We talk in psychology about conditioning, how you condition a rat or a dog. For Instance, you put that rat in a box, and you determine when and for what reason it will be fed, and you train it, that it has to perform a particular behavior to be fed or to get water. So in the end this rat acquires what we call a new behavior, a new way of dealing with the world as a result of being placed in those particular conditions.
We look at conditioning as learning, but note also that conditioning means to live under certain conditions. One thing that the human brain is about, is that it’s essentially a learning instrument. That is why we come into this world not pre-wired as little animals, but the brain is more like a computer so that its programs its environment and takes in its environment and then begins to orient the person’s behavior in terms of that program. In a sense then, we not only live in an environment, but the environment also lives in us. You not only live under certain conditions, but the conditions live in you as a people.
That rat then, as a result of being put into that condition of the Skinner box, itself becomes conditioned. And you can tell that it has been in the box by looking at its behavior. This means that the condition has inculcated itself into the very brains of that rat and it comes out in its very behavior.
When you let other people determine the conditions under which you must live as a people, then these people are creating you. The same way the rat's behavior is created by the conditions in which it must live.
I tell my students when you looked at the rat in the skinner experiment, the rat in the box. You must not just look at it the way it’s described in the book. The book will say “the rat is in the box and if it presses the lever the pellet of food drops down and it eats the food, and after a while, it learns the association between pressing the lever down and getting the food, hence it is conditioned.” They play all kinds of games with that.
You see the good ole black student comes in there and he learns all of that and he figures he’s equally educated with the white boy. “Oh man I know this conditioning”, he may even come out 5 beta kappa, first in his class, stupid though. Stupid, very stupid! Every 5 beta kappa keys are gonna make him stupid. He’s going to get Pride out of it, and you're not going to be able to tell him anything. “Why I got my degree from Harvard, your going to tell me?” If that class didn’t tell him that he is the rat, he’s been miseducated.
The relationship between the rat in the box and the experimenter is not merely an experiment and conditioning, it represents a political situation. It represents a set of power relationships, and that rat is created more by the power relationships than it is through the so-called experiment. But it isn’t described this way in a general psychology text.
The experimenter has Power, and the rat is relatively powerless, therefore the experimenter can put the powerless rat into this condition because if the rat had the power he would dare him to do it. And say “you're not going to put me in the box, I’ll put you in the box, but you're not gone put me in the box.” But the rat not having the power is not able to do it. And now the experimenter uses his power, “I’ll feed you when you do this, I’ll send an electric shock when you do that when I turn this light on you eat when I turn it off you don’t.”
So if the student doesn’t learn that he’s being miseducated, I don’t care what type of A he makes in the course, he’s being made stupid by that very Education. If he’s not told and asks the question; look at Harlem and the other ghettos of the world, and these include whole Nations. Who’s feeding you? Where do you get your food? Don’t you know you're locked in here, and if they ran a blockade around your community you would starve to death? Who brings the water into the community, into your house? The oil the gas lights, jobs? When you look at it you can see it again, what? Power relations.
Do you think these people who control these essential things are going to be foolish enough to manipulate them in a way as such that you will not be controlled in the sense that they want you controlled? That they are not going to use this power to create into us a type of personality that is compatible with their system and their status quo? You would do it if you had the power, of course, in a sense, this is the way reality works and this is the way the people have worked us.
The idea then that you let another group of people have this much power and control over the very vital resources of the world and over the vital things for life itself, means in a sense then that we are letting them have control to a great extent over our personalities and in a sense, they have created this personality.
Therefore what they have done is interjected into us the kind of possibility that is suitable to their continued domination of the world itself. And an essential part of creating that personality is to remove the knowledge of ourselves as a people.
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