Decline of civilization keyed to crowding?

[Pat]

raykos, I had this idea way before "Lethal Weapon" 1.0 or even the beta! Folks think ham grows on trees in big brown watermelon shaped things with a layer of fat like the white of the melon rind and then red meat inside but with a bone running through the middle instead of seeds.

Once properly inculcated in the origin and processing of food it would be harder for voting citizens to allow food producing land to be paved over. They would make a direct connection.

When elected or appointed as benevolent dictator of food distribution I would require courses in school that included trips to egg ranches, chicken farms, pig farms, cattle ranches, feed lots, and slaughter houses/packing plants. If you did not get a passing grade you would not be getting a lisc to buy or consume meat Participation in vegetable gardening lab at school being mandatory also. A generation or two down the road, and the general attitude of the populace regarding paving ag land would change drastically and there would be real concern for keeping good land in production.

The general attitude regarding hunters and fishermen would change as well. From eww, those evil hunters killing those innocent little animals, Walt Disney will spin in his grave! Would become, How quaint, getting food the old fashioned way, I wish I had time for that but will have to settle for "factory" food. Oh well, maybe when I retire.

The more we insulate and isolate the voting public from reality the worse off we will become as a nation.

I can see PETA getting realigned such that the ethical treatment of animals includes their use as food through humane slaughter. I can't promise you that there wouldn't be more vegetarians at first but I think there is a reason humans didn't end up as vegetarians and that reason will still be in effect. Ever watch the nature programs where it shows chimps living in the wild with little influence from man hunting bands of other animals as food? (even other chimps?)

Insulation and isolation from reality can be at least partially linked to crowding and the specialization associated. Reality is not who gets voted off the island, it is where does food and drinking water come from and what happens if we destroy the means of production?

Pat

[LindaMac]

Here are two books that might be of interest:

"Flee to the Fields: The Founding Papers of the Catholic Land Movement." This is a series of discussions on industrialization and the land movement.

"The Rural Solution: Modern Catholic Voices on Going 'Back to the Land.'" This is also a series of discussions of the merits of living on the land rather than in cities. And here is a quote from just before the introduction:
"Our hope for relief in the universal misery of the present lies in the reversal of the policy which produced the factory and the factory system. This reversal without depriving men of the benefits of industrial progress, would reinstate them as independent home owners in rural communities. Such a change in the living conditions of millions of people would be a revolution, but some radical adjustment in restoring the balance between rural and urban population is imperative if our country is to survive and if our civilization is not to disappear." Bishops of the Administrative Committees of the U.S. National Catholic Welfare Conference, April 26, 1933.

Also of some interest might be:
Rerum Novarum (on capital and labor):
http://www.papalencyclicals.net/Pius11/P11QUADR.HTM

and

Quadrigesimo Anno (on reconstruction of the social order):
http://www.papalencyclicals.net/Pius11/P11QUADR.HTM

[hudr]

I remember a book I read in my Architecture courses in college dealing w/ "space design" and its impact on society. Some scientist (don't remember the name or his associations) took a barn and partitioned it and then added white mice. On one side he and his associates took care to provide ample space(mostly via population control) and privacy. On the other side of the barn they just "let nature take it course". Food and water on both sides was free choice. The mice were then studied over several generations.
The "controlled" side stayed relatively calm. The uncontrolled side degenerated into a "Societal Sink". Females crowded to "alpha males" in what amounted to harems, the lesser males ran in packs with lots of homosexual type activities. Even though the food/water was free choice the alphas kept the others away from it as much as possible. Seems there was even a few instances of cannibalism among the lesser males and females. I wish I could remember more details. I still have the book somewhere, I should try to find it and re-read that section.
The point of that experiment being included in the book was to illustrate the impact designers of "space" could have on society by increasing feelings of privacy and personal visual space and such. Fairly interesting read now that I don't HAVE to read it for a class.

[Pat]

That was not an isolated one time experiment or finding. Crowding reaches a nonlinear trigger point like squeezing a child's "cricket" noisemaker toy. Once crowding reaches critical mass the social structure breaks down. This is true in at least lab rats, the lower primates, and humans.

