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What’s Wrong with WaldenTwo?Pedro Alexis Tabenskya
a Department of Philosophy Rhodes UniversityP.O.Box 94 Grahamstown, 6140 South Africa Email:Published online: 28 Oct 2013.
To cite this article: Pedro Alexis Tabensky (2009) What’s Wrong with Walden Two?,South African Journal of Philosophy, 28:1, 1-12
To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.4314/sajpem.v28i1.42900
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What’s Wrong with Walden Two?
Pedro Alexis TabenskyDepartment of Philosophy
Rhodes UniversityP.O. Box 94
Grahamstown, 6140South Africa
Email: [email protected]
You can’t enforce happiness. You can’t in the long run enforceanything. We don’t use force! All we need is adequate behav-ioural engineering.
(Skinner 1948: 149)Now that we know how positive reinforcement works … we canbe more deliberate in our cultural design. We can achieve the sortof control under which the controlled, though they are followinga code much more scrupulously than was ever the case under theold system, nevertheless feel free … By a careful cultural design,we control not the final behaviour, but the inclination to behave –the motives, the desires, the wishes.
(Skinner 1948: 246-7)
Abstract
Despite being eminently forgettable from the literary point of view, B. F.
Skinner’s novel, Walden Two, provides us with an excellent opportunity, not
so much to show what is wrong with mainstream accounts of free will, as
Robert Kane thinks, but rather to explore another key and importantly ne-
glected condition for genuine agency; namely, that properly lived human
lives are those that are and must continue to be vulnerable to unforseable re-
versals, as Aldous Huxley speculates in his Brave New World. In short, I ar-
gue, perhaps scandalously, that one of the central conditions for genuine
agency is that our lives are and must continue to be, to a large extent, out of
our personal control. The promise of too much personal control, not too little
(as Kane thinks), is what is wrong with Skinner’s social utopia.
1
Perhaps the novel of one of the great proponents of behaviourist psychology was al-ways meant to be a bad novel. Perhaps someone should have tried to dissuade B. F.Skinner from ever trying to venture into literature. Maybe someone did but, if so,clearly he did not listen. Walden Two is a poor novel, written by a well-intended scien-tist – an engineer of the psyche, as he fancies himself – genuinely convinced of theemancipatory virtues of behavioural psychology/engineering. It is written in the styleof a (secular) sermon, and his Jesus is the principal social/psychological engineer –
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2 S. Afr. J. Philos. 2009, 28(1)
Frazier is his name – of the experimental rural village named, probably infelicitouslygiven Skinner’s relatively weak conception of human autonomy (he is a hard deter-minist), after Henry David Thoreau’s Romantic utopia embodied in Walden.1 Skin-ner’s novel is mainly – indeed unidimensionally – about how B. F. Skinner’s scienceof behaviour could transform the world for the better. In this regard, his novel is cer-tainly expressive of an unusual level of self-confidence and single-mindedness, but tobe fair on the engineer, the arrogance in question is well-intended. Skinner is awell-intended man, who thinks that good social engineering – the mind-forming sort –will rid us of our socio-historical woes. Like a good father, he seems genuinely con-cerned for us and wishes to gift us with a science able to control, through positivetechniques of reinforcement – control without force – the very characters throughwhich our choices and actions spring. Characters, after all, are the products of specificsets of causal conditions (only someone who believes that we are the causa sui of ouractions would disagree with this claim, or at least wish to qualify it) and, so, Skinnerthinks, it would be advisable to have control over these causal condition such that theright sort of character traits are selected. (In this regard Skinner could be thought of asa neo-Platonist of sorts offering us an alternative to Plato’s ideal state.) Better to havea properly developed science of behaviour than to let things to chance. History atteststo the failure of chance. Only the science of behaviour, Skinner thinks, will save usfrom the seemingly endless string of evils that constitute the story of our problematicspecies.
Indeed, one could even claim that Skinner, like Plato, is a virtue ethicist for he con-ceives of an ideal social order as one where there is total control over habit-forminginstitutions. Perhaps we could describe the ethic underlying his concerns as totalitarianvirtue ethics. But perhaps my description is rather uncharitable. After all, Frazier, whois most definitely no dictator, does quite a lot of work to argue against Castle –Frazier’s principal intellectual opponent – who thinks that Walden Two is a fas-cist-like community where the sacrifice of individual freedom is the price of socialharmony. We shall see whether in fact I am being unfair and much will hang on howwe understand the idea of human freedom. No, B.F. Skinner thinks, an ideal social or-der will not be brought about by politicians or revolutionaries; nor will it be coercivelyenforced. What we need are good engineers of the psyche rather than, say, philosopherkings. And societies should be factories for the mass production of virtue. Imagine thedelightful prospect of a world overflowing with virtue. How different that would befrom our wretched world, how infinitely better!
