Walden Two and Island

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Chapter Ten
Walden Two
Introduction
As modern utopias B.F Skinner’s (1904-1990) Walden Two and Aldous Huxley’s (1894-
1963) Island combine elements of the old with the new. Traditional elements include Island’s
relative isolation and Walden Two’s leadership. But they also differ from earlier utopias. They
are temporally located in the 20th century rather than the future. They address modern problems
like pollution, slums, and superpower rivalry, and assume modern technology. Further, as with
modern dystopias, they are just as keenly interested in the internal workings of humans as with
their external environments. Both argue that the most important part of utopia is the
psychological state of its inhabitants. Island pushes this point to the extreme, implying that
utopia need not be located anywhere but within humans. Walden Two is more traditional in
linking a consciously created social and economic environment with desired psychological
states.
In large part this new focus is the result of new kinds of problems. The provision of
goods is not now, theoretically, difficult. While goods may be distributed so unevenly that
poverty for some results, production is not the cause of that problem for either Skinner or
Huxley. So while both Walden Two and Island will assume a generally even distribution of
goods and provide structures that encourage everyone to do something productive, neither of
these is the main focus of their utopian efforts. People are not content in either place solely
because of material security, though admittedly that is one of the appeals of Walden Two. Rather,
those who inhabit these utopias are more broadly and fundamentally concerned with the benefits
that come from either one’s self-programming (for Huxley) or the deliberate agreement to be
programmed externally and beneficially (for Skinner). The results are humans at peace with
themselves because they have the tools to overcome the psychological challenges that most
affect them. For Skinner these challenges come in the form of frustrations; for Huxley they take
the form of the tragedy of the human condition.
Walden Two (1946) is also different on a variety of fronts from the other utopian novels
discussed here. It is foremost the product of an academic. Skinner, a psychologist, is impatient
with many previous attempts at describing the perfect society although he, like Huxley, delights
in parading his familiarity with them. This impatience stems from his dissatisfaction with the
bases of these societies. Like some previous utopian authors, Skinner is convinced that changes
to humans’ social, physical and institutional environments will result in different behavior, and
that attention to both hardwiring and programming will bring about a radically better life. Unlike
the others, he sees the main connector between environment and behavior as psychology. As the
science of the inner self, Skinner sees psychology as amenable to study in ways more systematic
and thorough and therefore more productive of useful knowledge than the conceptions of inner
persons supplied by his predecessors, such as More and his crude attempts to steer people away
from gold and jewels.
Walden Two as a place is also different in its emphasis on a particular kind of
attainability. Skinner emphasizes repeatedly that the tools necessary to build the life he describes
are already at hand. No bloody revolution, no technological wizardry, no fortuitous convergence
of cultures, no isolation from the outside world need exist for us to move to a life that is much
more rewarding and efficient than what we currently enjoy. All we need do is take those tools
away from the corporations, rich individuals and other irresponsible and self-interested parties
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and vest them with experts who have the common good as their aim. Thus Walden Two as a
community attains for Skinner what was More impossible dream—not only will everyone be
materially secure, they will also be happy.
The Contexts of Walden Two
Post-World War II America provides the setting for Walden Two. Skinner considers this
time open to a mass interest in utopian communities in general and Walden Two in particular.
While Walden Two is said to have been founded before the war, and thus its roots lie in a general
dissatisfaction with Western, American society, its appeal is both sharpened and broadened by
the effects of the war’s aftermath: the sense of malaise and lack of purpose once the war was
won; the disillusionment with war as a way of achieving goals, and the rejection of post-war
society and its failure to live up to the sacrifices and insights generated by the experiences of
ordinary soldiers. The war also brings another crucial and practical element by removing the
radical individualism of pre-war society and replacing it with a model based on leadership and
solidarity.
Thus Skinner believes that the time is ripe for a new type of scientific utopianism. It
would be founded on the insights into psychology generated by modern science and the
experiences of modern war. It would draw upon the disillusionment with modern capitalism in
its alienation of people from one another, its failure to provide economic security or meaningful
opportunities for creative labor, its economic inefficiencies and gross social dysfunction. Both
the war and the Depression contribute to this disillusionment. In this Skinner looks back to
Bellamy and More as well as Marx in their rejection of modern Western economic systems. But
to a degree that greatly exceeds any of these he sees problems with humans as internal and thus
the improvements that come in his vision for the most part stem from programming. Thus it is
not just the right external environment or the provision of economic security that is key for
Skinner. Rather it is in the scientific approach to programming people from the outside in the
form of carefully calibrated incentives and scientifically-informed training.
Skinner benefits from a variety of developments. He can draw usefully upon the
explosion of utopian literature, of which Looking Backward and News from Nowhere were a part,
written in the late nineteenth century. The creation of utopias as a way of diagnosing problems
and posing solutions is now familiar. Much of the middle class is now a reading public who
might look at such fiction with approval. He also benefits from the accomplishments and prestige
that science has accrued since the 1880s, as well as the perceived effectiveness of planning
during the war. To argue that one has the scientific answer to the problems of the world is to
argue from a position of strength.
The discussions in the book regarding “world peace” also put this in the context
of the beginnings of the Cold War. There is an obvious sense of unease among the
visitors which the founder of Walden, Frazier, does not share. Ostensibly speaking for
Skinner, Frazier rejects the notion that those at Walden are not pursuing actively such a
peace, arguing instead that attaining the good life in itself makes for peace. Such a life
removes the aggressiveness and dissatisfaction that are the cause of war. Thus here as
elsewhere in Skinner’s argument, utopian action on the small scale is said indirectly to
contribute to the resolution of larger problems that are insoluble by the action of large
scale institutions.
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Synopsis and Characteristics

