Utopia leads to extinction — We need a better model for society

In the 1960s, Dr Calhoun performed (in my opinion) the most important experiment on societal organisation. He aimed to determine the effect of living in a utopia by recreating it for a mouse population.

What is a utopia? A place of unlimited food, water, living space, population growth without predators, and so on.

The experiment started with eight mice, who began to reproduce quickly, enjoying their newfound “utopia” with unlimited resources. Within 4 years, however, the population had become extinct through self-annihilation even though all the resources it needed for survival were readily available, including ample space to live. How could such a thing happen?

Well by the simple concept that struggle and suffering leads to growth and strength. While comfort and pleasure leads to decline and weakness.

It all starts with the social education of the young.

Due to the abundance of food and water and lack of predators, there was no need to perform any actions to acquire resources and/or avoid danger. So the young have no opportunity to see such actions, learn through positive and negative reinforcement (e.g. bad pupils often lose their lives) and, later, use them effectively.

The study showed that contrarily, difficult conditions instigate better coping mechanisms for the population, leading to its growth, strengthening and reinforcement.

The scientist carefully documented the growth, activities and state of the population all the way to extinction. The trouble began on Day 315 when social norms and structure started breaking down.

Aberrations included the following: females abandoning their young; males no longer defending their territory; and both sexes becoming more violent and aggressive. Deviant behavior, sexual and social, mounted with each passing day. The last thousand mice to be born tended to avoid stressful activity and focused their attention increasingly on themselves.

Human society has come to strikingly resemble the self-annihilation tendencies of the mice.

The only real difference is that a generation of mice takes about 50 days to play out, while a generation of humans takes about 20–25 years. What does it mean for you?

We are not living in a way that we have evolved too, and as such our internal chemistry is deviated from the baseline. We have widespread existential crises because people don’t know who they are, mostly because they fail to see themselves as parts of a larger machine known as society.

No man is an island.

Yet this is what everyone is aiming towards. Deficiencies in challenges in life, strong social bonds and reciprocity is the reason why we are so susceptible to dopamine addictions.

Do you know about the study that got rats addicted to cocaine while they were being tested in lab settings and locked in cages? When it was tested on wild rats living in natural colonies in open space, they could not get them addicted to cocaine. The environment made them more likely to become drug users!

Do you see how the environment you are in influences the kind of behaviour you exhibit? Most (if not all) addictions are a result of a person having a deficiency in their lives (compared to our optimal evolutionary environment) and not being able to solve the root cause.

I’ve seen first hand how lack of awareness and integration of the young into the social fabric of life, results in their unhappiness and in society getting worse.

Be aware that providing everything to your loved ones can become detrimental past a certain point. If they’re never hungry, do they know the value of food? If they aren’t aware of the effort it takes to grow food and cook meals they will all too easily refuse to eat something because it “doesn’t suit their taste”. Do they have compassion and empathy for others? If they never feel hunger how will they empathise with those that beg for food?

It turns out that “spoiling” kids actually makes them spoiled!

Maybe its time to balance it out with some tough love. Reward good behaviour, disincentivize the bad behaviour.

Instill in them the understanding and interdependence we have with greater society and that we should be orienting ourselves in a “service-to-others” kind of way.

“The lack of challenges gradually spoils the behaviour of subsequent generations of a population. This degeneration is inevitable and leads to eventual self-extinction. Due to the lack of challenges, the extinction of a population is inevitable. It lasts several generations, but is inexorable.”

Socialism / progressivism teaches children that competition is bad. “Everyone’s a winner” is the mantra of our time, and this creates an environment where children are not challenged. In fact, it is no longer even socially acceptable to subject children to any challenges at all. We are weakening our children, our families, our societies — and by law!

Thomas Sowell stated, “The welfare state shields people from the consequences of their own mistakes, allowing irresponsibility to continue and to flourish among ever wider circles of people.” Applicability to Humanity?

A fulfilling life is built through dealing with and overcoming pain and struggle, whatever form that may be. No life is ever exempt, and actually trying to make one exempt just leads to further suffering.

We must orient our lives towards being close to the production of our own food, being in touch with nature, hard work, sunlight , fresh air and soil. We are only meant to be living in communities of a couple hundred people, to have time to think about life and to appreciate being, to have limited choices at love and marriage, and when we find it, to work hard and with commitment to building a strong and stable family. We raise kids with the understanding and appreciation that we are here to serve the tribe, and if we do it well, the tribe will serve and protect us.

This is the harmonious cycle of humanity, our natural equilibrium state. In many ways, technology and industrialization moved us away from this and as a result we have more people suffering (mentally, emotionally, and possibly physically) than ever before. Important lessons from this study:

• The very real dangers of a Universal Basic Income (UBI) or welfare / stimulus giveaways
• When you give resources to populations without any apparent scarcity or competition, those population raise generations of offspring that are incapable of functioning in society.
• Population itself is not the problem. Collectivism and the welfare state is what will lead to humanity’s self-annihilation.
• They no longer valued competition, achievement or resources. Zero population was the inevitable result.