* * *
You may have gathered by now that my central concern here is not to explore theweaknesses of a novel qua piece of literature, although one could expect that a poornovel may be expressive of some unsavoury, or at the very least simplistic, viewsabout the human condition. Yes, good intentions can lead to unsavoury results. Myaim here is to expose the problems, the deeply disturbing problems, with B. F. Skin-ner’s alternative to The Republic and to suggest an alternative, and perhaps disconcert-ing, hypothesis; namely that those who are philosophically inclined should once andfor all stop engaging in the futile and arrogantly counterproductive task of dreaming ofworlds far removed from the caprices of chance. Such worlds seem plausibly better
1 Thoreau 1983.
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than our own only when observed at a distance, only when the cost of bringing themabout is not carefully considered. And, I aim to show, the cost is indeed far too high.Yes, my friends, the cost of perfection, if I may call it that, amounts, among otherthings, to the frightful abandonment of basic conditions that make us most properlyhuman. But now that I have violently thrust my views forward, it is time to step backand reflect.
Perhaps I am acting like a bully aiming, as bullies often do, at easy targets; picking,as I am, on this peculiar engineer for, given our current liberal sensibilities, it seemsobvious – trivial in fact – that the views expressed in his novel are preposterous. Whocould possibly endorse behavioural engineering today? What an illiberal and undemo-cratic doctrine! But Skinner’s views are not so trivially preposterous in the light of ourbest regarded accounts of human agency, although we shall see that ultimately they arepreposterous, and an exploration of his views will, I hope, reveal deep truths about theall-too-human limits that make proper human living possible, with all the unpredict-ability, risks and suffering that allows us to live identifiably worthwhile human lives.In making this move, I have Nietzsche’s central concerns in the background. He thinksthat a healthy life is one in which we are permanently struggling with the Dionysianforces of destruction.
2
What set me on the path of thinking about the problems with Walden Two is a course Igave in 2006 to first year students on the free will debate at Rhodes University. I cameacross an article, written by Robert Kane2 especially for students, where he argues,among other things, that the reason that we find Skinner’s vision, embodied in hisnovel, so disturbing is intimately related to what he thinks is wrong with compatibilistaccounts of freedom of the will, specifically regarding their optimistic view that wecan have free will, in a full-blown moral-responsibility-entailing fashion, in a fully de-terministic world. The problem, Kane thinks, is that Walden Two is modelled on theidea that there are only what he refers to as surface freedoms, as opposed to deep free-dom of the will; the freedom to act in ways that flow from a will which could consis-tently be thought of as forming part of the causal order of things, as opposed to thefreedom to act in ways that flow from a freely chosen will (the sort of free will that de-fenders of libertarian free will, and only them, believe is possible; the will as causasui). Although I agree with Kane that there is something disturbing about Walden Two,I disagree with him about what exactly is disturbing for, unoriginally, I am no libertar-ian, or anything of the sort. And I aim here to uncover the source of my discomfort.
Walden Two is portrayed as a happy rural community where people do as theyplease, but what they cannot do is something that most philosophers familiar with thefree will debate believe nobody else can do either. So, prima facie, there is nothing es-pecially wrong with Walden Two. And this is precisely why Kane chose the example.He wants to show how deeply held intuitions about free will, when properly under-stood, are antithetical to pervasive philosophical, specifically compatibilist, under-standings of free will. But, unlike Kane, I believe, as any compatibilist ought to be-lieve, that the problem in question is part and parcel of the human condition. Membersof Walden Two cannot ultimately choose to be who they are for, contra Kane and hismany illustrious predecessors, people cannot be the causa sui of their actions, the orig-
S. Afr. J. Philos. 2009, 28(1) 3
2 Kane 2005: 426-38.
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4 S. Afr. J. Philos. 2009, 28(1)
inators of their actions. Indeed, the very idea of being the causa sui is widely acknowl-edged to be incoherent and I do not feel particularly inclined to bother you with a sur-vey of a well-known debate (I take the argument to be a largely successful one). But,if there can be no such thing as a will that somehow bootstraps itself into existence,then why take issue with Frazier’s utopian project as Castle does? Castle, who is notconversant with the free will debate, believes implicitly in libertarian free will (orsomething close enough to that at any rate) and thus thinks that, at some deep level, weare responsible not only for what we do, but also ultimately for who we are; not onlyfor the choices we make, but also for the psychological architecture from whichchoices spring, or key aspects of this architecture at any rate, allegedly required forfull-blown agency.
