Chicken Banana Theory

Chicken Banana Theory

A man walks down the street and encounters another man. This other man believes he is a chicken, and promptly approaches the first man to inform him of this amid a series of chicken-noises. The first man acknowledges this, and hurries past.

Later, the first man is walking back along this same path and encounters the same man, though this time, the other man no longer believes that he is a chicken, but rather a banana.

This is an illogical transition– one cannot logically explain it by tracking the events that led to this mental transfiguration from chicken to banana. You cannot, for example, say that the man woke up thinking he was a chicken, had coffee, went to work, stood by the copier, and suddenly decided at that moment to become a banana. It does not follow any course of logic– it is the realm of insanity.

Consider then the deeper reasons for transition from chicken to banana. Did the man first believe he was a chicken to fulfill some need, then change his stance to banana as a fear response? Perhaps by embracing his status as “chicken,” he realized he was accepting some level of commitment to a new species, and chose to be a banana to escape said commitment. Perhaps this is not the first time he has believed he was a banana, and after experiencing life as a chicken for a short term, he feels the need to return to his native stance of banana, the decision either motivated by weighing the benefits or in response to fear stemming from his decision to become a chicken.

Or perhaps the insanity runs deeper. Perhaps the man simply changed his mental stance from chicken to banana for a subconscious reason, possibly a self-destructive reason, or even for no reason at all. Perhaps the man went from chicken to banana on a whim, feeling as if he were more in tune with the part of his mind that identifies with “banana” than that which identifies with “chicken.”

This of course precludes the question of why chicken and why banana? Why not salmon and raspberry? Canine and fig tree? Are chicken and banana two extremes in his mind? Two sides of the same coin? Could this not also apply to states of mind? Love v.s. the utter lack of it? Republican v.s. Democrat? Child v.s. adult? Joy v.s. fear? Logic v.s. insanity? How likely is it that chicken and banana are merely arbitrary functions of choice?

But then, who is to say that logic is the opposite of insanity. Is it insane to make illogical decisions? If we operate from the basis of illogical decisions still being sane ones, then perhaps the man’s transition from chicken to banana is not insane, but merely illogical. Perhaps logic is the language of insanity and the man’s transition from chicken to banana is as normal as the decision to do anything else illogical, such as trusting one’s gut in the face of heavy odds or mountains of evidence to the contrary. It’s highly illogical for the man to assume he is a chicken, and even more so for him to suddenly decide that he is a banana, but does that necessarily mean that he is wrong? Who is to say that, if he whole-heartedly believes he is a chicken or a banana, he is not?

And yet, does not logic prevail here? By looking at the man, we can easily tell that he is neither chicken nor banana, but a man, and merely insane. His transition from chicken to banana is entirely mental and has as much impact on the appearance of his physical body as the transition from politician to lawyer or lover to friend. It is a decision made by the man, for the man, in order to affect something that impacts the man directly. Perhaps he made the decision to change from chicken to banana to elicit a different set of responses from passerby, or perhaps only from the one man mentioned above. Perhaps he claimed he was a chicken first, thinking it was the more believable thing to claim, or to get something in return, and became banana later because the first man’s response frightened him. Perhaps if the first man claimed “I’m a chicken too!” the second man would go along with it until he decided he was a banana, at which point the argument might surface along the lines of “But, I thought you were a chicken, like me?” to which the insane man might respond “No, I’ve always been a banana, I just told you I was a chicken because I didn’t want to hurt your feelings. I’m not ready to be a chicken. I have to be a banana for a while first. Isn’t it normal for someone our age to want to be a banana? But don’t worry, you make a great chicken. I’m sure you’ll be able to find other chickens to hang with. I’ll keep you in mind if I ever decide to be a chicken again.”