The mouse utopia maps onto humans almost perfectly, and this isn't the first time it has happened to Man. Rome, Baghdad, and Greece saw very similar conditions.
In our own time the whole of Greece has been subjected to a low birth rate and a general decrease of the population, owing to which cities have become deserted and the land has ceased to yield fruit, although there has been neither continuous wars or epidemics... For as men had fallen into such a state of prententiousness, avarice, and indolence that they did not wish to marry, or if they married to rear the children born to them, or at most as a rule but one or two of them, so as to leave these in affluence and bring them up to waste their substance, the evil rapidly and insensibly grew.
I've never heard of any of that, except re the fall of Rome, and how its population dropped as much as it did, so cheers for this!
I will do some more research, and perhaps try and fit it into a future essay somewhere, ha!
If you have more quotes/info about any of that (mouse utopia?? I can guess what that entailed, but I don't think I've ever heard of it before!), please spill, coz I'm interested to hear it!
Also, what era was Polybius..? Are we talking Hellenistic Greece, here, or like, later, around the time they were taken over by Rome..??
Corinth was physically removed by Rome, which is the usual demarcation of Rome controlling Greece, halfway through Polybius' life. The Mouse Utopia shows that when animals don't have to struggle to survive they choose not to survive.
The Mouse Utopia shows that when animals don't have to struggle to survive they choose not to survive.
It suggests when we have nothing to do and not purpose we self-implode.
"need to struggle to survive" wording is rather bullshit though, a lot of things seems to change if we're constantly struggling to survive - a lack of interest in sex, high order brain function shutting off, and eventually violent conflict with our competitors to destroy others using the resources we need.
Humans seem to be evolved for an environment - in my opinion - where we're doing about 50% of the max work we could be. It doesn't matter if it doesn't sound cool that seems to be what it is. To little to do and we self-destruct from lethargy, to much just to survive and we get violent and aggressive.
To jump on your point, and tangent to something else I've been thinking about, I believe a huge problem with "wealthy" societies now is the lack of actual productive work...
Like, agriculture produces something of value. So does manufacturing. So does primary production. So does construction. These things formed the bulk of tenable employment until fairly recently (at least for men), and they actually CREATE something of tangible value to society, in the process...
Most (high paying, "desirable") work now, service work at least, produces nothing of actual value. Academia, admin, "management", HR, finance, all the other completely pointless "make work" jobs we have created for ourselves - these produce NOTHING of tangible physical value, except perhaps bytes of data, and paperwork. Doing these jobs, you don't feel the same sense of achievement, the same... Mateship and teamwork, or indeed expend anywhere near the same physical effort as the other jobs I mentioned, and yet... They are where the money is, and what we are told to ascribe to...
I think that's a massive part of all that is wrong with our society, and if we continue down this path... I honestly believe that we will likely end up closer to "Fall of Rome" than "fully automated luxury auto gay space communism", like the fags over at r/Stupidpol seem to believe we are headed for, lol...
The mouse utopia maps onto humans almost perfectly, and this isn't the first time it has happened to Man. Rome, Baghdad, and Greece saw very similar conditions.
-Polybius
Interesting...
I've never heard of any of that, except re the fall of Rome, and how its population dropped as much as it did, so cheers for this! I will do some more research, and perhaps try and fit it into a future essay somewhere, ha!
If you have more quotes/info about any of that (mouse utopia?? I can guess what that entailed, but I don't think I've ever heard of it before!), please spill, coz I'm interested to hear it!
Also, what era was Polybius..? Are we talking Hellenistic Greece, here, or like, later, around the time they were taken over by Rome..??
Corinth was physically removed by Rome, which is the usual demarcation of Rome controlling Greece, halfway through Polybius' life. The Mouse Utopia shows that when animals don't have to struggle to survive they choose not to survive.
It suggests when we have nothing to do and not purpose we self-implode.
"need to struggle to survive" wording is rather bullshit though, a lot of things seems to change if we're constantly struggling to survive - a lack of interest in sex, high order brain function shutting off, and eventually violent conflict with our competitors to destroy others using the resources we need.
Humans seem to be evolved for an environment - in my opinion - where we're doing about 50% of the max work we could be. It doesn't matter if it doesn't sound cool that seems to be what it is. To little to do and we self-destruct from lethargy, to much just to survive and we get violent and aggressive.
Yeah, this seems fairly apt...
To jump on your point, and tangent to something else I've been thinking about, I believe a huge problem with "wealthy" societies now is the lack of actual productive work...
Like, agriculture produces something of value. So does manufacturing. So does primary production. So does construction. These things formed the bulk of tenable employment until fairly recently (at least for men), and they actually CREATE something of tangible value to society, in the process...
Most (high paying, "desirable") work now, service work at least, produces nothing of actual value. Academia, admin, "management", HR, finance, all the other completely pointless "make work" jobs we have created for ourselves - these produce NOTHING of tangible physical value, except perhaps bytes of data, and paperwork. Doing these jobs, you don't feel the same sense of achievement, the same... Mateship and teamwork, or indeed expend anywhere near the same physical effort as the other jobs I mentioned, and yet... They are where the money is, and what we are told to ascribe to...
I think that's a massive part of all that is wrong with our society, and if we continue down this path... I honestly believe that we will likely end up closer to "Fall of Rome" than "fully automated luxury auto gay space communism", like the fags over at r/Stupidpol seem to believe we are headed for, lol...
/endrant