|
Walden Two | 
 enlarge | Author: B. F. Skinner
Publisher: Hackett Pub Co Inc
Category: Book
List Price: $9.95
Buy New: $7.05
You Save: $2.90 (29%)
New (30) Used (37) Collectible (1) from $5.95
Rating:  42 reviews
Sales Rank: 12972
Media: Paperback
Pages: 301
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.2
Dimensions (in): 8.4 x 5.5 x 0.7
ISBN: 0872207781
Dewey Decimal Number: 813
EAN: 9780872207783
ASIN: 0872207781
Publication Date: July 31, 2005
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
| |
| Also Available In:
|
| Similar Items:
|
| Editorial Reviews:
Product Description
A reprint of the 1976 Macmillan edition. This fictional outline of a modern Utopia has been a centre of controversy ever since its publication in 1948. Set in the United States, it pictures a society in which human problems are solved by a scientific technology of human conduct. FROM THE PREFACE: It is now widely recognised that great changes must be made in the American way of life. Not only can we not face the rest of the world while consuming and polluting as we do, we cannot for long face ourselves while acknowledging the violence and chaos in which we live. The choice is clear: either we do nothing and allow a miserable and probably catastrophic future to overtake us, or we use our knowledge about human behaviour to create a social environment in which we shall live productive and creative lives and do so without jeopardising the chances that those who follow us will be able to do the same. Something like a Walden Two would not be a bad start.
|
| Customer Reviews: Read 37 more reviews...
 Alternately brilliant, boring, and terrifying January 6, 2009
Mike (NYC)
First off, I'm not a Skinner basher. I work with an intellectually disabled population and I will be the first person to tell you that his methods work - extremely well for some folks and I use them. That said, I was incredibly disappointed by this book, even though it had some extremely interesting flashes of insight.
Walden Two just isn't Skinner's best stuff. Skinner is a behavoral analyst, and a brilliant one, at that. He should have stuck with that. He's not very good at writing a novel - or reshaping society to his whims. The whole book comes across as a very forced attempt to shove an ideology into a novel, almost like Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged. Characters are wooden and only serve to ask questions that leads to the commune leader to describe how much better Walden 2 is than the rest of the world. The only character of any distinction is the commune leader, and he comes across as having a god complex, which I doubt was intended.
Skinner does have some really interesting philosophical points regarding the way we teach ethics to children (which is really fairly brilliant), social engineering, scheduling to maximize spatial resources, and spook notions, but I honestly would've preferred a different treatment. This thing is painful to read. Technically, the writing itself is fine, but Skinner just should never have written in the genre of the novel, he doesn't understand how to create conflict and action. As a novel, it's just atrocious.
Regarding the work's philosophy, this book is basically an apologia for determinism (which makes an interesting companion piece to Sartre if you use excerpts), bashing Freudian Psychology (e.g. an incubated nursery apart from mothers for no practical socioeconomic reasons), and trying to change the world one token at a time.
The economic system is insane, and is basically Fourier socialism, but with a managerial component. As previously mentioned, the concept of cultural engineering is extremely interesting (especially the dinner trays), but you have to wade through large portions of ridiculousness fairly typical of the utopian novel to get to it. Skinner wildly overextends himself.
Part and parcel of Skinner's Utopia is the usual desire to eliminate conflict (which as readers of the book will note leads to boredeom) and all the standard utopic nonsense, which invades every one of these books since Moore's Utopia. To that, Skinner adds contempt for crowds (which he treats the same as individuals on p.35) something that seems kind of silly in a commune and goes against recent work in emergentism, existent work like LeBon and plain old common sense - people act differently in groups. To eliminate conflict and jealousy and ego is to eliminate human striving itself. It's horrifying. Skinner starts to come off like a mad scientist from a comic book.
If you're interested in determinism or radical behaviorism applied broadly to society and have an open mind (and are able to stomach boredom) it's a fairly intriguing read to skim through with some truly awesome (and frightening) ideas, but I'd read something else by Skinner first.
This book may also be useful for research in terms of social philosophy (vs. existentialists) and utopic fiction (taken with Moore, Neville, Bacon) but it's less useful as Psychology.
If you're interested in using Radical Behaviorism in your classroom or residence setting, "Technology of Teaching" is, in my opinion, probably the greatest book ever written regarding managing a classroom and one of the all time greatest books in the history of Psychology. If you want to use Skinner's stuff in a classroom or a setting where you want to minimize negative behaviors, buy that. It's very practical. It's a much easier read than Walden Two, even though it's more technical because Skinner writes nonfiction well.
Fascinating, only with some oppositions January 2, 2009
L. HEE
Walden Two has given me a significant hope that this world can actually be bettered in every way.
