2. The Inside and The Outside

The psychological wall divided into the inside and the outside is an inevitable element of organizations or communities. The psychological wall is consciously or unconsciously constructed by the members of the organizations or communities, such as family, school, company, a pastime club, a regional community, a municipality, a nation, the Japanese society, the international society. The functions and the domains are different among these organizations or communities albeit every organization or community has their different psychological domains divided them into the inside and the outside.

A community—whether it is unrepresentative or representative— has their unique ideas, objectives, and values. Assimilation pressure facilitates in maintaining the order between members within the inside of the community. The role of the member is assigned by the community in order to maximize the efficiency of it. If the individual does not adapt to one’s role in the community, the one can be eventually excluded from the community. If it is in a family, it can disown, running away from home, and divorce.

The most typical strategy for strengthen the inside harmony is to create the enemy or threats outside of the community. As a result, that community becomes “closed”. If the community attempts to strengthen the familiar friendships between the outside of the community, it would be “opened” community. The Japanese has been in favored of reading the study of the Japanese or Japan, although a few people noticed that this is a universal tendency of human beings, and people recognize uniqueness as an identity from it. If it is overemphasized, then it would cause a “closed” tendency of the Japanese. Thus, it needs to pay attention to it unless it is overemphasized.

              A famous scholar, who studied in Europe, wrote several books with his experience in Europe based on the concept that there is no society in Japan, but is seken, an invisible closed and homogeneous community. A famous critic wrote the book whose concept is that Japanese office worker is not an individual. These statements are easily acceptable for the Japanese, and even it can convince the Japanese that these statements make sense.

It is unfavorable statements because they discredit the liberalism constructed by the modernism, and they even deny the modernism itself, namely, denying democracy. I am not confident that these authors might have limited imagination capabilities or might have unknown intentions. It is, however, necessary that people should not only have reasonable attitude toward the statements, but also should have imaginations of consequences of the statements. I do not recognize the modernism or democracy as absolute values, and do not worship it as a holy scripture. Rather, I realized that there are several criticisms and improvable concepts of them. I simply disagree with those prior statements which discredit the worthwhile ideas of the modernism, and I believe that the valuable ideas of the modernism must be held as a historical heritage.

             Individuals are affiliated with multiple communities. If they are acknowledged their contribution to their communities, they can be given the higher position, given the reward, or recognized as justice in the communities. If these communities were recognized as higher evaluations in the society, their reputations and honor would widespread beyond their affiliated communities. Whatever the communities are observation of the inside and the outside of the communities are always required to review. Moreover, people have to remark that extreme concepts can be prone to be an opposite concepts even though the concept incorporates supreme ideas.

Considering these global age, the better strategy is “opened” than “closed”. Organizations and people have to recognize the “opened” strategy as a goal of the organizations. I reemphasized that recognizing the differences between the inside and the outside and having the interests in the outside are not only important strategy for the outsiders but also it is important for insiders. One Japanese Proverb holds that those who help others are to be helped by others.