The New Abnormal
Monkey Logic — the name of this esteemed publication — refers to the dank tangle of ‘Primate Programming’ which pulses at the back of our skulls. It is these ancient, primal algorithms that drive our behavior, and not, as we often like to tell ourselves, any supposed higher powers of intellect. The laws, norms, and manners of polite society are a thin veneer. Where the smooth civilized surface cracks, hairy, grunting, animal motives poke through…
As lock-down lifts, many of us find ourselves non-specifically uneasy at the thought of returning to the world. A search for the root cause of our discomfort will yield a confusion of confabulated yarns, but I suspect monkey inside has just gotten used to lurking in his cave. He wants us to stay isolated in our pajamas because if there is one thing Monkey doesn’t like — and believe me there are many! — it is change.
Monkey cannot be forced. Simians are strong. Guile and cunning must be deployed to soothe the anthropoids inside and coax them to do what we want. We need to decompress in stages. Softly, softly, catchy monkey. A haircut is a good first step towards normalcy.
My wife has been telling me for weeks that I am going full-blown ‘Cast Away’. My baseball cap solution did little to improve things — , a Rolland Schitt (Chris Elliott) mullet is not an improvement on a Tom Hanks wild man of the woods.
Since my appointment with the scissors, when I direct us to a mirror, my inner-monkey again sees something reminiscent of a man. It is a small assertion of authority, but at least in the mirror, I am no longer outnumbered by straggly simians.
As the dream fades and we wake to what we once called normal life, it occurs to me that sometimes Monkey has a point.
We moved at least a decade into the future over the last few months. Many of us proved that we can be just as productive directing our own energies as we previously were toiling within cubicle-farm-panopticons under the harsh scrutiny of the ‘ersatz-alpha in a suit’. Monkey doesn’t want to go back there. I can feel him screaming and racing around the enclosure of my mind.
We used to Travel too. He dreads the thought of going back to that. Airports: masks and gloves and too many sweaty people shuffling over dirty floor tiles through mazes of stretch-belt-barriers. Ape-inside is hysterical now, rattling at the bars of my mind as I visualize family summer travel. He will be throwing feces soon.
It’s not just the physical discomfort he objects to. Monkey is a primate, he knows the concepts of respect and status. He feels proud of what he and me have achieved in our life. At the airport, he is genuinely puzzled when hostile younglings are permitted to boss us around. Simian-me recoils at the injustice of being extorted out of hard-earned banana-tokens under the pretext of oversized baggage—
— fifty quid a bag! But I flew with the same cases only two weeks ago!!!
Monkey wants to respond to their thinly veiled threats of physical violence with a screaming rage tantrum — but last time Monkey got his way, we were nearly offboarded without refund.
Ape-inside will take a lot of shit before he snaps. We might think we have our simian selves under control — just like the lion tamer, who shortly before being eaten believed he had beaten all the fire out of his big beige cat’s eyes.
Monkey doesn’t want to go back to being at the bottom of the social pyramid, where every petty employee with a meager claim to authority can send us to the back of the queue or hogtie us with plastic restraints until the baboons in uniforms arrive to carry us off. Monkey would rather stay in our pajamas watching Netflix. If you try to take his salt and vinegar crisps he might just snap.
There are eight billion naked apes like him and me. They are already swinging their fists, baring their teeth, and egging each other towards some serious eve-of-destruction shit slinging. Just turn on your TV to see us. So, as we return to the new-abnormal, perhaps we should give some real thought to building a world where our simian selves feel a little more understood and less inclined to rage.
Listen to your Monkey, he is on your side and, you might not realize this, but your favorite pleasures are nothing more than vicarious second-hand enjoyment of his base animal appetites; he might be brutal and primitive, but he knows what he likes—
—he likes to drink and dance and fight and f…
As always, if you'd like to drop me a note, you can email me at toby@tobyweston.net or find me on Twitter at @weston_toby
Sincerely,
Toby
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