5/6

"So I'm supposed to suddenly start worrying about six billion strangers? That's not even possible!"

That's right, it isn't possible. That's the point.
What is hard to understand is that it's also impossible for them to care about you.

That's why they don't mind stealing your stereo or vandalizing your house or cutting your wages or raising your taxes or bombing your office building or choking your computer with spam advertising diet and penis drugs they know don't work. You're outside their Monkeysphere. In their mind, you're just a vague shape with a pocket full of money for the taking.

Think of Osama Bin Laden. Did you just picture a camouflaged man hiding in a cave, drawing up suicide missions? Or are you thinking of a man who gets hungry and has a favorite food of yoghurt and honey and who had a childhood crush on a girl and who has athlete's foot and chronic headaches and loves volleyball? (He actually does)

Something in you, just now, probably was offended by that. You think there's an effort to build sympathy for the murderous fuck. Isn't it strange how simply knowing random human facts about him immediately tugs at your sympathy strings? He comes closer to your Monkeysphere, he takes on dimension.

@Reddscope

6/6

"You've used the word 'monkey' more than 50 times, but the same principle hardly applies. Humans have been to the moon. Let's see the monkeys do that."

It doesn't matter. It's just an issue of degree.

There's a reason why legendary monkeytician Charles Darwin and his assistant, Jeje (pronounced "heyhey") Santiago deduced that humans and chimps were evolutionary cousins.

As sophisticated as we are (compare our advanced sewage treatment plants to the chimps' primitive technique of hurling the feces with their bare hands), the inescapable truth is we are just as limited by our mental hardware.

The primary difference is that monkeys are happy to stay in small groups and rarely interact with others outside their monkey gang. This is why they rarely go to war, though when they do it is widely thought to be hilarious.

Humans, however, require cars and oil ,a job,school and worldwide internets and, most importantly, governments. All of these things take groups larger than 150 people to maintain effectively.

Thus, we routinely find ourselves functioning in bunches larger than our primate brains are able to cope with.

This is where the problems begin. we are simultaneously supporting and resenting each other. We bitch out loud about our soul-sucking job as an anonymous face on an assembly line, while at the exact same time riding in a car that only an assembly line could have produced.

It's a constant contradiction that has left us pissed off and joining informal wrestling clubs in basements.

This is why I think it was with a great burden of sadness that Darwin turned to his assistant and lamented, "Jeje, we're the monkeys."

@Reddscope

30,000 people visit the Louvre Museum everyday, and around 10 Million visitors in total per year.

80% of them are there to see the Mona Lisa.

Assuming the tourists are non EU, The price of a ticket to visit the museum is €32.

Multiplying the ticket price for the number of toursits that visit the Mona Lisa would be 32 by 8 Million which is 256 Million Euros.

The French Government is assumed to make that much just from the Mona Lisa.

@Reddscope

But what makes the Mona Lisa that special?

Even though looks are subjective, she isn't as gorgeous as the books that were written, the songs that were made about how beautiful she is.

We often encounter "She looks like Mona Lisa " in movies,books and songs. It became sort of like a compliment, a standard on how a woman should look like.

There are far more impressive paintings than the Mona Lisa. If its about Techniques and overall aesthetics, The Mona Lisa wouldn't have a chance to stand out.

so Why is she famous??

@Reddscope

The first reason being "The Seinfeld Effect"

Seinfeld is a 1989 sitcom. Before Seinfeld, sitcoms believed that to keep an audience interested for 30 minutes, the characters needed to be facing a " do or die" situation(in a comedic sense) like doing all sorts of things, a try hard to make people laugh.

The plot had to be a problem that could actually disrupt their lives. For instance, a male character pretending to be a nanny to steal jewelries from a rich family and the comedy happening through out the process.

@Reddscope

However Seinfeld, didn't have a secret double life to make people laugh or being chased by polices for comedy.

Seinfeld had an episode were George Costanza tries to get a cheap massage or jerry trying to figure out whether the girl he was dating was once in commercial. They were minor frustrations that happen through life.

The audience loved the series around when it came out In fact it pulled in over 30 million viewer every single week by its final season.

The movies made for the next 3 decades like The office ,Friends and many more sitcoms came in with the same format. They had a simple casual environment with every episode being about comedy through small lies and petty actions.

I f you had to watch Seinfeld now you might find it cliche. You have seen dozens of such comedy and you would find it generic.  but it's the foundation to the comedy movies that were made now.

@Reddscope

Before Mona Lisa was painted Renaisance artists, had no idea about "The Sfumato"

a drawing technqiue invented  by Davinci,often called " painting without lines in a manner of smoke" Instead of painting sharp lines to separate the background from the subject, the chin from the neck or the eye from the face, It uses a soft, hazy and gradual blending to transition.

even though people were amazed by the Mona Lisa during those years, many artists have learned the technique and used it for decades resulting in the paintings we see now having sfumato and we are no longer impressed by Mona Lisa since there's a bunch of paintings with the same technique.


@Reddscope

The second reason is that the painting was drawn by Davinci.

A genius,Master of everything. A musician, anatomist who disected more than 30 human corpses and recorded his findings, a military weapon inventor, architect,sculptor,engineer and many more. Mind you he mastered these careers more than a person who have mastered one of these in his lifetime.

Of all his greatest inventions The Mona Lisa had been with him for over 13 years until the day he died. Maybe this is why the painting is famous. Simply because it was painted by Davinci.

for the same reason why Michael Jackson's thriller jacket was sold for $1.8 million. Its a leather jacket but Michael once wore it.

@Reddscope