Destroying Utopia
04/08/2016 / By David Risselada
In my book, “Not on my Watch: Exposing the Marxist Agenda in Education,” I discussed my college experience where I was educated by left wing zealots who taught the concepts of white privilege and social justice. The book is a combination of personal stories and research which describes many of the indoctrination methods being used in our universities and public schools today. One of the concepts that were continually discussed was the idea of creating “Utopia;” a world of total equality where everyone is free from want and the desire to compete with one another because everyone is provided the same basic necessities. In the minds of the left, people’s behavior is driven by the environment and they believe that capitalism, being competitive in nature, is one of the biggest contributing factors of inequality and poverty. They simply do not believe that some people achieve success based on their own hard work and merit; rather, it is a result of the environment in which they are surrounded by. Therefore, when it comes to creating “Utopia,” the idea is to change the environment to one where people’s behavior adapts with it, and they are no longer motivated by the need to survive and prosper because the environment is one where everything is provided to everyone equally. This is a basic precept of the social and behavioral sciences. It is the argument of man being free and autonomous or an instinct driven creature whose behavior can be controlled and manipulated.
In “Beyond Freedom and Dignity” B.F. Skinner argues that human behavior is not only shaped by environment, but through conditioning. The reward/punishment model of molding human behavior is widely used in our education system and it is argued by many that support the “free, autonomous man” argument that this is greatly hampering people’s ability to think and act because they will only do so when promised a reward. The fear of punishment also influences people’s ability to act out of fear that they may say or do the wrong thing. This is obvious on some levels as the threat of jail or loss of certain privileges will certainly influence the choices some people make. While conservatives would argue that man is freely making these behavioral choices, the behaviorists argue that these choices are dictated to us based on our surroundings. This is true on some levels, our surroundings may certainly limit our behavior choices; however, man is still very much in control of the choice he makes, to argue otherwise is to say man is no different than any other beast that roams the earth, and has no inherent qualities that makes him significant in anyway. This is why the left continually makes excuses for the behavior of criminals and terrorists. Islamic radicals are justified in their actions because they are oppressed, and our culture is intolerant of them. Black Lives Matter activists arejustified in burning down cities because they live in an environment where they are allegedly hunted down by white cops and murdered in cold blood. We all know these are invalid arguments and that to treat man like an animal unable to take any responsibility for his actions is to completely dehumanize him.
As mentioned earlier, one of the goals of the social controllers is to create “Utopia” and a world of total equality. In order to do this however, people’s ideas of freedom and control need to be changed as well as the environment around them. Skinner argues that the social environment needs to be redesigned in order to limit the aversive (negative) consequences of behavior and that once this is accomplished, the way people view social control can be changed. In other words, people can be conditioned to accept social control in a world where negative consequences of their behavior are eliminated and behavioral choices which lead to positive consequences are made for them. Consider the following statement from B.F. Skinners “Beyond Freedom and Dignity.”
Physical technology has reduced the number of occasions upon which people arenaturally punished, and social environments have been changed to reduce the likelihood of punishment at the hands of others. Punishable behavior can be minimized by creating circumstances in which it is not likely to occur. The archetypal pattern is the cloister. In a world in which only simple foods are available, and in moderate supply, no one is subject to the natural punishment of overeating, or the social punishment of disapproval, or the religious punishment of gluttony as a venial sin. (Skinner “Beyond Freedom and Dignity” pp.64)
That is quite a telling statement. It highlights the belief held by the left that man’s behavior needs to be controlled for his own good because his choices only lead to personal harm and destruction of the world around him. It also highlights the belief mentioned in the previous paragraph. The social controllers believe that the creation of Utopia is possible by manipulating mans surroundings in a manner in which the choices he makes are the result of a controlled environment in which he is positively rewarded for making such choices. It is the belief of the left that man would rather sit back and have the peaceful, stress free life fostered upon him as opposed to having to take risk and work hard to achieve a state of autonomy. They would like to create a world where people accept that their control is necessary for people to behave. In fact, it is the belief of Skinner that the creation of a perfect world, where people are conditioned to accept social control, would eliminate the need for people to be good because the conditions created where there is no aversive stimulus to react to, and no natural punishments for negative behavior would be absent. People would therefore simply go along with the stimulus provided by the social controllers in much the same way Julia is portrayed in Barrack Obama’s “The Life of Julia.” Here, Julia, a fictional character, is being led down the path of having everything provided to her by the government, a cradle to grave form of control if you will. The left believes that this type of system creates an “automatic goodness” in people because the environment would be one where there is no need to compete, no need to be driven by selfishness and no need to be without. In essence, society would be free from want and need.
If all of this were true to any degree then we would have achieved this Utopia long ago because the social controllers have been manipulating our environment for many, many decades in its pursuit. The biggest mistake made by these behavioral scientists is believing that man is not a divine being created with free will and an ability to choose. They view everything from scientific terms, and man, in essence, is a spiritual being whether they wish to accept it or not. If man wished to be free from want and the stress of providing for himself, then all of us would simply abandon our jobs, and other responsibilities, and show up at the welfare office Monday morning. Some people may wish to live this way because of the conditioning they have thus far received. There are people in our country that believe they are entitled to life at another’s expense because certain elements of society are privileged while others are allegedly oppressed. To convince man that he need not take responsibility for his own actions, and that he is entitled, does not create a better society; rather, it creates one of disincentive and true selfishness as man becomes focused more and more on his needs and his needs alone. When the resources are redistributed by government people rarely feel they have enough, and the fact that work is now being done for the greater good of society, and not for the pursuit of one’s individual needs, the motivation to excel is destroyed. On the other hand, when an individual is left to his own devises, and his work is based on the need to survive, and he reaps the benefits of his own labor, we all benefit because the motivation to keep succeeding leads to growing business’ and more wealth creation. The left knows this. If they didn’t, they wouldn’t devote so much time and energy to learning how to manipulate human behavior to accept otherwise. If they were truly compassionate, and not in search of total control, they would leave well enough alone and let people be free.
When my professor in “Understanding the Social Environment” proclaimed that we could create a Utopia and make a world where everyone was completely equal, I argued that America was as Utopian a country that one could ask for because we are (allegedly) free. It was in this argument that I began to understand the mindset of the left as I heard the words of this professor and leftist students in the class. They argued that freedom failed, and that unless government took control of the economy we would continue to see increasing poverty and gaps in income equality. They argued that the system in which we live is an unfair system because some people are more successful not based on merit, but on the circumstances that surrounded them in their upbringing. They simply do not acknowledge that people are capable of rising above their circumstances through dedication and hard work, and in the event that they are forced to acknowledge such a thing; they will still claim that it is unfair that some people have to work harder than others. I argued that it was government manipulation of the economy and the massive spending that was creating the ills they were seeking to fix. In other words, it was my opinion that they were not creating a Utopia, but destroying one.
Tagged Under: Behaviorism, education, free will, Not on my watch, Skinner, Utopia
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