One plus one equals three; 4; Of Rats and Men

One plus one equals three. It is estimated that in 16:50 there were four hundred seventy people. It took two centuries for that figure to double. It took only one century to double again. Today there are well over three and a half billion of us sharing this planet. Demographers tell us that by the year 2000 the world population will swell to almost 7 billion. This series of programs is about this problem about what happens because one plus one

equals four. What is space. Space for an individual to bring the mood to work to play to live. What is an individual's living space. How big is it. What are its characteristics. In the. Living space is not a simple concept. Individual requirements for the size and characteristics of living space vary greatly over the span of human history. And even today the requirements vary greatly from individual to individual. Scientists have only begun to study this aspect of human existence. We know little

about human space requirements and much of the material available on the subject is of a speculative nature that needs further study. What scientist are telling us is that modern human space requirements are not limited by the area needed to house a person grow his food and process his waste for example. Look at the space requirements of a man living in a residential district of an urban area. He and his family may occupy a two bedroom apartment with 700 square feet of living space. His car occupies a garage is another 200 square feet or more. Then he needs space for work. Perhaps in a downtown office he needs transportation space highways or railways. He needs sidewalks. He uses parks playgrounds recreation areas. These are some of the direct space requirements but there are many indirect space requirements as well. There must be land to grow its food space for the mines oil wells forests and reservoirs that are necessary to supply the raw materials he depends on his space requirements are scattered and they overlap with those of others. Say for the world's most

primitive cultures and the few hermits among us all human beings have space requirements that are similar in structure to the one I just described. Too much human pressure on any part of an individual space may result in a sense of feeling crowded. Dr. Michael spar Koski is an assistant professor of family relationships at the University of Illinois in about a. And a staff member of champagne county's Family Service Unit. Dr. Spock Koski had this to say when he was asked about the fact of urban crowding on family life. And I think we've got to break that down in terms of crowding you did it one way in terms of suburban urban rural. But I think density or crowding in terms of how many people live in a given space as well as housing space particularly we see this I think if we can go across culturally to India and perhaps China some of the countries where the population far exceeds the amount of housing and so you may have two or three families sharing what we would consider a one family

housing unit in this country. Similarly some families going to have a 12 or 14 room house with four people and still are crowded. I think we see this and I see this in my counseling practice sometimes in terms of families with teenagers especially where crowding. In other words having to share a room with one or two or perhaps even three other people. As a place of study as a bedroom this sort of thing causes quite a few other irritations and sometimes just physical proximity being close to each other is enough to irritate people. You know they're right there you can't get rid of them sort of thing even though you'd like to perhaps and you can't have the privacy this is a factor many families are starting to recognise more and more especially with the pre-teen and early teen child who wants privacy for whatever reasons they have and they have many many who can't get it because let's say your house has four bedrooms and you've got six kids and the parents either just has to be some sharing and I think that sometimes leads to more conflicts just because there's more possibility you can't get away

from it in a sense. I think this happens too with husbands and wives when the husband comes home after a long day at work and his wife is waiting to see him and bubbling over and there he comes and he wants some privacy and he's sort of crowded now that isn't the definition you started with but he's crowded because he wants to be left alone. As families increase certainly unless they have a lot of economic means they probably will have more crowding. As you get into the urban areas though into the big cities I think people living on top of one another in terms of apartments for instance try to maintain this privacy by not knowing their neighbors. It is an interesting phenomena I think in the rural area as you may know people who are 5 10 15 miles away and they're good friends. And yet in the city you may not know the guy who lives next door in his little pigeon hole I suppose we could call it and this certainly intensifies problems. You can't get away in other words or your sort of Hamden by the big city I think and for many people this is extremely frustrating and I think perhaps some of the riots we have had have have bubbled over in this sense. Too many people

too tightly packed and not feeling able to get out whether or not they could is another story but not feeling that they could. So this is this matter of crowding is not marry merely a physical thing but a sort of that an emotional psychological kind of a thing that if I were to take your statement Robbie would vary according to age you know where you live and what you are used to. Share your experiences before and I'm going to predict somewhat what these will be and we've got to recognize that by age you know you may want to be more gregarious you want me I want to be more social I think sometimes older people retirees and older are getting into the stage where they want to get back in and get together as part of a group where they perhaps have sort of strayed away from the group before and your needs at different ages certainly will vary per individual. I think two we've got to recognize that this crowding factor sometimes leads to more perhaps physical solutions in terms of violence in terms of physical hitting.

