B.F. Skinner's classic book, Beyond Freedom and Dignity is one that is worth reading or re-reading if you can get a hold of a copy of it. In this book he proposes that we look beyond conventional concepts of freedom, dignity, and punishment, and think about how the environment surrounding an individual effects the individual.

That individual is not helpless, but to the contray, much of his power comes through shaping the environment in a way that will shape himself. It is a reciprocal relationship between the person defined through the environment and how that person creates his own environment.

His concluding paragraph explains his belief on the science of behavior, and how it can be used to create a more perfect society. Quoting a portion of the paragraph:

...But environmental contingencies now take over functions one attributed to autonomous man, and certain questions arise. Is man then "aboolished"? Certainly not as a species or as an autonomous individual achiever. It is the autonomous inner man who is abolished, and that is a step forward. But does man not then become merely a victim or a passive observer of what is happening to him? He is indeed controlled by his environment, but we must remember that is an environment largely of his own making. The evolution of a culture is a gigantic exercise in self control.

So if we understand how people react to reinforcers, we can create a better environment that promotes harmony and other desired social values. Behaviorial psychology's most infamous blind spot is its lack of understanding of different ways people process and understand information (the issue of cognative psychology). To many psychologists B.F. Skinner's ideas are simplistic.

Indeed, his ideas are dated. He wrote in the 1960s, and the science and technology of behavior is vastly more advanced today. Still, a focus on environment and it's shaping of the individual is something too often missing in contemporary political discourse. The environment ultimately defines experience, which defines how we act.

Read this book, along with Szaz's classic essay called Myth of Mental Illness, and R.D. Laing's Politics of Experience for a good idea on how environment defines the individual, and how the individual can improve himself by defining his environment. I look forward to reading B.F. Skinner's other works, such as Walden II.