First, we'd work MUCH LESS. So many of us today don't work efficiently at all. Even for some of those that do, they might be working for nothing. For example, while brokers and technicians in Wall Street work their butt off almost every day, simply a sound monetary system, that restricts such fraudulent groups like Wall Street investment firms, can set millions of people free from wasting so much unnecessary energy.
A right money system under right people would disable wastful sectors and enable only the practical ones, that truely HELP people, instead of rubbing from them.
With more free time off from work, we could ENJOY our lives more. What's your favorite thing to do? We'll have more time to do it. And what's even more exciting is that we'll be BETTER at doing them, because the education system allows us to seek and focus on our own interests.
When I was 14, I desperately wanted to learn to play drums. But unfortunately my parents had prejudice against joining a band, assuming it would ruin my youth. Thinking back, not learning rather seems to have wasted my passionate youth. A sound educational system, that prevents prejudiced thinking and encourages listening to liberal ideas, would make so many of our lives affluent, affluent with expertise in personal interests, satisfaction, and joy.
Under this educational system, my parents wouldn't have had such bias against learning drums, and I would have been a fine drummer.. or maybe even a fine musician.
Alike, a right system under the right people will defeat the wrongs and frauds, and breed opportunities and fruits.
However, there's ONE thing that I disagree with Mr Skinner. I do not believe that a true utopia has a monetary system, since advanced technology would require no moeny or more than available resources to produce whatever that the whole mankind desires. So much inhumane issues like starvation, curable diseases, homelessness would no longer exist but only in history. No one will be left out, ignored off, from the society. And the society should be us, the whole hamanity, not just a group of people fenced in a castle.
And that is the true Utopia I believe in.
Despite so, Skinner gave me the inspiration, and it is fantastic.
Highly recommend for everyone.
Fascinating on several levels November 8, 2008
Warren Eckels
"Walden Two" serves, on its surface, as a work of escapist fiction. A party of B.F. Skinner's academic colleagues and their friends journey to a utopian community outside Canton, Ohio whose residents only work four hours per day and live in a resort community. Today's SF fans would quickly recognize the setting as a perpetual SF convention. They meet Skinner the Behaviorist, cleverly disguised as Frazier, and tour the community from tea service to Frazier's "throne". A Code created by experiment and the ministrations of psychologists from birth forward keep everybody happy and productive. For good measure, Skinner treats us to a superficial discussion of true liberty and freedom, which no work of speculative fiction aspiring above the pulps lacks.
The novel also serves as a view of the anxieties of America as it demobilized from WWII. Would swinging from wartime Keynesian spending to paying off the debts incurred defending the nation cripple the economy just as millions of young men demobilized? Three variations of fascism lay defeated by Communism and liberal democracy: which of the two systems left standing was best? It was too early to know that a combination of government policy, piles of war bonds in every patriotic American's mattress and a near-monopoly of industry would raise most Americans to heights of prosperity they could not imagine in 1946. It was certainly too early to get a complete picture of Soviet oppression and Mao Zedong was still fighting in the countryside.
Skinner ends with a surprise: his characters' trajectories are exactly what a model assuming pure materialism would predict. Steve and Mary, representatives of the prewar working class, choose life at Walden Two, which is arguably better in every material respect than what they expected given their lives before the war. Rodge and Barbara choose the upper middle-class life of a new lawyer. Rodge chooses the outside more relucantly than Barbara to be sure, but the end of the book does not find him in Walden Two looking for a new fiancee. Castle and Burris live in the Faculty Club, which means the decent bachelor housing of the era: one or two comfortable rooms, with all of the necessities and some of the luxuries met. Universities offer cultural amenities comparable to Walden Two as well. So, in material and cultural terms, Walden Two is equivalent to the Faculty Club, which lets each professor's disposition choose his destiny.
As a fanfic, I've wanted to offer yearly installments of Steve, Mary and Burris' life in Walden Two. Would Walden Two's studio apartments pale next to a Levittown's luxurious 700 square-foot houses, or would it take the split-level ranch that a factory worker of the 1960s could afford? Would the advent of television kill the community's endless round of live performances and barn dances? Would the cultural contributions of Steve Jamnik's Eastern European heritage be encouraged or discouraged, and would his (likely) Catholic faith survive? How would the first black couple entering Walden Two experience it, and some of their fellow communards emigrating from a fundamentally racist society? America's thermidor of the early 1950s awaited; would Walden Two survive Joe McCarthy?
Picture gives misconception July 22, 2008
Jennifer Huynh (Texas)
The product was not what I expected, the cover wasn't even the cover that was shown in the picture. The book is in perfect condition but it wasn't the cover that I wanted.
weird... December 23, 2007
Danielle Smith (Pa)
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
This book was assigned for my intro psych class. Well written, but it definitely turned me away from the idea of a utopian community.
|
|
|
SEO and Marketing TipsBETA RELEASE | |