Slapping kicking kinds of things. I've seen this sometimes and I just it's just an observation certainly not verified at least that I know everybody research but I think sometimes it's easier in that situation to let this out physically rather than talking it out. Tempers get short and things blow up grow quickly. Dr. Small account of his observations on family crowding may point to dangerous to human life. Among the distinguished men who have speculated on the dangers of crowding his Sir Julian Huxley. Now these men have noted the influence of crowding on such animals as wraps it over crowded conditions. Now these animals may show signs of increased emotional problems become hostile refused to mate and die for no apparent reason. I long to have animals. I heard that expands beyond the carrying capacity of the land will destroy its brood supply and then start good overcrowding to the same for man. We cannot say for sure we do know that the problems of our cities are becoming more and more cute. Five physicians for the University of Illinois Medical Center in

Chicago discussed this problem with Jack Ray Conner the physicians Dr. J Al Daskal Dr. John P. Havard Dr. Robert C. Steptoe. Dr. Robert W. Blum Stein and Dr. John M. Keller Let's talk a little bit before we get into your specialty which of course is a problem area birth control and abortion in this aspect. The population problem let's talk a bit if we can and you can do it generally and I'll focus on that not to cover the person sitting next to me. Let's talk about the results of chronic heart as. The problem of crowding today. How does this really emotionally affect an individual. That's it really is people being crammed together I saw study on television the thing about overcrowding and putting too many rats and mice in one area and they got they blew their cool is this possible with individuals. I'm quite certain it is the studies are more sociological than they are obstetrical gynecological of course and these studies are available in many of the magazines

Newsweek time to time will carry the results of such studies comparing the results of crowding of animals who purposely. Crowded into a small space to see the results of motion or changes in these animals aggressiveness in these animals. Some animals become catatonic and withdrawn in the face of excess crowding. And I think these types of actions and reactions to crowding are very easily discernible in the crowding scene in various areas of the cities. The ghettos for instance there seem to be much more crime actually a result of fighting and aggressive activity in destructive activity in crowded areas of large cities that were seen fairly sparsely populated rural cities. And I think that these results can be compared roughly. To the. QUESTION It's. A number that's going to have to stop and.

One of the major factors of excessive crowding. Is that there is a tendency when there are large groups of people particularly if there are unlimited economic resources and economic resources are referable to employment. Food. Housing. These factors tend to decrease the or have a direct factor ignoring the human values and their. Physical and emotional in the relationship. And this in fact is a factor involved and particularly and indirectly regards the statutes into account do we feel that this may be an influencing factor in birth rates it may be a factor influencing factor and the individual's emotional attitudes in relationship to each other. ME WE HAVE MY comments by saying the doctor desk and I both work in the ghetto we

thank the consultants in ecology to a large clinic in a ghetto. Without looking at rats and mice experiments the most outstanding feature that you notice in an overcrowded where you are is the hopelessness that overcrowding creates. It's a sense of hopelessness a loss of identity. And everything that that builds on this. It's a feeling that this engendered in people. Feeling you have not we never will have and this you can't help but be reflected in other attitudes. And we were told that this is the directly related to a joke logic problem namely control population control birth rate and it's a vicious cycle it's a cycle of hopelessness of lack of. Control in many other areas and get into some of this we talk about birth control. Congress members crowding change of values for people who have to change their vows of up at

the good time hard to exist. Yes it does it does just it changes their values it automatically changes their values and I think that the best evidence of this is when you take. Some of these people out of the overcrowded situation take them out of the ghetto put them into a home and the entire psychological make up of the family unit changes their attitudes begin to change in many different aspects of life. Or if you want to have a man I'm not sure if they had in mind all the conditions and yet on overcrowding. I can think of countries in Europe such as Holland which are overcrowded which have a year which although they're not increasing the population not increasing just overcrowded this promise are going to also have an extremely low crime rate. I think he should go back to poverty and again lack of education rather than crowding.

