of guilt. Being God all-knowing and all-seeing, there is no point intrying to hide something, as European populated countries people have aconscience, or superego, where they feel guilty or even punish themselves forthings that nobody witnessed. The Japanese, but also Orientals in general arealien to this idea: they have a very week sense of individuality and see moralissues as circumstantial. They depend on occupation and the end goal. There aremultiple gods, and the distinction between gods and men can often blur,therefore, one could say the Japanese have a shame culture instead of aguilt one. While Japan has very low rates of crime and corruption, cheatingon a test, copying what other company is doing and many other things can bejustifiable just as long as it is for the benefit of the whole and one is notcaught in the process. The collective is always put ina higher regard than the individual. Individual successes might be somewhatrecognized and have a small compensation, but never much above the rest. Whilethe mean IQ of the Japanese is slightly above that of Caucasians, thedistribution of IQ is narrower (fewer dull people but also fewer geniuses) andgroups and companies look for team players instead of lone-wolves. In a companysetting for example, if a worker achieves a breakthrough he is valued, ofcourse, but it is assumed that credit goes also to the person who hired theemployee, the supervisor who assigned him to the project, his colleagues andeven the janitors and others that helped to make the environment a suitable onefor the work in the first place. The group demands loyalty andexpects its members to help each other, loyalty to the end, which makes theJapanese despise whistle blowers and sometimes going as far as putting theblame in themselves to shield their superiors or even kill themselves in ordernot to give names in a corruption scandal for example. While that does not meanthat traitors do not exist, they are seriously frowned upon. Being the folk the biggest ofall the groups the Japanese claim loyalty to, it is admirable the sense of ashared destiny they have. The Japanese are very conscious of their lack ofnatural resources and therefore the importance of productivity and trade forthe survival of their country. The gusto in which most Japanese throw themselvesinto work, even to ones that do not have any particular prestige is enviable.Any kind of work has its importance to keep the social web going andfunctioning properly. Obviously none of this couldwork if it was not for a strong conformity: the strong conformity to the groupoffers meaning and the hierarchy dictates the proper behavior. Perhaps the bestexample would be the way that schools function in Japan. To begin with, practically allschools in the country use the same curricula and textbooks. Schools are justas responsible to raise children as the parents themselves: the same sensei (teacher/professor, but literallymeaning the one born before [you]) oversees the same group of students formany years and pretty much nobody skips or loses a year in Japan, forging andstrengthening bonds between classmates themselves and also the paternalisticrelationship between the sensei andthe students.