Attitudes and Actions
Someone suggested to me, that I should judge a man only by his actions. I strongly disagree. It is very important to also consider the reasons for his previous actions or abstinence from certain actions to predict the probability of his future behavior.
I need a relationship to be a safe haven. The better I can calculate the probability of how a partner will behave in the future, the more I can trust a man, the more I feel safe, because he is reliable. A man's past behavior alone is insufficient to predict his future behavior.
In a simplified view, any behavior or abstinence of a behavior can be determined by four factors, that together form the motivation.
1. Innate motivation: A reason, that triggers or causes an impulse to do something
2. Intrinsic motivation: A filter of values and attitudes, that modify the impulse by either moral justification or lack thereof
3. Extrinsic circumstantial motivation: The lack of the possibility or occasion
4. Extrinsic motivation: The consideration of unwanted consequences
Example: Alcohol
1. By innate motivation, a man can either feel an urge to get drunk or not.
2. By intrinsic motivation, someone feels an obligation either to others (2.2) or to his own self-esteem (2.1), not to get drunk and make a nuisance of himself.
3. By extrinsic circumstantial motivation, he can be impeded by being somewhere, where alcohol is not available or by the lack of money to buy it.
4. By extrinsic motivation, he may be in a situation like at work, where he would be punished for drinking.
Therefore, to predict, if someone will get drunk in the future or not, it is not enough to judge from having only known him sober in the past, but it needs also to consider the reasons for this.
The same is also the case in predicting, if a man can be trusted to not commit transgressions. Based upon the value of equality and of the appreciation of all humans as persons, pornography is a transgression, because it is an expression of the degradation of women to bodies as objects only serving a man's lowest animalistic instincts.
Example: Pornography
1. By innate motivation, a real hypoanimalistic man is only attracted to a woman's body, when he also has emotional and intellectual intimacy with her personality. He has no need, no wish, not desire, not urge to consume pornography. He is interested in his partner and not in pictures of some unknown woman from the gutter. Even when he is single, he wants a quality woman and not pictures of some female body from the gutter.
By innate motivation, a man with high instinctivity is driven to ruthlessly and automatically use any female body for his animalistic urges, it nothing else would stop him. For such a man, consciously there is nothing wrong with pornography, he has most probably consumed it himself in the past, there can only be extrinsic motivation for abstinence from it during a relationship.
2.1. By intrinsic motivation: A man, who respects women as equal humans by his basic attitude, consciously considers pornography as a very inhuman degradation of women to objects. Having this attitude, as a single man, he would not sink as low as degrade women by looking at filthy and disgusting pictures, and as as man in a relationship, he would not cheat by looking at such pictures. He does this for himself, for preserving his own self-esteem as a decent man, not just to temporarily please a woman.
2.2. By externally caused intrinsic motivation, he has enough morals to feel bound by a promise, even though his has no intrinsic motivation to stay away from pornography. As long as he feels obliged to the woman, his need to maintain his self-esteem by keeping a promise obliges him to stay away from pornography. But as soon as there is any reason, that is good enough for him to not feel bound by the promise anymore, nothing holds him back from relapsing.
3. By extrinsic circumstantial motivation, if a man in a village 100 years ago never consumed pornography, it may well have been just the lack of access or even his ignorance, that it existed. Nobody can know, what he would have done with a computer connected to the web.
4. By extrinsic motivation, his reasons are purely instrumental and superficial. He is scared to loose the woman or to get into conflicts. That is a very weak motivation, as he has not restraint to consume it, when he is sure, that she will not find out.
Therefore more generally, I can trust those, who have not innate reason for the transgressive behavior, and those who are restricted by their own intrinsic motivation. I cannot really trust the others. I can only trust someone, who shares my basic attitudes, therefore his intrinsic motivations impedes him to commit, what he and I agree as being a transgression.
It is obvious, that the man, who has his own personal intrinsic reasons to reject and avoid transgressions, can be trusted with less risk. His reasons are a part of his personality, of his identity, those reasons are independent of the presence or absence of a relationship.
