'It's all one big debate. That's my problem.' Jim said as he and I crested the hill. 'The characters just go back and forth debating the merits of Walden Two's behaviorist society. So while there are basic story elements; characters, setting and so forth, it's not really much of a novel.''Would you rather Skinner wrote an essay; An Outline for Utopia, or something like that?' Kara replied as she joined us on top of the hill. 'Would that have made him more persuasive?''Oh, no no.' Jim said and laughed. 'Walden Two is certainly readable; we all breezed through it in a couple days. The problem is the debate can't go anywhere... I could go on for a bit.'Kara smiled but wasn't about to grant permission for Jim to dominate the conversation. As usual I felt a little more permissive. 'Proceed with your screed.' I said.'Well, so most of the debate centers on Frazier vs. Castle right? Frazier represents Skinner's behaviorist model-''And perhaps Skinner himself.' I added.'Yes, perhaps.' Jim said 'Anyway, Castle represents more conventional philosophical thought and he's constantly searching for holes in the Walden Two model, or ethical issues, or potential future problems and whatnot. “Don't you run into problems with human ambition? Isn't it unethical to condition children from such an early age? Does such extreme egalitarianism stifle genius?” That sort of thing.'Jim paused for breath. I glanced at Kara, who wore a look of patience. Jim continued:'And these are worthwhile questions; but Skinner wins the argument every time, he always holds the hammer. Walden Two, in the book, works flawlessly; everyone is happy, productive and creatively engaged. You can't complain “but what about potential problems x, y and z” when everything you witness runs so perfectly. Castle's criticisms come of as petty and blind in the book.''Well, Skinner clearly believes in these ideas...' I said uncertainly, more to inject a little conversation than as a counterpoint.'Sure. Sure.' Jim said. 'But you can't just say “look at how well my ideas work in fantasy land. Don't you want to see them applied to the real world?” That's not persuasive; that's assuming your argument.'Jim put his hands on his hips and stared toward the sunset. It was mid-fall and quite cool. A visible shiver ran through Kara and she turned to head back toward the university. I joined her and Jim jogged to catch up after several seconds of gazing into the horizon.'I think' Kara said, starting slowly to soften her rebuttal 'that Skinner's message lies not so much in the efficacy of his fictionalized results, but in the train of logic that led there. Take, for instance, the painstakingly Socratic method by which he explains the time-saving benefits of Walden Two's work-scheduling; how eight-hour days could be cut to four-hour days through basic theories about motivation and efficiency.''Well, yes.' Jim replied 'Skinner argued that part thoroughly. And I must admit that the prospect of a 20-hour work week tempts me fiercely. But none of Skinner's other arguments are as rigorously logical and he usually leaps past the point where the basic, nuts-and-bolts planning happens and that's the trickiest part. We never even meat the planning committee much less see it in operation.''True.' Kara said. 'But you wouldn't fault a Science-fiction writer for not personally inventing inter-galactic transportation or designing a real-world functional space-ship. Take the insightful parts of Walden Two and don't dock Skinner so hard for not reinventing society. Take his description of an egalitarian community that treats men and women as equals in work, care-giving and authority. Take the notion that we'd all be happier if we could let go of our acquisitiveness. Take the notion that, while talent matters, we all work best when we develop everyone's skills and deemphasize 'genius.' These are the sorts of things our society hasn't fully come to grips with yet, but the more we study them the more we find wisdom in this line of thought. And he was writing about this in the forties.''What stuck out to me.' I interjected 'was when he talked about the multitude of unused books most universities have.' I pointed towards our own university's library; six stories high and glimmering white. 'I think that sucker could be half the size and nobody would even notice.'We all laughed. It felt good to produce a useful point while also relieving tension. Jim was still smiling when he said 'I appreciated the part when he described the value of physical work for even the most scholarly individuals. I often feel primed to write after some light exercise. Ghandi was big on that idea.''Carl Sagan too.' Kara replied.'Oh yes.' Jim said. 'But not everything Skinner talks about makes sense. Take that part about his advanced teacups with the bucket-like handles. What was that about? Sure, teacups are normally made with style emphasized over functionality, but why not just a simple plastic cup? If you carried your cup around using a handle, not only would you look like a fool, but you'd have to switch hands every time you wanted to take a drink. Completely impractical.'We all laughed again, and Kara added. 'Are we agreed then? Walden Two is a readable novel and Skinner makes several insightful points.''Just keep him away from the tea!' I said.
