Thursday, April 7, 2011

Walden Two

Walden Two, only novel written by American Psychologist B.F. Skinner, Harvard University Professor for many years, got the title after the experience lived by the American Philosopher Henry David Thoreau during two years in a forest called Walden, in Massachusetts, alone and completely retired of social life, to live in contact with nature. On the other hand, Walden Two is a fictional community, separated from the rest of the world, where life is lived in agreement with ethical and psychological principles. In both cases exists a rejection of industrial civilization and its effects on humankind.

Frazier, the character who created the ideology of Walden Two in the novel, says to a friend: "The distance between the technical power of the man and the wisdom whereupon he uses it, it visibly increases year after year… To restrain science until the wisdom and the responsibility of the man are able to take the reins, is not solution. As threatning as it seems, as crazy as it appears to the contemplative soul, science must go ahead. But we must rise  the man to the same level. When we have developed a science of conduct as powerful as the atomic science, you`ll be able to see a considerable difference"

What makes me remember the words of Zenon, main character of the novel The Abyss by Marguerite
Yourcenar:  "The world is big … May it please to the One who perchance Is, to expand human heart to
life's full measure"

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