demagogue on 15/8/2014 at 04:37
I believe that line of thought comes first out of Émile Durkheim's theory that modern urban society leads to what he called social anomie, or dislocation and depression; and increased suicide in modern economies was one of the signs of it. I think culture, economy, and mental well being are related in complex ways, but I was always skeptical of how the theory was abused.
The first problem is I think it over-relies on social determinism (social structures cause certain mental states), which I don't buy its the naive form at all ... way too top-down causation to be credible. Aside from that, I hated that Marxists & friends used to use it to dogmatically argue, on top of everything else, capitalism literally makes people go mentally ill, then they invented a disease for it -- which of course helped them justify institutionalizing and "reprogramming" unrepentant liberals.
Tony_Tarantula on 15/8/2014 at 13:29
Quote Posted by demagogue
I believe that line of thought comes first out of Émile Durkheim's theory that modern urban society leads to what he called social anomie, or dislocation and depression; and increased suicide in modern economies was one of the signs of it. I think culture, economy, and mental well being are related in complex ways, but I was always skeptical of how the theory was abused.
There's some studies out there that would seem to corroborate that. Perhaps you've heard of the famous (
http://www.mostlyodd.com/death-by-utopia/) mouse utopia experiment?
Short version: once the population became too dense, the mice began exhibiting extremely erratic behavior. Random violence, social isolation, abnormal sexual behaviors, and damaged offspring become common. The effects persisted after the population died off and was reduced.
DDL on 15/8/2014 at 17:59
Well, it's a good job we aren't mice, then.
Interesting though those studies are, trying to extrapolate them to any kind of human behaviour is questionable at best. It's hard enough doing physiological extrapolations from mice to humans, let alone behavioural ones (also, random violence, social isolation, abnormal sexual behaviors, and damaged offspring are all pretty common even with mice housed under optimal non-overpopulated conditions. Mice are a bit stupid. Adorable, but stupid).
Tony_Tarantula on 15/8/2014 at 18:13
Only if you accept the notion that people are somehow not animals. It's also worth noting that other studies have found that population density does have an impact on human behavior, and the behavior found in the study closely mirrors studies done into human behaviors in closed environments such as prisons. You don't even need to try
that hard to see other parallels. The current "MGTOW" idiocy closely resembles the behaviors of what Calhoun called the "beautiful" mice aka those who withdrew socially and developed introverted, narcissistic behaviors.
I'd argue that the big difference isn't in our inherent nature, because let's face it: people are animals(any metaphysical/spiritual opinions people may have aside). There's nothing on a physiological level that makes us immune to anything other animals experience. What is different is that we generally do not live in a compartmentalized environment. Unless you live in a totalitarian society there is nothing stopping you from packing your shit and moving to a tiny town in the middle of bumfuck nowhere. The mice were trapped in a closed system and couldn't leave.
Also found this with a more in-depth description of the behaviors observed:
(http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/communication-central/200911/crowds-behavior-why-did-i-do)Quote:
The rats at first developed a sense of order, but that soon went ‘haywire.' At the ends of the cage an alpha male took over and kicked the other males out. According to Wolfe, the alpha males would take eight to ten females as concubines. This meant that from 58 to 62 Norway rats would be forced to live in the middle two compartments.
Chaos resulted as no sense of order or balance could come from that many rats being trapped so close together. The male rats fought constantly and began to ignore mating rituals and force themselves on female rats. They also began to perform bisexual and homosexual acts. Some rats wouldn't even move in the daytime and would wait for the other rats to go to sleep before they would walk around. No rat was safe from molestation and any attempts to leave the confines of the middle compartments by male rats were checked by the alpha male at either end of the cage. They were trapped in chaos.
The alpha males, and their concubines, it must be noted, grew much larger than the other rats and maintained their health and vitality. The female concubines also had free reign and would venture in and out of the middle compartments as they pleased.
There's a LOT of parallels between that behavior and what we're seeing in modern Anglo-societies: massive disparities in sexual power and access to resources, people losing basic social skills, the rise of sexual behavior that previous generations would have considered deviant, rapidly declining birth rate, lack of care for the young, the emergence of a large class of "omega" males, and increasingly nonsensical violence are all exhibited in the behavior of 1st world humans in the last century.
How does all this relate to depression and suicide?
Quote:
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.
Little secret you all don't know about me: I've BEEN severely depressed before, and had a lot of experience dealing with those who were. I can testify first hand that the term "first death" is a good way of putting it. Once you reach that condition your mind has already stopped "living" as you are no longer actively engaged in the world around and you on longer have any real interest in life. I was lucky enough to establish some relationships that saved me, but not everyone is.
