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Part 16: Causes of Behavior:
July 1, 2002:
This time I want to get into the things which cause or inhibit
responsible behavior. Until now I have been talking about personal
responsibility as though it were a simple decision. I have been
describing ideal or desirable behavior. I have been saying what
we ought to do and be. I can imagine my readers saying, "Are
you blind Gaffer? Look around you. How are you going to get them
to do that?" I agree! If it were that simple, I would not
feel compelled to be writing about it. Our parent, teacher, or
preacher would say, "Behave!" and we would do it. Clearly,
there are obstacles to good behavior.
We need only look at our culture to see that most people behave badly, not well. We see it in the corner pushers in our cities. We see it in their customers, the users. We see it in the drive by shootings. We see it in the welfare roles. We see it in the punk gangs and we see it in our major corporate offices. In government, we see it in spades. Sadly enough, we even see it in our educational systems. Education is an area which will require extensive examination when I take up specific issues. Must we conclude that all of these people want to behave badly? Am I wasting my time in writing these things? Is my cause hopeless?
Let us look at the issues involved in good and bad behavior. I will submit that one issue has to do with rewards and punishments. Now, I cannot discuss reward and punishment without talking about behaviorism and B. F. Skinner. At one time Skinner was the spokesman for the science of behaviorism. Now, I am not sure that behaviorism has a spokesman.
Though he was a major spokesman for behaviorism, Skinner was not a good one. I believe that he was not wrong, he was simply misunderstood. I suspect the misunderstanding was deliberately by some people. Still, it was largely his own fault. He was too obtuse and too angry. Except for the true believers, he failed to make his case. It was too technical for most human understanding. I will take up the defense of Skinner in another essay, outside the scope of this series.
For now, I will submit that behaviorism is a useful tool in understanding human behavior. For the record, this is my understanding of the science. Behaviorism is the science of observing and controlling the environment with the goal of predicting and controlling behavior. It is an unfortunate fact that the tools of behaviorism have found their most effective use in the hands of really monstrous people. I speak of repressive governments and Madison Avenue. These are dreadful people who have used the tools in a completely selfish way. All science is like that. It can be used for evil or good.
Never mind Madison Avenue and other evil people for now. I will address that later. For now, I will ask, how can this science help us? I think it will help us in understanding what we are doing wrong. First we must get clear on what is possible concerning our behavior. In that sense, control, as used in the definition, is a poor choice of words. It would be a good word if we were talking about mechanical devices. People are not machines and it is not possible to directly control human behavior in that sense.
So, what is behaviorism really about? It is about influencing probabilities in behavior. In the jargon, it is about arranging contingencies of reenforcement. Here is a scientific reality. If you arrange the contingencies of reenforcement in a particular way, you will increase the probability that a person will respond in a particular way to a particular stimulus. In plain English, people will tend to act to acquire rewards and avoid punishments.
So contingencies of reenforcement are simply rewards and punishments. Some of these contingencies of reenforcement are cultural and some are environmental, but many more are simply arranged by the government and other agencies with the power to do so. More often that not, those which are arranged by the government are completely opposite of those which would be likely to encourage desirable behavior.
At this point I must throw out the concepts of good and bad behavior as unnecessarily divisive. I will replace them with desirable and undesirable behaviors. Now what do I mean by desirable or undesirable behavior? I define desirable behavior as that which is likely to enhance the long term health and viability of the culture. Undesirable behavior then is that which is likely to be detrimental to the culture.
The goal is a stronger healthier culture, so we should act to encourage desirable behavior and discourage undesirable behavior. We can attempt that by arranging the contingencies of reenforcement within the structure of our society to encourage desirable behavior. We are already arranging these contingencies. The only problem is, we currently arrange them so as to encourage undesirable behavior and discourage desirable behavior. The only thing we need change then is in what we encourage and discourage.
Here is the plain truth. Our culture is currently structured to reward failure and bad citizenship (undesirable behavior). We are also structured to punish success and good citizenship (desirable behavior). I don't know why it is necessary for me to point this out. The government ought to stop doing those things which reward and reenforce bad behavior. We also need to begin doing those things which are most likely to reward and encourage desirable behavior.
It is really very simple. We can encourage positive behavior by arranging positive contingencies of reenforcement. We can discourage negative behavior by arranging negative contingencies of reenforcement. The community must do this if our culture is to survive. The bleeding hearts notwithstanding, we cannot reward failure.
We cannot guarantee good behavior if we do this. We can only increase the probability of it. I must be very clear about this. Even if we change what we are doing immediately, the path out of this labyrinth is so long and so difficult that we may not succeed. However, what we are doing now is guaranteed to fail. In fact, it already has failed. Our culture is in chaos. Selfishness and greed rule our behavior. We have sacrificed the home and family. We have gone from a single income to a double income family. Our children are becoming neglected psychopaths. Still we cannot sustain the massive costs of bureaucracy run amuck. And, insane acts of despair continue to multiply.
I do not leave myself out of this. I am as culpable as anyone else. So, all of us must change. I am talking about what we must do if we are to have a chance at recovering. We must return to individual responsible behavior. That is where it starts and ends. Our governments and our institutions must begin doing those things which support responsible behavior. We must insist on that or America will go the way of the Roman Empire.
No one is perfect and no one will ever be perfect. Nonetheless, we have a duty and we must strive to perform it as best we can. What I am asking for is honest effort, from myself and everyone else.
I will continue with this theme of behavior in my next essay.
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