As the group reconvenes after lunch, Lou asks about Jenny, who took off running earlier that day after refusing to join the program. Yusuf explains that his staff is following her to ensure her safety but won’t force her to join them, as the program is voluntary. Lou then questions the philosophical origin of the core concept of seeing people either as people or as objects.

Avi provides a brief philosophical history to explain the idea. He starts with the French philosopher René Descartes, whose famous declaration, “Cogito, ergo sum” (“I think, therefore I am”) (84), takes the separate human consciousness as the foundational assumption of his philosophical theory. Avi argues that this individualistic starting point is flawed because Descartes could only formulate the thought using language he acquired from others. According to Avi, this demonstrates that a more fundamental reality is our existence with others.

Avi again mentions the work of Martin Buber, one of the philosophers who challenged the emphasis on the separate self. Buber argued that our way of being in the world is fundamental to human experience. He identified two primary ways of being in the world: the “I-Thou” way of being, in which we see others as people, and the “I-It” way of being, where we see them as objects, tools, or obstacles. Yusuf clarifies that Buber described these two states but never explained how a person moves from one to the other. He concludes that understanding this transition—how a heart at peace becomes a heart at war—is the central question they will now explore. When Lou objects that sometimes war is forced upon people, Yusuf acknowledges that circumstances can require people to defend themselves but argues that no one can force them to despise or denigrate others or adopt a warring heart.

Yusuf begins to explain how a heart at peace turns to war by sharing a story from his own childhood. He was a five-year-old boy in 1948 when his village, Deir Yassin, was attacked by a Jewish underground military group during the conflict surrounding the establishment of Israel. His father was killed in the attack, and his mother later moved the family to the M’askar refugee camp in Jerusalem when Yusuf was eight years old. Yusuf acknowledges that Jewish communities also suffered violence, citing an Arab attack on Kfar Etzion and the death of Avi’s father during an Arab attack. While working as a street hustler in Jerusalem’s Old City, Yusuf had little interaction with Jewish people and regarded them as enemies, though he now describes this view as simplistic.

Yusuf recounts a key encounter with an elderly Jewish beggar named Mordechai Lavon. One day, Mordechai stumbled and spilled his coins in the street. In that moment, Yusuf felt a clear, intuitive sense—a desire—that the right thing to do was to help him. However, Yusuf made a choice to ignore this feeling; he betrayed his own sense of how he should act and walked away. Yusuf later defined acting contrary to one’s own sense of the right way to act as “self-betrayal.”

Yusuf asks the group to consider how his perceptions changed after he walked away. He explains that he came to see Mordechai as a competitor, a Zionist threat, and a bigot. Simultaneously, he saw himself as a victim or as someone superior. He also viewed his circumstances as unfair and unjust and felt angry, depressed, bitter, and justified. Yusuf explains that after betraying himself, his perceptions of himself, others, and the world became distorted yet convincing, an experience that Camp Moriah calls being “in the box” (95). Using a “Choice Diagram,” Yusuf explains that people can either honor or betray their own sense of what is right to do. He concludes that choosing self-betrayal is “a choice to go to war” (97).

Yusuf elaborates on the concept of self-betrayal by explaining that it creates a “need to be justified” (99). Before he chose to ignore Mordechai, he saw him as a person and felt no need for justification. The moment he acted against his own sense of the right way to act, he created an internal need to justify his treatment of Mordechai. This need for justification caused his perceptions to distort reality, inflating Mordechai’s faults and leading Yusuf to see himself as a victim or as better than Mordechai so that he could feel justified in his actions.

Gwyn challenges this idea, asking if Yusuf would have been justified in not helping if Mordechai had been a genuinely bad person, such as a racist. Yusuf counters that mistreating someone because of their wrongdoing can give that person further justification for mistreating others. Choosing to see someone’s humanity, he argues, is the only way to invite genuine accountability, and he emphasizes that recognizing a person’s humanity does not excuse racism or require ignoring harmful behavior. To illustrate, he reads a letter from a former Camp Moriah student whose estranged husband had abused her. After learning that he had planned to die by suicide but hadn’t gone through with it, she prepared to say cruel words intended to encourage him to attempt suicide again but paused before doing so. She was struck by his humanity, and seeing him as a person changed how she regarded him without excusing his abuse. As she explains, being freed from the need to justify not loving him means that she’s no longer tempted to return to the relationship and can remain apart from him calmly and compassionately, without lasting bitterness.

Yusuf acknowledges that past mistreatment can profoundly affect a person but argues that how people see others in the present shapes how they carry memories of that mistreatment forward. He maintains that self-betrayal creates a need for justification. To feel justified, a warring heart magnifies the faults of others, creating enemies that sustain its sense of justification. Yusuf concludes that when people see others as objects, reciprocal mistreatment can spread outward, and he tells the group that their first step toward changing this pattern is to identify the ways they themselves need to feel justified.

