The Quest for Utopia

Walden Two(1948), by B. F. Skinner. This utopist is a psychologist, inventor of a “mechanical baby-tender,” presently engaged, according to latest reports, on experiments testing the habit learning capacities of pigeons. Halfway through this contemporary utopia, the reader may feel sure, as we did, that this is a beautifully ironic satire on what has been called “behavioral engineering.” [...] Of all the dictatorships espoused by utopists, this is the most profound [...] The citizen of this ideal society is placed during his first year in a sterile cubicle, wherein his conditioning begins. [...] In nauseating conclusion, the perpetrator of this “modern” utopia looks down from a nearby hill on the community which is his handiwork and proclaims: “I like to play God! Who wouldn’t, under the circumstances? After all, even Jesus Christ thought he was God.” (p. 592)