In 1950, an American ethologist named John Calhoun created a series of experiments to test the effects of overpopulation on the behaviour of social animals. The animals which Calhoun chose for his experiments where mice (and later on rats). He chose rodents as these reproduce rapidly thus allowing him to observe the development of several generations of mice in a relatively short space of time.
Calhoun and his researchers found that in a space-limited/resource unlimited environment, the population of mice would explode; peak-out and then collapse to extinction. This test was replicated several times and it was found that these led to the same outcome each time. The reason for this phenomenon was found to derived from social decay which worsened with each generation. The social decay led to unrest in the environment, which in turn led to sub replacement fertility. It was concluded that nature has a limit in which social animals can interact.
John Calhoun’s experiments gained world-wide recognition and his expertise was sought after by government bodies such as NASA. They present a useful yet grim insight into what could be our own future, for no matter how many times Calhoun repeated the experiment, the results led to the same inevitable conclusion: extinction.
The Experiment
His team created a comfortable environment ideal for the mice. This was achieved by fitting a pen (box-shaped enclosure) with unlimited food and water. The room had space for up to 3000 mice. The room was closed off so that neither the mice could get out nor predators get in. By removing the risk of predation, the mice could grow in an environment free from external stress. The room was then compartmentalised into different units, this allowed Calhoun to identify how different social groupings formed.
Four pairs of mice were screened for diseases (four male and four female). Upon verifying that they were healthy they were introduced into the enclosure.
Calhoun observed the mice population over the course of the experiment. He noted down behavioural changes and population numbers. He found that there were four distinct phases of population change observed during the experiment. The first stage, named “Strive”, was a phase in which the mice explored and adjusted to their new habitat, set territories and created nests.
The second stage was named the ”exploit period”. During this stage the mice population exploded. Calhoun observed that some compartments became more populated than others, and therefore some units used more resources. It was also observed that some units started to become crowded.
The third phase was named the ”equilibrium phase”. During this phase, the mice population peaked at 2200 individuals, although there was space for 3000. During the third phase Calhoun observed the collapse of the mice civilisation. He noted that the new generations were inhibited since most space was already socially defined.
The mice showed different types of social dysfunctions. Some mice became violent. Males fought each other for acceptance, those that where defeated withdrew. Some males became repeated targets of attacks.
Calhoun had noted during his experiments:
“Many [female mice] were unable to carry pregnancy to full term, or to survive delivery of their litters if they did. An even greater number, after successfully giving birth, fell short in their maternal functions. Amongst the males the behaviour disturbances ranged from sexual deviation to cannibalism and from frenetic over-activity to a pathological withdrawal from which individuals would emerge to eat, drink and move about only when other members of the community were asleep. The social organisation of the animals showed equal disruption…”
[…]
“The common source of these disturbances became most dramatically apparent in the populations of our first series of three experiments, in which we observed the development of what we called a behavioural sink. The animals would crowd together in greatest number in one of the four interconnecting pens in which the colony was maintained. As many as 60 of the 80 mice in each experimental population would assemble in one pen during periods of feeding. Individual mice would rarely eat except in the company of other mice. As a result extreme population densities developed in the pen adopted for eating, leaving the others with sparse populations.”
[…]
“…In the experiments in which the behavioural sink developed, infant mortality ran as high as 96 percent among the most disoriented groups in the population.” – John Calhoun
Newer generations born in the now dysfunctional mouse utopia became withdrawn, spending their days grooming obsessively and dedicating their time solely to eating , drinking and sleeping. This generation, for all the emphasis they placed on grooming, would not reproduce. Moreover, these mice were noted to be unintelligent compared to previous generations.
“…the limit Calhoun imposed on his population [of mice] was space — and as the population grew, this became increasingly problematic. As the pens heaved with animals, one of his assistants described the rodent utopia as having become hell.”
The fourth phase was the decline. In this phase the population plummeted. The last mouse died 600 days after the experiment began.
What Can Humans Learn From Mice?
The limiting factor of Calhoun’s experiment’s was space. As time transpired, the mice passed on the negative behavioural attitudes to the next generation, and these, subsequently passed them on to the next generation, with the addition of new unsocial attitudes. What is it that makes space, and lack there off, such a decisive factor in the development of social animals? And what are the consequences for population condensation?
Notice how the evolution of the behaviours displayed by the mice, parallel those of the people of Easter Island, as explored by Quintus Curtius in his ROK article The Power Of Choice. The people of Easter Island are a historical example of a human version of the mice utopia experiment:
“When humans first arrived there about A.D 900, it [Easter Island] was densely forested, and was capable of sustaining numerous tribes and a relatively high population.”
The conditions of the islanders were similar to that of Calhoun’s mice. On an isolated island, with a lush environment, a group of humans settlers arrived on boats to Easter Island. The settlers could thrive with almost endless resources without natural predators nor external factors of stress.
With time, the island became over populated. Quintus explains what befell the Islanders:
“The islanders then began to compete with each other more and more fiercely for an ever-declining volume of natural resources; vendettas multiplied, intertribal warfare flared, and a pall of hostility and fear descended on the island. As the trees vanished, the islanders were unable to build boats to escape to other islands: they became trapped in their own hell, doomed to fight each other in perpetuity for the last crumbs that the barren land could offer. Eventually the islanders began to starve, and feed—literally—off each other. As wild meats became unavailable, and escape off the island became impossible, the natural consequences followed. Cannibalism stalked the island, animating its folklore and infecting its archaeological sites. Perhaps the islanders compensated for their misery by focusing more and more on the empty ritual of building and raising statutes, as their means of sustenance melted away.”
This is reminiscent of the ”behavioural sink” observed in the mouse utopia. It also resembles the abhorrent behaviours observed in Calhoun’s experiments resemble several shocking stories from recent times. Is it be possible that it’s social decay rather than a shortage of food that led the people of Easter Island to near extinction?
There are natural limitations on the degrees of social interaction we can manage on a daily basis, just like with the mice. In humans this is referred to as “Dunbar’s number“, and it has been observed to be true in social media sites.
Whilst it could be argued that this could not happen to humans; as we have large swathes of unpopulated land, it has to be noted that at the peak population, only half the colony space was being used. The mice had a tendency to congregate and overpopulate certain sectors of space, something reminiscent of modern day cities.
Modern Cases Of Behavioural Sinks In Humans
It is hard to compare the mouse utopia to the human world because, for obvious reasons, there is no human version of the mouse utopia experiment. Experiments are carried under controlled conditions to mitigate sources of error. However we can compare modern adverse trends in human society to the behavioural sink observed in the mouse utopia experiment. Below are some examples of behavioural sinks in Humans compared to those of the mice utopia.
Population Condensation
Case Study: Germany (Also applicable to: Spain, Japan.)
The first sign of trouble in the mice pen was the crowding observed in some of the units.
In Germany, the Spiegel reports of a growing problem of population condensation in it’s large cities and of ghost towns in rural areas. Rents are soaring in Munich and Hamburg while in other cities apartments stand abandoned.
Whilst this example is not a perfect representation of the mouse utopia, we can make some comparisons. The mice pen was compartmentalised. Similarly, Germany is divided into several regions all with ample resources. In Germany, some regions are becoming more crowded, this is driven by labour demand in some regions and lack of labour demand in others.
Prediction: I predict that as cities become crowded, some of the behaviours observed by Calhoun will become apparent. These will include social unrest and lower fertility rates.
Population condensation was a major cause of social unrest in the mouse utopia. Time will tell if this will be the case in Germany.
Depopulation (failure to achieve replacement fertility)
World wide phenomenon.
Case Study: Republic of Korea [South Korea], Japan
The main correlation between the mouse utopia experiment and our times is depopulation.
Depopulation led to the extinction of the mice. It is fascinating yet terrifying to think that without the hardships of life, a species cannot survive. If we think about this from a human perspective, we see that our struggle for survival unites us as a species. Without hardship our life’s become pointless and shallow.
If we look at South Korea’s fertility rate per woman, which stands at 1.24, we can predict that this nation of 50 million will peak out by 2017. From there the population is expected to decrease to decrease to 42 Million by 2050.
The source of this decline is lack of jobs and thus lack of income needed to rear children. Like in many other nations, the job ladder is stuck as older people retire later in life. South Korea, like Japan, had a booming job’s market which guaranteed lifetime employment. Sadly, this is no longer the case. The job’s from the cities attracted many away from the country side and created a population concentration in cities such as Seoul.
Depopulation presents our species with an ever-growing problem since sub replacement fertility is becoming more prevalent in the developed world.
If we look at Japan, we see that Japan now faces a precipitous depopulation. Depopulation is estimated to drive Japan’s population to 87 million, down from 127 million by 2050. In economic terms it would be catastrophic as Japan’s has an advance welfare state like that of the United Kingdom and depends on having a larger tax base than a retiree base. The problem is getting so out of hand in Japan that the Japanese government is even considering immigration (a big no-no over there).
Sub replacement fertility is also being noted in the Republic of Korea, Spain, Germany, China, Russia, US, UK, Denmark, Sweden and Norway.
Depopulation is likely to be an effect of the social breakdown and not a cause.
Senseless Aggression
Word wide phenomenon.
Case Study: Easter Island.
Aggression is an obvious aspect in both the mice utopia and the East Island case. It is also easily comparable to our society in present day. Whilst violence has always existed amongst our species, this had always been attributed to a range of factors such as poverty or inter-tribal warfare (aggression due to lack or resources) and not as a factor of population condensation (aggression despite of abundant resources).
The first signs of trouble in the mice utopia were male mice fighting for acceptance. This appears to have led a spiral of other societal problems.
“…there where three times as young mice aspiring to enter social groups as there were vacancies in socially established groups…”
Aggression is the cause of the societal breakdown. What was the cause of the aggression? As observed, a lack of space, both physically and socially, which sets into motion a series of events that led to the outcome of extinction.
Breakdown Of Gender Roles
Developed world phenomenon.
Case Study: USA, Japan
At ROK, we place a large importance on gender roles. Looking at this subject from a perspective of another species may give us some further insight on the topic. We have observed that depopulation is an effect, so what is the cause? Perhaps there is more than one cause. The behavioural sink observed in the mouse utopia showed several abnormal social behaviours.
In the male mice, a limited space and a boom in population caused the males to fight more to be accepted. Since not all mice can be alpha males, the losers withdrew. With excess males fighting for dominance, older males gave up, leaving the females to fend for the family. These would then become increasingly aggressive and some even began attacking their own offspring.
Calhoun noted that as time progressed “…mothers fell short of maternal expectations”. In recent years there have been an increasing amount of cases [1], [2], [3], [4] of child neglect and abuse by human mothers that have made it to national headlines. It is not hard to speculate that there are many more we have not heard. In Australia, police have released data that attribute half of the nation’s infanticides to their mothers.
Since these are the more notorious cases which the media publishes, the less extreme cases go unnoticed, under reported or unreported in the media (in the last few decades there have been a string of stories in the media, which when examined as a whole tells us that women are starting to lose their natural instincts for nurture). We know that women in developed nations are suppressing maternal instincts, either intrinsically or extrinsically. It is also becoming more common for women to seek a sex-fueled lifestyle, something that was also observed in the mouse utopia.
“…the mice became more promiscuous…mice would roam around attacking others or mounting them irrespective of gender…”
“…phase C, the incidence of conception in females declined and the resorption in foetuses increased. Maternal behaviour was disrupted. Some mothers in desperate searches for quieter areas abandoned young that fell on the way…” – Tragedy in Mouse Utopia, Dr.J.R Vallentine
As the behaviour in the pen deteriorated, females would abandon their offspring leaving them to fend for themselves. With no parents around to teach them how to be well adjusted mice,
“…prematurely rejected, first by their fathers, then by their mothers, and then by established groups in the community, the young grew up without knowing how to behave, personally or socially as mice…” – Tragedy in Mouse Utopia, Dr.J.R Vallentine
Gender roles are vital in a social species, without that the break down of these lead to sub replacement fertility, depopulation, and finally, extinction.