DDL on 15/8/2014 at 18:31
Quote Posted by Tony_Tarantula
Only if you accept the notion that people are somehow not animals.
If they also did it with tigers, and with....eh, naked mole rats, and...giant deep sea isopods, and all gave the same results, you might have an argument, but "being an animal" is not a terribly deterministic criterion. I'll read more later when I have time, but take it from me: mice are behaviourally WORLDS apart from humans, and even from rats. Mice are absolutely a prey species, rats are opportunistic scavengers, and we're effectively a ballsy apex predator. It makes a difference.
Sulphur on 15/8/2014 at 18:36
Quote Posted by Tony_Tarantula
Only if you accept the notion that people are somehow not animals. It's also worth noting that other studies have found that population density does have an impact on human behavior, and the behavior found in the study closely mirrors studies done into human behaviors in closed environments such as prisons. You don't even need to try
that hard to see other parallels. The current "MGTOW" idiocy closely resembles the behaviors of what Calhoun called the "beautiful" mice aka those who withdrew socially and developed introverted, narcissistic behaviors.
I'd argue that the big difference isn't in our inherent nature, because let's face it: people are animals(any metaphysical/spiritual opinions people may have aside). There's nothing on a physiological level that makes us immune to anything other animals experience. What is different is that we generally do not live in a compartmentalized environment. Unless you live in a totalitarian society there is nothing stopping you from packing your shit and moving to a tiny town in the middle of bumfuck nowhere. The mice were trapped in a closed system and couldn't leave.
Also found this with a more in-depth description of the behaviors observed:
(http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/communication-central/200911/crowds-behavior-why-did-i-do)There's a LOT of parallels between that behavior and what we're seeing in modern Anglo-societies: massive disparities in sexual power and access to resources, people losing basic social skills, the rise of sexual behavior that previous generations would have considered deviant, rapidly declining birth rate, lack of care for the young, the emergence of a large class of "omega" males, and increasingly nonsensical violence are all exhibited in the behavior of 1st world humans in the last century.
Oh, dear lord. Given that I never read your posts, I thought the confirmation bias accusation people levelled at you in the other turgid wasteland of threads that you inhabit was a bit peripheral -- but no, it actually does soak through everything you post.
The worst thing the internet has wrought on society is the raft of morons who have no idea how science works and think they're doing it better than everyone else by positing opinions as incontrovertible facts, or even worse, bringing a host of completely unrelated suppositions to someone else's work, and cynically moulding it to fit whatever cancerous viewpoint they have because a self-reinforcing feedback loop is the kind of thing that gets them off.
Do not bring your lunacy to this thread. Take it elsewhere.
Tony_Tarantula on 15/8/2014 at 19:55
Quote Posted by DDL
If they also did it with tigers, and with....eh, naked mole rats, and...giant deep sea isopods, and all gave the same results, you might have an argument, but "being an animal" is not a terribly deterministic criterion. I'll read more later when I have time, but take it from me: mice are behaviourally WORLDS apart from humans, and even from rats. Mice are absolutely a prey species, rats are opportunistic scavengers, and we're effectively a ballsy apex predator. It makes a difference.
They've also found it to be true with Deer: (
http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/communication-central/200911/crowds-behavior-why-did-i-do)
Quote:
The worst thing the internet has wrought on society is the raft of morons who have no idea how science works and think they're doing it better than everyone else by positing opinions as incontrovertible facts, or even worse, bringing a host of completely unrelated suppositions to someone else's work, and cynically moulding it to fit whatever cancerous viewpoint they have because a self-reinforcing feedback loop is the kind of thing that gets them off.
Do not bring your lunacy to this thread. Take it elsewhere.
You're a fucking asshole.
Peoples suffering is NOT about politics despite what you might like to believe and you should be ashamed of yourself for trying to imply that it is.Is it really lunacy to ponder whether current prevalence of mental illness might be related to the high density of high-pressure social interactions in 1st world societies? Especially in America where social interactions are extremely competitive and objectified.
Exactly how the fuck do MICE have to do with politics or your fucking "tea party hiding behind every shadows" mentality? This might be a bit difficult for your politically-focused mind to comperhend
the fact of the matter is that the studies were talking about pre-date the current concepts of "left" and "right"> and as such your desire to conflate these findings with politics is beyond dumbfounding.
