Why Do We Prefer People Who Think Exactly Like Us?
Why Do We Prefer People Who Think Exactly Like Us?
Why Do We Prefer People Who Think Exactly Like Us?
Think about the WhatsApp group you most enjoy being in. Usually, most of the people there see the world more or less as you do. We read newspapers that fit our outlook, listen to people with whom we agree, consult friends who understand the way we think, and sometimes even choose a synagogue, neighborhood, and social framework in which the chance of meeting someone who thinks differently is smaller. It is comfortable. There is no need to explain every sentence, there are fewer exhausting arguments, and we receive repeated confirmation that we are probably right. But there is a price: when everyone around me thinks as I do, who exactly remains to show me that I may be wrong?
On Sukkot the Torah commands: “You shall take for yourselves on the first day the fruit of a beautiful tree, branches of date palms, a bough of a leafy tree, and willows of the brook” (Leviticus 23:40). It does not give us four etrogim or four lulavim. The mitzvah is constructed from the outset from things that are not alike. The sages turned this difference into a human image: the etrog, which has taste and fragrance, corresponds to those who possess Torah and good deeds; the lulav, which has taste but no fragrance; the myrtle, which has fragrance but no taste; and the willow, which has neither taste nor fragrance. Then the Holy One, blessed be He, says: “Let them all be bound together in one bundle, and these will atone for those” (Vayikra Rabbah 30:12).
This Midrash can be read as the familiar call for unity, but it contains something sharper. The bundle is not created after the differences disappear. No one demands that the willow become a myrtle, the myrtle become a lulav, or the lulav become an etrog. They remain different when they enter the same hand. The unity portrayed by the Torah is not a process in which everyone learns to think the same way. It is the ability to hold together people who have not become the same.
The sages present a similar idea in a surprising place. The Gemara says: “Just as their faces are not alike, so too their minds are not alike” (Babylonian Talmud, Berakhot 58a). Difference of opinion is not presented as a temporary defect that could be corrected if everyone learned enough. It is part of human reality. Just as we do not expect every face in the world to be identical, there is no reason to expect every consciousness to see reality from the same angle.
Before his death, Moses asks the Holy One, blessed be He, to appoint a leader for Israel: “Let the Lord, God of the spirits of all flesh, appoint a man over the congregation” (Numbers 27:16). Rashi cites the words of the sages: “Master of the Universe, it is revealed and known before You that the mind of each person is different from that of the other. Appoint over them a leader who will tolerate each person according to his mind” (Rashi, Numbers 27:16). A good leader, according to this description, is not one who succeeds in erasing differences. It is one who is able to lead human beings precisely when their opinions are not identical.
This is difficult for us. Psychology and sociology recognize a phenomenon called homophily, the tendency of people to form relationships with others who resemble them in traits, views, and background. Similarity eases communication and creates a sense of trust and belonging. There is therefore nothing surprising about our preference for being with people who understand us. The problem begins when similarity becomes a condition for belonging.
Then another mechanism appears. When a group consists mainly of people who hold similar positions, discussion does not necessarily leave them at the same point. Research on group polarization has shown that in certain circumstances, after discussion within a group that already shares a general inclination, members may move toward a more extreme position in the direction in which they were already leaning. They hear more arguments supporting their view, receive social confirmation, and repeatedly discover that everyone around them thinks more or less as they do.
At this point something dangerous can happen. A person does not merely become more certain of an opinion. The person may begin to wonder how any decent or intelligent human being could think differently. At that moment, disagreement over an idea turns into judgment of the person who holds the idea. Instead of saying, “I think you are wrong,” we move to, “If you think that, there must be something wrong with you.”
The Torah is deeply familiar with disagreement and does not require it to disappear. Beit Hillel and Beit Shammai disagreed on fundamental matters, yet the Gemara says: “These and those are the words of the living God” (Babylonian Talmud, Eruvin 13b). The Gemara there explains why the law was established according to Beit Hillel: “Because they were pleasant and forbearing, and they studied their own words and the words of Beit Shammai. Not only that, but they would mention the words of Beit Shammai before their own.” Their greatness did not consist in having no position. They had positions, sometimes entirely opposite those of Beit Shammai. But they were capable of learning the other side's words and even presenting them before their own.
That is much harder than simply “being open-minded.” To present seriously a position with which I disagree, I must listen until I can formulate it in a way that the person before me says: yes, that is what I meant. Very often we do the opposite. We take the weakest version of the other person's view, exaggerate it, and defeat it easily. We win the argument, but perhaps we never encountered the actual claim.
The sages teach in Pirkei Avot: “Who is wise? One who learns from every person” (Pirkei Avot 4:1). The statement does not say that every person is right. It says that if I am capable of learning only from people with whom I agree, my wisdom is limited from the outset. A person may be wrong in a conclusion and still notice a detail I missed. Someone may hold an outlook I reject and still point to a cost I failed to consider. Sometimes the person who thinks differently is not an obstacle on the road to my truth. That person is the mirror that shows me which part of reality my truth did not include.
We can apply this inside the home as well. A husband and wife argue about how to educate their child. Each arrives with arguments, examples, and proofs. At some point, the question is no longer what is right for the child but who will win. What would happen if, before replying, each person had to explain the other's position in a way the other person approves? It might suddenly become clear that one sees the need for boundaries while the other sees a distress signal that must not be missed. Perhaps neither of them holds the entire picture alone.
The same is true at work. A manager is surrounded by people who already know which answer the manager wants to hear. After years, the manager may become convinced that every decision is excellent simply because the people who once dared to disagree have stopped speaking. Such an organization can look highly unified, but it may be a dangerous kind of unity. A room in which no one disagrees with the manager is not necessarily a room in which the manager is always right. Sometimes it is a room in which everyone has learned that there is no point in disagreeing.
Rabbi Chanina says: “I learned much from my teachers, more from my colleagues than from my teachers, and more from my students than from all of them” (Babylonian Talmud, Taanit 7a). A student is, at least superficially, the one who knows less, yet precisely the student's question can open something the teacher did not see. For that to happen, the teacher must be secure enough in the Torah not to experience every question as a threat.
Perhaps this is why the four species are such a powerful image. If the Torah had given us four etrogim, we would have created a very impressive group, but no species would bring anything the others lacked. The bundle becomes richer precisely because not everything within it is alike.
When we take the four species this year, we can ask not only whether we know how to “get along” with people who are different, but a harder question: is there someone in our lives who thinks differently from us from whom we are still capable of learning something? Not agreeing with that person, not surrendering our truth, and not blurring disagreements, but admitting that perhaps this person is looking through a window beside which we are not standing.
True unity is not four people saying the same thing. For that, one species would be enough. The innovation of the four species is that things that are not alike can be held together without erasing any of them and without demanding that the other become me.