Withdrawal
Case Study: Japan
“Individuals would only emerge to eat and sleep when the rest were asleep.” When I read this, the first thing that came to my mind was the Hikikomori. It’s a term used to refer to a reclusive adolescent who is too introverted to function in society. These youth are so socially inept that they shut themselves indoors and only venture out at night to stock up on groceries. This is a phenomenon that has been occurring for 20 years but that is only recently coming to light in Japan.
The Hikikomori are estimated to number a million. Something that has alarmed the Japanese government who have been unable to tackle an issue they do not fully understand. In Japan, an entire generation of young Japanese have been born into a society in where all space is already socially defined just like in the mice utopia were “the new generations were inhibited since most space was socially defined”.
However this trend is not exclusive to Japan. Japan is however a very close approximation to a mice utopia experiment for humans just like Easter island. Under stress, these boys (and men) have been impaired by a stressed and dysfunctional society. Withdrawal is a cause for depopulation and the effect of an over stressed society which is in turn caused by the behavioural sink.
The Beautiful Ones
Case Study: Japan
There is another social ill in Japan that is comparable to Calhoun’s mice. These are the grass eaters (Soshoku kei Danshi ) of Japan. The term, “grass eater”, refers to males who have no interests in seeking relationships with the opposite sex. The media and the manosphere has confused these guys with whatever pre-conceptions they may have had. For example, the BBC documentary “No Sex please, we are Japanese“, explores the phenomenon with bias and poor journalism. So to ensure we don’t fall for the same pre-conceptions allow me to reiterate that the grass eaters are men who have no interest in pursuing relationships with the opposite sex. They are not homosexuals, asexual’s, otaku nor Hikikomori.
The difference between grass eaters and the Hikikomori is that the Soshoku kei Danshi are withdrawing from relationships and the Hikikomori are withdrawing from society all together. Grass eaters are not asexual, the prefer the vast array of porn available to them. Many grass eaters, although not all, are metro-sexual. These are guys who spend a lot of time and money into personal grooming. Once again this is not applicable to all grass eaters.
Some grass eaters show resemblance to the “Beautiful ones”, spending their time “…[obsessively] grooming, eating and sleeping….[and]…not reproducing”. The correlation appears to be that individuals are not conforming to a stressed societal model and are opting out of relationships and a male gender role. The grass eaters have become so numerous that is has pushed some Japanese girls to initiate the courtship. This phenomenon is most pronounced in Japan but is applicable to other developed nations.
In the Republic of Korea, 10% of men wear make up. In other developed nations, the “beautiful ones” are the vapid and shallow celebrity and beautify obsessed youth. It is possible that grass eaters could become a cause of depopulation and that is caused by the behavioural sink.
Conclusion
The mice utopia experiment presents us with a stark vision of our present and our future. As time progresses we will see more evidence that we are heading for a decline in population which is largely driven by social decay.
Through history we have developed an anthropocentric world view. This is folly. Humans are animals—highly advanced animals, yet animals nonetheless. Regardless of what we may think of ourselves, or how we may try to dissociate ourselves from the rest of the animal kingdom, the rules of nature that apply to mice often apply to us. Not learning or accepting the results of these experiments can only be detrimental for us as a species.
Social animals appear to be regulated by intrinsic behavioural factors. The question is if there is a nature kill switch for a species that has no predators. Calhoun concluded that the stress from social interaction caused the disturbances in behaviour seen in his experiments. If we truly stand apart from the rest of the animal kingdom, we ought to be able to avoid the same pitfalls. What is certain is that unless humans collectively apply some soul-searching, we will fall for the mouse trap.
Read More: The Power Of Choice
Some interesting ideas here. It is tough to extrapolate to humans since our environments are somewhat fluid and porous. I wonder if they ever ran these experiments with two separate habitats that were suddenly connected? Would one colony attack the other and change the overall balance?
Calhoun, towards the end of the colony, added some extra male mice (healthy) as there were too many females to males. Ill dig out the data.
Fascinating article. Enough food for thought for the day.
One thing I didn’t understand was that you said this led to extinction. Why would they go to extinction when there is unlimited resources? Im assuming the remaining mice would continue to eat and start the breeding process over. Did Calhoun cut the food supply?
Also other research shows that there is a higher incidence of mental illnes in urban rather than rural areas in humans.
The food and water supply was unlimited. Social cohesion broke apart as the population peaked, when this occurred, males fought constantly, females became aggressive, new litters grew without parents and stop reproducing. Without role models, new generations became inhibited and did not know how to act like mice.
I’d say extinction was the cumulative result of reduced reproduction, individuals dropping out of society, violence etc, until the whole ‘tribe’ perished without generating enough of a new generation to replace them.
It’s a sobering thought: a tribe can end up extinguishing itself even with unlimited resources, just because it degenerates to the point of not being able to function anymore.
This also seems to point out that personal space and functional inter personal relationships are as much vital resources as food and water, when it comes to the long term viability of a society. In other words it’s not enough to just have sustenance. The social system itself must work well enough to avoid the group self destructing.
“On day 560, a little more than eighteen months into the experiment, the population peaked at 2,200 mice and its growth ceased. A few mice survived past weaning until day six hundred, after which there were few pregnancies and no surviving young. As the population had ceased to regenerate itself, its path to extinction was clear. There would be no recovery, not even after numbers had dwindled back to those of the heady early days of the Universe. The mice had lost the capacity to rebuild their numbers—many of the mice that could still conceive, such as the “beautiful ones” and their secluded singleton female counterparts, had lost the social ability to do so. [b]In a way, the creatures had ceased to be mice long before their death—a “first death,” as Calhoun put it, ruining their spirit and their society as thoroughly as the later “second death” of the physical body.[/b]”
I think I just found the whole thing so hard to believe at first glance…
Amazing that their basic instincts could be bred out/interupted to such an extent that they can no longer reproduce properly… but alas… if this study is legit, there you have it.
In a word, “infertility”.
I remember reading somewhere that homosexuality is an evolutionary technique to avoid overpopulation in urban areas. It makes sense now after reading this great article – thank you!
Also, it’s been observed that rodents tend toward same gender mating when too populous.
can you link?
Thank you very much, I thought this topic would be of interest on the ROK
That homosexuality is an evolutionary adaptation to over-population is a very commonly held belief in Japan.
Terrifying food for thought here. Could this also be the case for sentient life in the galaxy? Maybe that’s why we have virtually not detected any forms of advanced civilizations on other planets because they drove themselves into extinction. I shudder to think of what would happen to the human race in the next 1000 years to come…
We must get off planet or the less advanced in our species will annihilate us.
Where I live (Toronto Canada), I shit you not, the only people my age with kids are crackheads and the mentally ill.
Everyone else is either in grad school or trying to find money… Including myself.
That reminds me of something else I wrote about, perhaps a bit off topic. Or maybe a human version of “social space already defined” for the new human generations. In a post, I pondered on the prospect of whether jobs and homes, and the lack theroff, are inhibbiting new generations from accesing the basic needs to start a family. In London, prices have gone mad in the housing sector, leaving many unable to buy a house or, if renting, from being able to save money.
I think Captain Capitalism (Aaron Clarey) goes into a bit of detail on this topic in his book “Enjoy the Decline” and his other books. He talks about the housing bubble coupled with economic/financial recession, and the simultaneous movement towards socialism.
At the same time we’re experiencing an education bubble as people are dishing out loads of cash on degrees that may or may not help them obtain employment that will reasonably return their investment… further into their adult years…
I can vouche for myself… growing up I assumed fatherhood would be part of my life.. It didn’t really occur to me until recently the difficulty in becoming financially able to start a middle class family. Worse still… now I’m paranoid about a wife exploding said hypothetical family because she is “dissatisfied”… and from experience… I know there are no expectations on her.
I’ve been kinda pissed off all day thinking about RedPill to be honest… I’m heading to the gym…
Great Article Mark… truly a thought-provoking RoK piece…
I think the more we bring in actual science/history into RedPill philosophy we can divorce it from the realm of opinion, anecdote, and “manosphere” and develop a well argued agenda.
lack of income is not stopping people from families from living there. A somoli that doesn’t speak any English & can not read in any language was given a home that would cost over 10K a month in American money. Since I don’t want this held up in moderation
search: Somali family on benefits handed keys to £2million luxury ‘council’ home a stone’s throw from where Tony Blair used to live
I am aware of this story
Of course the people paying taxes to support these 3rd world scum are trying to save up money to live in a nice safe neighborhood to raise kids.
Why mince words? We all know who you’re talking about.
Overpopulation is a leftist myth. The world is full of open spaces. Even if you are being cramped it’s far less cramped then out ancestors dealt with often all fucking in the same room. Now we have our own rooms etc. Very interesting experiment although it would be interesting to see it done with chimps.
Overpopulation has to do with resources required for sustainment. Land space available can be plentiful (and it is) but take away water and we’d perish.
There is a hard limit with water. I’m not sure exactly what the theoretical limit is but it would include all the plant and animals we need and the water we need. Also it’s quite clear that the US could do without an ever increasing population. Same with China.
Hell if it wasn’t for all the illegals CA wouldn’t have water problems now.
You are missing the point. The experiment set up a control factor and a variable. It’s valid experimental science.
It’s disturbing to see that a species requires a predator and to see the effects of removing said predator.
This is why I think the western states need to get medieval on less advanced areas and exterminate. Like Daleks.
True. Let’s start with everything above London.
stuff London, I lived in the north and these people are the real English. They are polite and friendly, go north of Hertfordshire and you will notice how the difference in courtesy (genuine and not feigned)
You have a point. Although London pretty much carries the rest of the country economically speaking.
I’ve read London taxes the rest of the country and spends it all on London, for example the Olympics and other state sponsored developments, leaving the rest of the country out in the cold and undeveloped. True?
No. London doesn’t tax anyone. Individual boroughs of London have tax authority over their boroughs only. Since the North of England is essentially socialist then obviously the productive South must be taxed to fund the socialist North by the UK Government.
Londonistan should be purged first.
You mean after foreigners destroyed docks around the rest of the nations so goods would have to go thru theirs?
Don’t be silly.
There definitely needs to be a selective cleansing (not talking about Hitler selective).
Survival of the fittest tells us that the most fit to survive in nature does and reproduces, passing along those gene’s that allow them to be more successful than the other guy. With the advancement of medical science and our feel good attitude we are keeping people around that have no business reproducing. This further dilutes the gene pool for humans creating a species that, take that away, is unfit to survive in nature and just adds to the problem of resource management. Cut off the dead weight in the human population so we become genetically sound and gain more resources.
Survival of the fittest hasn’t stalled. Most average people are living a vastly different lifestyle to the elite. When shit hits the fan, the average will be first to go.
The predator effect was the free market without a “social safety net”. You worked and produced, or you lived under a bridge until you died. That was high incentive to not be complacent and worried about “grooming” all the time. It involved no force, no culling and no violation of human rights.
We’d do well to re-establish laissez faire capitalism. Won’t happen of course, we’re on the path to destruction with a jet engine propelling us towards the cliff.
I think the socialist/Statist bent of Western societies in a sense create the Mouse Utopia. It destroys the incentive to be productive both economically and in terms of building a family. Not only I am robbed of more than half my income but like many commentators on this site, I am extremely cautious of marriage due to the significant financial risks.
Thus the State provides an environment where the intelligent cannot wisely reinvest their income nor pass on their genes. The result is inferior progeny such as we see with the Mouse Utopia.
But didn’t the nice have a predator? I mean they were essentially living in the Matrix.
Malthusian overpopulation is increasingly becoming a myth. Namely that we as a whole earth population are in fact slowing down our rate of reproduction quite quickly. In total we are still using more of the earths resources than is sustainable at the current rate and will continue to do that for quite some time.