The central problem with Walden Two, Kane argues (largely following Castle’sfootsteps), helps illustrate the central problem with compatibilist free will. He thinks,and I happen to agree, that if we are not the causa sui of our actions, then much (notall) of what most of us standardly value about free will would be lost.3 His sentimentsare also shared by all incompatibilists; pessimists and libertarians alike. But if this isthe alleged problem with Walden Two then, as I said, there is nothing uniquely wrongwith Walden Two; nothing especially wrong that would motivate us, compatibilistsparticularly, to censure it. So, it seems, an advocate of political liberalism who is con-versant with the free will debate should, on final analysis, think very highly indeed ofSkinner’s vision. Skinner takes it for granted that we are not the causa sui of our ac-tions and goes about designing a social order that will provide the ideal causal condi-tions for developing the virtues; indeed, for people to flourish, contrary to Skinner’sown commitment to hard determinism, as genuinely free agents.
And let it be noted that the picture here is not one of external manipulation or brain-washing. Walden Two is not guided by a manipulating despot and behavioural engi-neers cannot properly be thought of as external manipulators. Or, rather, they are ex-ternal manipulators in the very same sense that typical antecedent conditions in a lessregimented social setting externally manipulate (leave aside the issue of false con-sciousness), and this is indeed a very strange way of describing what antecedent con-ditions do in our actual world; conditions which make it so that we are never the ulti-mate causes of the characters from which our actions flow. What behavioural engi-neers do is ensure that those features of our characters that are never under our controlanyway are properly developed and they ensure that educational institutions, broadlyconceived, are managed allegedly in accordance with our best understanding of what itis to live a flourishing life.
If compatibilism (or pessimism for that matter) is true and we are not the causa suiof our actions then we may as well systematically, via an advanced science of behav-iour, assuming this science is available to us, control the causal circumstances that se-lect the character traits that play a core role in shaping societies. Such control would,allegedly, be a good thing. Prima facie, it seems better to be in control of the anteced-ent conditions that select certain character traits than allowing chance to express its ca-pricious, often cruel, nature. Better to be guided – controlled – by sound policy thanby the (often) cruel caprices of chance. The path of history, after all, has been writtenwith red ink drawn from countless corpses strewn on the erratic path of time. Thecharacter of a given social order is largely a function of the individuals who populate itand it is hard to see how a society composed entirely of virtuous individuals could be
3 For a defence of anti-retributivism based on an account of free will see Tabensky 2006.
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anything but a virtuous society. And, since what characters we have is at least to a sig-nificant extent a function of the character forming institutions that compose a society,then one could even go as far as to argue that it would be utterly irresponsible of usnot systematically to aim to control such institutions in order to ‘produce’ virtuous so-cial subjects in mass. This is Skinner’s position, and, given where the free will debatestands today, it should have some prima facie appeal, despite our visceral (largely lib-eral) aversion to Skinner’s vision. Our visceral aversion, we could plausibly argue, is afunction of millennia of exposure to an allegedly incoherent account of agency – thelibertarian account.
Kane, as mentioned already, makes an important distinction between surface free-doms and deeper freedom of the will (freedom not only to act in accordance with whatone wills but freedom also to determine what it is that one wills in a way that does notinvolve appealing exclusively to causal chains). This distinction mirrors Honderich’simportant distinction between voluntariness and origination.4 Our actions may be vol-untary, and voluntary in a way that does not involve being deceived or being psycho-logically distorted in some relevant way, and yet we may not have freedom of the will(as libertarians and pessimists believe). This amounts to claiming that we may havesurface freedoms and not deeper freedom of the will; freedom to choose and to act andnot free will; if, that is, by ‘free will’ we mean what libertarians mean. For compati-bilists, on the other hand, there can be no more to free will than voluntariness. Com-patibilists and pessimists alike should have no substantive complaints against WaldenTwo, and yet the immediate reaction of most people on any side of the free will debateis to feel repulsed by the vision promoted by the novel. So, what exactly is wrong withWalden Two or, minimally, why are we for the most part so reticent to embrace Skin-ner’s utopia with open arms? It seems, after all, that the vision in question may offer asalutary alternative to millennia of blood, and indeed, prima facie, it seems that withinWalden Two we would be able freely to pursue all manner of truly worthwhileprojects with a freedom we, living in this radically imperfect world, can only dreamof.
