Thank you Dr. Lee for your tireless efforts on behalf of all of us, and indeed all life on Earth. I have seen the conference summary and I watch you and Anthony Davis each week on The Weekend Show. I am 67 years old and this is by far the most trying time I have ever experienced in my life. I am very sensitive emotionally and come from an abusive early infancy situation where my mother had to flee and hide to save herself and me and my brother. I don't know if the savagery of the genocidal actions in the Middle East coupled with the violent rhetoric of the Trump campaign is triggering some very early memories and fear, but I spend part of each day over the last few months crying uncontrollably. I am so comforted and reoriented by your words, by the speakers at the conference, and I thank you and everyone working with you for helping folks like me cope during these heartbreaking and terrifying times. Bless you and may you be supported and protected...
I believe that the conflict in the Middle East would stop if the Arab world would accept the state of Israel and the right of the Jewish people to exist.
“As a health professional who sees everyone as a human being first … all I see is that dangerous leaders are making our world vastly unsafe for our species’ continued survival.”
Dr. Lee, I see what you see, but what that is a symptom of a disease, and not the disease itself. My question is, is there someone who can see the root cause of the disease? The definition of “root cause” is that it is actionable in a way that is demonstrably effective.
My answer is yes. To be more specific, I’ve identified that cause in comments I posted to the newsletter with the Zoom links to the October 5 Zoom meeting. It comes down to this: when a pair of conflicting conclusions emerge in a healthy social system, the conflict is resolved, and the resolution is a multi-step process. Conversely, if the conflict is treated like a threat with a one-step “I’m right, you’re wrong, and this conversation is over” solution, then the response is synonymous with an unhealthy system.
I strongly agree with your idea that “we are all united, more than we know.” Further, I would say that science informs, rather than refutes, the idea that “We all pray to one God, because we are all children of Abraham.” To be more specific, science informs the idea that we are all descendants of the handful of hunter-gatherer bands that emerged in Africa some 12,000 generations ago.
The following is from renown anthropologist Christopher Boehm’s book, Hierarchy in the Forest (1999). “Humans were egalitarian for thousands of generations before hierarchical societies began to appear.” To me, that makes the question of why Cain kills Abel every day easy to answer.
Pre-Neolithic Homo sapiens lived in what must have seemed like Paradise in that everyone in their band-sized social system treated everyone else like a human being. Paradise was lost at the intersection of human population with the necessary area of sufficiently fertile terrestrial territory for band-sized systems. Then the Neolithic Period with its characteristic “agricultural settlement” systems emerged. When hierarchical societies began to appear, Cane began to kill Abel.
You are correct in saying that we are in “an archetypal struggle for humanity that concerns the battle between health and disease, survival and total demise.” And you are correct in saying that “we must all collectively mobilize everything we have to counter it.” And I am correct in saying that “everything we have” includes the first scientifically valid interpretation of the most important experiment in the relatively short history of the field of psychology.
So, how do we detect the emergence of the disease in its earliest stage before it becomes difficult to treat? Watch for the emergence of conflicting conclusions. If the system is healthy, then the response is a multi-step conflict resolution. If the response is a one-step “I’m right, you’re wrong, and this conversation is over,” then the system is unhealthy.
It is good to know that everyone is to be treated like a human being first. That means we must treat one another the way we would want to be treated if the shoe was on the other foot. And that implies that we must never say, “I want you to listen to me, but I don’t need to listen to you” in word or in deed.
Myrna: it seems you’re not familiar with the history of the colonial settler project concocted initially with aid from the British Empire. It imposed Zionist, apartheid, fascist White Jewish, Eurocentric Supremacy upon the already occupied Palestine, w/o the consent of the Indigenous Palestinians.
Your statement, mere Zionist disingenuous trolling propaganda; “I believe that the conflict in the Middle East would stop if the Arab world would accept the state of Israel and the right of the Jewish people to exist” is disingenuous, obfuscates the truth and merely helps to continue the ongoing genocide of the Indigenous Palestinians and, more recently, slaughter the Lebanese, as well.
The issue has always been whether the Palestinian “…people have the right to exist” and whether the white, Jewish, apartheid, fascist State of Israel has forfeited its “right to exist.” No one advocates for the denial of Jewish people to exist. European Empires advocated and encouraged them to emigrate to lands already occupied. British and other Euro nations did not want them in Europe and sought hegemony, via proxy (Israel,) in already occupied Arabian lands occupied by mostly Arabians.
I would encourage empathetic, that is, non sociopaths, to read, asap, The Case for Palestine, by Dan Kovalik (2024.)
It is unfortunate that immigration is the source of so much inhumane and dehumanizing pathologies.
"Mark Twain visited Palestine in 1867 as part of a six-month pleasure cruise to the Mediterranean. His experiences in Palestine are detailed in his book The Innocents Abroad, which is considered the most famous 19th-century account of the region:
Desolation
Twain described Palestine as a desolate country with a rich soil that was given over to weeds. He wrote that the country was "a silent, mournful expanse" with "nasty" villages and "the usual assemblage of squalid humanity".
Zionism created prosperity in the Holly Land where most Arabs moved to from other "assemblages of squalid humanity" attempting to eliminate all Jews by allying with the Nazis. The UN General Assembly seeks to continue the pogroms.
Ask the 2,080,000 non-Jews (as of Dec2023) living in Israel if they approve of Palestinian Right of Return.
Benefits of the Trump Contagion is it demonstrates the relation between truth and Ego.
Sigmund Freud portrayed humanity as part Ego, Superego, and Id battling the subconscious, which is how Ego likes to see things because Ego does not want to be responsible for itself or for a truth other than itself. What psychology calls the subconscious is Ego steamrolling everything around it.
One way to see the coming election is to see it as a referendum on our attitudes about Ego.
