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Title: Walden Two (Trade Book) by B. F. Skinner ISBN: 0-02-411510-X Publisher: Prentice Hall Pub. Date: 01 March, 1976 Format: Mass Market Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $9.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 3.7 (30 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: Wonderful book for the mind
Comment: Walden Two is an excellent portrayal of a working utopian society contrasted with the relatively gloomy style of life as we know it. A Brave New World and 1984 portray attempted utopian societies which fail or appear to be failing, but Walden Two works, according to its author. All throughout this novel, readers wonder if they would really like to live in a society like this by weighing the costs and benefits. Written in more of a philosophical type of dialogue between the protaganists and the antagonists, the novel at first presents to be dull, but persistence proves to be worthwhile. This is a must read for any student or professor, as it is for anyone interested in the psychology or philosophy of the book. Try to make your decision to live in the society before the last few chapters and debate it with your friends! Good luck!
Rating: 2
Summary: An Insult!
Comment: The title of this novel is an insult to the original "Walden", turning Thoreau's great work on it's head. Thoreau wrote about individualism and self reliance in "Walden" (which I recently reviewed). "Walden Two" is a novel about a socially engineered utopia, far from anything Thoreau would have ever advocated. I read both Walden Two and the now out of print "Beyond Freedom and Dignity" many years ago after Skinner spoke at the college I attended. I found "Walden Two" captivating (I wasn't bored as were some reviewers) but I was captivated by what, quite frankly, is nonsense. Such a Utopian community would curb ambition; after all, who would aspire to break from the pack and achieve great things such as advances in medical research, if we were made contented in such a "utopian" society? Skinner could induce certain behavior by behaviorist techniques. If you were talking to him, for example, and you were scratching your head from time to time, he could get you to scratch your head more by giving you verbal positive feedback every time you did it. Sort of like Pavlov's dog. However, just because behaviorists can successfully control behavior does not mean they should. After all, who is to decide the behavior society wants that behaviorists should then induce? I'm sorry, we cannot go beyond freedom and dignity because these are ever enduring values, not the values that a controlled society may decide is best for us.
Rating: 1
Summary: Skinner makes his point in entirely the wrong way
Comment: Rarely has a book evoked such rage in me as this one did. It's not that I completely disagreed with everything that Skinner said about a Utopian society. While there are a lot of things--mainly to do with raising children and marriage--that I don't agree with, some of it could probably be beneficial. But the way that Skinner set up the book was not the best way to prove his point.
While Skinner is a notable psychologist, I can't say much about him as a writer. The characters were all annoying (the only one I didn't loathe was Castle, who was incredibly anti-Walden Two). Frazier, the founder of the community, seemed so manipulative and power-hungry that I was put off to the idea of anyone living there. I couldn't help but feel that if the people in the community had known how much Frazier was manipulating them, they would've wanted to leave. The ending, where Frazier blatantly stated that he was like God and that his community was acutally better than what God had created just put the icing on the cake--I would not want to live in a community created by this man.
The book is poorly written and any statements that Skinner might have made about Utopian societies were eclipsed by my anger towards the characters and their offensive behavior.
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Title: Beyond Freedom & Dignity by B. F. Skinner ISBN: 0872206270 Publisher: Hackett Pub Co Pub. Date: March, 2002 List Price(USD): $7.95 |
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Title: About Behaviorism by B.F. Skinner ISBN: 0394716183 Publisher: Vintage Pub. Date: 12 February, 1976 List Price(USD): $12.00 |
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Title: Science And Human Behavior by B.F Skinner ISBN: 0029290406 Publisher: Free Press Pub. Date: 01 March, 1965 List Price(USD): $18.95 |
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Title: A Walden Two experiment;: The first five years of Twin Oaks Community by Kathleen Kinkade ISBN: 0688000207 Publisher: Morrow Pub. Date: 1973 |
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Title: Question of Lay Analysis by Sigmund Freud, James Strachey, Peter Gay ISBN: 0393005038 Publisher: W.W. Norton & Company Pub. Date: September, 1969 List Price(USD): $8.95 |
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