We could even, as a brief aside, extend Skinner’s dream in the light of advances ingenetic engineering. We could imagine a world where even accidents of birth could beeliminated in such a way as to give people the allegedly best possible starting point inlife. Given that we are not in control of the antecedent conditions that determine whatsorts of people we are going to become then, prima facie, there seems to be nothingparticularly and in principle wrong with a world guided both by behavioural and ge-netic engineers. Of course there is always the risk that something terribly wrong couldhappen with such technologies or their applications, but if our knowledge of geneticswere relatively exhaustive, and proper policies were put in place, that is, if it were thecase that we could be assured that such technologies would not be used incompetentlyor with base aims in mind then, and this is the key point, such technologies could beseen as another step in the right direction.
3
A central issue that much of the literature on free will focuses on is that of control(and, relatedly, moral responsibility). To have free will is, standardly and minimallyunderstood, to have control over our lives and a few accounts of control, allegedly
S. Afr. J. Philos. 2009, 28(1) 5
4 Honderich 1993.
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6 S. Afr. J. Philos. 2009, 28(1)
compatible with determinism, have been proposed. The more control over our lives,the general idea goes, the more free will. And here, one could argue, is the problemwith Walden Two. A society organized in accordance with Skinner’s plan is a societywhere individuals have no personal control over their lives, like the inhabitants ofHuxley’s or Orwell’s totalitarian dystopias. But this reading of Walden Two could becontested. Indeed, there is a case for claiming that nowhere could we have more per-sonal control over our lives than in Walden Two for there we are able to develop thedispositions that would maximize human potentiality so as not merely to be free to dowhat we please, but free also to do what is most worthwhile. Walden Two allegedlyoffers us freedom from the torments that come from ill-formed and, one could say, im-properly developed minds. And crucially, Walden Two allegedly offers us freedomfrom the shackles of having to deal with problems that radically imperfect social ar-rangements throw on us. In Skinners ideal world we are allegedly free from unneces-sary worries and troubles, and allegedly free to construct our lives however we please.Only in Walden Two, or in a place very much like Walden Two, can people allegedlytruly act in accordance with the best understandings of how human beings should actand with the greatest amount of time to pursue our most worthwhile and truly desireddreams. Also, we mustn’t forget that in Walden Two people are explicitly encouragedto be themselves. So, not only would we allegedly be free to desire whatever we wantin Walden Two, but we would also allegedly be free from the shackles of misguidedpassions and allegedly free from all the time wasted as a consequence of having todeal with problems that should not be there in the first place. What more can we askfor? Let me remind the reader (again) that we cannot plausibly be the movers un-moved of our actions, so it seems that Walden Two offers us a world where we canmost fully be in control of our lives. So, I repeat, what more could one ask for? My re-ply, controversially, is less control, but I cannot simply state this and leave it at that, solet me continue with the argument that has been occupying our attention thus far.
Walden Two, one could argue, offers us the greatest level of control we could rea-sonably ask for, and I am obviously not speaking here of centralized state control.Rather, the control at issue is control over our individual lives, personal control. InWalden Two people are not at the mercy of the caprices of circumstances, not at themercy of character-forming contingencies that are often responsible of personal andcollective tragedies. No, Walden Two, arguably, provides its inhabitants with the con-ditions to develop the best possible characters given that their lives are informed bysound social policy and the findings of an advance predictive science of behaviour.Members of the community are taught (engineered), ideally from early childhood, notto be greedy or selfish; are taught to respect one another and to behave as responsible,even caring, citizens. Walden Two is, prima facie, a deeply functional place wherepeople live relaxed and peaceful lives and can pursue whatever projects they genu-inely wish to pursue (and no one in Walden Two, at least not when Skinner’s idealsare fully implemented, would wish to do anything that would not contribute to maxi-mizing well-being in Walden Two). It would be uncharitable to assume that the inhab-itants of Walden Two are prisoners of a false ideology imposed from above. Like any-one else, the inhabitants of Walden Two are the products of their time, place and spe-cific biological makeup. And there is no identifiable Big Brother in Walden Two. InWalden Two people are allegedly most genuinely in control of their lives; not merelyin control to do what they please, but also able to decide most clearly what is actually
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best, and to do so in a way that requires little or no internal strife (or external pres-sure).
