A classic psychology tract, constructed on the default premise: 1. Here's how things are. 2. Here's how things should be, if only people would listen to psych

A classic psychology tract, constructed on the default premise: 1. Here's how things are. 2. Here's how things should be, if only people would listen to psychologists. In this way, psychology has occupied the vacuum created by the departure of religion, in the minds of people who believe life should have a particular outcome, and who think someone is (or should be) in charge. Meanwhile, parents, children, indeed everyone, are doing their best to fulfill personally chosen goals. Those goals are freely selected by independent agents in a morally neutral universe ruled only by evolution. Some plans will succeed, some will fail, but consulting authority is always a mistake, because in evolution, there is no authority. Psychology has a long history of condemning behaviors it thinks the public dislikes, then changing their tune when public tastes change. It was once a mental illness to run away from your master in the antebellum South (Drapetomania). It was once a mental illness to be a homosexual (not very long ago). More recently, it was a mental illness to be creative and intelligent (Asperger syndrome). All these and many other imaginary ailments have been abandoned as public tastes changed. H. G. Wells said, "Civilization is in a race between education and catastrophe." It was a positive step to abandon religion. It will be another positive step when we abandon psychology and begin to think for ourselves.