Friday, November 24, 2017

Mooney's Malthusian Inventory

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The MMI

Participant number: _____________________________
Location:                 _____________________________
Date:                       _____________________________

Section I                                                                                 Disagree            Neutral           Agree

1. People often get in my way.                                              _______           _______         ______

2. I often feel impatient waiting in lineups.                            _______           _______         ______

3. I often bump into people.                                                   _______           _______         ______

4. I often have to put up with noise from children.                _______           _______         ______

5. I often have to put up with noise from adults.                   _______           _______         ______

6. I often have to put up with noise from machinery.            _______           _______         ______

7. I often have to put up with odors.                                      _______           _______         ______

8. I often see things that need cleaning.                                _______           _______         ______

9. I often feel that my personal space has been invaded.     _______           _______         ______

10. I often flee my dwelling for no particular reason.           _______           _______         ______

11. Sex isn't worth it.                                                            _______           _______         ______

12. Commuting isn't worth it.                                               _______           _______         ______

13. Kids aren't worth it.                                                         _______           _______         ______

14. A degree isn't worth it.                                                    _______           _______         ______

15. Cooking isn't worth it.                                                     _______           _______         ______

16. Wealth isn't worth it.                                                       _______           _______         ______

17. Lifestyle and personal expression are important.           _______           _______         ______

18. Politics and social justice are important.                        _______           _______         ______

19. Hobbies and side hustles are important.                        _______           _______         ______

20. Social media are important.                                           _______           _______         ______

Section II

1.   Months required to find your present dwelling: ____________  (Homeless: ___)
2.   Months required to find your present job:         ____________   (Unemployed: ___)
3.   Hours required to earn $1,000.00:                     ____________   (N/A: ___)
4.   Amount spent daily on recreational drugs including caffeine and alcohol: $___.__
5.   Number of current, known enemies:    ____________________
6.   Number of siblings, dead or still alive:____________________
7.   Number of jobs held, lifetime total:    _____________________
8.   Number of psychiatric diagnoses:      _____________________
9.   Number of suicide attempts:               _____________________
10. Number of medications:                     _____________________

Section III

I am:                                                  trans: ___    female:___   male: ___
I am:                                                  ___ y old.
Height, cm:                                        ___
Weight, kg:                                        ___
Country of origin:                              ____________________
Immigration date:                              __mm, __yy,  N/A __
____________________________________________________________________________
To the investigator: The MMI purports to measure the level of the construct "crowding stress," which is theorized to be an excellent predictor of history-making upheavals such as world wars and mass migrations [1,2]. Crowding stress, in turn, is thought to correlate with persons per hectare, with the slope of the regression line dependent on the details of housing and zoning practices. Gentrified developments, for example, would intuitively be expected to have a lower value of the slope, whereas slums would be expected to have a higher value.
[1] "The Cogs of Armageddon," in: "Theoretician's Progress" mmmtheoryblogspot.com
[2] "The Iatrogenic Conflicts of the Twentieth Century" in: "Theoretician's Progress" mmmtheory.blogspot.com
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To the Reader: of course, the above is just a pretend-test, with nothing known about how best to score it, the test-retest reliability, the content validity, or the construct validity. I propose it to get people seriously considering that "crowding stress', or "psychological population density," as it could be called, may have an insidious effect on the course of history that flies below the radar of the conscious mind, affecting people's emotional reactivities directly. City planners may derive some wiggle room from the fact that psychological population density is not necessarily the same as physical population density. These ideas were inspired by Calhoun's overpopulation experiments on rats and mice.


Ok, so I am not showing masses of people here, but the tone is right. (However, the infamous Rideau Street sinkhole opened up later at the base of the nearest street-light in this picture. Make of that what you will.)