Walden Two Reading Group (meeting at Cafe Abir @ 5pm Sunday)

About

On Sundays at 5pm at Cafe Abir:


Come read and contemplate B.F.Skinner's 1948 utopia about a future in which anger, jealousy, competition, frustration and personal domination are unknown. In it Skinner suggested a technology of self-control based on his then science-fiction "science of human behavior" would be able to let everyone live a life of relative leisure (a 4 hour work day), exploring the arts - music, literature, plays, sculpture, painting, games - while building a Golden Age of Culture. 





Skinner's then science-fiction "science of human behavior" has come to be realized in the Experimental Analysis of Behavior (EAB) and Applied Behavior Analysis (ABA). Decades of research has been done on self-control and other areas. Dozens of attempts have been made to create a Walden Two although most have deviated far from the novel or given up the novel as a model (e.g. Twin Oaks, East Wind, Los Horcones and others). 






Discuss the implications of the possible non-existence of freewill (Skinner's Radical Behaviorism says we have no free will) and the possibly anti-science role of the "literature of Freedom and Dignity" which Skinner says is impeding the science we need for survival.