The man and the monkey!

ojaantrik · Nov 18, 2015

[FONT=&amp]Dear Sri,
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[FONT=&amp]As always, your writing made my mind wonder, somewhat in the fashion in which (according to your exposition of Valmki) Shri Hanuman "wandered" around kissing his tail. You didn't specify clear boundaries for the venue for this ballet, but I suspect that it was not Mandodari's bedroom. Especially since Hanuman had presumed the sleeping beauty to be Lord Rama's wife (according to you reporting on Valmiki of course, let's not forget). I mean it is unthinkable that Hanuman was peeping into Sita's bedroom, particularly so if she was sleeping. Or, for that matter, any other lady's bedroom. On the other hand, he may well have peeped, for till the end of his life, he treated Sita as a Goddess and that's where womankind ceased to exist as far as he was concerned (according to Valmiki alone this time, because you preferred to let us wallow in supreme ignorance as far as Hanuman's knowledge of the birds and the bees went).
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[FONT=&amp]Be that as it may, you, "dear" friend (notice in this connection that oj is Cheeniya's "good" friend at best), now that you have implicated me in this simian affair, I too have turned somewhat restless. Like any other simian I suppose, I have been kicking myself in the bottom, asking repeatedly why on earth I mentioned Aldous, rather than Julian. And who else could I seek clarification from but google the Great? As I went about my way, it did occur to me that Cheeniya was not only the greatest authority on Wodehouse that I have come across, but also the closest mortal counterpart of Jeeves that I have known. Remember that Jeeves spent his spare time reading up Spinoza of all people. And I know that Cheeniya too reads up literature on subjects bearing a close resemblance to things as dangerous sounding as phenomenological ontology. Thereby making the ape that I am feel his miserable proximity to Bertie Wooster himself. In other words, if Wodehouse created the Jeeves and Bertie pair, God created Cheeniya and oj. But being clever, you left a question dangling in the air. Will oj evolve into Cheeniya? You reversed the question too, but only with reference to the celluloid world.
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[FONT=&amp]Yes, you mentioned Planet of the Apes and to my delight I recalled having watched the movie. Charlton Heston and a host of monkeys, leaving alone the literally brainless and scantily clad female in whose company Charlie boy disappears (much to the agony of Kamal of Jaipur fame I imagine) into the wilderness as the movie comes to an end. As far as my recollection goes, there was this time-space puzzle in the movie, which only physicists can explain. Not that we shall, or more correctly "I" shall, understand of course. A group of astronauts had taken off into space and collided with a time-space paradox that made them travel faster in time than they supposed they were actually travelling and land back on earth in the distant future. By then civilization had undergone a supreme metamorphosis and apes were ruling the part of the earth they had discovered. (No, they probably hadn't Galileo's vision yet.) You will remember the ruins of the Statue of Liberty looming in the background as Heston walks away (with that female that Kamal of Jaipur fame etc.). This proved that the planet was earth itself. A problem arises here of course, since one can't be quite sure if the ruins of the Statue of Liberty survived through the period of evolution of humans into simians.
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[FONT=&amp]But this is a trivial piece of detail. You have raised deeper questions. First, the Huxley connection. I worked hard and read on till I needed to have my glasses replaced and finally discovered this link where Huxley's identity is questioned.
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[FONT=&amp]http://www.antievolution.org/people/wre/essays/typing.txt
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[FONT=&amp]It is a bit of an eye opener isn't it? Or does it bring down the curtain? I am not sure how to look at it. The gentleman who has uploaded the well-researched document, ends up raising a question about the given name of the Huxley guy who may or may not have speculated on monkeys typing at random and producing Shakespeare. He concludes by suggesting that it was neither Aldous, nor his grandfather T.H. (the agnostic and the Darwinian), but more likely Julian (as you suggest yourself) who could have made the statement. If at all, for there are other contenders, including Borel the probabilist or Dembski the mathematician, (philosopher and what else not). It is up to you to read up the document. I found it interesting in my Bertie style. It could well look sterile to Jeeves though. Unless Jeeves added new dimensions to it.
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[FONT=&amp]The truly baffling question you have asked, however, concerns the monkeys living beyond their evolution into humans. Indeed, which way is evolution moving? Man to monkey or vice versa. Not that I am well-trained in the subject, but I need to admit to you that I often ask myself why I have such great difficulty distinguishing between a man and a monkey these days. And I am faced with the dilemma every morning when I read the newspaper headlines.
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[FONT=&amp]A delightful piece from you Cheeniya Sir, as your loving, young fans will observe. As for me, it's food for quintessential thoughts. Of which the pride of place is occupied by the dramatic question -- CAN oj POSSIBLY EVOLVE INTO A CHEENIYA? Reminds me of my figures of speech classes. Can an Ethiopian ever change his skin, or a leapord its spots? Answer -- Of course a leapord can change its spots, when it goes from one spot to another.