Ric, for the record, and since you brought it up, I think Freud got that wrong. For me, the id is the unconscious mind, the ego is the conscious mind, and the superego is when the id and the ego are working like the three musketeers (all for one and one for all) in lieu of working like the three stooges (all for one, and that one is me).
Each one of us has an unconscious circle of concern, and an actual circle of influence. As a child, my circle of influence expanded in a stepwise fashion. The moment that my circle of influence expanded beyond my circle of concern was the moment that I became insufficiently mature. Then, without being consciously aware of what was happening, my unconscious circle of concern would expand to encompass my circle of influence, and then I was once again sufficiently mature.
I look at people like POTUS 45, Elon Musk, and Putin and see a "me, myself, and I" circle of concern in combination with a global circle of influence, and they are steamrolling everything around them. Conversely, in the Harris-Walz ticket, I see a global circle of concern.
"One way to see the coming election is to see it as a referendum on our attitudes about Ego." On that, we agree.
Freud and America have something in common. They both tried to do something really difficult that nobody had done, and there are reasons to think they both did a terrible job, but you’ve got to give them credit for trying. Someone had to go first.
I checked out your website. My first impression is that we are on a journey toward the same destination via different paths. That’s the good news. You might think the following is bad news. If I am successful, then you will discover that your “presently current” terminology has become obsolete. Allow me to explain.
Think of the relationship between Trump’s id and ego the way you think about the relationship between Trump and his lawyers. You can’t blame the lawyers for their behavior. They’re just following orders. Likewise, you can’t blame Trump’s ego for his behavior. The ego is just following the id’s orders. You can blame the lawyers for their bad judgment in taking on such a client, but Trump’s ego only has one client (Trump’s id).
You’re describing a concept and labelling it ”no ego.” I’m describing the same concept and labelling it “maturity,” aka wisdom. For example, a POTUS has a global circle of influence. POTUS 46 has a global circle of concern. That means that Biden is sufficiently mature, aka wise. Conversely, POTUS 45 has a “me, myself, and I” circle of concern. That means Trump and maturity are in different universes.
Being wise doesn’t mean you run for president. Being wise means you do the best you can to make the world a better place. There are a lot of wise people, and most of them wisely know not to run for president. In other words, what we do in life is answer a calling.
We must accept the inevitability of immaturity, but we need not accept the inevitability of immaturity in combination with power. Using my terminology, you don't become mature by losing your ego. Instead, your id’s circle of concern expands as your ego just keeps following orders.
WRT “Parents are reluctant to tell children to tame Ego,” here’s what I say to children: “I have good news, and then I have bad news, and then I have more good news. The good news is that you are the most important person on the planet bar none, the bad news is that you are tied for first place with roughly eight billion other human beings, and the other good news is that you’re tied for first place.”
Dr Lee. As much as i want to blame Trump for this situation, it's actually the current Biden administration that is responsible. Biden administration is fully complicit in this Genocide and aggression in middle east. It may sound odd but Biden who is supposedly a 'fit' leader is taking unfit decisions. LBJ was a progressive leader but part of his legacy was plunging US into Vietnam war. Why?
The problem of our times is not just 'unfit' individuals (surely they are a grave threat) but actually the unfitness of whole system. The Blob, the defense industrial complex, the Neoliberal economic system, the plutocracy etc are structural forces that are beyond the control of Biden or Harris.
Regarding Blob, US defense and foreign policy, i recommend book 'Name dropping' by John Kenneth Galbraith who i regard as among the greatest intellectuals of 20th century.
Wars permit people to construct stories of power and righteousness in a narrative of existential defiance.
It is very difficult to disabuse us of these narratives since we are so often strongly attached to them, and to do so would require us to face our shared vulnerability and the fragility of all our lives. In the end, we all share the same fate: aging, sickness, and death. This understanding should direct us to compassion.
Thank you, Dr. Lee, for this article which speaks to the conscience of humankind. It is hard to understand how climate change, clean energy, and clean industrial activities are routinely voiced since decades ago without corollary mention of the horrific environmental damage being repetitively done to the Earth by bombs and other weapons of war since centuries ago, and much intensified in the 20th and 21st centuries. Part of war reparations must necessarily include repair and detoxification of the natural and built environment. Together with current, large scale trauma, injuries and loss of life, military conflicts on Earth are compromising liveability on Earth for generations to come. Truly, inter-religious interaction that overcomes a bulbous, eye in the sky and pie in the sky concept of God and of future life is long overdue. May our united prayers and care bear fruit in the brotherhood and sisterhood of all human beings and in the cherishing of our planetary and space environment! G-d bless!
Dr.Bandy Xenovvia Lee ! I disagree with your headline. I am a simple man who would use few words to explain .We all have hopes, wishes ,and dreams for us and our children so that we may continue.
Bandy X. Lee and Jeffrey D. Sachs co-authored an article a few years ago, “Trump shows why mental health must be a part of political discourse,” (https://www.jeffsachs.org/newspaper-articles/28ejswzlnbjfglzbg6wmeanezr3hhh?rq=mental%20health). Conversely, in chaotic times, political discourse must be part of the discourse of mental health. Thus a couple of geopolitical comments might be appropriate here, in Dr. Lee's wonderful newsletter dedicated to mental health.
(1) As Dr. Lee says, Netanyahu, like Trump, is motivated by the desire to stay out of prison. However, he also has an overriding, long-standing geopolitical motivation, one he shares with the most extreme elements of Israeli society, the settlers. (I respect the fact that Dr. Lee has expressed the desire to oppose the insanity of war apart from issues of blame and grievance; but it is impossible to oppose insanity without identifying those who are insane and the activities that demonstrate they are insane.) The activities of the Israeli settlers (which have been exhaustively documented) have for decades been gross and inhumane violations of international law and of the most basic humans rights of Palestinians. These settlers and their reactionary political allies dominate Netanyahu's cabinet, and they dictate his policies. Since October 7, 2023 they have repeatedly, publicly, and in fact exultantly made statements about annihilating Palestinians, statements that outrage the conscience and are deliberate echoes of the statements the Nazis made about Jews. These settlers have, understandably, been characterized by a human rights organization as being “worse than the Klu Klux Klan.”