I recall the scene in "Crocodile Dundee" where the crock guy is walking down a crowded NYC sidewalk trying to say g'day to everyone he passes and gives up in frustration, commenting, "Oh S---!"

Another strong factor is the supposed need to be in control, in charge. How many parents are running the wheels off the family car and burning themselves and their children out trying to haul the kids from soccer to gymnastics, to riding class, to party, to music lesson, to scouts, to... totally overbooking the child in an overwhelming array of MUST DO activities to the point of depriving the child of a childhood.

Meanwhile we labor under the illusion of control, being in control of events and not vice versa. A seminal experiment with monkeys gave one group free choice food and water in a cage wired to give them random non-lethal electric shocks of a few seconds duration. Another group had the same circumstances minus the shocks (control) and the the third group had the same shocks but were trained in how to turn them off with a button press.

The control group fared well with nice coat and condition. The group with shocks but who could do nothing about was nearly indistinguishable. The third group lost sleep, did not eat as well, fought among themselves and displayed various behaviors related to nervous worry such as chewing bald spots on themselves. What was learned? The animals trained to be able to turn off the shock worried excessively over when they might have to turn it off to the point of disrupting the rest of their lives. The animals who were shocked as part of their "environment" and couldn't do anything about it seemed to be more accepting of it and went on.

We are not all that different. We suffer mightily worrying when we will have to exercise an attempt to control something over which ultimately we may not even have control. "You can't stop the rain by complaining."

Crowding can only exacerbate the upsetting situation of the animals worrying about when they will have to try to attempt control of something. Whether or not we actually exercise control or just delude ourselves is almost not important, it is the complexity of our worries that tend to debilitate us. Mores the pity if we are stressed out over trying to control something beyond our scope of control.

Pat

[itsmeCindi]

Well, I can't speak about control because I can't remember ever really having any, however ...

I lived in the sticks for 5 years and tended to watch the road fairly regularly for any sign that another human might be coming to visit. I'm a fairly social person and I like to socialize. Almost without exception though, when visitors came, I couldn't wait for them to leave. Especially if it was kids visiting my kids. Now that I live in the city, double that.

My oldest daughter is 21, she had a friend come over to visit one Tuesday about 3 p.m. Supper time came and went and she was still here, 8 p.m. came and went and she was still here. She just lives 4 houses down with her mother, so it wasn't a transportation issue. 11 p.m. came and went and she was still here. I finally had to call my daughter to my room and demand to know when this kid was leaving.

She shrugged ... "when she gets ready I guess, why do you care? We're just watching movies."

"Because it's rude to show up at someone's house and stay through dinner and bed time and have to be asked to leave. Now you tell her to go home, or I will. Where's her mother? She's been here for almost 12 hours, doesn't she wonder what she's up to? "

Now the question is, why WOULD I care? Jill didn't have to work the next day, they're both out of school, and I was in my room with the door closed and I couldn't hear them, but I wanted her out of my house. Is this a control thing? Or is it a yearning for the good old days when people offered to leave when a family sat down for dinner, rather than waiting to be fed. Or offered to leave at a decent hour rather than camping out on the couch to stay the night, uninvited. On a weekday night, no less.

The decline of the social structure may have something to do with the decline of the social graces. I thought my daughter knew better; when she went visiting on a school or work night, she was home by dinner time unless she was invited to stay and if she was, she was still home by 9 p.m., but if she didn't know she does now. I told her 10 p.m. is the cut-off for visitors on a week night. She stills thinks I was being unreasonable.

[Pat]

Cindi, At least you know who is the adult and who the child and 21 is not an adult guarantee.

An older brother of a good friend of mine, according to my friend would wait till about 9:30PM (his bed time) for visitors to leave (including his brothers) and he would announce as he got up to leave the living room and go to bed, "I'm going to bed now, turn out the lights when you leave."

Decline of social graces is undoubtedly connected to the decline of social structure as they are inextricably intertwined. I however, would argue that "social structure" is farther up the hierarchy than social graces which I believe to be one of many manifestations of and constituent parts of social structure which evolved as a direct outgrowth of "what worked" as regards to living in groups without killing each other at too high a rate.

