התנתקות

מורי

גם לכבשה השחורה קשה להתנתק מהעדר 

אין כמו שטיפה הגונה כדי לסנן זהב מהבוץ 

השומר לך מאנשי כחש חלקלקים

פושע הוא זה היורה את הדין ונוקב את ההר

שומר נפשו ירחק מחוק

חוק וסדר הם בסדר

מורי

הרוח העבירה צינה בגופי. הרמתי את עיני וראיתי את העננים הכבדים שנערמו באופק מבעד לקרעי הערפל.

השיחים התנדנדו כשיכורים, שורקים במחאה על הרוח המנסה לעקור אותם ממקומם.

בפאתי המערב השמש הגוססת שולחת חניתות זהב אחרונות הצובעות את הערפל בקרבתם בצבע דם.

הנחתי את ספרי, הרכבתי את משקפי הערפל מביט אל עבר הצלליות של בתי המידות שבעיר.

רק קצוות הבניינים הגבוהים בעיר נראו ממרחק זה, מטושטשים וצפים בים הערפל.

ערפל תמידי ששרר בעיר.

לפי דברי אבי תמיד היה ערפל ותמיד יהיה, כך הוא עולמנו. אבי היה איש ציני ומעשי שלא האמין באגדה המספרת שהערפל יימוג כאשר יגיע 'הנאור'. כילד מאד רציתי להאמין שיום אחד יבוא 'הנאור', הערפל יתפזר והשמש תזרח בשמים הכחולים. לשמע התקווה הזו שלי, אבי היה מפטיר בזלזול: ' שמים כחולים? למה לא אדומים או צהובים? ילד תהיה מציאותי השמים אפורים תמיד.'

כמה חלונות הוארו בפנסים שהאירו את הערפל בסביבתם בהילה של אור.

זה כמה זמן אני מרגיש מועקה הולכת וגוברת.

"עמי, אתה קורא יותר מידי" אמר לי יותם. יותם תמיד מתעלם מבעיות.

זו הייתה שגיאה לשתף אותו בבעיותיי.

"תפסיק לקרוא ותתחיל לחיות", אמר יותם ובמילים אלו חתם את הנושא והלך לדרכו.

עכשיו חשבתי אולי יותם צודק.

לא. אני לא יכול להפסיק לקרוא, כמו שאני לא יכול להפסיק לחשוב.

צרוף קטלני קריאה ומחשבה.

צרוף שתוצאותיו מורגשות. למה אני לא יכול להיות אידיוט ומאושר כמו יותם?

בביתי תקפה אותי הרגשת מחנק ביתר שאת.

קירות ביתי סגרו עלי כמו גושי הקרח הסוגרים על אוניה הנלכדת באזור הקוטב, וכאותה אוניה הקורסת כנגד לחץ גושי הקרח, כך נדמה לי שהקירות סוגרים עלי לאט אך בהתמדה. לוחצים על בית החזה מקשים על הנשימה החופשית.

הייתי חייב לצאת לקרוא בשדה הפתוח, כאן מבודד ע"י הערפל מכל סביבותיי, הרגשתי כשרוי בעולם משלי.

עכשיו, מביט בלהבות שהציתה השמש השוקעת בחלונות הבניינים הגבוהים, נראה כאילו העיר עולה בלהבות ואני הניצול היחידי.

דמיון פעיל הוא קללה.

השפלתי את עיני חזרה לספר שבידי. האור המתמעט הקשה על הקריאה.

אפשר להגיד שאני בורח מהמציאות לעולמות אחרים שהספרים בונים עבורי.

הספר הזה תאר ארץ שטופת שמש ללא ערפל, בדיוק כמו באגדה על 'הנאור'. באותה ארץ חיים אנשים אמיצים שהעזו לעזוב את העיר במסע מעבר לגשר.

כולם אמרו לי שאין ארץ ללא ערפל, אך בתוך תוכי שאלתי 'מדוע לא?'.

רציתי להאמין.

הספר השרה אמון בגלל התיאור הכל כך נכון של האנשים בעירי. האנשים הקטנוניים, צרי אופקים שאין מחשבה מקורית אחת בראשם.

'מצטטי הססמאות!' קרא להם הספר.

עכשיו הרוח נחלשה במקצת, אך עדיין הבזיק הברק ונשמעו רעמים מתגלגלים במרחק.

הרמתי שוב את מבטי וראיתי אדם נשוא פנים קרב מתוך הערפל.

אור השמש האחרון שמאחוריו גרם לשערו הלבן לזהור בצבעי כסף וזהב כהילה מסביב לפניו. זקנו הארוך והגלי הגיע עד חזהו וגלימתו הלבנה מתעופפת ברוח ככנפי מלאך.

עיניו הגדולות האירו מתוך צללית פניו באור חם שהתגבר על אור השמש הבוהקת מאחוריו.

בקול עמוק ונעים הוא ברך אותי לשלום ותלה את עיניו הגדולות בפני בשאלה.

אין אדם היכול לעמוד בפני העיניים האלו ולא לספר את אשר עם ליבו.

כאילו נפרץ סכר, צפו הדמעות מאליהן בעיני, מערפלות את ראותי. והמילים זרמו מתוך גרוני החנוק: "אדוני, אני מרגיש מועקה רבה, ואיני יודע את מקורה. איני יכול לסבול זאת."

האישון הקטן במוחי, שהסתכל עלי כרגיל, מתוך ריחוק, ציין שקולי מלא טרוניה.

"אני רוצה, פשוט לחיות אחרת."

טרוניה למי? האישון תהה.

האיש הביט בי באותן עיניים גדולות וחומות שלו, העביר את ידו בזקנו הארוך מתוך הרהור, ולאחר שתיקה ארוכה שאל: "איך אתה רוצה לחיות?" .

נעצרתי לחשוב על השאלה הפשוטה, אכן איזה חיים אני רוצה לחיות? בוודאי חיים טובים מחיי האומללים: "הייתי רוצה חיים טובים ומשמעותיים במין 'ארץ מובטחת'. אך אסתפק בחיים ללא המועקה הזו המכבידה, הלוחצת את חזי, והמחנק שעולה בגרוני כל פעם שאני חושב על חיי כאן."

שוב שתיקה ארוכה...

למרבה הפלא לא מצאתי אותה מעיקה אלא שתיקה של שותפות.

"ומה דמות 'לארץ המובטחת' בשבילך?"

שוב שאלה שלא חשבתי עליה, במבוכה אלתרתי תשובה הלקוחה מהספר שבידי בתוספת כל הטוב שיכולתי לחשוב עליו: "'הארץ המובטחת' בשבילי היא מקום שטוף שמש, אויר צלול ואנשים נעימים." ידי אוטומטית תפסה את תנוך אזני. הרגל מגונה, אך משום מה עוזר לי ברגעי מבוכה. עזבתי את אזני והצבעתי על הערפל הכבד הרובץ על העיר, להמחיש לו את דברי. רציתי את ההיפוך של כל מה שלא אהבתי בעיר: "חיים בסביבה נקיה ושקטה מלאת אור, ללא ערפל, הולך ברחוב ללא כל דאגה ופחד מהאלימות ברחובות..."

'גם אתה מצטט ססמאות' אמר לי האישון הקטן שבראשי.

המשכתי משתדל להתעלם מהאישון המציק: "...אני רוצה לצאת למרחב".

כל זאת אמרתי בשטף אחד ובקול כועס

כל אותו זמן עמד האיש הפלאי, האזין בשקט ולא קטע את שטף הדברים.

נפלה שתיקה ארוכה מתמיד דמות האיש הדוממת נראתה מהרהרת בדברים ששמע.

ואז בתנועה אטית, הוציא כרזת בד מכיסו, עליה היה כתוב: "לך למטרתך!".

הרמתי את מבטי אל הדמות הזוהרת על רקע השמים האפלים ושאלתי: "לאן אני אמור ללכת?"

"אל 'הארץ המובטחת' שלך."

"איך אגיע לארץ נפלאה כזו?" שאלתי. וקבלתי תשובה חידתית:

" על הרכבת לצאת מהתחנה, הפסים כבר יובילוה אל מטרתה."

" לאיזה כיוון אלך?"

"לאשר האור יזרח שם תלך."

"מי יורה לי את הדרך?"

"בדרך הישר תלך אל שערי המידע. שם תשאל כל שתבקש." תוך דיבורו נעלם חזרה בערפל.

אותו יום המשכתי לשבת על הסלע המתקרר, עד שהחשכה סגרה עלי.

כל הלילה שבא אחריו שכבתי ער במיטתי, מחשבות מתרוצצות במוחי. עם אור ראשון הגעתי למסקנה שהאיש צודק. אדם חייב שתהיה לו מטרה אליה הוא שואף. עלי לעזוב את ביתי ולחפש את 'הארץ המובטחת' שבה אחיה כפי שאני רוצה.

האנייה חייבת להבקיע את הקרח ולשוט לים הפתוח.

איך אמר האיש 'לאשר יזרח האור'. אלך מזרחה מעבר לגשר.

ארזתי תרמיל ויצאתי למסע. תחילה בצעד מתון שהלך והתגבר.

תקפה אותי תשוקה שאין לעמוד בפניה להימלט מכולם, להימלט אל עתיד טוב יותר.

יתכן ולא הייתי ממהר כל כך אם הייתי יודע את העתיד לקרות.

THANKS

THANKS

To write this book I had to dig into numerous studies to find the information I needed. First and foremost, I want to thank all those who took the trouble to gather all this vast amount of human knowledge into the buffer memory shared by all humanity - the Internet. Special thanks to the researchers who consented to publish their research online, and make it available for everyone. Many thanks to all the people who built this phenomenal database.

Thank you to all the people who helped me in formulating this book.

It is my pleasure to thank Dr. Amos Sargon for proposing some very clever amendments.

Thanks to all my family for supporting and encouraging me in my writing. Special thanks to my son, Lior, who read bravely, without any complaint, the boring parts of the book in progress. He made many suggestions on how to correct my style. Lior is a brilliant film director, raised the idea of accompanying the book with a series of short videos, each on a different topic discussed in the book. See his site:

http://www.liorharlev.com/en

I have to thank you, my readers, in advance and would be very grateful for any comment you might care to send me on any aspect of this book. Please contact me on:

understand.the.other@gmail.com

 Yoram Har-Lev

SUMMARY

 SUMMARY

 What Do We Need to Learn?

