In my somewhat morbid state of mind this week, I started to examine the reasons that man behaves the way he does. Is it a part of our psychological make up? Is man’s inhumanity to man and ultimately himself, a result of a pre-programmed disposition toward self-destruction that forms part of our DNA? Or is this the result of demons as espoused by Education Minister Ronald Jones in Barbados and Chaguanas West MP Jack Warner in Trinidad. (Maybe it is a football thing).
To a casual observer, life in Libya under Qaddafi was as good as it gets.
1. There is no electricity bill in Libya; electricity is free for all its citizens.
2. There is no interest on loans, banks in Libya are state-owned and loans given to all its citizens at 0% interest by law.
3. All newlyweds in Libya receive $60,000 Dinar (US$50,000 ) by the government to buy their first apartment.
5. Education and medical treatments are free in Libya. Before Qaddafi only 25% of Libyans were literate. Today the figure is 83%.
6. Should Libyans want to take up a farming career, they would receive farming land, a farming house, equipments, seeds and livestock to start their farms – all for free.
7. If Libyans cannot find the education or medical facilities they need in Libya, the government funds them to go abroad for it – $2, 300/mth accommodation and car allowance.
8. In Libyan, if a Libyan buys a car, the government subsidized 50% of the price.
9. 0% unemployment.
Heaven.
If we accept the above is true, we are forced to ask the question. “How come the people of Libya were celebrating in the streets after the brutal murder of the man that created that standard of living for them?”
One train of thought is that despite all the perks, the people were not free to determine their own destiny.
Does the human animal have a need to be free even if freedom will result in them working harder and experiencing more hardships? If this is so, it will definitely explain the reason that Adam and Eve gave up utopia for the taste of an apple.
I pondered, “Is this only a human trait or did the creator instill this nuance into every living creature?”
I then stumbled upon the work of Mr. Calhoun.
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| John B. Calhoun |
In 1972, John B. Calhoun detailed the specifications of his Mortality-Inhibiting Environment for Mice: a practical utopia built in the laboratory. Every aspect of Universe 25—as this particular model was called—was designed to cater for the well-being of its rodent residents and to increase their lifespan. The Universe took the form of a tank, 101 inches square, enclosed by walls 54 inches high. The first 37 inches of wall was structured so the mice could climb up, but they were prevented from escaping by 17 inches of bare wall above. Each wall had sixteen vertical mesh tunnels—call them stairwells—soldered to it. Four horizontal corridors opened off each stairwell, each leading to four nesting boxes. That means 256 boxes in total, each capable of housing fifteen mice. There was abundant clean food, water, and nesting material. The Universe was cleaned every four to eight weeks. There were no predators, the temperature was kept at a steady 68°F, and the mice were a disease-free elite selected from the National Institutes of Health’s breeding colony.
Heaven.
Four breeding pairs of mice were moved in on day one. After 104 days of upheaval as they familiarized themselves with their new world, they started to reproduce. In their fully catered paradise, the population increased exponentially, doubling every fifty-five days. Those were the good times. To its members, the mouse civilization of Universe 25 must have seemed prosperous indeed. But its downfall was already certain—not just stagnation, but total and inevitable destruction. As the name Universe 25 suggests, it was not the first time Calhoun had built a world for rodents. He had been building Utopian environments for rats and mice since the 1940s, with thoroughly consistent results. Heaven always turned into hell.
Others argued that population growth would cause our demise by exhausting our natural resources, leading to starvation and conflict. But there was no scarcity of food and water in Calhoun’s universe. The only thing that was in short supply was space and hence freedom. This was, after all, “heaven”—a title Calhoun deliberately used with pitch-black irony.
So what exactly happened in Universe 25? Past day 315, population growth slowed. More than six hundred mice now lived in Universe 25, constantly rubbing shoulders on their way up and down the stairwells to eat, drink, and sleep. Mice found themselves born into a world that was more crowded every day, and there were far more mice than meaningful social roles, (jobs). With more and more peers to defend against, males found it difficult and stressful to defend their territory, so they abandoned the activity. Normal social discourse within the mouse community broke down, and with it the ability of mice to form social bonds. The failures and dropouts congregated in large groups in the middle of the enclosure, their listless withdrawal occasionally interrupted by spasms and waves of pointless violence. The victims of these random attacks became attackers. Left on their own in nests subject to invasion, nursing females attacked their own young. Procreation slumped, infant abandonment and mortality soared. Lone females retreated to isolated nesting boxes on penthouse levels. Other males, a group Calhoun termed “the beautiful ones,” never sought sex and never fought—they just ate, slept, and groomed, wrapped in narcissistic introspection. Elsewhere, cannibalism, pansexualism, and violence became endemic. Mouse society had collapsed.