What we think of as civilization is a complex set of rules and actions that permit large numbers of individuals to survive in proximity. It is to a large extent, what works. Many of the rules are not particularly beneficial at any given time to the individual on a short time scale but are beneficial to the group as a whole over time or they would have been replaced or modified.

Without expectation there is no disappointment. You have different expectations than your daughter. Rules that you view as "natural" may in fact not seem so natural to members of a different group or generation. Implied or understood codes of behavior when not held by all parties to social interaction cause discord. I'm sure you don't feel it to be necessary to explain the rules, they are, after all, THE RULES. Unfortunately everyone does not hold to the same set of rules which causes culture clashes between members of different groups, nations, religions, families, or ...

In Gulliver's travels he came upon a waring pair of nations fighting to the death over which end of the boiled egg to open to eat out of the shell with a spoon. Each was sure that the manifestation of improper social grace through opening the WRONG end of the egg had greater import than just table manners and was just so to say, the tip of the iceberg.

There are at least a couple possibilities for decreasing tension and increasing harmony. 1. explain and attain agreement or at least understanding as to "the rules" (the my house, my rules approach.) 2. consider that alternate sets of rules aren't automatically bad and wrong but just different and grant all parties freedom of having there own code of conduct so long as it doesn't violate the general premise of do your own thing so long as it does not hurt others. You have to decide if you are harmed by your expectations not being met or simply getting your feathers ruffled a bit by alternate ideas.

My personal actions, I think, would be more along the line of lets discuss what is reasonable conduct and what reasonable compromises I may entertain knowing that there will NOT BE a result where we agree to disagree but instead if we don't agree we do it my way.

I hope you the best in familial harmony,

Pat

[itsmeCindi]

Well, I won't beat a dead horse, but suffice it to say this overstaying the welcome is just the tip of the iceberg. She has friends that have no transportation, while she has a new car, which is summarily becoming an old car because so and so needs a ride to Tampa with her 4 fatherless kids, or such and such wants help with their paper route.

I lived in my new house approx. 2 days before the neighbor whom I had never met before asked to borrow my lawnmower. The same neighbor asked Jillian to take him and a pile of scrap metal he had accumulated to the recycling center. Her car is a Toyota Corolla with a cloth interior and he saw nothing wrong with piling the back seat full to the ceiling with wet, dirty, junk metal that had been lying in his back yard for 6 months. She's kind-hearted and knew that it was not a good idea, so called me to find out how to let him down easy. I said, put him on the phone, I'll let him down and I don't care how hard or easy he lands. This guy is in his fifties, he should know better.

Then there's the neighbor who rides through my yard on his bike every day. It's rental house and judging by the path, he's been doing it for years, so I bite my tongue. The problem is I never noticed what his bike looks like, so one day when he threw it down behind my garage and left it there for almost a month I called the cops and reported a found bike. I thought it had been stolen and dumped. They picked it up, and I hoped that whoever it belonged to would be able to get it back. Then he shows up demanding to know what happened to his bike. I explained that I had no idea the bike had been his and turned it in to the police. He calmly informed me that he has outstanding warrants and couldn't claim it, and since it was all my fault anyway, I should do the research and find out where it is and go get it for him. The kicker of this story is the bike is not his, he borrowed it from a friend, now the friend wants his bike back. [img]/forums/images/icons/grin.gif[/img]

What a messed up world we live in.

[Pat]

The problems you describe do exist, always have and always will. The frequency of the problems that one of us may encounter is related exponentially to the population density. Can't say as to the exponent, could be 2, 3, or ?

One thing is for sure if you encounter 20-30 people a day on average you are likely to be exposed to hundreds or thousands ore hassles per year than someone exposed to, on average, 2-3 people a day. Interpersonal hassles are like network theory. The more nodes you connect the more connections required and the number of connections increase much much faster than the number of nodes.

Between 2 people there is one connection. Between 3 people there are 3, between 4 there are 6, between 5 there are 10, and with 6 there are 15 (if I counted correctly) and so you can see the trend. The number of interactions between nodes increases faster and faster as the number of nodes increases.

There is an overhead to maintaining connections and with less time to devote to each connection eventually you just can't handle the load and things break down.

There is a difference between being good hearted and being a door mat. I like to help people and do. I like to help them, not take them to raise. We can't make everything all right for everyone.

Pat