322. Deviance a Relapse to Caveman Behavior?

Deviance a Relapse to Caveman Behavior?

The following are only speculations.

Exhibitionism is a good example of a deviant and shocking behavior, that could maybe explained as a relapse to cavemen behavior.  

Once I was on my way up to the pension on the top floor of a large building, when a man with his trousers open followed me up the staircase.    When I rang the bell, he luckily turned around and left.   I was scared and disgusted, but since then I also have always been puzzled, why on earth a man would do this.  


In entry 304 about Emotional Morons and the Evolution of Cognition I already speculated about cave people at some time in the past having had the intellectual abilities of today's small children.   They could have had a full grown body still surviving and procreating by animal instincts but already with the advantages of a child's intelligence as a helpful tool.  

But to speculate even further, I am wondering, if not all instinctive behavior of our ancestors is still wired somewhere deep into our brains but is buried under layers of later evolutionary additions and modifications.   Maybe a lot of behaviors, that today appear weird, sick, impaired, dysfunctional are such prehistoric automatic dispositions taking control over the behavior of some people?

Maybe the behavior, that today is deviant exhibitionism, is an example of what has been normal behavior of the male cave men millions or hundred thousands of years ago.    A cave man with the intellect of a small child and only a rudimentary simple language but having an adult body may have instinctively expressed his desire to procreate by approaching a female presenting his private parts to her with an unmistakable gesture.   
Maybe today's exhibitionists are doing the socially acceptable thing just 2 million years too late?

321. The Backlash to Promiscuity

The Backlash to Promiscuity
This continues entry 320.

From the 1960s onwards, two technological and scientific developments drastically changed the everyday life of people.

1. The invention of the birth control pill as an easy and highly reliable method has overriden the effects of the concealed ovulation (more in entry 319) as the mechanism ascertaining the survival of the species by enough unwanted breeding.
2. The development of cheap methods for natural looking representations of reality by color TV, videos, movies and cheap color print media enabled technically the subsequent oversexation and desensitization to nakedness, pornography and the habituation to and acceptation of promiscuity as normal, that was finally aggravated by the Internet. 
   Before novels became affordable to the general population, men had their affliction but where restricted mainly to their imagination, while they were not in a relationship.   Then dirty novels added to this but there was still the limitation to imagination.  
   Only the realistic quality of still and even more of moving pictures has the same strong effect on the animal brain, that has evolved as responsiveness to real visual stimuli during a time, when there were no pictures.   The afflicted men's brain cannot distinguish between seeing a real woman's naked body and a picture or movie of it.   His cognition can, but when the instincts are stronger, that does not help him to resist the effect.

This has lead to a polarization of society and the beginning of two disparate developments for people with high and with low AQs (Animality Quotient - more in entries 316 and 317).

1. The evolution of the human cognition has reached a point, where decent intelligent low AQ people are less and less inclined and motivated to breed.   Many decent, highly evolved and educated people became happy childfree couples, since remaining childfree had become possible for the first time in history.    Men with a low AQ are not very much at risk to be seriously damaged and desensitized by the oversexation of everyday life.  Their predominant need is to share their life with a companion.   They are able to preserve their decency and continue to perceive a woman as a person with a brain.   
   
2. But for those with a relatively high AQ the oversexation of everyday life has started a full backlash in mainstream society towards promiscuity, that is still continuing. 
   
   
   • Men have become desensitized to the detrimental consequences of the oversexation of society, pornography and naked pictures selling stuff to susceptible fools as a normal part of everyday life.   The higher a man's AQ, the more he is overwhelmed and made mentally dysfunctional by this ubiquitous effect upon his perception.
     Before the backlash, boys in an intact home grew up with the role model of decent parents in a monogamous relationship, and the boy was mentally and emotionally prepared to become a monogamous partner, until and unless unfortunate influences destroyed this promiscuity inhibition.    Now the flooding with oversexation already at prepuberty age makes boys believe promiscuous behavior to be normal and morally correct, before they are even old enough to fall in love and experience the joy of monogamous bonding.  
     This unfortunate situation is enhanced by the communication of the web, where even the worst men can find like minded others for the reinforcement of their attitude of using women as commodities for their instincts being acceptable behavior.  
     
