I’ve reached a point with this blog where I’ve laid out a lot of the things that concern me –and I’ll recap some of that– and for the time being I need to ‘go deep’ and get familiar with the guiding authorities that are shaping this New World into which we’re being delivered. People who generally are not concerned with controlling others have a tendency in common –they don’t explore the mechanisms of control or the literature that supports it, at least not until it becomes a problem. I have this tendency.
I’m in the process now of rereading a book that was initially loathsome, B.F. Skinner’s “Beyond Freedom and Dignity” –I highly recommend it. Skinner worked for Army Intel and trained a generation of Harvard behaviorists to create a science of social control. It’s been exceptionally thought-provoking to give Skinner’s book another go ’round and carry his ideas, published in 1971, forward to the state-of-the-art contributions in control made by science and technology. Behaviorism was Skinner’s technology.
I’ll give you a taste:[page 42]
“Man’s struggle for freedom is not due to a will to be free, but to certain behavioral processes characteristic of the human organism, the chief effect of which is the avoidance of or escape from so-called “aversive” features of the environment. Physical and biological technologies have been mainly concerned with natural aversive stimuli; the struggle for freedom is concerned with stimuli arranged by other people. The literature of freedom has identified the other people and has proposed ways of escaping from them or weakening or destroying their power. It has been successful in reducing the aversive stimuli used in intentional control, but it has made the mistake of defining freedom in terms of states of mind or feelings, and it has therefore not been able to deal effectively with techniques of control which do not breed escape or revolt but nevertheless have aversive consequences. It has been forced to brand all control as wrong and to misrepresent many of the advantages to be gained from a social environment. It is unprepared for the next step, which is not to free men from control but to analyze and change the kinds of control to which they are exposed.”
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I’m nearly bubbling-over to use Skinner’s book as a touchstone and apply what I’ve learned about the ‘state’ we’re in to his exposition of behavior. That will take some time, but doing so can only be helpful to know where to look and how to strengthen and extend the concepts of the “literature of freedom and dignity” to cover the areas implied by Skinner but not addressed; namely tools of control such as biological/pharmaceutical and electronic means which have slipped into “legal” development –like the article just below endeavors to point out. Freedom and dignity are concepts that Skinner believed to be artifacts from an earlier time when humans “aggrandized the individual” –they could be fatal, he believed, for a culture wishing to preserve itself. What culture, exactly, does Skinner hope to preserve? He answers only ‘our’ culture. His allegiance is to the controller-designers who esteemed him to develop a methodology; and so man is not the autonomous being of his thought and spirit. He is an automaton in motion, subject to the contingencies of the environment and the ‘reinforcers’ that condition him. That’s all.
If governments can manipulate our DNA, and program entirely novel organisms into existence (they can and they do!), nothing prevents them from using it to solve the “Human Question” once and for all. In fact, every aspect of this scientific pursuit has been accelerated. It’s not a moral question in behaviorism, but a contigency.
Hi Jen,
I never read Skinner during his “hey days” in the 70′s. From what I had heard, his ideas seemed ridiculous to me. The fact that the government found his ideas of interest seems unsurprising to me now.
In the human context, control implies violence or the threat of violence i.e. the use of force. Absolute control means absolute violence or force. Absolute force does not really exist. Absolute control is a pipe dream of those with a certain mental pathology.
To be free means to not be coerced by violence. Detachment to outcome and real knowledge seem to be the only tools to dull violence.
All attempts to control the environment or, more correctly, some part of the environment have been a failure. Nature is far bigger – meaning complex – than man and so cannot be controlled. The causal circles created by man are quite obvious if one chooses to examine the issues carefully. The fact that “experts” continue to propagate circular thinking in many issues simply speaks volumes about the the level of corruption – largely unconscious – and indoctrination. I find myself questioning, “Who is being served?”.
Government and quasi-government institutions only exist because of the exercise of violence and control. The fact that they should want to exercise even more violence and control in various ways should not be a surprise. ~ John
Comment by John Cowan — December 10, 2009 @ 8:50 pm |
Hi John –Skinner thought the control-designers should just keep trying, keep experimenting, keep manipulating, hence the insane escalation, and as we know, nature is vulnerable and compliant taking chemtrails and HAARP as examples. I think the man was a victim of his own grandiosity and obviously not original –think how advertizing has used behaviorism. He was useful in legitimizing the view that conditioning was effective and desirable, even though in his own life he could not live that way. I have a new appreciation for a technique (long time) being used of causing ‘profound agnosticism’ in people. Skinner did this to himself as well as teach it. The bottom line is to confuse and erase the ‘comfortable’ knowledge that we discern reality with and replace it with competing views until we are unable to hold any coherent beliefs about reality. The masque of Science does this masterfully.
Governments have reinvented themselves, as they must, to generate ‘environments’ and it was Skinner’s objective to help. He intended to service the agenda of control in benevolent ways, seeking ‘inconspicuous’ means, so as long we have our margin of freedom, the controllers seem benevolent. But he really intended for people to police each other with ‘approval’ and ‘disapproval’ and this is also benevolent.
The other side, the supporters of ‘freedom and dignity’ who get print and attention, need serious scrutiny for being on the same team and gatekeeping –how is it that there is inadequate definition in the opinion forums to draw a solid morality from? How did it get to the point where ‘ethics’ can permit the reconfiguring of DNA without a ‘moral’ violation and get away with it!?
I ‘see’ Skinner in all these biological and chemical control scenarios. Perhaps violence is arranged to condition us for that? In a country not experiencing open war but plagued by violence (and who initiates it?) are we being pushed to accept, prepare for, and cry out for the ‘benevolent’ government? Skinner gave me insights on punishment (versus violence) and I’ll add that as I write more about him. He was tailor-made for the means of deceptive ‘absolute’ control. thanks, John
Comment by jenniferlake — December 11, 2009 @ 12:11 am |