I have to watch that movie clip yet. So, I might write more later.

oj
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jayasala42 · Nov 19, 2015

Dear Cheeniya Sir,
While you have discussed about the monkey typing the songs of the bard and about theory of evolution, I have totally diverted into my own experiences of ordinary monkeys.Really sorry.

From my school days I have evinced interest in Darwinian theory of evolution.The primates (which include monkeys and humans) probably first appeared around 80 million years ago. On the other hand, the various types of early humans probably appeared around 2 – 3 million years ago and the first modern humans probably around 200,000 years ago. From these numbers, I think it’s at least safe to say that it took many 10s of millions of years for monkeys to evolve into humans.
I too vaguely remember seeing the movie you have mentioned while staying with my son's family.

First of all, humans would almost certainly need to be extinct - or, at the very least, to have completely abandoned the planet - for any other intelligent species to have much of a chance. It's difficult to imagine humanity passively sitting back and watching an entirely new intelligent species emerge, not withstanding the hi-fi imagination as viewed in the scientific movie.

Of course, it would take millions of years (or, at the absolute least, hundreds of thousands) for such a species to evolve, so it's not like any single generation of humankind would observe such a rise. But we've already reached a point in our development where we have the power to control and reshape much of the planet, and part of that domination likely means - at least subconsciously - that we will prevent the rise of a second intelligent species by holding our preferred environment .

There are many intelligent species of animals on earth,each excelling in a particular field.But no one seems to have excelled human beings in'self awareness ' and communication through language( except for Valmiki's creation of Hanuman).It cannot be denied,tough, that language ,sounds and songs are not prerogatives of human species alone.

The evolution of monkey from man' may take millions of years .There may be an 'indus-monkeys' Forum'which may be headed by Cheeniya and the like and who knows I may again, as lesser wise monkey, write a snippet reminding of Cheeniya's rambles of'man and the monkey'some millions of years back.It is rejoicing to imagine of such evolutionary process.
While discussing about the extinction of human race, my grandson told me that perhaps rats have the absolute opportunity to occupy the entire world.I jocularly told him that the mooshika, the vahana of Lord Ganesa, is stated to be the embodiment of wisdom and it is in the fitness of things that rats replace human beings.

Jayasala 42

Cheeniya · Nov 20, 2015

My dear Syamala
Thanks a lot for your second FB! I can's say in what context Huxley made this statement but I can make one observation. All other animals will have no interest in anything that is not edible. Even a cat or dog will just sniff at it, pull it around for a while hoping that there is some edible thing concealed in it. When they find nothing that makes them salivate, they just move away leaving it. But the monkey is an exception. It will try to explore the true potential of anything that it comes across. If it is a musical instrument, it may try to play it. No wonder that the typewriter grabbed its fancy and it started hitting the keys randomly. It is because of its close resemblance to human behaviour, we watch it with great fascination. Even if Darwin had not come out with the Theory of Evolution, we would have still found the monkey interesting.

Coming to Shakespeare versus Bernard Shaw, I belong to the small group of people who attribute their fame to the movie versions of their works. If Rex Harrison and Audrey Hepburn had not overwhelmed us with their presence in My Fair Lady, Pygmalion would have never come to my notice. Same goes for Shakespeare too. I liked Richard Burton as Antony a lot more than the Antony that graced the dusty pages of Shakespeare. The former had a lot of life but the latter was of interest only to English Professors!

Described as 'nobly successful' and 'the only non-tragic character' in the entire epic, Hanuman was not conceived as God by Valmiki. Hanuman's deification came much later. Initially Hanuman was revered for his duty consciousness, obedience, loyalty, willingness to serve, muscular power and perpetual celibacy. The earliest mention of Hanuman as God-like was by Bhavabhuti in Mahaviracharitha(Story of Rama) in which he mentions that Rama held Hanuman in great awe and reverence.

That episode of your son is interesting. The monkey wanting to visit people in cages is classic. It is not unusual that people watch wild animals in sanctuaries from the safety of cages!
Sri

Cheeniya · Nov 20, 2015

My dear OJ
The fact that this FB of yours is replete with parenthetical phrases makes it very profound. This is what the famous writers of yore freely indulged in. This way each sentence is stuffed with alternate meanings and contexts and the reader is left to draw his own conclusions. To clarify all the doubts expressed in parentheses, I give below the translation of the last two stanzas of Chapter 10 of Sundara Kanda:
“Seeing the lady well adorned with jewels and youthful exuberance , thinking she is Sita The mighty armed Hanuman was overjoyed with delight.
In that joy true to his simian nature Hanuman clapped his arms kissed his tail jumped around, rejoiced, climbed up the pillars and slid back.”
All this took place in Ravana’s harem. Hanuman was so desperate to find Sita, it did not even strike him that he was looking at the women sleeping there. Further he was such a strong celibate that gender differences possibly went unnoticed by him.