Every major Western country is currently not reproducing at replacement rates. The only one that comes close is Isreal. Other Western economies that are all built upon perpetual growth (Capitalism) as the fundamental premise are all in for shocks as the current baby boom demographic wave sloshes through their population. Steadily increasing entitlements be they social security or publicly funded health care and medicine costs are going to keep rising. In turn there will be a smaller percentage of the population of working age that can be taxed enough to support those entitlements for the older portion of the population as almost none of the governments have actually saved anything to pay for it, they simply rely on current revenues.
Globally the world is becoming highly urbanized. As families move to cities the economic value of children plummets and actually simply becomes a liability. If little Jane and Johnny grow up and leave the home they do not contribute to the homes economic viability, rather they go out into the world and become their own economic unit with effectively no return for mum and dad as they would have been down on the farm. So there is an additional transfer of wealth from parents of children who make a massive investment in raising children to people without kids, the government and corporations who profit from free “human capital” in the form of functioning young people who participate in the economy. To be clear, people without kids will benefit from that human capital when they grow old and receive entitlements paid for by the taxes of those children they chose not to have.
Eventually those same children hit the productivity wall where they are taxed to such an extent that they say “fuck it” why bother? Innovation and hard work drops off quickly when their future is one of endentured servitude to the entitlements and debts of the previous generation(s).
Immigration only puts a finger in the hole of the dike of the fundamental capitalist requirement for a constantly growing population as advanced countries plunder the best human capital from other poorer countries (doctors driving cabs) and those immigrants more often than not come when they are already well into their peak tax paying years, so net net, they don’t add enough value to the system relative to what they will ask of it in their later lives.
As long as family units are not rewarded or compensated by society for making a massive investment in bringing a child, or ideally 2.1 children to full fruition as tax paying reasonably functioning citizens, most people and or couples will rightly detect that its potentially a raw deal and will simply not have children or certainly not have enough to maintain even replacement levels of population.
Western population decline is inevitable. There will be a great deal of unrest about the burdens placed on millenials and that generation in terms of the taxation required of them, and many corporations will have to either globalize to find market or figure out how to kill off their competition or figure out how to deal with a shrinking market base to survive.
It all makes me wonder whether, in order to for an advanced civilization (like ours) not to quickly collapse and revert to more primitive ways, it *must* venture into space and colonize other worlds within a reasonably short time span. If it does not, civilizational death is inevitable.
This is an absolute imperative for survival of the species. I don’t think overpopulation will be a problem. More likely some lunatic will unleash a nuclear war. We need to get off this planet before this happens.
Absolutely agree Conrad, and have thought as much to myself in the past. The space race was on full steam, then stopped on a dime when whinging hippies started doing the “If we can put a man on the moon, why can’t we feed the children” lament. The socialists were more than happy to step in and suck up the resources we need to get off this rock in a bleeding heart frenzy of effeminate “compassion”.
Probably it will kick off in Korea. Apparently Kim 3, once drunk at a party, ordered the shelling of Seoul. I think the source was Asia Press, but I can’t properly recall.
Agreed. Also, another part of the problem has been the socialist space race/program of both the US and USSR. This probably set us back decades.
Absolutely, it was the fact that the U.S. space effort was taxpayer funded that made it possible to defund it on a dime to appease unwashed, uneducated mongrels wearing paisley.
Hillary Clinton may as well be the culprit, if she gets elected to POTUS.
Being an author, I can see posts that are scheduled. There is a post coming up on Hillary. I can’t wait. (I can’t read others posts when on draft)
We could have been on Mars but we wasted resources trying to make the unequal equal.
The space race gave us a lot of tech advances, and answered a lot of questions. If anything we could have been on Mars getting more resources for what we spent on failing to get equality.
Consider not only what is seen but also what is not seen. Consider the tech advances we would have gained much sooner if the US and USSR had not diverted considerable resources from the best alternative. The space race was the ultimate broken window.
The ultimate broken window is trying to make unequal things equal. We walked on the moon when all the computers in the world had less computing power than a single smartphone. Yet blacks from families that earn over $200,000 a year have an SAT avg only 3 points higher than whites under $20,000 despite trillions wasted.
https://img.4plebs.org/boards/pol/image/1390/32/1390327949864.gif
Sorry mate I’m confused. Are you arguing for redistribution of citizens money into government programs or not? Because your criticism of welfare to black people seems to argue the opposite principle.
Ok. I’ll concede for a moment that Maltusian overpopulation is a myth.
What’s most shocking to me about this study is that there’s something in the mices’ social and genetic code that cause it to self-destruct even when most of the resource consuming population was gone. Since food and water, the essentials for physical surival, were never a factor in the decline, it was merely the social choices of the mice who either could not compete, or chose not compete with the established social society. Even when massive amounts of the population died off, biology’s imperative should have taken over and the population rebounded. That’s the essence of Darwinian evolution, yes?
The society CHOSE as a whole to self destruct rather than propagate it’s socials ills to future generations. That’s what blew me away. Once space was no longer the limiting resource, males could have seen the ratios and chosen to return to breed with the females. Even one viable male and female could have regenerated the entire society over again and let the cycle repeat itself. And perhaps that’s what researchers expected to occur.
Instead, there outcome demands that we accept there’s point of no-return, where things are so bad from a social and political point (if mice practice politics) that no further breeding will occur, even it means the destruction of the species.
Is that not what we as humans are facing? So what if we solve all the world’s resource problems and can provide for a population of 25 billion, 4 times the current population. If we don’t solve the social problems, we’re doomed. What we don’t do to kill each other be accomplished by a society that refuses to breed another generation of degenerates.
Look at us here on RoK. Are we not the tip of the iceberg in terms of shutting down the propagation of future generations because of the insanity and injustices we see in our own generations? How many of us see any real hope of significant change in social dynamics — a necessary revolution – to turn the tide of the inevitable. MGTOW’s, MRA’s, PUA’s, are just labels for men choosing not to continue to battle the social decline we’ve awoken too, yes?
So, while resources may not limit the human race, we ourselves will do it to our own extinction. Of mice and men, where is there a difference?
Yes, spirituality and religion was the one, and perhaps only hope. But since most humans reject a spiritual authority to act contrary to the social tsunami, what’s left to save us?
“What’s most shocking to me about this study is that there’s something in the mices’ social and genetic code that cause it to self-destruct even when most of the resource consuming population was gone.”
I don’t see what is so shocking about this. Nor do I think the change was necessarily genetic.
Think of a person who suffers from a very bad case of PTSD, or some other such mental affliction (which is essentially what is happening to the mice).
Do you believe that person’s life would just be fixed over night if certain conditions in the world around him improved? No chance.
When some things break, they cannot simply be unbroken.
Did the society choose to fail? I suspect not. To me it sounds more like the active agent in the destruction of the society was the social one. Namely the ability of one generation to pass onto another the basic knowledge and learned experience of “how to be sufficiently sociable”.
Implicit in some of these comments is the assumption that an orphaned mouse who is nominally able to “survive” will automatically be able to procreate effectively, e.g. enough to replace itself. But it sounds like the basic social network of mice broke down, as simple as it may be, such that young mice had no understanding or effective example of how to become old mice or effectively procreating mice, so the loss of knowledge, which is passed on socially and not genetically lead to the population implosion.
I know some around here would look at the black community in much of America and say something similar is at work, thus its decline over time. statistically speaking the family unit in black America has all but blown up and there are limited examples for young people to follow to get to some kind of “functional norm”.
This may just be a matter of semantics, but I disagree with the idea that the problem is that knowledge wasn’t passed down from one generation to the next. We all innately understand how to reproduce (though I’m not sure what you mean by “effectively”), and we all learn right after our first wank that we should definitely try.
I believe the true crux of the matter is trauma/negative reinforcement. In order to find a female to reproduce, I must become socially accepted/dominant. When I try to become socially accepted/dominant, I risk being mortally wounded or having my tail bitten off/eye clawed out, etc. Is it working? Is the trade off worth it? No? Retreat.
It’s really not all that different than the average guy’s experience. We start our dating lives full of hope and enthusiasm (or at least not downright negativity)… and in many cases, it eventually evolves into “if I interact with this female, I will be laughed at/have a drink thrown in my face/be socially ostracized/be forced into a physical confrontation with another male(s) – fuck this I’m out.”
Yes, and no. Open spaces we have. Habitable spaces, no so much.
The first limiting resource for planet earth is water. Fresh water. There’s precious little fresh, potable water on the planet and we’re rapidly exhausting the unpolluted sources. China may have a roaring economy, but not enough fresh water for its population. They reportedly import more water than the US imports oil. almost 40% of their agriculture depends on a resource they don’t possess. And, they’re importing food to feed their billions. The guberment there is collectivizing labor into hundreds of massive cities to build economic power (as well as a kick-ass military), leaving the former agrarian way of life to the poorest of peasants. They’re relying on their economic and military engines to carry them into the future, one that is uninstallable.
There a few places left in the world where offshoot societies can safely habitate. I’d speculate parts of S. America may have potential. But who really knows how to survive in the jungles of Amazon or the mountains of the Andes? You couldn’t relocate a population of any size to these wilderness areas and hope for anything but disaster. Even when the pilgrims came to America, a very hospitable area to boot, it took them a while to adapt and to survive here.
Therefore there are no places left for mankind to escape the inevitable on this planet.
So, nuclear weapons and terrorism are phantom threats to our own built-in doomsday mechanisms in our brains and biology. And that is why prep is preppin.
Water is not scarce. Desalination of the oceans is simple and easily achieved.
In theory, yes. In practice, no.
Even low-energy vacuum desalination still requires energy. Where’s that coming from in the future? It ain’t nuclear. So, it’s a product of petroleum based economy and production process.
If it were so easy and economical, China would be doing it and stop it’s insane importation of water.
Yea all you need is nuk plants for the energy. Solar stills are disappointingly weak.
Overpopulation occurs, not in the world, but in specific geographical locations of resource, such as in a metropolis.
This is one of the most important articles on this site.
After reading this, I am going outside.
Just give your tribe the equivalent of a cat that hunts them and this Mouse Hole can be avoided.
“There is another social ill in Japan that is comparable to Calhoun’s mice. These are the grass eaters (Soshoku kei Danshi ) of Japan. The term, ‘grass eater’, refers to males who have no interests in seeking relationships with the opposite sex.”
Only in a post-Feminist world like this one would an awesome thing like this be labeled an “ill.” I’m dying for this trend to catch on here in the West. It gives me hope that there are actually members of our gender who think with their bigger head and who realize that there are some potentially rough economic times on the horizon.
Whats good for the MGTOW is not necessarily good for civilisation. Yes, we will catch the attention of the media and government, and maybe, hopefully, cause them to change (although MGTOW is not about changing the law and society but a means to change oneself).
Of course MGTOW is not good for civilization. But men, being infinitely smarter than females and feminists manginas who control the guberment and media see no other logical choice but to GTOW.
It’s nearly impossible to assume that the mice in the colony were unaware of what was happening within their little society. However, when the prime imperatives of survival, reproducing and successfully raising young are gone, there is no way to prevent the decline. In other words, the absence of patriarchy is the problem.
Awareness of the trend won’t stop it. If the mice had a 24-hour news network like we have today, I speculate the decline would only have accelerated as each social group pushed their agendas and further alienated others making things worse, quicker.
No need to get worked up. I was merely pointing it out.
I wonder what would have happened if they took one mouse from the behavioural sink and placed him/her in a functioning mice habitat. The result could tell us if migration out of the behavioural sink would be beneficial.
Doubt it, given as the behavior would be ingrained. We see this with human beings, hence the “fish out of water” stories we all have read or seen in our lives. I think it *can* turn out well for human beings IF you can convince them to exercise freewill and break their patterns, but that’s always a risky prospect at best. Most people I know have a set personality and by adulthood stick with it no matter how stupid the results are of what they’re doing.
TL;DR – put an inner city gang banger in Amish country and I bet his habits would not change an iota. Plus, you’d have a lot of really pissed off Amish looking for you with a list of grievances.