Synopsis
Walden Two has the classical structure of a utopian narrative but with several twists. As
in previous descriptions the community is set apart from ordinary society. One has to engage in a
kind of journey to reach it. Like Utopia and Island, this journey is geographical rather than
temporal. Once in Walden the group of visitors (made up of Burris, the academic psychologist
who serves as the narrator, the ex-soldiers Rogers and Jamnick along with their girlfriends, and
Castle, another academic) are shown around the community, witness the good life in action, have
the basis for the community’s life explained to them, and in the end most are attracted by the life.
As noted above, however, the “discovery” of utopia is different from previous stories. It
comes about as a result of a purposeful journey to find it. Thus while utopia here is closer to
hand than in earlier renderings, it does not come about through happenstance or as a result of
historical inevitability. One must want and pursue it. The ending of the story is also different.
Instead of all the visitors leaving, some stay. Of those who leave, some do so voluntarily and
with relief, some involuntarily and with regret. The protagonist Burris does both. He leaves but
decides to return, not by bus but on foot. He makes the journey a long one to signify in his mind
and those of the readers the consciousness of his decision.
While the two journeys described in the book (the group’s journey to the community and
Burris’s soldierly slog back) underline the fact that the community is not part of ordinary society,
Walden’s isolation is relative. The narrative underscores the fact that the community is close in
both proximity and realization to ordinary people. One does not need to go far outside confines
of current physical or social geography to achieve it. The emphasis throughout is not so much on
difference in the form of newness, uniqueness or outlandish character as on conscious
experimentation. Thus while the community is not ordinary, its appearance and its content are
not wholly surprising to its visitors. People dress much as they do on the outside, pursue the
same types of cultural activities, and appear no more different than one’s neighbors, colleagues
or grandparents. What is different is how they live their lives and how they pursue these
activities. The journeys to the community like the community itself are experiments extending
the familiar rather than activities that bring one from the known to the unknown.
As in Island, the story explicitly explores the different psychological types found in
ordinary society. Those who undertake the journey to the community represent these types as
opposed to the random protagonists found in most preceding utopias. Rogers and Jamnick, the
former soldiers, are disillusioned by what they perceive as the pettiness and dysfunctionality of
postwar America. Having experienced the life changing impact of war as well as the
organization and hierarchical leadership of the army, they are dismayed by the lack of focus and
purpose they now experience. Professor Burris is in some ways a kindred spirit, the difference
being he is of leadership caliber. He is an intellectually superior person dissatisfied with his life.
He has the mental capacities to be a leader of society and a molder of people but is stuck in a
contemporary institution that does not allow him to perform this function properly. He wishes to
make a difference but is for the most part powerless to do so. His abilities are liberated and fully
utilized only when he returns to Walden Two.
Castle, Burris’s academic colleague, is Burris without imagination or flexibility. His is
the life of the mind without awareness. He is ready to dismiss Walden Two and Frazier by
putting them in ready-made categories. He is not conscious; his insecurities lead him to mild
obesity and a lack of manners and grooming. Rogers’ girlfriend Barbara is his counterpart. She is
very conscious of herself and well groomed, but purely by the standards of ordinary society. She,
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too, lacks imagination and flexibility but instead of clinging to an academic life longs for the
standard existence of a socially and economically successful wife and mother. She wishes to join
Rogers in a life defined by prevailing standards and sees Walden Two as too unconventional to
be interesting. She represents the success of contemporary society in socializing ordinary people
to its norms while simultaneously illustrating its failure to make good or interesting humans from
its socialization process. Rogers, Jamnick and the latter’s girlfriend, meanwhile, are fit material
for the Walden Two experience.
Frazier, the originator of Walden Two, exemplifies several important character traits that
have deep philosophical importance for Skinner. He is eccentric by ordinary standards but
practical by those of Walden Two. Like Burris, he is the kind of extraordinary intellectual that is
mostly powerless in ordinary society. But in the small scale of Walden-type communities he is
able to make a significant impact on people’s lives through his leadership in framing social
experiments in behavioral engineering. He is successful in this role but is not the ideal citizen of
the community. As a first generation inhabitant, his upbringing lacks the experimental quality
and therefore engineered finish of those who grow up there. He therefore is better at articulating
the goals of the community than in living up to them, though he is also fits comfortably enough
within this new society.
In terms of leadership Frazier symbolizes the realizability of the community. He is an
example of a successful transition figure. He has the requisite knowledge and can make the
community work despite the fact that he is unable fully to live its life. We can compare his lack
of self-control with that of the children he has helped experimentally to raise. As one of the
extraordinary people necessary to molding the community without having been molded by it, he
is the counterpart of the unmoved mover, the entity that can create something out of nothing.
However, Skinner also wants to argue that the techniques Frazier uses are not new and thus he is
in that sense dependent upon the tools found in that old environment. While he is not the product
of the environment he wishes to create, he is the product of an environment whose seeds are
crucial to that creation.
As a community, Walden Two has many of the attributes of prior utopias. Everyone
works. Housing, food, clothing, medical care and education are communally provided. There are
no economic markets. There is a combination of choice (as with Looking Backwards) along with
intensive programming. People are said to be happy, handsome, satisfied, cultured and fulfilled.
Walden Two is also materially successful, having accumulated the resources necessary to
provide a highly satisfactory material life for its inhabitants through a combination of science,
practical skills, and a pragmatic reliance on the outside world. It emphasizes the importance of
leisure. It is run through a combination of cooperative effort and rule by experts. It is not a
democracy and it is founded on a strictly applied experimental method.
Key Characteristics:
THE IMPORTANCE OF THE COMMUNITY: While individual development is important, everyone
proceeds within the context of the collective. Work, meals, childcare , identity and leisure are
shared. Community norms are the most important, and the community consciously programs its
citizens.
THE CENTRALITY OF SCIENCE AND PLANNING: There is no role here for markets or tradition.
Community and individual lives are thought to be open to complete understanding by means of
observation and experimentation. This allows for the purposeful implementation of what are
believed to be the best policies and practices in the economic, political, social and psychological
realms.
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THE ELIMINATION OF MONEY: People do not work for money; they work for themselves in
the form of a community. Neither food, clothing or housing are rationed, but are provided in kind
to everyone, as is education, health care and leisure. In return everyone is expected to contribute
a set number of work units per year.
DOMINATION BY LEADERS AND EXPERTS: The key to the success of the community is those in
charge. These are not put in place due to voting on the part of the entire population, nor on the
basis of heredity. Rather they are experts who rise through the ranks of their work groups to
become heads of their activity groups.
The Problems Identified by Walden Two
As noted above, Skinner is dissatisfied with much of what modern civilization has done
in producing humans. He is content with science and generally satisfied with technology, but
culture and politics are woefully inadequate in his eyes. It is these that are to blame for poverty,
unhappiness, and crime. More generally they produce humans that are not very attractive in a
moral, intellectual or emotional sense. It is the unattractiveness and unhappiness of humans that
he mainly identifies as problematic.
The Inadequate and Harmful Ways in which People are Molded
Because people are moldable, they can be molded at random by experiences in society
and molded in harmful ways by bad institutions and leaders who lack integrity. This is the case
with modern society, Skinner argues. Modern leaders are either clueless with regard to the
science of human psychology, or ruthless in the use of that psychology to attain their own ends.
Students absorb what is trivial rather than what is really important because they are stuck with
classrooms and lectures. People pursue needless and sometimes harmful material goods in
response to advertising. People kill one another in the name of patriotism and nationalism.
People engage in unethical competitive behavior because of the unequal provision of material
goods and absence of material security. The lack of good faith and good method as well as the
randomness by which people are formed leaves them twisted and distorted.
This shows up in Skinner’s understanding of the prevalence of the deadly sins in
contemporary society. These, Skinner argues, are not innate in people. They do have certain
evolutionary functions, but society is such that they no longer need serve them. We can provide
enough for everyone, and do so in a roughly equal manner. Thus their presence in developed
civilizations is the result frustrations, such as the lack of adequate choice and variety in society
as well as incorrectly applied, random or otherwise harmful customs and traditions. Here, much
like More (who argued that greed comes about through lack of sufficient resources), Skinner
suggests that external conditions have an impact on internal processes, and therefore one can
change the former by changing the latter. Of course Skinner produces a longer list of external
changes than does More, as well as delving more deeply in the kind of social training people are
to undergo, but both are equally critical of contemporary society for seeing all problems as
hardwired into humans and therefore rejecting the solution of change and opting instead for
punishment
Domination of Life by Economic Concerns
Jamnick and his girlfriend Mary wish to stay in Walden because there they will not be
burdened by the need to find jobs and make their way in a society that requires that individuals
generate significant economic resources while at the same time making it difficult for them to do
so. Here it is not so much poverty that is identified, for Steve and Mary would probably fall into
the lower middle class in ordinary society, but the existential and physical price paid by everyone
but the rich for attempting to live a satisfying life in such an environment. Rather than removing
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the burdens of economic life, Skinner implies that modern capitalism is content with letting them
rest on ordinary people.
Skinner tends to depict many problems of ordinary society that are resolved in Walden
Two in terms of material failures or inadequacies. Ordinary society fails to provide good things
for citizens—solid housing, relevant education, sufficient health care, and a clean environment.
These, he argues, are essential factors of the good life that are inadequately addressed in ordinary
society due to a lack of centralization. This stems from several sources, he implies. One is an
excessive suspicion of power. Health and dental care are so good in Walden Two because
doctors and dentists have the authority to require regular checkups and treatment and have
control over the inhabitants’ diet. This would be resisted outside of Walden as authoritarian.
Moreover he points to the neglect of these basics by those who have power. They are simply
uninterested in the general welfare of others, being inadequately conditioned to care for the
larger community and unable to see the connection between the individual and the social selves.
They therefore do not see that public funds go to such, for Skinner, public goods. Ordinary
leaders are also often ignorant of sound scientific methods and though they recognize that people
can be molded, they do not adequately understand the molding process, do not have the time to
engage experimentally in that process, or are not interested in molding people so that the
community’s interest is placed first.
It is these inadequacies more than the problems of slums and other manifestations of
economic inequality that inform the important part of Skinner’s critique. For Skinner, economic
injustice is not a matter of economic problems, a poor society, or just an incorrect ideology. Nor
is it only a matter of material deprivation. It is also a matter of consciousness, frustration and a
lack of correctly-understood technique. Thus he does not argue that problems will disappear just
because labor is better utilized or efficiently mobilized. Efficient use of labor for him is not just
for the purpose of increasing production, but also for the creation of leisure. So rather than
attributing poverty and the lack of services primarily to economic structures, Skinner argues that
these problems are at bottom the products of leadership and psychological programming. A
correctly molded leadership that approached tasks experimentally would not allow slums to arise
and a correctly molded people would not put up with them. It is a matter of expectations and
desire, not technology or knowledge what makes for a productive economy that is the
problem.Thus the primary focus should not be on which economic system creates the most value
most efficiently, but rather on finding and empowering a leadership that will, pragmatically and
experimentally, find the right system or mix of systems that will lead to the greatest
psychological satisfaction for everyone. In this sense economic problems ultimately the problem
of faulty psychological programming and incorrect political structures.
The Unfulfilling Nature of Work and the Imbalance of Work and Leisure
The material failures of preceding societies in turn points to the most important part of
their inadequacy: no prior society, including modern American capitalist society, could provide
everyone the chance to support themselves through the experimentally sound organization of
work. Past societies either were not organized to allow anyone an enjoyable or pleasurable work
experience (by trapping everyone in narrow occupations) or only allowed a few to do so (by
freeing them of all work and allowing them to pursue their interests at their leisure). Engaging in
satisfying because chosen forms of work that allow one and the community to survive while also
providing for leisure is the ideal. It is an important part of what makes people happy. Frazier
articulates this ideal in part when he argues that Walden Two strives “to avoid uninteresting and
uncreative work”. Walden Two therefore tries to do without the things that are provided by such
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work. But being unable completely to eliminate such work means that Walden Two puts more
emphasis on the other portion of the ideal. The fair solution is to adopt the policy outlined in
Looking Backward of rewarding people who do uninteresting or arduous work with more leisure.
Likewise Skinner has Frazier extol the merits of the four hour workday and emphasize the justice
of allowing everyone to have leisure. The fact that contemporary and past societies did not give
people their choice of work, trapped many people in unfulfilling and brutal forms of labor, and
did not allow everyone adequate amounts of leisure (usually with those engaged in unpleasant
work also working the longest hours) is damning in his eyes.
Incompetent and Inadequate Leadership and Political Structures
Skinner argues that political and social leaders, at least those who are supposed to be in
charge of community affairs, do not understand their tasks. They are inadequately acquainted
with scientific psychology, and hold mistaken views on the nature of humans, the character of
economics and the problems of human relationships. They follow fads or traditions or mistaken
political philosophies that leave them ill-equipped to create a society in which everyone can be
happy and fulfilled. They are also not civic minded and care little about the material well-being
of the members of the community. It is these two things—the lack of scientifically applied
programming and the neglect of civic affairs—with which he is most outraged.
Skinner also maintains that our understanding of power is warped. On the one hand we
starve government, political leaders and experts of necessary power in the fear they will turn into
tyrants. So we create burdensome procedures, checks and balances, and negative rights that
prevent them from doing the paternalistic job required (that is, if they were equipped to do so).
On the other hand we ignore the fact that great power is wielded by those who privately
command material resources and access to our intellects. They can mold culture and society at
will through structuring our material environments, publishing journalism and literature, creating
advertisements, influencing our educational systems and peddling various philosophies and
forms of entertainment. By shackling community leadership we let these people run amok, with
the result that people are conditioned either at random, or in such a way that their actions will
materially benefit those who do the conditioning. No one looks after the common good or
community interest. No one is charged with making people happy. No one prevents those with
non-political power from doing anything they please. The result is that we are at the mercy of
corporations, churches and so called “opinion leaders”.
Thinking About Problems in Walden Two
While Skinner points to political structures as part of fundamentals of the problems we
face, his is not really an institutional or structural analysis. He is much more concerned with
psychology and culture, including those parts of programming and culture that involve making
everyone but especially leaders, civic minded. In his understandings structures and institutions
come from those more basic factors. If we think about the world correctly (or rather we have the
right people in power who think about the world correctly), then we can make it a better place,
including and especially providing material security to everyone. But if we don’t think about the
world correctly, if our socialization and culture are faulty, then it doesn’t matter which
institutions we have. For example if we reformed political power in the way Skinner
recommends but don’t have community-minded experts in the places of power, nothing will
change.
Accepting Skinner’s views on problems means understanding that the problems we face
cannot be fixed by policy changes or even fundamental institutional reform. It also means
thinking about economic problems from more than an economic standpoint, as to some degree
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did Bellamy and Morris. Our problems are more fundamental than the excesses of capitalism or
even the effects of civilization. Skinner’s diagnosis goes to the origins of human communities, as
he himself argues through Frazier. His argument is that the very existence of communities
requires socializing people to act in certain ways and to exhibit certain kinds of traits. Problems
arise when socialization creates dysfunctional traits either through the desire to profit from such
traits or through ignorance and misinformation.
Skinner would argue that his approach is both basic and infinitely useful. The problems
he identifies afflict all systems and have been with us for thousands of years despite all the
evolution of economic, political and social systems and all deliberate attempts at reform.
Skeptics might argue that to attribute our problems to psychology and culture is to look at the
world in an upside down fashion—don’t institutions and structures create those things rather than
the other way around? Skinner, they would argue, is looking at parts of the symptoms of the
problems rather than the causes.
Human Nature in Walden Two
As we saw in Chapter One, Skinner comes close to thinking that humans are completely
programmable. Sometimes it appears that he thinks humans are completely blank slates, or to
change metaphors, completely empty vessels to be filled with whatever traits society and their
environments provide them. This is not strictly correct, for Skinner does locate a long list of
important innate characteristics in humans. But these do not naturally cohere into a whole. While
they are not inherently contradictory as they are for Zamyatin, they do not naturally add up to an
attractive human. Skinner attributes some of this to the necessities of survival and evolution, and
in so doing argues that some attributes may be usefully dropped and that he has found the way to
eliminate them painlessly.
Humans are Moldable and Programmable from the Outside
In Walden most of the changes in human behavior are attained through programming.
While it is true that environmental factors play a role—the provision of material needs and the
availability of comely mates are seen as important to satisfying hardwired needs for survival and
reproduction—for the most part the important work is done through changing the way humans
internally process information and act on stimuli.
While what is changed is external, programming is generally done from the outside
Walden Two. People do not develop self-control and other desirable traits from their own inner
resources; unlike Island, Walden Two is not filled with people who program themselves. People
are conditioned to like this rather than that, and to avoid anti-social behavior. This includes
programming to eliminate undesirable emotions such as sorrow, hate, jealousy, rage, envy, and
unhappiness, as well as the institution of methods that teach self-control. “We can,” Frazier
argues, “make men adequate for group living—to the satisfaction of everybody”.
Thus the good human that Skinner reveals is largely artificial. It is the result of
experimentation and engineering being applied to the raw materials at hand. Unlike Morris,
Skinner is not seeking to strip away additions to human characters (though he wants us to drop
certain characteristics useful to the struggles historically engaged in to survive), nor like Bellamy
merely changing the environment so human potential can be revealed. Skinner builds the good
human, selecting along the way the materials he wishes to use and discard, and deciding how
those materials are to be placed within humans. In this he is much less like More than he is
Neville, who also thought that good humans were built through confrontations with their
environment. The difference of course is that Skinner sees more raw materials available within
humans, rejects the notion that humans must ceaselessly struggle to overcome their environment
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in order to build virtue, sees the building as an explicit, conscious and human endeavor, and sees
the result of the work of programming as a more perfect place than Neville could ever hope we
could attain. For him life can be close to being on vacation without the harmful effects that
Neville identifies.
Humans Have Ineradicable, Hardwired Needs
Not all parts of human nature are amenable to programming in Skinner’s view. There are
hardwired wants, desires and characteristics that the community at times takes into account, at
others attempts to avoid, and at others attempts to take advantage. An important list of these
constants is as follows: the need to survive and procreate, and the desire for variety, for human
contact, for free time, for the choice of activities, for the conquest of Nature and for beauty. The
first needs are given; where Skinner differs from others is in his understanding of other
hardwired attributes. Skinnerian people inherently value a leisurely, yet active life over a busy
life that compels them to always be on the move. They are physical beings who need manual
activities to remain in good physical and psychological health. They are social beings who need
human contact. They are self-interested and self-regarding, but that fixation on the self can be
transferred from the individual and family to a larger (but perhaps not too large) community such
that the individual regards society as the self. People are also naturally curious, though this
aspect of their lives is often wiped out by modern society. Frazier argues that these constants
translate into the continuing relevance of the laws of economics, which can be suspended no
more than can the laws of physics. This means that psychological engineering must be focused
on working around and with those laws such that the community can either take best advantage
of them or ameliorate their effects.
Humans are Inherently Competitive and Innately Desire to Conquer Nature
Frazier argues that a central feature of humans is that they are competitive beings whose
survival has traditionally depended upon the force of individual competitiveness. Society has
always functioned to manage and control this aspect of humans. One cannot eliminate either this
competitive nature or society’s function in controlling it. Since competition can have very
harmful side effects, it has to be channeled so that it is focused on the conquest of Nature and of
the character of humans and not, as Frazer puts it, on the conquest of other humans.
This understanding also marks a similarity to and difference from Bellamy. Bellamy is
ambivalent about competition. On the one hand he sees economic competition as destructive. On
the other he sees people putting their competitive nature to good use by working hard to attain
non-material rewards. Skinner likewise suggests that some forms of competitiveness are no
longer useful and serve to undermine rather than advance the good life. But he seems to place
more manifestations of competitiveness in the forbidden column than does Bellamy. He rejects
systems that motivate people through differential material rewards. He also does not want
awards, medals or other marks of social esteem to invade Walden communities. Thus the
practice of awarding hero status to hard workers, inventors and the like that Bellamy embraces,
as well as the use of the competitive desire for power that Bellamy employs, are all absent here.
Thus Frazier, though he is the founder of the community and makes many important decisions, is
relatively anonymous and is not accorded any higher degree of respect than any other member of
the community. He must work hard for the sake of a socially-formed inner satisfaction, not for
tokens of esteem.
The desire to conquer Nature is linked with Skinner’s understanding of competitiveness,
and as with that attribute has a double edge. On the one hand it can run amok, as in ordinary
society, creating an environment in which goods are created either for the sake of doing so or for
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the sake of the wholesale consumption that helps compensate for frustrations. This side must be
channeled and controlled. Nature must be seen only as a source of necessities, not the grounds
for the completion of humans. On the other hand this attribute provides a useful and allowable
motivation for work. Walden Two does not have to rely upon either material or non-material
incentives, for it recognizes that people want to work as a way of measuring themselves against
Nature. This is not the satisfaction derived from creative labor. It is rather akin to Neville’s
understanding of environmental challenges. As with Neville, Skinner sees Nature providing
challenges to humans that make them exercise their capacities and abilities. But where Neville
wants Nature to force itself on humans in the form of the necessity to work to provide
themselves the means for survival with civilization, culture and science as the result, Skinner
understands humans as seeking out Nature. They view work as a competition with Nature, a kind
of satisfying letting out of energy and a pleasing chance to measure one’s abilities, in the same
way that solving a mathematical problem allows one to work off intellectual energy while
providing the satisfaction of having overcome a challenge, or climbing a mountain uses physical
energy and generates pride in accomplishing a difficult feat. It is here that Skinner seems to
approach Morris’s understanding of work as pleasurable and natural. The difference with Morris
is that Skinner does not see most people as completing themselves in work. There are some
(those who are the most competitive) for whom work does provide meaning for their lives. But
for everyone else, given the congenial programming and environment that Walden provides,
work satisfies only one important desire among many, with fulfillment coming through the kinds
of free creation that usually occur in the domain of leisure
People Want Small-Scale Choices but are Indifferent to Large Scale Autonomy
Skinner assumes that people will want to be free to make a particular set of decisions
affecting their lives—when to eat, what work to perform, which leisure activities to pursue. In
this they do not want to be controlled overtly by the community, though one must recognize that
even those decisions are importantly influenced by the community (choice of work, for example,
is influenced by the number of work credits attached to each activity). In contrast he argues that
most people do not wish to concern themselves with large-scale decisions, such as community
planning and other political matters. Indeed he argues they wish to be freed from such concerns
and worries to be able to concentrate on their everyday lives. In this he turns More on his head.
His proposition is that people will put up with little choice in their daily lives but will receive
satisfaction from participating in the overall direction of the community through their choice of
leaders.
This is initially puzzling. Skinner seems to assume that most people are either unable to
recognize that their small-scale decisions are importantly influenced by large decisions, or that
they are capable of placing faith in experts or others to arrange large scale decisions in ways that
are pleasing to them. Most times Skinner appears to assume the latter. In this he further
emphasizes the pragmatic character of ordinary people. So long as society works and they can
make the decisions that most immediately impact their lives, they are not interested in larger
community matters.
People Desire both Leisure and Congenial Work
Skinner places special emphasis on the notion that humans need both work and leisure to
fulfill themselves, but the work must be freely chosen and not brutish in nature. Humans are
partly materially creative beings. They are also beings who are curious, aesthetically aware and
needful of aesthetic satisfaction. Thus Skinner through Frazier tends ultimately to tilt toward the
leisure, emphasizing the amount of leisure time in the community, the spread of leisure among
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everyone, and the products of leisure, particularly art. Leisure in turn is not just rest, nor is it
vegetation. To be free from work during significant parts of the day (as with Looking Backward,
where it is concentrated in the latter parts of one’s life) allows one to pursue other activities
which are not immediately productive of material value but are nonetheless creative, usually
aesthetically and therefore also valuable to human lives. Here Skinner emphasizes art in
particular as an important product of leisure. While the whole process of becoming human does
not come only after the press of making a living is over, some parts of the process do occur only
at that time. Thus with regard to art Frazier argues that artistic accomplishments occur out of
“personal relations which are social or cultural rather than biological,” implying that it is leisure
and happiness that allows for the greater part of becoming human rather than the necessary
overcoming of life-threatening challenges, the act of creating things materially in order to
survive, or even innate talent. The same premises are also true, he holds, of scientific inquiry.
Thus Skinner’s attitude here seems to be a combination of Morris’s and More’s. Like Morris he
sees humans as creative beings who can find fulfillment in work. But like More he emphasizes
leisure and argues that leisure should be used to improve the person not merely to rest the mind
and body.
People are Inherently Different in Terms of Intellectual Abilities
Skinner rejects the notion that intellectual differences are environmentally or culturally
induced. People have different capacities in the sense that some are innately more gifted than
others. Those who are more gifted should be placed in positions of responsibility where they
make important decisions regarding the organization and functioning of the community. To put
people of inferior abilities and without the needed intellectual gifts into positions of
responsibility and leadership for reasons of equity or democratic equality is wrong. It harms the
community because such people will act incompetently. Thus Skinner assumes that a well
organized community is hierarchical in terms of power and decision-making, but at the same
time holds that this hierarchy should not be accompanied by gradations of respect or wealth.
While people are intellectually different, they are all equally deserving of respect and material
support. Thus those experts who make decisions that mold the life of the community are allowed
no more leisure or material goods than any other member of the community.
Thinking About Human Nature in Walden Two
For a theorist who relies mostly upon programming to attain humanity’s ends, Skinner
identifies a surprisingly long list of hardwired traits. But in some ways this explains Skinner’s
obsession with programming. All that hardwire does not program itself—it needs direction, and
that direction inevitably comes from the outside. It is up to us to provide it sensibly and justly.
His emphasis on the natural competitive nature of humans and on their indifference to large scale
decisions both informs his understanding of where problems have originated previously
(competition and the need to constrain it both create problems, while indifference leads to a
neglect of political structures and the whole subject of programming and socialization) and
allows him to come up with easy solutions.
Accepting this understanding of human nature means that we must consider closely both
how we wish people to act (since much of their action is within the realm our ability to change)
and what it is that makes people human. Skinner’s human is competitive, yet potentially social;
hardworking but desirous of leisure, and insistent on choice but not interested in large political
questions. Such a creature does not seem to fit well with capitalism, an individualistic society, or
any type of democracy that demands attention to politics and political involvement.
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Skinner would hold that only a close attention to psychology reveals human nature.
While he is adverse to historical arguments, he might also hold that the fact that societies mold
their citizens in a variety of ways, that elites always control power, and that except for times of
great unrest people do not appear to have been overly concerned with politics supports his view.
An opponent might wonder whether the differences among different societies really are that
great, and point to the fact that popular unrest has not been an isolated feature of history.
Themes
The themes Skinner emphasizes all trace back in some way to a scientific understanding
of life. Even aesthetics in his understanding can be understood and supported by a scientific
mindset.
Behavioral Modifications
Walden Two is based on the principle that human actions are moldable from the outside.
Humans, Skinner holds, are beings who react to their environment and can be trained to act in
ways that are conducive to communal harmony and happiness at the same time retaining some
elements of individual choice. This theme is discussed throughout the book but the strongest
metaphor is the nursery. Here children are cared for communally from the beginning and placed
in a special, controlled environment that provides them with all but only the stimuli they need to
grow into well-adjusted persons, and they do so in a graduated and controlled rather than
random, disjointed and uncontrolled fashion. Frazier argues that Walden Two is engaged in
activities that are typical of all communities. In this argument utopia is not unlike ordinary
society, the difference being the consciousness of the efforts to control behavior and the benign
intentions of those who engage in the control.
This project of control as channeling should be approached experimentally, Skinner
emphasizes. He argues throughout the book that the premise of Walden Two with regard to
modifying behavior is already in place— society controls individuals by taking advantage of the
fact that they are both irreducibly competitive and that their competitive nature is not absolutely
fixed. Society trains people through customs, traditions and mores to concentrate on non-harmful
goals. So there is nothing creepy nor totalitarian in what he proposes. The assumption that people
in ordinary society are rugged, self-created individuals is a myth. They are formed, molded and
have their behavior modified to the same extent as it is in Walden. The difference in Walden is
how the task of molding is carried out. Its techniques are effective, promote the larger goals of
Walden, and relieve rather than create frustrations
Functionality
Functionality is important to Skinner for a variety of reasons. First, it goes to the theme of
living inexpensively. While some parts of the book hint that this was a theme thrust on the
community by its initial circumstances, Skinner has Frazier develop this into an independent
virtue. As in Utopia and News from Nowhere, Skinner believes that people should live simply
and inexpensively, as this allows for the community to enjoy a sufficiency of material goods with
the least expenditure of time and effort. Here the emphasis is not on the substitution of labor for
capital outlays (as the community attempts to reduce the time spent in labor much further than
does either More or Bellamy) but in what can be saved by efficient attention to detail. One
example is the staggered schedule for meals. This allows the community to get by with smaller
spaces and less equipment that is used almost continuously, rather than bigger spaces and more
equipment that is often left idle. Others include the communal care of children and the
dispensing of most clothes for babies in favor of a warm environment and easily cleaned
materials.
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Second, functionality informs the processes of change and experimentation. In Walden

