CHAPTER 1

The Rules of the Social Game

11th juror: (rising) "I beg pardon, in discussing ..."

10th juror: (interrupting and mimicking) "I beg pardon. What are you sogoddam polite about?"

11th juror: (looking straight at the 10th juror) "For the same reasonyou're not. It's the way I was brought up."

—Reginald Rose, Twelve Angry Men

Twelve Angry Men is an American theater piece that became a famous motionpicture, starring Henry Fonda. The play was published in 1955. The scene consistsof the jury room of a New York court of law. Twelve jury members who nevermet before have to decide unanimously on the guilt or innocence of a boy from aslum area, accused of murder. The quote cited is from the second and final actwhen emotions have reached the boiling point. It is a confrontation between thetenth juror, a garage owner, and the eleventh juror, a European-born, probablyAustrian, watchmaker. The tenth juror is irritated by what he sees as theexcessively polite manners of the other man. But the watchmaker cannot behaveotherwise. Even after many years in his new home country, he still behaves theway he was raised. He carries within himself an indelible pattern of behavior.

Different Minds but Common Problems

The world is full of confrontations between people, groups, and nations whothink, feel, and act differently. At the same time these people, groups, andnations, just as with our twelve angry men, are exposed to common problems thatdemand cooperation for their solution. Ecological, economical, political,military, hygienic, and meteorological developments do not stop at national orregional borders. Coping with the threats of nuclear warfare, global warming,organized crime, poverty, terrorism, ocean pollution, extinction of animals,AIDS, or a worldwide recession demands cooperation of opinion leaders frommany countries. They in their turn need the support of broad groups of followers inorder to implement the decisions taken.

Understanding the differences in the ways these leaders and their followersthink, feel, and act is a condition for bringing about worldwide solutions thatwork. Questions of economic, technological, medical, or biological cooperationhave too often been considered as merely technical. One of the reasons why somany solutions do not work or cannot be implemented is that differences inthinking among the partners have been ignored.

The objective of this book is to help in dealing with the differences inthinking, feeling, and acting of people around the globe. It will show thatalthough the variety in people's minds is enormous, there is a structure in this varietythat can serve as a basis for mutual understanding.

Culture as Mental Programming

Every person carries within him- or herself patterns of thinking, feeling, andpotential acting that were learned throughout the person's lifetime. Much of itwas acquired in early childhood, because at that time a person is mostsusceptible to learning and assimilating. As soon as certain patterns ofthinking, feeling, and acting have established themselves within a person's mind,he or she must unlearn these patterns before being able to learn somethingdifferent, and unlearning is more difficult than learning for the first time.

Using the analogy of the way computers are programmed, this book will call suchpatterns of thinking, feeling, and acting mental programs, or, as per thebook's subtitle, software of the mind. This does not mean, ofcourse, that people are programmed the way computers are. A person's behavior isonly partially predetermined by his or her mental programs: he or she has a basicability to deviate from them and to react in ways that are new, creative,destructive, or unexpected. The software of the mind that this book is aboutonly indicates what reactions are likely and understandable, given one's past.

The sources of one's mental programs lie within the social environments in whichone grew up and collected one's life experiences. The programming starts withinthe family; it continues within the neighborhood, at school, in youthgroups, at the workplace, and in the living community. The European watchmakerfrom the quote at the beginning of this chapter came from a country and asocial class in which polite behavior is still at a premium today. Most people inthat environment would have reacted as he did. The American garage owner, whoworked himself up from the slums, acquired quite different mental programs. Mentalprograms vary as much as the social environments in which they were acquired.

A customary term for such mental software is culture. This word hasseveral meanings, all derived from its Latin source, which refers to the tillingof the soil. In most Western languages culture commonly means"civilization" or "refinement of the mind" and in particular the results of suchrefinement, such as education, art, and literature. This is culture in the narrowsense. Culture as mental software, however, corresponds to a much broaderuse of the word that is common among sociologists and, especially,anthropologists: this is the meaning that will be used throughout this book.

Social (or cultural) anthropology is the science of human societies—inparticular (although not only) traditional or "primitive" ones. In socialanthropology, culture is a catchword for all those patterns of thinking,feeling, and acting referred to in the previous paragraphs. Not only activitiessupposed to refine the mind are included, but also the ordinary and menialthings in life: greeting, eating, showing or not showing feelings, keeping acertain physical distance from others, making love, and maintaining body hygiene.

Culture is always a collective phenomenon, because it is at least partly sharedwith people who live or lived within the same social environment, which is whereit was learned. Culture consists of the unwritten rules of the social game.It is the collective programming of the mind that distinguishes the membersof one group or category of people from others.

Culture is learned, not...