Hundredth Monkey Theory

You’ve probably heard something about this theory before. It is the idea that behaviors and ideas can spread among monkey populations that are physically cut off from each other. The theory has been discredited, at least according to several sources on the internet. But I’ve always taken the theory to mean that the same idea can occur to many individuals. It may not be exactly every hundredth monkey or human. But the takeaway to me is that there are very few original ideas. Ideas are in the ether. Sometimes we pluck them down and consider them. Sometimes we pluck them down and put them into actions. With the approximate 70,000 thoughts a human has each day of life, it seems like a statistical inevitability that different humans will just come up with the same ideas. Like most things, it just may not be provable.