   • Foolish women have also been brainwashed and desensitized.   They cover themselves less and less, until their normal and everyday way of dressing has become dangerously provocative.   They do this to compete with the pictures flooding the men's perception.    Just as high AQ men's animal reactions cannot distinguish between real bodies and pictures, high AQ women cannot distinguish between competing with other women or with pictures for the genes of the alpha males.   

Consequently society is heading back to the situation of scenario 1 in entry 320, where men are permanently triggered by visual stimulation into outbreaks of their affliction, their reason blurred by their instincts.  
Before the backlash, men had been compelled to monogamy by the obligation to provide for their progeny and by the limited availability of promiscuous women.    
Since the start of the backlash, all this has changed.   Men are returning to their previous state of oblivion of the possibility, that a woman can be an equal partner for intellectual communication.   They are deprived of the chance to ever experience this.   Having their instincts triggered all the time, they are unable to even notice and appreciate women for anything but their bodies.   In spite of the evolution of the brain, men's affliction prevails with unaltered force.   

Those men, who are the slaves of their instincts in an oversexed world, usually do not plan to procreate, when they are overwhelmed by their instinct to succumb to their promiscuity.   But the provocative brainwashed women with the highest AQ, who are triggering the men's instincts are those, who do this because they are driven to breed.    

As a result, the high AQ people, whose instinctivity is stronger then their cognition, continue breeding and thus the natural selection will favor the high AQ.  A change of the gene pool can be expected as a long term effect of the backlash.  The low AQ people reduce or stop breeding.  

This process of polarization can take two directions in the future:

• If further evolution of the cognition augments the low AQ and thus childfree proportion of the population, homo sapiens will get extinct.
• If the backlash continues and the breeding is done mainly by the high AQ segment of the population, society will end up like the cave people in scenario 1, fully driven by their uninhibited exposure and triggering of instinct, promiscuously breeding.  

320. Clothing and the Evolution of Cognition

Clothing and the Evolution of Cognition 

In the entry 313 I declared my disagreement with the nudists' myth, that nakedness were natural and without any effect on their perception.     
I have been pondering over this a bit more.  The following speculations are the result.   

More than 2 million years old stone tools and bones including teeth have been found, indicating that homo habilis was an omnivore.   Therefore If this species was not hunting then at least scavenging the leftovers of carnivorous animals.  Using hides as a protection against cold and rain was an obvious thing to do.   

But it has been estimated that people had started wearing some kind of clothing between 500,000 and 100,000 years ago.  Therefore my following scenarios are set at that time.  They are entirely my imagination for the purpose of explaining, how clothing could probably have accelerated the evolution of cognition, intelligence and language.

Scenario 1:   600,000 years ago, a tribe of homo erectus living in a hot climate, still naked.   The males live in a group, hunting and scavenging, the women and children live in a separate group, foraging and gathering.   The groups meet regularly to share their provisions.   They have a rudimentary language.   Whenever both groups meet, the male instincts get triggered by the visual stimulus of the naked females, who are automatically perceived as prey, no matter, what they want or if they protest.   The males consider and perceive them as utilities without a brain.     The females dislike and fear the males, but they depend upon them for the meat and for protection, else they would avoid them.    Both genders have mutually no social interest in each other except when they interact for the only purpose of procreation.

Scenario 2:   400,000 years ago, a group of homo erectus living in a cold climate.  They cover themselves with the hides and furs of animals.   They also live as two groups, the females with the children foraging and gathering, the males hunting and scavenging.   
But something is very different:   When a male meets a female, his instincts are not immediately triggered to the extent of blurring his reason.  He sees only a female face and a body hidden under layers of hide and furs, instead of being exposed to the full visual stimulation by seeing a naked body.   Therefore he has the chance to discover or to experience, that the female is indeed a person with a brain as much evolved as his own, that he can communicate with her and that this communication is beneficial for him.   
As a consequence, during the times of the male's homeostasis, males and females interact using their cognition, they are spending time together.  The males are positively influenced by the females.    Females are more than passive prey, they also choose their mates and by a preference for advanced cognition in males, this influences the direction of further evolution.  

I speculate that all this has been the cause of a big boost in the the development and evolution of language, reasoning, empathy, social skills and intelligence.   This evolution has continued as long as women with self-respect and intelligence covered their bodies in decent attire.    The recent backlash will be the topic of another entry.