What about a hikikomori
Oh, no worries. I’m Not worked up. I just flubbed my HTML there.
I’m just saying that apparently the algorithm is cemented and the code programmed into our DNA. The outcome of civilications is inevitable. MGTOW is a choice, but even to me it appears not to even be a choice anymore — merely the code of male logic running it’s course down the decision tree to its final action bubble.
I’ve chosen MGTOW after having most all the success the Amercian Dream says I can have. But after reading this article I”m not really sure if I did chose it, or if it’s just the inevitable outcomes of biology and sociology in a situation like that of the mice. In my pride, I’d like to think that I made the choice, but have I?
I’ve chosen marriage at one piont, game at another, and taken a brief stab at being one of the beautiful-one’s with less success. Now in my old age MGTOW seems like the best, and perhaps only option left. I wonder if the mice ended up in their respective groups after trying the others paths for their existence, or they started there and ended their lives in the same social situation. I like to think the former, as the newer generations of young males tried to compete against the establishment, but found themselves shut out and turned to violence to against other males, or went their own way.
Mice Going Their Own Way…
Men Going Their Own Way.
Both are MGTOW.
No idea Mark, out of my realm of observational experience. I wonder if that’s nothing more than normal hermit/recluse behavior from people who would have been recluses/hermits in the past, only now we get to see them live and on the internet? Dunno.
Something worth an article
I agree that in may ways behaviour is in-grained and tough to change. That having been said I look at your example of a gang banger in the country side and wonder if despite the relatively alien environment, might he in fact thrive after the initial period of discomfort? Taking the religion out of the equation it strikes me that many men respond well to a structured environment with a very solid social structure. It’s simple, they get it, they would be rewarded for hard work with respect, food, shelter and ultimately a sense of place and belonging. Would it work for all? No chance, but I strongly suspect that many would respond positively to a more orderly social construct to live in than the chaos of the streets.
“I want my cake and eat it too” Jeeeesus tapdancing Christ
talk about lack of awareness! fist you got me spasming with “nearly impossible to assume that the mice in the colony were unaware of what was happeningnearly impossible to assume that the mice in the colony were unaware of what was happening” first RATS are not MICE. Second neither is “aware” they juust react by instincts that are socially cued. that signifies no “awareness” as in analytic capacity. zzecond.
Oh, I might do machismo, but patriarchy? thats for failed men!
p.s. my scope reaches farther that yours. see you out there.
disregard my personal attack above, after this , I realize I completely misread it. unless of coyrse you think sperm dotors are superior to the creative matrix from which all live flows.
The only problem is that its only those who evolved in k selected evolutionary conditions that have declining birthrates. The 3rdworld breeds out of control, even after they move into 1st world areas..
There are already more of them than you may think though they usually tend to keep a more discrete profile – hence their reduced visibility. The more flamboyant would-be Casanovas and douches make the most noise as they publicly display their feathers and unwittingly end up detracting attention from the reserved MGTOWs quietly running their business in the background and preparing for the changing times to come.
retreating into frenzied manga cartoon fueled “sex” by one’s self is not thinking with the other head. These perves are not planning to survive the coming (on us around the next corner) anymore than they are planning to provide a seductive nest fthe missing prize mating companions. They have withdrawn. We have the diss of liberal progressives, the occupy movement as 35 something and living in the basement at their folks. here it is grossly overexagerated. In Japan its truly a huge cultural phenomena. The statistics have been registered!
Nice to see this important experiment finally become the subject of a RoK article, as I (as well as a few others, I believe) have been making reference to it and what we can learn from it for some time now in the C-section. Way to go guys!
It is a solid article but I have one disagreement; I don’t think population concentration was the primary stressor. I believe the absence of positive stresses caused most of the malaise in the mouse population.
The animal musculoskeletal system requires gravity and activity/exercise (positive stress) to grow and strengthen or else it atrophies. Without positive stress, the muscles and bones turn to mush. I believe that animal populations also require positive stress, which is provided by striving and searching for provision and resources. In a “resource unlimited” environment, animals cease behaving normally and indolence and decadence ensue. Animal populations must “lift” or perish.
From Africa we can see that this is not true for all humans as Ethiopia has had a higher birth rate than the west during its 20+ years of famine where everyone is near food drop off points. The k selected Asians & Whites seem to have less children when stressed. The Irish population still has not recovered from the potato famine.
“Over a period of four and a half years, eight mice in an enclosure designed as a model of human technological civilisation increased to a population of 2200 and then declined to extinction. Stresses arising from overcrowded conditions in Mouse Utopia barred young mice from access to social roles in the colony. As a result, young mice grew up without knowledge on how to behave as mice” – Tragedy In Mouse Utopia, DR. J.R.Vallentyne
Is this is key to the decline?
If mice had the tenants of social mouse behavior codified in some of text, such as a mouse religion or moral code of behavior, such as the Roman 12 tables, or the Bible, would the outcome have been different. What if the knowledge could have been passed along in some other form than social interaction. Would younger mice have been humble enough to accept it and put it into practice. Or, would they more likely I suspect reject it as old, dated advice of a dying generation in lieu of a new cool defiance, just like generations of youth in western cultures denigrate the old guard. To quote a current TV commerical for what I consider to be a older baby-boomer product, “Defiance never goes out of style.”
We are not mice. We do have these codes written down and recorded in every type of media available. We’ve had it for centuries. We’ve had the well reasoned and contemplated philosophies of the Greeks to today’s modern day poets.
I say it doesn’t matter if the knowledge is passed on or not if within the dynamic of the culture is the base character of man to reject wisdom, to reject self denial for the sake of the society, unless that code of behavior is enforced as part of the law with consequences for misbehavior. Families and communities of families would be the first line of defense to keep the status quo with the collective governing forces as a secondary and final enforcer of social order.
In the end of the experiment all mice had tattered tails. Perhaps at some point the top tried to pass on the knowledge, but with painful and lethal consequences. Now that I think of it, they must have to experience the explosive growth phase spanning one, two or even three generations of mice. So it seems reasonable to conclude that knowledge was passed along up to a certain point in the experiment. Patriarchs who survived the initial thrive phase must have had interaction with their grandchildren and great grandchildren. So, either they didn’t pass on the knowledge they had for selfish or lazy reasons, the younger generations rejected it, or both.
I say that point was rejection of the wisdom of knowledge by an increasingly alienated generation, compounded by each subsequent generation. We’ve seen that increase and accelerate in the last few generations here in the west. But, not as much in the 3rd world. However, they’re catching up to us.
How many young people seek to advice and wisdom of the elderly these days. Very few, even from their own grandparents. No, I see them congregating in Starbucks and espousing all sorts of silly ideas and philosophies that are not based in the reality, and would not sustain a civilization. On the flip side, how many elderly feel valued and think their knowledge and experience is valued in a narcissistic youth-centric society? They’d rather just insulate themselves in their retirement communities withe the remainder of their own generation waiting to die, and expecting less and less from the Boomer, Gen X’s, Y’s, Z, Mellenials and whatever else is next. As long as they can get their politicians to keep approving increases in Social Security, Medicaid, Medicare and other elderly guberment entitlements, they’re content.
It’s not just knowledge, but also enforcement of the social contracts between humans that’s necessary for survival. And you can bet the silver haired generation isn’t going to do that because they’ll get their tails bitten by the younger generation. CAn you even imagine a silver-haired great grandfather, a member of the “greatest generation” trying to tell a mouth entitled princess bitch to stop swearing in public? He’d get his tail bitten with some retaliatory slander or worse, accused of a crime for even addressing a young girl in what she’d perceive as a creepy old-man sexual assault, because that’s what all men are, creepy sexual deviants in her stupid beautiful-one world.
So, “knowlege” is only one component of social patriarchy. Enforcement is the other, usually through shaming. And that’s been long swept away in this country.
Four pairs of mice. Did the mice die off due to overpopulation, or was the lack of genetic diversity a factor (inbreeding)?
The mice died off due to depopulation by sub replacement fertility. I will have to dig up more information about the lack of genetic diversity.
Inbreeding doesn’t do that.
Excellent article, and a highly relevant one, too. Just like Stanley Milgram’s “obedience to authority” and Phillip Zimbardo’s “Stanford prison” experiments, Calhoun’s is an extremely important one with big implications for human nature and civilization. Many parallels can be drawn from this experiment and extended to humans.
“In the male mice, a limited space and a boom in population caused the males to fight more to be accepted. Since not all mice can be alpha males, the losers withdrew. With excess males fighting for dominance…”
I’ve begun to notice something similar in human males. Guys seeking eye-contact, ostensibly in an attempt to intimidate their male peers and to signal their “alphaness”, even if there is absolutely nothing about them to “back” this attitude up, i.e. being scrawny and build like a twig. As guys have become more thirsty for the approval of women, aggressiveness towards each other soars due to increased competition on the sexual market place. Backstabbers are everywhere. How many of the millennial generation have yet a concept of loyalty? Of honor? Males are becoming atomized, without any cohesion.
“Guys increasingly seeking eye contact…” hasn’t it always been thus?
There is something unnatural about a social reality where an increasing amount of guys believe they are the “alpha male of the group” and try butting heads with other guys.
Whereabouts are you located Conrad? As mentioned, I haven’t really seen this yet. Granted I hang out with rough and socially edgy biker types in central Ohio, so the wimps generally avoid us, but even out in public and looking respectable I haven’t noticed it as of yet. Need to keep an eye peeled to see if I can spot it.
Northern Europe.
Like I said earlier, this seems like normal youth behavior. I guess it just depends where you grow up.
Bro culture is over the top masculinisation, an attempt to be manly when these haven’t been taught how by a father figure.
I see it in the southern part of the lower peninsula of Michigan. It generally is only directed towards people that everyone knows is weak and they can take advantage of. Or they do it to test you and you call them out on it they always back down because they know they are “swinging above their weight class”.
I can see bullying a weaker, my wonderment was only in regards to being consistently aggressive towards men who can and will kick his ass. Strange phenomenon, not sure I’m quite ready temper wise to put up with runts trying to stare me down all the time.
I had this happen once. Little shit trying to start with me. It was so amusing I could only laugh at him. And then one of his friends beat him up for being so daft.
It’s funny to see men in USA are trying to outeye each other while on the other part of the globe men are preparing to turn USA into radioactive dust
Theory is put forth that lacking rough and tumle in the earluy and teen years, males don’dt learn how to controll the agression, don’t learn hos to ac ept a place in the order. perhaps they then want to overturn the order. This is a good idea for my calling those black block anarchist (dressed like ninja and in all the big social atreet actions, throwing rocks begging the police to chase them so they can get a hard on by running and evading…) “kids with issues.” While i certainly don’t think dad should have strapped them, h should have allowed them to go off and bash one another and come home stiff and sore till they figured out the lessons to be learned. It would be far better than them all popping caps over every little slight to the so delicate sensibilities, no?
a very observant psychologist had his books burned in the USA, the only official government book burning. He postulated that over masculinization is a facade of insecure masculinization. The sadistic trends in pornography is only one symptom. Nazi Germany was another. Drugs and degeneracy were rife in the german society then, and before the party arose “out of nowhere”. Hating the female because they are unsure of their power to satisfy, they resort to dominating. Secretly they are more comfortable with males, even in their “intimaices” which This Willhelm Reich said were mere rituals, not true comlete orgasm (much more than an ejaculatory reflex) .
an expeerience on the bus. guy butted in to a conversaation with the driver as I waas leaving. i was sorely tempet to literally toss his puny self down the stair. My pulse and pressure were way up. Then I saw the smile on his face. It was not just for getting me hot. He relished the terror he had from my eliciteded response. Hd I gone on, as with other jerks who got in my face (my 190 still at 65 not fat ..face) and found security there to prevent the mahem (i do have control, after I vent) anyway that smile on his face was, I realized, his moment to replay for the week, in bed, alone in the night. masochism is the other side of the sadistic trend. both have been with us a long long time but the late 1800’s started what we see today. P.C. culture of thhe upper middle lass, prudish religious piety and the wife as a lustless child bearing housemaid. Meanwhile every man was expected to get his rocks off commercially perhaps with an 11 year old who was then properly legal. Hollywood censorship in the 1930 along with prohibition were the triumph of prudery and the “final nail” in our casket. Germany fell apart sooner. WE still have a way to go. This alpha male thang isn’t what will save us. It is, pr at lest has become (in our circumstances)
part of the disease!
see, his friend knew what he was really begging to have happen!
the “smart set end of the stte like the coast here in Wa, or at least the puget sound. east and out on the actual coast, the peninsula is quite old school still. It has gods points and some bad. less good ones as depression and drugs get comfortable in the communities.
