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The Doomed Mouse Utopia That Inspired the 'Rats of NIMH'

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Re: The Doomed Mouse Utopia That Inspired the 'Rats of NIMH'

#31

Post by taeric »

qwertyuiop924 wrote: post #16
taeric wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have the audio book, but haven't listened to it yet. This just bumped it up to the top of my queue. I felt the same way with Never Ending Story. And, as a kid, I loved that movie. Book was so much more, though. Howl's Moving Castle was one where I actually had a hard time liking more than one or two scenes of the movie, because of how much I liked the book.

Oddly, DWJ really liked the Howl's Moving Castle film, apparently. As a Miyazaki/Ghibli fan, I got into the film more than the book. I still need to read The Never Ending Story. But yeah, the movie of Rats of NIMH was super disappointing to me.

I still overall liked Howl's. I just have a hard time rewatching it due to some odd choices. In particular, the odd "true love's kiss" for turnip head. Just, what?

Re: The Doomed Mouse Utopia That Inspired the 'Rats of NIMH'

#32

Post by drzaiusapelord »

throwaway2016b wrote: post #15

This paints a dark picture, not only for urban life, but for basic income. What wondrous creativity will be unlocked when we no longer need to work to survive? A negative amount, if you judge by the NEETs of today. Give a man food, shelter, and internet, and he'll kill himself for you.

Only because we don't take social currency as seriously as monetary currency. In a world where financial incentives don't matter, you'll have other incentives. We can see this in video games where people half-kill themselves to get some status or armor or whatever. Or how wealthy people take up charity work or compete on social status points like who holds the better parties or decorates the home better.

>if you judge by the NEETs of today.

I think its pretty obvious that NEETs are very much in denial, or have no access to, the mental healthcare they need. We also need to accept that a lot of people on the autism spectrum will end up as NEET-like and there's probably nothing to be done about it.

Re: The Doomed Mouse Utopia That Inspired the 'Rats of NIMH'

#33

Post by M_Grey »

throwaway2016b wrote: post #15

This paints a dark picture, not only for urban life, but for basic income. What wondrous creativity will be unlocked when we no longer need to work to survive? A negative amount, if you judge by the NEETs of today. Give a man food, shelter, and internet, and he'll kill himself for you.

"...The blind forces of urbanization, flowing along the lines of least resistance, show no aptitude for creating an urban and industrial pattern that will be stable, self-sustaining, and self-renewing. On the contrary, as congestion thickens and expansion widens, both the urban and the rural landscape undergo defacement and degradation, while the unprofitable investments in the remedies…serve only to promote more of the blight and disorder they seek to palliate." (Mumford)

Re: The Doomed Mouse Utopia That Inspired the 'Rats of NIMH'

#34

Post by projektir »

zerocrates wrote: post #27
throwanem wrote: post #3

> But the public held on hard to his earlier work—as Ramsden and Adams put it, "everyone want[ed] to hear the diagnosis, no one want[ed] to hear the cure." Was there a "cure"? The article speaks of the fashion in which his later efforts attempted to alleviate the catastrophic social problems he'd observed in his earlier utopian designs. It is craftily silent on the subject of those efforts' results.

The paper they're citing mostly handwaves around the so-called "cure" as well, but that might really be for the best. It does have some more detail, though: > In his early experiments in the outdoor pens, Calhoun had witnessed a creative act by his rats that he likened to the discovery of the wheel by man: when building a new burrow they did not simply dig out the dirt as they went, as any normal rat would do, instea…

> As Calhoun saw it, the repression they had suffered at the hands of their superiors had resulted in deviant, creative, and thus adaptive behaviour.

Could it also be that the group was simply different, and suffered because it was different/non-dominant, but it was not the suffering that made them different to begin with? And getting away from the main group allowed them to do those things?

I would posit a utopia where there is such a thing as "dominant group" is not a utopia, after all.

Remember these guys? http://www.nytimes.com/2004/04/13/science/no-time-for-bullie...

