I’m referring to John B. Calhoun, a scientist who built a perfect society in a small town in Maryland. He created an actual Garden of Eden in modern America.
But only for mice.
Even today, Dr. Calhoun’s bold experiment—known as Universe 25—demands our attention. In fact, we need to study Universe 25 far more carefully today, because zealous tech accelerationists—that’s now a word, by the way—aim to create something comparable for human beings.
What would you do if AI took care of all your needs?
Would you be happier? Would you be kinder and gentler? Would you love your neighbor more? Would you spend more time with family? Would you have a richer, more fulfilled life?
Calhoun tried to answer that question by creating a utopia for mice, and watching how their society evolved when all their needs and desires were met.
It didn’t turn out like he planned.
There were no predators. There was no disease. There was no competition. There were no threats.
Mice were free to be the best they could be. The only thing missing was 24/7 Netflix.
There was just one rule: Nobody could leave.
The galvanized metal walls of Universe 25 had no exit doors. But why would a mouse want to move out of the Garden of Eden?
Calhoun expected that his mice would flourish and propagate. He had room for 3,000 mice in his pen. He anticipated that the population would soon reach that limit.
It never happened.
At first, the population doubled every 55 days. But things started to deteriorate after the mouse population reached 620—although that was only around 20% of Universe 25’s capacity.
The problem started in the northeast corner of the pen, where the birth rate dropped enormously. But the decline soon spread elsewhere.
Dominant males adopted a narcissistic lifestyle—cleaning and preening themselves, and gorging on food. But they lost interest in routine mating behavior, although rape of both males and females was now on the rise.
Many other males became listless. Calhoun shared some details:
They became very inactive and aggregated in large pools near the centre of the floor of the universe. From this point on they no longer initiated interaction with their established associates, nor did their behaviour elicit attack by territorial males. Even so, they became characterized by many wounds and much scar tissue as a result of attacks by other withdrawn males.Females now became very aggressive—attacking each other, and even their own children. Males no longer acted as protectors, losing interest in defending the nests. Yet they would increasingly attack other mice for no purpose. Although ample food was available, mouse-on-mouse cannibalism was now commonplace.
The mouse population stopped growing on day 560. A few baby mice survived weaning for several more weeks—but after day 600 not a single newborn mouse lived to adulthood. (...)
The last living mice in Universe 25 were totally anti-social. They had been raised without maternal affection and nurturing, and grew up in a society of extreme narcissism, random violence, and disengagement.
Eventually the entire mouse population in Universe 25 died out. They couldn’t survive utopia. (...)
***
AI is ramping up to displace doctors, nurses, lawyers, teachers, software developers, engineers, scientists, therapists, writers, musicians, artists…all the way down to customer service reps, fast food workers, and the lowest entry-level employees.Nobody is immune. Well, almost nobody.
Consumers hate AI replacement theory by an overwhelming majority. But the ruling technocrats want it madly. And will force it upon us—as quickly and as irrevocably as possible.
But what happens to a society where people are deprived of purposes and vocations?
Humans are so much more complicated than mice. So if mice need challenges and obstacles in order to flourish, we need them all the more. People are not built for passive lives—and the tech billionaires who are chasing this (out of greed, not benevolence) are courting disaster on the largest scale imaginable.
More than 100 years ago, sociologist Emile Durkheim studied the problem of anomie. That’s not a word you hear very often nowadays. But we need to bring it back.
Anomie is a sense that life has no purpose or meaning. The people who suffer from it are listless, disconnected, and prone to mental illnesses of various sorts. Durkheim believed, for example, that suicide was frequently caused by anomie.
But the most shocking part of Durkheim’s analysis was his view that anomie increased when social norms were lessened. You might think that people rejoice when rules and regulations get eliminated. But Durkheim believed the exact opposite.
When the old structures go away, people encounter a crisis of meaning in their lives. In extreme cases, they kill themselves.
by Ted Gioia, The Honest Broker | Read more:
Images: John Calhoun and Universe 25; Twitter/X