I think he means out of proportion to their ability to back up their aggressiveness. Central Ohio is now flooding with Millenials but I haven’t noticed this trend yet. That’s not to say it isn’t happening of course.
The millennials are closer to the hikikomori and grass eaters. Every time I see a hipster, I think of the japanese grass eaters, they are the western version, and the human version of the beautiful ones. (they also look like wankers)
Their women, if not dyke-y and covered in piercings, do seem to be desperate for male contact. I was in a bar just two days ago and a female in a millenial group, very attractive for her type, could not keep herself from touching me, rubbing my back suggestively, etc. and she really doesn’t know me at all. I’m married, had my ring on, was not hitting on her nor even really paying her mind, she just decided she needed contact. Her herbivore male orbiters (I do agree, they look like wankers, hipsters are a plague on society) sat and watched in absolute boredom/dejection. Blase bunch of nobodies with an over abundance of tattoos and a lack of direction.
My only note to Conrad is that I don’t see the aggressiveness out of context of their actual social standing. If anything they (the males) seem meek and submissive around me, to the point where I want to smack them upside the head and tell them to grow a pair of balls.
Perhaps there is some regional bias (on my part) involved in my observation, GhostOfJefferson.
Fair enough, although this was normal where I grew up.
Agresion is stage 1, baby boomer generation. The Beautiful Ones are stage 3, hipster fags.
No doubt, I was just wondering how close or far it was from my location. Since another person mentioned LP Michigan then it may be that I’m just getting lucky to have not encountered it yet.
females in modern cities like portland oregon share this disdain of the asexuall rooster.
re in the bar. see, there you are! its just like that. Also see my report of Baboon females behavior and balls way above in this disc,
I’m 6’3″ and 320 lbs, so most people don’t make eye contact with me. It’s kinda sad because I’m sweet as pumpkin pie and would never hurt a fly.
in short, no. more of the answer is “depends on context.” strangers are not allowed that privelege,never have been for the most. Try this with a dog you never met. THAT is the normal reaction, because that is the normal meaning of the challenge. There are also cultural differences about eye to eye.
The article is hard to follow, here is what happened in the experiment, if I understand correctly:
1. The mice have unlimited resources (food) and no predators, which means they are in an unnatural existence (such as human civilization) where there is no external stress and where certain natural functions (such as searching for food and fighting off predators) are being unused.
2. At first, they become familiar with their environment, and nests are made. Each species associates in groups of a number particular to their species, because individuals can only properly associate with a limited number of other individuals. This is why 1000 monkeys would disassociate into tribes of 50 (or whatever number depending on the species). The same happens in humans where if you put a group of 20 humans together, groups will be formed within. In this period, the mice get into tribes, and therefore they establish their territories, which means that the available space becomes socially defined and compartmentalized.
3. Then, they reproduce and follow a cycle similar to what would happen in nature. Their population increases exponentially. Animals, just like humans, are lead by emotions and habits. The only difference is that humans can change habits and suppress emotions with random logical thoughts. There is food all over the space, but since mice are in tribes, they form the habit of eating together (the mice are close together and eat when they find food, this is a habit that is formed accidentally. Imagine that you are out in the wild with two others, and all your life you have only eaten when the two others are present. If you know nothing and the two others are not present, you will follow your habit and eat only when the other two are present). Therefore, the tribes accumulate in certain spaces (called behavioral sinks) where they all eat, despite there being food all over the place.
4. After the exponential reproduction, there is a period where the net amount of mice stops growing (meaning there is both death and birth that levels the population around a particular number). This happens because there is a change in the system. We are at a particular number of mice that is far less than what the container can take, but new generations are inhibited because all the space is socially defined. Tribes have “their space”, and many cannot integrate into particular tribes because they are already too big. So we have young mice with no social experience who cannot go anywhere, they step into one place and are shooed off by the tribe leaders, and the same when they go somewhere else. Before, everyone was accepted into the tribes because there was social space, but now there is none, so the “excess” fights for acceptance. What happens is the division of alpha and beta males. The males become violent and compete with each other for acceptance, trying to topple tribe leaders. Only the strongest are successful (alphas), while the rest (which are the majority) become shy and retracted, so they eject completely from society (otherwise they become socially bullied and attacked, some for longer periods until they finally choose to stop fighting). The ones who eject become “the beautiful ones”. They live in a kind of limbo, outside of socially defined space and tribes, and they don’t fight. They just accept they will not be accepted, and do not pursue females nor fight alpha males, they just eat, sleep and groom (grooming has no function, just to pass the time, it would be the equivalent of omega males and videogames). These mice cannot cope with any problems, they are stupid as they don’t have to face struggles for reproduction. Stupid in this environment equals socially inept, unable to interact with others or court females. Also, the lack of stress enhances promiscuity, for the simple reason that there is more time (it is the equivalent of grooming in socially apt members).
5. Most mice become “beautiful ones”, with very few alpha males. As a result, reproduction goes down. From natural tendency, tribes become opposed over resources, and the lack of alpha males makes the females more violent. They assume more masculine traits and take on the role of the alpha males, and from this their maternal instincts are habitually repressed (this can be translated into humans as sweet girls are good mothers, while masculine girls are not). Over generations, the lack of maternal instinct creates future generations that have not received the “education” (the formation of proper habits) to defend the tribe and successfully reproduce. Generations become more and more socially inept, with more and more mice withdrawing and becoming “beautiful ones”, and therefore less reproduction after each generation. Eventually there comes a point where reproduction becomes zero and the species becomes extinct.
The correlations that can be drawn with humans beings are:
1. Many beta males are accepting their inability to court females and retract from the mating dance completely. The number of alpha males is reduced.
2. The competitive work environment simulates the opposition between tribes and the fight for resources. Females assume masculine traits due to this, which in turn causes them to repress maternal instincts. Then, this becomes a collective thought (where all women think the same), and eventually most women do not want to have children. Pair this with the lack of alpha males, with most women being alpha widows, and you have a recipe for population reduction. There will be less marriage, less and delayed reproduction, and the family unit will become increasingly rarer.
3. In an environment where reproduction (which includes pairbonding and raising children) loses its value (the corporate structure of life eliminates the priority of family early in life, for both sexes), gender relations are determined by pure sexuality. Both males and females will eventually create collective thoughts of forfeiting relationships, and gender relationships will revolve around one-night-stands and short lived sexual relationships. Women will be encouraged to sleep around (which is their natural instinct, but since reproduction has lost value, her approach to men will be based around her sexual instinct and not her pairbonding one).
4. People, both male and female, become more socially inept with a general inability to socialize. They become socially wierd, afraid of vulnerability, somewhat fake and with a preference for virtual, and not face-to-face, communication.
5. Racism and cultural divide are macro-examples of a modern manifestation of tribe-opposition. Micro-examples are bullying, division into subcultures, large groups dividing into small groups…
6. Humans concentrate in cities due to the work environment, and because of integrating into a tribe that is neither too large nor too small (not possible in a small town). Cities become chaotic systems like that in the experiment. There are no proper tribes, but “fluent” tribes where a person’s social circle changes over time. Anonymity and lack of tribal control is responsible, in many ways, for chaos in habits. The lack of judgement and anonymity in cities, added to the lack of emphasis on forming a family and having kids in youth and the masculine traits of women added by the corporate environment are perfect conditions for female promiscuity to occur, first covertly, and then overtly once all women start doing it and then reach a consensus.
7. The lack of proper education in children, raised by single mothers and inept parents create generation after generation of increasingly inept children. New generations become more unable to interact with others, with more beta males, and promiscuous women (competing for alpha males, the beta males withdraw).
8. With all the above in account, the end result in humans is a general consensus that having children is a waste of time. Most men will become beta males, with alpha males becoming rarities. Women will compete for alpha males in their youth (so getting sex will become easier and easier in the future), but will also become more and more masculine (and more narcissistic due to bad upbringing). Eventually, even post-wall females will choose to not reproduce, not even with beta males. This means that most reproduction will occur by accident from short encounters with alpha males. The dynamics of relationships will not change much. Now, most relationships are k-selected ones with beta males, that usually end up in marriage if the woman is post-wall. In the future, these will still exist but they will not end up in marriage or kids, on the woman’s imperative. R-selected relationships will remain the same, ONS and short term flings, with the occasional LTR with an alpha male if a dual pairbond is formed.
Alpha males will live a sexual feast, but love or traditional femininity will be a rare sight. The number of naturals will go down and the number of betas will go up, to the extreme point where the few remaining alphas are self-taught (PUAs).
Since there will still be accidents, reproduction will not cease completely, but there will be an important decrease in population. There will come a point where the family unit is completely destroyed, and eventually the human race should go extinct. I don’t think this is how it will turn out, as social programming would probably fix this problem once it becomes one. But, as of now (in an overpopulated world), the paradigms that have been created and perpetuated by the media are ideal to reduce the population to a sustainable level.
I love your review of the experiment, think your limiting your lexicon though: your missing omega and zeta males. Beta males are males women settle for, wipe or enslave for alimony and child support. Omega’s are males only prostitutes would touch and Zetas are the “Beautiful ones” who have given up on relations with women and could have been any one of the three prior types before they gave up on playing the game altogether (usually omegas, some beta’s tired of being used or rarely alphas who have lost libido for some fluke reason)
Female hierarchy also exist, but is more complicated by the fact they are the limiting resource and can get dick with ease even if on the bottom of the attractiveness scale.
We may depopulated from 10 billion to 1 billion, then rise again.
I agree that human will not extinct because we have government, education, media, etc that can fix the problem.
However, human depopulation may need human civilisation (science and technology level, social intelligence level) reverted to pre-1900s era, because lack of people inherit our science knowledge and technologies.
We may depopulated from 10 billion to 1 billion, then rise again.
I agree that human will not extinct because we have government, education, media, etc that can fix the problem.
However, human depopulation may led human civilisation (science and technology level, social intelligence level) reverted to pre-1900s era, because lack of people inherit our science knowledge and technologies.
lower rates of racing to overpopulation is not the same as going extinct fr lack of breeding drive, Educated womed are less prone to have children and to invest in the ones they do have. traditionally agricultural peasants and self employed tradespeople had only kids and grandkids to comfort them in old age. we have a social system in socety now and do not need to breed those who will milk the cows and plow the fields. We have people who reject society and prefer the old clan and tribe ways. Those have gone to decline for m ore that just imperialism by the industrial system. There is a degree of people seeingbetter things. not always sell realized, but they should be recognized. The rugged individual thing is a fantasy anyway. Overly alphas were often killed for disturbing the peace. Today they compete in other ways than the gross physical. they make billions and only several kids. *****what a crock to call this rat eutopia! what a transparent frame up of the whole “conclusion.” I think the conclusion came first,and the experiment was just a convenient “proof.” It was hardly natural in many more ways. the representation of dynamics is sadly sophmoric and lacks depth. I would like to again draw attention to an experiment that is not well known. You can read all about it by searching “RATPARK” these guys wondered if the sterility of rats in cages was not the reason drugs seemsed so attractive and led rats to kill themselves in frenzied dosing . They put part in a paek with room and other rats. they put in things for rats to do, interessting things. These rats serre fine. So damn fine that even sweetening the water with cocaine or narcotics would not tempt them . They prefered hanging with the rats in the park, nosing the ball around, talking to the ladies. And yes, they were n ot left like rats in a midcentury welfare highrise ghetto. Funny noo one living there ever called them “eutopia. Noy in Cabrinni Greens, not in England where the white population gave rise to the PUNK MOVEMENT. Rats had no way to control their sitation. Humans have millions of ways. Eugenics appeals to some. They are those who figure they are gods chosen. I wonder about the framers of this experiment review.
