Reflections on Calhoun's Rat Utopia

Written 2nd June 2022


Calhoun's rat experiment is an experiment with a grim warning to the future of mankind, of a population that increases beyond the pyscho-sociological limitations of its limited area. 

One of the interesting aspects of the experiment Calhoun pointed out was that man, contrary to rodents, are able to construct a completely fictitious world of roles where we can inhabit. The rodents in his experiment on the other hand where unable to create more roles for the mice to fulfill and therefore degenerated into rodents who pursued non productive activities. Calhoun pointed out that in the state of nature animals that exceed the physical and pyscho-sociological limitations of the environment will divide itself and branch off into different tribes. The physical aspect is straightforward, if there enough land to support 100 individuals, once the population reaches 100 it must separate and emigrate in order for there not to be an overpopulation. The psycho-sociological aspect has more to do with the potential roles one can satisfy within a certain culture group, there can be more individuals than open roles available in an environment as shown by Calhoun's experiment. This is relevant to humans in a variety of ways, one that came to mind was the situation of low income individuals living in cities, in a way this reflects to a certain extent the experiment of Calhoun, that person is living in a confined environment without any ability to emigrate and therefore must participate in the overpopulated roles that is taking place in that environment, something I thought of was the pointless gang wars that provides the creation of more roles for individuals to satisfy in an environment which requires none. 


What the experiment ultimately shows, and I believe was the conclusion Calhoun arrived at, was that a species doesn't necessarily have to die due to bodily reasons such as lack of food, water, shelter, predators, or other factors. What Calhoun showed in his experiment is that a species can become behaviorally retarded to the point that they are unable to propagate their species. This was illustrated by the fact that they took rats from the experiment and were inserted in a new cage but were unable to continue the species even with ample space, food and water. The point shown was that a species can die off due to a death of the spirit. 


Furthermore, one of the things that came to mind while reading the study was the way we as humans treat the topic of mental illness, the way I view the mental illness industry, especially in the United States, is a purely medical one focused on the chemical imbalances in the brain. Therefore there is a very simple Newtonian solution to the phenomenon, provide pills to change the chemical structure of the brain so the individual responds in a different way. Now looking at Calhoun's experiment, we can very clearly see that most of the rodents were mentally ill in the sense that they were exhibiting behaviors completely foreign to how they would behave in the state of nature. If theses rats were humans, our solution would be to inject these rats which pills in order for them to behave more 'normally' the problem is that the supposedly chemical imbalance was never the problem, rather the problem was always the environment being completely unhealthy are therefore it created unhealthy individuals. 


Calhoun uses Revelations to illustrate the methods by which death can occur, excluding old age. 

1. Sword: Emigration

2. Famine: Resources and Weather

3. Pestilence: Disease

4. Wild beasts: Predation


What Calhoun has attempted in his experiment is to mitigate all the factors that would contribute to the death of a species. In order to avoid emigration he imposed barriers that limited the geographical expansion of the rodents. Resources were provided in abundance and the temperature was controlled. The researchers regularly cleaned the utopia to prevent the prevalence of disease. And finally there were no natural predators in the Utopia. The following observations are a result of these conditions. 

One of the thoughts I had while discussing this with my friends was the comment made by one of the aliens in The Matrix, he at first said that the humans were given a Matrix that was akin to Calhoun's Utopia, never needing to work, and everything provided to them as they needed, but the system failed, this environment was not suitable for the nature of human beings. Therefore they provided a 'normal' human environment, in my opinion they should have just provided an anarcho primitivist environment for the humans. The Matrix shouldn't be judged regarding the plausibility or the rational behind the mechanics of the Matrix but rather to question the philosophical as well as pyschological and sociological insights the movie provides regarding human nature. 

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