Smithsonian Magazine, 2/26/15 updated 8/8/24:

What does utopia look like for mice and rats? According to a researcher who did most of his work in the 1950s through 1970s, it might include limitless food, multiple levels and secluded little condos. These were all part of John Calhoun’s experiments to study the effects of population density on behavior. But what looked like rodent paradises at first quickly spiraled into out-of-control overcrowding, eventual population collapse and seemingly sinister behavior patterns.

In other words, the mice were not nice.

I’m seeing a lot of parallels between the mice and homo sapiens lately.

Working with rats between 1958 and 1962, and with mice from 1968 to 1972, Calhoun set up experimental rodent enclosures at the National Institute of Mental Health’s Laboratory of Psychology. He hoped to learn more about how humans might behave in a crowded future. His first 24 attempts ended early due to constraints on laboratory space. But his 25th attempt at a utopian habitat, which began in 1968, would become a landmark psychological study. According to Gizmodo’s Esther Inglis-Arkell, Calhoun’s “Universe 25” started when the researcher dropped four female and four male mice into the enclosure.

By the 560th day, the population peaked with over 2,200 individuals scurrying around, waiting for food and sometimes erupting into open brawls. These mice spent most of their time in the presence of hundreds of other mice. When they became adults, those mice that managed to produce offspring were so stressed out that parenting became an afterthought.

So it’s like…if the “survive and thrive” instinct is challenged by harsher conditions, it maintains its place as a top priority. If the hardships are suspended or removed altogether the priorities change.

What I notice about The Left — and I would expect The Left would agree with all this — is:
1. They and their ideological compatriots command and control the dominant, prevailing narrative in physical locations where the population density is high.

2. Perhaps because of #1, they place greater weight on what people think of each other when they conclude certain things. You ask them “What is a woman?” and the very last thing that goes through their minds is what a woman is; they’re much more drawn to choosing the proper insult for you for daring to ask the question.

3. To The Left, this is not neglect of “truth” because they don’t accept the supposition that there is a unified, objective truth. Their understanding of truth is a social thing. We accept a common “truth” to show we’re in a common tribe and can be friends.

4. Because they live in a world where we each choose our own truth, cause and effect relationships are up for debate. Experimentation does not confirm or refute theories; experiments, rather, bring credit or discredit upon themselves. The theory determines what the experiments have to do to be valid. Example: Socialism works. Anytime it doesn’t, it wasn’t implemented the right way. The wrong people were in charge.

5. The failings of human nature do not confound these theories because human nature simply isn’t a factor. Get rid of all the guns, there won’t be any violence. Equalize income and wealth, there won’t be any crime. If there’s no necessity to go to work, people will concentrate all their time and resources on mind-expanding, worthwhile, artistic things.

Where The Left would disagree with me, I expect, is in this correlation I draw between high-population-density, inner-urban, blue-state living and the “Beautiful Mice” experiment that removes significant difficulties from the effort to survive. This is an easy call. Blue state thinkers and voters don’t imagine themselves to have it all that easy. They think they’ve got it tough.

And with high crime, crumbling infrastructure and artificially inflated prices of goods and services, in a way they’re right.

I remember making the observation many years ago, that there’s this “ether” — an intangible object, but an object nonetheless, with a singular state. Only liberals can see it. Conservatives are more accepting of the St. Augustine observation that “wrong is wrong even if everyone’s doing it, right is right even if no one is doing it.” Or alternatively: There is no my-truth your-truth, there is only the truth and then a bunch of opinions.

But liberals believe in the one object with one state. As in: Darn that Donald Trump, he made it okay to be racist or whatever. So there’s a kiosk somewhere that unifies us all; the central oracle dishing out verdicts on “this is okay” and “that other thing is not okay.”

At that time I had a gadfly account, consisting of some undisclosed number of persons sharing a password, and over my protests. I would ban them a year or two later. In the meantime, they read about this and started using the “I win the argument because I don’t understand what you’re saying” maneuver, pretending “ethereal” and “object” were contradictory descriptors.

And this is the part that fascinates me. The kiosk, or ethereal object, exists somewhere. The liberals may not be consulting it all the time, but they come up with these issues as if the reference is being spoiled. Call it what you will, ether, object, kiosk, oracle, egregore, virtual reference manual; it catalogs the properties that are our prevailing culture and this is supposed to affect us in some way. As various high profile people, good and bad, have an effect on it.

This concept surfaces in the silly things they say now and then. Like: Such-and-such a person or organization or institution is setting the clock back on women’s rights or something. “The clock.” It must be affixed to something somewhere. With the wrong hands setting this clock, it becomes “okay” or “not okay” to think certain things.

You can tell liberals believe in this even though they don’t consciously realize they believe in it. This “object” is not truth itself, because it’s subject to manipulation by mortals. The truth in which conservatives believe, is beyond that; “water is wet” and it doesn’t matter how many people think it isn’t. Liberals are far more excited, even agitated, about their belief that there are many different “genders,” than conservatives are about their belief that there are only two. To the liberal, this is a social movement, whereas to the conservative it’s something that simply is. It doesn’t become an issue until a man invades the private bathroom space of a little girl.

Liberalism has changed with our higher standard of living, and with the advancement of technology. We have more liberals now, and more strident ones, because it’s an easier proposition to go cradle to grave without one’s judgment being truly tested. We can make mistakes now without ever being aware we made one. No danger to life or limb. So nothing to keep us in check.

Trump is not making the liberals angry. Neither are you and neither am I.

What sets them off is their knowledge of three things.

The first is that this “ethereal object” they seek to manipulate, is quite a different thing from truth itself. “Water is wet” is truth itself. We don’t bicker about that. It’s not up for voting, argument, rebuttal or appeal.

The second is that, to the extent the object exists, it exists as a request and not a rule. None of us have to follow it. Many don’t. “They’re married even though they’re of the same sex” is something you can choose to recognize, or not to recognize. It doesn’t matter what the law says. It doesn’t matter how the Supreme Court rules. We can all think what we want.

The third is that other people have an effect on it. This is why every moment Trump is in office and Republicans are running things, is a source of angst. If it could end tomorrow that would be good for them, but it would be better if it could end six o’clock tonight. Each minute is an agony. They want to retreat into the comforting embryonic sack of one book of rules, one object.

I myself can’t do it. I can’t roll with the changes when the “one object” flips around, as it sometimes does. It’s not like I’m being punished for each bad decision I make; I’ve made many, and haven’t been punished for all of them. I don’t work around corn harvesters or grain silos and I’m not in a position to have my arm ripped out by the roots if I make a mistake. I’m just lazy. Truth has something to do with what I do, and I change my mind slowly. I can’t say Kamala Harris is not to be mentioned one day, and the next day she’s the answer to all our problems. Every now and then this “object” demands its followers turn on a dime, hairpin-like, and I can’t do it. Too much thinking for myself, I suppose.