an appalling vision of a utopia. Unlike most utopia visions, however, this one is completely honest. It's not about making a "perfect society;" it's about controlling the members. The perfect society is both an effect of that cause and a a tactic towards that goal. Create a society in which everyone is happy, and people will behave for the good of that society. their behavior will be engineered from day 1. and by day 1 I mean since birth; infants are cared for by the community, and their physical environment, their external behavior, and their state of mind is carefully kept in line, monitored, and recorded. It's a vision of a society that is an extended experimental laboratory with all of humanity as the subject. TE Frazier, the author's alter ego, has set himself up as CS Lewis' "conditioner." (see The Abolition of Man.) In fact I can hear the words of one of CS Lewis' villains coming from Frasier: "Man will have to take charge of man. That means, of course that some men will have to take charge of others, which is a good reason to hop on the band wagon as soon as possible." (see That Hideous Strength.) Another person Frazier reminds me of is Elsworth Toohey. (see The Fountainhead.) At one point he straight up admits that he embraced selflessness, not because he believed in it as a moral ideal ( BF Skinner seems aware that there can be no morality without free will; to resolve this he treats morality as nonexistent, not even worthy of a discussion.) but because it is the only effective way of controlling others. "I'm the most selfless man you'll ever meet, Peter," says Toohey to one of his victims. "You want me for what I help you with. I want want you for what I can do to you."Even though this book was massively creepy, I give it five stars for being evil without pretension. The structure of the Walden Two society rests on a single axiom: that free will is an illusion, that we are all nothing but the sum of our conditioning. Therefore we may as well leave the conditioning in the hands of behavioral scientists, who will make it completely pleasant and also direct it to the noble goal of making society completely pleasant. In real life, Walden Two was a miserable failure. (check out the Twin Oaks "planned community.") With every aspect of their lives controlled, and with all the members disbelieving in free will, personal initiative, innovation, and intelligence went out the window. Rather than the automatic progress that Skinner and the soviet planners believed in, what the society experienced was stagnation, followed by regression. This book, and the real life experiment that copied it, proves the central thesis of my life correct. That thesis, of course, is that choice, free will, and individualism are the necessary and related sources of all human progress, all human joy, all betterment of human life, all human life, and all humanity. It's either freedom and prosperity, or control and stagnation. Make your choice.
Do You like book Walden Two (2005)?
One time, I threw this book out a window. That should probably tell you how much I detest it. It was required reading for a class, and I fully acknowledge that this "review" is basically just venting the resentment and bafflement that still lingers.Part of my ire is that Walden Two is presented as a novel (albeit blandly written with no care for depth of characters, emotions, or plot), and man, do I as a reader detest poorly-written fiction that's ultimately trying to argue something. (Well-written fiction that tries to argue something? I fully approve! Check out Derrick Bell's Faces From the Bottom of the Well for a golden example.) Storytelling-as-a-way-of-teaching-or-explaining is an ancient tradition. I'm all for it! But you have to have a good story for it to work. There's no story here, so it just felt useless and manipulative to me to have Skinner present his argument in a story form.Not being able to point out the flaws in his arguments (and having to witness straw man arguments representing the opposition) made this a frustrating read. Being that I was a woman of color reading this in the year 2003, so much about this book felt irrelevant to the world I live in. You know, the world where women are not just men with ovaries, where I wouldn't trust a privileged white man in power to assure me that everyone is equal because race is irrelevant, and where heteronormativity is toxic and actively critiqued. Just in regard to reproductive issues: oh, after giving birth to four children, a 23-year-old woman still enjoys both youthful "body and spirit"? OH REALLY? A woman's body doesn't change irrevocably with pregnancy? That having given birth multiple times might not have changed how she relates sexually to her partner, or how she relates to her own body? Pregnancy complications don't affect a woman mentally? Sure, some of this might be culturally conditioned, but most of it, I suspect not.Two cheers for Skinner for being able to imagine a community where no child goes unloved or hungry, where people are more than commodities or workers. I want a world like that too. But Walden Two is just flimsy, and yeah, I value democracy and individualism and have not been convinced that those values are the root of catastrophic failure in our society.
