Open Society

Behaviorism led to the development of standardized teaching techniques that aimed to efficiently modify students' behaviors and facilitate learning. These principles emphasized efficiency and the application of scientific methods to management and organization. Building upon the standardized right-or-wrong approach introduced by Edward Thorndike, these tests aimed to objectively measure students' learning and performance. This led to an emphasis on test-based accountability and data-driven decision-making in education – simple reward and punishment measures on students, educators, schools, and districts.

Behaviorism is a dehumanizing mechanism of learning that reduces human beings to simple inputs and outputs. There is an ever-growing body of research suggesting that behaviorism is not only harmful to how we learn, but is also oppressive, ableist, and racist.

The reason why Maslow’s hierarchy appears as a pyramid is due to how industry interpreted humanistic psychology. Douglas McGregor, a business management professor in the 1950s/60s, simplified Maslow’s hierarchy into a series of steps to make the theory applicable to entrepreneurship. McGregor created the management style “Theory X” and “Theory Y”: Theory X had managers who saw their employees as not liking their work. It is centered on rewards and direct supervision. Theory Y had managers who saw their employees as wanting to further a specific mission or vision. It is centered on self-motivation and fulfilling work. Although McGregor believed that only incorporating Theory X wouldn’t work in the long term, he believed both theories were necessary to be a great manager – which is quintessential behaviorism. This is no different than B.F. Skinner’s critique of Taylorism – that people need praise and other forms of motivation to be successful – and Theory X & Y are essentially the table of contents for business management technique books. Charles McDermid, a psychologist, translated the simplified version of Maslow’s hierarchy into a pyramid in the 1960 issue of Business Horizons: “How money motivates men”, which argued that the pyramid can be used to “maximize motivation at the lowest cost.” Professors Todd Bridgman, Stephan Cummings, and John Ballard found that much criticism of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs was/is directly associated with McGregor’s interpretation and McDermid’s accompanying illustration of the pyramid. Because it was such a simple graphic to easily include on PowerPoints and in textbooks, the pyramid became the defining force of Maslow’s legacy. Schools have embraced behaviorism and limited their incorporation of humanistic psychology. Pedagogy and teaching practices that utilize humanistic ideas are warped through managerial mindsets that are dominated by radical behaviorism and dehumanizing practice. It’s difficult to find resources that aren’t shaped by a business management approach.

Unlike the behaviorist list, humanistic values are complicated. When we don’t reduce people to simple rule-obeyers, it requires educators to have nuanced, creative approaches to their teaching – a system without specific step-by-step strategies. It’s an art, not a technical role. Teachers cannot manage their classrooms like Amazon warehouses or a call center. Just as workers must fight back against the egregious dehumanization of labor, educators must create spaces that bring human flourishing to their community.

The 3 core traits of autism are: hyper-connected neurons, monotropic thinking, and bottom-up processing

Meltdown is a sign of extra stress energy that the nervous system needs to release. Society’s intensity causes meltdowns - they are not caused by a lack of self-regulation.

What is a punk band, after all, but an affinity group with guitars?

“PUNK ROCK EQUALS ANARCHY PLUS GUITARS AND DRUMS. ANYTHING LESS IS JUST SUBMISSION.” -Italian Punk

This subculture has to be inclusive—and not just in the superficial sense associated with the liberal politics of representation. Rather than just preaching to the converted, it should draw in people from a wide range of backgrounds and politics. We want to reach the same young folks who are going to be targeted by military recruiters, and we want to reach them first. Sure, that will mean rubbing shoulders with a lot of people who are not anarchists—it will mean a big messy stew of different politics and conflicts and contradictions—but the goal is to spread anarchism, not to hide out in it. Get everyone together in a space premised on horizontality, decentralization, self-determination, reproducible models, being ungovernable, and so on and let them discover the advantages for themselves.

The most important thing is the participation of those who are poor, volatile, and angry. Not out of any misguided notion of charity, but rather because the so-called dangerous classes are usually the motor force of change from below. The self-satisfied and well-behaved lack the risk tolerance essential for making history and reinventing culture.

Picture a self-education society without instructors, ranks, or lesson plans. Teenagers will teach themselves to play drums by watching other teenagers play drums. They won’t learn about politics in dusty tomes, but by publishing zines about their own experiences and corresponding with people on the other side of the planet. Every time well-known musicians perform, musicians who are just getting started will perform, too. Learning won’t be a distinct sphere of activity, but an organic component of every aspect of the community.

From the beginning, punks took great pains to distinguish themselves from hippies; in retrospect, punk was everything hippie that couldn’t be domesticated and commodified.

Punk caught on among the forerunners of today’s superfluous workforce at a time when the futureless were still a bitter, isolated minority. It was the song of the canary in the coal mine.

All the shortcomings punks identified in the unidirectional capitalist media of the late 20th century (“Kill your television!”) inform the participatory capitalist media of our own day. Who needs to go to band practice when you can make a video on your smart phone and post it to Tik Tok immediately? Do it yourself!

Punk combines the engaging agitprop and global networks of 21st-century cultural movements with the longevity of pre-internet political formations.

Let’s imagine the ideal cultural vehicle for anarchism.

“Today, in the anarchist movement, we sometimes miss the Dionysian spirit that characterized the hardcore punk underground at its high point: the collective, embodied experience of dangerous freedom. This is how punk can inspire us in our anarchist experiments of today and tomorrow: as a transformative outlet for rage and grief and joy, a positive model for togetherness and self-determination in our social relations, an example of how the destructive urge can also be creative.” -“Music as a Weapon: The Contentious Symbiosis of Punk Rock and Anarchism”