The Three Monkeys

There were three monkeys that managed to get into the Zoo Keepers automobile, parked at the top of a long steep hill. Each of the monkeys held to a different belief. The first monkey had come to believe in reason, and held the view that reason alone was a reliable yard stick by which a monkey, or monkeys collectively, should make decisions.

Having seen the zoo keeper drive off in his car and being natively curious, reasoning monkey figured out how to open the car door and the other two monkeys followed him in. Once inside, reasoning monkey figured out how to get the car out of park and all the monkeys cheered. They celebrated their new found mobility with excited voices, doing summersaults and jumping while enjoying the changing scenes and approaching horizons - it was great fun. 

But as he sensed the continuing acceleration, reasoning monkey became concerned and suggested that perhaps they needed to all start looking where they were going and try and learn how to control the car, maybe even slow it down.

However, the two monkeys sharing the right seat were not concerned at all. You see, one believed that the world and everything that happened in it, was under the direction of an omnipotent super monkey in the sky. Accordingly, either no disaster would befall them or if it did, it would be the preordained end times and all the monkeys of faith, like himself, would ascend to where super monkey lived. Either way there was no responsibility and no point in being concerned.

The second right seat monkey had a different faith, that being that as long as every monkey look after his own immediate interest that an infallible wisdom would issue forth from the collective actions of all monkeys, and with an "invisible hand" steer things automatically in the right direction - there was no need to think about the future, look where they were headed or to consciously steer the car. Besides, nothing too untoward had happened yet, had it? Well of course it had, many times, but he clung to his belief anyway as faith of necessity blinds reason.

So confirmed was he in his faith, that even as the pace of the vehicle continued to quicken, invisible hand monkey convince religious monkey that they should work together to prevent reason monkey from try to alter the course of the vehicle or even to look outside. After all, it would interfere with the infalible invisible hand for reason to guided the car and further more, infalible hand monkey noted, with an ominous air addressed directly to religious monkey, " we must not monkey with the great monkeys plans, now must we?!"

The reasoning monkey, with increasing alarm, did his best to convince the other two that it was necessary to think about the future, that having used reason to change their condition, they must also use it to addresses the consequences of that change. But the right seat monkeys covered their eyes and ears so as not to have to see what was coming or hear what reason monkey had to say. Instead they ran their mouths, incessantly issuing the professions of their respective faiths so as to drown out reason monkey's arugments and to protect their comfortable views of reality.

So down the hill they roll, faster and faster, yelling and arguing and ignoring reality; believing instead of thinking.  But, it could be worse.  Instead of three monkeys in a car, it could be six and a half billion people running a planet.