Lessons from Walden Two Walden Two is a novel about a fictional community in present-day America. The community is a utopia of the highest standards: people are happy and content, there is a minimum of offensive emotions and activities, and everyone is healthy and prosperous. It's a stark contrast to the world we live in today. So why don't we change our society to match that of Walden Two, solving all of our nation's many problems? For one thing, we don't know if a society modeled after Walden Two will work. Walden Two is a work of fiction; such a society has never been attempted. However, even if such a society has been proven to work perfectly, our society is not prepared for such a radical change. It is human nature to resist change. Trying to immediately convert our society to Walden Two would be disastrous, even chaotic. What we can do, however, is take apart Walden Two; identify the most necessary aspects in our society today and work to apply them. By working to achieve these goals, we get closer to the good society, even if we never fully achieve it. One of the most dangerous aspects of our society is that we are a consumer society. People are pressured to spend money; the advertising industry has become a highly successful and profitable industry by effectively convincing people to spend money. Many people have more money and possessions than they will ever need, while many more people will never have enough. People are pressured to earn as much money as possible in order to belong to a higher social class. None of these problems exist in Walden Two; they are solved primarily through behavioral engineering. There are no social classes in Walden Two. Everyone is equal (socially and financially) and... middle of paper... the child will draw their own conclusion that listening to advertising is a very poor way to make choices. Then, as the child grows, he will see evidence of this idea for himself - it is not necessary to explicitly show it to the child. The advertising example is just one example of how a new learning system (which is a form of behavioral engineering) can be used to eliminate the problem of consumer society. There is no reason why the same method can be used to solve all types of problems, for example: wealth distribution, environmental problems and the desire for power. This is a very radical change; however, it is much less radical than the society proposed in Walden Two. Social change doesn't happen overnight; Changing the learning system will take a lot of work, but it is the first step in the right direction to change our society.