In order to understand how the other person thinks, feels, and reacts, we have to gather information from different areas, as well as exploring how the brain works. Here is some of the information we should gather:

• What information the senses present to the brain.
• On what database the brain relies to build the reality images. This database includes patterns (stereotypes) engraved in the brain, the person's life experiences, and what he learned in the past.
• How he processes his picture of reality to reach decisions. How he reacts after reaching a decision. The reaction is influenced by his character, and the extent of his involvement in his cultural group. All this should be investigated.
• To which cultural group he is most committed, and how this culture influences the picture of reality in his brain.

These are very challenging tasks. The best we can hope for is to learn all we can, and apply our estimations to what is going on in the other person's mind.

We have to keep in mind that there are always contradictory trends influencing a person's brain. The trick is to estimate which trends are dominant in the mind of the person we are analyzing.

These include freedom versus willingness to accept authority, fear versus courage, and so on.

All this information can help us, for example, to estimate the other person's reaction to specific events.

Below are several categories that must be explored if we are to understand the other person:

• How the other person perceives reality. In earlier sections we reviewed the complexity involved in structuring a picture of reality.
• The rules of the other person's cultural group.
• The other person’s relevant personal knowledge. This may not necessarily be true knowledge but, rather, what the other knows concerning the relevant issue.
• The threshold’s level of reaction. If it exceeds his high level, then a person will react. A person will ignore anything that does not reach his individual lower threshold.
• The intensity of the reaction to any given situation provided that it is greater than the threshold.
• It is also important to examine the other person's sensitivity to a specific situation, and not only the power of reaction that exceeds his threshold, the latter being defined as a change in the force of reaction relative to the change in the force of the situation.

If we accept the thesis that a person is actually an organic machine, controlled by a kind of a computer we call the brain, the other person can be understood. All we have to do is gather enough relevant data and knowledge. This is in contrast to the approach that sees the human behavior controlled by a mysterious soul, or some equally mysterious mental consciousness. In that other approach, it is an unsolved enigma.

A significant part of the meaning of "understanding the other" is to assess how the other person would react to the event.

In this book, I introduced another thesis called the 'human fractal'. It states that we are part of a greater being, which means that we cannot fully understand a man by analyzing him as an individual. We have to analyze his behavior as part of a larger cultural community within which he operates.

Here are several formulas to demonstrate scientifically how we can estimate the other person’s reaction to an event.

Of course, this is no easy task. It is difficult to estimate the parameters in these formulas, and the formulas do not include all elements that affect people’s decisions. These formulas are, therefore, incomplete and inaccurate.

I assume that when, in the future, there is progress in finding more accurate assessment tools, we will have a more accurate assessment of understanding how other people will react, or at least a better understanding of how most people belonging to a particular cultural group are likely to respond.

Let us define:

• Events = E
• senses = s

Es is the part of an event received through the senses. It is not exactly the whole real event because of:

1. Our sensory limitations (limitations = l).

2. We see only the parts of reality to which our brain is directing the senses in order to get as much important information as we can in a short time. - Direction = d.

Individual = I indicates a personal part of the brain. I can have a value between 0 and 1, depending on the human tendency to rely on ourselves.

Community = c indicates the part of the community in the brain. c can have a value between 0 and 1 depending on the human tendency to rely on community culture.

The values of both should amount to one. i + c = 1

Feelings = F, Indicates the emotional filter and should have a value between 0 and 1.

The individual image a person has of an event is:

Ei = Fi * Es

The perceived community aspect part of the event is:

Ec = Fc * Es

And the total event perceived in a person's mind is:

E = i * Ei + c *Ec

In the next step, the event is compared to an existing pattern template in the human brain, to determine which reaction can be issued in time.

Patterns = p

If a partial match is found, the decision of that pattern is issued - E = Ep.

This process does not stop, and continually matching is performed while an incoming stream of information flows from the senses. If a better match is found with another pattern, the decision is exchanged for a new one.

The brain pulls the template engraved matching Ep event from his memory, as long as there is no information that contradicts it.

If the brain cannot find a suitable template, it is forced to fit the information to bits of different templates available. In this case, the decision time is longer.

In the next stage, the brain must decide on the proper response that follows the decision.

Let us define:

• Event intensity = Er
• Low response threshold = rl
• High response threshold = rh

To decide on the proper response, the brain compares the intensity of the event to the thresholds. These thresholds are determined by the cultural values of the person's community, the personal nature of this person, and his mood at that time.

If the intensity of the event is lower than the low threshold - Er <Erl, then there will be no response as the person is indifferent to the event.

If the intensity of the event is higher than the high threshold - Er> Erh, then the brain sends the relevant commands to act.

If the intensity of the event lies between these two thresholds - Er2> Er> Er1, the person will react emotionally, but will not act upon it.

Then, according to the nature of the event and the required speed of response, the responses are directed to various areas of the brain for further treatment.

These different areas activate muscles by nerves and appropriate commands or stimulate one’s hormonal glands to regulate body function and display emotions.

In the case of immediate danger, there are some reflexive responses made by the nerves even before the brain receives the information, circumventing the described process, but in most cases, decisions are made by the brain.

We are aware of some of the decisions, but not aware of others.

When the brain finds a perfect match between the event and a well-defined pattern as in the case of driving home, or the act of walking, the brain activates the appropriate muscles automatically without alerting our consciousness. In other cases, especially when long-term planning is required, as in evaluating the next move in a chess game, the brain uses logic and imagination mechanisms and uses the help of graphics to compare possible operating routes to existing patterns for a quick decision. In these cases we are consciously alert. This is when we feel emotion, and become aware of the display of our senses.

In all cases, the brain builds these new pattern templates or modifies existing pattern templates, as a consequence of the decision that it made.

Can We Really Understand the Other?

The thesis of this book is that humans are just sophisticated machines with an organic computer we call a brain. There is no soul, or any other such incomprehensible mental entity whose actions cannot be anticipated. Therefore we can estimate the thoughts, feelings, and reactions, if we can collect sufficient data. Machines are not mysterious beings and can be understood.

It was also discussed in previous sections (see the 'human fractals'), how communities are entities with similar features; therefore they also function according to rules which can be understood.

If these theses are accepted, then all we have to know is what data are fed into these entities, and how they process these data in order to achieve a response.

In conclusion; if the other person is a machine then the answer to the above question is yes, we can understand the other person, but it is not easy.

It is not easy because we see the real physical world through distorting filters:

• We judge the world through rosy glasses that spare us unpleasantness but, at the same time, distort reality.
• We are all wrapped in our cultural garments that are woven of traditions, customs, conservative approaches, and routine. The purpose of these garments is to reinforce similarities; and they blur the differences among all members of the group, thus uniting our cultural position. These garments around us and around other persons, create a smooth shield, enabling us to reduce friction with others in our cultural group but, at the same time, prevent us from seeing the true nature of other persons.
• Our group is surrounded by a cultural wall that helps to consolidate our group, and blocks the influence of other cultures. But, at the same time, it prevents us from seeing the real nature of persons residing within the walls of a different culture.
• The foreign person within the walls of another culture is also wrapped in garments of his own that hide him from our view.

This is why many of us cannot understand the other person. We are convinced that the other person reflects our own image, and will react as we do, believing in our values. This leaves us sometimes standing, scratching our heads in disbelief, when the other person reacts differently from the way in which we would react to the same situation.

Because of all these obstacles, we have to remove our cultural garments, and look beyond the walls of the culture surrounding us. Then we have to look for the other person hiding beyond the wall of his own culture, wrapped in his own protective garments.

Only an independent person can remove all these veils, and understand the other. Regretfully, free thinkers are rare. They are often shunned in their community because the group demands solidarity and uniformity.

In this book, I have tried to open a window, through which we can peep into the other person’s soul, and see how he feels and thinks, enabling you, dear reader, to estimate his reaction to a given event.

But can you really remove all these walls and masks, to see clearly the other person’s behavior?

We need to keep in mind that our feelings of distaste toward “other persons that are not us”, are no more than chemical reactions that our brain implants in order to enhance the solidarity of our group and to separate our group from that of the other person.

Let us ignore them for a moment, and remember that the other has similar feelings toward us as well.

If you can do this, perhaps you will understand the other person to some degree. But even if you cannot do it, I hope that the insights you have gained from this book will help you understand yourself better, at the very least.

And that, too, is a worthwhile achievement.

The End

Chapter 3 - Cultural Communities

 Cultural Communities

 The thesis of the well-known philosopher, Friedrich Hegel, was that the ideas that we, as individuals, possess are totally shaped by the ideas of other people. Our minds have been influenced by the thoughts of other people through the cultural and religious institutions of which we are apart. "Geist" – spirit, is Hegel’s name for the collective consciousness of a given community which affects the ideas and the consciousness of each individual.

Carl Jung, the renowned psychologist, advanced Friedrich Hegel's theory one step further and coined the term “collective unconscious” -- this is the expanded subconscious of the community. According to his theory "collective unconscious" includes the pool of experiences preserved from one generation to the next. Jung further defined the archetype of the collective subconscious. The recurring appearance of the same images in diverse cultures was, in his opinion, proof that the collective subconscious does indeed exist. Jung concluded that, in his dreams, the individual connects to this treasury of collective memories, and that without acknowledging the heritage of culture deeply embedded in the human unconscious, it is not possible to understand the individual’s internal world and its many levels. These archetypal images constitute a driving force behind a person's character and how he thinks and feels.

Jung’s theories were rejected by the academic psychological establishment since it was difficult for researchers to accept the concept of a collective bond let alone a collective subconscious. Their intuition could not accept the idea that they, as individuals, were not unique. Currently, there are some second thoughts regarding Jung’s theory.

I do not advocate the idea of a collective subconscious but I hope that the renewed interest in this theory may lead to more thorough research on communities as living entities.

The true nature of how worldview shapes the behavior of a person will never become clear until we can understand the manifold ways in which human culture serves: to nurture, to regulate, and to amplify the cognitive activities of individual humans.

The ideas of Hegel, Jung, and others indicate the direction of recognizing the community as a living organism. This is the higher level in the human fractal chain.

In this chapter we discuss this communal organism, in an effort to decipher the way in which ideas are formed, and how they influence our point of view.

This means that we can regard people like the cells of the community's organisms. These human cells function as team players in the pursuit of common goals, not just consciously, but down to the roots of our unconscious mental processes.
This superorganism displays the same spectrum of relationships as does the individual human. These community's organisms are best known as “cultural groups”.

All political systems, religious systems, and other cultural systems are roughly like species in ecosystems, enabling the behavioral study of “cultural groups”, using the same research techniques that evolutionists already use for the study of species.

But first, we have to understand how and for what purpose these cultural groups were formed.

