Art and Performance

Chapter 8

The Theory of Good Company

“You see sir, 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 can 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.”

-Rogers, Forty-one, looking for a fresh start in his post-War career.

“A community must solve the problem of the family by revising certain established practices. That’s absolutely inevitable. The family is an ancient form of community, and the customsand habits which have been set up to perpetuate it are out of place in a society which isn’t based on blood ties. Walden Two replaces the family, not only as an economic unit, but to some extent as a social and psychological unit as well. What survives is an experimental question.”

“What answer have you reached?” said Castle.

“No definite answer yet. But I can describe some of the family practices which were part of the plan of Walden Two and tell you the consequences to date. A few experimental questions have been answered to our satisfaction.”

“Such as?”

“Oh, the advisability of separate rooms for husband and wife, for example.”

-Frazier on the growing weakness of the family.

B.F. Skinner, 1948. Walden Two (Hackett Classics, pp. 4, 128).