Re: Skinner-The system?

["Ratan Singh" <rsingh@jp1.vsnl.net.in>]

Absolutely, yours is in keeping with the Harvard Prof. B.F. Skinner. In 
fact he wrote a novel called Twin Oaks on his/your "System" where the 
whole society was programed to live in freedom (note the superficial 
contradiction of terms: "programed" and "freedom"). Later on a real 
commune called Twin Oaks was started and so did some other experimental 
communes in USA. I have a full book of these. Some of them practise 
living without electricity etc.. But some of them have dis-integrated. 
The chief reason was that some members became lazy parasites. But I think 
there should have been a "Skinner" to re-program such parasites back into 
the mainstream. Ratan.

On Fri, 14 Aug 1998, Kush Khatri wrote:

> Thanks Mr. Singh for putting it so succintly and yet so clearly.  I
> have not read Skinner but from the start, I have been talking about
> the same thing -- I have been calling it "THE SYSTEM".  People often
> make that mistake, where they start blaming the people ("they deserve
> the government THEY asked for," as a journalist commented) or many
> think that lack of HONEST people or HONESTY is the problem.  It is
> not.  It is the system which makes people in an organization honest,
> clean, so forth not the other way round.  Is this in keeping with
> Skinner??
> Regards,
> Kush Khatri

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