319. Childfree Neanderthals?

319.   Childfree Neanderthals?

This is a speculation from my personal point of view as a childfree woman.  I have not found any information on google, neither in favor nor in contradiction.    It seems that texts about evolutions always take for granted, that evolution only enhances the fitness of a species by favoring the urge to procreate in all individuals.   The paradoxical conscious choice to refuse procreation is never considered as a factor influencing evolution and natural selection.   

One result of evolution is concealed ovulation.    In contrast to most animals, human females show no noticeable external indication, when they are ready (or rather at risk) to get pregnant.    It is logical, that men's affliction of being driven by their permanent recurrence of the need for sexual homeostasis and of these instincts being automatically triggered by seeing naked female bodies has co-evolved with the concealed ovulation.  

Animals are driven to procreate, therefore visible signs of fecundity enhance their procreative behavior.   But signs of fecundity would give a choice to intelligent humans, not only to decide to procreate, but also to avoid procreation.  I doubt that if having such a choice, humans would bread under all circumstances.   I suspect that the concealed ovulation evolved because those, who did get pregnant accidentally by ignorance had more offspring than those, whose intelligence allowed them the choice to allow or to refuse procreation.  

Nobody knows, why the Neanderthals got extinct.  There are many speculations, so here I add my personal one:  
Maybe in the Neanderthals females, ovulation was no completely concealed, they did show some signs of fecundity, and they therefore had the chance and choice to avoid breading.   Modern humans' ovulation is entirely concealed and they invaded the territory of the Neanderthals breeding like rabbits.   In my understanding, when rationality, intelligence and cognition evolve beyond a threshold, the individual becomes able to doubt, that procreation is a good choice.    So the Neanderthals got extinct, when their cognition evolved beyond that threshold, while they were able to avoid breeding.  

We are many childfree people today, there is no reason to consider it impossible, that the childfree brain could already have had evolved in the Neanderthals.    It is probable, that any species gets extinct, as soon as there are enough members, whose brain has evolved beyond the threshold of understanding the detrimental consequences of breeding on the individual wellbeing.  

318. Predators and Prey: Another True Story

Predators and Prey:  Another True Story       

One evening another student, D., and I went dancing.   The campus was a bit at the outskirts of the town, and she had a car.   When the disco closed, a guy invited us both over to his place, also at some distance from home.   I had no objections, being aware that one guy could do no harm to two women.   It was better than walking home.  
But he opened a bottle of wine, and after a few glasses, D. felt no more able to drive.   So the guy assigned sleeping arrangements.   D. was to sleep on the couch in his living-room, and I was to share his bed.   He did this in such a matter, as if this were the most banal everyday way of arranging things.   
I was speechless in consternation.  But before I could even think how to react to this insult, he had noticed my reluctance, so he invited D. into his bedroom instead.    We were just two interchangeable female bodies for him.   He was satisfied with the one, that was willing.

It was a long walk home at two o'clock in the morning.........     


At that time, I experienced this only as an insult and an outrage.   But looking back at it after so many years and from another point of view, this guy was also pitiable.   There I was, an interesting, intelligent, educated person, available to enjoy profound discussions with.   But that pathetic loser's mind was so blurred and dysfunctional because of his instinctive urges, that he was unable to perceive anything more than my body.   
Their affliction deprives such men of all quality interaction with women, and they do not even know, what they are missing.   If they were not dangerous because of their physical strength, I could have pity with them for being so ludicrous.    

317. The Animality Quotient and Compatibility

The Animality Quotient and Compatibility

This continues entry 316.

Unfortunately, the knowledge about the force of animal instincts and the awareness for the detrimental effects upon the individual life in the general population is very limited.   People believe in the free will and in the power of healthy people to have complete self-control, and that behavior can be controlled by social rules and laws.    People judge others too much by their behavior without being aware of the motivation behind it.
People are generally considered as healthy, when they have sufficient self-control, else they are considered as mentally ill and deviant.  Deviance and mental dysfunction are rarely attributed to the virulence of the residue of animal instincts in the subconscious.   People are oblivious of how much their individual AQ (Animality Quotient) and UQ (Instinctive Urge Quotient) are determining their personality on a subconscious level and how much their personal instinctivity determines their identity.   

As long as people do not know any better, they project, they think, that others are like themselves.   Only with maturity and a high EQ do they gain awareness for differences and learn consideration for the needs of others.    This includes also the wide differences between needs as a consequence of the AQ.    Only when people project their instinctive needs, and their AQs are similar, then they have no problems.  

