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Intolerable
01-02-2007, 09:03 PM
A reoccuring line / though throughout the song is "Silly monkeys, give them thumbs..." ...correct me if I'm wrong, but aren't opposable thumbs one of the defining characteristics of monkeys? This has bugged me since I first heard the song.

Assuming I'm correct, is this some lazy research on Maynard's part, or what?

vesicapiscis
01-03-2007, 08:45 PM
A reoccuring line / though throughout the song is "Silly monkeys, give them thumbs..." ...correct me if I'm wrong, but aren't opposable thumbs one of the defining characteristics of monkeys? This has bugged me since I first heard the song.

Assuming I'm correct, is this some lazy research on Maynard's part, or what?


Yeah. Human and monkeys have this ability. To be able to take the thumb and move it to touch all other digits. I was reading somewhere that a monkey will have a tough time trying to pick up a needle quickly where a human would take little time at all.

Maybe I don't understand why you are being bugged by this? Why is it lazy research?

He stating that this separates them from other animals and look what they do with it.

Intolerable
01-04-2007, 04:42 PM
I am probably misunderstanding the lyrics then.

When I hear "Silly monkeys, give them thumbs (and) they form a club and beat their brother down" I take it to mean "give the monkeys thumbs (humans) and this is what they do with them." - implying that monkeys don't already have them.

Now that I look at it I can easily see it as meaning "We give these monkeys thumbs and this is what they do with them!"...which makes sense.

Probably disregard this post in that case.

InsolentBystander
01-05-2007, 10:18 AM
I think it just emphasises how humans act as though we haven’t evolved beyond monkeys. Like we’re wasting our human (god-given, as it were) talents. Instead of creating we’re destroying.

Legion
01-12-2007, 09:01 PM
we were given the gift of reason, the anatomy to accomplish great tasks and what do we do? we kill everything.

I Am Love
01-28-2007, 04:43 PM
I think it just emphasises how humans act as though we haven’t evolved beyond monkeys. Like we’re wasting our human (god-given, as it were) talents. Instead of creating we’re destroying.

exactly. the whole song, to me, just keeps driving that home... disbelievement. "look at what we're doing"

bassmaster
01-28-2007, 06:47 PM
Yeah. It's not meaning an actual monkey, but rather framing the perspective of humans as being animals, and angels being those of higher intelligence. Due to our behaviour over the millenia, we're little more than monkeys blessed with reason and free will, but our choices aren't displaying any kind of enlightenment a great deal of the time, even if the qualities we possess innately enlightened in nature.

Inner_Eulogy
02-02-2007, 11:21 AM
Yeah. It's not meaning an actual monkey, but rather framing the perspective of humans as being animals, and angels being those of higher intelligence. Due to our behaviour over the millenia, we're little more than monkeys blessed with reason and free will, but our choices aren't displaying any kind of enlightenment a great deal of the time, even if the qualities we possess innately enlightened in nature.

Agreed. IMO was always that he was referring to us humans as monkeys...like an insult to us that we of all the creatures inhabiting this planet with the most abilities to create and destroy foolishly choose to destroy and misuse our ability rather than use them to create and make things better...it's a reference to us being like barbaric cavemen when we have so much more potenetial than that, and look at what we waste it on...silly monkeys.