Judging a man only by his actions would be a dangerous logical flaw. What he has not done yet, or what she has not discovered yet, can still happen any day with some probability.
While people can sometimes be judged by their good and moral actions, they can rarely be reliably judged by their abstinence of an action, as this may just be due to the lack of an occasion or opportunity.
There are millions of actions, that millions of people have never done, not by a conscious decision, but just for the lack of an occasion. There are probably millions of men, who never have cheated, only because fortunately for their wives, they just did not meet a woman willing to participate in the cheating. Are they faithful or are they just impeded would-be-cheaters?
All attempts to predict people's behavior in the future has not only to take into account their previous behavior, but also the real and true reasons for that behavior. That is not an easy task. I use a man's true attitudes and motivations as the basis of my predictions of his behavior in the future, as much as I am able to find out, what his true attitudes and motivations are compared with what he pretends or believes himself.
Therefore I do judge a man mainly by the consistency of his actions with his expressed attitudes. As an example, if a man is a member of the green party but wastes as much precious water on his lawn as do his redneck neighbors, then I ask myself, why he really has joined that party in spite of all absence of ecological concerns. He is not consistent, so if I were to predict his behavior, I would need to first find out the real reasons for both behaviors, for joining the party and for wasting the water.
To trust a man, I need to experience the consistency of his actions with his expressed attitudes and values.
To trust, that a man really has the basic value, that a woman is equal and not just a body to use, it is not enough to experience his superficially correct equal behavior with me. I also need to experience his consistency, that he really never accepts or even tolerates any behavior, that does degrade a woman, no matter, if it is promiscuity, pornography, polygyny in any form. I can only trust the claim of equality from a man, who is consistent and intrinsically repulsed by any form of degradation of women
If a man claims to consider women as equals and yet considers nothing wrong with pornography and other forms of degradation, there is a logical inconsistency in it. He may treat me temporarily as an equal being only by extrinsic motivation of the 2.2., 3. or 4. variety. He certainly does not share my basic values.
Someone suggested to me, that I should judge a man only by his actions. I strongly disagree. It is very important to also consider the reasons for his previous actions or abstinence from certain actions to predict the probability of his future behavior.
I need a relationship to be a safe haven. The better I can calculate the probability of how a partner will behave in the future, the more I can trust a man, the more I feel safe, because he is reliable. A man's past behavior alone is insufficient to predict his future behavior.
In a simplified view, any behavior or abstinence of a behavior can be determined by four factors, that together form the motivation.
1. Innate motivation: A reason, that triggers or causes an impulse to do something
2. Intrinsic motivation: A filter of values and attitudes, that modify the impulse by either moral justification or lack thereof
3. Extrinsic circumstantial motivation: The lack of the possibility or occasion
4. Extrinsic motivation: The consideration of unwanted consequences
Example: Alcohol
1. By innate motivation, a man can either feel an urge to get drunk or not.
2. By intrinsic motivation, someone feels an obligation either to others (2.2) or to his own self-esteem (2.1), not to get drunk and make a nuisance of himself.
3. By extrinsic circumstantial motivation, he can be impeded by being somewhere, where alcohol is not available or by the lack of money to buy it.
4. By extrinsic motivation, he may be in a situation like at work, where he would be punished for drinking.
Therefore, to predict, if someone will get drunk in the future or not, it is not enough to judge from having only known him sober in the past, but it needs also to consider the reasons for this.
The same is also the case in predicting, if a man can be trusted to not commit transgressions. Based upon the value of equality and of the appreciation of all humans as persons, pornography is a transgression, because it is an expression of the degradation of women to bodies as objects only serving a man's lowest animalistic instincts.
Example: Pornography
1. By innate motivation, a real hypoanimalistic man is only attracted to a woman's body, when he also has emotional and intellectual intimacy with her personality. He has no need, no wish, not desire, not urge to consume pornography. He is interested in his partner and not in pictures of some unknown woman from the gutter. Even when he is single, he wants a quality woman and not pictures of some female body from the gutter.