In the beginning, human families lived isolated from one another, with each of them having different, unique traits.

Then some families joined with others to form a small group called a tribe.

Eventually, some of these tribes consolidated with others to become a much larger group, known as a nation.

Over time these groups grew even more and became an empire.

The amount of friction among members of a family was very low because they shared common genes. As groups grew bigger, members of the group did not know one another very well, and this could lead to conflicts within the group. As a consequence, some sort of regime introducing law and order was formed. This regime unified the group and reduced friction among its members.

Each such group tried to differentiate itself from other groups and enhance consolidation within the group.

In the previous chapter, we discussed the mechanisms that synchronize people. These mechanisms were based on traits within our brain, using genes and hormones. But these mechanisms are effective only if people are in close touch with one another. In a large group, most people do not know one another; that is why the activities of people connected within a big community are based on culture.

People living together sharing traditions, customs, and education tend to think and react in a very similar and typical way, different from the way people in other groups think and react. One can call these typical characteristics a “culture”, and the way of thinking – “Ideology”. A cultural ideology for the community is much like a worldview for the individual.

The communities evolve over time, much like the way in which species develop and use pretty much the same mechanism.

Common cultures make individuals identify with their cultural group.

Sometimes this identification is so strong that one can perceive the group as a “herd.”

The sense of identification in the 'herd' can be total. In such cases, members of a community are ready to kill and to be killed in order to defend the existence of the culture and its values.

When people merge into their community to the point of losing their self-identity, one can easily understand them because they all think and react in the same way as their culture dictates.

This is true, for example, in the Caliphate community of extremist Muslims known as ISIS.

In most communities, however, people do not share total identification. There are communities, such as those in Western culture, in which individualism is the norm and not the exception. But even in Western communities, people can, for a short time, merge into the crowd, as, for instance, when they are watching their team in a football game.

The key to understanding communities is to learn about their culture. This is why we have to discuss culture in detail.

 

The Fly that Plowed the Field

One of Ivan Krylov’s fables describes a fly that perched on the back of an ox plowing a field. At the end of the day’s work, he turns to the ox and said: “What a difficult day we had, the two of us plowing the field all day.” This fable applies to people who are proud of human achievements as though they, themselves, had succeeded in carrying out such achievements single-handed when, in fact, the feats been achieved by that large entity -- the human race..

It is inconceivable that one man alone could succeed in building all those wonderful things around us. It is the effort of many people in diverse fields of expertise, together with the accumulation of wisdom over many years. No Robinson Crusoe can plow the field; it is the strength of the ox, the human race that did it.

In Chapter 1, we discussed how the human brain processes information. Understanding the brain’s basic mechanisms helps us understand the other. This is because we gain a better understanding of the other when we understand how reality is perceived by the other, and how it can affect his conclusions.

We also alluded to why attention should be paid to the other’s mode of understanding since it helps us to evaluate how the other will react to an identical virtual reality.

In Chapter 2 we found that it is necessary to evaluate how much a person possesses his own individuality, and which part of his brain’s processes reflects the community in which

that person lives; how much of that person’s worldview is the outcome of his own experiences and thoughts, and which partly reflects the identity of his cultural group.

In this chapter, the cultural group itself is discussed.

Understanding the behavior of these cultural groups is vital if we are to complete our understanding of that part which reflects the community in which they live.

By understanding the factors which affect the creation of culture, we can understand the community's part in our brain, and thereby complete our understanding of both aspects: the individual, and the societal.

The claim that a cultural community is a living entity is difficult for Westerns to digest since the Western worldview glorifies the individual. But it is vital to fully understand the other person. The claim I make is that not only does a human community satisfy all the criteria for those known as living beings but, in fact, it is the being that plows the field, and not the human flies lodged on its back. The achievements of the human race are the achievements of the human community.

This chapter does not explore small communities such as families but seeks to clarify the components influencing the nature of this great body, defined as a “nation,” and for the following reasons:

• A similarity exists between small and large communities. This makes it possible to draw analogies from what is known of the behavior of a nation to the behavior of smaller communities such as a political party.
• Humanity is striding toward linking smaller communities into ever increasingly larger communities. It is therefore of great importance to discuss the nature of these large communities.
• We find that small communities such as the family are losing their influence over the individual.

People may merge with others within a community to the point of losing their personal identity, just as a cell may merge with other cells in the same organ inside the human body. To understand such a person, it is enough to understand how the cultural group thinks and functions. It is important to define that entity, and to pinpoint its characteristics or, in actual fact, its culture, to help us understand how that entity “thinks” and “operates.”

Let us first present the entity, functioning as a living body that we called “the human herd.” Then we can look at the similarities between the living body called a person, and the living body called the human herd. In Chapter 1, when introducing human fractals, we showed that evolution is an overall mechanism describing the development of nature. This is why the human herd develops according to the laws of evolution, just as the individual human does.

In this section, we will analyze how communities form. Such communities, those that are far larger than they ought to be, are the main reason for survival in the jungle. Huge communities are possible only by introducing culture and advanced means of communication. These communities introduced technologies that have given the human race a clear advantage over all other life forms.

Finally, we will discuss whether it is possible to alter the ideology of the cultural groups, much like the discussion in Chapter 2 on the possibility of changing a single person’s way of thinking. This large entity that we call a "herd", or "empire" as the largest cultural group, has a life-cycle similar to that of the individual human, but in a far longer time frame. The herd comes into being, lives, and finally dies. Embedded in the human body is the mechanism of aging which leads finally to death. Similarly, in the body of the cultural group or empire, is the inherent mechanism of its death.

The seeds of the herd’s failure germinate on a bed of success.

 The Secret Life of Communities

 Anyone watching from a distance the stream of people shouting slogans in a demonstration, can imagine the mob of demonstrators as a living entity, growling and crawling along the street. This herd of people moves like any other herd of animals found in the Savannah.

The phenomenon of the formation of herds is usually common among the weaker species in nature since this ploy allows the prey to withstand the attacks of the predator. It is a genetic capability that allows even a newly-hatched fish to join a school of fish. The same evolutionary mechanism enables a newly-born foal to stand on its legs and gallop with the herd.

Researchers are studying the cooperative behavior of communities of species such as ants. The ants are sterile, and their sole purpose is to serve their queen and help her to lay eggs and take care of the offspring.

In these studies, it was found that some of the principles controlling ant behavior could also explain the appearance of other communities such as bacteria at the lower end of the chain of life, or human communities at the other end of the life chain. It was found that bacteria, like ants and humans, live in complex colonies. They communicate in order to cooperate for the benefit of the entire colony. Thus the phenomenon of creating communities where the individuals comprising it cooperate for the benefit of the entire population is natural and even common in nature.

A question worth asking, then, is this: Why have communities of fish, ants, and bees not reached the same achievements as a human community?

One possible answer is that creatures such as bees do indeed live as a community, but they do not deviate from their genetic behavioral norms. The size of their community is just the size they need to survive. When the population of a beehive grows larger, the colony splits into two smaller communities, each becoming a separate colony. Humans, by contrast, have succeeded in agglomerating into larger groups than those inherently driven genetically by evolution. Humans do this primarily through the development of cultural rules and advanced communication. The groups, having merged together and operating as a large community, give the human species a tremendous advantage over any communities of other creatures.

Cultures shared by large groups of humans were developed with the support of the invention of sophisticated communication, allowing connections among people even when they are far apart in time and place. Communication allows people to form joint conventions in the community, and thereby create a joint culture. Culture becomes the glue joining people together even if they do not know one another personally, and allows them to consolidate large human communities.

Another possible answer to the question of why humans have succeeded in achieving such grand aims can be found in the delicate balance between the individual person and the community in which he lives, as presented in Chapter 2. This balance allows humans to enjoy simultaneously the best of both worlds: the strength deriving from being part of a large body, and the flexibility that allows outstanding individuals to advance the group. Communities of other creatures are more homogeneous. They lack the free thinkers of the human species. These individuals are crucial for inventing new ways to advance their communities. Therefore these groups lack the advantage of the advances through inventions. They rely only on strong genetic connections, not on advanced culture.

Ferdinand the Bull, in the well-known children’s story by Munro Leaf, loved to smell the flowers while standing alone beneath the branches of trees. He refused to fight in the bull ring. This is a fantasy -- precisely because a bull cannot act like a human being.

I doubt whether you'll ever find a bull lying in the meadow when the herd marches forward.