“In the male mice, a limited space and a boom in population caused the males to fight more to be accepted. Since not all mice can be alpha males, the losers withdrew. With excess males fighting for dominance…”
———————————–
What was actually happening is that there were lots of underling (mutant) males (far more than could thrive in the wild).
They formed coalitions against the Alpha types and drove them off from mating.
So the next generation of top males would be weaker than the previous.
And then coalitions of even runtier mice formed against those top males and took over.
And so on and so on.
As this happened the females started to become ‘feminists’ refusing to be mounted by all these runts.
That’s very interesting. Did you read that in the research paper?
did the reviewer read his “conclusions” there? Part of science is a critique of conclusions, particularly false ones, by suggesting alternative possibilities. Are you a guy who relies on the authority of others or is it just that you have an “advocay bias” toward seeing the papers view win? how unscientific! that would be.
lacking any value to the betas..protecting the pack as alpha lions do (mofre than dominating the pack e now uderstnd..thats the alpha female, as is the role of the “pasture bitch” among even domestic horses. They , not the top male, keep junior in line and slap that mounting idea out of his little head. Among baboons there are females so high on the totem that they are allowed to grab the testicles of males to judege their social and fetrility potency on that given day. This btw, is the basis of “hows it hangin?” because tight balls connote fear, hanging balls connote confidence. Kids dont get to check by touch, girls dont. But alpha females do, and are not challenged. This is something we lost understanding of, perhaps when we got so anti body with religion perhaps it was when we started using soap on a daily basis to hide the musk and pheremones. this was all long before we went metrosexual. Sometime between now and ancient Rome we also gave up lupercalia, the festival celebrating crones. We diss them as “hags” now. once upon a time they ran down and dismembered young bucks who had displeased them through the year. The so celebate and male catholic church condoned murdering them as witches for centuries. There was a power struggle, not a moral purity war, going on there.
I’ve noticed this too in the last 15 years or so. When I’m walking down the street and another man is approaching from the opposite direction, most used to just look straight ahead as they walked by but more and more, I see that when they walk past they try to make eye contact.
Maybe it’s just me (I’m a local small business owner and a lot of people recognize me out in public) or it’s just the town I’m in (a lot of shady characters here), but what I’ve perceived.
Here’s another case:
Prior to the communism in 1944 Bulgaria had one of the youngest and fastest growing populations in Europe. The population was relatively evenly spread around the country. The Bulgarians lived mostly in villages and thanks to a very fertile soil they were quite self-sufficient.
When the communists came to power they needed to create a large working class to support them in order to stay in power. The party line was to collectivise and intensify the agriculture and to industrialise the country as a whole. Large numbers of people migrated (forced to move) from the villages to the towns which later grew into big cities.
The population continued to grow but it peaked in 1989 but now it’s in sharp decline. Most Bulgarians (72.5 per cent) reside in urban areas.
The problem is that since most people now reside in the cities and the country experiences a big transitional crisis, the families are finding it difficult to feed the children and lack the skills and conditions to grow their own food.
The country had lived through two major world wars plus a number of regional conflicts but it had never experienced such a sharp decline in its population ever. The urbanisation proved fatal.
Collectivism is the greatest crime perpetrated by communism.
I can think of a greater one, but you’re not allowed to say it out loud.
Ever.
Multi-culturalism?
im for poly culturalism, but not so much for the p.c. aspects associated with forced multiculturalism. multiculturalism does nhave a large reactionary force of othercullturalism that any one would resist. Hilary sure read it wrong, Trump might well have pimped on it for votes but at least he was not so blind as to not read it!
I remember watching the Utopian Mouse Experiment the other day being quite disturbed. Bookmarked
One of the best ROK articles i have read. Well done
Great article, really enjoyed reading it. Thanks for posting
Good article,
Another example of overpopulation which lead to decline and eventually extinction was on St. Matthews Island around Alaska. The Coast guard introduced 29 reindeer as an emergency food resource but later abandoned the island. In 20 years the population of reindeer rose to 6,000, way above the carrying capacity of the island. The next two years the population declined to about 40, and the next 20 years lead to the extinction of the deer population in general. It isn’t a social experiment as is the mouse utopia but they parallel with the controlled conditions.
I asked my professor if you can apply the same model to the human population and he said they weren’t comparable. I’m glad you posted this article with relation to the human population. I’ve been feeling the same way for years.
“I asked my professor if you can apply the same model to the human population and he said they weren’t comparable.”
It’s never “comparable” to inhabitants of the ivory tower, until reality starts knocking on their doors.
A rather “pregnant” assumption in your comment…
can you please provide a link? this is worth a look.
THE INTRODUCTION, INCREASE,
AND CRASH OF REINDEER ON ST. MATTHEW ISLAND
By David R. Klein
Alaska Cooperative Wildlife Research Unit, University of Alaska, College.
this one isnt the published version, best i could find online from a credible source without paying.
http://www.geo.arizona.edu/Antevs/nats104/00lect21reindeer.html
http://www.adn.com/article/what-wiped-out-st-matthew-islands-reindeer
They blame it on a harsh winter but it was the lack of predators.
The lack a viable predator is what make us congregate in large cities. A big predator would make us disperse in every direction and thus ensure that the fittest will survive and pass on their genes.
The population exploded because of an abundance of food and space with no natural predators (sounds like the mouse utopia) and died off because of overcrowding, depletion of resources and climatic variables. the mouse utopias negative was only over crowding.
I would like to see the same experiment run with the mice but now deplete resources, and see what social chaos ensues.
That doesn’t make any sense, large and dangerous predators almost always make human being congregate together for mutual protection. In fact that’s usually the idea behind congregating together, some perceived mutual benefit, such as mutual protection.
You have that experiment, it’s called Easter Island, I believe he covered it in the article.
People would lump together against a mighty threat if we possessed swarm intelligence,- collective behavior of decentralised, self-organising system.
Our defense systems are completely the opposite, they are centralised and non intuitive. And they are useful only in the initial stages but when the threat becomes severe people tend to disperse and seek individual defense.
What happens when an army sense a defeat and the general is dead? Soldiers run in every direction.
That is a study coming from archaeologists and other scientists trying to dig up the past. I’m not trying to discredit anything they have put together, but they can only hypothesis. By creating a new experiment with the mice and introducing those variables we would be better able to see the social breakdown. and maybe be able to find a way to save the human population.
That explains armies and large navies then, all off doing their own thing as individuals, no soldier acting in cooperation with other soldiers, just doin’ his own “thang” and thwarting thermonuclear attack single handedly.
You and I do not need “swarm intelligence” to hunt together. In fact, it works out quite better sometimes to go hunting in a group. There’s this thing called “language” that allows sharing of ideas and conveys information that helps spot and bring down prey/a threat. The same applies to mutual self defense.
No offense but I’m not entirely certain where you’ve come to your understanding of human social behavior, but it does not appear to be reality. Humans have always banded together against common threats, whether predators, climate or imaginary boogeymen.
When soldiers are defeated, they are defeated by a united enemy front. Your observation then doesn’t hold water.
In fact by noting army and soldiers you’ve actually proven my point, that humans band together for mutual defense.
The thing is, there was actual observation of the end stages of Easter Island by the Europeans. We have eyewitness accounts.
I get what you’re saying though.
With internet shopping and social apps it is very easy to live like
Hikikomori on welfare benefits.
The Grass Eaters and Beautify Ones make me think of a few of the commentators on this site who unwittingly reflect feminist thought (i.e. never get married “don’t need no woman” and live absent responsibility until the end of their days).
Also, this article is a useful counterbalance to the recent Marxist article on “Civilization” where the author complains about having to work for a living.
Very insightful comment Bob. The reasons are irrelevant to the outcome, if the outcome is predictable in a social animal, which it appears is at least possible based on the mouse experiments. We are nothing if not one of the most social animals on the planet and certainly not immune to mammalian social animal behavior cause and effect.
I couldn’t click on the “Civilization” article, the by-line was enough to cause me to say “no thanks”. When the question becomes “Isn’t it slavery to have to work for one’s own upkeep” I tend to cruise right on past it. Ted Kuzinsky (sp) might agree, I however do not.
It’s a great article, do not dismiss it just because piratebob does not interpret it correctly. The two articles are in fact complementary as they both deal with fundamental flaws of our current social structure.
Two of the best on RoK, imo
Fair enough, I’ll examine it. You’re correct of course and one shouldn’t judge a piece before reading it, the by-line just kind of hit an insta-repel button in my psyche.
Please tell me the “correct” way to interpret it.
I believe you saw my comment under the article. This civilisation in its nature is a feminine. It is a giant vagina – sucks you in, drains your juice and then spits you out. Neeext!
No need to discuss it here again, is there?
Don’t know – is there?
I recall something about your idea about this civilization being feminine. Since you are the final arbiter of what is correct and what is not, I shall bow to your greater wisdom.
Maybe I picked it up wrong but I would venture that the author of the article on “Civilisation” wasn’t complaining of working for a living per say but working so that others might live and prosper off the back off the sweat of your brow rather than the individual reaping the rewards of his/her own labour. That’s what I gathered from the article in question anyhoo…….
It seemed like the typical Marxist tripe. Marx made exactly the same complaints 150 years ago. It has always been thus – someone else is always benefiting from your work. But so do you and additionally you benefit from the work of others.
To suggest that you do not benefit from your own labor in Western Civ, is completely untrue. This might be the case in Communist country like N. Korea though.
“To suggest that you do not benefit from your own labor in Western Civ, is completely untrue”
I agree, however, I would rephrase that assertion to “not benefit enough”. It is really necessary for people to work till 60-65 doing 40h work weeks? We have made great strides in technology and manufacturing, yet people haven’t been working less. At the same time, the gap between rich and poor is increasing. The large scale organization of labor in Western society seems, to me, hugely inefficient.
^ That.
People always fail to answer me why we work longer hours when we were supposed to actually work less with the advancement of technology and improved productivity.
That is down to the individual. The idea of “retirement” is a socialist/Statist one. If you have sufficient savings to stop active work prior to sixty, then by all means. But to me, a non-working human is a dead human. I never plan to stop working.
I’d say a directionless and goalless human is a dead human. One need not work in the sense of producing income, with a sufficient stipend saved over time; but rather he can then enjoy his time musing about philosophy, mathematics, etc. in the comfort of his own home not only for his own enjoyment but for the betterment of society at large. Kind of how the European nobles in the late 1700’s through the late 1800’s, having exhausted their actual utility to society in their current roles, sat back on their laurels and produced many great works of intellect and art (for example, Voltaire or Lord Byron).
We live longer, but not healthily. Too many people take their health for granted and its costing us big time. Look at metabolic syndrome and how much money is spent on treatment. Food companies and big pharma are profiting like no other and they only reinforce each other, to the point that they could be essentially a single entity.
People seem to think that only obese individuals are unhealthy, they know nothing about “skinny fat” or intramuscular fat that accumulates over a lifetime of eating bad food with a lack of physical activity. You always hear people claim they’re deteriorating because they’re “getting old,” as a copout not to do their due diligence so the generation behind them aren’t picking up the tab.
We do work less, physically demanding jobs. Tech advancement would have to make huge leaps and bounds to get to the point where we actually work less overall, but human nature might have a problem with that as we cannot escape the need to compete and establish hierarchies among ourselves. It isn’t in our nature to make things “too easy.”
If it isn’t profitable in the interim no ones going to invest the energy/resources into making it a reality.
