The Behavioral Sink of the 21st Century: Abundance, Isolation, and the Collapse of Social Bonding in the Neoliberal Era

This essay offers an interdisciplinary analysis of existential conditions in contemporary affluent societies through the lens of John B. Calhoun's ethological experiments on Universe 25. The author employs the concept of "behavioral sink" as a heuristic device to explore the paradox of advanced societies: increasing material abundance coexisting with widespread indicators of social distress, demographic collapse, and political disconnection. The research integrates five complementary perspectives: (1) Calhoun's behavioral ethology and the concept of "death squared"—social death preceding biological extinction; (2) contemporary critical theory, particularly Byung-Chul Han's analysis of the "burnout society" and self-exploitation, and Zygmunt Bauman's "liquid modernity" and fragmentation of social bonds; (3) critical political economy of neoliberalism (Harvey, Klein, Brown) as the systematic architect of the contemporary cognitive cage; (4) demographic studies on reproductive collapse in wealthy societies, interpreted not as dysfunction but as rational response to loss of collective meaning; (5) the climate crisis as material refutation of infinite growth ideology and possible catalyst for reconstruction of intergenerational responsibility. The author argues that declining birth rates, rising self-reported loneliness, political disconnection, and existential precarization are not isolated phenomena but interconnected manifestations of a systemic transformation: the shift from a "physical cage" (walls, material boundaries) to a "cognitive cage" (internalized imperatives, algorithms, economic structures shaping desires and behaviors). Neoliberalism has created conditions of selective material abundance that paradoxically undermine the social bonds necessary for collective well-being, replicating at human scale the dynamics Calhoun observed in rodents: not resource scarcity but saturation of meaningful social roles. The analysis also explores the risk of co-optation of ecological transition through mechanisms of institutional greenwashing, financialization of sustainability, and green technocracy that could transform the climate crisis into a new opportunity for value extraction rather than a catalyst for democratic transformation. The essay concludes by exploring forms of conscious resistance and reconstruction of meaningful "behavioral spaces" through local communities, solidarity economy, participatory democracy, and shared care practices. The author contends that the "behavioral sink" is not inevitable biological destiny but reversible historical product, and that true abundance is measured not in material goods but in quality of social relations and possibility of meaningful roles in collective existence.