Dok, the monkeys have no integrity.

[MMIX]

Having integrity has never been a part of what being a Monkey is about.

  well it certainly seems to be part of Kai's reality, are you suggesting he's an alien or a caddisfly mutant or something . . .

If you lower your standards as a reaction to this fact, then it's your own integrity, as well as your standards, that will suffer.

I have no worries at all about Kai's personal integrity but I do worry that having to deal with the shit kickers of Academe might make him explode from frustration or something.

[Doktor Howl]

MMIX:  We are primates, not monkeys.

We're not necessarily smarter than the monkeys.

We're just better.  Why?  Because we have Eris.

It's really that simple.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

This whole monkey thing seems to be turning into a bit of a religion.

[Doktor Howl]

This whole monkey thing seems to be turning into a bit of a religion.

Maybe.  Looking at the term a little differently now.  We're not monkeys, and that as an excuse is not valid.

We're primates.  Stuck on the Planet of the Apes.

[LMNO]

This whole monkey thing seems to be turning into a bit of a religion.

I would probably say that it's an idea that has gained more prominence than it may deserve; with time, it will most likely re-blend into our perception of reality in a more sensible way. 

[BadBeast]

Having integrity has never been a part of what being a Monkey is about.

  well it certainly seems to be part of Kai's reality, are you suggesting he's an alien or a caddisfly mutant or something . . .

If you lower your standards as a reaction to this fact, then it's your own integrity, as well as your standards, that will suffer.

I have no worries at all about Kai's personal integrity but I do worry that having to deal with the shit kickers of Academe might make him explode from frustration or something.


And just for the record, I'm not suggesting for a moment he's an alien or a caddisfly mutant or anything . . . If that was the impression I gave, then things are looking a lot worserer for me than I thought!

If the bar of their standards, is lower than Kai's integrity, then they need to kick higher, Kai doesn't have to lower his standards. They want to be a Top rated educational facility, and this is difficult to achieve, if people are expelled for what is clearly cheating. This calls into question not only the standards of the school in question, but the standards of whoever compiles the list of who the best schools are.  
To sacrifice integrity for standards, means that they both end up lower. A fact that I'm sure Kai realises. The most important thing, after all, is ones own integrity.
All you can do, is what you can do. No point in trying to change what you can't change, ie Other peoples integrity levels.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

This whole monkey thing seems to be turning into a bit of a religion.

Maybe.  Looking at the term a little differently now.  We're not monkeys, and that as an excuse is not valid.

We're primates.  Stuck on the Planet of the Apes.

I like the idea behind it; that of acknowledging that we are animals, we are primates, and we will tend to act in normal, irrational, primate ways if we aren't conscious of our own primate natures. Not that all primate ways are unproductive; they've gotten us this far. Some primate traits include friendship, love, loyalty to individuals and tribes, and hoarding against lean times; these are not bad things unless we become instinctively entrenched in them to the point where it becomes detrimental to ourselves and the world around us. We must not also forget that part of our primate nature is our ability to reason and to use forethought.

But when we start saying "THEY are monkeys and WE are primates" or dismissing the whole of human behavior as "being monkeys", and worst of all, when we start to capitalize "Monkey" as if that one word sums up everything we're trying to say, it's just become a joke we're not thinking too hard about, and that's the exact opposite of the original idea. It's exactly like overusing the word "cabbage" or "greyface".

I think we need to back away from using "monkey" as shorthand for a while, and learn to use our words again.

[MMIX]

Having integrity has never been a part of what being a Monkey is about.

  well it certainly seems to be part of Kai's reality, are you suggesting he's an alien or a caddisfly mutant or something . . .

If you lower your standards as a reaction to this fact, then it's your own integrity, as well as your standards, that will suffer.

I have no worries at all about Kai's personal integrity but I do worry that having to deal with the shit kickers of Academe might make him explode from frustration or something.


And just for the record, I'm not suggesting for a moment he's an alien or a caddisfly mutant or anything . . . If that was the impression I gave, then things are looking a lot worserer for me than I thought!

If the bar of their standards, is lower than Kai's integrity, then they need to kick higher, Kai doesn't have to lower his standards. They want to be a Top rated educational facility, and this is difficult to achieve, if people are expelled for what is clearly cheating. This calls into question not only the standards of the school in question, but the standards of whoever compiles the list of who the best schools are.  
To sacrifice integrity for standards, means that they both end up lower. A fact that I'm sure Kai realises. The most important thing, after all, is ones own integrity.
All you can do, is what you can do. No point in trying to change what you can't change, ie Other peoples integrity levels.

