The Cliffs Note Renaissance

I’d love to join in on all of the Orwellian commentary taking place today, but between you and me, I’ve only read the Cliffs Notes… I get the gist, and can navigate through a conversation on the highlights, but what about the other 312 pages of context ol’ George tried to lay out for us? What did I miss?

Consider this quote for starters:

Something is wrong when it is the system that must be saved rather than the way of life that the system is supposed to serve.

A decent synopsis of 1984, sure — however this isn’t Orwell’s quote. This reflection comes from B.F. Skinner, nearly 20 years after his book Walden Two was released.

A year before George Orwell published 1984, World renowned behaviorist, Dr. B.F. Skinner, PhD released Walden Two — a fictional manuscript depicting a utopia achieved by applying our understanding of Human Behavior.

This book may strike some particularly familiar chords for veterans:

“It’s a funny thing, sir, but in a way, fighting a war is easy. At least you know what you want and how to get it. But we don’t even know how to begin to fight the mess we’re in now. Whom are we fighting? What kind of war is it? Do you see what I mean?”

Skinner’s characters mesh the painful curiosity of a war veteran with the scientific objectivity of a scholar to ask some hard hitting questions. Considering the state of the world in 1945(the year he wrote the novel) lends some context to what must have been going through Dr. Skinner’s mind in the years following Hitler’s death.

If you were a Harvard Professor today, with a voice that could generate curiosity in the innovators of tomorrow — What questions would you ask?

“I had a job in a shipping department before the war,” he said with a shrug. “You wouldn’t call it ‘plans.” What we don’t see, sir, is why we have to take up where we left off. Why isn’t this a good time to get a fresh start? From the very beginning. Why not get some people together and set up a social system somewhere that will really work?

Why not?

The idea of banding together for a better future lies within our DNA. The way this drive presents itself in the observable world, however, is a bit harder to predict. Fortunately, the insights science lends us improves on a daily basis. Unfortunately, our ability to convey its valuable findings is trapped somewhere in the 1700’s… with troubling roots from much earlier.

“Politics really wouldn’t give us the chance we want. You see, we want to do something — we want to find out what’s the matter with people, why they can’t live together without fighting all the time. We want to find out what people really want, what they need in order to be happy, and how they van get it without stealing it from somebody else. You can’t do that in politics. You can’t try something first one way and then another, like an experiment. The Politicians guess at all the answers and spend their time persuading people they’re right — but they must know they’re only guessing, that they haven’t really proved anything.”

Whenever I tell someone that Dr. Skinner taught pigeons how to fly missiles during World War II, there is a brief pause followed by a “How?!”. They want to see proof (Obviously). We have proof, now what?

I’m turning to the context. Brainstorming new questions from the pile of mess we have to clean up. While I shovel, I’ll think to myself:

What type of world events inspired such land mark “utopian” novels to come out in the 1940's?

Why in the hell were we training birds to be kamikaze pilots?

How does the virtual realm differ from physically observable space in regards to government and freedom of speech? What did A Clockwork Orange Say?

These questions not only deserve, but demand that we familiarize ourselves with the other 300 pages we haven’t read, yet.

Stay thirsty, my friends.