University of Virginia Library

BOOKS

Reorganizing The Whole World

Beyond Freedom and Dignity

By B.F. Skinner
225pp. $6.95

By HOLLY SMITH

You remember B.F. of Skinner
box, Walden Two fame. Well, he's
back again, this time with a work
which sets forth no less a proposal
than how to reorganize the entire
world.

No one can deny the
tremendous influence Skinner has
had on the science of psychology.
His theories on behaviorism have
revolutionized many facets of
education, the treatment of
mentally handicapped patients, and
the rehabilitation of criminals.

But when reading Beyond
Freedom and Dignity the word
"overachiever" consistently comes
to mind. Yes B.F., you have
brilliantly worked out the major
concepts of behavioral science, but
B F D when it comes to revamping
all mankind.

Naivete

His lack of insight into human
nature is nothing less than
appalling. The theory he sets forth
shows that his amazing idealism is
surpassed only by his naivete.
Briefly, he contends that there is no
such thing as autonomous man,
that he is nothing more than the
product of his genetic make-up and
the environment that shapes him.
"Autonomous man serves to
explain only the things we are not
yet able to explain in other ways.
His existence depends upon our
ignorance..."

Therefore, Skinner reasons,
since there is no such thing as free
will, and nothing exists in man that
cannot be analyzed and controlled,
he should be controlled in a way
that will build a better society; a
society in which man will not fight
wars, pollute the environment, or
overpopulate the earth. The magic
method for exerting this control
is-you guessed it-behaviorism.

The idea is not even new;
determinists have been spouting it
for two centuries now. In 1860 the
Russian philosopher Nicholas
Chernyshevsky outlined the same
ideas in his essay "The
Anthropological Principle in
Philosophy" with only the word
"behaviorism" missing from his
argument. He writes "...and how
circumstances and attitudes must
be changed in order that the state
of the economy may be
improved-these are again new
problems, the theoretical solution
of which is very easy; and again, the
practical application of the
scientific solutions depends upon
man becoming imbued with certain
impressions."

Skinner has discovered exactly
how to cause man to become
"imbued with certain impressions,"
and he wants his techniques to be
used on all mankind, not just
psychotics and criminals. He feels
that once men abandon such
obsolete abstractions as freedom,
dignity, and the sanctity of the
individual, they will be on the way
to creating a lasting society
unthreatened by premature doom.

Crucial Element

For Skinner believes that
viability, not quality, is the crucial
element in assessing the worth of a
society. "Survival is the only value
according to which a culture is
eventually to be judged..." is one of
his more amazing statements, to
which one reviewer retorted:
"From which one must conclude
that if the Third Reich (an early
outpost of behavioral technology)
had survived its advertised thousand
years, one would have to call it a
good culture."

As for how his new society will
be organized, he gives no concrete
solutions for the problems of who
will control the population or
which ideologies will guide it. In his
chapter called "The Design of a
Culture" he talks all around the
problem, his only tangible offering
for the culture's proposed design
being the safeguard that the
controller(s) must live under the
rules they devise for the rest of the
society.

Prime Example

In another great chapter titled
"What is Man?" he concludes that
man is his environment. This is a
prime example of the way Skinner's
mind works. He knows how a man's
behavior can be shaped and
molded, he therefore feels justified
in assuming he has groped man,
inside and out. Two thousand years
of religious and philosophical
writings to the contrary don't stop
wonder boy.

Let us assume that Skinner is
right....that there is no such thing as
autonomous man, that he is
nothing more than the sum of his
genes and his surroundings. Still the
illusion that he is free might be an
integral part of man's will to live.
To take away all conflict and give
man a perfect culture to live in will
not guarantee his happiness, as
Skinner's own life demonstrates. If
Skinner really believed in what he
writes he would be sending his
BFD's from the Walden Two-based
community of Twin Oaks outside
of Charlottesville instead of his
Harvard Post in Cambridge. Yet
Skinner has stayed in today's
society to rage against it.

If you must read the book dig
up the condensed version of
"Psychology Today." Skinner
writes like a plumber and
considering the complexity of what
he has to say, 225 pages is about
200 pages too many.