everything is open to experimentation with an eye towards engineering. This puts
experimentation on a practical footing, as knowledge is not sought for the purposes of gaining a
foundational understanding of things. Rather it is geared for immediate application in the life and
function of the community. Here the tea service is the primary example.
Third, the leaders of Walden as those who engage in scientific experiments pay close
attention to the effect of physical, external factors on the psychological well-being and training
of its inhabitants. The community must be able to survive both physically and temperamentally.
What can be done to make the community more materially successful? People surrounded by
beauty are happier than when they are not—do changes increase beauty? People who live in
functionally useful surroundings are more psychologically stable than when they do not so live.
Which changes can make life easier for the ordinary person? Every aspect of life in Walden is
therefore evaluated carefully in terms of a variety of criteria: primary functional criteria (things
must be done for the community to survive), secondary functional criteria (things which must be
done should be done in such a way that the quality of life is enhanced) and psychological criteria
(things should be done in ways that promote stability, beauty, contentment, harmony, good
health, and a positive outlook on life).
Beauty
This theme is treated as something of importance, just as it is in News from Nowhere. But
where in the latter beauty is the product of absence (the absence of continuous hard work
preserves the beauty of people; no heavy industry preserves the beauty of nature), here beauty is
either the product of or preserved by artificial means. The beauty of Walden’s external
environment is the product of skillful engineering and planning. Trees are preserved, vistas
opened up, and natural beauties brought inside by the arrangement of buildings and windows.
Likewise the beauty of the women is the product of deftly designed clothing. Thus beauty is seen
as something to be striven for and attained only with effort and conscious design. Like other
parts of Walden, it must be engineered; it is not natural.
The emphasis on planning, experimentation, and engineering, as we saw above, is said to
result in beauty not so much by transforming physical appearances or only by addressing internal
factors but also and importantly by arranging external things like the landscape and clothing into
harmonious and elegant wholes. The same is true of enjoyment. It is the result of careful
planning of externalities, like the arrangement of the landscape. This turns ordinary living into
something that is more than ordinary in an aesthetic sense. To live in Walden is akin to being on
an extended vacation, with a myriad of activities and social events available for enjoyment every
evening and on holidays. Thus Burris notes of the evening activities on “The Walk”: “I was
reminded of the deck of a large liner,” and latter “Superficially, the place resembled a big
summer hotel. A large number of people, without homes in the usual sense, with few
responsibilities and a good deal of leisure, were brought into contact with each other during a
great part of each day.”
Thus beauty is a good that comes from using resources consciously, generally with an
eye towards functionality. Beauty doesn’t come generally from using materials that possess
intrinsically pleasing qualities (most buildings are constructed from rammed earth, for example,
rather than the brick, stone and marble that characterizes the structures of Morris’s future), but in
using simple materials with an eye towards aesthetic pleasure. Nor does it come only from the
absence of stress. Enjoyment and leisure, as parts of an aesthetically pleasing and therefore
beautiful life is said to be the result of a conscious and deliberate use of resources to enhance the
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quality of life of Walden’s inhabitants. Passageways are used not only to connect buildings, but
also as vista’s for viewing the countryside and for social gathering spaces. Water storage areas
are also used for swimming. Lawns are used to graze sheep and ducks are kept for both food and
the delight of children.
Variety
The melding of functionality, engineering, beauty and attention to psychology is also said
to be productive of variety. Skinner has Frazier remark continuously on the variety of interests
people hold, their variety of skills and their variety of activities. Here variety is as important as it
is to Bellamy. The small, functional scale of Walden and its attention to psychology is said to
produce conditions that satisfy the need and desire for variety. This runs somewhat counter to
what one would expect—small groups are often associated with sameness, conformity, a limited
range of differences, and the lack of resources necessary to produce experiences that are varied.
Skinner holds the opposite, arguing that it is the large scale of things that produces conformity
and sameness and logistically prevents people from satisfying their particular desires. To break
the large into the small creates the opportunity to perform the same functions differently or in
different settings, so as to produce different experiences and satisfy a range of different desires,
as Frazier demonstrates by showing his visitors the variety of dining rooms available.
Leadership
Walden Two, as noted above, is not about democracy. While all inhabitants are invited to
comment on the arrangements in the community and collectively decide whether to change the
code by which the community lives, in most important matters it is leaders who make decisions
based on their knowledge and expertise. Skinner argues that this is nothing new—communities
have always been hierarchically arranged when it comes to power. This should not change,
though he does reject the conflation with power differentials with those of material wealth and
social status.
Thus for the most part the living conditions in Walden are created and controlled by
leaders. They do the heavy intellectual lifting in terms of planning, both in the short term and in
any strategic sense. They are generally responsible to each other—those who, on rare occasions,
must be removed due to incompetence appear to be reassigned through the actions of other
leaders rather than action on the part of ordinary members of the community. And for the most
part their decisions go unreviewed by the community as a whole. Political structures here are for
the most part executive, with little notice taken of representation and with no conception of
anything like review by a judiciary.
The other part of this condition is the fact that these people are recognized as leaders and
are part of a leadership group. This means in Skinner’s scheme that no one else can do anything
that would affect the entire community. If a non-leader wants to make such a change, the
proposal must be submitted to the leadership and sometimes to the community as a whole. In this
sense all power over matters affecting the community is centralized in one group of hands. This
ensures that no one exercises power without the general awareness of the community and that
changes are not introduced in a haphazard fashion. In this political sense Skinner emulates the
One State in attempting to eliminate randomness.
Thinking About the Themes in Walden Two
While Skinner is a psychologist and a writer of utopian fiction, there are several
interesting parallels here with the One State, as alluded to immediately above. The themes that
permeate the story can also be attributed to mathematics—functionality, simplicity, even
aesthetic beauty can be attributed to mathematical logic. This is in keeping with the notion that
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this is a scientific utopia, founded upon sound scientific method (experimentation) and
maintained by a particular methodology that Skinner argues is scientific.
To accept these themes is to think about our community as it stands as a messy set of
unscientific compromises. We do not necessarily set policy now on the basis of experimentation
and functionality, but through a process that is informed by clashing interests and divergent
understandings of the world. The result is often not aesthetically pleasing nor functional, though
it does have the virtue of a wide participation of people, views and methodologies, all of which
would have to be sacrificed if we embraced the Walden way.
Skinner would hold that any rational person would automatically recognize the
superiority of the Walden way. Who would not want functionality and beauty while at the same
time keeping variety? What we have is the realization of More’s hopes, including that of
communal solidarity, without the blandness and standardization he was forced to concede.
Critics might question the ascendancy of science and technical knowhow here. The beauty and
functionality of Walden is that conveyed by engineering—would we want to be engineered? Are
we really only the raw materials out of which society is built? Do we want to be thought of as
the equivalent of a bridge? Isn’t it better to be individually autonomous in messy world than be
the object of scientific experimentation in an ostensibly more perfect place?
Solutions
Where the themes Skinner employs can be traced back to science, the solutions he
proposes are animated by self-awareness. To plan, to use science, to modify behavior, to inject
variety and beauty into life are all self-aware actions. Solving problems means being conscious
of what is being done to the community. To an extent this is true for all members of the
community. They must be aware of what is going on in their daily lives and in the life of the
community. But it is really the leaders to whom this most applies, for it is they who are most
responsible for solving the problems of contemporary society.
Experimentation and Engineering
These are related solutions that go in hand with the theme of functionality. Walden does
not take for granted ways of living and working. Everything, hypothetically, is open to
experimental investigation, the result of which is a piece of mechanical or social engineering that
improves the functionality of what is examined. Here “experimentation” is taken in a quasi-
scientific fashion. It has an analytic component (people break down large processes or wholes
into constituent parts) and a practical component (observation of what happens when various
components are rearranged, changed, dropped or substituted). When improvements in a process
are verified, then it is incorporated into the community. Part of the improvement itself is also
attention to psychological detail. Nothing is changed externally without an eye towards
psychological affects. Thus changes that might lead to greater efficiency are rejected if their
psychological impact is harmful, though for the most part Skinner seems to suggest that every
efficiency that involves breaking large groups into smaller ones will inevitably have a beneficial
psychological effect, as he has Frazier argue with regard to the “staggered schedule” system.1
Yet while experimentation and engineering are seen as part of functionality, the
emphasis is not on regimentation; rather, it is on flexibility, even though new methods are
expected to be followed by everyone. To experiment in this context implies the
1
This has to do with working hours and the use of communal facilities such as the dining rooms. Note here
the importance of scheduling coincides in part with a similar emphasis in We. To be fair, however,
Skinner’s point here is that correct scheduling allows for flexibility and choice rather than the
standardization and regimentation that is the heart of We’s Table of Hours.
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willingness to change, sometimes dramatically, practices and norms. This is necessitated

both by the need to find the best possible way of doing things (under the assumption that
existing methods are not the best) as well as by the perceived need to continue changing
to keep up with a changing world. This is demonstrated by Frazier’s dismissal of
monasteries and other static institutions whose survival, he argues, is due to their
rejection of and isolation from the outside world. Despite their longevity he nonetheless
deems these communities failures because they can not keep up with our ever expanding
understanding of human needs and goods and cannot compete with conventional society.
To expose these communities to the outside word is to destroy them, he asserts, while
Walden Two exists side by side with its conventional competitors. It can compete and
hold its own and demonstrate its ultimate superiority because of its flexibility in pursuing
its “drive to the future”.
All this means of course that Skinner follows More in arguing that customs and in
general ways of doing things are artificial rather than natural. There is no natural law that
dictates the arrangements of political communities. Humans being moldable, customs and
arrangements can and do vary. The trick to happiness is to find those ways that are the
most functional and the most psychologically congenial to humans given their
hardwiring.
Paradigm of the Small
Frazier argues that many human problems are amenable to solution by small
groups. Small scales are better for interpersonal relations, as they allow for real
interaction. Small scales allow for good observation and reliable gathering of data. Small
scales are said to convey needed services more efficiently. Small scales are also said to be
efficient in other ways, as small spaces and small institutions are more flexible, can be
used for a variety of purposes, and avoid the logistical problems that beset the large, such
as overcrowding and pollution.
In addition to dealing more efficiently and more effectively with material and
organizational matters, the small scale is also said to contribute decisively to the
resolution of pressing problems that are caused by and are not soluble by large
institutions. The technique here is to build from the small to the large by way of
accumulating the benefits of the small rather than transferring the responsibilities of the
small to the large. To operate on a large scale effectively means aggregating what can
only be achieved on the small scale. So in the case of Walden the effects of changes are
measured first in terms of the satisfaction of individuals rather than on their effects on the
community taken as a whole. The assumption is that if individuals’ lives are enhanced,
this will automatically translate into a better communal life.
Living in smaller rather than larger communities is said generally to enhance the quality
of life. Small groups are psychologically easier to control. Small groups allow for responsibilities
for communal matters to be fixed more strongly than large groups and crowds. Small groups
allow for more individual space, more choice of activities, and more meaningful work
experiences. Small groups are more efficient in the attachment of people to those who have
similar interests, and are more satisfying to psychologically sound people, whereas crowds only
appeal to those who are otherwise starved for human contact. There is a tradeoff with material
efficiency but Skinner suggests that if the community is of sufficient size then this tradeoff, as
compared with the efficiencies achieved by super-sized communities, is not meaningful.
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Recognition of the Difference between what is Natural and What is Artificial