The Human Herd

  People consider themselves intuitively as a separate and intact identity.
They can agree on the existence of the community's social bonds. After all, as Aristotle, the legendary Greek philosopher, said, “Man is by nature a social animal.” But the idea that they are not in full control of their mind, and that some part of them is shared by all others in the community, is too much to swallow.
However, is it possible to rely on intuition? We saw earlier that intuition is an unreliable crutch to bear the weight of proof regarding our own consciousness.
We assume by intuition that our skin separates us from the others.
But is it really?
Research shows that our brain can decide to extend our body. In one experiment, a rubber hand is extended from the left hand of a person, and both the right hand and the rubber hand are stroked with a brush. The person regards the rubber hand as his own.
The phenomenon of extending the body is very common. Any bus driver will testify that he regards the bus as the extension to his body. Any violinist will testify that he regards the violin as an extension to his hand.
If the body can be extended, can our mind be extended too?
Our mind is not isolated. In many ways, we share some parts of ourselves with our community. A part of us is “the playground of the community.”
We relate to our neighborhood football team as a single entity. When our national football team plays, we relate to it, also, as a single entity. When all our players are wearing the team’s colors, visitors watching the game have difficulty identifying an individual player within “the team”. Similarly, we cannot single out one specific soldier from the platoon of another country at war. We refer to each of them as 'the enemy'.
We relate to religious groups as a single entity, because their uniform clothing and certain typical behavioral traits make each of them look no different from any other members of the same group. That is the meaning of the phrase: “All Chinese look alike”.
If we examine this closely, we will find that many phenomena are impossible to explain other than in terms of our sharing with our fellow members of the community.
One cannot explain in any other way why we have a typical behavior of our community; when we are all driven by deep religious feelings; when we all encourage our team in a thrilling game of football, or when we all gather admiringly around a charismatic figure.
Sometimes people behave within the community as though they have no willpower of their own. Their personality withdraws, and they merge with other people in the community. In such cases, we can refer to the community as a "herd".
One can argue that human cultural groups have no well-defined boundaries, as seen in the human body. Therefore, it’s not possible to consider cultural groups as a living being.
But even though there is no skin wrapped around the community, everyone can distinguish between different human herds with almost the same degree of ease as they distinguish between individual persons. There are the white Western people, the black Africans, the yellow Chinese, and we can distinguish between each of them in a blink of an eye. There are the Russians, the Germans, the Americans -- all of them white people, but still we can clearly distinguish each group by its language, and manners. There are the Democrats, and the Republicans -- all of them white Americans -- but they clearly differ in their beliefs.
It is clear that we can refer to each community as one body, one being, but can we refer to it as a living body?
For a person to be able to identify a community as a living being, that person must be outside that community. We can identify the group of Muslims pouring out of the gates of the mosque like a living being, crawling up the road, growling "Allah Akbar" with its many mouths, together. But we find it difficult to accept that we liberals also share with others, the life of a big living being.
And yet communities all have features that we find in a living being.
Human communities are often 'born' through the consolidation of more ancient communities; then they acquire wealth and power to become a nation or even an empire. As wealth and power increase, there is a greater need for rigid rules to manage the population.
When the power of the community is at its peak, people allow themselves to advance their own needs, putting them above those of their community. This causes the solidarity of the community to crumble. More and more people leave the herd and go in other directions. This is the moment that predators are waiting for. The predators (called 'Barbarians' when we refer to nations) leap forward to devour those individuals who have left the herd’s 'circle of protection'.
We can see this process happening now as ISIS predators devour the individuals with weak solidarity links to the European culture.
Just as a pack of lions will attack those animals that have been separated from the herd, so humans separated from the human herd will be attacked by other cultural groups.
When too many individuals leave the community, the community is weakened. Then a younger, more vibrant community will defeat the original now-weakened community.
This phenomenon occurred constantly in the history of mankind.
This is exactly what happened to the ancient Greek Empire; it fell to the barbaric Roman tribes which then took over its place and role. This is what happened to the ancient Roman Empire which, in turn, collapsed after reaching its peak. This is what happened also to the Ottoman Empire which, at the height of its power, became “The sick man on the Bosphorus.”
We can find this phenomenon occurring now, as the Empire of the West, which has ruled the world for centuries is now slowly dying. Following the pattern of what happens to communities which are no longer challenged by any real threat, the individuals comprising Western communities have lost their willingness to die for the community’s values. As an outcome of this loss of solidarity and determination, the Western community is unraveling and weakening.
This is precisely the right time for the new 'Barbarians', in the form of extremist Islam, to attack.
I am aware that the description above is somewhat superficial since the issue of cultural groups is far more complex than that.
A person can participate in several different cultural groups simultaneously.
He can be a Muslim citizen of the same country as a Jewish citizen, and, at the same time, participate in the Muslims’ cultural group.
The factor which determines to which cultural group he is loyal, determines his action in a state of crisis. The individual will be loyal to the group with which he has the strongest bonds.
When a Muslim citizen feels stronger bonds to his religion than to his citizenship, that individual will feel a greater affinity with a Jordanian Muslim, rather than with his Jewish or Christian neighbors. In peacetime, he can be a good citizen and have Jewish friends, but this may not be the case when circumstances change.
In extreme cases, an individual may attack his neighbors.
History is full of examples of this trait. This was true in Yugoslavia where the Croatian population expelled and murdered its Serbian neighbors with whom, until the war, they had lived peacefully.
The same is happening in Iraq, where Sunni Muslims are fighting Shia Muslims neighbors.
The more cohesive a cultural group, the less it will exhibit tolerance.
The greater the potential danger with which a rival group threatens a community, this community will fight more fiercely against the group. A civil war is the cruelest form of war because the culture of both sides is very similar, and therefore there is a strong possibility that members of one community will be tempted to desert and join the other group.

A cultural group is much like the human body: it rejects foreign human cells or foreign groups, to maintain its inner harmony. If minorities groups do not adopt the culture of the majority group, the latter will expel them in order to ensure their own cultural cohesion.
If the rejected cultural groups are sufficiently large, they will separate and establish a new community of their own. One can consider this as the birth of a new community. Sometimes the original community can split into several communities, very much like the reproducing of bacteria.
This mechanism of a community's birth is a common phenomenon in history. In our recent past, the former USSR was divided into many daughter nations, as was Yugoslavia. There are many other cultural groups fighting for independence; the Catalans in Spain, the Scots in Britain, the Flemish in Belgium, the North of Italy in Italy, and so forth.
The driving force for keeping empires from disintegrating into smaller nations is the stability and cohesion of its population. A homogeneous population is more stable and shows greater cohesion.
If, for example, the American president had divided Iraq into three homogeneous nations after the American occupation in the 2003 war, the friction between these three cultural communities -- the Sunni, the Shia, and the Kurd -- would have been much smaller, and perhaps the bitter war in Iraq could have prevented.
Human communities are 'born', struggle to survive, 'give birth' to sub-communities, groups with their own features, and eventually, 'die'. This is typical of a living creature.
If we are to understand humans, we do not need to investigate the function of each cell in our bodies. To understand human communities, we do not need to examine each individual in it.
Very few studies are focused on this phenomenon.
According to the Theory of Mind (TOM), a research area still in its infancy, the human brain developed a neural network whose functions enable us to understand the thoughts, feelings, and intentions of fellow humans, to predict the behavior of others and to feel empathy for the other. These social skills held tremendous evolutionary advantages because living in cooperative social groups significantly expanded the chances of survival.
Researchers found a pheromone, which is excreted by animals for the purpose of signaling that they are of the same species. Usually, this is for the purpose of mating. Owners of a female dog know that she exerts pheromone signals to the male dogs when she is ready to mate. The male dogs smell it, and come to mate with her.
Humans are not that much different. A researcher named Jacobson found that humans react to pheromones as well, although in a more restrained manner than animals. Several studies have shown that women can be attracted to men simply by smelling their sweat. Another study, though controversial, found that female students living in close quarters, such as dorms, eventually synchronize menstrual time frames. This is known as the McClintock Effect.
There are not many studies on how people synchronize but it is impossible to deny that the phenomenon of synchronization exists.
The exact nature of synchronization is of little importance for the discussions in this book; we just need to know that it exists.
Humans are social animals not just because this is how we have learned to be through education but also because evolution has refined various mechanisms to make it easier for us to connect with other people to form a group. This is the natural norm mentioned earlier.
As with many processes which developed over the years, evolution has structured diverse traits, each of which supports the need to form groups.
There are supportive traits to form communities, and other traits preventing separation from the community. Among the supportive traits, we can find empathy, compassion, and altruism. In addition, there are many other traits, such as mimicry, as well as the need for friendship.
In the spirit of the way in which evolution works, there are traits to prevent negative processes from impeding the desired result. Here, too, the collapse of the community is prevented by features such as feelings of loneliness, which push us back to the comforting arms of the community, and boredom which can be avoided by gathering around the hearth of the tribe. Those are but two of the social traits.
There are features designed to help consolidate our cultural group, and distinguish it from other competing cultural groups. On the positive side, we have national pride or patriotism. On the negative side, we have developed the trait of hating our enemies.
It is apparent that part of our difficulty in understanding people of another cultural group is a function of the same traits which assist us in consolidating our own group.
These traits are common in all cultural groups.
Here is some research concerning a group of financial analysts under the title: “The Herd Phenomenon. An Analyst’s Recommendations”.
In this paper, the author quotes a researcher in the field who notes that analysts are writing overly optimistic recommendations because they have a herd instinct, which is manifested in the tendency to belong to the group of fellow analysts. That is why they publicize recommendations that align with the consensus. In this way, they reduce the chances of a critical backlash if their forecasts are wrong.
To help keep our bodies intact, the immune system in our body attacks every defective cell which threatens our health. In the same way, any community member that poses danger to the unity of the community is attacked. There are many examples of such behavior in every community;
Salman Rushdie faced death threats because he criticized the Muslim religion. Authors criticizing the kibbutz in which where they grew up were shunned by all their friends.
A member of a religious community is considered dead by his family for daring to leave the religion.
There are journalists who are afraid to publish their real opinions because the community of journalists will boycott them.
In 1963, Stanley Milgram, a psychologist at Yale University, conducted an experiment to assess the ability of people to have and to maintain their own opinion. He wanted to check whether an authoritative figure could instruct people to do something without their objecting to his instructions.
The experimenter and the student were actors. The tested person was given the role of a teacher. The experimenter and teacher (whom we tested) are in one room and the 'student' in the second. The 'teacher' needs to test the 'student' by asking questions. For every wrong answer, the 'teacher' has to punish the 'student' with an electric shock.
The 'teacher' was instructed by the experimenter to increase the electrical shock for every wrong answer. The 'student' was an actor acting as though he had really received the shocks. Some 65% of tested 'teachers' obeyed the rules. The experiment finally reached a point where the electric shocks would have killed the student if they had been real.
Milgram’s experiment proves the strength of the tendency to obey orders from a leader. The leader's function is to symbolize the 'spirit of the herd'. This is another typical herd characteristic.
A leader is not always needed. Even if no leader is present to define the “appropriate” behavior, we toe the line with the masses around us.
For example; we witnessed spontaneous outbursts of disruption among African-Americans in Baltimore following the death of a young man shot by a policeman.
Even people who are normally not violent can find themselves smashing shop windows and becoming involved in other negative behaviors that “everyone’s doing.”
In everyday life, parents of children need to cope with the effect of the herd phenomenon when a child says, “Everyone’s going…” or “Everyone’s got one…”
The well-known story, “The Emperor’s New Clothes,” by Hans Christian Andersen, demonstrates the herd effect. Everyone is cheering the naked emperor; only one child breaks the spell of the herd effect by shouting out the truth: “The emperor is naked!”
In liberal Western culture, we witness the herd effect manifested as “politically correct.”
Studies have shown that people behave differently when they are in a large crowd from when they are among their close family or their inner circle of friends. The reason is that the more the crowd acts as one entity, the more influential it becomes.
This is why leaders speak at public rallies, where the masses can be influenced to act in unison as a herd and the individual does not have a chance to think for himself.
The strength of the herd phenomenon can be seen by the testimony of a Jew who attended one of Hitler’s rallies. The crowd around him was roaring with enthusiasm. Soon enough he found himself roaring with them. It took him some time to realize that he was calling for the murder of Jews! He then fled in shame.
Huge public rallies are not the only way to consolidate a large number of people.
The mass media, including newspapers, electronic media, and social networks, are all the modern 'gatherings' of the masses.
The herd effect grows with the adoption of symbolic signs of group identity, such as uniforms. Soldiers wear uniforms in order to crystallize them into a company which obeys orders and is ready to kill.
Every religious cult adopts its own identifying garments.
Every child demands that his parents purchase clothes with fashionable labels to be just like everybody else in his class.
The illusion of consciousness brings us to think that we are strongly differentiated from others.
This is not the case!
“The tree cannot see the forest.”

