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I've just finished watching the Starcraft 2 Legacy of the Void "movie", and I just don't understand the whole "oh no, if I cut off my nerve cords the Khala will die" thing. I might not know something or there's a discrepancy in facts. From what I know:

• the Khala is the natural psychic connection between all Protoss,
  mediated by the nerve cords;


• one can be closed off from the Khala by cutting off the nerve cords OR by kind of hating the other Protoss too much (okay, so it is not exactly clear to me, why the Tal'darim don't have the Khala, but the Aeon of Strife and the Tal'darim mentality point to something akin to this);


• the nerve ending is a biological part of the protoss body, thus cutting it off does not affect any offspring (also implying, that for the Nerazim, cutting it off is somewhat like a circumcision).

Now if the above are true, why is everybody acting as if this will surely and permanently change the Protoss? Okay, everybody cuts it off, or almost everybody, so Amon is weakened, but wouldn't the next generation have the nerve cord, thus the Khala? I mean okay, so it's kind of needed for the Protoss to leave the Khala, so western liberalism can be raised on a shield - real hard to talk about individualism with something like the Khala -, but I just don't get the in-universe logic of it.

Khala is not natural - it has been orchestrated by Xel'naga who manipulated early Protoss race into developing strong mental links and certain loss of individuality. While it brought peace and prosper to the race as a whole, it was also a trap made by Amon - when needed he could use it to mentally control whole race.:

Amon and the Xel'naga who followed him broke their rule of noninterference and came to Aiur. Seeing beings who had the potential for purity of form, they began to manipulate the natural psionic link they had developed to accelerate their potential. This would have the added bonus of allowing Amon and his Xel'naga to assert direct control of the protoss if needed.

So now, to survive they have to destroy something wonderful, something that has been influencing their culture for countless generations - you could compare it to humanity getting together and suddenly banning ALL forms of art and religion.

Will it change the race? Definitely - instead of being part of united being they will become more individual beings. Will the next generations have Khala? Yes, at birth, but if Protoss will decide to permanently remove it, my guess is that it will be severed at birth, akin to severing the umbilical cord.

My understanding is the Khala holds the ancestral memory of the entire Protoss culture, but only when there are people tapped into the Khala keeping it going, like the Preservers.

With every single Protoss having now cut their nerve cords the Khala no longer exists. When new generations are born, the Khala will be a blank slate. They will no longer have that wealth of ancestral memory to draw from.

Rohana and Artanis have a discussion about this, lamenting how they lose the certainty of knowledge about history, and instead having to rely on something more akin to our own historical revisionism.

If i remember correctly, Amon had established the psionic link of all protoss, but in leaving them that connection was lost. Then comes the Aeon of Strife and near its end Adun had reestablished the link that is now known as the Khala. However, different tribe didn't want to be connected with others as they wanted to keep their individuality. The Nerazim getting the brunt of this as they cut off their nerve cords and the Tal'darim I believe they just up and left and were considered exiled later.

The issue with the Khalai protoss isn't that they would die with their nerve cords cut.. as shown by the Nerazim.. however through their continued existence within the Khala, they have socially never been alone and never had to deal with pain or sorrow alone. This social function would mean that they could always rely on their past brethren and nearby citizens for support. The dysfunction of the Khala is a inability to work things on their own and a weak internal willpower... hence why it was so easy for Amon to usurp his will over the Khalai, first the network of connections to all Khalai and their weakness to internal control.

Now as for their biology, it is stated in the Starcraft Wiki(if you want to trust it) that when the nerve cords are cut and are not sealed by psi clamps/couplings taht psionic bleed off with at one point kill them.

I got the impression that they intend to cut the nerve cords of all new protoss to prevent it from reforming because "khala bad, it makes protoss arrogant and (justifiably) certain of their superiority"
really felt like they were bashing the khala hardcore in SC2, i got the feeling it was new writers who hated what the old ones did in SC1 and wanted to change things.
Also, it really diluted the protoss' identity.