Radical behaviorialism and the class based vote.
May 1, 2006
Active-Negative Personality: How the personality of greatness even with its pitfalls should be celebrated.
Alienation: From a psychitaric term to a societal problem needing treatment.
Canned Reality: A discussion of video games, and television, and their effects on society.
Dealing with Depression: A look beyond medicine for truth.
Exploring and Questioning Madness: Andrew questions what it means to be 'mad' or insane, and how such a categorization both benefits and hurts society.
Feeling Good: What it means to have feelings as humans.
Flashbacks: A look at memories that get stirred up and force us to see today in yesterday's light.
Individual Making Friends: The importance of giving part of the self up to be a good friend.
Judith Kaye's Life Lessons: Some words of wisdom from the NYS Chief Justice.
Legitimate Feelings: How mass-society forces us to have certain kinds of feelings.
Narcissism: Be a self advocate, but remember humanity.
Narrow Minded: We need to think beyond our narrow perspectives.
New Toy Feeling: What it feels like for an adult to get a new toy to play with...
Not My Choosing: So much of our lives are not under our control.
On 'Loners' and the Solitary Life Style: Why so called loners and those who choose to live a solitary life-style are not disfunctional or evil.
Our Own Worst Enemy: Personal reflection on what it means to be an individual and my experience of the world around me.
Passionate Words: Short poem about passion versus anger.
Politics of Self-Reflection: A look at writing and self-reflection and the challenges it poses.
Pyromania: Some thoughts on the love of fire and arsonists.
Redefining Ourselves Beyond Labels: Too often we deny ourselves flexibility by binding ourselves to labels.
Revenge Never Works: One upping another person will never make things better, only worst.
Routine: A Great Danger: We routinely do many things in our lives, without considering the potential abuse that routine creates.
Schizophrenia and Society: A look at how we define this social construct.
Smile a Little Smile: Our faces reveal a lot about how we see our world.
Social Context of Writing: Why our own words seem so foreign over time.
Social Control Breaksdown: Why society can't always protect itself from the individual.
Sublimation: A Way to Truth and Freedom: Reasons why we should try to appease our unsocial desires instead of repressing them.
The 'R.D. Laing Problem': Andrew looks at phenomenology, our notion of experience, and how we see each other and ourselves.
The Colorful World of the Web: Thoughts on the use of color in websites and how it's careful application can promote a desired message.
Thoughts on Autism: Autism is a difficult communications disorder.
Understanding Behavior: How the interaction of environment, experience, and the autonomous individual define interaction.
What Does Anger Mean Today?: A look at 'public' anger as a legitimate reaction to a sometimes disfunctional political society.
What Does Courage Mean Today?: A look at the contemporary meaning of courage in a society that shuns it.
What Does Hate Mean Today?: Some thoughts on hate and political action.
What is a Nervous Breakdown?: How such psychological stresses can be transforming experiences.
Why Go to Psychotherapy?: Psychotherapy help you find yourself as an individual.
Why I am Crazy: Some lists explaining how I view the world, and mocking the social control notion of psychology.
Some 40 years ago, B.F. Skinner declared that the autonomous man is dead and never existed. His remarks were badly taken by many people who felt that if man was not a creature of free world and simply a prisoner of his own experience and environment that we would be on the slippery slope towards facism. Yet, that alone does not invalidate his argument on how man behaves and interacts with his environment.
If we were to assume that the radical behaviorism as expounded B.F. Skinner is correct then it would suggest that all of man's choices are made choosing the behavior that is most reinforcing in one way or another. Man's experience and environment is complex and we can rarely understand where an individual has been or how sees the world around him. Yet, if we could only control part of the experience or environment, maybe we could control man and his choices.
That would of course ignore the differences in the human mind when it comes to preception. All humans precieve things independent of experience and environment slightly different, and this particularly pronounced in cases of mental illness and autism where there is clear deficitancies in perception of the world. We might be able to control part of the individual but far from totally.
To the political scientist, radical behaviorialism explain a lot of political behavior including class voting behavior. Does the individual actually choose who he votes for in the polling booth or is it predetermined by his experiences generated by social class? It also suggests that if we can penetrate a culture and get our message out then we can radically change how whole groups of people vote.
![[Picture]](/img/small/earth/ice2.jpg) | Ice From the Common Earth Series. Added 12/10/06. |
Copyright ©1999-2008 Andy Arthur.
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