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The most succinct definition I could find of the idiom "monkey on your back" was the following:
A serious problem that will not go away. There are more specific definitions that identify things like drug addiction and duties we don't want to deal with. The summary above pretty much covers them all. The complete etymology of the phrase aside, it's safe to say the concept has been around much longer than the phrase itself. Before we said "monkey on your back," we certainly had other ways to express the phenomenon of having to constantly struggle with something in our lives. There is another explanation that was once used, and it originally was intended in a literal sense, then through time and psychoanalytical desensitization and misdirection it became a figurative reference: demons. When we use this term today, we mean someone has an internal struggle that wreaks some level of havoc in their emotional, intellectual and sometimes physical lives. Usually, the reference comes with qualifiers, such as "inner" demons or "personal" demons. One of the powerful traits of the human mind, as compared to the rest of the animal kingdom, is our innate ability to think in the abstract. That's why we're so good at things like math and poetry; we can create and understand things like concepts and analogies. Everything does not have to be literal for us to comprehend it. And so through time, as we understand more about our universe and how it works, we take what was once literal, and relegate it to figurative status. Before we 'understood' the human mind, as we believe we do now, we thought inexplicable self-destructive behavior was the result of being possessed by demons. Now that we are 'enlightened,' the idea of literal demons (actual beings who could influence our thinking) produces elevated eyebrows and sarcastic remarks about ignorance. Now that we are so much wiser to the ways of human behavior and the official 'sciences' of the mind, the only places literal demons are appropriate are in fiction books, songs, plays and movies. I'd like to temporarily pause from the flow of this essay and ask everyone a question. Do you know anyone, other than a very young child, that is completely free of any sort of mental compulsion that manifests itself in some form of self-defeating or destructive behavior? Despite the typically inaccurate perception we have of others doing better than ourselves, we must, upon astute and thorough scrutinizing, come to the conclusion that there is no one who is completely free of the back-riding monkeys that plague us all to some degree, however slight or great. Now I'll ask a short but important question. Why? The most typical answer will be some form of, "Because human beings aren't perfect." Okay, let's run with that ball for a bit. If there is some standard of perfection we can conceive of, why does it appear impossible for anyone to achieve it? Anything is possible; isn't that what we're taught from grade school on? If so, then why is every man, woman and non-toddler on planet Earth saddled with some sort of mental or physical affliction that keeps them from this struggle-free existence that perfection would imply? To temporarily help us forget or avoid our internal struggles, some of us drown ourselves in a bathtub of gin, or a haze of marijuana smoke. Some of us troll singles bars or the Internet for sexual gratification, be it via self-stimulation, escorts or other randy trollers. Some of us cripple ourselves with anger, some with apathy, some with depression... the list goes on. Some of us decide to take the "high road" and become members of the clergy, monks in an isolated haven, fanatical proponents of exercise, meditation or yoga, or just prostrate ourselves continuously before God, in an attempt to purge the darkness from our lives. But even for those who seem to have their spiritual lives in order, the internal struggles remain. Like Alcoholics Anonymous famously declares, there are no ex-alcoholics, only recovering alcoholics. Now I'm dropping that ball and returning to the point of this essay. Mental and physical maladies are at an all-time high. The statistics for mental illness and physical infirmity are easily accessed on the Internet, and they are sobering to say the least. The expensive medications prescribed for these allegedly organic problems are also legion, and show no signs of being replaced by any non-chemical resolutions. Next question: If our collective knowledge about ourselves is so advanced and accurate, then why have our relatively modern solutions not only failed to lessen our internal struggles, but could be suspected of making them worse? Having a common enemy can galvanize a populace. The solidarity that occurred in the United States immediately after 9/11 was palpable. Through time however, things went back to selfish business as usual, as a matter of course in the human experience. Why do I bring that up? We are more unhappy, more unfulfilled, more tortured and more self-defeated than ever, even in this astoundingly technologically advanced year of 2012. Somewhere along the line, we lost humankind's common enemy. It was replaced by theories, conjecture, sophistry, and the pharmaceuticals produced to address these potentially spurious explanations. Make no mistake, we all have a mutual enemy. The worst part of it is that the greatest tool we had to fight it was our own belief that it existed. No one checks under the bed for monsters they don't believe are there. What was the original phrase that spawned so many popular versions? I believe it was Charles Baudelaire, in a poem called The Generous Gambler: "My dear brothers, never forget, when you hear the progress of enlightenment vaunted, that the devil's best trick is to persuade you that he doesn't exist!" |