Skinner's+Walden+Two

B.F. Skinner’s //Walden Two// supposedly plays off of the transcendentalist ideologies in Thoreau’s //Walden Pond//. T.E. Frazier returns from World War II and decides to found a new perfect community. A fellow comrade of Frazier, Augustine Castle, searches for Frazier after the war and locates him in his small community. This reunion initiates a dialogue between the two characters on how a perfect society should be established. Frazier believes that within his socialistic controlled regime he has created a perfect society through the government’s policies on employment, family affaires, and eugenics.

The “planners” who are in charge of the community establish an accounting “system-cum-currency” to distribute money to the citizens based on how much “labor credit” they have. The value of each man or woman’s work is not based on the skill level of the person, but rather how popular it is among the society. How can the government accurately measure how popular each line of work is? If the government took surveys, then the masses could manipulate the system to attain whatever goal they wanted to. On the other hand if the government controlled gauging how popular work is then it could disregard what the people think, ultimately making the decision itself rather on “popular opinion”. The second flaw in this system is that when the government declares one job “popular” and another job “unpopular”, then it creates incentives of certain jobs over other jobs, giving the government too much control.

The government of Walden II advocates marriage, but that the relationship between parent and child is weakened. In this community, parents not only have the authority over their biological child, but all the children in the community. The point of this is to lessen the load on parents and to strengthen the bond between the children and the community (aka government). Having a system such as this breeds conformity, and the government advocates this because it is easier to control. All parents would have to come to a common consensus about rules and regulations to punish the children by. This eliminates individuality and that is why it is so disturbing to me.

Furthermore, Frazier later takes the family situation to an extreme and advocates implementing a policy of eugenics. A policy of eugenics would tarnish marriages because the government would only allow men and women with “acceptable genes” to be married so that the offspring would be to the government’s liking. This radical view eradicates individuality, breeds conformity, and creates a robot community that abides to any governmental requests.

Any community which is manipulated by the government will absolutely always end in corruption. Radical views of employment, eugenics, and family affaires interfere with human rights: life, liberty, and happiness. Individual liberty is sacrificed in //Walden Two// to succumb to the biddings of the government.

-Big Brother