During the course of between 75 and 100 years in the nineteenth century, the perception of German Jews by Germans changed from being an evil with which one had to live, like it or not, to a problem to which there had to be found a solution. By the end of the century, in a content analysis of the writings, from the previous 35 years, of 51 prominent anti-Semitic authors and various other publications, 28 of them proposed solutions. Of these, 19 chose physical extermination.
Using our own lives as the only reliable guide, because we each know exactly what we have learnt and experienced, we make the assumption that every other person learns in the same way. What we learn during the first 10 years of our lives remains part of our unconscious forever, unless purposely changed as we learn better or add to our knowledge. To take a very basic example, before we can really cogitate we have learned to use the toilet. Our teachers were our parents and relatives, who each understood that, however much we screamed, we had to learn.
As we started to mix with other children, we learned a few rudimentary rules to enable us to tolerate them so that every playtime was not a wartime. Again, our parents were our teachers as much to save their own sanities, as to make us social beings. We, probably, about this time started to hear about God, in relation to how good children should behave and were maybe taught some prayers to help us keep ourselves in line. A little later, we met other teachers than our parents, all adding their contributions to enable us to fit into our world. If we had indifferent parents and crazy teachers, we would always know what was right from the way we fitted into the society of our peers; at all stages of our learning, these have the most influence especially on questions of behaviour. If we move away from the norm, we will find ourselves the target of the group's jeers and laughter, no matter how old we get.
I have laboured this point and I hope that readers can see into their own lives the same way I see into mine, hopefully without rose-coloured glasses! Thinking hard, I can find nothing pernicious in what I was taught, and I assume that my unconscious is also clear because I do not go around hitting people who do not agree with me, nor stealing even from those who can easily afford it. If I were 10 years old and able to reason in that way, I would assume that I was just like any 10 year old in the world. When I was 10, I would have been absolutely thrown off my stride if a friend had told me that Jesus was not the son of God and he knew it because his father had told him so. If the argument had gone on a little, I could see myself ready to fight my friend.