 The Evolution of Communities

For most of their evolutionary period, humans lived in the jungles of Africa along with other animals. To survive better in this harsh environment, for protection, they evolved some social traits to ease the forming of groups. Humans are not the only living beings to use this mechanism of living together as a group. Other creatures live in groups of varying sizes. The size of a group is optimized to the dangers it faces.

There is a balance between the desire of man to fight with the others take for himself the largest possible share of resources on the one hand, and the desire to belong to the community to enjoy the benefits that it offers on the other. The life-cycle of communities is much like that of individual human beings.

One short and interesting definition of the human life-cycle is: “Find food, reproduce and eventually die.”

Human communities are often 'born' from the consolidation of more ancient communities, a process much like the mating of humans.

Then they acquire wealth and power – these are the food of communities and grow to be a nation or even an empire. When the community’s power is at its peak, people in the community allow themselves to advance their own needs, putting them above those of their community. This causes the solidarity of the community to crumble like the bones of an old man. The old community becomes ill with social diseases, such as corruption and extreme gaps between classes. Then more and more people leave the community and choose other directions. This is the moment that predators are waiting for. The predators (called 'Barbarians' when we refer to a national community) leap forward to devour those individuals who have left the community’s 'circle of protection' and, eventually, the community is conquered and dies.

Different species have different balance points. The more they are vulnerable to dangers, the greater the herd becomes.

The natural balance of the human race was a family or tribe. But the sophisticated culture of humanity enables it to create communities much larger than dictated by the natural balance.

When its culture weakens, the large community breaks down. Predators are organized in small groups while the groups of the weaker members, the prey, are organized in large groups.

The human race faces fewer dangers than do zebras, but more dangers than predators such as tigers. Therefore people had the ability to form groups, but only the size of a family or a small tribe. A small group, such as the family or tribe, was enough to ensure its safety but despite this humans succeeded in forming very large groups, using culture and communication capabilities.

In such large communities, humans could devote more resources to perfect their culture and communication even more, and reach new levels of achievement.

The factors affecting the development of a community and its ability to compete with other communities are:

• Its effective size - which is the number of individuals participating in its development.
• The nature of its culture that consolidates and unites the individuals within that community.

 The Effective Size of a Community

The size of a community, for the purposes of assessing its development, is not measured by counting the number of individuals it contains but, rather, by counting the number of individuals contributing to its development, since a community’s strength lies in the accrued contribution of individuals comprising that community.

A community under a dictator has a very small number of active contributing individuals. The masses are no more than an unskilled workforce and therefore can provide only a meager contribution to the group. This creates a smaller community rather than a dynamic democracy in which a large proportion of free individuals participate in the development of the community.

From this perspective, Israel is no smaller a community than all the Arab countries put together.

By way of example, we can describe an economic development comparison: China is known as a huge country with a poverty-ridden population, which allows it to be the center of world production because of low wages. When it comes to labor costs, it has no competitor. But the most productive Chinese worker, receiving a low wage, and working long hours under slave-like conditions, is unable to compete with automated production lines that function at high speed, without stopping, without salaries or social benefits, working 24/7. All day and every day. All that is needed is a supply of electricity and ongoing maintenance. If production lines like these were set up in Israel, China would lose some of the advantages of having this huge population.

The Nature of Culture

A veteran actress complained in rather a crude language about the government not investing enough in culture. She demanded more public money for her theater as she thought that theater is culture. For me, a polite individual represents culture more than this actress, even though that individual might not like theatrical entertainment.

Culture can be defined in numerous ways;

One definition states that culture is: “The sum of values as manifested by the behavior of humans”.

Another definition is more specific. It states: “Culture is a system of values, ideas, and shared behavioral norms in a particular community, conveyed through a process of social learning passed from one generation to the next”.

Tradition, art, clothing, customs, and the like are all included in the phrase: 'behavioral norms in a particular community'.

A person born and living in a particular community absorbs the modes of behavior and thinking patterns typical of that community.

Culture to a community is like a worldview to the individual. Both dictate the rules of behavior. The worldview dictates the rules for the individual, while the culture dictates the rules for the community.

When trying to understand the other, it is important to understand the basic mechanisms of culture. In Chapter 1, we examined the impact that a worldview has on the person's decisions. In the same way, we have to study in depth the culture of the community that influences the other person's decisions.

To illustrate the meaning of culture in detail, we can imagine culture as the wall of a fortress surrounding the community, protecting it from external influences of other communities, while consolidating the people within it:

• The foundations: shared mythology, religion, and history.
• The building blocks: rules of conduct at the individual level, and between the individual and the community. The rules of conduct formulated in terms of “to do” and “not to do” are conveyed through education and personal emulation, from one row of stones to the higher row of stones, from father to son, from the past to the future.
• The cement that binds the stones together contains: the language, the images, education, the close interactions when working together, and more. In Judaic culture the unifying cement is defined by the statement, “All Jews are responsible for one another”. In the Western culture, it can be represented by: “All for one and one for all; united we stand, divided we fall” from the book “The Three Musketeers”.
• The plaster overlay giving a uniform appearance to the wall symbolizes the uniformity of all individuals belonging to that culture. This includes language, customs, clothing, and manners.
• The paintings on the walls display the narrative of that culture, told by stories and displayed in the arts.
• The wall is topped by sculptures, representing the symbols of that culture: its flag, anthem, historic symbols, and heroes.

The high walls can defend the people within it from the influence of all other communities outside the walls.

If we wish to see the other persons in a culture beyond the walls, we must climb the high wall, and peer over it.

I am aware of the fact that when we climb to the top of the wall to be able to see the others, we are exposed to the others as well.

When Western culture, in the name of tolerance and multiculturalism, encourages lowering its cultural wall, it weakens its own ability to survive. A flood of Muslim extremists can break through it, and reach the heart of the Western community.

Despite the process of removing row upon row of bricks of their cultural wall, many individuals in the West still have difficulty in understanding the Muslim culture in spite of living with them in the same city.

To really understand members of a foreign culture, we need to go one step further and remove the masks behind which they hide.

A lack of understanding can result in a dangerous flood of immigrants into Europe. Even those Europeans who understand the dangers are afraid to act as they do not wish to be viewed as xenophobic and racists.

Yes, it is confusing. Some -- but not all -- of those acting against the members of a foreign culture are really racist xenophobes.

The evolution principle is also valid for communities.

In the name of its culture, a community fights with other communities. Similar to the evolution in species, the fittest survive and its culture wins.

There are aspects in a war that are good for the community along with the devastating damage. The very fact of being at war helps the community unite. This consolidation is achieved by diverting internal tensions outward, causing people to cooperate in the face of a shared existential threat, whether real or imaginary.

The long war of the United States with the USSR is an example of the importance of the existence of an enemy to a community. As long as the US faced the Communist culture as an enemy, it flourished. Now, for some years, the US has not had any powerful enemy, and the US is weakening.

 Competition between cultural communities is always good for humanity, in the same way that competition between businesses is good for the economy, or competition between species helps to perfect their traits.

The Importance of Culture

Through its culture, the community influences the way we think and react. Therefore, we need to explore every aspect of the community's culture in detail.

The human race, like all other species, was developed both as an individual and as a community of individuals in the same mechanism of the evolution. Here is how culture evolved:

• Evolution of the species is responsible for the sophisticated structure of the human body and brain.
• Evolution of the communities enabled the development of a culture that is responsible for those most incredible achievements of the human race.

Individuals tend to function according to their animal nature as defined by the evolution of the species, but their behavior is constrained by culture. These cultural constraints are called morals, ethics, conscience, fairness, integrity or simply, “the cultured being.”

Culture allows humans to live together while foregoing some of their individual freedom in exchange for other advantages. That is why culture is vital to living in a social framework. Sometimes there is a conflict between the natural tendencies and the rules of culture. When that happens, the human brain finds a way to ignore the cultural rules, by disconnecting the context of this action, from the rules of the culture. In such cases, when the action harms the social group, the individual is described as having committed a crime, while he himself thinks he is not guilty. An example would be excessive use of an expense account, allowed the employee by his employer. While the employee might not see this as theft, continued excessive use over time, could amount to sums greater than a direct theft from the employer’s business.

The culture reflects the behavior of the community as a whole and the interactions of the individuals within it. Hence the importance of understanding how culture functions.

In ancient communities, a culture was identified primarily with religion.

The monotheistic faiths are cultures in every aspect.

The Jewish culture was the Jewish religion and its cultural norms were formally prescribed for the first time in the form of the "Ten Commandments". These core rules were developed later to become the Jewish religion.

There is a big difference between the Jewish religion and the other monotheistic religions that stem from it, regarding the attitude to the other person and to other communities.

The Muslim faith demands total solidarity. This demand leads to proselytizing to coerce all humanity into adopting that faith. In countries controlled by Islam, violence is directed toward non-Muslims who are regarded as “infidels”. This is no different from the behavior adopted by Christian countries in the Middle Ages.

Judaism, in contrast, has always supported freedom of thought. “Choose your own Rabbi" is a famous adage in Judaism. It means that each person can choose to follow views of his liking. Judaism chooses a defensive strategy to build high cultural walls against the attacks of other cultures. The other religions prefer the offensive strategy.

This freedom of thought gave the Jewish culture strength to change its rules with the changing of circumstances. This is the basic evolutionary rule of survival.

That is why Judaism survived all these years.

This flexibility of the Jewish culture is evidence of the advantages of a balanced culture where free thinking is allowed within the community.

The Jews have contributed greatly to humanity in diverse fields. Communities with cultures more rigid than Judaism force all its members to comply with the mainstream, thus suppressing innovation.

The impregnability of a specific community compared to any other is directly related to the degree of solidarity, which is linked to the community's culture.

Let me explain this.

In the West, the culture focuses on the welfare of the individual; therefore people are less willing to sacrifice their convenience for the good of the community. This is one reason why the West has trouble in defending itself from the Muslim suicide bombers. The life of each individual is more precious than any other value; this is why people in the West are reluctant to defend cultural values with their life.

In Muslim culture, on the other hand, the individual is less important than the culture of the community - Islam. That is why people -- such as the suicide bombers -- are willing to die for the cause.

Communities with extreme cultures are not stable.

In the Muslim extreme culture where the individual does not count, the individuals have no initiative to contribute to the community. This is why some Arab states are not developed.