“…get to the point where we actually work less overall, but human nature might have a problem with that”
The elites might have a problem with that. If you want to know who’s benefiting, look where the money goes.
The elite represent a very good example of human nature.
That’s because we are supporting more. We are supporting Taniqqa and her 17 illegitimate kids, along with supporting the rest of the world. There are now less full time private sector workers than people on taxpayer paid government benefits.
Yes, I read that. I found it to be much ado about nothing. Civilisations were built for the betterment of society, whilst not everything gained was positive, the net result was a standard of living unparalleled by anything before us.
I am writing another article on the fate of empires. It will touch on this subject.
I will look forward to that! Its remarkable how many of those living in the current empires have this belief that it will all last forever. And they wind up making the same mistakes as previous empires.
Civilizations are built by men who plant trees that they know they will not know the shade of.
if you would like some extra research material you should check out the blog/book. anonymousconservative.com. It ties in the trajectory of societies, resource allocation/utilization and how it relates to overall behaviour from an evolutionary psychology stand point. Its like a merger of red-pilly stuff from this site, and the biological aspects that produce certain character types.
Yeah, well these changes are inevitable on a planet with a finite amount of land area. Unless the MRA/man blogs propose and work to make some kind of space colonization a reality, there really is no alternative to this reality.
Everyone here could join the Space Studies Institute (www.ssi.org) and help them with their research efforts to help open up the high frontier.
Mark, this is a quality article and top notch writing, not to mention a fascinating topic. Well done sir, you’ve provoked my curiosity to investigate this study further.
Thank you. I would recommend a book called “tragedy in mouse utopia” by Dr J R Vallentyne
Thank you, I’ll look it up.
Mark, just that you know, the link to your blog does not work. Maybe ask Roosh to fix it.
http://www.thedeclineofthewesternworld.blogspot.co.uk/
The most important and prescient social experiment of the last century, IMO. I’d been hoping an ROK author would finally tackle this topic.
It’s worth noting that it appears that it is the fierce competition for females, and not competition for resources (that remained plentiful until the very end) that leads to the behavioral sink/spiritual death of the society. For those with ears to hear and eyes to see, the parallels with our own modern sexual marketplace are so, so obvious.
I for one would like to know if that last mouse was male (alpha or beta) or female (beautiful-one or mother). Same goes for the 2nd to last to die.
I don’t know for certain, but towards the end there were more females than males and these were inhibited and incredibly stupid.
Why am I not surprised.
The incredibly stupid beautiful-one females congregated together in the end to grow fatter, older, and weaker when the last alpha male died off. And, even though the females had everything they needed for survival without needing males to provide, they doomed the entire civilization through their lack of reproduction and mothering to ensure continued survival. Any litters they did produced died as they were too busy primping, eating, and whoring with alpha males to raise them.
And so it is today.
In the similar case with the reindeers in St. Matthew Island, the last surviving reindeers were few females and only ONE male that had abnormal antlers. So obviously an alpha male. Quite possibly the same happened with the mice.
This is anecdotal and to be taken with a grain of salt, but the article mentions the majority clustering in one particular cell, despite there being ample resources in all of the cells. They literally chose to make their situation worse, you could say.
It’s no secret that I’m moving to Wyoming from Ohio when my children graduate high school. The reasons are various and already expressed on other threads, but I notice the reaction I get from people when I say that I’m doing this. They are almost, but not quite always, negative or in some way indicating that I’m a bit touched for considering such a thing. The “what if’s?” fly like flocks of geese on the wind, and I rarely get a “Great idea, I’d love to do that!” (though to be fair, it does happen occasionally). Now taken with this, I’ve heard that urban centers are starting to be re-populated again by people who had moved out of them (or their descendents). This is certainly true in Columbus, the Millenials cannot rent up the “trendy” inner city apartments fast enough, especially around the short North region, German Village, Victorian Village, etc.
So I’m going to the less populous cell and I have successfully reproduced, whilst they are basically listless and uninterested in general “normal” society and are congregating en masse in the highly populated cell.
How odd that it conforms so well, or seems to, with the mouse study.
Males will go wherever the females are. Or, more precisely, wherever they feel they have the best shot of snagging one, whether they are right or wrong (and I would argue that increasingly, within big cities, they are wrong).
So then the urge to re-urbanize you believe is female driven?
I believe most male behavior is female driven.
Brings to mind that old Dave Chapelle skit about men fucking in cardboard boxes if women allowed them.
Sounds reasonable, and rather points out the stark contrast I’m seeing. You see, I’m the one stating we’re moving to Wyoming and the wife is following. She’s never been there, she’s going sight unseen (unless we can find vacation time to go there in the next three years, which might happen). If the Millenials (and the mice) are going where they think the pussy is then, well, there you go.
And that’s fine by me, stay away from the wide open spaces, I say.
“Amongst the males the behaviour disturbances ranged from sexual deviation…”
I wonder what kind of “sexual deviation” the experimenter was talking about? Did he mean homosexuality? Were the mice getting into BDSM? Honestly, I am expecting he means homosexuality. Is science teaching us something faith knew long ago?
“Because of this, God gave them over to shameful lusts. Even their women exchanged natural sexual relations for unnatural ones. 27 In the same way the men also abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed with lust for one another. Men committed shameful acts with other men, and received in themselves the due penalty for their error.” Romans 1:26
Now don’t go all atheistkult on me, but look at this from an open perspective. This isn’t a judgement against homosexuals, but Romans tells us that because the people had turned against God (objective reality with an extremely deep understanding of human nature as expressed in that reality for those of you lest theism prone) they fell prey to a deprived nature. The nature of the people changed because of psychosocial effects.
There are hints of this in the comments made by many on this site. There are those who go so far as to say they will not have any relations with women, sexual or otherwise. And we see this reflected further in those “Hells” on Earth we call prisons.
It appears that when we turn from God, we turn from the one thing that separates us from the animals. We begin to act like animals, worship animals, and teach each other that humans are just animals. It also appears that when things get too easy we also abandon God in our independence; we feel we’re no longer dependent on God for what we are- and once famine and warfare return people go running back to God in droves.
I am sorry to the author, but humans are not animals. They are creatures made by the Creator. Macro evolution is a joke.
Perhaps macroevolution is the mechanism which the Creator saw most fit to bring humans into existence?
I disagree in that most animal laws apply to us. We may not be “animals”, but we are still biological entities and many of the laws apply to us (or perhaps the animals get a lesser form of our laws?)
If you look at genesis vs science everything happens in the same order its only the amount of time involved. What if there was a translation error between day vs epoch?
Day and epoch is essentially the same thing it all depends on how fast you are moving. Take the twins thought experiment and one traveling near the speed of light for a year and returns, his twin being 88 years older. That sort of mad science that defies common sense is what we consider facts. You would have to do the math to turn 6 days to 6 billion years to make our earth and all but yeah still possible.
according to Calhoun’s paper, yes, male mice did have sex with other male mice. However, it was more that the males couldn’t or didn’t distinguish between male or female and actually had sex with both.
Didn’t Jay Z say that’s why he picked up a tranny?
Brilliant. A striking parallel to the current satate of humanity. We peaked in the 90s, have flattened, and will decline over the next 40 years. Not from lack of resources, but from social collapse and fertility. We have been here for 250k years, and fucked it up in a century. Nature always finds its way.
The people of Japan, so advanced and disciplined, are at the forefront of the collapse. Such great culture reached its peak in the 80s. Japan’s present, will be our future.
Look at Generation Y. Social ineptitude, female promiscuity, male withrawal and/or violence, lack of discipline, parental abandonment, no predefined roles, exhausted social model, nihilism, hedonism, attention whoring. Just as the mice.
The natural equivalent of a predator for humans would have to be disease. The role of the predator is keep the prey species lean and keen by culling the weak and stupid. It could be argued for most of human history people lived a tenuous way that any child that was deemed weak or sickly would not be raised and infanticide was probably an act of mercy where a strong capable child was doted on. Nowadays children are seen as a burden by many or a maybe achievement when people enter middle-aged after playing throughout their youth.
Easter Island was an extreme example. As a world – we are not even close to that stage. The pressure points are self-created by the plutocracy. There are areas in the world, where you fly for hours at 400/miles/hour and don’t have one human living there – even in countries like India or the US. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vZVOU5bfHrM
I often wonder at people who swoon over moon colonies when most of the Earth is pretty much uninhabited. How viable(or desirable) is a moonbase if no one is willing to live in Antarctica?
The internet has decentralized the mind.
Now we need tech that decentralizes the physical elements of our being whether it’s efficient small scale power generation, food production, or 3d printing.
So eventually we can fulfill all our needs equally from the Ross Ice Shelf as in NYC…or soaring high in a solar powered craft.
There are numerous alternative almost free energy methods, which are actually quite decentralized.
No need to live in Antarctica. Even the UN admitted that we produce enough food for 12 bio. – it is just wasted. 50% of Africa alone can easily feed 7 bio. Terraforming of Mars can be done even with our current technology. Nevermind advanced space-travel, which could open up more options. Most restrictions now are political and economic. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oKmYqUSDch8
Then I stand in anticipation of a new age where these bottled up creative forces are unleashed.
The trouble with these new solutions is that it’s much harder to collect rent and taxes from mobile, evenly dispersed targets.
One of the implications of such tech is the end of nation states as we know them.
Haha – the plutocracy has decided to go the route of depopulation and total control. So the new age won’t be coming any time soon. Economic destruction, total tyranny and Brave New World are the current goals – free local energy & interest free money are contrary plans. Whether they succeed as planned, that remains to be seen.
The plutocrats tend to overestimate the amount of control they actually possess.
The more people are made to live in their own shit the less they have to lose.
The less they have to lose, the less leverage plutocrats possess.
It’s made me laugh for years that even tanks, missiles, and jet planes are useless against a few million people that are genuinely pissed off.
Impoverished malcontents are free. They’re less than free. One of them dying frees up precious space for someone else clambering over a pile of shit for but one shaft of daylight.
A single missile or tank shell costs thousands or even millions.
As Vietnam, Somalia, Iraq, Afghanistan, others have demonstrated, modern weapon systems are cost prohibitive while human life is cheap.
The new age is sooner than you suspect.
The problem is that even Warren Buffets son gave up on trying to teach Africans things that the ancient romans knew about farming such as crop rotation. SA & Rhodesia where breadbaskets of Africa and now have starving masses.
Teaching Africans modern or even ancient agriculture in their current system of corruption and disorder is almost useless.
Their lands have the potential to feed the world, but of course their system cannot even feed their own people. Question is how much of the chaos is created by design, since the UN does not even wish for Africa to industrialize.
Don’t worry. The Chinese are buying up land there and putting THEIR people in charge of it. They know full well that Africa represents huge untapped resources just waiting to be exploited.
After all, why should only the Europeans have had their fun with colonialism? Time for others to share in the “adventure of a lifetime”.
Looks like getting rid of “evil whitey” was quite the bonanza for them. If they had at least kept his beneficial expertise on how to run an efficient agricultural system things could have been somewhat better but nooo. All remnants of the old regime must be totally disposed of even if it kills us in the process. well done indeed.
I think there would be lots of people willing to live in Antarctica if there was border control. Look at Iceland with almost no recourses but a standard of living far above Haiti.
Cities in the current form are bad living spaces for human beings anyway. Geographically we could fit 7 billion people in the space of Texas giving every family some 4300 sqft. Technology could easily allow everyone to spread around the world, so that there is plenty of breathing space.
Will you otherwise intelligent authors please stop referencing Easter Island as an overpopulation case study?
That place was so fucking weird you can’t know, in any remotely definitive sense, what the hell went on there.
Given the few examples of overpopulation explosions without an exit route, we have to use what we can.
Sounds fairly bad. I fear for Western Civ since it seems to be approaching the crash, but this time may have to fight Muslim immigrants for the scraps.
And no, Islam is not a viable future.
It can be tempting to underestimate human ingenuity.
