Page 20 - Cultures and Organizations

The Rules of the Social Game 5

learn something different, and unlearning is more difficult than learning
for the fi rst time.
Using the analogy of the way computers are programmed, this book
will call such patterns of thinking, feeling, and acting mental programs,
or, as per the book’s subtitle, software of the mind. This does not mean, of
course, that people are programmed the way computers are. A person’s
behavior is only partially pre determined by his or her mental programs:
he or she has a basic ability 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 about only indicates what reactions are likely and understand-
able, given one’s past.
The sources of one’s mental programs lie within the social environ-
ments in which one grew up and collected one’s life experiences. The pro-
gramming starts within the family; it continues within the neighborhood,
at school, in youth groups, at the workplace, and in the living community.
The European watch maker from the quote at the beginning of this chapter
came from a country and a social class in which polite behavior is still at a
premium today. Most people in that environment would have reacted as he
did. The American garage owner, who worked himself up from the slums,
acquired quite different mental programs. Mental programs vary as much
as the social environ ments in which they were acquired.
A customary term for such mental software is culture. This word has
several meanings, all derived from its Latin source, which refers to the
tilling of the soil. In most Western languages culture commonly means

“civiliz ation” or “refinement of the mind” and in particular the results of

such refinement, such as education, art, and literature. This is culture in the
narrow sense. Culture as mental software, however, corresponds to a much
broader use of the word that is common among sociologists and, especially,

anthropologists: this is the meaning that will be used throughout this
1
book.
Social (or cultural) anthropology is the science of human societies—
in particular (although not only) traditional or “primitive” ones. In social
anthropology, culture is a catchword for all those patterns of thinking, feel-
ing, and acting referred to in the previous paragraphs. Not only activities
supposed to refine the mind are included, but also the ordinary and menial

things in life: greeting, eating, showing or not showing feelings, keeping a
certain physical distance from others, making love, and maintaining body
hygiene.