But, someone inclined to agree with Castle could protest, members of Walden Twoare like automata in the sense that their actions are not voluntary; their ‘actions’ flowfrom the will of another. They are ‘programmed’ by behavioural engineers to act asthey do, leaving, it seems, very little space for agency given that our actions would notonly not originate in us, but in an important sense the causes explaining the actions ofthe standard citizen of Walden Two would be the intentions of the behavioural engi-neer. But, I do not think this is a fair accusation. Members of Walden Two do in factgo about deciding how to act and nobody tells them how to choose in much the sameway individuals outside of Walden Two typically go about choosing. Frazier is no des-pot. He is, rather, an educator and a social engineer in possession of a highly sophisti-cated science of behaviour, who is able to design the educational programs and createthe right environment for people to develop the best dispositions for proper behaviour(perfect virtue in the vocabulary of the Ancients), and citizens of Walden Two canleave at will, but as a matter of fact they never do. So members of Walden two are notautomata in any interesting sense, or so it seems.
But I disagree with this conclusion. I think they are like automata, but not for thestandard criteria given to differentiate automata from genuine agents. Ultimately, un-chosen antecedent conditions, that is, un-chosen by the choosing subject, always deter-mine how we are going to act no matter what society we actually happen to live in.The problem with life in Walden Two has ultimately to do with the levels of controlthat people have over their own lives to carve out their own particular destinies. ForSkinner, the ultimate ideal, the ideal that guides Walden Two, is one of complete de-terminism-compatible agent control (or, shall I say, almost complete lack of genuinethe surprise and adventure that force upon us the need to adapt, indeed, to improvise).
This is precisely what bothered Aldous Huxley about his own nightmare vision oftotal control. What ultimately bothered him is that life in his Brave New World lacksaccident, lacks the sorts of contingencies that make life a genuine challenge; a genuinecreative enterprise of adaptation to largely unforeseeable circumstances. Huxley, and Iagree, believes that too much control over our lives, even agent-control, is life-dimin-ishing and agency-undermining. Everything in Walden Two is under control, indeedalmost fully mapped out in all of its important detail by all inhabitants (and not merelyby Frazier). Life, under such conditions, becomes automatic, like going through lifewith a detailed blueprint of how the life is going to unfold. There is some scope forspontaneity, but it is highly limited. There are some risks and dangers, but all radicallyconfined. Because of the high levels of control, personal and institutional, challengesare at least almost inevitably spurious and capricious, for very little is genuinely atstake given that risk and danger has been kept at bay (I shall deal with an objection tothis claim below). We are seldom if ever forced to adapt, to genuinely come to termswith a shocking reality we never chose for ourselves. And in Walden Two there is noovercoming. We do not have to come to terms with bad character traits, for in WaldenTwo for all intents and purposes there are none. No one in Walden Two does anythingwrong, and hence they do not have to come to terms and find solutions to difficultproblems. Because of this, it would not be entirely off the mark to claim that inWalden Two people are like children living in a protected cocoon. In the momentswhen the going gets rough we, finite, vulnerable and largely ignorant mortals yearn forstability and ease, but when things become too easy we seek out the danger of adven-
S. Afr. J. Philos. 2009, 28(1) 7
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ture, of the unknown. And life seems to require such cycles. We are, after all,project-driven creatures and projects typically come to an end when the relevant goalsare achieved.
Life is hard for wretched creatures like ourselves, but this hardness, the pain andsuffering, is a great source of meaning for us, for that which is most meaningful to uscomes about as a kind of victory after a protracted battle. Protracted battles are largelyresponsible for bestowing meaning, for what matters must be won. Meaning is notmerely a matter of having correct ends, but it also has to do with how we come toachieve these ends. Meaning happens, as Philip Hallie (1997: 47-55) would put it, inthe eye of a hurricane. So, it is not enough merely to have projects. Our undertakings,if you may, must involve a considerable amount of danger.
In the words of Mustapha Mond, the Controller in Huxley’s dystopia:
civilization has absolutely no need of nobility or heroism…. In a properly orga-nized society like ours, nobody has any opportunities for being noble or heroic.Conditions have got to be thoroughly unstable before occasion can arise.Where there are wars, where there are divided allegiances, where there aretemptations to be resisted, objects of love fought for or defended – there, obvi-ously, nobility and heroism have some sense. (Huxley 2004: 209)
The savage replies:
But the tears are necessary. Don’t you remember what Othello said? ‘If afterevery tempest come such calms, may the winds blow till they have awakeneddeath.’ (Huxley 2004: 210)
And, he continues:
But I don’t want comfort, I want God, I want poetry, I want real danger, I wantfreedom, I want goodness, I want sin. (Huxley 2004: 211)
The Savage wants these things because he wants meaning in his life. He does not wanta petty life such as the lives of those who populate the brave new world. Rather, hewants to feel the passions rise and above all he wants to come to terms with the contin-gencies of the sort that are typically thrown at us by well-lived lives, for living, he rec-ognizes, properly living, is largely a matter of coming to terms with contingencies andnot, by contrast, to live as if we were plugged into Nozick’s experience machines;lives very much like those lived in Huxley’s dystopia, where pleasure maximizationand nothing else is the final end of human living.5 The life that Savage wants is largelya life that is largely out of his control; a life formed by contingencies that force him toadapt; contingencies that ultimately lead to his death. Indeed, the savage wants to takecontrol of his life and not merely to have control over it, and this involves strife, risk,uncertainty, fear and victory over odds.
