Academic

OUR PARANOID ruling class. Related: The secret to Maslow?s success: ?Maslow was influential bec?

By Glenn Reynolds

OUR PARANOID ruling class.

Related: The secret to Maslow’s success: “Maslow was influential because he was very smart, wrote well, and had many good ideas. But he was also influential because his theory told many of the cultural elites of the era that they were objectively more mental healthy and more psychologically developed than were their opponents. Flattering poppycock, and also dangerously undemocratic. . . . Maslow wanted to give an objective validation that, for example, the Viet Nam war protestor was objectively superior to the Viet Nam general, the environmentalist was objectively superior to the captain of industry etc. Many cultural elites ate it up, just as Soviet elites ate it up when their psychiatrists said that anyone who didn’t love the government was mentally ill and needed electroshock treatment post-haste.”

Plus, a warning about “socially convenient beliefs.”

Full post as published by Instapundit.com on September 07, 2010 (boomark / email).