• A couple both having a low AQ can get bonded as intellectual companions and be happily devoted to each other.   
• A couple of both having a high AQ, where the man has high sexual needs and the woman an high urge to breed, ends often having the standard formal marriage:  The woman avoids the man's needs pretending headaches, the man cheats.  The woman is bonded to her children, and the man has a lot of stress working hard to earn the money for them all.
• When a woman with a low AQ makes the mistake of projecting by accepting a man with a high AQ for physical intimacy with the wrong assumption, that for him as for her it is the beginning of commitment, she gets hurt.  
• When a man with a high AQ makes the mistake of projecting his sexual needs on all women, he risks a lot of trouble, even legal for harrassment, and he gets a lot of rejection from all the women, whom he is insulting and offending.
• When a man with a low AQ makes the mistake of projecting this on a woman with a high AQ, he ends up being forced to work hard to provide for the unwanted children, which he got instead of the bonded companion.
• When a woman with a high AQ makes the mistake of projecting her urge to breed on a low AQ man, who wants a companion, she risks to become a single parents raising the children alone.

Therefore it is very important for people to have full awareness of the differences between people's AQs and of the strength their own AQ, so that they can make a wise choice of an AQ-compatible mate.   

Without full awareness, there is a big problem, when people judge others by their behavior and jump to conclusions about their attitudes and their ethical standards.   When I catch someone with a lie, this allows me to know, that he is principally a liar, I just do not know, how often.   As long as I never catch someone with a lie, I cannot know, if he really is never lieng and would not lie under different circumstances.   All I can do is estimate the probability of his honesty as high.  

It is the same with the high or low AQ.   When a woman sits on a bench in a park and a man approaches her, who makes unequivocal advances for the purpose of using her body, she can judge him as a high AQ person.
But when she sits on a bench, and a man approaches her starting an interesting conversation about a cultural topic, then she cannot know, why he does not treat her as prey.    From the absence of any high AQ behavior at that moment, she cannot know, if his AQ is really low or not. 

• He could be a truly low UQ man, who is genuinely just interested in talking with her.
• He could be a high UQ and low AQ person, whose instincts do get triggered, but his intellectual interest in the woman is really and innately higher.    He is intrinsically motivated not to be under the control of instincts, but to follow his intellectual inclinations.  
• He could be a high UQ person with a high AQ, but who acts under external reasons to restrain himself.   He could be religious and fearing the purgatory too much to allow himself his true inclinations.   He could be too scared of being rejected.   He could be married and talking to her while waiting for someone, who would tell his wife.   He could be someone hoping to make some money from a tourist.   

There can be many reasons, while a high AQ man behaves as if he were a low AQ man, and the more a woman is aware, the more she can avoid getting involved with an incompatible man.      

316. The Animality Quotient - AQ

The Animality Quotient - AQ

Sometimes, for example in entry 314, I may give the impression, as if I hated all men.   This is certainly not true.  This entire blog is about finding the man, who will be my mindmate.   Repulsive to me is all instinctivity, which is driving both men and women in a different way to use others for the purpose of breeding.  

My metaphor for human behavior is the speed of a car, which is determined by two contradictory forces, the gas and the break being pressed simultaneously.   In the brain, the animal instincts for procreation and all behavior leading to and enhancing procreation are like pressing the gas, while the rationality and cognition are pressing the break.   The relative strength of both forces is the individual's instinctivity determining either the speed towards breeding or the relaxed abstinence from breeding.  

Women's instinctivity focuses directly on breeding behavior including the mate choice for healthy genes and for good providers, while men's instinctivity focuses on spreading their genes ruthlessly.   Therefore the urges of instinctivity lead both genders to very different behaviors, detrimental for both, the individual's and the used other's wellbeing.


I assume, that the strength of instinctivity is distributed along a bell curve and that it can be defined by a quotient analogous to the IQ.   Statistically the Intelligence Quotient is an example of a very useful way of measuring a human trait.    It combines a linear scale with the distribution of the population along a bell curve.    100 divides the population in a lower and a higher half, and every 1 standard deviation is usually connected with 15 points on the linear scale, which thus goes from 40 as practically none (0.003%) to 160 as practically all (99.997%)

I will call the distribution of instinctivity along the bell curve the Animality Quotient AQ.   While there is neither a test nor any way to measure it, this does not diminish its value as a description.  
At one extreme end, there are the animals with the brain of a moron, who are automatically driven by their instincts.  At the other extreme end are the completely hypoanimalistic people, who are entirely guided by reason and logic, having no other instincts except those for self-preservation.     

