A Society Named Albert

     There was once an experiment by behavioralist psychologist John B. Watson that conditioned an automatic the response of fear of a rat. Knowing Pavlov had discovered that dogs or animals unconciously respond with salivation to the anticipation of food and the stimulus of only footseps or a bell, Watson wanted to test if he could condition the response of fear. May I introduce "Little Albert", an experiment that today would be deemed as deeply unethical.

     Watson found himself a one year old infant he named Albert and put him in an empty room. Every day he would eventually release a rat into the room with Albert. The albino lab rat was in fact tamed, but even if it hadn't Albert did not seem to really care. We typically associate rats as hideous creatures, evil little things that symbolize slums and barns and ugliness. They are bad and we fear them or hate them. But Albert as any one year old child would, greeted the rat with curiousity and excitedness. Albert saw the rat as a possible toy or maybe even somewhat of a companion. What Albert actually thought of the rat is hard to say for sure but we do understand that his reaction to the rat was far friendlier then ours, as leardned adults would have been.

     However the experiment had not even begun yet. Watson, after noting Albert's curiousty and semi-familiarity with the creature set out to change the child's reactions to it. At the same time he introduced the rat to Albert everyday, he now also created an extremely loud banging noise that would obviously irritate and startle the child. Albert would cry and cry from the noise. At first Albert did not seem to think it was the rat that caused the noise, but he certainly did not go about studying and playing with the creature with the same amount of trust and enthusiasm. So every day Watson would continue bring Albert the rat and include a loud and startling banging noise. Very quickly Albert began to associate the rat with the noise and unconciously decided that the rat was no good; that somehow for whatever reason when he saw the rat along with it came this horrible sound that always made him very upset. Everyday from then on, when the rat entered the room, Watson saw the exact response he was looking for from Albert... terror.The child wanted nothing to do with the rat. While he was of course bothered by just the noise, the terror was only reinforced by the rat and only the rat. Albert now knew of course that the rat was bad and of did not want anything to do with it.

     I tell you this story because I can relate very easily to Albert. Reading this should make you realize that you also can relate to Albert. Every human in this world, well at least anyone that even remotely partakes in social procedure, can relate to "Little Albert". As behavioralist theorists would be eager to tell you, every emotion or response you have is somehow learned by your environment. Some would argue just how much genetics play into the equation, but the idea that your environment shapes you so thoroughly is substantial to me.

    Humans naturally have a tendency to also make patterns and conclusions from scattered information they gather from the day, the hour, the minute, or even the second. The past, the future, and most importantly your present is constantly being analyzed and over-analyzed in your own over-zealous brain. Combine this human character flaw with the idea that human emotion is learned from your environment and then examine these words:

     God... hope, faith and love....

     How do you see thse words now? Well let me tell you Albert, they are all related. While you may think you know that they are related, you don't see it like you should... I gaurantee it. Love is what mostly everyone seeks in today's world. Love they relate with happiness, (which is a concept I can further elaborate on but I will not) and at any chance people will use they're curious eyes and curious conciousness to find love and happiness. When Albert was introduced to the rat he was instantly curious of the creature, but was ignorantly optimistic to hope that it was a source of entertainment; a toy or companion. In my analysis this ignorant sense of optimism that the rat may be a toy is exactly what love is in society. The optimism that something foreign is a source of happiness and entertainment is only ignorant hope and faith. When and if substantiated it is love. However, notice how his optimism actually perpetuated and reinforced the idea that the rat was a toy. In Albert's optimism that the rat was a toy, he found no actual evidence to tell him otherwise because of his optimisim. So in today's social terms, if faith, hope, and love works then it works, no need to say otherwise.

     So is John B. Waston in this whole analysis God then? No. Watson does not exist in the child's small world, thus in our small world God doesn't exist either. We do not have the capacity to see otherwise. We could be the rat, the room, the child, we could be anything. But we will never understand the higher, the highest forces of the universe. This is beside the point. What we view as God in society, is the rat in the experiment. The rat enters the room at the same time everyday. At first Albert sees the rat as something that gives him entertainment, but is this because the rat is entertaining or is it because Albert is totally alone in an empty room. Eventually after the horrible noise is introduced every time the rat enters, the rat is associated with terror and cruelty. Does the rat actually cause the banging noise? One could argue that the rat may actually be entertaining, and that the rat actually does cause the noise, but that is merely a philosophical debate. The point I am trying to make is that in an effort to draw conclusions from whatever information is presented, sometimes only irrational conclusions are made. The effects of the environment on humans, the information we have available to us as a whole society, may actually cause us to see God as something smaller then God could ever be.