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How do you design a utopia? In 1972, John B. Calhoun detailed the specifications of his Mortality-Inhibiting Environment for Mice: a practical utopia built in the laboratory. Every aspect of Universe 25—as this particular model was called—was pitched to cater for the well-being of its rodent residents and increase their lifespan.
Everything was perfect. It was exactly as if they had free healthcare for all and where everyone had a guaranteed living wage. Life must have been perfect.
Four breeding pairs of mice were moved in on day one. After 104 days of upheaval as they familiarized themselves with their new world, they started to reproduce. In their fully catered paradise, the population increased exponentially, doubling every fifty-five days. Those were the good times, as the mice feasted on the fruited plain. To its members, the mouse civilization of Universe 25 must have seemed prosperous indeed. But its downfall was already certain—not just stagnation, but total and inevitable destruction.
What exactly happened in Universe 25?
Here's what happened:
Past day 315, population growth slowed. More than six hundred mice now lived in Universe 25, constantly rubbing shoulders on their way up and down the stairwells to eat, drink, and sleep. Mice found themselves born into a world that was more crowded every day, and there were far more mice than meaningful social roles. With more and more peers to defend against, males found it difficult and stressful to defend their territory, so they abandoned the activity. Normal social discourse within the mouse community broke down, and with it the ability of mice to form social bonds. The failures and dropouts congregated in large groups in the middle of the enclosure, their listless withdrawal occasionally interrupted by spasms and waves of pointless violence.
Now that sounds like modern America!
The victims of these random attacks became attackers. Left on their own in nests subject to invasion, nursing females attacked their own young. Procreation slumped, infant abandonment and mortality soared. Lone females retreated to isolated nesting boxes on penthouse levels. Other males, a group Calhoun termed "the beautiful ones," never sought sex and never fought - they just ate, slept, and groomed, wrapped in narcissistic introspection. Elsewhere, cannibalism, pansexualism, and violence became endemic. Mouse society had collapsed.
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. 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.
Modern America is building a world exactly like the Utopian world given to the rats. Now we are seeing the beginning of societal breakdown with the absence of fathers from the family unit, lone females having children and then there are the "beautiful ones" and there is far to many of them in middle schools spread across the country.
You dwell on the days a segregation and attempt to say that those of us who remember some better times in the past think that civil rights or segregation is to blame. What's up with that?
So basically if some of us see some things better before, you are attempting to play a race card in it.
Exactly! There were some bad things about the past but there were many good things also. Some of those good things have been replaced by unsavory things today. The bad things have changed for the better but some people pretend we have never evolved from them.
Let me guess when you were a young boy white men ruled everything. Women stayed at home barefoot and pregnant and blacks sat at the back of the bus.
Good old days.
No, those aren't the good old days that we speak of but there were many things that were better than today. Why is it that people like you can only see the bad things of the past as if nothing good existed and claim that we only want the bad parts back?
Would you remember anything good about the good ole' days if you were a barefoot Negro riding in the back of the bus? I don't think so.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Oldglory
No, those aren't the good old days that we speak of but there were many things that were better than today. Why is it that people like you can only see the bad things of the past as if nothing good existed and claim that we only want the bad parts back?
OKAY,
Im sure no one will agree, but it seems as tho it all fell apart and things started going down hill when prayer and the- UH OH!!
im gona say it.....
the Bible, was taken out of schools..
Probably Im the only one in the country that thinks this-
but I thought Id give it a shot and throw this idea out in the public arena ,( so to speak )
and see what happens...
No, those aren't the good old days that we speak of but there were many things that were better than today. Why is it that people like you can only see the bad things of the past as if nothing good existed and claim that we only want the bad parts back?
I'm with you, however, there was a lot of good that happened with the women's movement.....
but things were much better then, although even then politicans were corrupt and power hungry....
it was the start of the end....which fast forewards to, today.
Would you remember anything good about the good ole' days if you were a barefoot Negro riding in the back of the bus? I don't think so.
But I wasn't and therefore, at the time it didn't matter. Now that it does in retrospect I'm not about to feel guilty for enjoying my youth. That would be pointless and counter-productive. Let others spend their lives saying mea culpa. I have better ways to spend my time. Some people just need to "suffer" to show how "feeling" they are. Thankfully, I'm not one of them .
Yes, similar to Mayberry. Like much of this country was in the 50s.
How would you know exactly? Your username appears to indicate a birthdate of 1947, which means you were all of 13 when the '50s ended. I have a 13-year-old right now, and God love him, he doesn't know his a$$ from a hole in the ground when it comes to anything outside of his little bubble, and neither do any of his friends. So you'll pardon me if I can't take your post seriously.
How do you design a utopia? In 1972, John B. Calhoun detailed the specifications of his Mortality-Inhibiting Environment for Mice: a practical utopia built in the laboratory. Every aspect of Universe 25—as this particular model was called—was pitched to cater for the well-being of its rodent residents and increase their lifespan.
Everything was perfect. It was exactly as if they had free healthcare for all and where everyone had a guaranteed living wage. Life must have been perfect.
Four breeding pairs of mice were moved in on day one. After 104 days of upheaval as they familiarized themselves with their new world, they started to reproduce. In their fully catered paradise, the population increased exponentially, doubling every fifty-five days. Those were the good times, as the mice feasted on the fruited plain. To its members, the mouse civilization of Universe 25 must have seemed prosperous indeed. But its downfall was already certain—not just stagnation, but total and inevitable destruction.
What exactly happened in Universe 25?
Here's what happened:
Past day 315, population growth slowed. More than six hundred mice now lived in Universe 25, constantly rubbing shoulders on their way up and down the stairwells to eat, drink, and sleep. Mice found themselves born into a world that was more crowded every day, and there were far more mice than meaningful social roles. With more and more peers to defend against, males found it difficult and stressful to defend their territory, so they abandoned the activity. Normal social discourse within the mouse community broke down, and with it the ability of mice to form social bonds. The failures and dropouts congregated in large groups in the middle of the enclosure, their listless withdrawal occasionally interrupted by spasms and waves of pointless violence.
Now that sounds like modern America!
The victims of these random attacks became attackers. Left on their own in nests subject to invasion, nursing females attacked their own young. Procreation slumped, infant abandonment and mortality soared. Lone females retreated to isolated nesting boxes on penthouse levels. Other males, a group Calhoun termed "the beautiful ones," never sought sex and never fought - they just ate, slept, and groomed, wrapped in narcissistic introspection. Elsewhere, cannibalism, pansexualism, and violence became endemic. Mouse society had collapsed.
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. 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.
Modern America is building a world exactly like the Utopian world given to the rats. Now we are seeing the beginning of societal breakdown with the absence of fathers from the family unit, lone females having children and then there are the "beautiful ones" and there is far to many of them in middle schools spread across the country.
Holy God...That is what is happening...
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