The AQ is a net score and therefore a simplification of a more complex situation.    The AQ measures the difference between the force of the instinctive urges and the restraint by the combination of awareness and self-control.   In the car metaphor, it is the speed resulting from the combined forces of the break and the gas.   

The innate strength of only the instinctive urges is also distributed along a bell curve.   But when assuming an UQ as the instinctive Urge Quotient, a person can have an UQ very different from the AQ.  
A man with a low AQ has little inclinations to use a woman's body for the restoring of homeostasis.  But this does not determine, if such a man can get emotionally bonded and attached by entering physical intimacy or not.   Someone with an AQ of 70 can be either someone with an UQ also of 70, who is just relaxed and not bothered, lacking any need for restraining, what is not there.  Or he can be someone with an UQ of 130 but who is fascinated and interested in intellectual and creative pursuits, and who perceives his instincts as annoying.  He uses self-control and restraint in favor of what is really important to him.  

Therefore a low AQ is a necessary but not a sufficient condition for a man to be able to get intrinsically committed.    In my metaphor of the car, there is also the stirring wheel determining the direction of the behavior.   One direction is the selfish use of others as utilities and commodities, which is innate and also a part of the animal nature, the other direction can be chosen, if there is enough force of the IQ and EQ.   

His IQ enables a man to appreciate and to enjoy the intellectual qualities of a woman and value her brain more than her body.   His EQ enables him to have empathy, responsibility and consideration for her as a person and to be guided by ethics.   Having a high EQ, a man does not consider a woman as a commodity, and by never starting promiscuity, he never loses his ability to get bonded.   

The combination of a low AQ and high IQ and EQ are the determinants for intrinsic commitment.  Men and women with the ability for intrinsic commitment have more in common than have men with this ability with men lacking it, and it is the same for women.

I admit that I loathe the instinct driven animalistic men, but I also have not much sympathy for instinct driven women.  But I do have a very high appreciation, respect and regard for those rare men, who are able to commit intrinsically.   

315. Opium of the People

Opium of the People

Until a few days ago, I always interpreted Marx's famous quote "Religion is the opium of the people" as a metaphor.   

A few days ago, I changed my mind.   I was sitting at a bus stop and got into talking with the woman sitting next to me, who in less than a minute presented herself as a Jehova's witness.   Usually I avoid religious discussion as a completely futile attempt to get through the believers' delusion.   They believe, what they feel a need to believe, why should I be bothered to interfere?   But there were still 20 minutes of waiting for the bus, so I started to amuse myself by telling her about the impossibility to prove or disprove the invisible pink dragon in my garage, by talking about Persinger's helmet, about statistics and coincidence, about intermittent reinforcement and a few other things.    
She had no clue, what I was talking about, but she reacted, as religious people usually do, when they have nothing to reply to any rational reasoning.    She got more and more fervent in her declaration of her love, devotion and creed for her god.    Her eyes were shining, her voice had a sound of intensity.   Had I been deaf and only observed her visually, I would have lost a wager about her being someone under the influence of a drug.  

Her religious delusion had such a strong impact upon some of her brain chemicals.   It was amazing to watch.
  
Therefore, Marx was right also literally, religion really is the opium of the people.      

314. Mating Strategies - The Instinctive And The Intellectual Paradigm

By now, I have been writing over 300 entries in this blog, and the number of page views per day due to being found in Google is not growing.   Therefore I attempted to get more publicity by joining articlesbase, where I published entre 287 with a link to this blog.    Some hours later, my text had been copied to more than a dozen sites.    But I was not really prepared for the discovery, that my text would be presented in dubious places between texts favoring the degradation of women.   This has instigated me to write the following strong text in favor of monogamy and respect for women and also publish it on articlesbase.    


Mating Strategies - The Instinctive And The Intellectual Paradigm

When men's instincts are awakened, when they drool over women's bodies, when they are in need to restore their sexual homeostasis, their reasoning capacity gets blurred and they become irresponsible animals.    They regress to the primitive state of predators, whose temporarily dysfunctional brains are entirely focused upon one goal: how to acquire the use of a woman's body.   If they are not as successful as their instinctivity urges them, they become manipulators and jerks.   
Some poor misguided fools even invest money in jerk-training.   They call themselves euphemistically pick-up-artists (PUA), but PUA really stands for pick-up-animals, because of their lack of one basic human quality: the ability to respect a woman.  I call them emotional psychopaths, because they feel entitled to be ruthless predators.  Those jerks are repugnant to decent women, but they are oblivious of this.   