Before I move on to Bertie and Jeeves, I must thank you for letting us into yet another simian characteristic. While we know what monkeys do when they are overjoyed thanks to Valmiki, we now know what they do when they become restless. I have never seen a monkey kicking itself at the bottom to show its restlessness but then it could mean only one thing that monkeys never become restless. We all know how monkeys behave when they are fully drunk from another Chapter of Sundara Kanda but Valmiki, like me, probably never had a chance to meet a restless monkey. Be that as it may (I love this classy phrase), we’ll take your words for granted that restless monkeys kick themselves at the bottom.

My good friends are all very dear to me. When I describe them as good, it is implied that they are very dear to me. This is not an exercise in semantics but a true statement of how my friends become dear to me. It is just by being good to me that they earn this distinction. There is just one thing that we need to thrash out before we take on Bertie and Jeeves. Jeeves is not the only person who reads Spinoza ‘of all people’ in his spare time. My brother who you have met in Chennai swears by Spinoza! Don’t say it runs in the family. I never read him unless I need to reply to some complex personality of IL!

You seem to imply that Bertie has greater claim to the monkey lineage than Jeeves. I doubt it very much. While Jeeves is a voracious reader who leaves out none including Spinoza, he is never known to have contributed anything to the literary world. But Bertie, on the other hand, is an accomplished writer. He once contributed a piece on ‘What the well-dressed man is wearing’ to ‘My Lady’s Boudoir’ a magazine published by his Aunt Dahlia. Such sophisticated contributions to fashion literati is not truly a monkey’s job. But on several occasions, Jeeves has displayed close resemblance to a monkey by ‘raising his eyebrow a fraction of an inch’ when feeling agitated.

I remember that last scene of the Planet of the Apes with the half-buried ruin of the Statue of Liberty. Now that you have mentioned it, I googled for the exact words of Charlton Heston and found this: [riding down the beach in the last scene] Oh my God... I'm back. I'm home. All the time it was... we finally really did it. [screaming] YOU MANIACS! YOU BLEW IT UP! OH, DAMN YOU! GODDAMN YOU ALL TO HELL! (camera pans to reveal the half-destroyed Statue of Liberty sticking out of the sand). At that time when I saw this movie, this scene did leave me with a feeling of awe but reading about it again, it wrings my heart. This was truly a science fiction with a difference. You have raised a very pertinent question if the ruins of the Statue of Liberty could have survived the period of evolution of humans into apes. But I know for sure that ruins have a great capacity to survive!

Honestly you don’t have to kick yourself at the bottom as simians are wont to do when they feel restless. That monkey producing Shakespeare plays by randomly striking at the keyboard is something that anyone could have speculated on including you and me! It doesn’t have to be anyone from the illustrious Huxley Family. Such thoughts come rushing into my mind if I have nothing else to do. They can supply enough material to me to ramble for eternity!
Sri

Srama · Nov 20, 2015

Dear Cheeniya sir,

Forget the sonnets, the monkeys and the Shakespeares and the Huxleys of the world. The one thing I learnt today is if I cannot write a feedback to a post that I like as I soon as I read it, I am lost. No amount of reminding myself that I can write will not help.

As I read through the snippet I wondered as to why limit the lack of consistency only to the talk of monkeys? I can claim all of my life to a lack of consistency in action. The one thing that interests me today making me resolve will be the same thing that would be making to revolt, by evening! I want to give you more examples but you know what? I just realized that I am like that monkey - inconsistent all the time. Now I understand where that phrase monkey mind comes from. Now, when anyone talks to me about my monkey mind, I can put it down my genes and the inheritance I have gained.

Now think about it sir, how did you end up with the humans as the vanishing tribe starting with Huxley and one finger typing. But then that is what is amazing about what you have written. On one hand, you make us (at least me) want to read some of those sonnets, then may be pick up Huxley and then rethink Ramayana a little more and may be even read it again, remembering the recent book that I enjoyed reading by our very own Pattanaik on Sita, make a mental note to watch the movie, reread this snippet for the third time and still enjoy it. Don't you see all that has happened with this monkey mind? Well my smartness lays in the fact (even if I say so myself) that I shelved all those ideas and just stuck with the last one - rereading your snippet and making a wise decision of writing my feedback even if it may look like I am just plain putting my thoughts down, taking a leaf out of your book and simply rambling. Ha! some wisdom was passed on after all to me.

