Is NOTHING Scared
Do you have a secret fantasy place... someplace safe you can dream about going when everything in life gets too overwhelming?I do.
My secret fantasy place is based on a secret passion... comparative psychology. Comparative psychology is the study of animal behavior in the hopes of learning more about human behavior. I, however, am part of a small minority that believes animals have rich emotional and psychology lives of their own. I believe they are worth studying for their own sake and if by chance we learn some that helps humanity great.
The pinnacle in this area has been Koko the gorilla. 30-some years ago a grad student, Dr. Francine "Penny" Patterson, started a four year project to teach sign language to a gorilla. Now, Koko has a vocabulary of over 1000 words. She has pets and shows extreme mourning when one
of her pets dies. She has likes and dislikes. She has favorite TV starts -- Mr. Rogers among them. I am amazed by Koko.When life gets too overwhelming -- I sometimes dream of giving up every in order to go work for Penny. I've thought about trying to repeat her experiment -- after all if her findings are valid a second experiment should be able to verify them.
But I recently heard something very depressing. MSNBC reported that The Gorilla Foundation settle a case out of court. An odd and disturbing case. Two women changed that Koko has a nipple fetish. The alleged that Penny forced them to show Koko their nipples saying their jobs would be in jeopardy if the didn’t. A third woman still has a case pending against the foundation.
Of course, the foundation has declared victory. They state in part, “The Gorilla Foundation believes that the dismissal of plaintiffs’ lawsuit confirms that the termination of Ms. Keller's and Ms. Alperin's employment with The Gorilla Foundation was entirely lawful, and that plaintiffs’ suit was without basis in fact or law.”
I’ll be honest here… I don’t know what happened. I don’t know if Koko has a nipple fetish or not. For me, right this very minute truth doesn’t matter. What matters is that the same old crap that happens in every day life has spilled over into my fantasy
utopia. Now when life is too overwhelming… I have no where to turn.
People suck. Maybe I’ll just get my own baby gorilla and go live in the wild somewhere…
posted by Liz at 11:25 PM
1 Comments:
We were discussing that in the office recently, in disbelief. VERY disturbing.
Those monkeys/apes/etc. are some very earthy creatures sometimes. But, we wondered... How do you discover that your ape has a nipple fetish? Perhaps it's the dress code that needs to be re-examined.
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