Unfortunately, these jerks are encouraged by foolish women.   If all women had the wisdom to reject jerks as pathetic and ludicrous, they would have a reason to learn to respect women.  
   
A foolish woman derives her identify primarily from the quality of her body.   She feels good about herself, as long as she believes herself to be a beauty, but she is not bothered, if she drops out from high school.  A foolish woman accepts her role as prey, she does not feel indignation, instead she feels flattered.   A foolish woman attempts to trigger men's most primitive instincts by purposefully running around half naked in provocative attire and by flirtatious behavior.   She even takes pride in triggering a man's instincts.   
Such a woman is as pathetic and ludicrous as the jerk.   She has the delusion, that by getting a man infatuated with her body, she motivates him to marry her and to spend the rest of his life with her.   She is naive and mistaken.    As soon as the jerk has restored his homeostasis, he gets aware, that she is only an insignificant commodity for him.    As far as stupidity is concerned, predator and prey are a match, but the predator enjoys his triumph, the prey suffers.    As predator and prey, they both lack dignity.
  
When the instincts take temporary control over a man, the breeding instinct is the true driving force behind the sexual instinct.   Two bodies check each other's quality for healthy offspring, while any consideration for long-term individual happiness is temporarily in oblivion.    A jerk is promiscuous, he wants to spread his genes.  Once he had succeeded to gain the temporary control over the prey, he restarts his hunt for a new prey.

Wise women do the exact contrary of the demeanor of foolish women, because they derive their identity from their intellect.  A wise woman presents herself with an anti-sexy exterior, she does not flirt, she does everything possible to avoid and discourage men from getting infatuated with her body.     Her priority is to be respected, valued, appreciated as an equal partner.   For her it is of paramount importance, that her well functioning brain and her intellectual competence are of higher value to a man than her body.     A wise woman chooses a man for intrinsic commitment, bonding, closeness, she wants to be a man's valued companion and confident.  
A wise woman does not allow a man access to her body, unless he deserves it by respecting her personality, she insists to create emotional and intellectual intimacy, before she allows physical intimacy as the sealing of the bond.  
A wise woman needs a wise man, who is hypoanimalistic, who is not a blind slave of his instincts, but who is controlled by his brain, and who also derives his identity from his intellectual, emotional and moral qualities.   A wise man is monogamous, because monogamy gives him the joy of bonding.   He wants to be human and he agrees with the woman in her disdain for promiscuous studs as animals.   A wise man does not hurt a woman's dignity, she does not need to protect it.

We live in times, where the human brain has invented the most amazing things, like pictures from Mars, cell phones, relativity theory and reliable birth control.   But instinct driven jerks and foolish women still behave as if they are cave people 500.000 years ago.   

313. Nudists: Fools, Naive or Conscious Animals?

Nudists:  Fools, Naive or Conscious Animals?

I just ended the contact with someone, because he admitted to be a nudist.   I consider nakedness as part of the exclusivity of the intimacy of a couple.   If a man would expose himself in public or if he would frequent places, where women are exposing themselves, this is a form of cheating.  

As I have already written about in several previous postings (232, 236, 238 and 240 -Chemistry and Subconscious Instinctive Communication), the animal instincts in the subconscious mind of people are triggered by visual and olfactory stimuli.   Those instincts are not leading to the choice of an intellectually and emotionally compatible partner for the happiness of a couple, but to the choice of the best body for having healthy offsprings.   When those instincts are triggered, especially when men are in need to restore their sexual homeostasis, their reasoning capacity is blurred, and they make foolish choices, that allow the survival of their genes for the price of individual unhappiness. 

Therefore, wise people cover their bodies, as long as they attempt to find a mindmate for long term happiness in commitment, and avoid the triggering of instincts, until they are rationally sure to have found someone compatible. 


Nudists do the contrary.   The expose themselves, automatically sending triggering signals into everybody's subconscious, and they are also receiving the triggering signals, as soon as they look at another naked body.    These are the biological facts.  