In the extreme Western culture where the individuals think only of themselves, the individual does not contribute to the community's strength. This is why some Western countries are so vulnerable.

Of course, these are extreme cases. Most communities are not extreme, but we can detect in many communities these tendencies toward the extreme.

A successful community should find a balance between the individual and the community.

A balanced culture allows the individual maximum advantages without undermining the existence and development of the community of those individuals.

Comparing Culture & Laws

In some democratic cultural groups, there is a tendency to see obedience to legal rules as a basic value that underlies everything.

This is also true for religious people keeping the traditional laws of their religion, even if they contradict the spirit of their own faith.

Can civilized behavior really be replaced by compliance with legal rules?

Let us first find the reason why the justice system was formed in the first place.

The reason for this is that wherever there are people who choose not to behave in a cultural manner laws must be legislated to ensure a cultural behavior.

Culture has a far greater range of influence on a person's behavior than state laws, and it reflects far more justice than religious rites. An acculturated individual will behave according to his internal cultural code, even when others are not watching.

Laws are legislated when too many people behave in an uncultured manner. In such cases, the cultural code needs to be enforced. In a community where no one steals, there is no need for laws to protect property. When the culture of a community is religion, people obey its laws either from tradition, persuasion, or fear of an omnipotent God watching every move. In such cases, there is almost no need for a legal system and means of law enforcement. But even in such communities, irregularities occur, making it necessary for a religious leader such as a Priest, a Rabbi, or a Shaman, to set things straight.

In Western culture, religion has weakened and, in its stead, we find that the state law holds a higher standing over cultural or religious behavior.

I respect the belief in the superiority of the state law, just as I respect any other religious belief. However, I wonder why devout law-abiding believers justify the unquestioning application of the law in every circumstance. Why are laws more important than moral principles?

Laws are, by their very nature, rigid and thus cannot be applied to every case. Modern judges, as opposed to the demands of the judges in the Bible, are there to judge according to the laws of the state, not to apply justice.

Laws are the product of some compromise reached during the process of legislating. Sometimes laws are regulated by corrupt legislators, or influenced by the interests of a small power-group.

The superiority of state laws can result in severe injustice. A way should be found to override the law in order to preserve human dignity.

One extreme example would be when Nazi Germany’s racial laws were applied to the Jews. According to these laws, Jews should be handed over to the authorities to be sent to the gas chambers. Nonetheless, certain individuals chose to override the laws and to remain faithful to moral principles.

As much as a modern justice system has its shortcomings, it is obvious that a set of laws is necessary.

Laws exist to regulate the lives of people living in a group; a lone person, living

Robinson Crusoe does not need any law.

On the other hand, a group of people who know how to live together, whether through mutual respect or guided by tradition and morals, does not need a legal system.

Such was the situation among the ancient tribes.

In the huge communities of today, these measures cannot work. This is why we find the application of social punishment whenever legal laws do not apply. Social punishment acts through rejection from social activities and, in severe cases, through excommunication. This kind of banishment can be found in extreme cultural groups where anyone daring to voice non-politically correct (PC) views is considered a traitor and is a pariah. Both types of penalization, by state laws and by social excommunication, may be unjust and immoral.

Throughout the law enforcement process there are failures and lapses:

• Some legislators are unethical, voting for the wrong reasons.
• Judges, whose duty is to enforce these laws, are trained lawyers, not the wise, authoritative judges of the past. They are regular people, with personal opinions. Their moral judgment is no better than that of any other person. In any event, even the most talented and ethical judge must judge according to the written law, and not according to justice.
• Laws exist primarily to protect the community from individuals threatening to disrupt its integrity and harmony. Law and order are vital to the existence of the community. Too frequently the law tends to protect the accused rather than the victim, and ignores public interests, setting the pyramid of justice on its head. As previously argued, public interest should be the first consideration, then the victim and only then the rights of the accused.

The “contract” between the citizen and the state obligates the citizen to obey the rules of that state, to ensure the protection of all other citizens.

Laws are like crutches supporting a lame person, the community being the body in this metaphor. The broken legs are the criminals.

Applying laws to convicted criminals in the community would be like using crutches to help the lame person. Both have their disadvantages:

•   A person using crutches reduces his willingness to invest greater effort in walking, resulting in the weakening of the muscles even more instead of strengthening them. Laws, in the same way, weaken the willingness to use moral decisions. With no moral inhibitions, criminals find ways to circumvent the laws and continue their deeds with no fear of punishment.
• People learn to cast responsibility on the law, instead of on their own moral judgment, just as the person places all his weight on the crutches instead trying to use his legs.

 The Balanced Culture

One of the dangers faced by communities is extreme inequality within the community.

There is a basic truth in the socialist theories that see the danger in class inequality, not from the moral perspective but from the worldview of the advantages that a balanced culture community has. This balanced culture will aspire to prevent large disparities between segments of its community on one hand but, on the other, will try to maintain some level of disparity, which motivates people to make an effort.

Inequality is not the only parameter that should be balanced in a community. I presented it for the sake of demonstrating what should be the rules in a balanced culture. All cultural parameters in the community should be balanced. It is not in the scope of this book to list all the parameters, and to explain why they should be balanced, but here is one example to give an idea on what, in my opinion, is a balanced culture.

The community of the Jewish people is an example of a balanced culture.

This is why;

The principles of Jewish culture were formulated in the Ten Commandments.

If we remove the “divine component” which, in my view, was added to ensure obedience, we find that:

• Three main rules remain for organizing coexistence among individuals.
• Three additional rules deal with relations between individuals and their community.
• One Commandment advocates an altruistic framework for the good of the entire community.

I refer here only to the cultural rules and not to the religious ones.

The basic framework of rules for coexistence between individuals lies in the following:

• “You shall not murder”. People must live in an atmosphere of personal security.
• “You shall not steal”. This allows financial security. A person can accumulate assets without fear.
• “You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor”. Integrity and tolerance toward other members of the community prevent suspicion and assure harmony.

The basis for coexistence between individuals and their community can be found in the following rules:

• “Honor your father and your mother”. All people must be treated with respect to ensuring harmonious coexistence.
• “You shall not commit adultery”. This sets the relationships within the nuclear and extended family, which is the basic unit within a community.
• “You shall not make for yourself a carved image”. A community must unite around ethical values, and not around the worship of celebrities, media images, or famous objects.

These rules allow for the consolidating and preserving of the community.

One additional rule within the framework of Judaism enables the community to change and prosper:

• “Remember the Sabbath day”. As I see it, this means that for one day of the week, we should forget our own interests, and contribute our efforts towards altruistic activities for the benefit of the community.

 Communication in the Community

The human species is not unique in its ability to communicate. All living things have some ability to do so but a person’s communication is far more sophisticated and complex than that of any other creature or plant.

Beyond enriching human knowledge, communication is vital for producing the culture that unites individual humans into a large consolidated community. A community of this kind can achieve much more than simply responding better to the challenges of survival.

Communication, in its broadest sense, strongly influences the advancement of knowledge. Advanced communication allows the accumulation of knowledge over time, making each generation more knowledgeable than its predecessor.

The advent of human communication in its broadest sense has enabled the accumulation of knowledge. Good communication enables the sharing of knowledge from one generation to the next and storing knowledge in sophisticated mechanisms. Thus humanity accumulates knowledge with time, and this knowledge becomes ever more accurate and spread over more areas.

The progress of communication was achieved by successive leaps, as follows:

• Speech
• Reading & Writing
• Printing
• Transportation
• Wired (landline) communication
• Wireless communication
• Internet
• Smartphone

Speech

People could share knowledge using language. The sophistication of speech using a rich language allows the precise transfer of information and ideas from one person to another. There is also a dark side to the ability of speech. It can cause harm, as one can express dislike and even hatred of the other.

The speech also enables persuasive people to convince others into carrying out evil deeds. But this is true for every invention. In every invention lies its inherent dangers. It is up to each individual’s character to determine how he uses the invention.

Animals can make communicating sounds. But they are far less sophisticated than human language and convey the richness of information of which the human language is capable.

Reading and Writing

Speech as a form of communication was limited only to the people with whom a person actually met face to face. Consequently, knowledge could be shared only by people being in the same place and time.

With the invention of writing, humans could leave behind a testimony of their knowledge. This allowed others to read and learn from it, even if its writer had long been dead. It was also possible to convey written knowledge to places far from where it was originally written. Writing improved the ability to convey knowledge across time and place. It was yet another huge leap forward for humanity.

Writing is, without doubt, one of the most important inventions in human history, allowing people to preserve knowledge, pass it down over generations, and increase the total number of individuals able to contribute.

Writing has allowed us to develop advanced cultures, commerce and trade, science, and systems of government.

The earliest known evidence of written messages was found in southern Iraq where the ancient Sumerian people lived. That was less than ten thousand years ago, barely one minute in terms of human existence.

These people used tablets of soft clay and wrote into them with a narrow stick. Initially, the writing was a series of images depicting objects and actions but it slowly evolved into formalized shapes of letters, which were used to create words. As time passed, many more nations developed written languages of their own.

Not many people had the skills of reading and writing in the ancient world. This knowledge

was limited to the narrow ruling class. The rest of the people were ignorant for they had no access to written knowledge.

There was one exception to this – the Jewish people. Around the first century AD, their leaders issued a rule that every father had to teach his children to read and write. Later these Jewish leaders built a system of schools to spread these crafts of reading and writing even for those that could not learn from their parents. This ability of the Jewish people has played a role in their survival and even in their excellent achievements for humanity in general.

Printing

In Victor Hugo’s book, “The Hunchback of Notre Dame,” a studious man is described as spending his days hunched over his books, gazing at a newly-printed text, which was to eventually replace the hand-written books of his day. Then he looks through his window in the Church of Notre Dame and muses aloud. “This will bring about the end of that.”

By this, he meant that printed books would lead to the end of the dominance of the church, which held the monopoly on knowledge which was concentrated in hand-written books.

Until that time, writing books and letters was limited only to those few who could read, write and had access to those books. For centuries, very few people had access to what was considered a privilege; usually, they were members of the ruling elite who possessed not only the knowledge to read, but also the means to buy these expensive books.

The invention of the printing press enabled the production and sale of reasonably priced books; now many people could afford them. That had been impossible when books were written by hand.

Now, at the time of this invention, there was a growing circle of people who could read and write. These two events vastly increased the number of people able to contribute to the community, and they enhanced its ability to accrue knowledge.

The invention of printing affected human social consolidation as well, by standardizing the language in the country, thus contributing to unifying the many dialects into one language that all citizens could understand.

