Walden Two: it’s supposed to be a utopia…
Behavioural pyschologist B. F. Skinner’s novel describes a utopian community where everyone lives in harmony thanks to the perfect application of behavioural science. All members of the community are happy with their lot and get on with each other really well, courtesy of the conditioning they receive from an early age.
Published in 1948, the same year as Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four, Walden Two is very different in tone. It was mainly popular in the ’60s, hence the psychedic cover art I suppose (see above).
Inhabitants of Walden Two feel like they are acting accordingly to their own free will, but really they are operating within parameters established through their psychological conditioning. Some might call that brainwashing, of course. Walden Two is either a revelation in how behavioural science is the key to society functioning at its absolute best (this is presumably what Skinner is trying to advocate). Or, it’s creepy AF.
Jenny Odell singles it out for criticism in last month’s book of the month, How to Do Nothing. She likens it to a ‘technocratic dictatorship’. What it boils down to, according to Odell, is one bloke in charge of everything. Including what people think and feel. Furthermore, no-one’s allowed to access ‘the Code’ on which their conditioning is based.
Time to revisit it, then. If you’re in Bristol, UK and would like to join an in person discussion of the book, come along to the next Bristol Utopian Book Collective meeting on 6 March 2023.
[…] This is an examination of the nature of work in the utopian tradition of William Morris. Morris differentiated between ‘useful work’ and ‘useless toil’, and in his utopia News from Nowhere there was none of the latter. It has been a theme with our other recent book choices too: How to Do Nothing by Jenny Odell and Walden Two by B.F. Skinner. […]