Yeah, I couldn't agree more. I worked as an academic for 6 years and, in the end, faced with the sort of disingenuous shit that Kai is dealing with, I walked out [at the end of the semester and after fulfilling all my responsibilities to my students] and didn't look back - I didn't even claim for my last half semester's salary - I just walked away, a nice, clean, break.

@Dok Yes
@Nigel YES
@LMNO Fucking YES!!!

& Dok, the bee in my bonnet about memes is about just this problem - it seems to me that increasingly, to misquote RWHN, a meme is simply where you stopped thinking  . . . 

[BabylonHoruv]

This whole monkey thing seems to be turning into a bit of a religion.

Maybe.  Looking at the term a little differently now.  We're not monkeys, and that as an excuse is not valid.

We're primates.  Stuck on the Planet of the Apes.

I like the idea behind it; that of acknowledging that we are animals, we are primates, and we will tend to act in normal, irrational, primate ways if we aren't conscious of our own primate natures. Not that all primate ways are unproductive; they've gotten us this far. Some primate traits include friendship, love, loyalty to individuals and tribes, and hoarding against lean times; these are not bad things unless we become instinctively entrenched in them to the point where it becomes detrimental to ourselves and the world around us. We must not also forget that part of our primate nature is our ability to reason and to use forethought.

But when we start saying "THEY are monkeys and WE are primates" or dismissing the whole of human behavior as "being monkeys", and worst of all, when we start to capitalize "Monkey" as if that one word sums up everything we're trying to say, it's just become a joke we're not thinking too hard about, and that's the exact opposite of the original idea. It's exactly like overusing the word "cabbage" or "greyface".

I think we need to back away from using "monkey" as shorthand for a while, and learn to use our words again.

Hoarding against lean times is not very common for primates, monkeys, or humans in a hunter gatherer society.

Not trying to be pedantic, I think you made a really good point, just that that sort of greed behavior seems like it comes from somewhere else.

[hooplala]

Hoarding against lean times is not very common for primates, monkeys, or humans in a hunter gatherer society.

Not trying to be pedantic, I think you made a really good point, just that that sort of greed behavior seems like it comes from somewhere else.

Really?

[MMIX]

Hoarding against lean times is not very common for primates, monkeys, or humans in a hunter gatherer society.

Not trying to be pedantic, I think you made a really good point, just that that sort of greed behavior seems like it comes from somewhere else.

Really?

no not really - just one example - squirrels store nuts - and while food storage [calling it hoarding drags in a whole pile of irrelevant baggage like the greed thing] is not practiced by simple hunter gathering societies it is very common in Complex Forager Societies. So just let Nigel's post stand as it is - a damn  fine point.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

Hoarding against lean times is not very common for primates, monkeys, or humans in a hunter gatherer society.

Not trying to be pedantic, I think you made a really good point, just that that sort of greed behavior seems like it comes from somewhere else.

Hoarding against lean times, like forethought, is not very common in other types of primates, but it is VERY common in our specific type of primate, including hunter-gatherer societies, who will store baskets full of surplus dried fish, game, berries, etc.

And where "else" would that greed behavior come from, exactly? Space aliens?

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

For simplicity's sake, I am not talking about stockpiling, but very basic hoarding beyond what you need for your immediate use. If you have enough dried fruit to get you through the winter, you have a hoard.

http://www.merriam-webster.com/netdict/hoard
Main Entry: 1hoard
Pronunciation: \ˈhȯrd\
Function: noun
Etymology: Middle English hord, from Old English; akin to Gothic huzd treasure, Old English hȳdan to hide
Date: before 12th century
: a supply or fund stored up and often hidden away

[BabylonHoruv]

Hoarding against lean times is not very common for primates, monkeys, or humans in a hunter gatherer society.

Not trying to be pedantic, I think you made a really good point, just that that sort of greed behavior seems like it comes from somewhere else.

Really?

no not really - just one example - squirrels store nuts - and while food storage [calling it hoarding drags in a whole pile of irrelevant baggage like the greed thing] is not practiced by simple hunter gathering societies it is very common in Complex Forager Societies. So just let Nigel's post stand as it is - a damn  fine point.

Squirrels aren't monkeys, or primates.  Neither are ants (another animal that stockpiles)  primates mostly don't, aside from human beings.  So it's human behavior, rather distinct from monkey behavior.

It's not that it isn't instinctive, just that we can't blame our furry cousins when that particular instinct makes us act fucked up.

[MMIX]

INTEGRITY you fuckers - do you stockpile it???