AnnaP; Skinner! You ARE showing your age now, dearie! You must be nearly as old as I am! Skinner was dealing with pigeons and meeces -straight after WWII. He saw what was expected of him to see for someone whose geneology and generation suffered what they suffered - but I won't go there. This post (on reward and punishment) coupled with your previous (scrumptious fruit in your garden) wondrous in their reasoning as they are, miss one little point though you've hinted at it in your first post. It was missed by much more from the other posters. It's to do with "how much we got compared to how much THEY'VE got" and "what WE'VE got is at THEIR expence." Tariq Ali (Clash of Fundamentalism) puts it more bluntly yet infinitely more eloquently than anyone else I've heard, saw or read: CEOs of huge corporations in mainly America but not necessarily so, run the military who in turn make sure that (let's say) "American interests (see here Corporations) are protected" or expanded. To these ends, labour forces in other countries are turned into slaveyards. The leaders of these countries are planted there by these CEOs (by means of bribes and suchlike) the common folk are told that they're entering a "new beautiful world of globalisation" and to go on working for the likes of NIKE and Mackers and Burger Queens and oil companies and battery companies that ruin every fruit-bearing piece of land - for nothing! If I see any group genuinely fighting for peace and against war it is the S11 who demonstrate at the economic fora around the world. If we could blame anyone -and yes, we ought to blame and force to stop their behaviour- it is the CEO who run off with millions, once they've harvested them from THOSE poor countries. Millions which would help in THEIR education which would make them better citizens -if that's what we think is needed. Millions which would turn them away from religious schools and into real schools where they learn their philosophy and science and develop an inquisitive -instead of an obsequious- mind; millions which would see anger vanish and a soft gaze at the back yard, filled with fructiferrous trees; millions which would allow hands to streched in support of others rather than coiled back into the chest like a card shark with a poor hand... I think I'll go and plant the cucumbers now! My heart has sunk again!
