Mindless by Robert Skidelsky

Author:Robert Skidelsky [Skidelsky, Robert]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Other Press
Published: 2024-10-08T00:00:00+00:00

The Savage goes back to “being savage” in a deserted lighthouse, with primitive tools, growing his own food, hunting rabbits, flagellating himself, praying to God. He is secretly filmed. The film is a sensation. Sightseers gather round the lighthouse for entertainment, wanting to see the Savage whipping himself. The Savage commits suicide.

It is possible, with a different set of priorities and values, to treat a Huxley-type dystopia as a utopia, and this is exactly what B. F. Skinner does in Walden Two – the title an echo of Thoreau – dating from 1948. There is a big difference, though, in location and scale between the two stories: Huxley’s Brave New World is set in the future and is literally the whole world; Skinner’s is a small utopian community set in contemporary Ohio. The principles of both are the same: behavioral engineering is used to keep humans happy. “That’s the point,” the community’s benign dictator Frazier explains to a visitor:

Society already possesses the psychological techniques needed to obtain universal observation of a code – a code which would guarantee the success of a community or state. The difficulty is that these techniques are in the hands of the wrong people – or, rather, there aren’t any right people. Our government won’t accept the responsibility of building the sort of behavior needed for a happy state.

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