Walden Two was a very intriguing piece to read, especially following the discussions of the pieces we read immediately before it. After accepting the fact that most of the utopias we were reading were impossible – mainly because of their ignorance to the shift in human nature and behavior – we’ve read one that attacks those concepts head-on and answers any question we may have against the society. Skinner’s theories of behavioral technology and cultural engineering are compelling and he puts a halt to any argument against their feasibility by using Castle and the narrator to be the voices of the reader.
I would come to accept every answer Frazier gave to a question both the reader and the characters brought against him. It wasn’t until we reached the near end of the story, in Chapter 28, when I questioned one of his answers, the one concerning history’s place in the Walden community. On page 224, Frazier states: “I submit that history never even comes close to repeating itself. Even if we had reliable information from the past, we couldn’t find a case similar enough to justify inferences about the present or immediate future. We can make no real use of history as a current guide. We make a false use of it – an emotive use of it – often enough.”
Frazier had convinced me that they could adjust inherent traits of human beings by the cultural engineering and raising the children consistently and similarly to one another, that they could turn people to work for one another because of the open opportunities and economic system of Walden Two, but I was unsettled by this statement. First of all, I have a hard time agreeing with a statement – especially one so pointedly made – that history does not repeat itself. That’s how our society has been built, how our human nature has been defined, because we’ve seen the patterns of our actions complementing those of times and figures before ourselves. Part of the reason we react the way we do to certain situations is because we’ve seen it done before and we find comfort in those patterns – they define our nature. Obviously, Walden’s inhabitants were raised to be different by nature, so the history books we value would not hold the same value for them. The “survival-of-the-fittest” mentality of our figures and times would not make sense to their ideals of living and working for everyone in a moderate society. However, a huge part of what our history books and studies have done for us is given us a union as parts of a complete world, a constancy and an ideal to which we adapt ourselves. History is important for more than simply being “cultured,” as Castle would say. Communities are united by history because we all share in its progression.
In order for the Walden communities to progress and perhaps eventually make up a large sum of the country – something of a new nation – I feel that they need a similar linking factor between them. Obviously, Frazier and the community don’t value leaders or heroes, but I think the progression requires history books of the beginning of Walden Two and its makings. Just as our country is united by the history of our country’s founding and our fight for independence, the utopian world would be satisfied and replenished by a history of its origins in Walden Two. The techniques in engineering and culture would be benefited by the studies, because like our history does for us, their history would give them an understanding of human behavior that was constant and accepted as a part of their nature. History indirectly teaches us how to react, how we’re supposed to react. It has an unspoken power in that way. We also see how segregated the Walden community is from the United States at that current point because they are starting a different world and they reject the same history books or the same political systems. But if the Waldens of the future didn’t have that constant factor, that history, how separate from one another might they be? When Frazier responds at the end of the chapter, “That’s another story” – there seemed to be an understanding that it would be necessary. And we discovered in the end that it was, despite his comments previously. The history of Walden Two was as important as the behavioral engineering techniques – even Skinner, a behaviorist, understood its power.
Megan Waldron
