I recently came across a social media post about the Universe 25 experiment. You might have seen it too.
No? Then Google – or nowadays ChatGPT – it up. It’s a study by John B. Calhoun in the 1960s and 70s, where a group of mice was placed in a utopia with unlimited food, shelter, and no predators.
Initially thriving, then collapsing into chaos – violence, apathy, infertility, and extinction. The post ended with a grave warning: This is what happens to society when comfort replaces purpose. And if we’re not careful, humans are next.
Thousands of shares. Comments like “This is exactly what’s happening now” and “We are finished.” A few even said, “There’s no hope for the future.” It made me pause.
Not because the experiment isn’t real – it is. And not because the themes it raises aren’t important – they are. But because of how easily we treat one story, one metaphor, one study on mice as a fixed prophecy for humankind.
That, to me, is where the real danger lies.
We live in a world flooded with content. Ideas are shared faster than they can be understood. And some of the most viral ones are the most frightening. Doom spreads quickly. It travels well. Especially when it offers a clean explanation for why we feel stuck, disconnected, or unsure about the future.
But here’s the thing: Universe 25 is not a map of our destiny. It’s not even accepted as a reliable framework for human behaviour anymore. The study has long been criticised for its oversimplifications, ethical concerns, and limited relevance to complex human societies. Mice don’t have culture, values, institutions, or the ability to change their mental model of the world. We do.
Yet, this post – and countless others like it – don’t come with disclaimers. They’re shared without context, without critique, and without care for the effect they have on the people reading them. Especially the young. Especially those already struggling with anxiety, apathy, or the quiet fear that maybe life is broken beyond repair.
And here’s what I want to say to them, and maybe to you if you’ve ever felt that way: You are not a mouse in a lab. You are not the sum of a theory. You are not the inevitable victim of some decline narrative just because a post said so. You are a human being, living in a complex world, with choices to make and meaning to build.
Mitch Albom once wrote in Have a Little Faith, “Faith is about doing. You are how you act, not just how you believe.” And I would add: How you respond to fear matters. Especially fear that’s been packaged as fact.
We’ve seen this pattern before. Remember Y2K? For months – years, even – we were told that when the clock struck midnight on Jan 1, 2000, computers worldwide would crash. Planes would fall from the sky. Banks would collapse. Civilisation might grind to a halt.
I was there. I remember the countdown. The warnings. The genuine concern in people’s voices. And then – nothing happened. Planes kept flying. Lights stayed on. Systems adapted.
It wasn’t because the threat was fake. It’s because we prepared. We acted. We did something about it. Quietly, efficiently, the world’s programmers got to work. And the moment passed – not with catastrophe, but with a kind of quiet competence that rarely makes headlines.
That, to me, is what’s missing in these viral collapse narratives.
They don’t talk about human ingenuity. They don’t mention how often people rise to the occasion. They don’t tell the stories of community gardens, volunteers, teachers, builders, artists, thinkers – all the invisible forces working every day to move life forward.
Instead, they sell you a neat, dramatic picture of the end. And too often, we buy it.
But here’s what I believe, deeply: Despair is not intelligence. Cynicism is not clarity. And surrendering your hope to a social media post is not wisdom.
Be curious. Ask questions. Learn from history. But don’t fall for the narrative that says we’re all just spiralling toward some inevitable collapse.
Because history has another lesson too – human beings are surprisingly hard to write off.
We’ve stumbled, yes. But we’ve also built skyscrapers, discovered penicillin, walked on the moon, written poetry, cured disease, and kept on teaching, loving, dreaming – even in times darker than this one.
So the next time you see a post like Universe 25 – pause. Think. Ask what it’s trying to make you believe.
If it ends with “We are doomed,” question it.
Because while it’s easy to sound wise by being bleak, it takes courage to stay hopeful. To believe in progress. To try anyway.
And no matter what the mice did in their little box, we are not them.
We are not doomed.
The views expressed here are the personal opinion of the writer and do not necessarily represent that of Twentytwo13.
