If you have been around the personal development industry or attended spiritual talks, it is likely you may have heard about the 100th Monkey Effect. I have heard about this effect many times and it has been part of my mental database for many years. I was recently research material for a meetup I was co-hosting called ‘Define Critical Mass’, and remembered this story, so I ‘googled’ it and came to realize the ‘100th Monkey Effect’ did not happen exactly as told by the many self-help gurus who choose to re-tell this story to promote one the metaphysical aspect of consciousness.
Note: this article is not written to discredit ‘consciousness’, but to highlight a key aspect more practical aspect of achieving critical mass…
Learned Behavior vs. Paranormal Conscious Field
The popular version of the story was that when a new ‘behavior’ is adapted by a certain number of the population, the ‘behavior’ spreads metaphysically over the conscious airwaves.
In the case of the 100th Money Effect, it was believed that when a certain number of monkeys learned the new behavior of washing sweet potatoes in the sea salt water, the behavior spread rapidly through isolated island population of monkeys and then when the new behavior reached a critical mass it mysteriously spread to other islands.
In reality it was a learned behavior passed down from a few older monkeys to the younger ones, eventually as the older monkeys died, the new behavior became prevalent amongst the monkeys. It was also noted that most of the older monkeys did NOT adapt the new behavior.
More about the 100th Monkey Effect can be read here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hundredth_monkey_effect
What is the 100th Monkey Effect?
There are many references to the 100th Monkey Effect on Youtube, here is one short video that not only tells the story but also the metaphysical interpretation of it.
Achieving Long Term Critical Mass Through Youth Education
While the theory of a certain number of people adapting a new behavior, and then ‘that consciousness’ spreads metaphysically sounds wonderful, and maybe true, what really is important is too note is that in order to reach critical mass, such that a percentage of population adapts new behavior, can be achieved via the education of the younger generation!
One only has to look around and observe population behavior to know that social transformation is needed in many areas of life. With the majority of adults stuck in their ways, even though their actions are harmful to themselves, their children and the planet, the key to reaching critical mass is long term education programs.
Social Changes
There are many areas of society that can benefit from the Critical Mass effect, some of the areas that we discussed that could benefit from a Critical Mass effect were:
- Spiritual Awareness
- Stamping out Caste Discrimination
- Education of slums children
- Shelter for homeless
- Stamp out street littering
- Reduction of urban trash
- Clean up rivers, forest, green space
- Adapting to greener living
- Drastic reduction of airborne pollution
- Stop wildlife extermination
- and Improvement to Traffic conditions (LOL)
This list could go on, but if you feel strongly about any particular cause, ask yourself how you are contributing the Critical Mass effect to bring about the change you wish to see in the world?
Beejal Parmar
Social Entrepreneur, Coach, Consultant and Trainer
Posted by Beejal Parmar 



