Walden Two
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The most popular introduction to the operant conditioning principles of Burris Fredrich Skinner is found in his novel, Walden Two. The novel is titled after Thoreau’s Walden, a depiction of living the simple life to find out the real meaning of man’s existence. Walden Two is a utopian novel wherein the society depicted, human problems and social ills are solved by scientific technology applied to human conduct, i.e., social behavioral engineering. The concepts in Walden Two are not directed at the psychologist or philosopher, but rather at the layman. Skinner uses a technique that is common among writers to propose his propaganda. He shows us the society and ideology of Walden Two through the eyes of outsiders who show varying degrees of skepticism or enthusiasm for the behaviorally engineered society, much like Swift has Gulliver experience the utopian society of the Houyhnhnms in Gulliver’s Travels. Frazier is the voice of Skinner in Walden Two, and he is the single-name originator of the community of Walden Two, a society he starts with a population of 1,000. Frazier, like Skinner, is provocative in his claims, “What would you do if you found yourself in possession of an effective science of behavior? Suppose you suddenly found it possible to control the behavior of men as you wished?” (Skinner, 1962, p. 255).Castle is a philosophy professor (obviously a profession held in disdain by Frazier/Skinner) who offers resistance to
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e answers or at least pretend to know them. Today the Russians contend that an optimal cultural pattern has been achieved, if not fully implemented. They dare not admit to any serious need for improvement” (Skinner, 1962, p. 275). Thus, regardless of the conditioning of human behavior, individuals must still use their intelligence to continually evolve the best responses to social problems.
SKINNER’S IMPACT ON SOCIETY
The publication of Walden Two outraged many, especially religious leaders who misperceived it as robbing man of his free will and making human beings mechanical creatures. There were also many Americans of all social strata who took exception to Skinner’s novel, mainly because its utopia presented is a countermeasure to the social system Skinner finds inherently flawed, democracy. In Walden Two there are no political systems, parties or even a voting system. Behavioral engineers control society, but, since the goal of the society is the happiness of the greatest numbers a kind of democracy exists. In 1948, when the novel was first published, it was no small offense to American society to write a novel describing a utopian society in comparison to democracy, one which was based on a Bolshevik democratic centr
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Approximate Word count = 2507
Approximate Pages = 10 (250 words per page)
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