Universe26

June 22, 1972. 

John Calhoun stood over the abandoned husk of what had once been a thriving metropolis of thousands. Now, the population had dwindled to just 122, and soon, even these inhabitants would be dead.

Calhoun wasn’t the survivor of a natural disaster or nuclear meltdown; rather, he was a researcher at the National Institute of Mental Health conducting an experiment into the effects of overcrowding on mouse behavior. The results, laid bare at his feet, had taken years to play out.

copied from here, full article

It would be cheeky to anthropomorphize the mouse experiments of Universe 25 too freely—but it’s easy to hear echoes of the same tensions in the neoliberal-developed world, perhaps most notably in declining birth rates. In Canada, for example, the rate dipped to 1.33 children born per woman, below the replacement rate of 2.1 which sustains population numbers. (Source: StatsCan)

Similar to the mice in Universe25, it seems that humans aren't opting out of reproduction because we're running out of resources; obesity is now a greater global problem than food insecurity. While environmental limits and the consequences of human activity are real and serious, they are not the whole story. Perhaps what is more pressing are the cultural conditions that have left our species spiralling in hyper-consumption that produces obesity in our bellies and overflows our landfills while failing to nourish our bodies or honour the planet. In many ways, this is a crisis of human spirit. We have "Behavioral Sink".

Universe26 is an exploration of different paths forward—ones that put human thriving at the center, even in the event of economic shrinkage due to population decline and the end (or rebalancing) of growth. If our species is going to flourish beyond the extractive era we’re emerging from, we’ll need businesses that are capable of creating value without insisting that “more” is always the best answer.

That’s why some projects under in Universe26 focus on value creation that de-centers growth from their business models. A couple of examples:

• PairUp: turning vacant homes into vacation destinations—creating value without growing the accommodation supply

• BeMall: empowering people to vote with their wallets to support companies that are BEing better to the planet

Universe 25 was a catalyst of inspiration for Universe26, among others from a mix of thinkers and traditions, including:

Henry Mintzberg, Taoism, Erich Fromm, Václav Havel, Srđa Popović, Ayn Rand, Josef Pieper, and Cory Doctorow.