By innate motivation, a man with high instinctivity is driven to ruthlessly and automatically use any female body for his animalistic urges, it nothing else would stop him. For such a man, consciously there is nothing wrong with pornography, he has most probably consumed it himself in the past, there can only be extrinsic motivation for abstinence from it during a relationship.
2.1. By intrinsic motivation: A man, who respects women as equal humans by his basic attitude, consciously considers pornography as a very inhuman degradation of women to objects. Having this attitude, as a single man, he would not sink as low as degrade women by looking at filthy and disgusting pictures, and as as man in a relationship, he would not cheat by looking at such pictures. He does this for himself, for preserving his own self-esteem as a decent man, not just to temporarily please a woman.
2.2. By externally caused intrinsic motivation, he has enough morals to feel bound by a promise, even though his has no intrinsic motivation to stay away from pornography. As long as he feels obliged to the woman, his need to maintain his self-esteem by keeping a promise obliges him to stay away from pornography. But as soon as there is any reason, that is good enough for him to not feel bound by the promise anymore, nothing holds him back from relapsing.
3. By extrinsic circumstantial motivation, if a man in a village 100 years ago never consumed pornography, it may well have been just the lack of access or even his ignorance, that it existed. Nobody can know, what he would have done with a computer connected to the web.
4. By extrinsic motivation, his reasons are purely instrumental and superficial. He is scared to loose the woman or to get into conflicts. That is a very weak motivation, as he has not restraint to consume it, when he is sure, that she will not find out.
Therefore more generally, I can trust those, who have not innate reason for the transgressive behavior, and those who are restricted by their own intrinsic motivation. I cannot really trust the others. I can only trust someone, who shares my basic attitudes, therefore his intrinsic motivations impedes him to commit, what he and I agree as being a transgression.
It is obvious, that the man, who has his own personal intrinsic reasons to reject and avoid transgressions, can be trusted with less risk. His reasons are a part of his personality, of his identity, those reasons are independent of the presence or absence of a relationship.
Judging a man only by his actions would be a dangerous logical flaw. What he has not done yet, or what she has not discovered yet, can still happen any day with some probability.
While people can sometimes be judged by their good and moral actions, they can rarely be reliably judged by their abstinence of an action, as this may just be due to the lack of an occasion or opportunity.
There are millions of actions, that millions of people have never done, not by a conscious decision, but just for the lack of an occasion. There are probably millions of men, who never have cheated, only because fortunately for their wives, they just did not meet a woman willing to participate in the cheating. Are they faithful or are they just impeded would-be-cheaters?
All attempts to predict people's behavior in the future has not only to take into account their previous behavior, but also the real and true reasons for that behavior. That is not an easy task. I use a man's true attitudes and motivations as the basis of my predictions of his behavior in the future, as much as I am able to find out, what his true attitudes and motivations are compared with what he pretends or believes himself.
Therefore I do judge a man mainly by the consistency of his actions with his expressed attitudes. As an example, if a man is a member of the green party but wastes as much precious water on his lawn as do his redneck neighbors, then I ask myself, why he really has joined that party in spite of all absence of ecological concerns. He is not consistent, so if I were to predict his behavior, I would need to first find out the real reasons for both behaviors, for joining the party and for wasting the water.
To trust a man, I need to experience the consistency of his actions with his expressed attitudes and values.
To trust, that a man really has the basic value, that a woman is equal and not just a body to use, it is not enough to experience his superficially correct equal behavior with me. I also need to experience his consistency, that he really never accepts or even tolerates any behavior, that does degrade a woman, no matter, if it is promiscuity, pornography, polygyny in any form. I can only trust the claim of equality from a man, who is consistent and intrinsically repulsed by any form of degradation of women
If a man claims to consider women as equals and yet considers nothing wrong with pornography and other forms of degradation, there is a logical inconsistency in it. He may treat me temporarily as an equal being only by extrinsic motivation of the 2.2., 3. or 4. variety. He certainly does not share my basic values.