—Megan
Community or the individual: which is of greater import to human happiness? This is the central question being asked at the heart of Skinner's "Walden Two". Other topics addressed in the novel include the value (and necessity) of free will, social engineering, political systems and governance, ethics, as well as many others. Do you believe, as many others (including myself) do, Churchill's admonition that "those who fail to learn history are doomed to repeat it"? Using one of the main characters as his mouthpiece, Skinner argued that, due to the complexities of and differences between historical events, all of which are complicated and obscured by subjective reporting by the victor, history has little--if any--wisdom to impart to the denizens of subsequent ages. Little more than extraneous information at best, and a tool for indoctrination by the ruling elite at worst, is essentially how Skinner might sum up the realm of "history".Skinner certainly held very unorthodox views on virtually every aspect of life; however, for all his Utopian ideals, I doubt most of us would care to live in his version of "Skinner's Box". The frightening part (and not widely known) is that our children are being subjected to experimentation based upon some of his wildest ideas: in the late 1950s/early 1960s, public schools across America embraced a new paradigm of education known as "Outcome-Based Education" (or "OBE"). The new "Common Core" is merely the most recent development in an on-going social and educational experiment.For all the comparisons with Orwell's "1984" and Huxley's "A Brave New World", Skinner's "Walden Two" is the more practical--and the most relevant--of the three dystopian classics. By accident or by design, Skinner's novel rests less upon artistic device and literary flair than it does upon the strength of the author's ideas. One might think that the book's relative obscurity would indicate that the ideas it espouses have been rejected; unfortunately, this is not the case. But one thing is for sure, for a control-freak, Skinner was certainly an "outside the box" thinker! (Forgive me, the opportunity for some Skinnerian humor doesn't appear very often. Good thing, probably...)
—Recynd
It's a classic, and I have a thing for utopia/dystopian novels. Skinner is a psychologist, not a writer, so read this one for its ideas not it's beautiful writing.___________“A world which has been made beautiful and exciting by artists, composers, writers, and performers is as important for survival as one which satisfies biological needs.”___________“The mob rushes in where individuals fear to tread, and Führers deceive themselves as to their support.” (37)___________A wealthy class to provide leisure for the artist is characteristic of a great age. Artists aren't lazy, but they must be reasonably free of the responsibility of earning a livelihood. Isn't that the very essence of art - that it taps the energies and talents which in a more demanding world go into earning a living? (80)___________You can't encourage art with money alone. What you need is a culture. You need a real opportunity for young artists. The career must be economically sound and socially acceptable, and prizes won't do that. And you need appreciation - there must be audiences, not to pay the bills, but to enjoy. (80)__________At this very moment enormous numbers of intelligent men and women of good will are trying to build a better world. But problems are born faster than they can be solved. Our civilization is running away like a frightened horse, her flanks flashing with sweat, her nostrils breathing a frothy mist; and as she runs, her speed and her panic increase together. As for your politicians, your professors, your writers - let them wave their arms and shout as wildly as they will. They can't bring the frantic beast under control. (81)___________Some of us learn control, more or less by accident. The rest of us go all our lives not even understanding how it is possible, and blaming our failure on being born the wrong way. (99)___________Triumph over nature and over yourself, yes. But over others, never. (103)___________No one asks how to motivate a baby. A baby naturally explores everything it can get at, unless restraining forces have already been at work. And this tendency doesn't die out, it's wiped out. (114)___________The world will never be wholly known, and man can't help trying to know more and more of it. (116)___________Chaos breeds geniuses. It offers a man something to be a genius about. (116)___________The philosopher in search of a rational basis for deciding what is good has always reminded me of the centipede trying to decide how to walk. Simply go ahead and walk! We all know what's good, until we stop to think about it. (147)___________... man changes. It's characteristic of him to discover and to control, and the world doesn't long remain the same once he sets to work. (195)___________The zealot always thinks he knows what's fair, and justifies his aggression accordingly. (216)______________________
—Iso Cambia
