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The project of the "mental toolkit" was originally inspired by Ralph Ellis' Rational-Emotive Therapy. Ellis identified learned ideas as a source of personal effectiveness. He asserted that certain learned ideas are "correct" in that they guide us towards effective actions, while others are "false" in that they guide us towards misplaced actions. This pro-active approach contrasts with the more passive traditional "psychotherapy," wherein the therapist only helps the patient to find their own solution, by the mere act of listening while the other talks.

We could generalize this principle of "correct ideas" to create a new type of self-help book. But as soon as we start investigating any particular [[conceptual scheme]], we come across a vast sea of existing specialized knowledge. A rational approach would therefore be to assemble inter-disciplinary teams of accredited specialists, who would work together to identify sets of "correct ideas" that could help set us all on the right track towards individual success, as well as collective change.

==Constructivist epistemology==
The theme of the "mental toolkit" is close to ideas developed by various thinkers that are often grouped into a current called "constructivist epistemology." Those frequently cited include:
*Lev Vygotsky
*Jean Piaget
*Alfred Korzybski
*Gregory Bateson
*Ralph Ellis himself

One well-known off-shoot of constructivist epistemology is Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP). However, this latter school of thought is generally considered to be pseudo-scientific. (Also, NLP lost considerable credit after one the founders was tried for murder.)

==The political dimension==
One approach to providing people with useful mental tools would be to prepare documents based on expert knowledge, as mentioned above. But while such an approach based on scientific knowledge (positivities) could be effective in specific areas such as psychology, it is insufficient in that human understanding must be based on more than science. In particular, all of the practical activities of the individual are in reality interconnected with that indvidual's political outlook - or lack thereof.

While the political dimension is important even for the individual's personal projects, it is obviously predominant in the individual's collective projects.

[[Category:Life]]