I have had any number of interactions, in any number of ways, with any number   
   of people involved in psychology.   
      
   I discovered that their task is to get people to feel good about their place   
   on the Titanic as it is about to sink.   
      
   Where do I start. Let's start with the biggest pile of crock. Self-esteem.   
   Rewarding self-esteem does not make better people; it makes worse people. If   
   you have high standards for yourself, you will find it harder to feel good   
   about yourself than if you    
   have low standards for yourself. The person with lower standards will have a   
   higher self-esteem; the person with higher standards will be a better person.   
      
   Another bit of idiocy. “Positive thinking.” Navel-gazing. Stupidity.   
   Delusion. “Positive thinking” does not begin to solve anything at all. All   
   it does is blind you to what is going on all around you. I have seen blind   
   optimism lead people into    
   hideous situations and all sorts of stupid, ignorant deeds. You fail to   
   anticipate problems, and you do foolish things. Then you think that the reason   
   that you are failing is some kind of unconscious negativity. It is not. It is   
   the stupidity of your    
   approach. You think that thinking critically is the same thing as thinking   
   negatively. So then you fail to check for what could go wrong, and you run   
   into all kinds of unexpected problems.   
      
   Personal responsibility – well there is a room for that, but it's not what   
   is needed at this time. We have polar ice caps melting. We have men and women   
   killing one another. If people are encouraged to focus only on their personal   
   lives, these problems    
   do not get solved. Focusing on such things would get you labeled as not taking   
   personal responsibility or as being negative or grandiose. However that kind   
   of focus is what is sorely needed now. Whereas if people are only focusing on   
   their personal lives,   
    nobody is going to pay any attention to these things, and our Titanic will   
   sink.   
      
   What else. Supposedly ego is the root of all problems. It is not. Anything   
   human can work for good or for ill. That is as much the case with ego as it is   
   the case with the mind or the heart. Yes, the heart can err, and I have seen   
   that in many situations.   
    That the mind can both do good things and bad things, everyone knows. As for   
   the ego, for an alternative view we have Ayn Rand, that the ego is the   
   fountainhead of all progress. I take neither side in this battle. I neither   
   extol nor demonize ego. I see    
   it as capable of going in any given direction, for good, for ill or for a mix.   
      
   Oh and, you can never be angry and you can never say anything negative. More   
   stupidity. When the nuclear reactor in Japan blew up, the Japanese politicians   
   used that kind of thinking to not tell people what had taken place. They   
   thought that that was    
   enlightenment on their part. It was not enlightenment. It was lying. If you   
   believe that you get what you send out, you will not say the things that need   
   to be said. This will create a climate of suffocating insincerity. That will   
   not lead to anything    
   like enlightenment. It will lead to deception and insincerity all across the   
   board.   
      
   Then there is the idea that you create your reality with your thinking. Yeah   
   right. Your thinking did not create the Sun. Your thinking did not create   
   America. Your thinking can influence your life in all sorts of directions.   
   That does not mean that it    
   has created your reality.   
      
   Am I being negative in saying on this? I sure hope so. These people are   
   totally full of shit. Their solutions are absolutely wrong, in some cases   
   precisely wrong. Self-esteem does not better humanity, it worsens it. Positive   
   thinking does not make you    
   successful, it makes you blind. And claiming that focusing on anything other   
   than one's personal life is being grandiose or not being responsible prevents   
   people from paying attention to the very real problems with which we are faced   
   now.   
      
   What is being pushed as “mental health” is absolutely no such thing. It is   
   a delusion. And it is time that more people wake up from these and related   
   delusions and get to work solving the real problems of the world.   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)