Imagine what it would be like if the US government were controlled by the Klu Klux Klan. Unfortunately, to a significant extent the US government actually is; that is, its military policies are decisively controlled by people in the foreign-military establishment (the so-called “blob”) commonly referred to as “neoconservatives,” or sometimes as “hawks.” These terms make it appear that they have an authentic, healthy geopolitical point of view. In reality they are Machiavellian, bloodthirsty, ethno-nationalistic, imperialistic psychopaths. They have decisively controlled US military policy since at least the beginning of the twenty-first century, and their success in their relentless warmongering (their multi-trillion dollar “forever wars”) has left a trail of hundreds of thousands, or millions, of corpses; of incalculable devastation and human suffering; of failed states internally and perpetually at war with themselves; and of US servicemen and women suffering from PTSD, other mental health problems, and physical problems caused by serving in pointless, unjust wars (to say nothing of the unbelievably high rate of suicide in the lower ranks of the US military). These "neoconservative" warmongers invariably justify their endless wars as a way of “reshaping the Middle East” to bring prosperity, peace, and justice to the region and to the rest of the world. Like Trump, they think they are geopolitical geniuses who alone are possessed of the supreme wisdom to use tyrannical power to make the world great. They continue to spew out their warmongering and triumphalist rhetoric despite their unblemished record of total failure and total counterproductiveness. Like all psychopaths, they are incapable of experiencing or understanding reality, or of learning from experience. Together, these US and Israeli psychopaths have seized control of the current affairs of the world, and they are attempting to act out their own essential inner logic, which is the logic of nihilism, in the form of the destruction of everything they can reach with the weapons of mass destruction the rest of us have allowed them to seize control of.
(2) I would also like to address a couple of comments obviously made in pain, anger, and fear, but also in ignorance of the relevant empirical facts.
myrna solganick comments: “I believe that the conflict in the Middle East would stop if the Arab world would accept the state of Israel and the right of the Jewish people to exist.” (Liked by 5.)
Aaron David comments: “The single focus of the hyper-religious mobs in Iran and those surrounding Israel is the elimination of Israel and the scapegoating of Jews for the failure of their psychopathic theocracy aided by Europeans that fear the spread of their ideology.”
“Consider Israel’s claim about national security, as was recently repeated by PM Benjamin Netanyahu at the United Nations on September 27th. Netanyahu accused the Palestinian Authority, and specifically President Mahmoud Abbas, of waging ‘unremitting diplomatic warfare against Israel’s right to exist and against Israel’s right to defend itself.’
“After Netanyahu’s speech, Ayman Safadi, Jordan’s Minister of Foreign Affairs, standing beside Palestinian Prime Minister Mohammad Mustafa replied to Netanyahu in a press conference:
'All of us in the Arab world here, want a peace in which Israel lives in peace and security, accepted, normalized with all Arab countries in the context of ending the occupation, withdrawing from Arab territory, allowing for the emergence of an independent, sovereign Palestinian state on the June 4, 1967 lines with East Jerusalem as its capital.’
“Minister Safadi was speaking on behalf of the 57 members of the Muslim-Arab committee, who are all willing ‘to guarantee Israel’s security’ in the context of a two-state solution. Minister Safadi, alongside the Palestinian Prime Minister, articulated the region’s peace proposal, an alternative to Netanyahu’s endless wars.
“Earlier this year, the Bahrain Declaration in May 2024 of the 33rd Regular Session of the Council of the League of Arab States, on behalf of the 22 member states, re-iterated:
“’We call on the international community to assume its responsibilities to follow-up efforts to advance the peace process to achieve a just and comprehensive peace based on the two-state solution, which embodies an independent Palestinian state with East Jerusalem as its capital on the lines of the fourth of June 1967, able to live in security and peace alongside Israel in accordance with the resolutions of international legitimacy and established references, including the Arab Peace Initiative.’
“The many Arab and Islamic statements for peace, including those of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC), in which Iran is a repeated signatory, trace back to the 2002 Arab Peace Initiative of Beirut—where Arab countries first proposed the region’s readiness to establish relations with Israel in the context of the two-state solution. The initiative declared that peace is based on Israel’s withdrawal from the Palestinian, Syrian, and Lebanese occupied territories.”
Professor Sachs is a University Professor and Director of the Center for Sustainable Development at Columbia University, where he directed The Earth Institute from 2002 until 2016. He is also President of the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network and a commissioner of the UN Broadband Commission for Development. He has been advisor to three United Nations Secretaries-General, and currently serves as an SDG Advocate under Secretary-General Antonio Guterres.
To unequivocally condemn Netanyahu’s genocidal, deranged, and criminal regime, which is now inciting regional and even world war, is not to oppose the security, safety, and prosperity of Jews or of Israel. To condemn Netanyahu’s regime is not antisemitic; in fact, it is the position of a great many Jews. The eminent US Representative Jamie Raskin, who is Jewish, said that Netanyahu is the worst Jewish leader in over two thousand years. There are important American Jewish organizations that are actively opposing Netanyahu’s genocide and the American Israel lobby that supports it. Haaretz, the major Israeli newspaper, published an editorial on August 14, 2023 entitled, “AIPAC Is the pro-Netanyahu, anti-Israel Lobby” (AIPAC being the major organization in the American Israeli lobby). (https://www.haaretz.com/opinion/editorial/2023-08-14/ty-article-opinion/aipac-is-the-pro-netanyahu-anti-israel-lobby/00000189-f4dc-d975-a9cf-ffdf38d80000). We all want Jews, Israelis, Palestinians, and everyone else in the world to be healthy, happy, prosperous, at peace, and secure. The policies of the rogue regime in Tel Aviv are a horrifying betrayal of the infinitely valuable legacy of Judaism to world civilization, and of everything Judaism stands for. To oppose this regime's policies is to oppose policies, devised and implemented by fundamentalist psychopaths, that are immensely and pointlessly destructive to Jews, Israel, Palestinians, Arabs, and every other human being on the planet.
