There is a story social scientists like to tell. It is probably apocryphal in its specifics. The shape of it is still exactly right.

Five monkeys in a room. A ladder in the middle. Bananas at the top. A sprinkler on the ceiling, rigged to turn on and soak the whole room in freezing water the moment any monkey climbs the ladder.

The first monkey tries. Freezing water hits everyone. Chaos.

The second monkey tries. Same thing.

By the fourth or fifth attempt, no monkey will climb the ladder. They have learned.

Then the scientists take one monkey out and put a new one in. The new monkey, having no history, immediately heads for the ladder. The other four, who do not want to get soaked, drag the new monkey off and beat him. He stops trying.

Swap out another monkey. Same thing. The three originals plus the one experienced survivor attack the newcomer when he tries to climb. He learns not to climb.

Keep swapping. One by one, every original monkey is replaced. Eventually there are five monkeys in the room, none of whom has ever been sprinkled with water. None of them has any direct experience of why the ladder is a bad idea. But none of them climbs it. And they will attack any new monkey who tries.

If you could ask them why, they could not tell you. The rule has outlived the reason.

The rules you follow that were never explained

That is a story about monkeys. It is also a story about you.

Most of the rules you live by were not installed through your direct experience. You absorbed them from the group around you: your family, your school, your workplace, your culture, your friends. Someone, at some point, had a reason for a given rule. That reason might have been real, might have been imaginary, might have been true then but no longer true now. The reason faded. The rule did not.

A short, uncomfortable list of candidates:

Family rules you follow and have never once questioned.
    "We don't talk about money."
    "You don't call people after 9pm."
    "Firstborns are responsible for the rest."
    "Nobody leaves the table until everyone's finished."

Workplace rules nobody wrote down.
    "You stay until the boss leaves."
    "You don't ask what other people earn."
    "You cc your manager on everything, just in case."

Cultural rules that feel like physics.
    "You should be married by X."
    "You buy a house, not rent."
    "You go to university, then get a job, then..."
    "Your career trajectory should go up, not sideways."

Personal rules you don't remember writing.
    "I don't ask for help."
    "I always say yes when someone asks."
    "I don't take breaks until the work is done."
    "I don't post anything personal online."

Pick one from your own life. Ask yourself, honestly: when was the last time I actually examined this rule? For most of them, the answer is never. You absorbed the rule from someone, who absorbed it from someone, who had a reason that nobody now remembers. The sprinkler is long gone. You are still staying off the ladder.

The monkey question

The useful question for any rule you catch yourself enforcing on yourself (or on other people) is this:

If the original reason for this rule has gone, is the rule still worth keeping?

Three honest answers, all legitimate:

  • “Yes, I examined it, and I still endorse it.” You looked. You kept it on purpose. That is a rule you own now, not a rule you inherited. Totally fair.
  • “No, actually. The reason is gone and the rule is costing me.” You can drop it. Not easily, because the group may still enforce it on you. But you can start.
  • “I’m not sure. I’d need to think about it.” Also fine. The point is not to tear down every rule in your life. The point is to notice that there are rules you’ve been enforcing without ever having asked the question.

The monkeys in the story aren’t stupid for enforcing a rule they don’t understand. They are doing exactly what social animals are built to do. They just can’t see the mechanism from inside it. You can. That is the one real advantage of being able to think about your own thinking.

Why this is slightly harder than it sounds

The rules you’ve inherited don’t feel like rules. They feel like reality. They feel like obvious, settled, common-sense truths that any decent person would of course agree with. That is exactly what the monkeys would say about the ladder, if you could ask them.

The giveaway is the emotional reaction when the rule is challenged. If someone questions a rule and your immediate internal response is “that’s just how it is” or “obviously you don’t do that” or a flare of actual anger, you are almost certainly inside an inherited rule you have never examined. The reaction is the enforcement. You are being the monkey who drags the newcomer off the ladder.

Notice this in yourself, especially. Not to feel bad about it, because everyone does it. Just to catch which rules in your life are getting enforced by you on yourself without any living reason behind them.

A short exercise

Three rules I follow that I've never actually examined:

1. _________________________________________________

2. _________________________________________________

3. _________________________________________________

For each one:

- Who taught me this rule, or where did I absorb it?
- What was the original reason for it?
- Is that reason still valid for my life right now?
- If the reason is gone, do I still want the rule?

The honest answers often look like: “My dad enforced this because of something that happened in his family in the 1970s, and I don’t actually know the specifics, and the situation he was trying to prevent is not a situation I’m anywhere near, and I’m still enforcing the rule anyway.”

Which is fine for monkeys. Less fine for a grown person with a prefrontal cortex.

The one line

If you keep nothing else from this post, keep this:

Not every rule you live by is yours. Some of them belong to monkeys who left the room a long time ago.

The sprinkler is probably gone. You can check. That is the whole post.

This is not clinical or medical advice. If you are struggling with your mental health, talk to a qualified professional. These are personal notes, worked through in my own words.