Ah, freightdawg...thank you! That was such a good posting! It explained so much about...so much! Thank you. This is exactly where I wanted to go, and you offered some important, thoughtful, intriguing ideas.

I hope more people will write in with their own perceptions, because I really do think this is an important issue. I will also add that what you brought up about children's pecking orders on the playground is kind of what I had in mind when I referred to the "alpha male" way back in my first(?) posting...We are social animals, and take away the rather thin veneer of what we've created in the past few thousand years, the need for a leader hasn't changed much.

Nature or nuture? I offer that up towards discussion on the individual leader. Whether that charisma you spoke of leads the leader towards the organization and maintenence of an inclusive community (vs exclusive) based on group needs and built on group talents...or takes the road towards despotism and an ego-driven, force-maintained hierarchy may well be more about the influences surrounding the rearing of the leader him/herself.

And the funny thing is that being fear-driven, as you mentioned towards reasoning why soldiers follow orders that may be against their own personal feelings, is BOTH Nature and Nuture, making it doubley hard to break. Fear has proven to be such a compelling factor in our make-up that it leads not only to anger and violence, but to a more complicated set of reasoning, (ie-brainwashing) that will provide acceptable answers towards fulfilling despicable ends.

I always think of "The Prince" by Machiavelli. It is such a reasoned formula and makes so much sense that it scares the bejiggers out of me. Like the "Art of War", and "Mein Kampf", and "The Communist Manifesto"...all so well thought out, so easy to be taken as a guide to life, if you will. We like to think that books like the New Testament, The Torah, the Koran, etc, (though the first two were written by several people at least) offer alternative moral/societal choices...(even though they've been subborned by some of the writers of the first list into their own theories). But...sorry, trying to organize a through-thought here- They are all about the summoning and organization of power. They are all built on an US vs THEM code of belief and behavior. They are all (arguably) exclusive, rather than inclusive communities.

Another book by Colin Wilson to throw into the mix-and just for it's title at the moment-"The Outsider", goes to my point (finally I'm getting to my point?) Does there always HAVE to be an OTHER? And if so, is the definition of the "other" really one of the major things at the core of what establishes the tribe and its' leader?

I have a theory, and it goes loosely like this-the only way we will ever be able to become a whole as a species, is if we can (because we seem to need to) establish the "other" as an Alien Species-preferably not one on earth. If we need a "bad guy", and I'm being most simplistic here, would we be not best served by creating the outsider as FAR outside as possible?? Now, needless to say, if ever the time comes that some other life-form does make an entrance on our planet, we would hardly welcome them with open arms (and the arms we might have developed would in themselves have cost waaay too much...unless we could convince people that our only form of defense is a mental one...but I'm not here to start a thread on good science fiction as an alternative political force...or am I? Whew! Too much coffee this morning...but if you can winnow out my thoughts here, and care to comment on any or all of it, I'd be grateful...ellen