On day 560, a little more than eighteen months into the experiment, the population peaked at 2,200 mice and its growth ceased. A few mice survived past weaning until day six hundred, after which there were few pregnancies and no surviving young. As the population had ceased to regenerate itself, its path to extinction was clear. There would be no recovery, not even after numbers had dwindled back to those of the heady early days of the Universe. The mice had lost the capacity to rebuild their numbers—many of the mice that could still conceive, such as the “beautiful ones” and their secluded singleton female counterparts, had lost the social ability to do so. In a way, the creatures had ceased to be mice long before their death—a “first death,” as Calhoun put it, ruining their spirit and their society as thoroughly as the later “second death” of the physical body.
Calhoun had built his career on this basic experiment and its consistent results ever since erecting his first “rat city” on a quarter-acre of land adjacent to his home in Towson, Maryland, in 1947. The population of that first pen had peaked at 200 and stabilized at 150, when Calhoun had estimated that it could rise to as many as 5,000—something was evidently amiss. In 1954, Calhoun was employed by the National Institute of Mental Health in Rockville, Maryland, where he would remain for three decades. He built a ten-by-fourteen-foot “universe” for a small population of rats, divided by electrified barriers into four rooms connected by narrow ramps. Food and water were plentiful, but space was tight, capable of supporting a maximum of forty-eight rats. The population reached eighty before succumbing to the same catastrophes that would afflict Universe 25: explosive violence, hypersexual activity followed by asexuality, and self-destruction.
Is the perception of “freedom” a basic need of all animals. Would we survive only if the illusion of being in control of our own destiny is maintained?
Barbados. 166 square miles of tropical paradise. Free primary, secondary and tertiary education, free health care including free modern Ambulance service. Well trained and equipped Police, Coast Guard and Defence Forces. Ultra modern prison, excellent Fire Service and a hospital that, despite it’s challenges, is still one of the best in the region. There is a stable system of Government, a judiciary free from corruption, an efficient banking system and a freedom to express ones opinion in the press and media. No marauding bands of criminals, no state of emergencies and curfews, no health epidemics.
Heaven.
Yet it is clear that the we are seeing a rise in anti-social behavior in Barbados. Why? Why do we resemble a community experiencing the first stages of the “first death” where the normal tenants of society are beginning to break down?
Is the illusion of being free being overshadowed by the reality of hopelessness brought on by the rising unemployment and escalating disenfranchisement of our people? As we celebrate 45 years of independence, names like DaCosta Mannings, Knights, Super Centre, United Insurance, Roberts Manufacturing, SBI Distribution, Seawell Air Services, Brydens, Barbados National Bank, Trimart, McEnearney Quality, Stokes & Bynoe, Voice of Barbados, Nation Publishing, to name a few, can no longer be described, with pride, as Barbadian.
This week, in my altered mental state, as I looked around Barbados we were beginning to look a lot like Calhoun’s mice.
Heaven.
Four breeding pairs of mice were moved in on day one. After 104 days of upheaval as they familiarized themselves with their new world, they started to reproduce. In their fully catered paradise, the population increased exponentially, doubling every fifty-five days. Those were the good times. To its members, the mouse civilization of Universe 25 must have seemed prosperous indeed. But its downfall was already certain—not just stagnation, but total and inevitable destruction. As the name Universe 25 suggests, it was not the first time Calhoun had built a world for rodents. He had been building Utopian environments for rats and mice since the 1940s, with thoroughly consistent results. Heaven always turned into hell.
Others argued that population growth would cause our demise by exhausting our natural resources, leading to starvation and conflict. But there was no scarcity of food and water in Calhoun’s universe. The only thing that was in short supply was space and hence freedom. This was, after all, “heaven”—a title Calhoun deliberately used with pitch-black irony.
