Current Event: Drunken Monkey in Stockton!

Drunken Monkey

Today, October 28, 2011, Dr. Robert Dudley from UC Berkeley gave a seminar talk on "The Drunken Monkey: Is Alcoholism in Modern Humans an Evolutionary Hangover?" at the University of the Pacific's Biology Building. The Drunken Monkey hypothesis was first proposed by Dr. Dudley. "The drunken monkey hypothesis proposes that human attraction to ethanol may have a genetic basis due to the high dependence of the primate ancestor of Homo sapiens to fruit as a food source. Ethanol naturally occurs in ripe and overripe fruit and consequently early primates developed a genetically based attraction to the substance" (Wikipedia).



Although this event may appear to be an abnormal situation to do for my Confucian blog, this event is actually quite fitting for my blog. If Confucius were alive today in Stockton, he would definitely choose to attend Dr. Dudley's "Drunken Monkey" Seminar. Confucius would examine Dr. Dudley's seminar based on his own thinking because he is a person that loves learning and believes that any opportunity to learn is precious. This is an awesome example of Confucian ethics in action. As the students and professors are listening and paying attention to the lecturer regarding the "Drunken Monkey" talk, they are following the "li" (propriety). Additionally, Confucian learning is "the transmission of human culture from generation to generation." Confucian reflecting is "pondering, entertaining, imagining." To truly understand the point of the seminar talk, each of the audience member would have to be fully engaged in the Confucian thinking of "learning" and "reflecting."