Manners at Walden Two are austere: “Honorific titles” are forbidden and thank‐yous have atrophied, in recognition that these tokens are unfaith ful to the depth of personal relationships there. “Our bulletin board,” the community's spokesman says, “is our Great White Way, and we're dazzled by it.” Music suffuses Wal den Two - from chamber groups to marching bands- and theater, art and handi crafts flourish.
Sally prin venture towns free#
The effort continually is to minimize labor and to leave the members of the community free to pursue their creative interests. Pleasant work is discounted somewhat, odious tasks “pay” better. The community is governed by appointive “planners and managers,” but the work and property are shared by all, through a system of “labor credits”: Each member of the community is obli gated to the equivalent of four hours' work in each day. Walden Two is self‐sustaining, with its own farm land and dairy, sheep and mills, doctors and den tists, symphony orchestra and com mon kitchens. It oc cupies a vast, alluringly vague amount of space: “Except for the hills on the other side of the river,” a character explains, “all the land you see from here belongs to Wal den Two.” When the reader comes upon it, Walden Two has been in existence for 10 years and a thou sand people live there in comfort, productivity, harmony and joy. The imaginary community exists somewhere in a hospitable countryside-modeled, Skinner says, on the Susquehanna Valley in Penn sylvania, where he grew up. It seems to be a ray of sanity and hope in the midst of an otherwise insane confusion.” “I read ‘Walden Two’ and have dis cussed it with my friends. A psychologist wrote him recently: “I have honestly be come convinced that Walden Two is the most significant book of the 20th century.” “The idea of living a life of quiet desperation does not appeal to me,” a student wrote. “‘Walden Two’ is not a handbook for hippies, it has sparked no revo lution but it has championed prin ciples which are now very much in the air.” And his mail brings al most daily confirmation of the book's appeal. “There is an obvious connection with what is happening among young people today,” Skinner says. There is now at least one group, in rural Virginia, that is striv ing to act out Skinner's utopia. Most of its readers were born about the time the book was, and they are alive to the possibilities it offers for obliterating old forms and start ing anew. Much interest in the book derives from a generalized hunger for “com munity,” whose emblems range from new towns to rural communes. “Walden Two,” as a fictional embodiment of his ideas, is often in college courses. Skinner is the central figure in the behaviorist movement and Edgar Pierce Professor of Psychology at Har vard. Some of the success is owed, of course, to Skinner's eminence in psychology. Skinner keeps a precisely drawn graph of the sales in his office the curve hugs the bottom axis for sev eral years, and then accelerates up ward at a rate that will take the total to a million very soon. The book has now sold some thing more than 600,000 copies, in two paperback editions, and recently it has been reissued in hardcover. The New York Times reviewer said: “Alluring, in a sinister way, and appalling, too.” The Herald Tribune reviewer said: “The only thing I'm sure I'd really like in ‘Walden Two’ is the radio.”īut today the novel's time has come. “Walden Two” was not published, however, until 1948 (after suffering several rejections) and then it had a mixed reception: some praise, some hostility, some confusion. “To my surprise,” he now remembers, “I began to write Walden Two.” Seven weeks later, having written some of the novel in “white heat,” he was finished.
He started, that is, to write an essay defending the possibility of successful planned communities. The book was prompted, Skinner recalls, by a dinner‐party conversa tion Skinner was lamenting that the returning veterans would face noth ing but old ruts, a lady urged him to write about his plans for “an ex perimental attitude toward life,” and he did. Skinner-then professor of psychology at the Uni versity of Minnesota-sat down in June of that year and began to write his novel, “Walden Two,” an account of life in a community created by science and pervaded by happiness.
IN the summer of 1945, the pros pect of security and nonkhaki clothes was idyll enough for mil lions of Americans, but B.
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