- Al-Ma'idah (5:48): "…….. If Allah had willed, He would have made you one community, but His Will is to test you with what He has given (each of) you. So compete with one another in doing good".
The Mouse Utopia Experiment: Paradise, Piled With Bodies
In the 1960s, behavioral scientist John B. Calhoun created what should have been heaven for mice: endless food, constant water, no predators, perfect temperature, clean nesting spaces. Nothing was missing. Nothing was scarce.Except space.
At first, the enclosure thrived. The mice formed groups, raised young, and multiplied rapidly. Order existed. Life looked stable.
Then the population density crossed a threshold—and things turned dark.
As crowding increased, social structure collapsed. Dominant males became violently aggressive, attacking others without provocation. Mothers abandoned litters. Infant mice were killed. Dead bodies began to appear in corners and nesting areas, sometimes ignored, sometimes trampled as life continued around them. Violence became routine, not purposeful—just noise in a crowded system.
Some mice snapped outward. Others shut down.
A group Calhoun called “the Beautiful Ones” withdrew entirely. They never fought, never mated, never raised young. They groomed obsessively, stayed spotless, and avoided the chaos. They were physically unharmed—but socially dead.
This breakdown is what Calhoun named the “behavioral sink”: a state where normal behavior disintegrates under social overload. Parenting failed. Mating failed. Purpose failed. Despite unlimited resources, births slowed, then stopped altogether.
The enclosure didn’t collapse in a dramatic explosion. It decayed quietly—surrounded by food, dotted with corpses, filled with animals that no longer knew how to live.
Calhoun wasn’t predicting human doom. He was issuing a warning grounded in biology: survival is more than staying alive. Space, roles, boundaries, and meaning are not optional extras. Without them, abundance becomes irrelevant.
Utopia failed not because the mice lacked resources,
but because constant crowding turned life into pressure—and pressure turned society into violence, withdrawal, and extinction.
Lesson:
A society can rot from the inside, even when nothing looks wrong on the surface.