For 75 years every peace deal broke down at Palestine Refugees Right to Return. It is not a right of any other refugee from war, and UN support ends only after 5 years, when it is expected that people move on. Life is tough and then you grow up and make a life for yourself. UNWAR has been a tool to keep the war to eliminate Israel going way too long. Time to grow up and make a life as a citizen, somewhere other than Israel.
On September 1, 1939, Nazi Germany under Adolph Hitler invaded Poland, beginning its project of occupying Eastern Europe as its own Lebensraum, exterminating or expelling much of the population, and stealing their land.
After WWII, the world community, looking directly at what Hitler did on September 1, 1939 and afterward, created a body of international law prohibiting nations from violently invading territories outside their borders, exterminating or expelling the native population, and stealing their land. At the Nuremberg trials, the US, also looking at what Hitler did on September 1, 1939, called the illegal invasion of another country “the greatest of all war crimes."
That is why the UN has voted twenty-three times since 1967 to order Israel to end its violent and illegal occupation of Palestinian lands. Under international and natural law, the illegal and violent Israeli settlers must “move on” and allow Palestinians to return to the land Israel has stolen from them—just as Nazi Germany was forced to leave the Eastern European lands it violently and illegally occupied during WWII.
Reading your comments here and elsewhere in this newsletter, it is breathtaking to experience, even through words on a screen, your ferocious hatred, paranoia, utter lack of concern for other human beings, inhuman contempt for Palestinians, childish smokescreen of fantasied rationalizations, impervious denial of empirical reality, and arrogance. Such massive and aggressive mental armor is, among other things, psychological scar tissue, which develops only as a defense against profoundly distressing, unresolved inner conflicts.
In particular, you appear to be a victim of the psychological malady, “the internalization of the aggressor,” now painfully visible throughout Israeli society: the paranoid fantasy that in order for Jews to protect themselves, they must become like Nazis themselves.
Please believe me when I say that I wish you the best, and hope that you may eventually find your way out of the mental labyrinth in which you are now lost.
However, you will also understand my saying that I will not respond in the future to any replies you might make to my comments.
I suggest you and others in this thread review the Wikipedia article on Historical Negationism. My recollection is that October 7th, 2023 was a well planned and executed pogrom. Sorry if the result is not your preference.
Your claim that Netenyahu would blow up the world to stay out of jail is absurd.
The single focus of the hyper-religious mobs in Iran and those surrounding Israel is the elimination of Israel and the scape goating of Jews for the failure of their psychopathic theocracy aided by Europeans that fear the spread of their ideology.
The premise that Palestinians just want a country of their own has been proven false. The evidence is that the term refugee is false. In reality they have been taught and lead for several generations to be a hostile tribe seeking to replace, not live in peace with a Jewish State.
The following are links to a recent article about Bebe and a video by Einat Hilf describing a more supportable resolution that Harris could work towards.
It's not clear what Mr. Fararja is (Jewish- Lutheran- Muslim) but refugee one day replacing an Israelí he’s not likely to become.
Her claim is correct. Netenyahu is a low-conscience manipulator who only cares about Netenyahu. Mainstream TV in the UK is questioning his motives and speculating that he's trying to get Trump re-elected. Many Israelis distrust him completely.
Aaron: you stated, disingenuously and trollingly: “The premise that Palestinians just want a country of their own has been proven false.” Indigenous Palestinians have been violently displaced, starved, killed and wounded by Zionist colonial settlers before and after Israel self-declared independence, with genocidal, intent for the sake of White, Zionist, Jewish, Eurocentric supremacy and/or hegemony; as well as well as to facilitate the plundering of fossil fuel resources off the Gaza Strip and to build yet another canal to assure unimpeded shipment of plundered resources and the practice of Western idolatry; reverence to its Western ecocidal demigods, Commerce/Capitalism/Ecocide.
TROLLS ought to be banned, but democracies seem to have been caught in a death spiral and unwilling or unable to protect themselves from demagogues spreading disinformation.
Is your solution (final I suspect) the elimination of the Jewish state? Please watch Einat Wilf's video. I hope you agree it is the most defensible position. If not, maybe we could continue our discussion in a more rational manner.
Thank you Dr. Lee for your tireless efforts on behalf of all of us, and indeed all life on Earth. I have seen the conference summary and I watch you and Anthony Davis each week on The Weekend Show. I am 67 years old and this is by far the most trying time I have ever experienced in my life. I am very sensitive emotionally and come from an abusive early infancy situation where my mother had to flee and hide to save herself and me and my brother. I don't know if the savagery of the genocidal actions in the Middle East coupled with the violent rhetoric of the Trump campaign is triggering some very early memories and fear, but I spend part of each day over the last few months crying uncontrollably. I am so comforted and reoriented by your words, by the speakers at the conference, and I thank you and everyone working with you for helping folks like me cope during these heartbreaking and terrifying times. Bless you and may you be supported and protected...
I believe that the conflict in the Middle East would stop if the Arab world would accept the state of Israel and the right of the Jewish people to exist.
I doubt it very much. The Israelis also have to treat the Palestinians with respect and dignity.
