Understanding Social Space May Help Us Fight Genocide

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Baltimore, MD, May 6, 2010 — Physicists study physical space. Geneticists study biological space. In Our Quest for Effective Living, author Fred Emil Katz studies social space. This isn’t the kind of social space we access through Facebook or an Internet chat room, but the interchanges between creatures and their surroundings.

Katz, a sociologist and a survivor of the Holocaust, has previously published two books that present convincing explanations of how good people can do horrible things.

“Better basic science about social space will eventually give us tools to fight genocides and other major horrors we inflict on ourselves,” Katz says.

The book has four sections, each dealing with one dimension of the social space in which we live:

(1) The Second Path Phenomenon: Every day, there are annoyances, uncertainties, even some real honesty that we can’t mention. When we get home, then, we may shunt these unmentionables into what the author calls the Second Path so they won’t interfere with our daily living. But it turns out that the Second Path can attain a life of its own, erupting in supremely negative ways, even when it can contain some of our most noble and decent impulses.

(2) The Closed Worlds Phenomenon: We humans get our sense of identity from a moral compass that’s learned from our family, community, religion, nation, etc. When our moral compass comes from a closed world that excludes everything else, such as the military, we can learn to accept what otherwise would be abhorrent to us, such as using nuclear weapons.

(3) The Access-to-the-Ultimate Phenomenon: Sometimes we have access to some sort of reality that gives us power to transcend the horror of an immediate situation, such as Auschwitz.

(4) The Link Phenomenon: Our ability to think, believe, remember and expect brings into our personal space things from the past, present and future. They create links that intrude into all sectors of our lives.

“Science is more than observation of what exists in nature. Science is adventure of the mind,” Katz says. “It took many creative leaps of the mind to produce science as sophisticated as modern physics and genetic biology. This book offers creative leaps to help us understand the social space in which we live. Read this book and join the adventure.”

About the Author

Fred Emil Katz spent his first 11 years in Oberlauringen, Germany, then escaped the persecution of Jews with the help of the Kindertransport – a rescue operation that brought Jewish children to England. He attended a Quaker-type refugee school for four years, then went to work in factories for three years before coming to the United States in 1947. There, he found more factory work, went to night school, and attended Guilford College and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill; his studies focused on sociology, history and philosophy. He became a college professor of sociology at various universities.

Hardcover, 140 pages

Published by AuthorHouse

ISBN-10: 1438985665

ISBN-13: 978-1438985664

Dimensions: 9 x 6 x 0.4 inches

AuthorHouse is the premier book publisher for emerging, self-published authors. For more information, please visit http://www.authorhouse.com.

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