What happened after the Monkeys and Ice water spray experiment?

Most of us have heard of the Monkey, Banana, and Water spray experiment.

Is there a chance of a better ending? How can companies transform employee behavior when caught in this vicious cycle?
1) Change the standards

A major lesson from history is that no heroes are responsible for their success. Not entirely. The factor that governs what it means to be successful is the prevailing standards. The culture just follows suit. I wrote this poem a few months back.
The play of chance, the hand of times
Distracts our eyes from what it hides
Hunter in an Industrial Age
Writer facing the Dinosaur's rage
Flip the centuries, the Heroes fall
Yet the world is snared by illusion's trawl

All we know is the scale of standards
Pity what’s different, judge what threatens
Fear the outlaws or discredit with slanders
Worship the Heroes, scorn the strays
And continue till time tilts the scales

The crux is, the company is still in charge of introducing the variables into the experiment.
What happens if you introduce a new ladder and dangle a bunch of bananas on a rope? This will confuse the monkeys. When a monkey gets the courage to reach up, offer this monkey a new Reward too as a Bonus. Introduce multiple ropes with bananas so that there are enough Bananas for the monkeys to reach.
Lesson: Fine tune the standards of Rewards and enable people to set their own goals

2) Change the setting

The Organization is still in control of the environment
Grab 2 monkeys and place these monkeys in a different setting. Have a new trainer monkey to reinforce good behavior. Protect the trainer monkey and punish with ice water spray if the monkeys try to disrupt. Keep doing this for a week. After the monkeys learn this new behavior, put them back in their old setting. This time, place a barrier between the 3 monkeys that remained in the old setting and the 2 monkeys that learned new behavior. Repeat the experiment for a week.
Lesson: Train people and leverage them to influence others

3) Change the consequences

The pack of monkeys continues this behavior because they don’t see a negative consequence for their behavior. Bring a new monkey and introduce the ice water spray whenever they try to pull down the new one from climbing up the ladder. Continue the experiment till the monkeys learn about consequences. Go back to experiment 1 and change the standards. . When the standards change, culture follows.
Lesson: Evaluate people with the right goals and help them understand the concept of consequences to justify their potential.

Why emotions carve the political landscape in Tamilnadu?

Self immolations in Tamil Nadu when ADMK supremo Jayalalitha was arrested raised a lot of questions.  This was certainly not the first instance. A similar account can be found in the Wikipedia page on MGR "His death sparked off a frenzy of looting and rioting all over the state... The police had to resort issuing shoot-at-sight orders. Tamilians from Bangalore rushed to Madras in trains to see the mortal remains of MGR. Government had announced free train facility for this visit. The violence during the funeral alone left 29 people dead and 47 police personnel badly wounded. This state of affairs continued for almost a month across Tamil Nadu. Around one million people followed his remains, around 30 followers committed suicide and people had their heads tonsured"

Why emotions carve the political landscape in Tamilnadu?

Language plays a major role in the way we think and behave much more than we give it credit for.

A few years back, I read a study by Lera Broditsky, Professor in Stanford on how language determines thought process, values, knowledge, and behavior. HOW DOES OUR LANGUAGE SHAPE THE WAY WE THINK?

Her research includes her experience with Kuuk Thaayorre, a tribe in Australia. Their language has a lot of spatial words that are imperative to constructing a sentence (Equivalent to 'Move your cup to south, south west', 'Your north-west leg' etc). This forces them to stay alert on spatial attributes because they cannot communicate without that. She found them to have a very high level of spatial cognition.

Broditsky conducted an experiment asking people to arrange shuffled pictures to show temporal progression (E.g. a man aging). She found that native English speakers arranged the pictures from left to right and Hebrew speakers tend to arrange the pictures from right to left. People from the tribe Kuuk Thaayorre arranged the pictures from east to west. That is, when they were seated facing south, the cards went left to right. When they faced north, the cards went from right to left etc. and they were always aware of their spatial orientation.

Tamil as a language encourages valor, sacrifice, loyalty, idealism etc. at the cost of survival. If a native tamil speaker is not exposed to any other language, the language imparts such values with a higher intensity.

Learning a new language or being exposed to other languages has a unique way of balancing us. Allowing our brain to consider different ways of thinking tempers intense beliefs.

Tamilians are fiercely loyal about their language. The unique vocabulary and the values it espouses shape one's thinking. Tamil was my second language in school and I found it intoxicating. The Heroes of Tamil literature valued Courage and Truth above everything else. They were always ready to lay down their life for a cause. Shrewdness was considered cowardice. The followers of the thalaivan (Head) followed him with intense loyalty. Death was the only choice if survival meant dishonor. Tamilians who know additional languages are less intense.

Learning a new language rewires the brain. Hopefully, the new generation of Tamils who are exposed to other languages find a way to rise above jingoism.

A phenomenon called Bruno Mars!

I am probably late to the party and I know that I am using the term 'probably' rather loosely. I just discovered this phenomenon called Bruno Mars. I don't care for music much. I hate how playing music in the car seems like a normal thing to do or how it sneaks in from my neighbor's house some mornings. The rare times I do enjoy music are when the lyrics resonate with me or when the voice shares more than technique. Old Hymns move me and that has to do with the words and not music. I love 'Les Miserables' for its content.The exceptions are Bob Marley and Michael Jackson -not regular though. There is something haunting in their voice that reveals their inner persona. After listening to 'Grenade' I added one more to the list : Bruno Mars! Intense!

The tale of a little cyst

I had a minor surgery to remove a sebaceous cyst this thursday. By some strange coincidence, I also had a very rough week at work. After my holidays, this cyst had been bothering me a lot that I couldn't focus well at work and my work didn't take it too kindly either. Wednesday I had to work through the night and I went straightaway to the hospital on thursday for the surgery. My cyst was deep and the local anaesthesia didn't work well for me. To add to all this drama, the little cyst had a mind of it's own and broke within. This had to be scratched out so that nothing is left behind. It wasn't a pleasant feeling to be cut and poked/scratched inside. The poor surgeon had to bear me whimpering like a child.

Today was my first bandage dressing after the surgery and I found myself complaining a lot.

Then, noticed something

Genesis 39
19 When his master heard the story his wife told him, saying, "This is how your slave treated me," he burned with anger. 20 Joseph's master took him and put him in prison, the place where the king's prisoners were confined. But while Joseph was there in the prison, 21 the LORD was with him; he showed him kindness and granted him favor in the eyes of the prison warden. 22 So the warden put Joseph in charge of all those held in the prison, and he was made responsible for all that was done there. 23 The warden paid no attention to anything under Joseph's care, because the LORD was with Joseph and gave him success in whatever he did.

I used to think of Joseph's imprisonment as his distress time that led to his blessing as second to the ruler. It's not very easy to relate a phase like this as a blessing. But the fact is, even when Joseph was in prison, he was blessed!