Skinner’s insistence on differentiating between the natural and the artificial is one of the
important points of contact between Walden and earlier utopian writings. It has always been the
case that utopians condemn ordinary society for thinking that problematic conditions are natural
and unchangeable. Skinner thinks the same, but goes further in arguing that a scientific
understanding of humans is necessary to understanding where this boundary lies in all aspects of
human life.
Thus part (though not all) of the emphasis on functionality, efficiency and behavioral
engineering in Walden converges on the understanding that molding behavior must take into
account what is natural. While the community must engage in the molding of behavior, implying
plasticity, it must also understand that there are unalterable human characteristics. We saw this
above in the example of competition and it is mirrored in the attitude taken towards sex and
reproduction. The urge to procreate is present naturally at an early age and rather than artificially
deny youths’ urge in that area (as did most conventional societies of the time), the community
encourages it in the form of early marriages and childbearing. Here engineering isn’t so much
about creating new ways of life and organization than in removing what is seen as harmful
practices, thus allowing people to return to something that is natural in the sense that it is
hardwired. Following the natural way (and simultaneously recognizing that existing norms, in
this instance the norm of later marriages, are artificial and changeable) in turn creates harmony
and good will. Frazier seems to argue, as with Morris, that harmony is natural, and that it is often
the artificial denial of natural urges by arbitrary norms which produces the frustration and
aggression that in turn create disharmony and ill will.
On the other hand Skinner also recognizes that many parts of human life are totally and
ineradicably artificial. The key to this understanding is the realization that artificial parts of
human life are changeable and should be changed so as to take into account the unchangeable,
natural parts of humans. The norm against the expression of gratitude is an example here. The
Walden norm turns on its head the usual social custom. Its successful reversal here (allegedly)
shows first that the norm is artificial and is changeable, and second that most cultural norms are
psychologically rooted and should be adjusted so as to attain the best psychological and social
programming. As Frazier notes at one point, it is psychology that is fundamental; get it right and
all the rest will follow. Thus if gratitude is seen as a barrier to efficiency and solidarity in a
particular context, then the norm of expressing gratitude should be changed so that people will be
re-conditioned not to express it.
Thus behavioral engineering cannot be seen as only the attempt to manipulate humans to
fit a particular mold. The concept of engineering does imply this and it is true that in many ways
Skinner wants to modify what humans are by permanently eliminating some characteristics that
have hitherto been expressed. But there is more to the story, as is illustrated by Skinner’s
treatment of emotions. Emotions insofar as they are encouraged or eliminated based on their
usefulness to society and to the individual, are not mysteries or random accretions to human
nature according to Skinner. Nor is the attempt to regulate them an attempt to remake humans in
an arbitrary fashion. Skinner argues for an evolutionary understanding of the function of
emotions and thus the susceptibility of emotions to rational study and manipulation with regard
to wider social goals and the ineradicable parts of human nature.
Emotions we consider negative, like rage and jealousy, played an important role in the
survival of humans when operating within the previous contexts of untrammeled competition, he
argues. A negative emotion serves to “energize one to attack a frustrating condition”. Walden
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Two would like to eliminate negative emotions so as to emphasize group cohesiveness. But the
community cannot merely attempt to eliminate them in isolation from other considerations. To
attempt to remove an undesired trait without altering outside conditions that sustain the trait
would be a useless, counterproductive and ultimately destructive endeavor. So for Frazier, traits
like emotions are conditioned by material and social environments. Thus, for example, it would
be useless to eliminate anger in a hyper-competitive environment, just as it is cruel and
ultimately vain to punish theft in situations where many people are starving and others live
sumptuously. To alter or eliminate an undesirable trait one must change all the relevant set of
conditions. In the case of jealousy, the altered conditions must consist not just in discouraging
the expression of jealousy but its elimination in the form of the provision of many equally
desirable opportunities that forestall the frustration experienced when a particular object of desire
is unobtainable. This is what Frazier argues Walden Two achieves. While people in Walden do
not always get what they want, they eventually do get something they desire in place of the
original object of desire. Thus there are no discernible jealousies.
When the recognition of what is natural and what is artificial and the accompanying
understanding of the relations between traits and environments is correctly grasped, the result is
the attainment of individual happiness and contentment as well as social harmony and loyalty,
Skinner argues. An example of the latter is illustrated by the Walden way of bringing up
children. The very strong attachments between children and parents we witness in conventional
society, Frazier argues, is largely the result of environments in which nuclear families by
necessity are the norm. In Walden, where children live communally with their peers and are
looked after by a collection of adults, those ties are unnecessary, as children are in this situation
not dependent on their parents for survival or education. Nuclear families are not the norm.
Moreover since the goal of the community is to strengthen communal ties, the attachments
formed by nuclear families are not desirable. Thus parents are encouraged to look upon all
children as their own and while they do recognize their own children and spend more time with
them than with others, time is not spent exclusively with those children. In this way the
conventional attachments between children and parents, which in their exclusivity are artificial,
can be changed. This is possible because Frazier holds that love and affection are the products of
psychology and culture rather than blood ties—i.e., they are artificially and socially rather than
biologically and naturally produced. Thus in place of exclusive family units tied together by
emotions, the entire community becomes the extended family, with children able to identify with
and pattern themselves after any member of the community in whose activities or life they have
an interest. Note this arrangement is equally artificial, but is said to have the benefit of
encouraging solidarity and flexibility. We see some of the same kinds of family arrangements in
both Utopia and Island (while Orwell explores a less benign relationship between the community
and children in Nineteen Eighty-Four).
Thinking About Solutions in Walden Two
Even more than the other utopians considered here, Skinner takes a detached view of
human communities, much as does Frazier in the story. The subject is human happiness and
Skinner treats it much in the same way as a scientist approaches the problem of attaining clean
drinking water. Skinner hints that such distance is necessary. If one gets too close to the subject,
the result can be a variety of problems, including jealous attempts to control the community
single-handedly and a stubborn attachment to preconceived notions. This attitude in turn is
reflected in the actual solutions, which involve the conscious and systematic application of
knowledge to the problems at hand.
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Thinking about solutions in this fashion means rethinking politics. It would no longer be
about representation of interests or different viewpoints but about science. It would not
encourage passions but detachment. It would require the kind of training and close study beyond
the capabilities of most people, including the businessmen who now continuously attempt to
translate their experience and expertise from the private to the public sector.
Skinner would argue that it is foolhardy to think about solving our problems through any
other approach. Why wouldn’t we want to approach the disorganization and poverty of our
society and the unhappiness of our citizens in any way but through science? Aren’t those
problems just as important and just as pressing as that of clean water? Why should we apply our
best minds to the latter and leave the former to demagogues, charlatans, and hacks? Critics might
argue that the chore of thinking about these problems is more complex than Skinner describes. Is
it possible to approach those subjects in a disinterested fashion? And isn’t the study of humans
and human practices different from the study of natural objects? Doesn’t the subjectivity of the
problem call for an equally subjective approach, based on what people say they want rather than
what experts say they should want?
Utopian Life in Walden Two
Walden employs on a smaller scale a modified because simplified version of Bellamy’s
political organization. Six Planners are in overall charge of community, supervise the work of
managers, and discharge “judicial functions”. Each must work for two additional labor credits
each day, one of which must be manual labor. They are selected by existing planners from
nominees by managers. Below them are the managers, who are in charge of the various sectors
of the community. They are specialists who work their way up to the position--promoted through
ranks by superiors in a system that is “like the Civil Service”.
Leaders in Walden control the community on a more basic level than do those in the
outside world, but the mechanisms are hidden and there is a dislike of “hero-worship” and the
conscious elevation of some people to higher status. There is a cultural bias against dominant
persons. To make life better, coordination is required, but people must be led to the good life
rather than forced. Leadership for Frazier is not about coercion or “force” but setting up
conditions that lead people willingly to accept the conditions necessary for all to live the good
life. Skinner through Frazier waffles in his description of this type of leadership. He alludes to
techniques of leadership and sometimes accepts that it entails power; at others he seems to
conflate power with coercion and bemoans the fact that previous societies had neglected to
investigate “how to dispense with [power] altogether”. More, he argues that putting power in the
hands of one outstanding person is to follow in the belief that good government is an art rather
than a science, yet it is also clear that as a founder Frazier had and continues to exercise a
disproportionate amount of power. In all he wishes to argue that the kind of leadership exercised
in Walden is different from conventional forms in that it entails more control over individual
lives than is accepted in ordinary society, yet that this leadership is hidden, that leaders do not
coerce, that leaders do not accumulate “power” and that non-leaders are much “freer” than in
ordinary society.
This of course goes to the roots of Skinner’s concept of freedom, which he argues
elsewhere extends beyond conventional Western conceptions. To be conditioned to accept a way
of life that coincides with human nature is in his mind to be free, as it entails being able to do
what one would want anyway to do. This is in some ways the “positive” freedom to which Isaiah
Berlin2 alludes, as well as the concept of “libertas”—defined in Christianity as the ability to
2
In a famous essay entitled “Two Conceptions of Liberty”.
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choose rightly that humans had before the Fall and which can also be had to a limited extent
through grace—found in religious ethics.
Skinner through Frazier suggests that this paradigm of leadership is better on utilitarian
as well as moral grounds to that found in conventional power structures. All organizations
exercise control over individuals, this argument goes. The pertinent questions are: what kind of
control, for what purposes, and to what result? The answer in Walden Two, Skinner wishes to
argue, is that control is systematically exercised over the individual and the individual’s
environment for the purpose of increasing the happiness of the individual and the society. This
ultimately paternalistic practice takes the form of manipulating social, economic, and physical
spaces with an eye towards psychological impacts. The result, he in turn suggests, are far
superior to what is achieved in ordinary society. Ordinary governments employ “bad principles
of human engineering” partly through ignorance and partly through a lack of paternal regard on
the part of leaders. The ultimate question then, he wants to argue, is not that of control or no
control, or to what degree should leaders control, but on what basis is control exercised—on
whims or barely digested understandings of the world, or the results of an experimental approach
and a disciplined regard for the welfare of everyone?
There is a real dichotomy between leaders and followers here, though the leadership
function is not celebrated and the mechanisms of leadership are not in full view. Leaders plan
and organize; ordinary people work within the experimental structures set for them. The latter do
participate, consciously, in the experimentation, but they do not set the grounds of the
experiments. Leaders are interested in experimentation; followers are interested in the practical
results. Ultimately leaders make decisions and control the agenda of society, in that they exercise
power in ways readily recognizable to ordinary observers. The claim to disinterested concern for
the general welfare is also conventional. What is different is the separation of power from
prestige and wealth.
It is important to Skinner that Walden’s economy is centrally owned and controlled. This
allows for the communal provision of goods and services as well as the communal direction of
economic activities. Yet there is not the type of control and discipline that typifies such
communal economies in More’s or Bellamy’s visions. On the one hand work is planned and
controlled by managers, who foresee and schedule work to be done. On the other, workers
choose the work they wish to perform given the nature of the work and the labor credits earned.
While this importantly provides flexibility to workers for the most part, in that they may almost
daily choose the kind of labor they wish to engage in, it is not the case that individuals can
always choose their work. The community sometimes (as in Utopia) takes priority in the
allocation of duties, such as in the mobilization of the inhabitants for big projects like
construction or harvesting. This reveals an understanding of economics that in some ways cuts
against the theme of small scales. It is true that the universe that is the Walden Two community
is itself small, but the emphasis on small scales within the community, which Frazier discusses at
length when extolling the merits of Waldonian architecture, does not always hold. In mobilizing
labor for these tasks, crowds are good, and the large scale is superior to the small scale. The
same is true of the product of mobilized labor. The community does not deal with food on the
small scale, but rather on the large. Here Skinner seems to acknowledge and take advantage of
the economies of scale that he otherwise ignores or dismisses
There is, of course, no money. Labor units are employed both for accounting purposes
and for purposes of weighting types of work. Everyone is expected to accumulate a certain
number of labor credits per year as his contribution to communal maintenance, though Frazier
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argues that most people contribute more than are necessary. As this accounting principle implies,
Skinner adopts from Bellamy and others a labor theory of value, though with a twist. So long as
people contribute at least the equivalent of four labor credits a day in terms of productive labor,
the community is able to provide sufficient and pleasant material existence in the form of food,
clothing, health care, education and support in old age.
The assignment of labor credits to forms of work entails a combination of expert
understanding and a rudimentary kind of market mechanism. Leaders initially assign labor value
to particular tasks. They either raise or lower that initial valuation based on the demand for that
labor at that value. If too few accept the bargain, the value will be raised, and if too many, the
value will be lowered. Thus there is a recognition that value stems from labor, but how much
value is a matter not just of expert, objective analysis but also of individual, subjective valuation.
Thus Walden is also dependent upon having within its community varieties of people who wish
to do a variety of tasks. The visitors run across many such people: the old lady who likes to make
cakes; the people who work in the farm; those who take care of small children, and the dentists
in their dental laboratory.
Walden’s capacity to care for all while providing for a short work day is the product of
several sources of labor saving practices and efficiency. The central allocation of work, which in
turn is the product of central planning and decentralized management, is said to be an important
source of efficiency. So are the multiple uses of the same time, space, and resources, such as the
communal raising of children and the use of sheep to crop the lawn. There are also continuous
efforts to find the most efficient way of doing work, analogous to the attempt in Island to find
ergonomically best way of doing physical labor, but here the emphasis is on process rather than
ergonomics. The conscious use of experts to supervise and organize work is said to be superior
to both central management and to capitalist management practices. Frazier also argues that work
performed in Walden is more productive than in ordinary society, given the shorter hours, the
fact that people work for themselves, and work only to produce things that are really needed,
Aside from efficiency, Walden Two is also like Utopia and Bellamy’s future in that it is able to
devote more people to the productive process than conventional society. Part of this has to do
with the integration of women into working population.
As in Utopia and Looking Backward the community is the owner of all housing. The
emphasis on building dwellings that are inexpensive, functional and attractive make it possible
for everyone to live in pleasant, sound and attractive buildings. Experimentation with natural
building materials and the decision not to live in separate houses are crucial here. Old buildings
are preserved and reused, and new buildings are constructed of rammed earth and stone. Thus
Walden eschews contemporary materials—concrete, steel, though not glass— and contemporary
living arrangements that emphasis separation rather than community, in order to build and
maintain buildings inexpensively. This extends to the layout of buildings, which are meant to
maximize not only different types of social spaces, but also heat, air and light. More, while
Frazier admits that Walden Two cannot attain Wells’ dream of controlling the weather as an
external context, it can control the effect of the weather by building such that people do not, if
they wish, have to venture outside. This decreases the frustrations of people caused by the
inconvenience and discomfort caused by the weather (another echo of We, unwelcome as that
comparison might be to Skinner). In all the communal provision of housing and the emphasis on
sturdy, reliable and functional housing makes Walden look very much like Utopia (and to some
extent the One State).
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In general Skinner wants to differentiate Walden’s economy from conventional systems

in ways that form a critique of existing economic structures. One argument is that a capitalist
system, built on supposed economies of scale and the maximization of profits, is not the most
efficient way of organizing economic activities. It wastes material and labor (as was the point
also in News from Nowhere) by not focusing on what is needed. It operates to create profits,
thereby stimulating artificial needs or catering to the needs of people living in a dysfunctional
and unhappy society (such accounts for the presence of bars and taverns). It wastes labor in the
operation of its financial system. It wastes labor and material in its maintenance of its large scale.
The Walden Two system is also held to be more efficient in providing a different psychological
atmosphere than created by capitalism. “Working for himself” spurs the one who labors to work
harder, more efficiently and to waste fewer materials.
The second critique reverts to the argument that that the small scale is more pleasant and
more efficient than the large scale. In Walden there is no need for transportation networks or
large-scale financial units. There is no overcrowding or the need to take into consideration large
workforces or other crowds. Third is the argument that an efficient, socially-engineered, planned
community will demand less labor of its members than will other systems, allowing people more
leisure time and a less hurried life. Fourth, he holds that such a system will allow people more
choice in the kinds of labor performed and provide them opportunities for variety. Fifth, as with
Utopia, he argues that more value will be communally produced than in the outside world
because almost all adults will be engaged in productive labor. There will no longer be a leisured
class, no longer will women be confined to the performance of household tasks in inefficiently
organized individual households, and there is no unemployment, substance abuse problems, or
people prematurely retired due to health or age reasons.
Thinking About Walden Two
Frazier’s description of the probable transition from a few isolated Walden’s to a nation
of Walden’s is a mixture of free choice and constraint, in reflection of life in Walden. He
foresees people voluntarily moving to small scale Walden communities to escape ordinary
society, but also sees others rooted by interest and habit to the old way of life. The former forms
the natural and free part of the transition. The latter will have their options structured such that
they will eventually have no choice but to join. Frazier of course sees this as physically non-
violent, but admits that in terms of ordinary understandings of freedom represents a type of
coercion. The conditioning and behavioral engineering involved in getting these people to join
the new way of life will be overt rather than hidden and subtle. Yet Skinner through Frazier is
ultimately optimistic that ordinary people will respond to the example of Walden and that those
too recalcitrant or self-interested to respond will be taken care of through the extension of
Walden-like control over existing political and economic system. Like a benign cancer, Walden
will grow within the body politic until such a time as it takes it over completely. What do we
think of this description? Would we be content to be maneuvered into living in such
communities without giving our consent in conventional ways? And what does it reveal to us
about Skinner that he sees nothing problematic about this? Remember that Skinner does not see
freedom in the way we do traditionally. To condition someone to choose in ways that would
make that person happy (at least in Skinner’s assessment) is still to allow that person freedom.
Would we agree?
To push this further, here we again have the choice of being happy or being free. Skinner
does not see it that way—there is no contradiction in his eyes, and he would say that it is only
our mistaken construction of freedom, and probably our misunderstanding of happiness, that
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creates the tension. But is that the case? If we could be happy and know that we have been
conditioned (and accept that conditioning is inevitable) would it make any difference? Would
we be any less happy?
This scenario of course presumes that everyone should live in a Walden-type community.
As such Skinner must think that a Walden existence is possible for everyone. But if he believes
this and wishes to preserve the present technological level of existence, can he achieve both
aims? It is unclear that a Walden-like existence would be possible while preserving the level of
economic and technological sophistication that Walden Two takes for granted. Are heavy
industries, as Frazier argues, compatible with small communities? Is heavy industry and high
technology supportable among a population that values leisure as much as does Walden? Skinner
through Frazier implies that there is compatibility between Walden’s life and modern industrial
practices, that “Walden” life in some ways is a rationalization of modern life, yet the differences
that he points out, particularly in terms of priorities, point to the incompatibility of the two. It is
unclear that a modern, technological nation of Waldens is possible—it would either be Walden-
like or modern and not Walden-like.
Again we must set aside these practical problems to grapple with the kind of life
that Skinner offers. Are we convinced by his fundamental argument that humans are
moldable? Or is it the case that we accept (or want to accept) that the hardwiring he
detects in humans is more determinative of the final product than he depicts? To answer
negatively is also to question Skinner’s argument that we are now molded, without our
knowledge and certainly without our consent, by powerful economic and cultural forces.
If he is wrong, then what he proposes is that we turn our lives over to others to run and
that we be created in highly artificial ways when we can remain perfectly content in a
coherently natural state. But if he is right, his proposition may be sound. Maybe it is
better that we consciously put experts in charge and let them proceed on a scientific basis
and hold them to looking out for the common good rather than allow ourselves to be
molded and created at random by outside forces.
Yet our uneasiness may take another form—not just that people are molding our
lives, but that Skinner proposes that someone have as their goal our happiness. Skinner is
untouched by arguments that this is unacceptably paternalistic and totalitarian,
reminiscent of Zamyatin’s warnings. Better, he argues, that we be molded to be happy
than to be molded to be unhappy, or to be the servants of the state or capital. But could
we trust Skinner’s managers not to try to do exactly that? Or is that concern just a product
of an old-fashioned liberal prejudice?
What of the lifestyle Skinner proposes? It is more communal than even Utopia,
approaching the level of shared life depicted by Zamyatin. Does this make us
uncomfortable? If so, why? Is it because we have been programmed to desire privacy, or
because privacy is hardwired in us? Evidence against the latter can be found in the lives
of our ancestors. Privacy to a great degree is a modern invention. Skinner appears to be
right to argue that this feature is artificial. But does it mean that a communal life is better
than a private one? One could discuss this point from many points of view—to argue, for
example that the choice is dependent upon individual psychologies, or to point to the
efficiencies that might be achieved if we did away with individual houses and strictly
segregated nuclear families. At bottom this type of life is quite different from what we
live now, but maybe not so different from what humans have lived in the past. Is such a
reversion a good thing? Are we harmed by this modern invention of privacy, as Skinner
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would argue, or is this in fact a sign of progress that we should be at the least hesitant to
reverse?
Another issue to ponder is Skinner’s contention that our understanding of the world
should be fundamentally psychological. This is what leads him to place his reliance upon
programming. But one does not have to dwell on the dichotomy between hardwiring and
programming to think differently about that contention. Might political and economic matters
have dimensions that are not psychological? Skinner seems to realize this when speaking of
functionality and attempts to meld the emphasis on psychology with that of function. But is that
all there is? Skinner’s reliance on “experts” in various fields operates as a kind of black box in
this regard—it relieves him from having to deal with matters that are not psychological in
character or reducible to functionality. Does this throw Skinner’s entire scheme into question, or
are we comfortable, as is Skinner, in relying upon the knowledge of experts to organize their part
of the community?
This raises still another question. How much power are we willing to cede people who
will have complete control over their area of work? That is, should doctors be in charge of all
medical matters, engineers control all mechanical things, educators dictate all things
educational? On the one hand Skinner argues this is a good thing, not only because it prevents
ignorant interference, but it also empowers experts to do what is right and best for us. It allows
doctors and dentists to force us in for checkups, for example. On the other hand allowing experts
to be in charge relieves Skinner from creating a community in which these experts are directly
accountable to the community. Skinner cannot do so because he sees people as too narrowly
focused on their lives and own tasks to have the knowledge or the interest in these larger affairs.
So long as the plumbing works and children are educated, he would hold, people are content and
should be content. Is that the case? Is that who we are, or are we more interested in larger affairs
and better able to acquaint ourselves with outside issues than Skinner give us credit? And no
matter the accuracy of Skinner’s observation in contemporary society, wouldn’t we be more
interested in such affairs in a Walden-like community given the more intensely communal
organization he advocates?
More general is the question that Skinner raises with regard to power. His assertion is that
we are not free, not only in his sense but in ours. We think of ourselves as autonomous beings
making decisions unburdened by outside forces. No one exercises power over us except those
whom we choose. But in fact many entities exercise power over us and for the most part, he
argues, they are unaccountable and uninterested in the common good. We must eliminate the
freedom to exercise such unaccountable power and instead vest all power in people who are
community minded. Is Skinner correct? Are we the subjects of others rather than the masters of
our own lives? Would we be willing to give up freedom as we understand it in exchange for
ridding ourselves of corporations, institutions and the wealthy?
Finally, the kind of people Walden Two requires is also murky and we must think about
whether we meet the mold. Most basically it requires people who prize leisure, want choice in
small matters but not in large affairs, are content with following experts, think about
improvement in terms of experimentation, and are comfortable living a more intensely
communal life than is the case in the contemporary West. But there is also more. That Walden-
type communities require some extraordinary people of intellect and experimental imagination to
act as leaders and planners is apparent. But the “ordinary” members are painted ambiguously.
Skinner argues in many places that there is nothing extraordinary about them. They are the same
as any other random person living outside the community. Yet it is also the case that there must
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be something different about them, as they are comfortable choosing an obviously