Before the advent of printed books, almost every geographical area had its own unique dialect which was frequently so different from the others that it prevented mutual understanding. Books printed in a specific dialect of language led to broader assimilation of the linguistic structure according to that found in the books. Secondary dialects fell into increasing disuse. In this way, even people living far from the center of the country gradually absorbed the main linguistic structure. In France, for example, the language developed primarily from the dialect prevalent in the center of the country, the city of Paris.

Transportation

Improving means of transportation over land, by sea, and in the air, allows those living at great distances from other people to meet and exchange ideas. This can be considered as a means of communication. A person from one cultural group who migrated to another country could meet with the local scholars to exchange ideas. Today there is no place, however distant, which cannot be reached within the space of a day’s flight.

Wire communication

The invention of the telegraph comes first, then the telephone, with physical wiring. With these inventions, people could enjoy long-distance calls. Information and knowledge could be exchanged, even if the people could not travel, physically, to meet for that purpose.

Wireless communication

Wireless communication appeared initially in the form of wireless telegraph machines. Later this was developed into a mass media system. First, the radio was invented, followed by the invention of television. These means of mass communication allowed the spread of knowledge and views from one central point to a vast mass audience. It also helped to consolidate a culture which could now be shared.

The establishment of entertainment and news channels had no small impact on human culture as well as the group’s ability to recruit others into that group.

Internet

The continuing drop in the price of personal computers has made them affordable to many. Computers are currently owned by vast numbers of people. This and the invention of the internet made another leap forward in the ability of humans to access, store, and share knowledge.

No less important than producing knowledge is the ease with which knowledge can be accessed.

Improved automated translation systems offered by internet companies help break down language barriers. Social networks have increased the possibility of social bonding abilities. People can share ideas and form groups in ways which were unimaginable in the past. They are not limited by borders, nationality, or distances. Social networks and the Internet have already produced yet another major leap forward in global communication. They have a great impact on the nature of communities.

Smartphones

The invention of smartphones allows everyone, irrespective of time and place, to come into contact with others. This invention also enables access to the media and the Internet in the same way as though they were at their home or office.

Communication becomes personal, making everyone available to everyone else.

A smartphone is actually a computer with video capabilities; it includes a camera and navigation tools in addition to being a telephone.

The smartphone with its many applications furthers the ability to consolidate communities.

Communication is the empowering factor which increases a community’s scope and its strength.

The means of communication have been developed chiefly in the Western world, which pushed it far ahead of other cultures, and was the primary factor in empowering and reinforcing the Western Empire. But in recent years, the Western world has begun to use communication more for trivial purposes, such as spreading gossip and playing games, more than for the purpose of spreading knowledge, and the advancement of the community. This tendency should worry about anyone in Western culture.

Seeds of Failure

Throughout history, empires have risen and fallen. They were defeated after reaching the peak of success. One reason for this is the loss of solidarity within the community, thus losing the urge to fight for the integrity of the community. Here are some examples of the rise and fall of the large communities we call Empires;

The Roman tribes won the battle against the ancient Greek empire when it was in its peak. The Barbarians conquered the Roman Empire when the Romans dominated the world. The Ottoman Empire was defeated in the same circumstances.

It seems that all empires underwent the same fate for the same reasons. The people of rich and prosperous empires became addicted to luxurious lifestyles and were not ready to fight for their community. They were too busy caring for themselves to risk their lives for their country, like their "barbarian" ancestors.

The new "barbarians" on the other hand, were full of fighting spirit which gave them the victory.

There is a disturbing similarity between the life cycle of the Roman Empire, and the current status of our Western empire.

From an organized and disciplined warrior nation, the Romans became a collection of people seeking no more than “bread and circuses” – “Panem et Circenses” – or, in other words, shallow amusements.

Anyone closely observing the nature of current Western culture can discern this same phenomenon. The West is placing increasing importance on wealth and entertainment in all its forms. It focuses on the economic wellbeing of the individual and on “the good life,” which is the modern version of “Panem et Circenses”. Our satiated, wealthy Western community lacks all motivation to fight in its dying days. The Western empire, in the name of tolerance and hedonism, is risking its own existence.

Autocracies, such as the Muslim culture, are much like the barbaric tribes that attacked Rome. Free and prosperous democracies tend to have bitter disputes that weaken the community or even cause it to collapse because of the lack of solidarity.

As an example, the Muslim culture is fighting relentlessly for total dominance over the Western infidels, while people in the West are willing to accept the Muslims, and share their wealth with them. We can conclude that here the Muslims have a distinct advantage.

True, in the war between cultures, as with many other processes, we can identify various and contradicting trends.

People in a culture of oppression, like that of the Muslim tyranny, will ultimately rebel in order to attain a minimum of rights and freedom. Many oppressive governments have collapsed following an internal rebellion by their citizens.

It is difficult to know which of these opposing trends will win but history shows us that the barbarians eventually defeat the prosperous cultures, even if it takes longer than we might expect.

 That is how things come to a full circle: the seeds of failure germinate in a bed of success.

Leadership

The human community needs a leader just as any herd needs a shepherd.

A leader can cause others to cohere around him, like drops of rain that need a speck of dust to begin the process of condensation. Under the right conditions, these drops of people pour down on the community, causing floods of aggression with such force that no one can stand up against them.

Leaders are not necessarily unique persons that possess “leadership qualities”, just as a speck of dust does not have to be unique to make drops of rain condense around it.

One can be a leader by chance, or through familial inheritance.

People think that a leader should have one central trait that distinguishes him from the masses. Often, in a leader, this trait is called "charisma" but we can find many leaders in history who lacked charisma.

Often the very fact of holding a leadership position puts the leader in a preferential place at many levels. The highest level is the love of the people for the leader, which may even bring them to be willing to sacrifice their lives for their leader. At one level lower comes admiration, then respect, and then social identification.

Among those outside the group around the leader, we find opposing manifestations in various degrees; these range from a low level of derision, then to fear, and hatred.

Hitler is an excellent example of someone who would never have been marked as a leader.

Hitler did not seem to be a particularly authoritative figure: he was short, and ugly, at least according to Nazi standards; he lacked the blond hair and blue eyes of the pure Aryan. He never completed high school, he was rejected by the art academy due to a lack of talent and was, in fact, an abject failure in his youth. He was not a brilliant orator. His voice was high-pitched, and he spat as he shouted slogans at his audience. He lacked any outstanding qualifications yet he found himself turned into that speck of dust that caused the drops of rain to cohere around him. This rain became a flood, threatening to drown Europe.

How did such a man manage to excite an entire nation which was considered to be the most cultural nation in Europe? How did he succeed in gaining the position of leader?

The answer lies in his being in the right place and at the right time to promulgate ideas that were presented as holding the solution to the dire straits in Germany at the time.

He stepped in during a period of economic depression, and deep national humiliation after Germany's defeat in the First World War. He also stood out compared to other leaders by manifesting compassion-less extremism. In this way, he gained the image of a strong and uncompromising leader.

He expressed what the nation needed most at that time: pride and a unifying power that would heal the country’s economy. In times of crisis, the people seek a strong leader who can decide unhesitatingly.

Many are the leaders who have wielded their power for evil purposes once they have achieved the position of leader. Many of them have used their powers for personal gain.

Even when a leader slaughters some members of his herd for a feast, all the rest continue to look up to him in admiration. In a time of war, facing the danger from the outside, the nation consolidates even more behind its leader.

Independent thinkers are not welcomed by the community, and therefore these people usually cannot become leaders. Nonetheless, some thinkers can be called upon to lead. The story of the biblical Moses describes such a leader.

He reached leadership status by coincidence after fiercely protecting a Jewish slave.

It is important to understand how people who blindly follow their leader’s orders lose their individuality.

 To some degree we can see God in the role of an imaginary leader, and his believers just follow his orders.

Faith

 For much of human history, the only culture that unified a community was religion. Even today, a large proportion of the human race believes in some sort of religion. Even some of those who claim to be secular believe in a divine power.

Issues of religion and faith have been discussed widely for many years. It is not in the scope of this book to discuss faith, not even my opinion on the subject. Here we will discuss the subject of faith only in relation to its impact on the individual person and on communities.

Religion has a great impact on how people think and act. Therefore we cannot ignore it in our quest to understand the other person. Let us keep in mind what was noted in the previous sections. A person is motivated by his own beliefs; therefore we should study those beliefs no matter what we think of them.

Belief in a divine entity is the product of our natural tendency to attribute to God the coincidences or natural phenomena that we do not understand.

Brain scans show that religious faith activates neural networks that mediate social communication, emotions, memory, and imagination. It shows the great impact that religion has on the brain.

As mentioned in the first chapter, numerous studies show that the human brain is always trying to fit phenomena into a known pattern. When no pattern is found for a phenomenon that we do not understand, it is attributed to God.

Just as secular people tend to match their pets’ behavior with known human traits through the mechanism of personification, and perceive them as members of the family, so the believer attributes human behavior patterns to God. The human brain perceives the divine as “another person”.

Dr. Jordan Grafman conducted a study where he found that the basic neural networks which allow understanding other people are adapted for the cognitive processing of religious belief.

The use of the same traits for different purposes is common in nature.

It is interesting to note that the same neural areas of the brain have been activated in many studies where researchers examine political claims of persons holding various political views.

It shows that in any faith, whether religious, political, or environmental, our brain uses the same mechanism. Thus understanding this mechanism is important for the task of understanding the other person.

Studies show that, in comparison to secular people, the believers are healthier, happier, live longer, and contribute more to the needy. They accept life’s hardships, and are more at peace with themselves. Communities of believers are more united and their members tend to line up with the group. They have the characteristic of a 'herd' that cannot tolerate free thinkers.

Can Culture be Changed?

Every culture experiences spontaneous changes that were not orchestrated according to a specific plan. Usually, these changes are slow. The question is this: Can a community’s culture be consciously changed in an extreme manner?

Historically, the answer is yes, it can.

Numerous examples of extreme cultural change exist. The French revolution is one predominant example in modern history. Nazism is another. Generally such changes occurred in the form of revolutions which gained impetus from a background of severe crisis.

Can a leader change the nation’s culture?

A strong leader can bring about changes in values, only after he has taken control over his people. It is human nature to show empathy toward a leader who represents the majority of a nation. This is how Hitler was able to bring about a complete change in the values of the German nation.

Crises can change cultures.

The crisis must be immense for it to drive an entire nation against its previously unifying culture.

Cultures can also change very slowly.

