Even monkeys fall from the tree… sometimes
Autor: Nicholaj | Publicado: 2016-08-17T06:00:00-07:00





The monkey
skillfully climbing a tree and jumping from treetop to treetop using the
environment to its advantage like a parkour artist is something we expect to
witness. To see the very same monkey fall to the ground in its acrobatic
mastery calls upon shock, laughter, bewilderment and what not.



When I
witnessed this a few days ago in my own wood clad backyard I didn’t knew what to
think really except for a brief internal dialogue consisting in ‘how on earth
was that possible’ and sitting there watching the monkey getting up on its feet
and disappear in the foliage I stayed there puzzled wondering about this whole
event, thoughts I wanted to share as this bizarre incident of a falling monkey
triggered a bounty of reflections. 



Witnessing the
monkey falling from the tree a judgment occurs, instinctively and reactionary
where a form of certainty concerning the reasons of the monkeys fall is
established in the matter of seconds, a judgment born from preexisting learning
and the desire of making sense of what is outside the expected that in turn
hatches itself on our prior experiences where our lazy brain makes the most
immediate connections possible to present us with some plausible explanation.
Just to make sense of whatever happened, hence sense making is commonly a
selfish process – and how could it be in any other way – our reference to the
world will always be rooted in how we experience the world, our learning and
our personal history.



Hence we have
an innate tendency to generate rules that validate a behavior or a phenomena
that at first is simple response born from personal history and experience that
then takes the shape of truth. 

And here we
are diving into waters most poisonous. To take your judgement of why the monkey
fell from the tree as truth would probably indicate that you are in error. The
Romans saw truth or Veritas as a maiden clad in white resting at the bottom of
a deep well – and truth will always be like that, truth is something we sense,
feel and know is true, it is not limited to facts and behaviour, axioms or
possibilities. Truth is not what is statistically secure or relevant; truth is
always elusive and subject to perspective and placement. The quest for truth
gave us postmodern philosophers like Deleuze, Lyotard and Derrida in recent
years who in their enquiry of situation, location, time and space related to
meaning can be summarised in Derridas observation, here paraphrased,&nbsp; that ‘facts proves or explains nothing, we
always give a voice to the facts we observe’.



And so, let
us return to the monkey that fell in his jump, to some extent we can perhaps
agree that falling in your self-confidence is a result of hubris, it be in the
form of a debilitating character trait or as a consequence of some error. If
so, this brings us back to the concept of judgement. 



We judge
constantly, if you have no idea about how much we judge every day, set a goal
of avoid judgements for one day, just to see how much you judge everything in a
self-referring way constantly. 

If we look at
Dante’s Divine Comedy we find that hubris is that sin that throws you in the
deepest pit, in tartaros, what is above here is people of treachery and fraud,
flatterers, hypocrites and oath breakers. Lucifer always served as the great
example of hubris in that one thing of believing that he knew better than
anyone else. It doesn’t matter if he did or not, what matters is his attitude,
namely over confidence born from an exalted idea of self-importance and so in
the case of the monkey falling from the tree and those judging it we are
perhaps speaking of the presence of hubris on both the part of the monkey and
those who judge the reasons why and declares truth. 



In analysing
hubris I have found that there is some difference here between the English
‘pride’ or ‘vainglory’ in how hubris was understood in Antiquity. Commonly
hubris was ascribed to the Olympic gods and to rulers and political advisors
from Aristotle to Seneca to Machiavelli was always warning against the
consequences of hubris, it would always lead to fall, lest the erroneous trait
or attitude was recognized and altered. Sun Tzu advices in his the art of war
that if your opponent suffers from pride or believes himself to have to upper
hand, feed his arrogance so you can strike like thunder in the blackest night. 



Like monkeys
sometimes fall from the trees we also fall in the journey of life, we commit
errors and mistakes, some born from foolishness and others from hubris. The
corpus of Ifá is full of stories about orisas committing mistakes of both
sorts, it be about refusing to make the sacrifice necessary because they find
it unnecessary or because they know better. Hence we find the orisa of purity,
Obatala in complicated and demeaning situations as we do with the majority of
the orisas. Somehow it seems that the only one not prone to hubris is the orisa
Esu, the man at the crossroad, Lord of transformation, choice and opportunity. 



Errors
committed in hubris must always been corrected and this ranges from the simple
things like let us say you stopped smoking and in turn you demand your partner
to cease the habit as well. You do this from the best of reasons, yet since you
are over confident and portray yourself to know better this might be an act of
hubris performed in such situation. From such small matters as this to the wide
array of aesthetic, and political opinions, judgements, bickering and fights for
truth and right in opinion, verdict and judgement of all kinds. 



From the perspective
of Ifá hubris is considered a trait or attitude born from praise and flattery,
success and increase in social station and not necessary as a character flaw.
The orisa of justice, Sango, being the power often used to represent the
downfall of hubris. In the case of Sango it all starts with good intention, he
came from the invisible realm wanting every human being to be rich. Finding
human beings to be fickle and inconsistent, prone to quarrel and judgement he
interfered because he knew better the ways of abundance (and indeed as the
author of abundance he knew what he was speaking of) – yet imposing his
supremacy led to his downfall.&nbsp; 



Judgement is
another form of hubris and I feel the story from sura 18 in Al Quran where Khidir
meets Moses is illustrative in this regard. Briefly told the sura speaks about
how Khidir met Moses at the junction of two seas and intended to teach him ‘the
right knowledge of what he has been taught’. Khidir asks from Moses that he
must have patience and avoid questioning his actions. They set out on the
journey and enter a boat. Here Khidir when they are out on sea damages the boat
so it will sink. Moses shocked by the saints behaviour questions him and is
immediately corrected and reminded he promised to be patient and don’t
questioning him. After this Khidir kills a young man and after this they arrive
to a town where they are denied hospitality, here Khidir restores a broken wall
for the villagers. Moses in shock of his conduct breaks his oath on all three
occasions whereas Khidir tells him:

“Many acts which seem to be evil, malicious or somber,
actually are merciful. The boat was damaged to prevent its owners from falling
into the hands of a king who seized every boat by force. And as for the boy,
his parents were believers and we feared lest he should make disobedience and
ingratitude to come upon them. God will replace the child with one better in
purity, affection and obedience. As for the restored wall, the Servant
explained that underneath the wall was a treasure belonging to two helpless
orphans whose father was a righteous man. As God's envoy, the Servant restored
the wall, showing God's kindness by rewarding the piety of the orphans' father,
and so that when the wall becomes weak again and collapses, the orphans will be
older and stronger and will take the treasure that belongs to them."




My point being an act
with its judgement is often rooted in hubris, a hubris born from a desire to
understand how something not in conformity with what we assume or think is the
logical or correct way or outcome of a situation. It is Moses in bewilderment
not figuring out the reasons for a saint to behave ‘unsaintly’ or a monkey
falling from the tree judgement always occurs and this judgement is instinctive
and born from our personal history and expectation. And so if my judgement of
the monkey falling from the tree is because he is stupid or bad – well maybe I
am wrong – maybe he was just in error and took a jump on a broken branch. We
always confer judgements and judgements born from jealousy, envy and self-hatred
always lead to gossip as judgement born from bitterness and hubris lead to
slander… and still monkey’s will from time to time fall from the tree and we
will keep on wondering why and pass our judgements.