?"

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