|
|
Sandra Myers
|
What happens to society if all our appetites are catered to, with all of our needs and wants met? One ecologist and psychologist, John B. Calhoun, sought to answer this question.
Calhoun started with just four pairs of breeding mice and put them in the Utopian “city” he created. He eliminated all potential problems. He gave them unlimited food and water, nest areas and nesting material, perfect climate control. The mice were specifically chosen because they were healthy and disease was blocked from entering the Utopian city, and there were no predators. From 1954 to 1972, working with the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), Calhoun spent years trying to perfect his experiment with continual redesigns of his rodent cities, Universe 25, repeating it 25 times (thus the title Universe 25).
In each experiment: Early on the mice, with no need to forage or build (no work), would initially breed in large quantities; soon a leveling-off occurred; then, the mice would develop either aberrant, hostile or anti-social behaviors; finally, the population would die off to extinction. The Utopia was designed to hold more than 3800 mice, but at 2200 their society began to decay. What went wrong?
According to Calhoun, the death phase consisted of two stages: the “first death”—characterized by the loss of purpose in life beyond mere existence (including the loss of desire to mate, raise young, or establish a role within society)—and “second death” marked by the literal end of life and the extinction of Universe 25.
According to a researcher and reviewer of Calhoun’s experiments, Edmund Ramsden, author of “The urban animal: population density and social pathology in rodents and humans,” stated:
|
“In the sealed [utopian] enclosure, flight was impossible. Violence quickly spiraled out of control. Cannibalism and infanticide followed. Males became hypersexual, pansexual and, an increasing proportion, homosexual. Calhoun called this vortex “a behavioral sink.” Their numbers fell into terminal decline and the population tailed off to extinction. At the experiments’ end, the only animals still alive had survived at an immense psychological cost: asexual and utterly withdrawn, they clustered in a vacant huddled mass. Even when reintroduced to normal rodent communities, these ‘socially autistic’ animals remained isolated until death. In the words of one of Calhoun’s collaborators, rodent “utopia’ had descended into ‘hell.’”
|
Ramsden believed the demise was more due to the inability to move beyond the structure creating not an overpopulation problem, but rather a scenario where the more aggressive mice were able to control the territory and isolate everyone else.
Could this be the only issue? New experiments by other scientists revealed when the mice were assigned to carry out tasks (work) under varying conditions of population density they displayed far fewer behavioral problems. As such, the population density of the mouse utopia wasn’t the real issue, but the valuelessness of life when everything is handed to the subject without effort.
Parallels to Today’s Utopian/Socialist Vision
Projecting these same conditions onto humanity, Calhoun’s primary conclusion asserts that it’s mere over-population that will lead to our “Utopia’s” demise. (Enter in population control.) And although Ramsden suggested that moving about (like to a new community) will help alleviate the social breakdown, once socially and psychologically fractured, the damaged mice fared no better when moved to a new, normal colony.
But in a similarly designed human Utopia, our Democratic socialist leaders want to “give” us free food, free housing, etc.
Biblical Examples For Our Life
The one thing missing from this experiment is obvious: God and His design for life. Although Calhoun was attempting to play God, giving the rodents everything he thought they needed, he forgot the natural order and of the way God designed life.
God was the first to do work on the earth. And God created us to work and to enjoy the satisfaction in the fruits of our labor and the meaning it gives to our lives and it is very good.
|
“Every man also to whom God hath given riches and wealth, and hath given him power to eat thereof, and to take his portion, and to rejoice in his labour; this is the gift of God.”
|
All of our lives, animals and humans live in a world of struggle. This struggle allows for the species to adapt, overcome and grow. Remove that struggle, and progress stops and even digresses, with the behavior observed in this study the result.
Of lesser value in the experiment, but still important—the ability to move outside of our “city.” After a time of building, Abram and Lot eventually started having tensions and they chose to seek a place where they could expand their own dominions without stepping on each others’ toes. Those feeding from the government trough have become “socially autistic” don’t even have the mental capacity to think of moving beyond their socialist “Utopia.”
The Universe 25 experiment that the godless socialists/democrats are perpetrating on American citizens is leaving a devastating mark on society. Have we descended to the level where the “socially autistic” mice are now governing, training up our children, and are in control of building a new liberal/socialist country? Can we stop the “behavioral sink?” As such, there is little value or respect for God, of life, work or property. Is this the waxing worse and worse the Bible speaks of? Is this why only a remnant will be saved?
Let this be a dire warning to spread the Good News to those who still can and will receive it. There is great reward and the most satisfaction in God’s work. 
|