unconventional life without having been socialized into it. To put the preceding questions more
bluntly, are you this type of person? Are you willing to cede greater power to experts without
direct checks on their actions? Do you want more leisure and choice in work in exchange for a
more communal way of life? Would you be happy in a small community? Could you live
without separate houses and with much less cohesive families? Could you do without money and
the flexibility markets provide if you knew you would enjoy material security? Would you
exchange liberal political democracy for the assurance that experts are working for the common
good and our individual happiness?
Chapter Eleven
Island
Introduction
Island (1962) brings us full circle from Utopia. Where More and others are concerned
with the political and economic rearrangement of life, arguing that changes in the environment
along with training will yield changes in human behavior, Huxley is concerned with internal
renovations. In this sense “Island” as utopia is “nowhere” not just because such a physical
place does not exist, but also because it need not exist physically. While institutions and
practices can be part of the solution to the problems of the human condition, they need not be
present for people to live the good life. Instead of only creating an external environment that
leads to desired behavior (by eliminating material insecurity, for example), Huxley
concentrates also on the internal changes that they, along with individuals themselves, can
foster if properly constructed. Moreover it is not a particular kind of government or economy
that is most important in Huxley’s vision of training people to program themselves. It is rather
families and educational systems. Wherever these exist, even on a small scale, the good life is
possible for particular individuals.
As with Skinner, Huxley here sees people as being deeply programmable. While he
understands that people have preset psychological tendencies to which they may revert, he
argues that these can be influenced through particular kinds of spiritual and psychological
techniques. This in turn will result in behavior that is good for both the individual and society
as a whole. Huxley also shares with Skinner the argument that a lack of proper programming
leads to deeply problematic behavior. Both see social unrest and international conflict as
manifestations of wrongly adjusted individual behavior. Thus individualism is very important
for both, more important than in Utopia, Looking Backward, or News from Nowhere, though
the latter two pay more attention to individual needs than does the first. But what really
distinguishes Huxley and Skinner from Bellamy and Morris is the methodological
individualism of the former. The world, in their view, must be changed one individual at a
time. This also helps account for their shared interest in the small scale.
What differentiates Huxley’s view from Skinner’s is his rejection of the benign
authoritarianism that Skinner embraces. There is no one on Pala with the kind of power that
Frazier exercises in Walden Two. Everyone on Pala can exercise power for the good, even six
year old girls. Where leaders in Skinner’s Walden communities (as with More’s) are
characterized by their knowledge and understanding, Huxley’s are marked by their empathy, a
universally attainable trait. Indeed Huxley’s Palans are much more emotionally involved and
demonstrative than any of the inhabitants of the other utopias examined here. The good life
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that Huxley identifies is mostly a matter of the inner self and emotions developed through the
requisite techniques for self-programming.
The Contexts of Island
Huxley is writing in the early 1960s, after World War II and in the midst of the Cold War.
He is disillusioned by many things. The good life seems far away in the wake of Hitler’s
Germany, Stalin’s Russia, Mao’s China, the Cold War, Western consumerism, the arms race,
and attempts by former colonies to imitate the industrialized and modernized West. In
particular he is not satisfied with supporting the West in its fight with Communism. He is
obviously not enamored of Stalin or the Soviet model, but the alternative provided by America
is also not appealing. Both appear fixated on the external at the expense of the internal self.
Both pursue modernization as an overriding end. Both see the resolution of human problems
purely in terms of industrialization and consumption. Both wish to eliminate rivals by means
of military force. Faced with such unappetizing choices, Huxley opts to find a third way.
He conceptualizes this third way in terms of integrality. To be either Eastern or Western,
capitalist or socialist, primitive or modern, materialist or spiritualist, is to rob oneself of the
insight necessary to understand the world and be truly human. The human experience contains
all things. Thus he locates his utopia on the boundaries between Asia and the West and
between the premodern and modern.
From a Western point of view it appears from the story itself that Huxley is not seeking
integration, but a full-fledged turn to Eastern religion. His description of Pala seems to be the
realization of a Buddhist dream. But Huxley is writing for a Western audience and thus sees
his main task as introducing the rationalist, materialist West to the mystical and non-materialist
understandings of the East. He does not need to emphasize materialism and rationalism to the
West, though they are importantly present in Pala and purely anti-materialist orientations are
mercilessly criticized.
In arguing for a turn inward rather than outward and for a more integral life rather than a
narrow one, Huxley is obviously critiquing society as it stands in terms of the mainstream
understandings of humans shared between the Communist and Western blocs. But he is also
pointing in a different direction than dystopians. In writing this book he is diverging from the
arguments previously provided by London, Zamyatin, Orwell—and himself. Where in Brave
New World he had cautioned against trends that saw unscrupulous forces manipulating humans
through their sexuality, here he provides a solution to these problems. Dystopia alone in this
sense is condemned as too narrow an approach to the complexities of modern life. Life is about
fulfillment as well as loss, overcoming as well as tragedy. One should not despair of life when
one can evade an externally controlled programming agenda by taking control of one’s own
programming.
Huxley is of course utilizing a familiar medium for his message. As he knew from his
long career as a writer, most educated people at the time found the bulk of their reflective
materials in serious fiction. Thus in company with Orwell and other contemporary
intellectuals, Huxley aims for an audience beyond the academy and professional philosophers.
But he does not target everyone. Only an educated and relatively sophisticated reader can
grasp the nuances of his argument And while his vision holds out a better life for blue collar
workers, it is probably not the case that they would be moved by his account any more than
would successful businessmen and others who benefit from the current capitalist, consumerist
system. Only those who feel sufficiently alienated from their current situation and sufficiently
open to radical change have sympathy for his message. As evidenced by the dissidents of the
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1960s it will be the educated strata of the middle class who will be most interested in Huxley’s
vision.
Synopsis and Features of Island
Synopsis
Island imitates the old style of utopian story. A stranger on a journey comes across an
isolated community. That community practices a more perfect way of life. The stranger
explores this life through subsidiary journeys within the community. The stranger, though
initially skeptical, comes to appreciate and finally embrace the way of life exhibited.
Despite the similarity of the Island story to other utopian narratives, Pala as the site of
utopia is also different from many others. Pala is not completely isolated. It has access to the
outside, but controls that access. Pala, like Walden Two, also depends upon the existence of an
outside world that is not utopian, in terms of the creation of heavy equipment, research into
physics and chemistry, and the manufacture of vehicles. It is not clear if those activities would
be engaged if the system spread to the entire world. The narrator is also different than in other
utopias. Will, the narrator, is more like the adventurer who provides us with the description of
Erewhon than like Hythloday. He is a flawed person and not entirely trustworthy. But he is
even more—like the narrator of Erewhon he is simultaneously a product of the West, an agent
of infiltration into unknown parts, and the bringer of change, even though in the end the most
profound changes are those that take place within him.
Will arrives on the island of Pala (located somewhere in the South Pacific)
surreptitiously. He even reaches it in the same fashion as the earliest utopias—by boat and as
with Bacon’s New Atlantis and Neville’s Isle of Pines, in the midst of bad weather. He is
originally sent to interview the strongman of the nearby mainland, but he also serves as his
employer’s agent to gain access to oil for a favored company. His job is to facilitate political
changes on Pala that will put the underage Raja and his mother in charge. They are much more
open to Western understandings than is the current leadership, the Raja in terms of
consumerism, the Rani in terms of organized religion. The plan is to help orchestrate a coup
and then bribe the Raja and his mother into allowing the favored oil company to exploit Pala’s
natural resources.
Thus Will comes to Pala as a kind of secret agent of the West. But while the original plot
hatched by his employer goes forward, he participates in it in an increasingly half-hearted
fashion. Rather than infiltrating Pala, Pala comes to infiltrate him. His exposure to Palanese
culture, spirituality, culture, education, economics, and science erodes his former confidence
and provides him, almost against his will, with solutions to his own deep-seated problems. He
ultimately participates in a central spiritual exercise of the island by partaking of the
hallucinogenic moksha medicine—a shortcut to full consciousness. The book ends with the
invasion of Pala and the presumed end of its unique social, economic, political and cultural
institutions, but the continuation of the Palan way in the inner lives of its inhabitants as well as
in Will.
Along the way Huxley lays out the philosophy and advantages of his utopian way of life.
Structures and practices have been created to support the goal of self-programming.
Government is more about coordination than lawmaking. The economy is a mixed system
characterized by cooperatives. Lines between families are blurred and education is an
overriding concern of all islanders.
Features of Island:
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THE IMPORTANCE OF SPIRITUALITY: While Palans for the most part reject organized religion,
they are deeply focused on the spiritual as a way of integrating their lives. They combine
Christianity, various Hindu texts, and Buddhism in a complex mix. But in this they do not
reject a material appreciation of life or practice an austere or ascetic brand of spirituality.
REJECTION OF BOTH THE EAST AND THE WEST: Huxley consciously and explicitly argues
that this society cannot be subsumed under either of the two systems then vying for dominance
in the world. Both were too narrow and both lacked a true understanding of what humans are
all about. Palan society is a combination of free market and socialism as well as spirituality
and materialism. Like Skinner, Huxley portrays this rejection as pragmatic rather than
dogmatic. Since neither system works well, there is no reason to adopt or defend either.
EMPHASIS ON AUTONOMY: The overriding goal for both Pala as a society and individuals
within society is the attainment and retention of autonomy. Pala collectively does not want to
be subsumed by either side of the Cold War nor taken over by its neighbor. Likewise the goal
of training for individual Palans is ultimately the ability to guide themselves. To engage in
self-programming is to make sure that not one else is performing that task. Thus where Skinner
emphasis happiness and redefines freedom to allow for a deep practice of paternalism, the goal
of Palans is to guide themselves through the variety of experiences of life and ultimately to
deal with the tragedy that marks human existence.
Problems
Island proceeds somewhat differently than earlier utopian stories in that there is no
complete demarcation between the outside world as problematic and Pala as utopia.
Descriptions of problems are scattered. They are to be found in the outside world and in some
in Pala as well, they are internal and external, and they are described in a variety of places in
the book. All can be traced back to some type of human lack of adjustment to life.
Disease, Poverty and Violence
Descriptions of the outside world in terms of material problems do follow a familiar path.
Huxley has Will and others describe poverty, disease and violence as the main afflictions of
humans. Here the nearby country of Rendang fills the role of England in More’s Utopia. It is
ruled by a rapacious military dictator. Its government is filled with officials who live well at
the expense of the country’s population. That population is crowded in fetid and unhealthy
slums. Its leadership is consumed by the desire to modernize and industrialize. Its goals are the
acquisition of military power and material wealth.
Huxley, however, does not attribute these problems to economic and political structures.
His constant reference to the multi-faceted nature of the human condition does not allow him
to separate the material or outward from the spiritual, psychological and inward. If
overpopulation, ignorance and militarism produce the problems we can immediately identify,
they in turn are part of as well as products of larger and more comprehensive conditions—
those created by the psychological maladjustment of people to the human condition and to
their own biochemical makeup.
Overpopulation
Huxley continually returns to the problem of population in analyzing the larger material
problems that afflict the world in the 20th century. At times he is almost Malthusian in his
assessment of the world’s capacity to sustain a large population. A good life materially, he
argues, is impossible unless societies remain uncrowded. In general he tends to argue that
population pressures intensify the problems humans experience due to the limited resources
they have at hand. Overcrowding results in poverty, disease, crime, wars, pollution and the
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despoiling of natural resources. Of course this is an important problem not only because of the
results of overcrowding, but also the roots of the problem lie in the human hardwiring
connected with propagation.
Incorrect Human Programming
Island identifies many of the problems of the times as importantly internal to individuals.
When Utopia examines the problem of greed in humans as a problematic trait, More attributes
it to the influence of environments on human hard-wiring. When humans are placed in
situations in which essential goods are scarce or unequally distributed, they will automatically
and collectively react by seeking to maximize the amount of goods they control. The solution
is therefore to change the ways in which the state and the economy are organized so that a
sufficiency of goods is guaranteed and an equality of goods is a feature of society. Huxley’s
understanding is different. He sees problems as associated more closely with human
programming per se. In his understanding human nature is more importantly programmable
than for More. Problems arise when people are unable to deal consciously with the human
condition through an inability to program themselves. For Huxley, programming for the most
part equals psychology and therefore problems manifest themselves not in the form of vices, as
is the case with More, but in terms of psychological problems. Put the people of Pala in
England and they will still live fulfilled lives, though doing so will be more difficult because
their efforts will not be reinforced by a congenial culture.
Thus Huxley’s understanding of problems fixes on psychology. Where people are
maladjusted, either because society does not provide them opportunities to adjust themselves
or they refuse such opportunities, problems arise. All people are prone to psychological
disorders if they are not properly equipped to deal with the human condition and multiply the
tragedies the latter brings.
One can see this in the characters Huxley creates, as he immediately identifies this
problem through the device of Will Farnaby’s gradual awakening on Pala. Dragged from
unconscious by the persistent calls of “Attention” by the myna bird, Will’s feelings of guilt,
anxiety and sadness are not generated by the economy, political structures, or broad and
impersonal historical trends. Rather, they are produced by events that he unconsciously
produces, or conditions which he is psychologically incapable of resolving. His marriage ends
as a result of his serial affairs. He is haunted by the guilt not only of this failure, but the
accident that takes the life of his wife shortly after their last meeting. His upbringing is also a
source of psychological damage caused by his father’s tyranny, his mother’s passivity, and his
sister’s passive aggressive saintliness.
The result, as Huxley discloses throughout the course of the book, is a human damaged in
a particular way. Will is chronically dissatisfied with life. He is afflicted with phobias. He is
cynical and superficial, the “man who won’t take yes for an answer” who is “paid to travel the
world and report on the current horrors”. He had traveled to Rendang to interview Colonel
Dipa because “there’s death in the offing. And death is always news”. He is not a typical
product of Western society but rather a particular species of pathology: one who objects to and
rejects the West but is unable to formulate the reasons for his dissatisfaction and incapable of
dealing with his dissatisfaction. Thus he likes to quote from Erewhon. He is a clueless rebel
still trapped by the binary thinking and emotional tyranny of the Enlightenment. He still
chooses by reference to either/or. He recognizes the horrors of the world, but is unable to
understand their causes, feel fully the pain they entail, or to deal with the emotional damage
his exposure to them causes himself or to others. He does not wish to commit himself to any
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cause. He recognizes the “vileness” of Aldehyde, his boss, but still does his bidding. He
sublimates his problems within the persona of a hard-headed journalist who attributes events to
“sinister practical jokes which are Providence’s specialty”. While his beliefs contrast with
those of the ordinary Westerner in ways that superficially mirror those of the Palans, his is the
distorted mirror of dissent while that of Pala is clean and clear.
Other species of pathology are exemplified by Lord Aldehyde, the Rani, and the Raja.
Lord Aldehyde represents the pathology of greed. He is unmoved by any concerns for the
people of Pala or for the earth. His sole concern is to amass wealth. The Raja is a miniature
version of Aldehyde. Trained by his mother to be other-worldly and spiritual, he secretly
rebels by becoming obsessed by materialism. He is self-absorbed and hedonistically caught up
with material goods. His imbalance is consumerism. Rather than perusing pornography, his
rebellion lies in his fascination with the Sears and Roebuck Catalog. Under the influence of
the pederast Colonel Dipa, he systematizes this as a policy with strong Western overtones—he
wishes to “modernize” Pala by exploiting its oil reserves and thoroughly industrializing the
island. In this and his attitude towards the various spiritual and physical therapies on the island,
the young Raja symbolizes the materialist West that rejects the integral life.
The Rani, on the other hand, is a species of religious fanatic. She pushes spiritualism to
its extremes. She believes in intuition, telepathy and operates on the basis of belief (which
Huxley has the Old Raja distinguish from faith). She embraces Theosophy3 and rejects the
“false happiness” of the “lower self”. Will describes her as the counterpart to Aldehyde, “a
female tycoon who had cornered the market, not in soya beans or copper, but in Pure
Spirituality and the Ascended Masters”. In pushing away the physical, sensual world and
insisting on purity as the essential virtue she warps her son’s sexual and psychological
development. She wishes to monopolize him and protect his purity by rejecting any possibility
that another woman may enter his life. She wishes to save the world by launching a great
spiritualist crusade with herself at the center, the instrument of the Savior who engages in work
exclusively to feed her ego. Yet she is also, in a disjointed way, worldly in her quest for
funding.
Thus “problems” for Huxley importantly come in the form of individual examples of
pathology. On one level these problems are the result of social inadequacies, particularly the
inadequacies of Western society. The West is unable to create ways by which people may
generously and creatively deal with natural urges such as the sex drive and the inevitability of
sickness, aging and death. Will destroys his marriage due to the pull of sexual urges that were
not satisfied by his partner and is scarred by the guilt that arises from her tragic death.
Aldehyde and the Raja define themselves in terms of power and money, in the Raja’s case
because he has an unhealthy relationship with his mother. The Rani turns to the other side of
the Western duality, that of pure spiritualism, in large part because of her unhappy relationship
with her late husband.
Thus the problem with Western society as a type of conventional society, Huxley argues,
is not that it is Western and materialist. These are not inherently bad. It is that is only Western
and materialist that is the problem. Thus it is not so much evil as it is dysfunctional from a
human point of view. It is unable to provide its inhabitants with the knowledge and skills
necessary to deal with the tragedies of life. The fact that it has not solved the problems of
3
Theosophy was a spiritualist doctrine popularized by Madam Blavantsky. It’s doctrine pointed to the
eventual penetration of material life by spiritual forces and the evolution of humans to a superior form of
spiritual existence.
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anger, jealousy, greed, violence, sickness and death, as other utopian writers urge to a greater
or lesser degree, is not relevant to Huxley. What is relevant is that it does not give people the
tools by which to deal with those problems and in its failure adds to and multiplies these
problems.
The Problems of Human Physiology
Rendang is a hellhole not only because of human imperfections in general, but also and
importantly because of the actions of its dictator. Here Huxley does not dwell on the forces of
imperialism, the mistakes of socialism, or the ravages of capitalism, though they may all be
implicated. Likewise the Second World War, Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia are not to be
explained merely by reference to the movement of history, economic determinism or the forces
of nationalism. Rather, they are also importantly to be blamed on Hitler and Stalin as
individuals and upon the people, as individuals, who followed them. Huxley has the Palans
psychologically and physiologically typologize these individuals and attribute the horrors of
the Nazi and Soviet systems, and ultimately all wars, to the acting out of the proclivities of
their respective types. So superficially it seems that Huxley puts forward a kind of “Great
Man” view of history by attributing events and conditions to particular humans and their
ability to lead populations into particular circumstances. Behind this picture, however, is a
larger understanding of psychobiology which provides a more comprehensive understanding
and which serves to explain the behaviors of both these particular individuals and of the
history of societies in general. In this sense Hitler and Stalin are not, as the proponents of the
“Great Man” view of history would have them, unique individuals, but rather specimens of
somewhat common types that collectively create some of humanity’s problems.
Thinking About the Problems Identified in Island
In some ways Huxley is condemning the modern world. In place of well-adjusted
individuals living in material sufficiency, you find misery, poverty, disease and war. Yet this is
not exactly what Huxley is up to. He is dissatisfied with modernity but doesn’t want to turn the
clock back in terms of technology or civilization. It is not the stage of development we are in,
or even the turn of civilization we have taken. Our problems are timeless ones, and in that
sense he is condemning human organizations in general for being unable, after all this time, to
solve them.
To think about problems in the way Huxley does is to understand the breadth of their
roots. They are not caused solely by economic underdevelopment, or political dictatorship, or
the wrong kind of social organization. They may be attributable to all these, but also more. In
particular they are attributable to psychological maladjustment, a topic that no politician or
businessman or bureaucrat is willing to take seriously. We see that only Skinner among these
authors addresses it directly.
Huxley would argue that the persistence of these problems over time into the modern
era shows that our current fixation with economic, political and social structures is inadequate.
We claim to have made a better world, yet we still condemn large numbers of people to the
kind of life they might have lived 500 or 100 years ago. We must transcend our narrowness of
view to see the world as it is, a place where psychological maladjustment and the effects of
that condition are rife. Critics may argue that Huxley’s attempt to attribute problems to
maladjustment and sociobiology is both simplistic and cranky. There is no evidence that bodily
chemistry has the kind of effect on people that he alleges, and that the immediate cause of the
problems he sees around him are attributable to the structures with which current policymakers
grapple.
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Human Nature
Huxley paints human nature as complex. It is a mixture of all types of attributes. There
is no one cause of problems and hence no easy solutions to the problems humans experience.
They are, of course, programmable, but also importantly influenced by body type and
chemistry.
Humans are Deeply Programmable
In the course of illustrating his understanding of humanity and of how the Palans are able
to approach its fullness, Huxley paints human nature as even more plastic and moldable than
does More. In general what people are is the product of their social, cultural, psychological,
even bodily environment. There are hardwired traits having to do with reproduction and
survival, but these are not as important to Huxley as those traits that vary with other factors.
As such, humans are constituted mostly by their reactions (controlled or otherwise) to the
human condition. That condition is tragic. Thus humans are fundamentally also beings who
react to the unavoidable tragedy of existence. How we react is a matter of both individual
constitution and social environment. Some people react badly because of their chemical
makeup, others because of their early family life, still others because of the stresses of the
social structures they inhabit. Still others, meanwhile, are given or acquire the tools by which
to address as constructively as possible this tragic situation. “People… are at once the
beneficiaries and the victims of their cultures. It brings them to flower; but it also nips them in
the bud or plants a canker at the heart of the blossom”.
For Huxley, then, the general run of humans are plastic. They can be programmed,
either from the outside or the inside, to react in various ways to the human condition. As such
they are in the process of becoming beings that may or may not be fully realized humans.
Humans do not spring up fully formed. Humans do not attain full humanity easily or quickly
and often not at all. Insofar as they do attain humanity, it is through a process of seeking
happiness in the human condition of inescapable tragedy. In turn seeking happiness is not
made possible merely by removing particular conditions such as poverty or ceaseless physical
labor. External solutions are necessary but not sufficient for Huxley, because the individual
humans are the center of the process. Becoming fully human means becoming conscious of the
human condition and programming oneself to confront it. To train oneself to deal with the
tragedy and joy of existence, to avoid or deal with human-created tragedy, and to find
fulfillment and thereby reasonable contentment in the here and now by means of self-
knowledge is to fulfill the human potential. This is an individual project (though one that is
aided by social support) that requires effort and a correct understanding of who one is and
what one can do. To try to do less is to live a life at the mercy of the elements, to be buffeted
by physics and society. To try to do more is to misunderstand oneself as a human and thereby
cut oneself off from the possibility of attaining the happiness and contentment that is
attainable.
As with Skinner, the key to programming is understanding. Like Skinner, Huxley
believes we can unlock the secret of ourselves and our condition. While he does concede that
some people are more skilled at this than others and are well suited to teach others the nature
of their condition, he is not as easy with experts as is Skinner. People, even the youngest and
the least educated, can develop enough self knowledge and understanding of the world to take
on the task of self-programming. In do so they mold themselves rather than allowing
themselves to be molded by outside forces.
Capacity for Consciousness
210
In Huxley’s understanding what makes humans human and therefore different from
other living entities is their capacity for consciousness. Animals live and die, carrying out the
“elemental existence” common to all beings, but they are unconscious of their circumstances.
They cannot reflect on living or dying, nor can they be more than dimly aware of the here and
now. Humans can reflect and be conscious of the entirety of existence. In that sense they can,
at least potentially, be wholly present—mentally, emotionally and physically- in every moment
of existence. To achieve this consciousness fully is to be wholly and fully human. The
attainment of a good government, economy, and culture cannot bring that awareness, but they
can be parts of a support system that can make it possible, or at least more possible than
otherwise.
Achieving full consciousness does not equal Nirvana. Nirvana as the experience of
pure, disembodied bliss is only part of full consciousness. It must be transcended,
supplemented, even supplanted by other aspects of life and spirituality. Some characters add
love and work, but more prosaically a consciousness of life. The latter for Huxley is not of
undiluted bliss, but also of pain, suffering and death. Consciousness does not mean escape into
realm without cares, but an understanding of the totality of existence.
The Innate Tendency to Fanaticism
Fanaticism, in the form of a single-minded attempt to impose one understanding on life, is
a deeply attractive way of dealing with the variety, problems and lack of understanding of life.
It is in some respect a substitute or rival for true consciousness. This Huxley, like Orwell,
rejects. But Huxley views its roots differently than does Orwell. For Orwell fanaticism starts
with the desire for certainty. For Huxley it starts with a binary understanding of existence—
the either/ors of the material vs. the spiritual; life vs. death; knowledge vs. feeling, and ends
with a narrowly focused throwing of the self into one way of life, in asceticism or hedonism.
Fanaticism can focus on virtues or it can focus on hedonism, in finding a narrow pleasure.
Both are attempts to “perpetuate the ‘yes’ in every pair of opposites” and therefore not,
presumably, acknowledging the “no”.
This is where fanaticism crosses with the emphasis on imperfection and tragedy. Tragedy
being an inevitable condition, one should not pursue perfection. No one and no society can
attain it, and its pursuit is not only hopeless but damaging. The pursuit of perfection is
therefore a species of fanaticism, for to pursue perfection means to pursue one course of
development, one way of understanding the world, one way of living life, to its ultimate
destination by attempting to exclude the fullness of life. To pursue perfection means trying to
make of life something that it is not—an existence that has banished tragedy.
In the hands of someone like Neville, Butler or Orwell such a judgment would lead to a
dystopian discussion. It is important and interesting that it leads to the opposite for Huxley. His
remedy for fanaticism isn’t just to outline the bad things that happen when people are fanatics.
That is only half of the story. The rest of it is the discovery that people need not be fanatics to
deal with human tragedy. Dealing with it correctly, by becoming fully conscious, does bring a
better life. It is not a perfect life, and to think that it is or can become perfect reveals a lack of
full consciousness. But it is a good life and a much, much superior one than provided by
ordinary society or that produced by fanatics.
One important form of fanaticism that particularly interests Huxley is the fanaticism of
other-worldly spiritualism, what Dr. McPhail labels a theology of God as “other” rather than
God as located in the world as well as beyond it. To see God as other is to embrace fully a
material/spiritual dualism and to devote oneself to the spiritual side. The result is the attempt to
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cleanse the human condition of part of its humanity, that is, of its material life. MacPhail
credits it not only to overtly religious leaders like Augustine and Luther, but also to the
twentieth century dictators. Thus again Huxley differs somewhat from Zamyatin and Orwell in
this regard. While all argue that dictatorship has its roots in the pursuit of what is ostensibly
good, Huxley through McPhail places blame on an incorrect view of the world. Fanaticism
here is not just a matter of pursuing something wholeheartedly and narrowly so as to abdicate
moral responsibility as it is with Orwell; it is also and ultimately a failure of understanding.
Thinking About Human Nature in Island
Huxley’s argument that humans make themselves is interesting in part because it
straddles the lines of two different ways of thinking politically. On the one hand it privileges
the individual and underscores the importance of intellectual and spiritual autonomy, as does
classical liberalism. But liberalism also thinks that humans for the most part already are whom
they are, importantly through lots of hardwiring. They would resist the notion that people
would need to be formed, seeing in that proposition an opening for governments to do the
forming. Here Huxley is more like Rousseau and some of the postmodernists and much less
like classical or most modern liberals.
To think about human nature as does Huxley is to put aside several propositions that
Americans generally accept. It means abandoning the notion that happiness comes only from
controlling our lives materially. It means putting the awareness of death and suffering at the
forefront of our thinking but without, as do religious ascetics, turning that awareness into a
rejection of the body and of the world. It means seeing life as a continuous whole, to be
accepted totally including its end. It is to see the cultivation of one’s inner life as just as
important as the cultivation of one’s intellect or income.
Huxley would argue that understanding that we are who we are because of our reaction
to environments and the larger context of life’s tragedies is crucial to understanding why
people act as they do. In turn the collection of individual actions determines how societies act.
And it only makes sense to him to categorize people in terms of those reactions, as there are
discernible patterns to reactions and to behaviors and there are only a limited number of
environments to think about. Thus he says that while we are complex and people have until
now not fully understood themselves, witness the persistence of large problems, thinking about
human nature in this way gives us the insight necessary radically to improve our lives. A
skeptic may counter that there are too many behaviors that have been consistent over time and
which are not linked strictly to survival to think that humans are as bereft of hardwiring as
Huxley suggests. Traits associated with acquisitiveness, competitiveness, the quest for
knowledge, the desire to belong to a community, the itch to do something creative and
constructive and other constants point to more than the instinct to live and procreate. Huxley
doesn’t seem to take these into account aside from attributing them to particular body types or
environments.
Themes
Huxley stresses themes that contrast the wholeness of Pala and its inhabitants with the
emptiness of other places and people. These themes serve to diagnose problems and prescribe
solutions. While sometimes these are obvious, at others they are found in descriptions and
narratives that ostensibly have to do with other topics.
Synthesis and Integrality
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Huxley provides a plethora of examples of the integral nature of the good life. As with
other utopias, Huxley helps introduce this theme through his description of physical settings.