Yusuf identifies the telltale signs of the need for justification, beginning with a category of signs involving exaggeration. When in the box, people tend to “horribilize” others by exaggerating their faults. They also exaggerate the differences between themselves and others, such as differences of race, gender, religion, or class, which can be used to justify mistreatment. Yusuf connects this exaggeration of differences to labeling and stereotyping, and Gwyn adds that labeling provides even further justification by lumping a person into a stereotyped group. The group distinguishes this exaggeration from recognizing genuine differences: Pettis explains that his identity as a Black American is an important part of who he is, and Yusuf argues that seeing people as people involves being curious about their differences without using them to justify marginalization or mistreatment. Another sign is exaggerating the importance of anything that can provide justification, such as an appointment that suddenly seems critical or a book that suddenly seems necessary to read.

Yusuf then introduces the first two of four common “styles of justification” (119), which he says everyone carries to some degree. The first is the “better-than box” (119), where individuals feel superior, important, and virtuous, leading them to see others as inferior, irrelevant, or wrong. This creates feelings of impatience and disdain. Elizabeth recognizes this pattern in her own feelings of superiority toward her sister, whom she resents for not making the effort to attend the program for her son.

The second style is the “I-deserve box” (123), characterized by feelings of being victimized, unappreciated, and entitled. From this box, a person sees the world as unfair and others as mistreating or ungrateful. Yusuf points out that these two boxes often appear together, as they did in his story about Mordechai. He concludes that the need for justification obscures the truth: The more certain he is that he’s right, the more likely he may be mistaken, while the more certain he is that he’s being mistreated, the more likely he is to overlook ways that he’s mistreating others himself. When Lou worries that seeing others as people might make someone too soft to confront harmful behavior, Yusuf explains that allowing people to continue hurting themselves or others can itself arise from another kind of self-justification.

Avi describes the two remaining styles of justification. The third is the “need-to-be-seen-as box” (127), in which people are motivated by a desire to be well thought of by others. They may worry about being seen as likable, causing them to feel anxious and view others as a judgmental audience. Avi shares a personal example of failing to confront a problematic employee named Jack. He admits that his inaction wasn’t due to seeing Jack as a person but because his need-to-be-seen-as box about being likable made him fear confrontation. He argues that this kind of box often leads to “softness,” which Lou had previously worried was a central flaw of the program’s philosophy. As he considers these diagrams, Lou begins recognizing his own better-than and I-deserve boxes in his relationship with Cory. He initially thinks he lacks a need-to-be-seen-as box but then reverses himself, recognizing that Cory threatens the family name and puts Lou’s reputation at risk.

The fourth justification style is the “worse-than box” (131). People in this box see themselves as deficient, broken, or not as good as others. They feel helpless, jealous, or depressed and may see others as advantaged or privileged and the world as difficult or against them. Carol identifies with this box, recalling that she felt worthless during her eating disorder and questioning how such feelings could provide justification. Avi reveals his own history with a worse-than box, explaining how he used his severe stuttering as a justification to isolate himself from others. He stresses that his disability itself required no justification; what required justification was his withdrawal from other people. He discloses that even after mostly overcoming his stutter, he attempted suicide twice.

As the day’s session concludes, Avi clarifies that his stuttering wasn’t the root of his problems but a weapon he used while carrying a heart at war; his deeper problem was his need for justification. The group reviews the day’s main concepts. Carol explains why one’s inner state matters independently of outward actions. She explains that while she has been outwardly “nice” to Cory, her heart has been at war with him, and she believes that Cory knows she doesn’t genuinely feel loving toward him. She feels guilty about this and recognizes that she has developed a worse-than box in which she sees herself as a bad mother.

Lou argues that Cory’s behavior caused her to feel this way, but Carol distinguishes his behavior from her own responsibility for how she has felt toward him. Yusuf reinforces her point, stating that while others can make our choices more difficult, they can’t take away one’s ability to choose their own way of being. In a surprising moment of directness, Carol confronts Lou for “refusing to hear” the day’s lessons (141), a shift that impresses Lou, who had feared the program would make her “soft.”

The facilitators summarize the path to war: An individual betrays their own sense of what is right toward another person (self-betrayal), which creates a need for justification and leads them to see themselves, others, and the world in ways that justify that betrayal. Over time, repeated choices to pull away from and blame others can build enduring patterns of self-justification, which the group has discussed through four common styles: better-than, I-deserve, need-to-be-seen-as, and worse-than. A person can begin to carry these boxes with them, starting interactions already in a state of war. Yusuf also clarifies that honoring one’s sense or desire does not require performing every helpful action that one feels a desire to perform: A person can remain willing to help even when circumstances prevent a particular action. Conversely, someone can perform an outwardly helpful action while inwardly resenting the person and remain in the box. For the evening, the participants are asked to reflect on their own boxes and identify the “collusion patterns” in their lives, considering how their boxes may invite the very behaviors that provide further justification for them.