But I think that for most of us the concept of overcrowding goes along with the concept of poverty at least in this country. Most of all I think we should mention outside of the emotional aspects of physical diseases that are prevalent in overcrowding which I think is very real. The incidence of tuberculosis or at least what used to be through the ghetto where you and I think just recently the norm for the cases of the 335 which were obviously localized and in the overcrowded area so I think there is a physical disease without question in these areas and the emotional factors to. Go before we get into it. We exhausted this or. Going to. It's all part of a cycle I think we're just touching I want to aspect of when we talk about overcrowding in it's both a product and a cause of the problem and I think it will get into some of the other aspects of these observations from positions on the University of Illinois Medical Center staff. They are confirming to a large extent by studies of urban society. Mrs.

Ede plan as a National Science Foundation fellow doing Advanced Study in sociology at the University of Illinois in about a year some of her observations on population pressures and the urban environment. Personally I feel we are suffering from a Republican nation simply by sometimes going out for a Sunday drive and finding so many people who can't find a quiet spot anymore. Even if you try to go on vacations and seek out the highest mountain you're going to find it's going to run with people. In terms of sociology You know I think the overpopulation problem is are and it's saying in scientific terms is becoming acute because I think it's going to interfere it is already interfering with the integration. For example our black minority it seems to make things much more difficult when you have too many people for not enough jobs. Too many children for not enough schools not enough scientists not enough people to accommodate in terms of

teaching. Rendering health services and so on. What about the matter of crowding and individuals and of course there's the famous study with the rats rats I want. But from a sociological standpoint what has any studies been done on what crowding does to people. Have we seen a deterioration or a change that is as a detour it changes people a change. Well of course there is obviously just by the fact that we are living in smaller areas be some change in lifestyle but what happens when people are crowded from a sociological point of view. Well basically I have to think of the phenomenon of urbanization which definitely for instance produced a reduction in the number of children per family. Urbanization has definitely been identified as one of the factors that produces a lowering of fertility. It has done so in the past with this. It is still doing now.

I think part of the overpopulation problems of our cities presently is a fact of the exodus from the country towards the city. Yet there there we do have the problem of overpopulation or of too many children particularly of the of the less economically fortunate in urban areas. I know of no replicated study or to the effect of crowding on the individual. It is primarily an issue for the psychologist the psychologist has dealt with it more extensively than we have as far as I know about the way they have come up with studies that for instance proved that you could get rats to even enjoy crowded conditions and I think being one of the recent issues of Psychology Today shows of an experiment in which it is simply changing the environment of a rat rather than a

genetic make up. You can approach produces a rather peaceful rat willing to co-exist with others so I don't think we have all the answers yet in terms of the effect of overcrowding. I would think though that it is at least as far as I'm concerned an aesthetic issue. I think there is such a thing or there seems to me there is still beauty and wide open countries in looking at the mountains without having to worry about the honking of horns and looking at the litter of the street. I think everyone should have the right to the beauty of nature which is I think fastly going away or losing it. These problems were pointed out by Mrs Edith plan. Dr Philip Hauser professor of sociology and director of the Population Research Center at the University of Chicago is an internationally respected expert on population problems. Louise Geithner's discussed the pressures of population with Dr. Hauser at the Population Research Center.

She asked him if crowding was an influencing factor in today's urban problems. Right. Moreover most people when I think about the population problem are thinking about what I was just simply one small facet of that name the excessive jeopardy and rapid population growth rates. This is commonly called the population explosion. But some of these problems that I've just outlined are the result not so much of the population explosion but can be traced more directly to what I call the population implosion and the population disclosure. Now the population implosion refers to the increased concentration of population and relatively small portions of the earth's surface or the national surface from Al-Anon better known as urbanization and urbanization has itself created as one has exacerbated many of these problems to which I've just referred. In this sense it's also the result of an aspect of population change about a population disposal. I refer to the increasing diversity of

people who share not only the same geographic area but increasingly the same live space social political and economic activities. By diversity I mean people differing by culture by language by religion by Badger systems by ethnicity and by race. And the point is that the population explosion implosion and dysprosium as I've defined them. Are all wrung out of me. Recent phenomena coming to a head during his masters of the 20th century. They have created what I like to refer to as a 20th century demographic world which is also. Subjected to technological change. So we now live in the 20th century demographic and techno magical world creating unprecedented problems and creating right is the chaos that we see throughout the world as well as in this nation and I think the reason for the chaos is that we are attempting to deal with these problems of a 20th century demographic and technological world with 18th and 19th century

