Walden Two

The book I chose to read for this review was the famous book by B.F.Skinner called Walden Two, which is based off of the Utopian societal ideals of a book by the philosopher Henry David Thoreau called "Walden". The dictionary definition of a Utopian society is literally any place that seems to be perfect in every way, a dream land. Walden Two, which has 306 pages, was published in 1948 by Collier Macmillan Limited. This book begins by introducing the main character and narrator, Professor Burris. Burris meets with his friends whom have returned from World War Two in search of a better life. Along with another professor named Augustine Castle, They all decide to take a trip to a Utopian society named "Walden Two", which they had all heard about from a student of Burris named T.E. Frazier, whom was the founder of this Utopian society. Upon their arrival they all are greeted by Frazier and showed how Walden Two functions. They all discover that the people living there, roughly a few thousand people, are all very highly organized with very little sense of organized leadership. All of the people have perfected and equal healthcare, self-sustained food cultivation and preparation, education and very little work by organizing every single member to work four hours a day in order to meet a number of hours by the end of a year. In order to create this society, Frazier made use of various psychological behavioral control techniques in order to change the way people felt about the world they live in. By raising children from birth with specific psychological guidlines, The children grew up with a natural sense of oneness with everyone around them. "Since our children remain happy, energetic, and curious, we dont need to teach 'subjects at all. We teach only the techniques of learning and thinking....Our children aren't neglected, but they're seldom, if ever, taught anything". This quote demonstrates one of the psychological techniques imposed on the children which made them actually want to learn, so they are not forced to learn things they do not want to in school, whereas they eventually learn all they need to know as they grow. Another point I enjoyed was that in this society, personal gratitude towards someone is highly discouraged, because it is believed that every single person in the society is important, and that one person should never be held higher than another person. The idea of saying "Thank You" to a person for doing something nice for them is a completely alien idea. It is expressed, " It's as if you had handed her a certain amount of money which belonged to the whole community". I found this to be a VERY powerful statement. In time, Frazier helped eliminated jealousy, aggression, contempt, greed and other negative, separating feelings in his society which in turn enabled all of the citizens to work together to understand their communal need for peace. Throughout the book, Castle is the most skeptical about the validity of this Utopian society because he had taught classes on Utopian societies so he had developed a firm, opposing opinion on them because of their underlying motives. Burris, the narrator, keeps a slight sense of skepticism up until the middle of the book, where eventually in the end of the book, he joins the society after running away from the city which he had returned to. I felt that this book gave a very in depth look into the way that a society can live, with very exact details as to how it would be planned out and organized over time, including plans for dealing with future problems and indoctrinating new citizens. Though there were a few spots towards the end of the book that bored me a bit, overall this book helped me to change some of the ways I view the means to attain happiness, and the ways I look at gratitude, flattery, heroism, and ingratiation and the ways that it affects the individual negatively. Though this book had some EXTREMELY important lessons to learn from, it was SUPER heavily wieghed with philosophical and psychological talk, which could get quite boring for someone that is looking for a leisurely read with lots of "grabbing" scenes such as fight scenes, drama, suspense, or any kind of action. If you are willing to devote the time to learning some very important philosophical and psychological lessons about life (some of which completely enveloped me with pure amazement and beauty), then this is would be a very beneficial book to read. In my honest opinion, I would give this book a thumb up and three quarters of another thumb! The slight boredom bits chops off a quarter of the other thumb...

Your Brain on Fiction EC

This article opened my eyes to the possibilities of reading that I had not yet considered. When we are reading a novel that is dealing with multiple sensory details, our brains are percieving those interactions in the book as if they were actually happening in real life. Our brains are referring to the last time we had experienced whatever is being explained, and trys to replicate that by stimulating our brains. Reading novels allows us to be more successful in interacting with others because reading novels is actually putting our minds into a sort of virtual reality! This improvement in social interaction in turn leads us to being more academically successful by interacting more positively with our teachers, class mates, employees and employers.

PBS Culture SHOCK!

HELLO...I return with more blogging... Due to my sudden absence on monday, I was unable to pair up with a partner so I checked out the website on my own. The experience had some good points, yet also had some cheezy arguements against violence in video games. The good points were that they were discouraging violence in video games because of the influence it has on growing children, and how it shapes their acceptance of violence in their lives. Perfectly rational, yet one of the article bits said something along the lines of "With the influence of these games in our minds, we go out into the streets with cross-hairs embedded on others" which seems a bit overthought. Then there were images of some lady with her eye poked out, and St. Sebastian with a spear through his head, obviously not related to video games. On top of that, it was connecting violence in video games to police brutality and war, with images of a building about to be bombed in the middle east, and a protester being beaten by police officers during a protest at the WTC in 1993. This was COMPLETELY out of context, the fact that they were attempting to relate the brutality of police officers and the corruption of the U.S. in war to violence in video games. Anyway, the image they showed first of wasnt even that violent! All I saw was robots and flashy lights!! I clicked yes... :P In a way, I would say that video games are an art form, as they are an incredible invention, especially in our age of video gaming, things have gotten really intense with the graphics and details put into these games. It is an art form that requires the collaboration of many brilliant minds that, in a literal sense, interact with peices of metals, plastic, chemicals and electricity to be able to put these complete masterpeices on to grapefruit sized peices of plastic! I suppose that the claim of video games " the representation of violence reduce mayhem and murder to an experience designed to entertain" has its truths, yet the only way I can relate is by comparing my experience seeing my brother play Call of Duty, a brutal war game. I would say this is true, yet have no idea how millions of others apply this sense of entertaining murder into their lives. I can relate from my childhood in regards to letting out aggression through violence in video games, because I did that a lot :D....that is all...I rambled on for long enough.