B.F. Skinner, in his book Beyond Freedom and Dign

What we need is a technology of behavior. . . . A behavioral technology comparable in power and precision to physical and biological technology is lacking, and those who do not find the very possibility ridiculous are more likely to be frightened by it than reassured. That is how far from "understanding human issues" in the sense in which physics and biology understand their fields, and how far we are from preventing the catastrophe toward which the world seems to be inexorably moving (5)

In other words, Skinner has a plan which could save the world, a plan which will be based on his theory of behaviorism, and yet the world is simply too stupid to realize that he has come to save us from ourselves. His experiments with pigeons and other lowly animals have led him to believe that human beings can be shaped behaviorally through conditioning and that once that is accomplished, under his brilliant auspices, the world will be transformed into a paradise and the human race will become one happy family.

I cannot help but think of the movie "Stepford Wives," in which the wonders of techn

. . .
ual human being, the more Skinner's pigeon-based theory crumbles into dust. How can one reduce a painting by Van Gogh to the level of a pigeon pecking at a food bar? How can one reduce a musical masterpiece by Bach, and the response it elicits in a listener, to the scratchings of a rat in a maze? In my view, Skinner is a very simple, dull man with no imagination who considers himself superior to other beings, when in fact he is inferior because he has either suppressed his more complex and creative side, or he was deprived of the opportunity to develop that side by others in his childhood and education. Skinner writes; This escape route [that is, the Freudian notion that the individual is "free to choose among different courses of action"] is slowly closed as new evidence The book is sparsely footnoted for a work which purports to defy the notion that human beings are free and offers instead the revolutionary conceit that human beings are simply big pigeons with illusions about freedom. However, what sort of footnotes could support the claim that human beings have no freedom when the study which those footnotes would support sees freedom as an illusion? In other words, Skinner has set himself the task of arguing that free
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Approximate Word count = 1600
Approximate Pages = 6 (250 words per page)