4
Here is a possible objection, indeed an important objection, to the conclusions thus farlaid out.6 Although it is true that the moral dimension of our lives may be impover-ished in a world such as the one described by Skinner, some may wish to argue that
5 Nozick 1974: 42-5.6 I thank those present at the delivery of an earlier version of this paper at the University of Witwa-
tersrand for pressing me to address this issue.
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there are many other dimensions of our lives that would indeed be better served in aworld such as the one proposed by Skinner. Morality, we could agree, becomes trulyspecial when the going gets rough and we are called to extend ourselves from themoral point of view beyond the limits of the comfort zone. The morality of WaldenTwo is, at best, a quotidian morality, which could without straining the imagination beunderstood as a natural extension of etiquette. Nobility and heroism may be impossi-ble in Walden Two and, someone (certainly not Huxley) could contend, so much theworse for the moral dimension of our lives. In short, in Walden Two there would beno place for moral heroes, but we should not, the argument could go, worry aboutthese things. Indeed, we should not given that the price of such heroes is the unbear-able cruelties that we should wish fully and once and for all to overcome. What mat-ters ultimately, the argument could go, is that the inhabitants of Walden Two haveplenty of time to engage in artistic and scientific pursuits; generally, in pursuits thatare genuinely worthwhile but which are not typically characterized in moral terms.And no one is unjustly harmed in Walden Two. Surely, we could further speculate,what the Mandelas of this world, and those who admire them, should wish for is anovercoming of all those conditions that make it possible for the Mandelas to come tolife in the first place. The aim of moral heroics, the argument could go, is to bringabout a better world and there is no more perfect a world than one bereft in its entiretyof evils. And such a world would be, for very good reasons, rather superficial from themoral point of view.
But what is it that moves us to engage in artistic and scientific endeavours (and othersuch deeply worthwhile endeavours typically not described in moral terms)? A need ofsome sort, no doubt. And where does this need come from? What are its basic fea-tures? In what conditions do needs of this sort arise? We could start trying to answerthese questions in the following manner: we have needs because we are naturally curi-ous and we naturally desire to express ourselves. This may be so, but the explanationis woefully incomplete for we want to know why these things are natural and what themechanisms are what spark our curiosity and our creative urges. So we must push fur-ther. We have worthwhile needs because we have lacks that push us to pursue theworthwhile. This is a theme at least as old as Plato: we need because we lack and welack because at some level we recognize a perfection that is forever beyond us; indeed,beyond this world. We recognize and this recognition pushes us to strive (although,clearly, it may also often do quite the opposite as frustration often leads to compla-cency), but the striving in question is motivated by a sense of our deep inadequacies,both of the soul and of its world. Disciplines such as the sciences and the arts are waysof coping; ways of securing survival, of finding meaning, in a world of uncertainty,doubt and pain that often leads us to yearn for prefabricated meaning; a world thathelps magnify our inadequacies and which forces us to cope in one way or another.But someone could protest: mere whim could do the job of pushing us to discover andcreate. I doubt that whim, motivated by what could vaguely be characterized as rawcuriosity or as a raw desire to create, could systematically do the job of making us pur-sue truly worthwhile (allegedly) non-moral projects. An appreciation of truth and, say,beauty, does not occur in a vacuum. Something else is required to push us in the rightsorts of directions; something else is needed to inspire and move.