“As a health professional who sees everyone as a human being first … all I see is that dangerous leaders are making our world vastly unsafe for our species’ continued survival.”
Dr. Lee, I see what you see, but what that is a symptom of a disease, and not the disease itself. My question is, is there someone who can see the root cause of the disease? The definition of “root cause” is that it is actionable in a way that is demonstrably effective.
My answer is yes. To be more specific, I’ve identified that cause in comments I posted to the newsletter with the Zoom links to the October 5 Zoom meeting. It comes down to this: when a pair of conflicting conclusions emerge in a healthy social system, the conflict is resolved, and the resolution is a multi-step process. Conversely, if the conflict is treated like a threat with a one-step “I’m right, you’re wrong, and this conversation is over” solution, then the response is synonymous with an unhealthy system.
I strongly agree with your idea that “we are all united, more than we know.” Further, I would say that science informs, rather than refutes, the idea that “We all pray to one God, because we are all children of Abraham.” To be more specific, science informs the idea that we are all descendants of the handful of hunter-gatherer bands that emerged in Africa some 12,000 generations ago.
The following is from renown anthropologist Christopher Boehm’s book, Hierarchy in the Forest (1999). “Humans were egalitarian for thousands of generations before hierarchical societies began to appear.” To me, that makes the question of why Cain kills Abel every day easy to answer.
Pre-Neolithic Homo sapiens lived in what must have seemed like Paradise in that everyone in their band-sized social system treated everyone else like a human being. Paradise was lost at the intersection of human population with the necessary area of sufficiently fertile terrestrial territory for band-sized systems. Then the Neolithic Period with its characteristic “agricultural settlement” systems emerged. When hierarchical societies began to appear, Cane began to kill Abel.
You are correct in saying that we are in “an archetypal struggle for humanity that concerns the battle between health and disease, survival and total demise.” And you are correct in saying that “we must all collectively mobilize everything we have to counter it.” And I am correct in saying that “everything we have” includes the first scientifically valid interpretation of the most important experiment in the relatively short history of the field of psychology.
So, how do we detect the emergence of the disease in its earliest stage before it becomes difficult to treat? Watch for the emergence of conflicting conclusions. If the system is healthy, then the response is a multi-step conflict resolution. If the response is a one-step “I’m right, you’re wrong, and this conversation is over,” then the system is unhealthy.
It is good to know that everyone is to be treated like a human being first. That means we must treat one another the way we would want to be treated if the shoe was on the other foot. And that implies that we must never say, “I want you to listen to me, but I don’t need to listen to you” in word or in deed.
Myrna: it seems you’re not familiar with the history of the colonial settler project concocted initially with aid from the British Empire. It imposed Zionist, apartheid, fascist White Jewish, Eurocentric Supremacy upon the already occupied Palestine, w/o the consent of the Indigenous Palestinians.
Your statement, mere Zionist disingenuous trolling propaganda; “I believe that the conflict in the Middle East would stop if the Arab world would accept the state of Israel and the right of the Jewish people to exist” is disingenuous, obfuscates the truth and merely helps to continue the ongoing genocide of the Indigenous Palestinians and, more recently, slaughter the Lebanese, as well.
The issue has always been whether the Palestinian “…people have the right to exist” and whether the white, Jewish, apartheid, fascist State of Israel has forfeited its “right to exist.” No one advocates for the denial of Jewish people to exist. European Empires advocated and encouraged them to emigrate to lands already occupied. British and other Euro nations did not want them in Europe and sought hegemony, via proxy (Israel,) in already occupied Arabian lands occupied by mostly Arabians.
I would encourage empathetic, that is, non sociopaths, to read, asap, The Case for Palestine, by Dan Kovalik (2024.)
It is unfortunate that immigration is the source of so much inhumane and dehumanizing pathologies.
"Mark Twain visited Palestine in 1867 as part of a six-month pleasure cruise to the Mediterranean. His experiences in Palestine are detailed in his book The Innocents Abroad, which is considered the most famous 19th-century account of the region:
Desolation
Twain described Palestine as a desolate country with a rich soil that was given over to weeds. He wrote that the country was "a silent, mournful expanse" with "nasty" villages and "the usual assemblage of squalid humanity".
Zionism created prosperity in the Holly Land where most Arabs moved to from other "assemblages of squalid humanity" attempting to eliminate all Jews by allying with the Nazis. The UN General Assembly seeks to continue the pogroms.
Ask the 2,080,000 non-Jews (as of Dec2023) living in Israel if they approve of Palestinian Right of Return.
Benefits of the Trump Contagion is it demonstrates the relation between truth and Ego.
Sigmund Freud portrayed humanity as part Ego, Superego, and Id battling the subconscious, which is how Ego likes to see things because Ego does not want to be responsible for itself or for a truth other than itself. What psychology calls the subconscious is Ego steamrolling everything around it.
One way to see the coming election is to see it as a referendum on our attitudes about Ego.
Ric, for the record, and since you brought it up, I think Freud got that wrong. For me, the id is the unconscious mind, the ego is the conscious mind, and the superego is when the id and the ego are working like the three musketeers (all for one and one for all) in lieu of working like the three stooges (all for one, and that one is me).
Each one of us has an unconscious circle of concern, and an actual circle of influence. As a child, my circle of influence expanded in a stepwise fashion. The moment that my circle of influence expanded beyond my circle of concern was the moment that I became insufficiently mature. Then, without being consciously aware of what was happening, my unconscious circle of concern would expand to encompass my circle of influence, and then I was once again sufficiently mature.
I look at people like POTUS 45, Elon Musk, and Putin and see a "me, myself, and I" circle of concern in combination with a global circle of influence, and they are steamrolling everything around them. Conversely, in the Harris-Walz ticket, I see a global circle of concern.