Utopia is an artificially created island, signaling the importance of a conscious human
application of reason to economic and political affairs. News from Nowhere accentuates the
beauty of its natural, de-urbanized setting, signaling the need to go back from a modern,
industrialized existence to an existence in better harmony with physical Nature. Huxley
symbolizes his main theme by emphasizing the ways in which the physical landscape of
human habitations on Pala are syntheses of natural and human settings. The island, he has Will
observe, appears to be sculpted—not radically altered but changed on the edges such that there
is a convergence between human vision and nature. Humans do not just inhabit spaces, but
neither do they transform them. Humans and such spaces merge and grow together.
Huxley continues with other examples of the integration of things and attributes that in
other places are held separate or are thought to be incompatible: humans who act naturally and
birds who speak like humans; hospitals supplied with penicillin and other modern
wonderdrugs along with traditional eastern spiritual practices; Asian and Western influences
on Palan society; ancient practices and modern technologies; the old Raja’s poem about all
things and different things working together perfectly; pragmatic spiritualism and divinized
materialism; chewing grace; Western science and Eastern yoga; the yoga of love as both
sacred and ordinary; the founders in the form of a Scottish, formerly Calvinist, and later atheist
doctor, and a Palanese “pious Mahayana Buddhist”; scientific laboratories and hallucinogenic,
mystical experiences, and the bridge-building of school exercises. In all, Huxley is pointing to
the overcoming through synthesis of the generally constructed binaries that are typical of an
unreflective or fanatical way of thinking. Thus he points to the transcendence of the
differences between the real and the imagined (through the use of the mushroom medicine), of
the outside and the inside; of memories and of now; of what is natural and what is artificial, of
the conscious and the unconscious. All this is summarized and symbolized in the discussion of
Shiva’s nature at the children’s moksha ceremony that all opposites in fact are part of a larger,
real whole.
The ultimate expression of the theme of integrality in terms of Huxley’s vision of the
good life is Lakshmi McPhail’s death. Rather than encouraging her to die by drifting to sleep,
to not see death coming and thereby avoid it to the end, Sussila encourages her to remain
awake and conscious, and therefore to pay attention to the very end of her life, to see death
coming and accept, even embrace it as part of existence. Only in this way is life lived
integrally and in a fully human fashion
Imperfection and Tragedy
This theme also comes in several varieties. One is that imperfection is inevitable.
Imperfection means pain, suffering, aging, death, emotional distress, even the eventual
destruction of the Palan society at the end of the book. Cancer is a theme throughout the story.
Mrs. McPhail and Will’s aunt both are afflicted with breast cancer; descriptions of their slow
and painful deaths (though differently faced) are important parts of the narrative. Other aspects
of humanity’s tragic condition also predominate. Mary’s father dies in a fall from a cliff. The
young Raja and the Rani are not integrated into Palan society, and both are scarred in ways
they do not recognize. Sussila’s parents had marital problems; Appu and Ranga were estranged
while Appu pursued the future Raja. In this sense, Pala is like the outside world. It is not
perfect. This, it appears, is part of the point. If utopia means conquering once and for all
human problems, there is no utopia, for utopia in that sense would mean conquering the human
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condition. It could only be inhabited by non-humans, or as Sussila puts it, beings who are less
than human and Huxley is not interested in subhumans. Thus if there is utopia, it is a place or
condition in which these tragedies are confronted and accepted.
Thinking About the Themes in Island
Huxley’s themes are few because they are so powerful and pervasive. Insofar as Pala is a
utopia, it is because it is a place that integrates all aspects of life and attempts to confront the
tragedies of life. In some ways nothing else need be said. Here Huxley is being more
philosophical than he is policy oriented or scientific, and indeed his approach to politics,
economics and social issues comes from the viewpoint humanity’s general place in the
universe rather than an understanding of the dynamics of those areas as systems. He is only
interested in the mechanics of power, the ambition of dictators, the working of markets, and
the existence of social classes insofar as they have a bearing on the human condition. While
Pala sends students off of the island to study academic disciplines, these tend to be the natural
sciences, not the social sciences. As with Skinner, Huxley seems to argue that if one gets the
psychology right in the context of humanity’s situation as mortal beings, then everything else
follows. What differs is that Huxley’s psychology isn’t modeled on the natural sciences; it
stems from religion and philosophy.
To think as does Huxley is to refuse to place goals, conditions, ways of understanding and
thinking, or even ways of life into opposing categories. It means automatically taking a
synthetic view of life, seeking to integrate all aspects, both good and bad, material and non-
material. This runs contrary to both the usual way that Westerners think about the world. Our
“common sense” is importantly binary or at least based on classification , as we ordinarily like
to group things, events and conditions into discrete and separate categories. It also runs
contrary to much of our academic tradition, which is importantly based upon an analytic
method—to understand things one takes complex matters and breaks them into discrete parts.
It also runs contrary to the usual way we think about life and death. The latter is something one
either does not think about, or is the subject of gross jests equally meant to distance ourselves
from it. We do not embrace it as an inextricable part of life.
Huxley maintains that recognizing the integrality of life and the tragedy of the human
condition is the only truly honest understanding. It is also the only realist position, taking into
account as it does our deep interest in grasping the substance of the only life we possess. To
divide up life into categories and see them as inherently different and oppositional is to impose
an artificial veneer of intellect on reality, which only serves to prevent us from addressing
problems in their entirety. Opponents might argue that much good comes from analysis and
categorization. Grouping and differentiating events, conditions, and phases of life is useful.
Not everything is the same and not all things can or should be mashed together into some sort
of ultimately artificial whole. Death is tragic and while awareness of it is good, is it really
healthy or conducive to the good life to dwell on it at the length Huxley proposes?
Solutions
The solutions that Huxley proposes are focused on the individual. While he depicts
Pala as instituting political and economic systems different from those in the West or East,
these really are not decisive solutions. The real problems are with individuals and therefore his
solutions concentrate on getting individuals on the right track as humans.
Crime as Sickness
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Huxley follows in the footsteps of Looking Backward and News from Nowhere in seeing
problems such as crime as manifestations of a kind of sickness, in this case sickness as defined
as intellectual, physical and psychological imbalance.4 This general position, of course, was
satirized in Erewhon and critiqued in We and Nineteen Eight-Four as dangerous because it
provides a pretext for the state to intrude itself into the innermost beings of individuals.
Huxley, while not unaware of this problem, rejects the rejection of the need for psychological
and spiritual education as part of a comprehensive attempt to equip people to face life’s trials.
In his understanding individuals never stand alone in their psychology, isolated from outside
influence in some type of pristine condition. They are willy-nilly affected by a whole variety
of influences, social, environmental, and chemical that all must be addressed.
To understand crime as sickness entails recognizing the sources of that sickness internal
to people. All people can succumb to destructive behavior in the face of life’s challenges. But
different personalities, Palans argue, are prone to different types of pathologies. All must
therefore be taught to program themselves to avoid this behavior in ways that are responsive to
the particular personality each inhabits. The result is not perfect people, but imperfect people
who are aware of and have tools to mitigate their imperfections.
There are, however particular types of people who are preternaturally drawn to disorder
due to their physiology and body chemistry. Untreated examples of these, Huxley argues,
constitute almost the entire set of violent criminals, dictators and revolutionaries. They must be
taught how to program themselves to avoid the pathologies of their physical makeup. Thus, for
example, the dead Dugald was a loving husband but according to his own mother “was so
strong, such a tyrant, he could have hurt and bullied and destroyed” if he had not been taught
to program himself. He was, in Huxley’s term, one of the Muscle People, as was Stalin.
Others, the “Peter Pans” (like Hitler) are led astray by their “endocrine disbalance” and must
be treated chemically. So for Huxley some people are actually born dysfunctional and can only
be taken off the anti-social path through medical and/or psychological intervention. Yet for
Huxley this is not a condemnation of these people. Rather, it is recognition of their objective
status, which merits treatment rather than punishment.
Treatment as Understanding the Human Condition
While Huxley argues that particular types of people, due to their physiology, are prone to
violence, problems are not confined to these people. Everyone can be warped by the
experiences of life if not adequately equipped to deal with desires and tragedies. This means
that everyone must receive psychological attention so that they can deal with the inevitably
tragedy of the human condition. It is here, as well as in his discussion of the delivery of this
attention and the form it takes, that Huxley makes his main utopian contributions.
For Huxley, the goal of utopia is to create circumstances in which everyone is well.
Wellness in his understanding means the ability not to overcome imperfections but to deal with
them. Here the contrast between the West and Pala on this subject is incorporated in the
differences between Will and one of the main Palan characters, Dr. McPhail. Like Will, Dr.
McPhail sees the human condition as ironic beyond comprehension. For Will this is a source
of deep dissatisfaction and the cause for pessimism. For him, to be well means to be without
imperfection. One conquers diseases, banishes desires or otherwise eliminates from life those
things that make it unpleasant and painful. But because life is not susceptible to this kind of
4
Here Huxley does not use the language of Western Freudianism or Western psychology in general, and so
it would probably not be accurate to put labels derived from those sources on his psychological categories.
Instead, Huxley uses the vocabulary of Hinduism, Buddhism and yoga.
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treatment, all treatment is useless. Because life cannot be perfect it must be a cosmic joke and
lived as such.
This attitude not only indicates an incorrect understanding of life in Huxley’s view, but is
also a indicator of Will’s maladjustment, created by the West’s inability to properly equip its
citizens. With its emphasis on materialism, consumerism, narrow pragmatism and power, the
West sees solutions to problems in the same way as Will. They, along with Nature, are to be
conquered. Yet human problems are ultimately invincible. Thus Will experiences a typical
frustration.
McPhail in contrast, is a specimen of the good Palan. He embraces the irony of life by
pondering and ultimately embracing “the incomprehensible sequence of changes that make up
a life, all the beauties and horrors and absurdities whose conjunctions create the
uninterpretable and yet divinely significant pattern of human destiny”. Here Huxley echoes
some of Zamyatin’s argument about the need to experience the full texture of existence. Life
cannot be made perfect but that does not mean that the good life cannot be found, nor that
one’s contact with painful and unpleasant things cannot be ameliorated and accepted as part of
the fabric of life. To understand life in this way, and therefore to seek in the right places the
tools to deal with humanity’s tragic condition, is the road to human wholeness. Again it is the
inability of the West to foster this attitude in people which is the root of its fundamental
failures. It is not just its slums and riots, it is its Wills that offer the proof of that failure. And
of course the presence of Colonel Dipas also show that the East and the developing countries
do not, because of their structural situation in the world, magically have the answers either.
Adjustment and healing therefore requires the development of self-knowledge and an
understanding of the integrality of life. Dealing with imperfections and tragedies entails
understanding how one naturally and automatically deals with all aspects of life, from sexual
urges to jealousies to tragedies and frustrations. These trigger emotions, including anger and
sorrow, and the stimulation of appetites. It also entails understanding how the self is situated in
a world in which pain and unpleasantness are inevitably present. Thus self-knowledge means
embracing the many-sidedness of life. As the Old Raja put it, “If I only knew who in fact I am,
I should cease to behave as what I think I am; and if I stopped behaving as what I think I am, I
should know who I am”.
Education as Self-Programming
How is this kind of self-knowledge to be developed throughout a population? Huxley
rejects the notion that it can come only from the outside, as Skinner would have it. People
cannot just be taught self-knowledge or self-restraint as an academic subject or as a behavioral
exercise. They must experience and continuously live that knowledge in the form of traditions,
practices and ultimately specifically tailored psychological regimes. This process starts with
children, who are all taught general understandings of the human condition as well as general
methods of self-programming. These regimes are then adjusted personally as they reach young
adulthood and take part in several coming of age ceremonies, and then are continued
throughout one’s life.
Huxley limits the logistical problems of teaching people self-programming and sustaining
these regimes on Pala by taking advantage of several characteristics that are not part of the
broader world. First he is able to rely upon a tradition in which self-realization and self-
knowledge play an important role. While not practicing a religion in a strict sense, most Palans
utilize spiritual practices that are easy to comprehend and have the attraction of tradition. Even
those people who are not intellectually inclined are able, by following these practices, to gain
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significant insights into themselves and the human condition. These practices, one may note,
are more influenced by Eastern cosmology than Western theology. Thus it is not the case that
Huxley would agree that Christianity, at least in its current form, could fill this role.
The other advantage Pala possesses is its small size and scattered population. People
generally live in villages and the overall population of Pala is relatively small. This makes
possible the close-knit communities and face-to-face relationships that will be an important
part of Huxley’s treatment. Indeed as noted above Huxley also sees population control as an
important factor in creating other conditions necessary to the good life, and sees
overpopulation as a source of problems that he argues Pala has eliminated.
In Pala the development of self-knowledge and its accompanying techniques that allow
for self-programming importantly take place within the extended families, in organized groups
that take the place of religious organizations, and in schools. Of these, the schools are the most
important place of socialization. Students are categorized by psychological and physiological
characteristics. They are taught the means by which to divert their energies from harmful to
productive channels. They are exposed to a variety of types of people and learn tolerance and
understanding. In all they receive an education in self-knowledge of both their individual and
collective selves.
The results are illustrated in the descriptions of the lives of the Palans the reader
encounters. The benign outcome of the elder McPhail’s marriage (encompassing as it does two
very different types of people), Huxley argues, is partly the result of education. Sussila’s
ability to deal with the death of her husband and Dr. McPhail’s capacity to make it through the
lingering death of his wife are also important markers. It is also demonstrated in the lives of
young people, which are said to be relatively free of the extreme traumas and dramas of
adolescents in Western society. This is because the subject of marriage, as well as sexuality, is
addressed as part of children’s formal and informal schooling. Where the problems of
sexuality and families are dealt with in Walden Two by means of early marriage, communal
raising of children, and separate rooms for married couples, Huxley’s argument is that
equipping young people with an understanding of personalities, sexuality and other important
aspects of marriage, along with the institution of extended families and allowing young people
to engage in sexual practices responsibly, will lead people to better informed choices regarding
marriage and marriage partners even if biological urges will still play an important role in that
process. It is better, Huxley seems to argue, to provide this information as a tool than not
provide it and allow choices to be made purely on the basis of biological attraction.
Modifications of Family Life
This leads to marriages and family lives. Huxley also sees these as important venues for
the development of self-knowledge and the techniques of self-programming. Indeed he sees
them as the vehicles of therapy as well as the place where the problems of overpopulation must
be addressed. The Western models of marriage and family, Huxley implies, are inadequate.
They are badly suited for helping people deal with their own personalities and the inevitable
tragedies they will face. They trap people, (marital partners, parents and children) into
inescapable situations and provide no ways for the differences brought to family relationships
to be transcended into a synthesis. Thus the differences between Will and his wife in their
Western marriage destroyed their relationship. The differences between Dr. McPhail and his
wife in their Palan marriage served to help complete them both.
Huxley also necessarily thinks differently about the sexual and reproductive nature of
families. Western marriages encourage unbridled breeding because it provides only one way in
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which sexuality may be expressed, Huxley argues. It sees it as a “lower” expression of animal
instincts of which people are alternately ashamed and which they secretly and desperately
desire. Huxley instead advocates instead the “yoga of love,” which blends the physical with
the spiritual. The uniting of bodies is part of the process of self-knowledge and therefore of
attaining full humanity. It is not “lower,” nor is it purely physical pleasure or purely
reproductive. The full “yoga of love” as Huxley explicitly explains it is akin to the practices of
New Harmony—the male never completes the act. This reservation not only makes for a
different experience; it along with contraceptives allows for population control. Thus this form
of the family importantly entails its shrinkage in terms of propagation. Two to three children
rather than six to eight is to be the norm. This not only places less strain on society, it frees
families, particularly women, from drudgery.
Huxley thinks even more fundamentally about families. He rejects the traditional Western
model as the sole way of living in favor of a hybrid of extended families and individual
mobility. Palans practice an understanding of family that does not see blood ties as primary.
Sussila and her mother see little of each other because their personalities are not compatible.
Parents and children are not expected to “cling”. They go their own way when children reach
adulthood, interacting as much or as little as each sees fit. He also sees the raising of children
as reaching beyond the bounds of the nuclear family. Children do not have one set of parents
they have many, in the form of the families that constitute the Mutual Adoption Clubs.
Children benefit by being able to experience many different types of adults and children and to
escape the household. They experience society in miniature rather than merely the confines of
a single household. Adults benefit by having a wide variety of others to care for their children
when they are stressed, and when elderly by having something to do and people to care for.
Thus Huxley does not see the family as something to be accepted on traditional lines. It
must be molded to fit the needs of humans looking to fulfill their humanity. As such, it must be
consciously confronted and experimentally modified, and thereby subordinated to a larger
cause. That cause is not the state, as is the case with dystopias, nor just the physical well-being
of citizens, as with Utopia, but that of the total liberation of individuals.
Thinking About Solutions in Island
Huxley’s focus on individuals and his attempt to help them with their struggles in life
as a way of dealing with larger problems puts him outside the mainstream of political,
economic and social analysts. For the latter the obstacles humans experience in life are mainly
caused by larger problems in society, not the other way around. This is another instance of a
privileging of small scales that Huxley shares with Skinner. Like Skinner, Huxley thinks that
attempting to deal with problems by going first to large social and economic structures and
analyzing huge historical trends misses what is really happening to humans. There is no
separate logic guiding the actions of humans as masses of beings; in this sense neither “states”
nor “classes” nor “civilizations” are actors. Only individuals act and it is on them that we must
focus.
Thinking in this fashion is probably not alien to the customary ways in which
Americans understand the world. Most people do not think in terms of large actors such that
they would attribute events and conditions to the products of systems or the logic of history.
The focus on therapy would probably be less welcome though familiar. Adopting that part of
the solutions by doing away with prisons and other parts of our current justice system and
thinking about crime as a sickness would be as disconcerting here as it was when we
considered the views of Bellamy and Morris. While we wish to focus on individuals we also
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want to fix responsibility with them rather than accept the argument that problems that result in
disorder are curable by correcting chemical imbalances or providing help that aids in self-
programming.
Huxley would defend his position by holding that only by getting the lives of
individuals right will we set right the workings of larger human groups. We cannot expect to
have order, peace, and prosperity if the individuals who make up a community are unhappy
because ill-equipped to face the tragedies they inevitably experience. One wouldn’t send out
someone in a car on a busy highway who hasn’t been trained to drive; in the same way one
shouldn’t send out into their lives people untrained in ways of dealing with the challenges and
problems they will face. To do otherwise is dysfunctional and irresponsible. Critics might
argue that the relationship between individual problems on the one hand and social, political
and economic problems on the other is more complex than Huxley argues. There is a logic to
larger systems and dysfunctions can and do arise through their structure; these can have as
much impact on people’s lives as do such problems as sickness and death, and indeed such
dysfunctions can cause sickness and death. So focusing on the small and particular is not
enough. Solutions must be applied also to the large scale organizations as well.
Utopian Life in Island
Huxley says little about the political institutions on Pala. We know there is a Raja who is
a constitutional monarch with few powers and who acts as head of state. There is also a Privy
Council made of experienced people, a Cabinet and a House of Representatives.
We do know some characteristics of government. Aside from these national institutions,
political structures are characterized by their decentralized and democratic character. Politics
and power, Huxley recognizes, permeates all organizations, including families and economic
units. He uses this understanding to set up Pala as “a federation of self-governing units”. The
national units seem to do little more than coordinate, while decisions vital to a particular
organization are made by its members within the organization. This appears to be a kind of
decentralized syndicalism, as Huxley has McPhail refer to “geographical units, professional
units, economic units”. How relations among these units are coordinated, and how the
inevitable overlap in both jurisdiction and the effects of decisions are dealt with is not clearly
articulated, though the national institutions probably fulfill these functions. His emphasis on
the lack of and undesirability of a “great leader” reinforces the democratic ethos Huxley has
McPhail portray, though this resides uneasily beside the office of Raja and the tradition of
benign autocracy that the history of the island reveals.
Huxley praises the virtue of decentralization as one of the answers to the problem of
tyranny. If power is dispersed, no one can get their arms around all of it. But by itself it is
inadequate. Indulging in a criticism of political theory operating in isolation from other sources
of understanding, he has McPhail deride Lord Acton (who coined the phrase about power
corrupting absolutely) as “almost non-existent” as a practical psychologist and goes on to
describe the true solution to the “power problem” in terms of decentralization.
Aside from the values of decentralization and democracy, Huxley also endows Pala with
a devotion to freedom, reason and decency. In some ways his depiction of freedom is
libertarian. No one is forced to do what he or she does not wish to do. No is drafted into an
army or forced to conform to exacting rules. More important, as Huxley has MacPhail
proclaim, is that decisionmaking by individuals is based on reason and decency. It is these
values that lead McPhail and Vijaya to reject the “energy and devotion and self-sacrifice”
generated by Colonel Dipa and compare them to the destructive forces of a typhoon.
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An example of how Huxley views the organization of society as cooperative and free is
his description of the Palan newspaper. There is only one newspaper, but it is controlled by an
editorial board that is composed people with a variety of interests and opinions, and the paper
itself composed of articles that attempt to persuade the public of a variety of positions. Thus
diversity is not expressed through a variety of published outlets, but within the confines of a
single paper.
As this example demonstrates, Huxley does not see this society as dependent upon a
uniformity of beliefs or policy preferences. Nor does he see the desired policy outcomes as
reflecting some objectively recognized or derived common good. There does not appear to
exist in its strictest sense a Rousseaun General Will. Rather Huxley portrays a society in which
different interests and opinions legitimately exist and which are, in some manner, taken into
account by the political system.
While in some ways minimal, government is also somehow, active. It helps mold the
physical aspects of life. It controls the economy, regulates exports and imports, and provides
particular kinds of education. The goal is to rid people of the most egregious physical
problems (poverty, poor health, crime) while conceding that the more important work is
internal. Government in this sense takes its place alongside all other remedies for the human
condition, for the human side of that condition comes from many sources and therefore the
solutions to those problems must come from many sources. Problems like providing sewage,
clean water, healing for the sick and prophylactics are within the scope of human and political
endeavor not just in their provision, but in the carry through to the better life of which they are
to be a foundation.
Pala possesses police, judges and courts, but, as with News from Nowhere, does not have
prisons. Crimes are said to be few and dealt with either in the confines of the culprits Mutual
Adoption Club or “medical and mycomystical experts”. Rather than punishment, crime is
treated as a disorder to be dealt with through psychological or medical therapy. But more
important is prevention rather than treatment, through the means of education, preventative
therapy, the reform of family life, and the provision of necessities.
Huxley intentionally says little more about social and political structures and institutions.
The beauty and success of Pala does not ultimately come from a reformed politics. Utopia,
insofar as there is one, is not about political structures and what a good politics can do for
people. It is not so much about organizing the outsides of people, but the insides. In this sense
political structures are less important than economics, which are less important than social
structures, which are less important than psychological and spiritual training. The least
important parts of the structures that create the good life are political. Politics in general has
meaning mainly in its capacity to overturn the good that other parts of human endeavors
create, though in the end Huxley hints that even political mistakes cannot take away the path to
a better human life.
In terms of economics Dr. McPhail argues for Huxley that the good society opts “to adapt
our economy and technology to human beings—not human beings to somebody else’s
economy and technology”. This is not to say that he is here arguing for a fixed human nature,
but rather he is arguing that economics and technology should be responsive to the human
condition. That condition being mixed and the preferred response to that condition integral, the
economy best suited for it should also be mixed. It should not focus on any particular sector or
approach. It is neither export oriented nor autarchic. It has heavy industry, light industry and
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agriculture. It depends on both manual labor and technology. It employs ancient techniques
and the most recent scientific advances.
This approach leads to several specific economic approaches. First there is an emphasis
on essentials. Things to be imported are only those seen as most important—electrical
equipment, refrigeration units, medicines, machinery. It is likewise with what is manufactured.
Pala eschews televisions, air conditioning and many motor vehicles. It also discards the
“temptation” to manufacture or buy arms, as it sees these as only fit for aggression, and
aggression is expensive and counterproductive. Second, this focus on essentials means turning
away from a consumerist society with its focus on the highest level of consumption, debt and
planned obsolescence. Economics is not about “growing” an economy such that a GDP is
elevated or that a standard of living, measured by the value of consumables, is constantly
raised. Quality is preferred to quantity, and an integral understanding of happiness is preferred
to a purely materialist version.
Third, the basic organization of the economy is “cooperative”. Individual units are to
be self-governed both internally and externally. There are no banks. There is paper money, but
it is backed by the convenient deposits of gold and silver on the island.
Fourth, Huxley depicts Palans as forming a flexible work force out of desire. People
seek and are allowed to pursue various types of work both simultaneously and serially.
Intellectuals like to engage in manual labor for part of the day. In their early years some people
(particularly “Muscle People”) move back and forth between various kinds of industrial and
agricultural work. Unlike Bellamy, who in Looking Backward similarly suggests a flexible
labor army which can work at various tasks without loss of efficiency, Huxley admits that this
is not an ultimately efficient system, but insists that people prefer such variety and “If it’s a
choice between mechanical efficiency and human satisfaction, we choose satisfaction”.
Moreover, he suggests it is a necessary part of an integral education, as actual experience in
various types of work forms part of the “concrete materialism” they wish to pair with their
“concrete spiritualism” to gain a complete awareness and consciousness of their experience as
a kind of integral yoga.
Fifth, there is the limitation of inequality. No one is to have more than four or five
times the wealth as anyone else.
As can be seen, this is less of a theory of economics than a philosophy of economics.
There is unquestionably a technical understanding of the effects of the flow of goods, labor
and capital within Pala and between Pala and the outside world, and of the means by which a
region industrializes and “modernizes”. But Huxley is less interested in promoting a technical
solution to the problems of modern economics than in subordinating economics to a
comprehensive understanding of the human condition. In this his utopia is probably closer to
that portrayed in News from Nowhere than either Utopia or Looking Backward.
So while Huxley points to a sufficiency of goods and to the enjoyment of
order, the kind of existence that the inhabitants of News from Nowhere and Looking
Backward live is not sufficient for Huxley. The material conditions are present, but
not the psychological and spiritual. Likewise the utopia Skinner creates in Walden
Two, which as we saw depends upon external programming of individuals, is not
only insufficient; it is deadly, as there is no way in which humans can fully realize
their humanity in Huxley’s understanding unless they control their own
programming.
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In this sense Pala as utopia is the place for the realization of humanness. As
such, it performs the same functions as other utopias in bringing a fulfilling life to all,
not just a rich upper class or intellectual elite. Huxley does not argue that everyone is
the same or equal in terms of intellectual gifts or physical skills, and he does not
portray Pala as leveling people in those ways. What is leveled is the opportunity for
everyone to attain a full knowledge of himself and therefore embark on the road to
full humanity. Much as Skinner claims for Walden Two, Huxley argues that Pala is
heaven for ordinary persons. “Pala’s the place for stupid people,” Huxley has Mrs.
Rao argue. “The greatest happiness f the greatest number,-- and we stupid ones are
the greatest number”.
Here Huxley contrasts the societally-sanctioned pursuits of happiness that are on
offer elsewhere that seek either too much or too little happiness. The Western
consumerist buries the search for self-awareness in the short-lived hyper-happiness of
materialism. He continuously needs a new fix to keep up. The Western ascetic
discards the search for this-worldly happiness and tries to find fulfillment in the
denial of his “lower” nature. The pure spiritualist likewise denies “lower” nature but
this time in pursuit of an ecstatic happiness that is ultimately ephemeral and hollow.
Such happiness means focusing on the “here and now”. This argument is reinforced by
the ever-present mynah birds and is emblematic of a key to the achievement of the good life on
Pala. To focus continuously is the hallmark of the preferred method for dealing with inevitable
human problems—yoga. Thus Susila McPhail continues to feel the pain created by the death of
her husband but strives to live in the present for the sake of her well-being, and that of all the
children who are her responsibility. Her father-in-law does the same in attempting to deal with
the lingering death of his wife.
The child Mary’s early actions in helping Will disclose the most important part of the
Palan approach to life. While she is willing to guide Will through the yogic process that allow
him to discard the psychological pathologies that afflict him, she first attempts to spur him to
engage in self-healing: “if you won’t do it yourself, I’ll have to do it for you”. What she does is
to take control of his programming and change it from the flow of emotions and energy set by
his mother to one that is benign and beneficial. But what is best is for Will to do it himself.
The key to utopia in Pala is self-programming, that is, taking control of one’s psychological
state as one works through the stresses, strains, comedies, tragedies and rewards of human life.
Thus the good life for Huxley means living in the present and laughing at world’s
problems and the “enormous joke of existence” is the preferred way of life. It does not banish
sadness and pain, nor attempts to ignore them. Rather it takes them as part of the fullness and
reality of life and recognizes the potential for and limits of happiness.
Thinking about Island

