A wise university lecturer once told me this story...
If you take 3 hungry monkeys and put them in a cage with some bananas in the corner they will undoubtedly head straight for the bananas to eat them. However, if you stand outside the cage with a fire hose and spray all the monkeys each time any of them try to eat the bananas, they will eventually learn to stay away. The key to this rather unfriendly experiment is that you must give all the monkeys a good hosing each time any of them try to eat the bananas.
Now and again one of the monkeys might decide to try his luck again with the bananas, but the other monkeys will beat him back, knowing that if he tries to eat the bananas they will get wet. Eventually the monkeys will learn the rules and stay away from the bananas. At this point you can get rid of the fire hose, the monkeys have learned their lesson.
Next, you replace one of the original monkeys with a new monkey who doesn't know the rules. He will head straight for the bananas in the corner, only to be beaten up by the 2 banana fearing monkeys. Remember, they don't want him to go near the bananas for fear of getting hosed.
Eventually the new monkey will learn the rules of the cage and wont go near the bananas, if he does the others will beat him up. In fact, he will even learn to join in on the beatings every time another monkey goes near the bananas. He's not sure why, but those are the rules of the cage.
Remember, this new monkey has never been sprayed with the fire hose, he has learned the rules from the other 2 monkeys.
If you continue this process until all of the original monkeys have been replaced, you will end up with a cage full of monkeys all of which are too scared to go near the bananas in the corner. But none of them know why.
Too many people behave like this. They follow along in life never stopping to think and challenge the ideas presented to them. They do things because "that's they way they've always done them" or because "that's what everyone else is doing".
Well, we just saw what happens when you do that... you miss out on the bananas.
Think for yourself and question the norm once in a while.