The Invisible Testosterone of Overpopulation Stress

In my sociology class prior to entering chiropractic school, I read of two fascinating experiments in what, for lack of a better term, I call overpopulation stress. I don’t remember the authors. Their work changed my thinking about the human condition as much as tai chi and chiropractic.

In the first experiment, the overpopulated lab animals were deprived of sufficient food and the animals warred over the resources. In what I thought was the much more interesting experiment, in the second experiment the animals were given all the food they needed as their numbers grew.

Four behavioral patterns emerged—homicide, infanticide, suicide and homosexuality.

I would suggest the following:

1. The creature that has no predator becomes predator to itself, and the reflex is hardwired into us as a feedback loop.

2. The greater the overpopulation stress, the more our brain is designed to make us imagine differences between us sufficient to warrant cheating, stealing, disenfranchising, even killing.

3. In animals, the tools are tooth and claw, in humans, the weapon is irrationality and emotion swamping reason so that we become more vulnerable to being swept away by counterfeits of enlightenment and the common Good.

4. The invisible testosterone of overpopulation stress is designed to be in us. It represents the greatest test of the human race by whatever put us here. We must defeat this illusion of separateness and the need to harm one another before we are allowed to evolve to better places of existence.

Two things are essential for defeating this defeat of ourselves: (a) we need to understand that our own brain is rigged against us when we fail to realize how good we are, and the wonderful tools we have for solving all of our problems; (b) the structural forces of our world, and the Good that we come from, and our inborn enlightenment, create a measurable material fact that each time we harm one another we inject dysfunction into our lives and coexistence so that we lower our collective quality of life and create new social problems.