Groups of people interested in esoteric things who just want to be left alone... sounds familiar.

Re: The Doomed Mouse Utopia That Inspired the 'Rats of NIMH'

#35

Post by M_Grey »

drzaiusapelord wrote: post #32
throwaway2016b wrote: post #15

This paints a dark picture, not only for urban life, but for basic income. What wondrous creativity will be unlocked when we no longer need to work to survive? A negative amount, if you judge by the NEETs of today. Give a man food, shelter, and internet, and he'll kill himself for you.

Only because we don't take social currency as seriously as monetary currency. In a world where financial incentives don't matter, you'll have other incentives. We can see this in video games where people half-kill themselves to get some status or armor or whatever. Or how wealthy people take up charity work or compete on social status points like who holds the better parties or decorates the home better. >if you judg…

Truly, "NEET" is a mental health issue in almost every case; when you look at it carefully it seems like a terrible way to live. Being utterly disconnected from your peers and potential social contacts is just not good for the human animal.

Re: The Doomed Mouse Utopia That Inspired the 'Rats of NIMH'

#36

Post by projektir »

lawpoop wrote: post #28
jds375 wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder what that could mean for us as humans. Is some degree of "strife" necessary in society for people to be happier? Perhaps our work to eliminate many of the more primal issues that affect us (the need to hunt, survive in the wild, etc) are only making us worse off? It would be interesting to hear more about this, as well as what the potential "cures" may be, as alluded to at the end of the article.

I wouldn't say "strife" but perhaps "challenges". I think things like a wander-year, self-initiated long-term projects, like starting a business, writing a program, building something architecturally, making a short film, etc. There's plenty of "strife" in day to day life, some other jerks on the road, to your co-workers, to your friends and family. Or just working on your long term goals and dreams in the face of th…

I think there's also something patronizing in promoting the inflictment of violence on beings to make geniuses out of them. Would the promoter like the same treatment?

Kind of like the human who makes the rat park and complains the rats are not happy?

Perhaps we will be happy in environments we choose to make for ourselves, not some that others have arbitrarily decided we should be happy in. I would say there's something inherently corrupt in an environment you do not control.

Re: The Doomed Mouse Utopia That Inspired the 'Rats of NIMH'

#37

Post by blfr »

Most of the adolescent mice retreated even further from societal expectations, spending all their time eating, drinking, sleeping and grooming, and refusing to fight or to even attempt to mate.

Every time I read about these experiments, this is the stirring part. Individuals that appear to be the most fit just fail to mate for no apparent reason, yet they live as if they were always preparing for it.

Re: The Doomed Mouse Utopia That Inspired the 'Rats of NIMH'

#38

Post by projektir »

blfr wrote: post #37

Most of the adolescent mice retreated even further from societal expectations, spending all their time eating, drinking, sleeping and grooming, and refusing to fight or to even attempt to mate. Every time I read about these experiments, this is the stirring part. Individuals that appear to be the most fit just fail to mate for no apparent reason, yet they live as if they were always preparing for it.

Well, "Individual organisms are best thought of as adaptation-executers rather than as fitness-maximizers" and all that.

Re: The Doomed Mouse Utopia That Inspired the 'Rats of NIMH'

#40

Post by qwertyuiop924 »

taeric wrote: post #31
qwertyuiop924 wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oddly, DWJ really liked the Howl's Moving Castle film, apparently. As a Miyazaki/Ghibli fan, I got into the film more than the book. I still need to read The Never Ending Story. But yeah, the movie of Rats of NIMH was super disappointing to me.

I still overall liked Howl's. I just have a hard time rewatching it due to some odd choices. In particular, the odd "true love's kiss" for turnip head. Just, what?

If that's the only thing you thought was odd about it, you must not have been watching very closely :-).

I'm much more of fan of his other works, like Castle In The Sky, and Kiki's Delivery Service. And The Wind Rises. And the Cat Returns.

Okay, let's just pencil in that I like all of Miyazaki's work.

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