Think. Or, rather, imagine. We are moved to pursue certain goals in a particularspace; a space that motivates us to be possessed by a meaningful project. We are notideally possessed by mere pastimes (and if someone were possessed fundamentally by
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pastimes we would think of that individual as shallow or as an escapist). Rather, weare possessed by things that consume us; by things that, so to speak, force themselvesupon us and typically suspend our ability to choose to do otherwise, even if at somelevel we want to do otherwise. To be gripped in this way is to be gripped by an obses-sion or something very close to it. And I doubt that we could be gripped in this way inthe space offered to us by Walden Two. For to be gripped in this way is to be grippedby a desperate need or, to put things more mildly for the more sober among you, adeeply moving need. Such passionate commitment, it seems reasonable to suppose,can only be had by the malcontent. Animals of other species are typically content (par-ticularly if they are well fed and in good bodily health). Indeed that is primarily whywe think of them as beasts; they are made content by very little indeed, by a rather nar-row band of concrete needs homogenously shared for the most part by all members ofthe species. But we are a malcontent species, in much the same way that Eros is a mal-content demigod, and it is because of this that we pursue goals that aim to take us be-yond the confines of what we believe, with reasons that are implicit for the most part,to be our pathetic condition.
But it could be protested that all that is required for the sort of anxious grip that mo-tivates us to pursue worthwhile projects is the belief that we are under threat in aplethora of different ways (so as to motivate subjects in a plethora of different ways).Such beliefs could arguably be had in a place very similar to Walden Two, but only atthe cost of truth. Members of Walden Two would have to be the victims of deep illu-sions; very much like the sort of illusions of those populating Oceania in Orwell’s to-talitarian dystopia (or by Plato’s noble lie). Such widespread falsehoods would requiretop-down conditioning. It is conceivable that the behavioural engineers in a place verymuch like Walden Two could condition people to have the required levels of anxietyso that creative or exploratory urges could come to manifest themselves. But, assum-ing that subjects could genuinely be conditioned in this way, it is clear that a societythat encouraged such practices would be one that required what could fairly be de-scribed as brainwashing; something that is, I take it for granted, deeply unacceptable.Indeed, on further analysis and contrary to what I stated above regarding Walden Two,a place where such negative conditioning occurred would be a place very different inspirit from the democratic ethos allegedly promoted in Walden Two. Moreover, Idoubt that such illusions as those necessary to promote curiosity and creativity in adeeply uninspiring environment could actually be sustained. What is required is an on-going sense that there is threat and, on pain of being slaves of illusions, the threatsmust be real. Nozick’s conclusions derived from his famous experience machinethought experiment (mentioned above) is further grist for my mill.
* * *
I have said little directly about love, but arguable this is the greatest of goods and per-haps a world as safe as Walden Two would be as perfect as a world can get for loveallegedly thrives there. But let us go back to the words of the savage for it is helpfulfor us to remember that he thought, instructively, that love, proper love, is not trulypossible in the brave new world. Why? Because attachments are formed in a world ofrisk. Because we love that which is genuinely vulnerable and frail. The preciousnessof love is largely a function of its vulnerability. Love requires sacrifice and sacrificerequires risk. A true lover is someone who is there for the loved one through thick and
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thin. In Walden Two there is no space for sacrifice for no one is potentially at risk (atleast not when Frazier’s project is fully implemented).
But, we could try a familiar strategy. People in Walden Two may not be potentiallyat risk, but they could be led to believe that they are? But, how would they come toform the false beliefs sustaining the illusion? Again, it seems that the only option isbrainwashing and the totalitarianism that comes with it. And this is a most undesirableoption. Moreover, love, if it is genuine, should be guided by truth and not sustained byillusion. To love is to make a commitment and a commitment is just that if threats gen-uinely threaten to show their ugly heads.
5
Yes, we have reached certain conclusions here which may surprise some but whichpoint to the constitutive role that danger plays in life. Yes, danger: danger that makesadults out of children; danger responsible for all the woes of history; responsible forthe pools of blood in which we all swim; dangers, crucially, that undermine rather thanfacilitate control over our lives; dangers, most importantly, which allow for the pre-cious vulnerability from which true love springs! And, to put things paradoxically, it isprecisely this threat to agency that allows for the possibility of genuine full-blownagency. Our condition, if you may, is to roam, to be moved by dangers; dangers ulti-mately responsible for our perdition and for the hope that stems from risk. Yes, it sad-dens me to confess, but my sadness is laced with joy, life is fundamentally tragic and itis tragedy, above all, that Skinner, and before him the Plato of The Republic, wishmost passionately to rid us of in order to bring about ease (and they wish this, I mayadd, contrary to their own explicit claims, precisely because it is lacking; precisely be-cause ease must be won). In our actual world ease happens in those moments when weare allowed the luxury of looking back on things and realizing, if indeed we are of-fered the luxury of looking back, for the ease in question cannot be guaranteed, justhow far we have moved through the thicket (and we recognize how far we havemoved by comparing our trajectory to those of others, often with jealousy or pity). Hu-man ease is the ease of who I refer to, idiosyncratically, as the tragedian. The tragedianis someone who recognizes and appreciates the limits of personal control; that recog-nizes the importance of spontaneous adaptation, for we are adaptive creatures, whichcan only come about in a world of risk, scarcity and uncertainty; a world populated byreal agency-threatening dangers. Skinner’s world is a world located in the eye of ahurricane, but without a surrounding hurricane; a world of peace dislodged from thedisruptive source of genuine purposiveness.