"One way to see the coming election is to see it as a referendum on our attitudes about Ego." On that, we agree.
That's a lovely description of humanity. FWIW, I don't understand Freud's influence on psychology. His work seems to me as Ego feeding Ego.
I'm now in the process of publishing my work at the end of the year. If you're interested, here's the home page for it.
noegoodyssey.com
Freud and America have something in common. They both tried to do something really difficult that nobody had done, and there are reasons to think they both did a terrible job, but you’ve got to give them credit for trying. Someone had to go first.
I checked out your website. My first impression is that we are on a journey toward the same destination via different paths. That’s the good news. You might think the following is bad news. If I am successful, then you will discover that your “presently current” terminology has become obsolete. Allow me to explain.
Think of the relationship between Trump’s id and ego the way you think about the relationship between Trump and his lawyers. You can’t blame the lawyers for their behavior. They’re just following orders. Likewise, you can’t blame Trump’s ego for his behavior. The ego is just following the id’s orders. You can blame the lawyers for their bad judgment in taking on such a client, but Trump’s ego only has one client (Trump’s id).
You’re describing a concept and labelling it ”no ego.” I’m describing the same concept and labelling it “maturity,” aka wisdom. For example, a POTUS has a global circle of influence. POTUS 46 has a global circle of concern. That means that Biden is sufficiently mature, aka wise. Conversely, POTUS 45 has a “me, myself, and I” circle of concern. That means Trump and maturity are in different universes.
Being wise doesn’t mean you run for president. Being wise means you do the best you can to make the world a better place. There are a lot of wise people, and most of them wisely know not to run for president. In other words, what we do in life is answer a calling.
We must accept the inevitability of immaturity, but we need not accept the inevitability of immaturity in combination with power. Using my terminology, you don't become mature by losing your ego. Instead, your id’s circle of concern expands as your ego just keeps following orders.
WRT “Parents are reluctant to tell children to tame Ego,” here’s what I say to children: “I have good news, and then I have bad news, and then I have more good news. The good news is that you are the most important person on the planet bar none, the bad news is that you are tied for first place with roughly eight billion other human beings, and the other good news is that you’re tied for first place.”
If you're interested in my work, check out https://wisdomtheo.com/resources/
Thank you for your link to your thoughtful work!
Dr Lee. As much as i want to blame Trump for this situation, it's actually the current Biden administration that is responsible. Biden administration is fully complicit in this Genocide and aggression in middle east. It may sound odd but Biden who is supposedly a 'fit' leader is taking unfit decisions. LBJ was a progressive leader but part of his legacy was plunging US into Vietnam war. Why?
The problem of our times is not just 'unfit' individuals (surely they are a grave threat) but actually the unfitness of whole system. The Blob, the defense industrial complex, the Neoliberal economic system, the plutocracy etc are structural forces that are beyond the control of Biden or Harris.
Regarding Blob, US defense and foreign policy, i recommend book 'Name dropping' by John Kenneth Galbraith who i regard as among the greatest intellectuals of 20th century.
Listen. To the Women
Wars permit people to construct stories of power and righteousness in a narrative of existential defiance.
It is very difficult to disabuse us of these narratives since we are so often strongly attached to them, and to do so would require us to face our shared vulnerability and the fragility of all our lives. In the end, we all share the same fate: aging, sickness, and death. This understanding should direct us to compassion.
You should stick to your areas of expertise. The Middle East is not one of them.
Thank you, Dr. Lee, for this article which speaks to the conscience of humankind. It is hard to understand how climate change, clean energy, and clean industrial activities are routinely voiced since decades ago without corollary mention of the horrific environmental damage being repetitively done to the Earth by bombs and other weapons of war since centuries ago, and much intensified in the 20th and 21st centuries. Part of war reparations must necessarily include repair and detoxification of the natural and built environment. Together with current, large scale trauma, injuries and loss of life, military conflicts on Earth are compromising liveability on Earth for generations to come. Truly, inter-religious interaction that overcomes a bulbous, eye in the sky and pie in the sky concept of God and of future life is long overdue. May our united prayers and care bear fruit in the brotherhood and sisterhood of all human beings and in the cherishing of our planetary and space environment! G-d bless!
Brilliant. I will print this out and read it over and over again
Oops! Dr. Lee’s middle name has only one v,
Sorry folks.
Dr.Bandy Xenovvia Lee ! I disagree with your headline. I am a simple man who would use few words to explain .We all have hopes, wishes ,and dreams for us and our children so that we may continue.
I’m confident there will soon be a change.
Maybe it’s up to You and Kamala.
Phillip
Bandy X. Lee and Jeffrey D. Sachs co-authored an article a few years ago, “Trump shows why mental health must be a part of political discourse,” (https://www.jeffsachs.org/newspaper-articles/28ejswzlnbjfglzbg6wmeanezr3hhh?rq=mental%20health). Conversely, in chaotic times, political discourse must be part of the discourse of mental health. Thus a couple of geopolitical comments might be appropriate here, in Dr. Lee's wonderful newsletter dedicated to mental health.
(1) As Dr. Lee says, Netanyahu, like Trump, is motivated by the desire to stay out of prison. However, he also has an overriding, long-standing geopolitical motivation, one he shares with the most extreme elements of Israeli society, the settlers. (I respect the fact that Dr. Lee has expressed the desire to oppose the insanity of war apart from issues of blame and grievance; but it is impossible to oppose insanity without identifying those who are insane and the activities that demonstrate they are insane.) The activities of the Israeli settlers (which have been exhaustively documented) have for decades been gross and inhumane violations of international law and of the most basic humans rights of Palestinians. These settlers and their reactionary political allies dominate Netanyahu's cabinet, and they dictate his policies. Since October 7, 2023 they have repeatedly, publicly, and in fact exultantly made statements about annihilating Palestinians, statements that outrage the conscience and are deliberate echoes of the statements the Nazis made about Jews. These settlers have, understandably, been characterized by a human rights organization as being “worse than the Klu Klux Klan.”
