“If there is a devil in history, it is the power principle”- Mikail Bakunin- Russian anarchist/socialist, opponent of Marxism
Imagine, it’s graduation day. You’ve navigated the maze of pre-programmed lessons that is government schooling. You’ve opted out of 4-8 more years of indoctrination from state and “privately” funded universities, you want freedom. You want to step out on your own, put some money in your pocket, build a life you see fit, room to breathe, to make choices for yourself. You want to be free of outside manipulation, but like all great plans…..
“Give me a baby and I can make any kind of man”- John B. Watson- founder of Behaviorism
According to this worldview, the behavior of organisms, and therefore including human beings, is predictable and controllable. In 1920 at John Hopkins University, Watson did a series of experiments on babies ranging in age of 3 month to 1 year. Remarkably simple in practice, they included presenting lit candles or introducing an animal into the environment to see if they were naturally afraid or only after a traumatic experience. He would often wear masks and make hissing noises and observe their results as well, and soon also discovered that newborn’s had no fear of the dark. However he also learned that such fear can be conditioned and so it was with rabbits.
One of Watson’s subjects, known as “Little Albert”, was introduced to such a creature and soon found joy in petting the animal and it’s overall company. Then after a time Watson began using a hammer to beat on a sheet of metal whenever “Little Albert'' began to stroke the rabbit. Soon the reaction to the rabbit became one of absolute terror instead of delight. This led to the mere sight of the animal eliciting fear even when no noise was produced and began to extend to similar objects and textures. From his experiments Watson reached a radical conclusion that would define political and social engineering in the 20th century. The driving force in society is not love, but fear.
“If people do the right thing, they do not need to be retrained”- L.J. Henderson- Harvard University
You can debate why the lab rat was so useful but it is easy to see. It can reproduce rapidly and people are not really affectionate towards them, so worries of ethical objections were limited. The running of a rat through a maze is a pretty understandable metaphor for life running back through early Christian and Greek societies. Of course in Christianity the maze is full of meaning and a path to God a “Pilgrim’s Progress”, where in modern society it’s viewed as Nietzsche said “Life is like a maze you can never run to the end to”.
In American laboratories, the maze was once again seen as a symbol of hope. This time not as a route to God, but as a hope that people could be controlled in a very scientific manner, that social life could be remade based on scientific principles.
B.F. Skinner helped formulate the science of human behavior or “Behaviorism”. This science is based on the principles “operant conditioning”( the method that employs rewards and punishments for behavior) or otherwise known as “behavior modification”. The notion that all that matters is behavior and not the thought process that surrounds it, it’s also seen as a method of control.
This philosophy is deceptively simple, it suggests that organisms can be viewed as flesh and blood machines. WE need to be fueled like machines. Like machines, we can be put to work for a certain cause. Like machines, we can be repaired or redesigned for different purposes; and like machines, we can be propelled to take certain action at a push of a button.
While fascination with human behavior has always been there, it wasn’t until the enlightenment and the industrial revolution that men began to think they could control life forms the same way they control objects. To see things as mechanical parts interrelated, to view the earth at a distance, to see the world dead.
Behaviorist’s began with plants and the idea of tropisms (any direct response by an organism to a constant stimulus). Quickly moving on to insects with Jacques Loeb (nominated for a nobel prize as the instigator of the virgin lab birth) and his idea of “durable machines”, his self-proclaimed “technology of living substance” that the social ramifications begin.
In Russia, Ivan Pavlov with his “Pavlov’s Dog” became synonymous with the notion of “conditioned response”; and in America, John B. Watson graduated to humans.
Prominent in social science and U. S. advertising, Watson’s role is significant, his dissertation in 1906 was about the relation and awareness of the movement of a body of a rat in a maze. The idea was to see if he could remove, one by one, all of the rat's senses and test its ability to navigate a maze it had been trained to run. In his view, rats were always a stand in for humans and called it “psychology as the human behaviorist views it”. It was basically his manifesto for behaviorism. He declared there was a method available with technology by which human beings could be shaped in any way a scientist desired. Always obsessed with control, Watson stated “Give me a baby, and I can make any kind of man”.
And with the rise of the industrial revolution, cities offered bigger mazes and employment offered more test subjects, labs rats for the “Rat Race”. This larger playing field offered new insights and new techniques but also new problems to solve with more dire solutions or as U. S. financier and railroad businessman Jay Gould stated at the time “I can hire one half of the working class to kill the other half”