6
The problems with Walden Two is not that in it there are too many obstacles to indi-vidual control, but that there are too little; no space for tragedy, thus guaranteeing theimpoverishment so deeply despised by the savage. I do not want to suggest that I donot believe in the importance of agential control. Rather, my concern here is with theconditions for the possibility of meaningful agential control; control which is both alimit and a condition for the possibility of full-blown agency Agency, however finite,is a feature of finite creatures whose basic condition is to roam treacherously, uncer-tain of success and in partial blindness; to live lives that are largely out of their con-trol. To be sure, we must yearn for agential control when such control is found radi-
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cally wanting, but we must also recognize, with fear and an optimism stemming frompartial resignation, the sources of disruption that makes life a genuine challenge; agenuine problem to us all.
I do not dispute that the idea of agential control is central to the idea of free will, butthere are central limits to agential control.
The neglected sources of purposiveness are the conditions that force us to strive,largely in the dark. So, Kane’s fears are misplaced. He should indeed find the offer-ings of Walden Two frightful, but not because they limit personal control. Instead, hisrevolt against Skinner’s vision should be a revolt against a particular concept of hu-man agency that does not acknowledge the proper limits of agent.7
References
Hallie, P. 1997. Tales of Good and Evil, Help and Harm. New York: HarperCollins.
Honderich, T. 1993. How Free Are You?: The Determinism Problem. New York: Ox-ford University Press.
Huxley, A. 2004. Brave New World. London: Vintage.
Kane, R. 2005. ‘Free Will: Ancient Dispute, New Themes’, in J. Feinberg & R.Shafer-Landau, eds. Reason and Responsibility: Readings in Some Basic Prob-lems in Philosophy. Belmont, CA: Thomson Wadsworth, 426-438
Nozick, R. 1974. Anarchy, State, and Utopia. New York: Basic Books.
Radford, C. 1998. ‘On the Positive Desirability of Evil’ in his Driving to California:An Unconventional Introduction to Philosophy. Edinburgh: Edinburgh UniversityPress, 137-144.
Skinner, B.F. 1976. Walden Two. New York: Macmillan.
Smilansky, S. 2007. ‘Morality and Moral Worth’, in 10 Moral Paradoxes. Malden,MA: Blackwell, 77-89.
Tabensky, P. 2006. ‘Moved Movers: Transfiguring Judgment Practices’, in P. Tabens-ky, ed. Judging and Understanding: Essays on Free Will, Narrative, Meaning andthe Moral Limits of Condemnation. Aldershot: Ashgate.
Tabensky, P. 2003. Happiness: Personhood, Commnity, Purpose. Aldershot: Ashgate.
Tabensky, P. 2009. ‘Tragic Joyfullness’, in L. Bartolotti, ed. Philosophy and Happi-ness. London: Palgrave.
Thoreau, H. D. 1983. Walden and Civil Disobedience. New York: Penguin Books.
7 One of the anonymous referees of this piece, whom I must thank, wisely suggested that I considerSmilansky 2007. Smilansky argues that the value of morality is parasitical upon context, meaning thatthe value of morality is parasitical upon a world of adversities, large and small, and that if, as we should,we manage to rid ourselves of most adversities, then we should welcome the retirement of sophisticatedmoral life. Smilansky’s fundamental unspecified presupposition is that morality floats free of meaningand agency, and this piece in part aims to show that this is not the case. So, a world of the sort that hethinks would be best, a world where morality would at best be a kind of etiquette, would also be a worldlargely devoid of meaning and a world where full-blown agency could not exist. A fuller elaboration ofthe intricate relationships between morality, meaning and agency will have to wait for a book on thesubject that I am currently writing, which will be called Shadows of Goodness. I may mention that Aris-totle’s ethics can be read as a largely successful attempt to relate the three concepts of morality, agencyand meaning. For a defense of the Aristotelian project seem Tabensky 2003 and for a recent qualifica-tion of my endorsement of Aristotle, see Tabensky 2009. In this latter piece, following Nietzsche andparticularly Philip Halllie, I argue for the central role that adversity plays in our lives. For a short but in-cisive piece that endorses views that I defend see Radford 1998.
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