Humans do want to follow. Stage development is natural.* However, the kind of stage development that civilized minds are engaged in is very unnatural, dishonest and delusional, for being geared to follow the evolution of technology of all kinds. Overlapping examples of technology: memetic-cognitive (ideology, dialectics, rewiring of our brains), symbolic (beauty, love, freedom, liberty, integrity, responsibility, guilt, crime, punishment) methodological (religious and social ritual, the scientific method), material (the dynamic allure of houses, cars, computers, internet, travel, gadgetry) and globally systemic (trade, civilization, internet, infrastructure).

*Stage development and leadership: we tend to want to follow the emotional interactive lead of our mother, then that of other caretakers, then that of the attitude of our same-level peers and that of immediately more mature peers at the next stage up from where we are, institutions, our own philosophy, the whole dynamic of philosophies, and the universe as unity. We trust it, no matter if it is bio-nature based or machine.

All civilized minds, from the basic civilization of hunter-gatherers to cutting-edge supernerd societies have the same basically wrong story-telling shaman structure. It is this structure we must study, to know how it can be restructured. The wrong structure is shaman meaning making – essentially a continuous life-long seduction of the human mind in terms of artificial development through technological stages. In the early societies from around 80,000 years ago, or as soon as humans developed language fluency, shaman stories have conveyed a belief in a host of potent spirits in nature, setting the tone for a vast mystical mythology, both religious and secular.

I think this wrong developmental structure is seated in symbolic language and speech. It is in the sound, cadence, structure and semiotics of language. The delusional use of logic is subject to speech. So, linguistics to me is the most important study, and then the study of individual development as a visceral recapitulation in each individual of the development of civilization. Finding out how language and civilized development are wrong will go a long way towards ensuring the survival of the human animal species.