So what exactly happened in Universe 25? Past day 315, population growth slowed. More than six hundred mice now lived in Universe 25, constantly rubbing shoulders on their way up and down the stairwells to eat, drink, and sleep. Mice found themselves born into a world that was more crowded every day, and there were far more mice than meaningful social roles, (jobs). With more and more peers to defend against, males found it difficult and stressful to defend their territory, so they abandoned the activity. Normal social discourse within the mouse community broke down, and with it the ability of mice to form social bonds. The failures and dropouts congregated in large groups in the middle of the enclosure, their listless withdrawal occasionally interrupted by spasms and waves of pointless violence. The victims of these random attacks became attackers. Left on their own in nests subject to invasion, nursing females attacked their own young. Procreation slumped, infant abandonment and mortality soared. Lone females retreated to isolated nesting boxes on penthouse levels. Other males, a group Calhoun termed “the beautiful ones,” never sought sex and never fought—they just ate, slept, and groomed, wrapped in narcissistic introspection. Elsewhere, cannibalism, pansexualism, and violence became endemic. Mouse society had collapsed.
On day 560, a little more than eighteen months into the experiment, the population peaked at 2,200 mice and its growth ceased. A few mice survived past weaning until day six hundred, after which there were few pregnancies and no surviving young. As the population had ceased to regenerate itself, its path to extinction was clear. There would be no recovery, not even after numbers had dwindled back to those of the heady early days of the Universe. The mice had lost the capacity to rebuild their numbers—many of the mice that could still conceive, such as the “beautiful ones” and their secluded singleton female counterparts, had lost the social ability to do so. In a way, the creatures had ceased to be mice long before their death—a “first death,” as Calhoun put it, ruining their spirit and their society as thoroughly as the later “second death” of the physical body.
Calhoun had built his career on this basic experiment and its consistent results ever since erecting his first “rat city” on a quarter-acre of land adjacent to his home in Towson, Maryland, in 1947. The population of that first pen had peaked at 200 and stabilized at 150, when Calhoun had estimated that it could rise to as many as 5,000—something was evidently amiss. In 1954, Calhoun was employed by the National Institute of Mental Health in Rockville, Maryland, where he would remain for three decades. He built a ten-by-fourteen-foot “universe” for a small population of rats, divided by electrified barriers into four rooms connected by narrow ramps. Food and water were plentiful, but space was tight, capable of supporting a maximum of forty-eight rats. The population reached eighty before succumbing to the same catastrophes that would afflict Universe 25: explosive violence, hypersexual activity followed by asexuality, and self-destruction.
Is the perception of “freedom” a basic need of all animals. Would we survive only if the illusion of being in control of our own destiny is maintained?
Barbados. 166 square miles of tropical paradise. Free primary, secondary and tertiary education, free health care including free modern Ambulance service. Well trained and equipped Police, Coast Guard and Defence Forces. Ultra modern prison, excellent Fire Service and a hospital that, despite it’s challenges, is still one of the best in the region. There is a stable system of Government, a judiciary free from corruption, an efficient banking system and a freedom to express ones opinion in the press and media. No marauding bands of criminals, no state of emergencies and curfews, no health epidemics.
Heaven.
Yet it is clear that the we are seeing a rise in anti-social behavior in Barbados. Why? Why do we resemble a community experiencing the first stages of the “first death” where the normal tenants of society are beginning to break down?
Is the illusion of being free being overshadowed by the reality of hopelessness brought on by the rising unemployment and escalating disenfranchisement of our people? As we celebrate 45 years of independence, names like DaCosta Mannings, Knights, Super Centre, United Insurance, Roberts Manufacturing, SBI Distribution, Seawell Air Services, Brydens, Barbados National Bank, Trimart, McEnearney Quality, Stokes & Bynoe, Voice of Barbados, Nation Publishing, to name a few, can no longer be described, with pride, as Barbadian.
This week, in my altered mental state, as I looked around Barbados we were beginning to look a lot like Calhoun’s mice.
Quote of the Day
Gang aft agley,
An' lea'e us nought but grief an' pain,
For promis'd joy!
(The best laid schemes of Mice and Men
oft go awry,
And leave us nothing but grief and pain,
For promised joy!)
Scottish national poet (1759 - 1796)
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