What does the end of the book tell us when it describes the armed takeover of Pala by the
unscrupulous Colonel Dipa? It is tempting to see a little bit of Huxley in Ambassador Bahu,
who argues that utopias like Pala are no longer possible because there are no isolated parts of
the world available for them. They must succumb to the influence of the rest of the world by
force of events. Huxley may not go as far as does Bahu in arguing that the freedom and
happiness of the Palanese are a moral affront to the rest of the world because a symptom of
hubris, but Huxley ultimately seems to think the physical existence of a utopia like Pala is an
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impossibility. The question is why? Is the destruction of Pala as a physical utopia (rather than
an inner utopia) part of the one third of existence’s tragedy which is inescapable, or part of the
two-thirds that humans themselves create?
Moreover, if the invasion of the outside world makes a physical utopia impossible but
enlightenment goes on, is this a message of hope or of ambivalence? If life really does
inevitably present us with tragic problems, of which the impossibility of a utopia is part, if it is
an inescapable mix of experiences both good and bad, and if the majority of people are unable
to program themselves, even the capacity to live in such a way as to maximize our capacities
to cope seems beyond us. If there can be no physical, external, communal utopia, why should
we accept that a spiritual, internal and individual one is within our reach?
There are further ramifications to Huxley’s understanding of utopia as well. Again note
that he argues that even utopia will experience tragedy, not only in its physical end but also in
its everyday life. In other words, utopia is not about ending tragedy, it is about coping with it
and managing it. This realism may be useful. It can limit what we expect of politics even while
we expand our expectations beyond their current levels. To think of us achieving the good life
in terms of coping with the imperfections of life may also be a good thing, in that it would lead
us to expect different things of ourselves and our institutions than we do now. For example, it
can lead us away from demanding an ever-increasing standard of living from our government
and economy. It may lead us to ask more in terms of psychological and spiritual care from our
community than we do now. Thinking about the world as a hopeful yet tragic place may also
lead us to temper our efforts to remake the world in radical ways. In this sense Bahu is wrong
—the core of Pala is not hubris, but recognition of human limitations.
Another interesting aspect of Huxley’s argument is the notion that humans are themselves
various and live in an environment that is filled with variety. It is a mistake, he argues, to
pursue a purely materialist or purely spiritualist approach. Is he right? If so, how do we create
the balance socially and politically? Do we want a department of religious affairs? Not only
would that be deeply contrary to our own traditions, but divisive as well. Which spiritual
tradition should we follow? For all of Huxley’s awareness of religious fanatics he is perhaps
overly optimistic in his belief that ordinary citizens will easily take up the different and often
mystical spiritual practices he advocates. One need not be a fanatic to be attached to a
particular religious tradition. If that is the case, and not all traditions are amenable to the kinds
of practices Huxley says are necessary, is this inner utopia he thinks is so close actually much
further away?
Other proposals are also quite different but may hold merit. What of the extended family
units? Wouldn’t it benefit children to have a multitude of same places to go if there is conflict
in their immediate family? And isn’t having a variety of adult role models good? Note that
More and Morris also speak of extended families, while Skinner would do away with the
nuclear family altogether. The traditional family, it seems, is part of the problems we
experience in the eyes of many utopian writers, mostly in terms of the narrowness of
experience and exposure they provide for children.
But we should also push Huxley. Are all problems necessarily psychological? Can we
impute war, violence, terror and tyranny to such causes? To do so would be to remove vast
areas of scholarship and understanding from our arsenal of knowledge. Instead, are there not
important causes of concern that are systemic rather than individually human? Is it always
wrong to think that some people are, truly, evil? And, as we saw with Orwell, is it not a
mistake to see dedication in terms of fanaticism?
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There are also deeper problems. What of the emphasis on psychoanalysis and therapy? Is
it helpful? Think about it in terms of two important categories of people: criminals and
children. First can we usefully attribute the origins of disorder to chemical imbalances, body
type and psychology? Does it make sense to try to cure criminals of their tendencies? On the
one hand this appears naïve. But on the other, might a different approach, on that seeks to
eradicate the internal causes of social disorder, be more effective than expensively confining
large portions of our population to prison? Might the fact that we have to do so signal that
there is something wrong with society that so many cannot adjust to norms of expected
behavior? Or is it that a significant portion of the human population is naturally disorderly, or
is innately evil? A different problem arises with regard to children. This has to do with the
expectations placed on them in Huxley’s system. Can children really grasp the kinds of
techniques and attain the self-understanding Huxley attributes to them? Does he inaccurately
paint them as little adults, or is our understanding of them as incapable of understanding and
dealing with tragedy and their emotional lives a damaging attempt to infantilize them?
There is another and more fundamental problem with which we must grapple. To say that
utopia is inside us, that we need to program ourselves, and that problems must be approached
one person at a time may be a recipe for political quietism. If I am good, correctly
programmed, and face my tragic problems with aplomb, why should I worry about the outside
world? Indeed, put in Huxley’s terms of life as a series of experiences, why should we attempt
to solve problems systematically and on a large scale if, by doing so, we only attempt to shield
others from the experiences they will inevitably face?
Thinking about Walden Two and Island
There are, of course, important similarities between Skinner and Huxley. Both
emphasize the need to experiment rather than taking customs for granted. Both wish people to
understand how external forces impact their lives (though Huxley is more insistent on this than
Skinner). Both point to important founding figures. Both condemn prior civilizations as not
only radically imperfect but actively harmful to people. Both emphasize the psychological over
the physical. Both privilege the small scale over the large.
They differ somewhat in their understanding of the good life. While both argue for
psychological adjustment, a degree of choice and variety in work, Skinner provides a rather
bovine view of happiness. People are happy in Walden Two because their frustrations have
been removed. They need not worry anymore and can live their lives, between bouts of work
as if they are on a cruise. Huxley’s utopia is much less frivolous. We cannot remove all our
frustrations. More importantly, we cannot remove our tragic condition. The good life is in
dealing with those while still seeing and enjoying other aspects of life—love, friendships,
accomplishments, children, art. We are never on a vacation in Huxley’s world.
Thus while both Skinner and Huxley outline material and external changes that must be
made for utopia to be realized, and in so doing follow the conventional route in identifying
material security, their focus is much more on the inner life of utopians than external
structures. In this they follow in the footsteps of 20th century dystopians, who identify the
colonization of our mental and psychological selves as an existential threat to our status as
humans. Should this give us reason to pause? Do Zamyatin and Orwell trump Skinner and
Huxley in their identification of the problems caused when external structures or other people,
invade our inner spaces? Or have the latter come up with ways of increasing human happiness
and autonomy without the problems modern dysopians warn us against?
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The answer that both Skinner and Huxley provide, and which we should ponder, is that
it is never a question of guarding a pristine inner life or of allowing the outside to influence us
in some way. The latter will happen whether we want it or not if we are not cognizant of our
situation. The difference between Skinner and Huxley, of course, is in their assessment of what
can be done with the knowledge that we are psychologically affected by the outside. While
both point to a benign party outside ourselves that can help us find internal happiness, Skinner
allows that party to continue to influence us while Huxley wants us through our consciousness,
self-knowledge and master of therapies to become more psychologically autonomous than
Skinner allows is possible. Who is right, or is either?
Can we be happy if we are programmed from the outside? It is difficult to see modern
humans consciously responding positively to such a proposal. Should we place faith in others
to program us benignly? That would seem very risky. If it is difficult for us to trust others with
political power (and note that Skinner is ambivalent on that point—on the one hand he says we
give leaders too little power, and on the other he criticizes those leaders as incompetent) would
it make sense for us to trust people with this kind of power?
Should we instead concentrate on programming ourselves? Should we want to do so? Is
there a sense of inner autonomy, of decision and a sense of self, that is fundamentally invaded
by even this understanding of the good life? Do we want to be internally organized? Do we
want constantly to be conscious of the tragedy around us, or is that just the projection of
busybody psychotherapists who, like philosophers, think people imitate them and incessantly
ponder large questions that have little to do with our ordinary lives? Do we want to spend our
lives, metaphorically speaking, on a therapist’s couch? I suspect many would also resist this
notion. But at the same time isn’t it better to be aware of what is happening in life rather than
ignoring tragedy?
Additional Readings
Walden Two
Bjork, Daniel. B.F. Skinner: A Life. American Psychological Association, 1997.
Kinkade, K. A Walden Two Experiment: The First Five Years of the Twin Oaks
Community New York: Morrow, 1973.
Machan, T. The Psuedo-Science of B.F. Skinner University Press of America,
2007 (Reprint)
Richelle, M. B.F. Skinner: A Reappraisal. Psychology Books, 1995
Stillman, P. “The Limits of Behaviorism: A Review Essay on B. F. Skinner's
Social and Political Thought,” The American Political Science Review, Vol. 69, No. 1.
(Mar., 1975), pp. 202-213.
Wolpert, R. “A Multicultural Feminist Analysis of Walden Two”. The Behavior Analyst
Today, June 2005.
Island
Barfoot, C. ed., Aldous Huxley Between East and West, ed. C. C. (Amsterdam, 2001)
Birnbaum, M. Aldous Huxley: A Quest For Values New Brunswick: Transaction
Publishers, 2006 (Reprint)
Firchow, Peter. "Brave at Last: Huxley's Western and Eastern Utopias." Aldous Huxley
Annual, 1 (2001), 157–174.
Lee, S. "Aldous Huxley's Final Utopian Vision: A Study of Island," Journal of English
Language and Literature, 40 (1994), 493–517.
225
Mathiesen, W. “The Underestimation of Politics in Green Utopias: The Description of