Imagine what it would be like if the US government were controlled by the Klu Klux Klan. Unfortunately, to a significant extent the US government actually is; that is, its military policies are decisively controlled by people in the foreign-military establishment (the so-called “blob”) commonly referred to as “neoconservatives,” or sometimes as “hawks.” These terms make it appear that they have an authentic, healthy geopolitical point of view. In reality they are Machiavellian, bloodthirsty, ethno-nationalistic, imperialistic psychopaths. They have decisively controlled US military policy since at least the beginning of the twenty-first century, and their success in their relentless warmongering (their multi-trillion dollar “forever wars”) has left a trail of hundreds of thousands, or millions, of corpses; of incalculable devastation and human suffering; of failed states internally and perpetually at war with themselves; and of US servicemen and women suffering from PTSD, other mental health problems, and physical problems caused by serving in pointless, unjust wars (to say nothing of the unbelievably high rate of suicide in the lower ranks of the US military). These "neoconservative" warmongers invariably justify their endless wars as a way of “reshaping the Middle East” to bring prosperity, peace, and justice to the region and to the rest of the world. Like Trump, they think they are geopolitical geniuses who alone are possessed of the supreme wisdom to use tyrannical power to make the world great. They continue to spew out their warmongering and triumphalist rhetoric despite their unblemished record of total failure and total counterproductiveness. Like all psychopaths, they are incapable of experiencing or understanding reality, or of learning from experience. Together, these US and Israeli psychopaths have seized control of the current affairs of the world, and they are attempting to act out their own essential inner logic, which is the logic of nihilism, in the form of the destruction of everything they can reach with the weapons of mass destruction the rest of us have allowed them to seize control of.
(2) I would also like to address a couple of comments obviously made in pain, anger, and fear, but also in ignorance of the relevant empirical facts.
myrna solganick comments: “I believe that the conflict in the Middle East would stop if the Arab world would accept the state of Israel and the right of the Jewish people to exist.” (Liked by 5.)
Aaron David comments: “The single focus of the hyper-religious mobs in Iran and those surrounding Israel is the elimination of Israel and the scapegoating of Jews for the failure of their psychopathic theocracy aided by Europeans that fear the spread of their ideology.”
This repetition of projective paranoid propaganda is neither healthy nor useful. Following is a passage on this topic from “Here’s the Truth—It is the Lack of a Two-State Solution That Most Threatens Israel,” by Jeffry D. Sachs (https://scheerpost.com/2024/10/07/jeffrey-d-sachs-heres-the-truth-it-is-the-lack-of-a-two-state-solution-that-most-threatens-israel/). Professor Sachs will be familiar to readers of this newsletter from the considerable work he has done with Dr. Lee.
“Consider Israel’s claim about national security, as was recently repeated by PM Benjamin Netanyahu at the United Nations on September 27th. Netanyahu accused the Palestinian Authority, and specifically President Mahmoud Abbas, of waging ‘unremitting diplomatic warfare against Israel’s right to exist and against Israel’s right to defend itself.’
“After Netanyahu’s speech, Ayman Safadi, Jordan’s Minister of Foreign Affairs, standing beside Palestinian Prime Minister Mohammad Mustafa replied to Netanyahu in a press conference:
'All of us in the Arab world here, want a peace in which Israel lives in peace and security, accepted, normalized with all Arab countries in the context of ending the occupation, withdrawing from Arab territory, allowing for the emergence of an independent, sovereign Palestinian state on the June 4, 1967 lines with East Jerusalem as its capital.’
“Minister Safadi was speaking on behalf of the 57 members of the Muslim-Arab committee, who are all willing ‘to guarantee Israel’s security’ in the context of a two-state solution. Minister Safadi, alongside the Palestinian Prime Minister, articulated the region’s peace proposal, an alternative to Netanyahu’s endless wars.
“Earlier this year, the Bahrain Declaration in May 2024 of the 33rd Regular Session of the Council of the League of Arab States, on behalf of the 22 member states, re-iterated:
“’We call on the international community to assume its responsibilities to follow-up efforts to advance the peace process to achieve a just and comprehensive peace based on the two-state solution, which embodies an independent Palestinian state with East Jerusalem as its capital on the lines of the fourth of June 1967, able to live in security and peace alongside Israel in accordance with the resolutions of international legitimacy and established references, including the Arab Peace Initiative.’
“The many Arab and Islamic statements for peace, including those of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC), in which Iran is a repeated signatory, trace back to the 2002 Arab Peace Initiative of Beirut—where Arab countries first proposed the region’s readiness to establish relations with Israel in the context of the two-state solution. The initiative declared that peace is based on Israel’s withdrawal from the Palestinian, Syrian, and Lebanese occupied territories.”
Professor Sachs is a University Professor and Director of the Center for Sustainable Development at Columbia University, where he directed The Earth Institute from 2002 until 2016. He is also President of the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network and a commissioner of the UN Broadband Commission for Development. He has been advisor to three United Nations Secretaries-General, and currently serves as an SDG Advocate under Secretary-General Antonio Guterres.
