Friday, September 24, 2021

What we can learn from John B.Calhoun's rodent experiments

 What Humans Can Learn

"When all needs are accounted for, and no conflict exists, the act of living is stripped to its barest physiological essentials of food and sleep. In Calhoun's view:


Herein is the paradox of a life without work or conflict.

When all sense of necessity is stripped from the life of an individual, life ceases to have purpose.

The individual dies in spirit." 

Another review THE BEHAVIORAL SINK The mouse universes of John B. Calhoun

"Death of the establishment leads to spiritual death

= loss of capacity to engage in behaviors essential to species survival
....

No matter how sophisticated we considered ourselves to be, once the number of individuals capable of filling roles greatly exceeded the number of roles,

only violence and disruption of social organization 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 behaviors will become fragmented. Acquisition, creation and utilization of ideas appropriate for life in a post-industrial cultural-conceptual-technological society will have been blocked."

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