http://jenniferlake.wordpress.com/2009/12/10/beyond-freedom-and-dignity-part-i/
http://jenniferlake.wordpress.com/2009/12/17/beyond-freedom-and-dignity-part-ii/
http://jenniferlake.wordpress.com/2009/12/19/beyond-freedom-and-dignity-part-iii/
The links above contain extensive excerpts of B.F. Skinner’s 1971 book, Beyond Freedom and Dignity, which along with Walden Two are considered his most famous works. They’re the only books of Skinner that I’ve read. I see in him the operation of the “Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion” –he provided ‘scientific’ techniques through animal experiments to define patterns of behavior that became powerful tools for social control, and like all powerful tools, applicable to both ‘creation’ and ‘destruction’.
It makes no difference whether Skinner’s critics relegated him to the bin of ‘pseudoscience’. Institutional practice like Virology is also a pseudoscience and is taking us to new levels of human suffering and ‘management’. Skinner’s technology is useful for designing problems into the system and it seems important to recognize on who’s behalf he worked. For the ‘noncontrollers’, the experience of a modern technological lifestyle is the infliction of pseudoscience made legitimate by its application. Behaviorism works! We can easily discard Skinner’s daydream of utopia but not the powerful implementation of his ideas.
…I’ll have more to add here shortly, and some comparisons to the Protocols and real-life events.
