Skinner and the Self
Where Is I in Them?
This was written while I was attending classes at Shimer College. Shimer was a very small “Great Books”-oriented, liberal arts school located in Waukegan, Il. I was an adult student of the “weekend program” for about two years, my leaving coming as a result of weariness derived from constant battles with a biased professoriate.
High abstracted man alone…a wonder, a grandeur, and a woe. — Melville
The ambivalence that Melville shows towards the individual of modernity is abandoned — no, is rejected — by Skinner. In short, for Skinner, the individual is dead. Free will is to be regarded as little more than a myth. The “right” sort of social environment predestines/predetermines the “right” sort of person. And, as I noted in class, the “social” is prior to the individual in the most extreme way. It’s “nurture” uber alles.
Much was said in class about the validity/invalidity of Skinner’s characterization of human behavior. We all noted and criticized his jettisoning of free will. Nonetheless, I detected amongst my peers a willingness to concede that Skinner may have been largely correct in his characterization of how most of society was controlled, how so much of societal behavior seems to be a reflection of the grip that cultural and governmental forces have on us as individuals. I can only generalize, but I think it would be safe to say that most of the class would view these forces as being largely malevolent, especially those forces we would link to the mass media. I wouldn’t be surprised to find out from my fellow students that they believed that the mass media held undue influence in and over our communities, especially those communities’ youngest members, who seem to be most susceptible to being seduced by the mass media’s messages.
This is not an unusual point of view, and I have a fair amount of sympathy for it. But my sympathy only extends so far. First, I would argue that while the corporate media have a great of power--certainly a highly disproportionate amount of power vis-a-vis forms of popular media — it is nonetheless limited and can be curtailed even further. The power of corporate America should not be accepted as a fait accompli; there is evidence in even our most recent history of struggles against it being won. None of the players in these struggles should be treated monolithically. The corporations and those that struggle against their influence, whatever form that may take, should not be regarded in any abstract sense. All inhabit a layer of social life, as do the struggles that are fought between them.
If one scratches below the surface of these struggles — and this is my second point of departure from my fellow students — peculiar things begin to appear. Common-sense would seem to dictate that if a battle is to be won, a base must be found. It’s my view that those struggles that had any chance of winning had to have a viable base to begin from. Concretely, this would mean an established community of some type. Historically speaking, for a strike to succeed, it seems to me, it would have had to have had the support of the community where striking workers lived — minimally. One could argue that the decline in this country’s organized labor force was parallel to the decline of our country’s communities. Once one goes, so does the other. The same could be said of other communities that may have been involved in other forms of political or cultural struggle. From this standpoint, it should come as no surprise at all that most landfills, toxic dumpsites and incinerators are constructed in poor, largely minority and all but decimated communities.
Community need not be left hanging so abstractly either. The ability to curtail the power of corporations and governments is dependent upon the preservation, maintenance and rehabilitation of communities. But in order for these communities to be made viable or kept viable, they would require the preservation, maintenance and rehabilitation of what I would term “populist” or authentic culture. Key to this endeavor would be the rehabilitation or if necessary reconstitution of those institutions that have historically been central to the transmission and retrieval of “traditions.” Such institutions would include religion, the family, the neighborhood, the public square, the marketplace, etc. All have been losing or have lost their vitality for all sorts of reasons, with the most outstanding of these being related to the logic of the market and the logic of the state. Both have played incredibly debilitating roles in this regard.
Neighborhoods, families, churches--they are composed of individuals. But individuals are partly the product of these institutions. Each is dependent upon the other. History, embodied in the form of traditions, is crucial--is the glue that links one with the other. In history and thus in tradition, the value that the community has for the individual and the value that the individual has for the community is preserved, ready to be reflected upon, and ultimately to be built upon.
Skinner seems to be arguing that the “twilight of subjectivity” and the end of the individual are part and parcel of the project of modernity, and that we have reached the point of no return. In contrast to Skinner, it’s my contention that bolstering subjectivity is the best hope we have for fending off the forces of control that Skinner hopes to harness for his purposes. I also believe that as long as remnants of our mutilated institutions, traditions and selves remain free of corporate and state-driven forms of co-optation, the potential still exists to resist those more subliminal forms of corporate control.
I think it’s important to remember that the mass media reflect not only the interests of corporations and governments--that is, those linked inextricably to the propagation of consumerism as a way of life — but the true interests and values of real people. If this was not the case, television shows would not be watched, products would not be bought, and voting would become completely obsolete. Let’s not forget that corporations are most interested in making money. If it can be done by marketing so-called “traditional values,” they will do it. If it means marketing the values of Madonna, they will do that too. More than likely, the corporations will be doing both at the same time.
I think it is incumbent upon anyone who claims that the “masses” are “duped” to explain why or how they have remained free of contamination.