But for every war that kills off tens of millions, there’s plenty of war profiteers and soldiers who never see the front lines calling themselves veterans and getting themselves all the street cred a uniform provides.
Frank Sinatra was the original Justin Bieber hated in his time because he was getting laid by all the women left behind. But not a single man was allowed to put a bullet in his brain.
For the most part, in our modern sausage fest, another man’s loss is another’s gain.
There’s plenty of species out there, humans included, where most males don’t reproduce. But those who do win big.
Not the end of the species, just a tournament species.
You might have something worth saying, but you cannot say it. Your writing is horrible, because you do not know how to use the apostrophe, and you misuse it.
Please learn how to use the apostrophe properly, and then do so.
http://www.AngryFlower.com/bobsqu.gif
One has to wonder if the ancients understood something that we don’t today.
They practiced human sacrifice.
That usually gets ascribed to things like religious beliefs and/or the desire of the ruling class to maintain control through intimidation.
Perhaps the reasons ran deeper. There wasn’t enough human sacrifice in these cultures for it to be about controlling the size of the population. At least not directly.
I don’t understand how the mice population goes to zero, “extinction”. Wouldn’t an equilibrium and a healing period begin after a population crash, thus starting a boom/bust cycle. Why don’t the last surviving, say dozen mice, start to reproduce again, with enough space now for baby mice, even if not ‘raised’ in a healthy way, to find an area to start over in a slightly less dysfunctional way. How can the psychic harm caused to the population actually become an ‘extinction trigger’? Where is the tipping point for such a trigger. And if such an extinction trigger did evolve in mice for whatever reason, (and maybe other species), would having placed a single predator into the environment have solved the problem, or perhaps only slow it down? What about 2 predators? What about a fake predator?
According to Calhoun, the reason why the “last mice” didn’t reproduce was simply because they couldn’t – society for the mice had become so fucked up that the remaining mice didn’t know how to. After generations and generations of withdrawal, avoidance, and lack of guidance from the previous generations, you could say the mice just didn’t know how to reproduce, and if they did they couldn’t care for it.
Introducing a predator would probably curb the mice population and keep things normal, but the point of the experiment was to somewhat mimic humans and their living conditions – essentially, we don’t have any predators (yet?) so there was no point in adding predators to the experiment.
The extinction phase reminds me of Japan with the dried fish ladies and herbivore men. The society is so fucked up over there that people are no longer reproducing, just as the mice did at the end.
If civilization in the current form causes extinction of the species, maybe we should tag that as a failed experiment and move on.
Yes!
I read the original article by Calhoun and studied it about half a year ago. Just to point out that the population condensation was usually towards the middle/central pens. This was because the side pens, which where the better pens, were usually dominated by an Alpha male mice. The side pens run by the alpha male would usually have an abundance of female mice who are protected by the alpha. The Alpha would also sometimes allow submissive male mice to live in the pen, but if i remember correctly, was forbidden to mate with any of the females. With the best pens protected by the Alpha, the weaker majority stayed in the middle pens where it got crowded.
Kinda makes you think about what might happen when we start reaching a saturation of living space if we’re just part the majority huh?
Excellent analysis piece by the article author. When I read the scientific journal, Japan was one of the places that came to my head.
Firstly, this is a very well-written article… it brings up some other questions however….
I read about all this “deviant” social behavior in the mice and what is not at all clear to me is how much of this behavior is PRACTICED BY THE MICE IN A NATURAL SETTING? For example, infanticide is something that as far as my knowledge goes, is practiced by all of the higher lifeforms, at least all of the mammals, including us for the vast majority of our history! Cannibalism I’m not sure of, because mice are scavengers, not predators, but I do believe the majority of predators (which is what human beings really are) do practice cannibalism under certain circumstances in nature.
As for sexual behavior, what do mice do in nature? What do HUMANS do in nature? With no external rules and no civilization, what becomes the norm? Mice and humans have both done quite well over the past few millions of years from an evolutionary standpoint, but what really were the key factors, what actually PUSHED that evolution?
Another thing to think about, nature tends to select for alphas and alpha traits like a bitch on wheels. In the natural world, the betas )and gammas, deltas etc) are the ones constantly dying, and the alphas are the survivors! I would submit that maybe the problem with those mice populations is precisely the fact that too many of the betas survive and ultimately bring the society down with their inferior traits…. which I could see as a direct parallel with humans!
Great article but you have way too many typos. Your should fix these to maintain your credibility.
Then on top of it all, IQ levels in general are in decline worldwide… Idiocracy here we come!
Have you got any sources on that?
the PISA tests showed that while the US IQs are in decline, if everyone but Asians scored at the avg for non Hispanic whites then it would be second place in math.
Thank you for this article, it is excellent.
I should make it easy for my grandchildren to be raised in a rural setting.
Saw the article title and immediately thought Japan and South Korea and now many western nations such as Australia, England and America.
RoK should team up with Von Mises. we share about the same views with them
I think the appropriate word here is: we’re fucked. I guess polygamy and a meditative retreat far in the woods would be a solution for the discerning man.
Great article — should have titled it “Of Mice and Men,” though.
Just reading this. What an excellent article. Probably the best I’ve read on this site.
Irrelevant. We’re not mice. The end. THE END I mean are you serious right now? You’re really serious, holy heck you’re dead serious aren’t you.
Please emulate the mice, and never breed.
““…the mice became more promiscuous…mice would roam around attacking others or *mounting* them irrespective of gender…”
It looks as though we’ve been in this phase, where parts of society are mounting anyone and everyone they can
Modern capitalist-consumer society is probably the most dysfunctional in all human history. But it’s coming to an end. It’s not just that the world’s economic system is on life support, but the earth’s resources are being rapidly depleted. What will replace it is the question. A prison planet or indeed ‘the Return of Kings’.
These poindexters are so smart that the obvious seems to escape them. This is simply a rodent version of the lotus eaters from Greek Mythology of Homer’s Odyssey. These mice had all the food they wanted and they had nothing to fear. They didn’t have to work for food and all they did was eat sleep and mate. Without a struggle and challenge, what is the motivation in life? We’ve all heard of old men who nearing retirement talked incessantly about all the things they would do when they finally retired. Then they did and for a few weeks they were busy gardening and doing hobbies. Finally after a couple of months they stop, and just lay around bored, until they die. Not from disease or the factors of old age, but simply because they have no reason to live anymore. Anyone who supports social welfare programs and listens to crazy old hags like Nancy Pelosi talk about spending all day writing poetry ought to keep this in mind. Having nothing to do will kill you. Sedentary lifestyles kill more people than smoking!
Explains why SJW types are more present in high-crowded cities, while rural areas are full of freedom-loving folks.
I wonder if inbreeding has ever been cited as a concern in the Calhoun experiments. If you only start with 8 adults, there will be massive inbreeding in a few generations.
There is something to that. According to rat fanciers, inbreeding can cause serious mental and behavioural aberrations in
rodents. (And it only takes about two generations for the aberrations to
surface.) On top of that, inexperienced mothers will frequently kill and eat their first
litter. Experienced mothers will frequently kill and eat their babies if
something is wrong with them–if they are underweight, retarded,
insane, or too sickly or malformed to live (all conditions which could
easily be caused by inbreeding). And they can sense these problems in
their babies easily and quickly.
Breakdown of gender roles, specifically the loss of maternal instinct, is encouraged by organizations like Planned Parenthood.
Moral of the story: A strictly socialist economy, with universal, full employment and living space adequate enough for family raising will prevent a population crash, provided you’re able to move people out of overcrowded cities.
there are human example of behaviour sinks all barracks style army training replicates a behaviour sink
Calhoun’s conclusions are chilling in their straightforwardness:
“For an animal so simple as a mouse, the most complex behaviours involve
the interrelated set of courtship, maternal care, territorial defence
and hierarchical intragroup and intergroup social organisation. When
behaviours related to these functions fail to mature, there is no
development of social organisation and no reproduction. As in the case
of my study reported above, all members or the population will age and
eventually die. The species will die out. For an animal so complex as
man, there is no logical reason why a comparable sequence of events
should not also lead to species extinction. If opportunities for role
fulfilment fall far short of the demand by those capable of filling
roles, and having expectations to do so, only violence and disruption of
social organisation can follow. Individuals born under these
circumstances will be so out of touch with reality as to be incapable
even of alienation. Their most complex behaviours will become
fragmented. Acquisition, creation and utilisation of ideas appropriate
for life in a post-industrial cultural-conceptual-technological society
will have been blocked. Just as biological generativity in the mouse
involves this species’ most complex behaviours, so does ideational
generativity for man. Loss of these respective complex behaviours means
death of the species.”
It is not so much a biological kill switch that Calhoun was observing as the deterioration of the capacity to learn. What the author of the article summarises as “social decay” is really the loss of the ability to relate to the opposite sex and the loss of the ability to raise one’s children. When those things happen, the species dies. In the case of the Calhoun mice, the behaviours of learning and courtship never matured, and thus they couldn’t pass it on to their children, thus resulting in species extinction.
Human beings face this same prospect, both in terms of courtship and in child-raising. The way we’ve achieved it, though, is principally via contraception and the fact that women in the West are not having their children at a young age. Career women leave childbearing too late with the result they don’t learn from their parents who raised them — their parents are too old and their memory of childraising has died out by the time Miss Career decides to shit out a kid at age 35+. Books like “What To Expect When You’re Expecting”, written typically by gynaecological “experts” and “motherhood” “experts” are a symptom of this failure of intergenerational teaching. And because their *own* daughters are likely to hold off childbearing until late in life, odds are on Miss Career will be dead of old age before she can teach her own child how to raise kids herself.
Courtship? Men have largely suppressed all knowledge or training in courtship, thanks to radical, misandrist feminism which now calls any male approach a rape or indecent assault. Consequently men — absent those teaching their sons Red Pill principles and brute-force “approach 100 women as quick as you can” — are letting their courtship knowledge decay as well, and the ability to win a mate is not maturing — not in the sort of strong pairings that keep the species and societies healthy, or not in the West anyway.
Good reason for western countries to limit immigration
How should we prevent this outcome? Is there a civil, empathetic solution, or must mankind implement a more unpleasant one?
you didn’t mention homosexuality
For depopulation, it is real case for most developed countries, especially on populated east-asia countries like Japan, Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore.
If human are live under freedom, our future will exactly like those mice.
However, I would like to point out that, human have government, policies, and law. Say, We have compulsory education and even compulsory voting in many countries. This policies has successfully eliminate illiteracy.
In China, we have 1 child / 2 child policy. In historical China, we had compulsory marriage, or heavy single tax (say single person pay tax 5 times more than married people). Today, we have computer and internet, which allow implement such policies and law easier than before.
I think human is different from mice, because we have government.
The government can do everything to control population when depopulation become severe problem. Policy and law like Compulsory Marriage, Compulsory Fertility, Single’s tax, infertility tax, etc are expected to implement in future in many countries.
In China, there are proposal for 2 child recommendation. Tax for couple who opt for 0-child, or couple for opt for 4 or more child.
Compulsory marriage, Compulsory Fertility, Single’s tax, Infertility tax are violate basic human rights. But it would be a necessary evil for future.
Therefore, human will not extinct like mice, but will have those necessary evil policies in future.
once again we learn that overpopulation is the biggest threat humanity faces, yet they continue to procreate like rats/cancer, and corrupt gvnt caters to it with welfare states, unchecked immigration, and predatory capitalism for “affordable housing/urbanisation” etc.
The Easter Island story is based solely on theory. No one knows what was going on there. You should mention that there are other equally valid theories.
Calhoun tried to come up with a way to cure behavioral sink and create a true mouse utopia by designing a better mouse city. However, people were only interested in the problem, but not the cure.
Thus, he couldn’t get fundings for further experiments. He was forced to retire.
After 9 years from retirement, he died.
That a species needs hardships to survive seems to be a hurried conclusion.
I think he just needed more experiments and more time.