value systems with 18th and 19th century institutions including government or from the government and processes of government and for this reason I see a considerable increase in unrest within the United States as well between now and the end of the century. The problems we see all around us now which raise questions of the viability of our nation are likely to become worse not they go rather cumbrous long before they become better. What about this matter you're talking about urbanization here and. I think of a release from a literary standpoint the marvelous book on them. Is it Richard Audrey Andriy that the territorial imperative. Do you believe that this territorial imperative concept is a viable one. Well their answer can be yes it can be viable if man who is the only culture Belling animal on the face of the earth loses the capacity he has for

thought and planning and problem solution for the resolution of those problems that arise from these things I've just you know bridge the explosion the implosion the disposal and technological change. Now up to this point I think that our society has taken the advantages of some of these developments and has deferred payment of the costs. If we face the problem from a I think that we can have a viable society even with these developments. But this would mean among other things the dampening of population growth rates the dampening also the kind of the effects of the implosion and they disclose and they control the technology so that we use technology not only to create the opportunities for increased goods and services but we use it also to recycle scarce renewable resources and to prevent pollution. What if that man as a creature is it is an individual creature and his self. You me.

Anybody else we have. Is there a space need. Do we get the do we have does does an individual have a suit either psychological or physical space. It's necessary for his well-being. Well this has been argued by many people including architects and engineers and psychologists. And I think it will remain in that realm namely argument. I'm much more impressed as a sociologist with the fact that the human being is a highly malleable malleable animal from space nature determine a large measure by the culture in which he is reared and the society and amenities that are made available to him. Now if you go back to the dramatic days in the router rest in the carboy you couldn't live within the confines of these things we call the house you had a human being who had definite shall we say demonstrably space needs right different than the apartment house stronger

and better say in a crowded apartment house in Manhattan or in a city Chicago. In other words if there are any specific space needs minimums without which the human being cannot live. Shard of suffocation and not getting enough air and what not. The answer is human beings are adaptable enough to live on our almost any conditions of density. And I'm much more impressed by that than I am some of these considerations of theoretical space needs which they show us they are not demonstrably. I just wonder because this is as you hear someone say why Julissa Julian Huxley talking about space needs and so on and if you think I need MIT to being something the throwback to the 19th century I know that I get claustrophobia from people which is why that segment of the Indianapolis 500 raised the thought of others people just drives me up a wall but that's me. And I don't I don't know how other people react but if you're a born and rarity and let us say some of the crowded dance conditions of life in Manhattan

you might become petrified if you ever found yourself on a wide open plane without another human being in sight. And I repeat the human being is man of the book can adapt almost any physical conditions which do not snuff life out itself and the human being here Jane used to live where other respectable members of the animal kingdom would die. These remarks by Dr. Philip Hauser stress a cautious optimism about man and his capacity to adapt to growing concentrations of his fellow man. Nations around the world are becoming concerned about population growth and what it will mean to them in the coming years in the United States. President Richard Nixon has taken the first steps toward a national planning for accommodating a growing population and checking its growth rate. In March 1970 he signed a bill creating a commission to study the problem and appoint a John D Rockefeller the third as commission chairman. This is as I said a moment ago but a first step. We have a long way to go.

Mankind is only too ignorant of what makes him and his world tick. We know too little about man's need for space or a place of his own home. We know too little about birth control. You know a lot about death control. Indeed it has been sad that the one biblical commandment that man is consistently followed is the one in Genesis that says Be fruitful and multiply. Next week at this time we'll be taking a look at how we arrived at a world population growth rate of 2 percent a year and how we became so fruitful that we can now multiply at the rate of seventy million more this year. Join us next week. You have been listening to one plus one equals three for. Finding. A series of programs about the problems we face because of our growing population. Your host for this program has been Dennis Corrigan special music performed by Ria Truscott engineering by Edna Haney.

I'm not going to meet you one. Right. Many many many. Many. And there is little to beat me down upon me. One plus one equals three four five was produced and directed by Luis Geissler. It's been wy allows the radio service of the University of Illinois in Urbana. This is the national educational radio network.