A quick look at population growth

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4. Behavioral sinks

I was also enamoured with the implications of Calhoun's work. After sitting with it for a few years, however, I'm becoming more cautious about applying his mouse utopia findings too directly to humans. While I think we may be suffering from some aspects of a Hans Selye-style General Adaptation Syndrome which seems to converge with Calhoun's behavioral sinks in some regards, I'm hesitant about reading too much prophetic power into Calhoun's work. After all, there are significant aspects of the behavioral sink he described that are not being borne out in human experience - even in super-crowded Asian cities. Those include things like ultra-high infant mortality rates, bizarre dining habits and cannibalism, for example. On the other hand, social withdrawal, sexual deviance, frenetic overactivity and poor mothering instincts seem ever-more prevalent

Like any analogy, Calhoun's research gives us a conceptual framework - which is at its best when it stimulates us to take a close, open-minded look at our own situation.