Politics in Huxley's Island, Le Guin's The Dispossessed, and Callenbach's Ecotopia,” Utopian
Studies, Vol. 12, No. 1 (2001), 56–78
Matter, W. “The Utopian Tradition and Aldous Huxley,” Science Fiction Studies #6, V.
2, Pt. 2 (July 1975).
McDonald, A. “Choosing Utopia: An Existential Reading of Island,” Utopian Studies,
Vol. 12, No. 2 (2001).
Meckier, J. Aldous Huxley: Modern Satirical Novelist of Ideas, ed. P. Firchow and B.
Nugel (Münster, 2006).
Rohmann, G. "Island: Huxley's Ecological Utopia." 'Now More Than Ever': Proceedings
of the Aldous Huxley Centenary Symposium Münster 1994, ed. Bernfried Nugel (Frankfurt,
1995), 175–185.
226

Walden Two and Island

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Synopsis and Characteristics

Second, functionality informs the processes of change and experimentation. In Walden

willingness to change, sometimes dramatically, practices and norms. This is necessitated

Recognition of the Difference between what is Natural and What is Artificial

In general Skinner wants to differentiate Walden’s economy from conventional systems

be something different about them, as they are comfortable choosing an obviously

Thinking about Island

Mathiesen, W. “The Underestimation of Politics in Green Utopias: The Description of

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