The aberrations of humanity that stem from definition are primarily why peace between Arabs and Jews remains elusive, it is why the Islamic extremists are committing unspeakable and mind bugling acts of terror against Christians and the Western societies, it is why Iraqi insurgents are killing their own people in the most gruesome manner, and why the Hindus in India have treated and are treating the so-called “untouchables” so wickedly. It is also the reason for the mistreatment of women and children in many cultures around the world.

It would be simplistic to attribute all these aberrations of humanity to a single cause as many have done, most notably Friedrich Nietzsche and Sir Arthur Keith among others. It is certainly not the reason Keith tenaciously argued for—amity towards insiders and enmity towards outsiders as an evolutionary disposition. However, the reason is deeply rooted in people’s definition of themselves, their definition of other people and the definition of values by which people operate and act towards other people.

In fact, Keith’s notion of amity towards insiders and enmity towards outsiders and Nietzsche’s Übermensch -- the notion of a self-created being, incapable of unselfish emotions (compassion, love, ultruism and even justice), that would culminate from bringing to consciousness all the strong and contradictory forces that lie beneath the human surface, that would fully appropriate the “tragedy of life” -- the actualization of the “human inequality”. Whereby slavery and the economic oppression of the masses would become conditions for the possibility of great cultural achievement by the few, effectively eliminating the notion of equality, which Nietzsche argued, would inevitably push humanity down to the lowest common denominator -- that of the “democratic herd animal.” Others view this malignant human behavior as a rupture or ruptures in civilization. Perhaps, the notion of rupture or ruptures in civilization is closer to the root of the problem, and if so, it is because those ruptures in civilization directly derive from definition.

The term civilization “rupture tend” to be applied exclusively to the German Holocaust, but in reality there is nothing banal about the German experience. There has been many genocides around the world since then and even now as I write this book, there is genocide taking place in Sudan, where Arabs are engaged in systematic destruction of the so-called black Africans. Hence, one could say that civilization continues to rupture every now and then. It seems to me that our preoccupation or concern ought not lie so much in the fact the civilization has ruptured many times and continues to rupture, rather it should lie in what causes it to rupture and to do so ever so often. The culminations of the aberration of humanity highlighted above are all evidence of a series of such ruptures that have taken place in the last three centuries or so, particularly in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

There is a tendency to place events such as the German Holocaust or the Rwandan Genocide outside a banality or originality, dismissing them as unique or exceptional and isolated occurrences devoid of rationale or reason. But they are not; there is a foundational element to them that binds them to the human consciousness. That element exists even today and it continues to inspire atrocities that approach the magnitude of the Holocaust, as we have seen in Rwanda, Cambodia, and perhaps even former Yugoslavia, Chechyna, and Sudan.

Intrinsically, definition; particularly definitions that are developed to harm other people have been described as “radical simplifiers” that position for marginalization or for destruction, those they defined. This is true of all genocides. In deed, definition underlies all self-inflicted calamities that have befallen the human race; it has been the tool for portraying people and values, and subjugating conscience with respect to people and values as to commit acts that would otherwise be inhibited and prohibited by human conscience. It is often the harbinger or prelude to “radical projects” such as genocide, crimes against humanity and the subjugating class structures.

It has been noted that every act of genocide entails, first the identification of particular groups and that every act of classification, of identifying and categorizing populations, is an ideological and political act. Eric D. Weitz noted in his book, A Century of Genocide: Utopias of race and Nation, that “There is nothing ‘natural’ about classifications.”

From the origin of perception as a concept, to the dynamics of perception as social expressions, from the instruments and agents of perception to the impacts of perception in society, this book provides a necessary foundation for a better understanding of the subject and essentially leads readers to articulate the proper response.

This book takes a comprehensive look at perception, not only the ordinary and personal expressions of perception, which is the focus of other works, but also, and particularly, the ideological and more fundamental nature of perception (stemming from definition), from which the ordinary and personal expressions of perception derive. It shows why and how the definition of people is formed and the roles it plays in human relations, particularly group conflicts and the attendant calamities that have marked the human history. More...