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 innate. It derives from one's social environment ratherthan from one's genes. Culture should be distinguished from human nature on oneside and from an individual's personality on the other (see Figure1.1), although exactly where the borders lie between nature and culture, andbetween culture and personality, is a matter of discussion among social scientists.

Human nature is what all human beings, from the Russian professor to theAustralian aborigine, have in common: it represents the universal level in one'smental software. It is inherited within our genes; within the computeranalogy it is the "operating system" that determines our physical and basicpsychological functioning. The human ability to feel fear, anger, love, joy,sadness, and shame; the need to associate with others and to play and exerciseoneself; and the facility to observe the environment and to talk about it withother humans all belong to this level of mental programming. However, what onedoes with these feelings, how one expresses fear, joy, observations, and so on,is modified by culture.

The personality of an individual, on the other hand, is his or herunique personal set of mental programs that needn't be shared with any otherhuman being. It is based on traits that are partly inherited within the individual'sunique set of genes and partly learned. Learned means modified by theinfluence of collective programming (culture) as well as by unique personalexperiences.

Cultural traits have often been attributed to heredity, because philosophers andother scholars in the past did not know how to otherwise explain the remarkablestability of differences in culture patterns among human groups. Theyunderestimated the impact of learning from previous generations and of teachingto a future generation what one has learned oneself. The role of heredity isexaggerated in pseudotheories of race, which have been responsible, amongother things, for the holocaust organized by the Nazis during World War II.Ethnic strife is often justified by unfounded arguments of cultural superiorityand inferiority.

In the United States there have been periodic scientific discussions on whethercertain ethnic groups, in particular blacks, could be genetically less intelligentthan others, in particular whites. The arguments used for geneticdifferences, by the way, make Asians in the United States on averagemore intelligent than whites. However, it is extremely difficult, if notimpossible, to find tests of intelligence that are culture free. Such tests shouldreflect only innate abilities and be insensitive to differences in the socialenvironment. In the United States a larger share of blacks than of whites hasgrown up in socially disadvantaged circumstances, which is a culturalinfluence no test known to us can circumvent. The same logic applies todifferences in intelligence between ethnic groups in other countries.

Symbols, Heroes, Rituals, and Values

Cultural differences manifest themselves in several ways. From the many termsused to describe manifestations of culture, the following four together cover thetotal concept rather neatly: symbols, heroes, rituals, and values. InFigure 1.2 these have been pictured as the skins of an onion, indicatingthat symbols represent the most superficial and values the deepest manifestationsof culture, with heroes and rituals in between.

Symbols are words, gestures, pictures, or objects that carry a particularmeaning that is recognized as such only by those who share the culture. The wordsin a language or jargon belong to this category, as do dress,hairstyles, flags, and status symbols. New symbols are easily developed and oldones disappear; symbols from one cultural group are regularly copied by others.This is why symbols have been put into the outer, most superficial layerof Figure 1.2.

Heroes are persons, alive or dead, real or imaginary, who possesscharacteristics that are highly prized in a culture and thus serve as modelsfor behavior. Even Barbie, Batman, or, as a contrast, Snoopy in the United States,Asterix in France, or Ollie B. Bommel (Mr. Bumble) in the Netherlands haveserved as cultural heroes. In this age of television, outward appearances havebecome more important in the choice of heroes than they were before.

Rituals are collective activities that are technically superfluous toreach desired ends but that, within a culture, are considered socially essential.They are therefore carried out for their own sake. Examples include ways ofgreeting and paying respect to others, as well as social and religiousceremonies. Business and political meetings organized for seemingly rationalreasons often serve mainly ritual purposes, such as reinforcing group cohesion orallowing the leaders to assert themselves. Rituals include discourse,the way language is used in text and talk, in daily interaction, and incommunicating beliefs.

In Figure 1.2 symbols, heroes, and rituals have been subsumed under theterm practices. As such they are visible to an outside observer; theircultural meaning, however, is invisible and lies precisely and only in theway these practices are interpreted by the insiders.

The core of culture according to Figure 1.2 is formed by values.Values are broad tendencies to prefer certain states of affairs over others.Values are feelings with an added arrow indicating a plus and a minus side. Theydeal with pairings such as the following:

* Evil versus good

* Dirty versus clean

* Dangerous versus safe

* Forbidden versus permitted

* Decent versus indecent

* Moral versus immoral

* Ugly versus beautiful

* Unnatural versus natural

* Abnormal versus normal

* Paradoxical versus logical

* Irrational versus rational

Figure 1.3 pictures when and where we acquire our values and practices.Our values are acquired early in our lives. Compared with most other creatures,humans at birth are very incompletely equipped for survival. Fortunately,our human physiology provides us with a receptive period of some ten to twelveyears, a span in which we can quickly and largely unconsciously absorb necessaryinformation from our environment. This includes symbols (such as language),heroes (such as our parents), and rituals (such as toilet training), and, mostimportant, it includes our basic values. At the end of this period, we graduallyswitch to a different, conscious way of learning, focusing primarily on newpractices.