Social processes do not bring about change at the speed of modern technology

but technology accelerates social processes. The very ability of technology to change how people communicate by offering non-stop communication no matter when or where they are allows human interaction without the limitations of geography. This enables the creation of new types of groups, which ignore a particular location, or even a particular nation. The fact that most cultures have such free access to other cultures makes it more difficult for any culture to remain utterly isolated.

We can say that communication technology alters culture.

Radio, then television, and later, the Internet, can all be regarded as instruments for brainwashing. The Internet can even lead to changes in a regime as was demonstrated in the Middle East. Whoever wields control over social media and the various instruments of communication can bring about cultural change. The question is whether an individual or organization can gather sufficient authority to bring about a change. It would seem that there are numerous attempts to do this with a number of successful outcomes.

Whether holding such power is desirable would depend on each individual’s point of view.

Culture continually changes, even without being directed intentionally.

The ways in which people dress, what they eat, or how they organize their free time, all change with time. Many changes are spontaneous, and are linked to the economic and social status of the group in question.

Education is a tool used to influence the direction of the culture. Children are frequently the focus of education, as they represent the future of the culture. Every regime tries to exert influence on the culture through various forms of education, ranging from institutionalized education to brainwashing and preaching designed to overcome the individual’s natural filtering mechanisms, and prevent the undesired influences of other cultures.

Narrative is another tool used to create a culture that binds together its members, while differentiating them from other nations at the same time.

Narrative mixes facts and imagination, and forms the nation's historical story.

Narrative works for the community just as the human brain works for the individual. Some people brag that their belongings, behavior and actions are the best. That is because our brain tries to justify and praise everything we do and say. The narrative brags in the same way for the community.

Culture influences individuals at all levels of brain activity:

•   At the level of constructing reality pictures, cultural ideas blur facts, adapting them to fit the shared culture. This is in addition to the other reasons which cause people from one culture to see reality differently from people of another culture.
• At the second level of understanding reality, the brain uses cultural stereotypes in addition to the personal stereotypes. The stereotypes of another culture will be different from those of ours, thus changing the way in which information is processed in the minds of people. All this should be taken into consideration when we try to understand the other.
• At the third level of consciousness, values are ranked very differently in different cultures. This is vital for understanding how someone of a different culture will react in specific situations.

 SUMMARY

 What Do We Need to Learn?

In order to understand how the other person thinks, feels, and reacts, we have to gather information from different areas, as well as exploring how the brain works. Here is some of the information we should gather:

• What information the senses present to the brain.
• On what database the brain relies to build the reality images. This database includes patterns (stereotypes) engraved in the brain, the person's life experiences, and what he learned in the past.
• How he processes his picture of reality to reach decisions. How he reacts after reaching a decision. The reaction is influenced by his character, and the extent of his involvement in his cultural group. All this should be investigated.
• To which cultural group he is most committed, and how this culture influences the picture of reality in his brain.

These are very challenging tasks. The best we can hope for is to learn all we can, and apply our estimations to what is going on in the other person's mind.

We have to keep in mind that there are always contradictory trends influencing a person's brain. The trick is to estimate which trends are dominant in the mind of the person we are analyzing.

These include freedom versus willingness to accept authority, fear versus courage, and so on.

All this information can help us, for example, to estimate the other person's reaction to specific events.

Below are several categories that must be explored if we are to understand the other person:

• How the other person perceives reality. In earlier sections we reviewed the complexity involved in structuring a picture of reality.
• The rules of the other person's cultural group.
• The other person’s relevant personal knowledge. This may not necessarily be true knowledge but, rather, what the other knows concerning the relevant issue.
• The threshold’s level of reaction. If it exceeds his high level, then a person will react. A person will ignore anything that does not reach his individual lower threshold.
• The intensity of the reaction to any given situation, provided that it is greater than the threshold.
• It is also important to examine the other person's sensitivity to a specific situation, and not only the power of reaction that exceeds his threshold, the latter being defined as a change in the force of reaction relative to the change in the force of the situation.

If we accept the thesis that the person is actually an organic machine, controlled by a kind of a computer we call the brain, the other person can be understood. All we have to do, is gather enough relevant data and knowledge. This is in contrast to the approach that sees the human behavior controlled by a mysterious soul, or some equally mysterious mental consciousness. In that other approach it is an unsolved enigma.

A significant part of the meaning of "understanding the other" is to assess how the other person would react to the event.

In this book I introduced another thesis called the 'human fractal'. It states that we are part of a greater being, which means that we cannot fully understand a man by analyzing him as an individual. We have to analyze his behavior as part of a larger cultural community within which he operates.

Here are several formulas to demonstrate scientifically how we can estimate the other person’s reaction to an event.

Of course this is no easy task. It is difficult to estimate the parameters in these formulas, and the formulas do not include all elements that affect people’s decisions. These formulas are, therefore, incomplete and inaccurate.

I assume that when, in the future, there is progress in finding more accurate assessment tools, we will have a more accurate assessment of understanding how other people will react, or at least a better understanding of how most people belonging to a particular cultural group are likely to respond.

Let us define:

• Events = E
• senses = s

Es is the part of an event received through the senses. It is not exactly the whole real event because of:

1. Our sensory limitations (limitations = l).

2. We see only the parts of reality to which our brain is directing the senses in order to get as much important information as we can in a short time. - Direction = d.

Individual = i, indicates a personal part of the brain. i can have a value between 0 and 1, depending on the human tendency to rely on ourselves.

Community = c, indicates the part of the community in the brain. c can have a value between 0 and 1 depending on the human tendency to rely on community culture.

The values of both should amount to one. i + c = 1

Feelings = F, Indicates the emotional filter and should have a value between 0 and 1.

The individual image a person has of an event is:

Ei = Fi * Es

The perceived community aspect part of the event is:

Ec = Fc * Es

And the total event perceived in a person's mind is:

E = i * Ei + c *Ec

In the next step, the event is compared to an existing pattern template in the human brain, to determine which reaction can be issued in time.

Patterns = p

If a partial match is found, the decision of that pattern is issued - E = Ep.

This process does not stop, and continually matching is performed while an incoming stream of information flows from the senses. If a better match is found with another pattern, the decision is exchanged for a new one.

The brain pulls the template engraved matching Ep event from his memory, as long as there is no information that contradicts it.

If the brain cannot find a suitable template, it is forced to fit the information to bits of different templates available. In this case, the decision time is longer.

In the next stage, the brain must decide on the proper response that follows the decision.

Let us define:

• Event intensity = Er
• Low response threshold = rl
• High response threshold = rh

To decide on the proper response, the brain compares the intensity of the event to the thresholds. These thresholds are determined by the cultural values of the person's community, the personal nature of this person, and his mood at that time.

If the intensity of the event is lower than the low threshold - Er <Erl, then there will be no response as the person is indifferent to the event.

If the intensity of the event is higher than the high threshold - Er> Erh, then the brain sends the relevant commands to act.

If the intensity of the event lies between these two thresholds - Er2> Er> Er1, the person will react emotionally, but will not act upon it.

Then, according to the nature of the event and the required speed of response, the responses are directed to various areas of the brain for further treatment.

These different areas activate muscles by nerves and appropriate commands or stimulate one’s hormonal glands to regulate body function and display emotions.

In the case of immediate danger, there are some reflexive responses made by the nerves even before the brain receives the information, circumventing the described process, but in most cases, decisions are made by the brain.

We are aware of some of the decisions, but not aware of others.

When the brain finds a perfect match between the event and a well-defined pattern as in the case of driving home, or the act of walking, the brain activates the appropriate muscles automatically without alerting our consciousness. In other cases, especially when long-term planning is required, as in evaluating the next move in a chess game, the brain uses logic and imagination mechanisms and uses the help of graphics to compare possible operating routes to existing patterns for a quick decision. In these cases we are consciously alert. This is when we feel emotion, and become aware of the display of our senses.

In all cases, the brain builds these new pattern templates or modifies existing pattern templates, as a consequence of the decision that it made.

 Can We Really Understand the Other?

The thesis of this book is that humans are just sophisticated machines with an organic computer we call a brain. There is no soul, or any other such incomprehensible mental entity whose actions cannot be anticipated. Therefore we can estimate the thoughts, feelings, and reactions, if we can collect sufficient data. Machines are not mysterious beings and can be understood.

It was also discussed in previous sections (see the 'human fractals'), how communities are entities with similar features; therefore they also function according to rules which can be understood.

If these theses are accepted, then all we have to know is what data are fed into these entities, and how they process these data in order to achieve a response.

In conclusion; if the other person is a machine then the answer to the above question is yes, we can understand the other person, but it is not easy.

It is not easy because we see the real physical world through distorting filters:

• We judge the world through rosy glasses that spare us unpleasantness but, at the same time, distort reality.
• We are all wrapped in our cultural garments that are woven of traditions, customs, conservative approaches, and routine. The purpose of these garments is to reinforce similarities; and they blur the differences among all members of the group, thus uniting our cultural position. These garments around us and around other persons, create a smooth shield, enabling us to reduce friction with others in our cultural group but, at the same time, prevent us from seeing the true nature of other persons.
• Our group is surrounded by a cultural wall that helps to consolidate our group, and blocks the influence of other cultures. But, at the same time, it prevents us from seeing the real nature of persons residing within the walls of a different culture.
• The foreign person within the walls of another culture is also wrapped in garments of his own that hide him from our view.

This is why many of us cannot understand the other person. We are convinced that the other person reflects our own image, and will react as we do, believing in our values. This leaves us sometimes standing, scratching our heads in disbelief, when the other person reacts differently from the way in which we would react to the same situation.

Because of all these obstacles, we have to remove our cultural garments, and look beyond the walls of the culture surrounding us. Then we have to look for the other person hiding beyond the wall of his own culture, wrapped in his own protective garments.

Only an independent person can remove all these veils, and understand the other. Regretfully, free thinkers are rare. They are often shunned in their community because the group demands solidarity and uniformity.

In this book, I have tried to open a window, through which we can peep into the other person’s soul, and see how he feels and thinks, enabling you, dear reader, to estimate his reaction to a given event.

But can you really remove all these walls and masks, to see clearly the other person’s behavior?

We need to keep in mind that our feelings of distaste toward “other persons that are not us”, are no more than chemical reactions that our brain implants in order to enhance the solidarity of our group and to separate our group from that of the other person.

Let us ignore them for a moment, and remember that the other has similar feelings toward us as well.

If you can do this, perhaps you will understand the other person to some degree. But even if you cannot do it, I hope that the insights you have gained from this book will help you understand yourself better, at the very least.

And that, too, is a worthwhile achievement.

The End