July 31, 1996

"Whether they ever find life there or not, I think Jupiter should be considered an enemy planet."

As I drove to work today, I made what I thought was a conscious decision to stop off at this little convenience store and grab a cup of coffee and a doughnut.

Little did I know that my stopping at that store at that time for that reason was all part of a conditioned response. I feel so used.

You really think you're free? Think again; no, wait, on second thought, don't think, because it's not really your thought — it's an ingrained, preconditioned thought brought forward via your subconscious by the people who ultimately control you.

In the event you're quickly getting lost in the psycho mumble-jumble here, don't despair. I'm getting to the point.

One of the neat items included with all the new computer gear we recently acquired here at The Times is a little CD-ROM entitled the "Grolier Multimedia Encyclopedia." I'm amazed by the information packed into that little disk.

Just perusing some of the topics available, I ran across a bio on behaviorist B.F. Skinner, whose theories have helped to shape the scope of what we now term "outcome-based education." I'd known the guy's theories were radical, but what I read on-screen literally scared me.

Skinner was the founder of the modern psychological phenomenon known as "radical behaviorism." According to Grolier, he believed that all human beings are controlled by others — it's simply a matter of who does the controlling. In his view, scientists are the best-qualified to do so, more so than, say, religious leaders, parents, politicians or educators.

Worried yet?

"Determinism is the theory that all human action is caused entirely by preceding events, and not by the exercise of the WILL," the Grolier entry on "determinism" by Jesse G. Kalin notes.

Skinner, writes Thomas H. Leahey in the Grolier bio, "implored people to improve their lives by applying the scientific method to social problems ... he urged the abandonment of many traditional concepts of freedom and dignity."

Education in this country, the encyclopedia adds, is now in the hands primarily of educators with a "humanistic" philosophy. "Because humanistic educators view the student primarily as an individual rather than as a member of a national group, they tend to identify society as the world and take a humanistic-ecological approach to caring for and nurturing the world's resources."

Skinner's predecessor, John B. Watson, "boldly defined psychology as behaviorism," with the end goal being "the prediction and control of behavior."

Buying into the theory, then, I was able to determine that sometime between 1958 and now, some scientist somewhere implanted that response mechanism in me which would lead, inexorably, to making me to stop off and buy that doughnut and coffee.

It's a huge relief to know that I don't really have to hustle any more to come up with column ideas, since they're not products of my thoughts anyway.