If nothing else, Calhoun demonstrated that population density is a severe stress to a mouse society, resulting in behavior contrary to survival of that population.
That strange mouse behavior came back into my awareness a few years ago when I saw reports (and later experienced) of so-called Road Rage. Or, a school age boy shooting, killing class mates and teachers. Or a mother drowning her children. Overpopulation? Probably not, but overwhelming stress.
What is behind the massacres in Africa, Cambodia, Myanmar (Burma), and elsewhere? That is not human behavior. I am convinced that torture is not human, but yet, now it seems policy of our government. What is going on? What makes my species behave in ways that cannot but lead to its own demise?
What if inhuman behavior has to do with growing up in an inhuman environment? How many children grow up without love, or without at least one parent?
Children all over the world used to grow up in small groups, villages, extended families, where children were treasured and respected as individuals. Now many children grow up with their peers and authority figures like teachers, while both parents work out of the home, ten hours a day. In parts of the world diseases like HIV/Aids, or malaria, or tuberculosis, have killed so many adults that children grow up alone, or in orphanages. Societies are torn apart by wars and revolutions. Child soldiers.
What distorted view must children get of who they are.
The abyss is no longer a personal barrier to knowing one's self, but now seems to be a phenomenon of our civilization and the excesses it breeds.
Of the six and a half billion people now alive, millions, probably billions, feel stressed, overwhelmed by wars they cannot understand, by poverty, hunger, fear. Many of us must feel the threat of our globalized economy, a capitalist system that strongly favors the rich and powerful, making the majority much poorer and feeling abandoned.
Global Warming is a threat. Even though we now know that we are causing the poisoning of our atmosphere and the resulting warming of the planet, a growing number of us sense that the survival of our species might be threatened.
The planet is in trouble; of course we feel that. .
Over the years people have told me, "you are too negative; there are wonderful people in the world, who do good and human things." I know. I know many of those wonderful people.
However, I have come to think there is an enormous wave of happenings, rolling over us, moving toward a great catastrophe. Climate Change is now a fact, and is upon us faster and greater than foreseen even a few years ago. And, suddenly again, fears of a man-made atomic disaster are with us. A seeming inability of governments and people to think of anything other than stay the course and more force, more violence, secret prisons, and torture as accepted ways of gathering information. All that could threatens our survival as a species.
People behaving in ways that are not human any more.
A thousand species of beings are disappearing each day. Our civilization, so-called, is destructive, not sustainable. Even if we were to change fuels, it is still unsustainable. Our way of life is unsustainable.
And, I think, that those of us who have any sensitivity left, must feel that.
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