To unequivocally condemn Netanyahu’s genocidal, deranged, and criminal regime, which is now inciting regional and even world war, is not to oppose the security, safety, and prosperity of Jews or of Israel. To condemn Netanyahu’s regime is not antisemitic; in fact, it is the position of a great many Jews. The eminent US Representative Jamie Raskin, who is Jewish, said that Netanyahu is the worst Jewish leader in over two thousand years. There are important American Jewish organizations that are actively opposing Netanyahu’s genocide and the American Israel lobby that supports it. Haaretz, the major Israeli newspaper, published an editorial on August 14, 2023 entitled, “AIPAC Is the pro-Netanyahu, anti-Israel Lobby” (AIPAC being the major organization in the American Israeli lobby). (https://www.haaretz.com/opinion/editorial/2023-08-14/ty-article-opinion/aipac-is-the-pro-netanyahu-anti-israel-lobby/00000189-f4dc-d975-a9cf-ffdf38d80000). We all want Jews, Israelis, Palestinians, and everyone else in the world to be healthy, happy, prosperous, at peace, and secure. The policies of the rogue regime in Tel Aviv are a horrifying betrayal of the infinitely valuable legacy of Judaism to world civilization, and of everything Judaism stands for. To oppose this regime's policies is to oppose policies, devised and implemented by fundamentalist psychopaths, that are immensely and pointlessly destructive to Jews, Israel, Palestinians, Arabs, and every other human being on the planet.
For 75 years every peace deal broke down at Palestine Refugees Right to Return. It is not a right of any other refugee from war, and UN support ends only after 5 years, when it is expected that people move on. Life is tough and then you grow up and make a life for yourself. UNWAR has been a tool to keep the war to eliminate Israel going way too long. Time to grow up and make a life as a citizen, somewhere other than Israel.
Aaron,
On September 1, 1939, Nazi Germany under Adolph Hitler invaded Poland, beginning its project of occupying Eastern Europe as its own Lebensraum, exterminating or expelling much of the population, and stealing their land.
After WWII, the world community, looking directly at what Hitler did on September 1, 1939 and afterward, created a body of international law prohibiting nations from violently invading territories outside their borders, exterminating or expelling the native population, and stealing their land. At the Nuremberg trials, the US, also looking at what Hitler did on September 1, 1939, called the illegal invasion of another country “the greatest of all war crimes."
That is why the UN has voted twenty-three times since 1967 to order Israel to end its violent and illegal occupation of Palestinian lands. Under international and natural law, the illegal and violent Israeli settlers must “move on” and allow Palestinians to return to the land Israel has stolen from them—just as Nazi Germany was forced to leave the Eastern European lands it violently and illegally occupied during WWII.
Reading your comments here and elsewhere in this newsletter, it is breathtaking to experience, even through words on a screen, your ferocious hatred, paranoia, utter lack of concern for other human beings, inhuman contempt for Palestinians, childish smokescreen of fantasied rationalizations, impervious denial of empirical reality, and arrogance. Such massive and aggressive mental armor is, among other things, psychological scar tissue, which develops only as a defense against profoundly distressing, unresolved inner conflicts.
In particular, you appear to be a victim of the psychological malady, “the internalization of the aggressor,” now painfully visible throughout Israeli society: the paranoid fantasy that in order for Jews to protect themselves, they must become like Nazis themselves.
Please believe me when I say that I wish you the best, and hope that you may eventually find your way out of the mental labyrinth in which you are now lost.
However, you will also understand my saying that I will not respond in the future to any replies you might make to my comments.
I suggest you and others in this thread review the Wikipedia article on Historical Negationism. My recollection is that October 7th, 2023 was a well planned and executed pogrom. Sorry if the result is not your preference.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_negationism?wprov=sfti1
Your claim that Netenyahu would blow up the world to stay out of jail is absurd.
The single focus of the hyper-religious mobs in Iran and those surrounding Israel is the elimination of Israel and the scape goating of Jews for the failure of their psychopathic theocracy aided by Europeans that fear the spread of their ideology.
The premise that Palestinians just want a country of their own has been proven false. The evidence is that the term refugee is false. In reality they have been taught and lead for several generations to be a hostile tribe seeking to replace, not live in peace with a Jewish State.
The following are links to a recent article about Bebe and a video by Einat Hilf describing a more supportable resolution that Harris could work towards.
It's not clear what Mr. Fararja is (Jewish- Lutheran- Muslim) but refugee one day replacing an Israelí he’s not likely to become.
https://www.jpost.com/israel-news/article-823588
https://youtu.be/MqRXO55CF84?si=d_Zj2zFmsSTOkiEX
Her claim is correct. Netenyahu is a low-conscience manipulator who only cares about Netenyahu. Mainstream TV in the UK is questioning his motives and speculating that he's trying to get Trump re-elected. Many Israelis distrust him completely.
Ya, Israeli's distrust Bebe like the US distrusted FDR after Pearl Harbor. The linked jpost article explains.
How would Britain avoided war after a 10/7 attack, say in the Falklands?
Aaron: you stated, disingenuously and trollingly: “The premise that Palestinians just want a country of their own has been proven false.” Indigenous Palestinians have been violently displaced, starved, killed and wounded by Zionist colonial settlers before and after Israel self-declared independence, with genocidal, intent for the sake of White, Zionist, Jewish, Eurocentric supremacy and/or hegemony; as well as well as to facilitate the plundering of fossil fuel resources off the Gaza Strip and to build yet another canal to assure unimpeded shipment of plundered resources and the practice of Western idolatry; reverence to its Western ecocidal demigods, Commerce/Capitalism/Ecocide.
TROLLS ought to be banned, but democracies seem to have been caught in a death spiral and unwilling or unable to protect themselves from demagogues spreading disinformation.
Is your solution (final I suspect) the elimination of the Jewish state? Please watch Einat Wilf's video. I hope you agree it is the most defensible position. If not, maybe we could continue our discussion in a more rational manner.
https://youtu.be/MqRXO55CF84?si=ZBKVfG2igXq7sXXq
May I suggest
https://www.limbicnutrition.com/blog/resources/a-code-of-conduct-for-effective-rational-discussion/
Totally agree with your words.
From Portugal, with love and concern.
Paulo Godinho-Ferreira.