as anyone with significant exposure to Academia would know. And he (she?) explained it about as clearly as could be. And since the use of “scholar” here arose in the context of New Leader’s work in an academic environment, there’s really no question, is there? And yet there it is – the interesting need to attempt to marginalize heru-ur, to discount. That’s not really about the meaning of “scholar”, is it?

It could relate to a number of things, including of course an apparent, understandable need in some quarters to construct New Leader as an “intellectual”. There is reason for such a need, and if we are honest we recognize, for one, that the simple religiosity, for example, uncomfortably reminds of arrested intellectual development displayed by other leaders and public figures. When a deconstruction, like heru-ur’s, of an attempt to construct something needed by use of a label or title elicits such a strong emotional response, that says something.

Heru-ur’s point is the most important and well-reasoned to appear in this thread – about the careless, insidious, and unprincipled misuse of language to create lies . . . . and New Leaders, something many seem willing to collaborate on.

In context: “When in fear, attack and kill.”, behavior that would be recognized in numerous phyla.

"If somebody was sending rockets into my house where my two daughters sleep at night . . . . .” and I had done nothing to relocate and make them safer, then I am a neglectful and/or impaired parent.

“ . . . . . I’m going to do everythnig in my power to stop that.” And if that includes bombing and killing hundreds of neighboring humans, with the expectation that my daughters’ safety has been enhanced, then I am both morally arrested and intellectually impaired.

The Audacity of Arrested Development.

is this letters thread.

That is, the cause is what is represented in each and every letter here (with exception of those of “buddha….” someone, who seems to understand the role of myth and pathological expression of distorted beliefs and maladaptive archetypes in human behavior) : retained regressive beliefs in and normative endorsement of astonishingly nonsensical make-believe elements from childhood tales – that there are such things as “nations”, “Jews”, “Arabs”, “religions” such a thing as an “American”, an “Israeli”, a “Semite”. Us / Others.

Stop! I can’t tolerate it, can’t stand to imagine existence apart from my Tribe, my group, my culture, my god cult of magical shame and forgiveness, my cult that must be the Right one – without my Group, I’m nothing, terrified, unable to think or choose, especially now since Mom and Dad are gone. I just don’t get all this crazy fighting all over the world.

And as an American . . . . . .

is overwhelmingly driven to engage in behaviors that promote its security and survival, in seemingly endless varieties of strategies that increase command of resources, raise status, increase control of others, etc. In evolutionary context, all strategies are “adaptive” in the sense of promoting, under some particular set of environmental selective pressures, differential survival and reproductive success, including, for example, homicide, siblicide, rape, violent competition, “stealing”, intimidation, aggression, deception, “false advertising”, and so on, behavioral traits which may become maladaptive under new ecological circumstances, such as in increasingly “social” species, when the individual’s survival is enhanced by mutual promotion of the safety and well-being of others. Under these circumstances, quite different behavioral traits have survival value, such as cooperation, sharing versus hoarding of resources, openness and sharing of accurate information, and reading the inner states (needs) of others, or “empathy”.

Developmentally when humans face chaotic, impoverished, unpredictable, unresponsive, unsafe, and/or abusive environments, then learned behavior, inner states, behavioral predispositions, beliefs, “cognitive templates”, even brain architecture tend toward the retained developmental pathways that focus on acute responses, self-preservation, and immediate survival, rather than intellectual and moral development, reflection and higher cognitive functions, empathy and other tools for social integration.

In human culture, we construct these exaggerated survival-mode traits helpfully and accurately as mental health disorders, or pathology, (because they lead to impairment in social and individual functioning) ranging from ADHD to PTSD to “conduct disorder” in kids to “antisocial personality disorder” or “social dominance orientation” in adults, EXCEPT WHEN WE OBSERVE THE TRAITS IN MEN AND WOMEN WHO HAVE RISEN TO THE UPPER LEVELS OF HEIRARCHIES in business, politics, media, etc., in which cases, these very same men and women, who are in positions to control meaning and reality through manipulation of language and images, for pressing and obvious reasons, construct the sets pathological traits (e.g. lying, stealing and hoarding of resources, manipulation, intimidation, deficits in empathy, uncontrolled aggression, deficits in emotional regulation, etc.) normatively as “success”, “influence”, “intelligence”, “leadership” etc.

In one particular area - the use of lying, power differential, deception, etc. to hoard recourses to the detriment (harm, illness and deaths) of others in order to protect status and security for self - the pathological behaviors have been quite euphemistically and practically constructed as “Economics”, or “Capitalism” or especially “Free Market Economics” in order to normalize, legitimize, and protect the gains conferred by the antisociality. So well developed are the ego defenses and rationalizations of these disordered and antisocial behaviors that, almost charmingly (if not for the history of human suffering engendered), we have constructed pathology as a discipline, a major field of study in universities, with degrees conferred, “theories” created, studied and debated, etc.

In this letters thread, the point is understood by Jnagarya and others, although his enthusiasm may tend to dilute the message:

“Get it through your perfectly absolutist pie-in-the-sky infantilism and conspirabunk: greed is not a "philosophy" or an "economics": it is a destructive passion that CANNOT regulate itself, thus necessitated is imperfect human's need for law, law enforcement, and jails, for those who REFUSE to make the ADULT effort to keep their feet on the nonsociopathic ground."

That’s about it, really. Until we decide to change it.