Think of the world in which you live. Consider the interactions of everyone you have ever seen. Imagine the government and the motivations which drive it to continue existing. Look at the American economy at how it thrives and fails. Think of how any given business flourishes. Now, consider the motivations that drive you, specifically, to do what you do. What is the common denominator in all of these circumstances? Simply answered, it is free will. Because they chose to do so, people interact with each other. Because they had great goals for themselves and America, people utilize their free choice to do what they did whether they had dinner with a friend, started a business, or ran as a presidential candidate. If free will is taken out of the equation, these seemingly easy-to-operate, social functions and interactions would cease to be what they are. B.F. Skinner believed that man could live in a society without free will. In fact, He believed that man would thrive, as he had never thrived before, in such a world. His basic idea was to eliminate free will and put, in it is place, conditioning. This conditioning would mold the actions of humans until they did what they needed to do and nothing else. As I said before, this world could never be. To take free will out of the equation was to take humanity and even the essence of life out of everything that is done in this world.
B.F. Skinner discovered a lot about the behaviors of living things. He used something he called conditioning to create a desired chain of behaviors or reactions from the animals he tested.
Now called operant conditioning, this method was tested on rats. Skinner created a “Skinner box” which contained a rat, a lever, and food. At one point in the experiment the rat accidently knocked the lever and food pored out a container into the animal’s tray. It didn’t take too long for the rat to become aware that if he pulled the lever, he would be rewarded with food.
This method of conditioning, unlike classical conditioning, required a behavior from the animal before any sort of worth-wild stimulus would appear. Once the behavior occurred—in this case the behavior was the rat hitting the lever—the stimulus would occur—in this case the stimulus was the food.
Skinner’s method of conditioning did not just include rats. Monkeys and many other different animals were conditioned to behave in different ways.
Not all of Skinner’s methods were as simple as a rat pulling a lever. The behaviors could be long and complex turning into a chain or series of actions which would finally lead to a desired stimulus.
After much research and experimenting, Skinner believed that it was possible to use this method of conditioning to make anyone behave desirably. He believed that the whole human race could be conditioned to become a utopian society. Humans would do the right things and then they would be rewarded with some sort of stimulus.
At first glance, maybe Skinner’s idea of conditioning to create a Utopia does not seem all that unrealistic. But, after much examination, the idea does become very absurd. His plan would eliminate free will, thinking, and even individual purpose to create a “supposedly” better world. In the end, however, he would only produce brain washed individuals who did things so that they could receive a desired stimulus such as food or money. Even if it was possible to control people’s behavior through this conditioning it would not make the world, the economy, the government, or individual lives any better. In fact, it would make all of those things worse if not completely useless.
Everything we do is out of a desire of the body and the mind. We all have preconceived ideas which make us act as we do. To try to reduce those ideas and thoughts into a series of controlled, manipulated actions would make our functioning world a non-functioning dictatorship. The economy would no longer be stimulated but, instead, would decline as people no longer purchased what they wanted. The government would no longer function on the ideals and values of free thinking individuals but on a standard that might not meet the needs of the people. Individual interaction would be reduced to nothing more than meaningless actions made to produce a desired stimulus. Humanity would cease to be humanity and all social institutions would cease to function.
Though conditioning would not be effective in creating a utopian society, conditioning could be used effectively in every day life. Imagine if one had a child that did not want to clean his room. If that person were to treat this situation as Skinner might, he would first imagine that cleaning the room was a behavior. In order to produce this behavior in his child he would either promise to reward that child for cleaning his room or promise to take away an undesirable stimulus for cleaning his room. In this way, through operant conditioning, the child would clean his room—this would be the desired behavior—and in return, the child’s parent would reward his child—this would be the desired stimulus. Anyone could do this in any facet of his life. This could make life easier and better whether a person did it to his child, the people under him at work, or even to himself.
So in conclusion, was Skinner’s idea of creating a utopia through conditioning plausible? Not really. His idea would eliminate everything great about our society. His idea would reduce thinking and ideals to mindless actions. His idea would destroy what government, economy, and society we possess sucking it of its life and making it a monotonous useless beast. The only way the world as we know it can truly survive is through the free-thinking human individuals. We should do what we do because of our values not because of a mindless desire for food or money. In the end, though conditioning cannot create a utopia, it can still be used in every day life to make life better whether it is used on children, those subordinate to a person, or even on oneself. Yes, conditioning is an interesting and affective tool, but it should never be used as anything more than that. To make it into a weapon that would mold the world into a utopia is not only absurd but useless.
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