This is part of a series on feminism and the decline of society. See this index.

The purpose of this series is to examine the—potentially causal—role that feminism plays in society’s ills. Spurned on by the recent SovietMen post “Managed decline” at the People’s Blog, I’m reviving this mulit-part series that was previously published at the now defunct v5k2c2 blog (see part 2). At the People’s Blog, Nikolai Vladivostok had this to say:

“In any case, we should not assume that like the mouse utopia experiment we’ll get down to zero. The Mennonites will still be around.”

So we begin by introducing the Mouse Utopia experiment and analyze societal implications. Let’s see how what was written in 2019 compares to what is written today.

Darwin’s theory of evolution has led to two primary mechanisms: random genetic mutation and natural selection. It’s a matter of established science that mutations occur as a normal course of life and that these are passed to children during reproduction. Natural selection says that those with mostly beneficial mutations survive and pass their genes to their children and those with mostly negative mutations do not. Populations that operate this way are under Darwinian-selection.

In the 1960s and 1970s, researcher John Calhoun performed experiments on mice to find out what would happen to populations where Darwinian-selection mechanisms were removed. He set up utopian environments: spacious with unlimited food and water, clean bedding, and no predation. He seeded the experiment with eight of the best and healthiest stock mice he could acquire. His goal was to test population overcrowding.

Initially everything went great. The mice reproduced as mice do and the population grew exponentially. But then something surprising happened. Long before the colony ran out of space, the population growth slowed, plateaued, and then began to fall as reproduction eventually ceased entirely. This led to complete colony extinction.

During the decline, a number of strange behaviors were noted.^[4]

Females became more aggressive and male-like. They kicked their young out of the nest before they learned proper social behaviors. Males became disinterested in having sex. Females had to pressure the males for sex. Some homosexual behavior was witnessed.

Mice in the colony ceased to engage in normal, complex mice behaviors. They started clustering together into large groups in areas designed to hold smaller numbers. They would randomly attack each other. Cannibalism began, despite the unlimited food availability.

The most interesting were male effeminate mice who isolated themselves from the rest of the group and never had sex. They spent their entire day standing with others like them, eating, drinking, sleeping, and grooming themselves and each other. Calhoun described them as autistic creatures capable of only the most basic physiological behaviors. He called these the “Beautiful Ones” as their grooming led to clean, attractive, smooth fur coats.

When the social bonds of the colony ceased to function, Calhoun noted:

“Their spirit has died (the first death). They are no longer capable of executing the more complex behaviors compatible with species survival. The species in such settings die”

At the end of the experiment all that were left were the Beautiful Ones, females not interested in males, and social outcasts who did not perform normal mouse behaviors.

The Mouse Utopia experiments raise interesting questions about human populations. Prior to the industrial revolution, Western child mortality was around 40%, but this is now at 1%. Like Mouse Utopia, human populations have broken free of Darwinian selection. Humanity’s population pyramids are inverting. This is most advanced in Japan:

Japan’s population is falling. Women are not interested in children. Men have lost interest in sex. Many don’t even bother to masturbate. Evolutionary maladaptive behaviors are entrenched. There is no end in sight. Other countries, like China, are following close behind. In America immigrants are replacing the native population, masking the same trends. Across the world fertility rates continue to decline.^[1]

What is happening to humanity?

Due to modern innovations in genetics, researchers have been able to identify a genetic mutation for autistic behavior (like the Beautiful Ones) in rodents to NLGN3 (paper 1; paper 2). Researcher Michael Woodley and his colleagues ran an experiment where sufficient numbers of captive-bred NLGN3 knockout mice were mixed with a population of wild mice. As in the Mouse Utopia experiment, the genetically-damaged mice caused social damage to the entire population. However, if the defective ones were removed, then the colony would begin to recover within as little as a week.

To explain these results, Michael Woodley formulated a general theory of Social Epistasis Amplification. The notion is that genetic mutations of a few can still have deleterious effect on the population of social species as a whole through genetic interactions at the social level (i.e. ‘interorganismal gene-gene interactions’).^[2]

Human populations are experiencing the effects of social epistasis. Feminism is one example. Feminists, who often have high mutational load, routinely promote genetically maladaptive behaviors (e.g. the birth control pill; abortion; forced assent of homosexuality and transgender issues; delayed marriage) on those with low mutational load. Doing what they suggests literally harms society, even as it is declared virtuous. Moreover, it is not sufficient to reject feminism: nearly everyone is influenced. MGTOW is one example of resulting maladaptive behavior.^[3]

Future parts of this series will explore how we got to this point and expand upon these concepts in greater detail. The series continues in part 2.

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^[1] And, unlike the mice, humans do not have unlimited resources.

^[2] This bears similarity to the social contagion concept.

^[3] The “Beautiful Ones” were the mice analog of MGTOW: socially isolated and asexual. In Mouse Utopia, mice going their own way ended up destroying the colony.

^[4] The citation previously at a link here was censored by YouTube. Inconvenient scientific inquiry is no longer permitted.