20160131 (armchair science)

Armchair theorizing by any other name would be BS

Without doing the cheap and

Shoddy research associated with

Wikipedia-supported speculation

I’m going to unload my ideas

About overpopulation derived

From cursory familiarity with

The work of Thomas Robert

Malthus (ca. 1798, English)

And John B. Calhoun (ca. 1947,

American). As a learned person

(Who else would be reading 

This stuff?) you may know of

These two already. Malthus

Emphasized more the economic

Factors of food supply and

Population growth and concluded

That as more food was produced

It did not serve to reduce human

Misery as the population grew

More quickly to reduce the 

Supply of food per person again

To subsistence levels. Malthus’s

Subsistence levels were nothing

To write home about—desperation,

Hunger, crime, and vice plagued

The lowest on the ladder of

Human gradations. He became,

Therefore, an advocate of 

Improving the human condition

Through attention to positive

Checks which increased the death

Rates—war, disease—and 

Preventive checks—birth control,

Abortion, postponing marriage,

Celibacy—which decreased the 

Birth rate. As nobody really liked

Diseases or more fatal warfare he

Was left with birth control as the

Only realistic and practical way 

Of advancing the quality of life

Among the lower classes when

Productivity increased food supply.*

Calhoun’s work observed the

Behavior of rats and mice in

Defined-space cages while

Researchers varied food supply.

Roughly, when there was food

Enough for all, life in the cages

Was middle-class enjoyable in

A ratty/mousey sort of way. But

When the crowding got to be too

Much the subjects misbehaved

Radically. The aggressive ones

Fought each other and ate the

Newborn; mothers cannibalized

Their young. Scientists of every

Stripe joined in the jubilation

That they had uncovered the 

Causes of urban misery—

Crowding, not desperation.

In later years Calhoun redesigned

His cages to reduce the perceived

Crowding by creating high rise

Apartments which alleviated

Some of the stress. Well, as you

Can guess bio-students of all

Types went nuts with charges

Of anthropomorphism and

Zoomorphism zinging past

Each other to reduce C’s

Observations to nothing 

Applicable to urban life 

While others claimed them 

The key to understanding

Slum life, violence, and crime.

I’m not saying I’d eat my 

Young were I penned in a

Closet with farters and others

Who didn’t bathe, but I’d be

Damned sure I’d not be the

Pleasant, rational hermit I

Am today, no?

c. J.S.Manista, 2016

* In Monty Python's History of the World there is a hugely satirical
depiction of precisely this outcome.