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Generalizations concerning people are dangerous and should be
avoided as much as possible, but they occur!
Why?
Because as much as we worship the individual and try to provide him/her
with the best possible habitat namely: peace and freedom, we must
remember that the consciousness and self awareness of the human
species are dynamic. They transform between the individual
and the group according to the varying conditions
of competition*. For each individual "Life" is sacred but
not so for the consciousness of the group. There, individual life is
dispensable! This evolutionary mechanism ensures survival of the
species. In one stroke it manifests itself in the most noble and
altruistic behavior and in the most horribly atrocious one. This is
where war and peace stem from. That is why peace is heaven for the
individual and war is hell but this is also why dying in a war
"in the name of..." is heaven for the people's "hero"
and shameful defeat is hell. Unfortunately sometimes the only way to
restore peace to crush a society until it disintegrates into "individuals".
Do we remember such examples? When waging war, there is only a
"generalized enemy",trying to remain a "humanistic
individual" as you fight is most difficult task and it is
precisely what Israeli soldiers are trying to do, separating the
innocent ones from the violent ones and remembering that even beasts
have mothers. After the Roman conquest of Jerusalem and the tragedy
of Massada the Jewish people tried hard to shed most signs of "we".
They gave up the idea of state with all its symbols (including the
holy temple itself) and went into exile just keeping the book and
the abstract faith in the heart of the individual.
It was a nice try but we all remember where it got them. And the
lesson is: generalizations are not good or bad they just are! We
should respect their role in keeping us alive and at the same time
be doubtful and flexible so that we can switch between the "we"
and "me" states of mind and not lock ourselves into one
state. Here is why this happens so many times: the "we"
mode of operation needs a strong and charismatic leader like the
leading goose in a flock. That leader and his clan retain a lot of
their individual "me" qualities and they will very
reluctantly forsake them. His interest is to keep the tough going so
that he continues to thrive controlling the rest locking them into
the fundamental "we" state of mind. The same principle
goes for the "me" state of mind. The individual
"me" will sanctify the social conditions which allow him
to operate and safely compete with other individuals. These
conditions are peace and freedom
manifested in the form of western democracies. This individual will
face imminent danger and will still be reluctant to switch into the
"we" survival mode until enough individuals succumb. These
are symmetric cases of rigidness and slow reaction to changing
situations. These days we are witnessing both, between peaceful
democratic Europe and the mostly poor totalitarian Muslim world.
Nobody knows the secret of optimal performance. It is probably
beyond the scope of individual perception. We only judge it in
historical perspective and try our best to master our joint
"me" "we" fate.
*By the way all of this is not reserved for humans. Simple
grasshoppers and swarms of locust (interestingly enough) are one and
the same species! When drought hits to the point that too many
grasshoppers crowd around drying puddles of water, they touch each
others bodies and legs and secrete some hormones which physically
transform them to locust. then they migrate in huge swarms and graze
anything in their path. When conditions change they transformed back
to harmless garden grasshoppers. The lesson from this scientific
fact is: we should better try to share our wealth in such a
way as to avoid extreme circumstances that may bring about
fundamentalism before it develops. Having said that, we should
remember to defend ourselves when under attack and theorize about
the ways to better our ways in the future later.
Generalizations are bad!
So is this one!!!
Gil Dor.
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