From a summary of the study itself. Look, it MIGHT make you uncomfortable by hitting political trigger words, but just keep the time in mind:
(
http://www.edmondschools.net/portals/3/docs/terri_mcgill/read-crowding.pdf)
Quote:
Let's examine some of theextreme and pathological behaviors he observed:
1.Aggression
Normally in the wild, male rats will fight other male rats for dominant positions in the social hierarchy. These fights were observed among the more aggressive rats in this study as well. The difference was that here, unlike in their natural environments, top-ranking males were required to fight frequently in order to maintain their positions and often the fights involvedseveral rats in a general brawl. Nevertheless, the strongest males were observed to be the most normal within the center pens.
However, even those animals would sometimes exhibit "signs of pathology; going berserk; attacking females, juveniles, and less active males; and showing a particular predilection—which rats do not normally display—for biting other rats on the tail" (p. 146).
2.Submissiveness
Contrary to this extreme aggression, other groups of male rats ignored and avoided battles for dominance. One of these groups consisted of the most healthy
looking rats in the pens. They were fat and their fur was full, without the usual bare spots from fighting. However, these rats were complete social misfits. They moved through the pens as if asleep or in so me sort of hypnotic trance,ignoring all others, and were, in turn, ignored by the rest. They were completely uninterested in sexual
activity and made no advances, even toward females in heat. Another group of rats engaged in extreme activity and were always on the prowl for receptive females.
Calhoun termed them probers. Often, they were attacked by the more dominant males, but were never interested in fighting for status. They were hypersexual and many of them even became cannibalistic!
3.Sexual deviance
These probers also refused to participate in the natural rituals of mating. Normally, a male rat will pursue a female in heat until she escapes into her burrow. Then, the male will wait patiently and even perform a courtship dance directly outside her door. Finally, she emerges from the burrow and the mating takes place. In Calhoun's study, this ritual was adhered to by most of the sexually active males except the probers. They completely refused to wait and followed the female right into her burrow.
Sometimes the nests inside the burrow contained young that had failed to survive, and it was here that late in the study the probers turned cannibalistic.
Another group of male rats was termed the pansexuals because they attempted to mate with any and all other rats indiscriminately. They sexually approached other males, juveniles, and females that were not in heat. This was a submissive group that was often attacked by the more dominant male rats, but did
not fight for dominance.
4.
Reproductive abnormalities
Rats have a natural instinct for nest building. In this study, small strips of paper were provided in unlimited quantities as nest material. The females are normally extremely active in the process of building nests as the time for giving birth approaches. They gather the material and pile it up so that it forms a cushion. Then they arrange the nest so that it has a small indentation in the middle to hold the young. However, the females in the behavioral sink gradually lost their ability (or inclination)
to build adequate nests. At first they failed to form the indentation in the middle. Then, as time went on, they collected fewer and fewer strips of paper so that eventually the infants were born directly on the sawdust that covered the pen's floor.
Read that list again. You make a mistake only a simpleton would make by ascribing everything to a political motives. T
he reason why you're wrong is that I view political situations as the RESULT of more powerful trends. As such any specific political label is insignificant in and of itself, and only important because of the trends manifesting in it. Given your previous post history I doubt you can comprehend or relate to that view point.
More from that article:
Quote:
Calhoun's results with animals have been supported by later animal research (see Marsden, 1972). However, as has been mentioned before in this book, we must always be careful in applying animal research to humans. Just as substances that may be shown to cause illness in rats may not have the same effect on human physical health,environmental factors influencing rats' social behaviors may not be directly applicable to people.
At best, animals can only represent certain aspects of humans. Sometimes animal research can be very useful and revealing and lead the way for more definitive research with people. At other times, it can be a dead end. Which is kind of the point. Politics as you believe in it doesn't even factor into that equation. The point is these studies demonstrate obvious parallels to human behavior and raise some question.
Sulphur on 15/8/2014 at 19:56
All right. Time to get the mods in here. You're completely off the rails yammering about god knows what, and this isn't doing Robin Williams' spirit any good.
Tony_Tarantula on 15/8/2014 at 20:02
Quote Posted by Sulphur
All right. Time to get the mods in here. You're completely off the rails yammering about god knows what, and this isn't doing Robin Williams' spirit any good.
I'm completely off the rails because you are calling my hypothesis that the prevalence of over-crowded urban areas might be related to mental illness as "lunacy" for no other reason than your political biases. You're bringing political name-calling into a discussion that is completely unrelated to politics.
You also might have a clue if you...you know...actually READ people's posts before calling them names.
Open question: Exactly how the fuck does talking about a mouse study, population density, and how it results to abnormal(in the scientific definition meaning deviations from the standard pattern) behavior piss you off so much that you're demanding I be censored?