Even if I sound like a broken record, I do want to tell you that I enjoyed reading this snippet so much. Thank you for writing this.

PS: I made sure not to read any of the FBs simply for the reason that I may have the option of writing what comes to my mind. Now, that is taken care of! Time to read the feed backs

ojaantrik · Nov 20, 2015

Dear Sri,

Now that we have begun discussing an issue as horrendously large as evolution itself, I doubt that a single fb is adequate enough to express my reactions to your delightful rambling. I need more time to collect my thoughts though. But rest assured that I shall be back sooner or later, Hanuman style.

For the moment, I have only one observation to make. I was caught on the wrong foot in referring to restless simians kicking themselves in the bottom. I have no idea if I have ever been able to distinguish a restless simian from a non-restless one, particularly with reference to what they do to their bottoms. But I had once watched a monkey in the zoo scratching its bottom and that may have given me ideas. It reached its bottom, without much effort it seemed, with a hand moving down the back all the way from behind the head. Such a creature ought to be able to kick itself in the bottom I thought. I have doubts if either one of us could manage to kick oneself in the bottom, however much we tried.

I saw your learned brother only once and realized immediately that I should not open my mouth in his presence, unless I wished to make a complete fool of myself. I know now why I felt the way I did. He can quote Spinoza you tell me now! I once felt a stupid urge to read up about Spinoza from a book called Dialectical Logic or something of that nature. It injured my brain permanently.

Will be back. Hanuman style as I said.

oj

Cheeniya · Nov 20, 2015

Dear Jayasala
You don't have to feel sorry for digressing into the topic of monkeys. They are an integral part of my rambling. Charles Darwin is my favourite too. But what surprises me is that why no one thought of the descent of man from the monkey before Darwin. Every time I look at a monkey, I feel as though I am looking at the mirror. Even if Darwin had not written the Origin of Species, I would have rambled about it! I must confess here that there have been frequent references to me as a monkey by my peers and classmates and that made me become speculative about the possibility of monkeys being our forefathers.

I always wonder if this planet would continue to be habitable for millions of years. There has been distinct depletion of resources that sustain man in the last 200 years. All this Global warming and the resultant catastrophic events would point to the fact that the life of this planet is running out. I would think that a new species that could survive all the odds that man cannot might emerge eventually. Your grandson talks of rats. But more interestingly, cockroaches have the capability to survive even nuclear wars!

It is an interesting thought about the version of IL that would keep pace with evolution. Some Cheeniya will continue to ramble on subjects that would be of interest to rats and cockroaches!
Sri

Cheeniya · Nov 21, 2015

My dear Srama
You seem to be labouring under the mistaken impression that monkeys are inconsistent. Maybe I have inadvertently communicated such a picture in my post. Please be assured that I hold monkeys in the highest esteem for their consistency. Monkeys have a habit of dropping a pursuit midway if something more interesting comes their way. But then even humans have this tendency. This is not inconsistency. I'll explain what consistency is all about. Give a coconut or a banana to any Indian monkey whether they reside in Assam or Kerala and it will eat it exactly the same way monkeys have been doing for centuries. Provoke them and they will react in an identical manner in any temple town of India. I can go on listing it out but the two instances that I have quoted will amply testify my statement.

I am sure you have read George Orwell's Animal Farm. You may have noticed that the novel has a couple of super intelligent pigs and their hench-pigs, a cynical donkey, goats, cats and even a raven but no monkey! What does it imply? It implies that Orwell does not look upon monkeys as animals but as the half-brothers of humans. The TV channel 'Animal Planet' may show monkeys as animals but their life style so closely resembles that of humans! Monkeys learned to use their minds well before the advent of humans. I am sure you have seen this Mentos TV ad:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ohZvWEKfq_c

The more I write about this, the more I am convinced that Darwin was all wrong about Evolution. It is actually in the reverse direction!
Sri

Cheeniya · Nov 21, 2015

My dear OJ
What a joy it will be if you return to my Ramble, Hanuman style as you say!
But wait a minute! Who said you were caught on the wrong foot in saying that simians kicked themselves in the bottom when they were restless? It only implies that you have been more observant than any of us. Further monkeys are the only species that can perform such an acrobatic feat. I tried doing it and fell on my back with a thud!

I too have seen a monkey scratching its back but did not give it much attention to notice if it did it by 'moving the hand down the back all the way from behind the head'. I tried to do it but could reach only up to the shoulder blades! Monkeys are extremely ambidextrous and this is one area where they are far superior to us.

Spinoza, I am constrained to point out, is beside the point when we are considering some vexing issues of Evolution. Jeeves and my brother can have all the Spinoza they want!
Sri