Culture Reproduces Itself

Remember being a small child? How did you acquire your values? The first yearsare likely gone from your memory, but they are influential. Did you move abouton your mother's hip or on her back all day? Did you sleep with her, or withyour siblings, or were you kept in your own cot or pram? Did both your parentshandle you, or only your mother, or other persons? Was there noise or silencearound you? Did you see tacit people, laughing ones, playing ones, workingones, tender or violent ones? What happened when you cried?

Then, memories begin. Who were your models, and what was your aim in life? Quiteprobably, your parents or elder siblings were your heroes, and you tried toimitate them. You learned which things were dirty and bad and how to beclean and good. For instance, you learned rules about what is clean and dirty inregard to bodily functions such as spitting, eating with your left hand, blowingyour nose, defecating, or belching in public, along with gestures such astouching various parts of your body or exposing them while sitting or standing.You learned how bad it was to break rules. You learned how much initiative youwere supposed to take and how close you were supposed to be to people, andyou learned whether you were a boy or a girl, who else was also a boy or a girl,and what that implied.

Then when you were a child of perhaps six to twelve, schoolteachers andclassmates, sports and TV idols, and national or religious heroes entered yourworld as new models. You imitated now one, then another. Parents, teachers, and othersrewarded or punished you for your behavior. You learned whether it was good orbad to ask questions, to speak up, to fight, to cry, to work hard, to lie, tobe impolite. You learned when to be proud and when to be ashamed. You alsoexercised politics, especially with your age-mates: How does one make friends?Is it possible to rise in the hierarchy? How? Who owes what to whom?

In your teenage years, your attention shifted to others your age. You wereintensely concerned with your gender identity and with forming relationships withpeers. Depending on the society in which you lived, you spent your timemainly with your own sex or with mixed sexes. You may have intensely admiredsome of your peers.

Later you may have chosen a partner, probably using criteria similar to that ofother young people in your country. You may have had children—and then thecycle starts again.

There is a powerful stabilizing force in this cycle that biologists callhomeostasis. Parents tend to reproduce the education that they received,whether they want to or not. And there is only a modest role for technology. The mostsalient learning in your tender years is all about the body and aboutrelationships with people. Not coincidentally, these are also sources of intense taboos.

Because they were acquired so early in our lives, many values remain unconsciousto those who hold them. Therefore, they cannot be discussed, nor can they be directlyobserved by outsiders. They can only be inferred from the way peopleact under various circumstances. If one asks people why they act as they do,they may say they just "know" or "feel" how to do the right thing. Their heart ortheir conscience tells them.

No Group Can Escape Culture

There normally is continuity in culture. But if you were caught in a gale at seaand found yourself stranded on an uninhabited island with twenty-nine unknownothers, what would you do? If you and your fellow passengers were fromdifferent parts of the world, you would lack a common language and sharedhabits. Your first task would be to develop an embryonic common language and someshared rules for behavior, cooperation, and leadership. Role divisions wouldemerge between young and old, men and women. Conflicts would arise and somehowbe handled. Whose responsibility would it be whether two people mate? Who wouldtake care of the sick, the dead, and the children born on the island?

The point of this example is to show that no group can escape culture. Creatingshared rules, even if they are never written down, is a precondition for groupsurvival. This pioneer group of thirty people united at random will have tocreate a new culture. The particulars of that culture will largely depend onchance, inheriting from existing values, particularly those of the most prominentgroup members. However, once the culture is set, and supposing children areborn into the group, that culture will reproduce itself.

Values and the Moral Circle

From 1940 to 1945, during World War II, Germany occupied the Netherlands. InApril 1945, German troops withdrew in disorder, confiscating many bicycles fromthe Dutch population. In April 2009, the Parish Council of the Saint-Catharinachurch in the Dutch town of Nijkerk received a letter from a formerGerman soldier who, on his flight to Germany from the advancing Canadians, hadtaken a bike that was parked in front of the church. The letter's authorwished to make amends and asked the Parish Council to trace the owner or hisheirs, in order to refund the injured party for the damage.

(Continues...)