[Published in the Emory Wheel, Tuesday, March 6, 1973, page 8, cont. page 12 (Vol 54 Num 17); typos and typographical mistakes corrected to match what I submitted. This was a follow-up satirical piece to The Idiocy of Emotion published a month earlier.]
by D. J. Swift
Recently I have read and heard of complaints against the so-called “inhuman” library we have here at Emory. A few totally unscientific students decry science, and would like to see Emory torn down and converted into a jungle. Fortunately, most Emory students are not anti-progress; fortunately, most would not destroy all that scientific man has created.
Indeed, scientific reasoning shows that nature is not our natural environment. It never has been. People had to be conditioned to live in open spaces and freedom. Take a baby just born: it has spent its entire life up to its birth enclosed and without freedom. Being outside is not natural for it. The baby wants to be enclosed. It is obvious from this that people were meant by God (please excuse that totally unscientific term; I use it only for emphasis) to live in buildings and libraries and classrooms. Evidence: the desire of primitive man to live in caves.)
So to hear such anti-building talk at an institution of higher learning like Emory is highly disconcerting. Even worse,, it represents a much more radical and unacceptable attitude—an anti-progress, even an anti-Behaviorist, attitude! Such potentially damaging dissent must be stifled—the dissenters must be re-conditioned.
Behaviorists, being the most logical and scientific of all, will readily see what I mean and just as readily agree. What I write now is for those who have not as yet been so enlightened.
B. F. Skinner (sort of the Behaviorists’ God right now) has scientifically proven the correctness of Behaviorism. To understand it, imagine that people are like player pianos. They play the music that is programmed into them. They have no choice in what they play. In other words, all this nonsense you’ve heard about ‘“free will” is just that: nonsense. Freedom doesn’t exist. If you want proof of this, read B. F. Skinner’s Beyond Freedom and Dignity, a very clear, concise, easy to read (yet totally scientific) book.
Skinner explains that it is up to science to make player pianos (people) play the most beneficial and scientific tune—whatever is best for society’s future. Imagine: a brave new world dependent entirely upon the use of scientific conditioning to control the behavior of people for society’s needs; the use of large-scale behavior-shaping mechanisms to condition individuals to fit into society’s grooves; the deliberate control—yes, control—of human behavior and thought.
As Skinner says, “Nothing is to be gained by using a softer word (than ‘control’). If we are content merely to ‘influence’ people, we shall not get far.” This is not fascism and it is not a “blueprint for hell” (as some have said); it’s a chance for science to create a Brave New World. When power is used scientifically, it is good government! The problem with fascist governments is they do not put their power to good scientific uses. (For example, Hitler exterminated the Jews; he should have re-conditioned them instead—or at least kept those with the higher IQ scores. He was definitely not scientific.)
In the Behaviorist society, things would be different, you can be sure. All taboo actions would be eliminated through conditioning (and re-conditioning where necessary), so there would be no crime, no corruption, no alcoholism, no smoking, no tardiness, no jay-walking, no chewing gum in class, and definitely no being anything other than standard and normal. In short, it would be a perfect society. Utopia! Eureka!
More immediately, as students of Emory, as supporters of scientific progress, as intellectuals, we must fight to repress all counter-conditioning. All anti-building talk. Whatever is against Behaviorism is against science. Whatever is against science is against man.
Indeed, in case you’ve wondered why I have chosen to send my articles to the Wheel, it is exactly because such counter-conditioning has found support in the Wheel. The Wheel is ”liberal” and “free”; and I’m trying to counter that with my enlightened and scientific knowledge. So long as we trust science, there is hope for mankind.