Nudists claim, that they are not affected by any visual triggers.    They may be naive and believe it, they may subconsciously or even consciously want the triggers, they may have successfully desensitized themselves from consciously displaying their subconscious reactions.    But they are all in denial of the true but subtle power of their instincts.   

The web is full of texts perpetuating the denial, but I found one text admitting the reality:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2007/jun/06/comment.comment

Nudists justify being naked as being natural.   But there is so much behavior, that can be called natural, and nobody would justify it.  
In some societies, cannibalism triggered by the outgroup instinct has been natural, and in times of scarce food, it may have been the natural way for a group to survive.     
It is natural to eat and store body fat for the next winter of starvation, but it is not justified in the circumstances of modern society.  
And nudity cannot be justified as beneficial for those people, who want to be guided by reason in their choice of a mate, and not by instincts.

312. An Online Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

An Online Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

I stumbled upon a web page, where people discussed a video and its author, who had published it on YouTube.  

In this video, he claims evolution to be flawed and attributes his own unfortunate life situation to this.   Evolution has by natural selection favored the hierarchy instinct, which makes people fight for a high position in a hierarchy, and as a consequence thereof some people at the top have lots of privileges, while others at the bottom suffer deprivation.   While evolution itself cannot be described as flawed, because it is not concerned about people's pain, but only about he survival of the species, the consequences of natural selection on the wellbeing of individuals can be described as flawed from the subjective perspective of the underprivileged.   

He talks about his own deprived life situation, having little formal education, a minimum wage job, no friends, no relationship.  
He speaks with agitation, and I watched the video with a lot of sympathy and compassion.   I was touched, and I admit that I thought for a moment, how someone like him, but in my age group and with a university education could just be the clingy, needy guy for me.

So I got curious and went to YouTube, where he has published about 150 more videos.  I started to watch another one.   For about one minute, I was at a loss to even understand, what it was all about.  He was calling a hearing-aid company for information.  Being still under the impression of the guy being an unfortunate sensitive person, it took me a while, until I got aware, that it was a prank.   He was misunderstanding the man from the hearing-aid company on purpose.  That man most probably is an employee, who would have lost his job, had he lost his temper.   That employee was probably fully aware of being the victim of a cruel prank, but had no choice except to go along.    

At that moment, all my temporary sympathy for the prankster dwindled.   It was the victim of the prank, who deserved my compassion.  After watching 5 minutes I skipped most of the video.   When I watched the end, that employee had kept his countenance for 15 minutes.   I admire his patience.    As much as I have empathy with the victims of circumstances, I have more empathy with the victims of malice.  

The alleged and pretending victim of social injustice was in reality a self-centered guy, completely absorbed in self-pity, cruelly letting out his own frustration by playing heartless pranks on others, who have never done anything wrong to him.  (I am assuming, that he talked to a complete stranger at the hearing-aid-company, which of course I cannot know.)   He complains about the lack of compassion of those people, who had been favored by evolution to have a better life than himself.    But he has himself not the least compassion for the victim of his prank.    It makes me shudder, how by a short video people including myself can get taken in so easily to have sympathy and compassion for someone, who does not deserve it.     

But what saddened me the most was the complete insensitivity and lack of compassion, let alone outrage, elicited by his prank.   On YouTube, there were dozens of comments congratulating him on his hilarious performance.   On the other site, there are several hundred postings discussing his life situation.    Some people just call him a loser who should do something instead of ranting, but some others melted in compassion.   

His pranks were mentioned less than 5 times and the most critical comment was calling him a hypocrite.    It really puzzles me, how the same people, who pity him as a victim of a harsh and ruthless capitalistic society, are not at all taken aback by his own cruelty with his victim.    Is only the prankster a hypocrite or are they also hypocrites?

I am not sure about what is the cause, but it seems that people have become very insensitive to cruelty and moral failures, as long as they are emotional, subtle and without visible damage.    That prank alone may not affect a resilient employee, but if he were already mobbed, maybe it would be adding to the burn-out of the man.    The prankster just cannot know, what damage he is doing.

Maybe the desensitization of being exposed by the media to the worst atrocities and agonies on a daily basis, not only of crime, but also of accidents and natural catastrophes, makes appear emotional cruelties as if they were only trifles.  

I think that many people need to be resensitized to take responsibility for the pain, that they cause others. But they need not only take more responsibility for themselves.  They should also reestablish higher standards in their expectations of others by being much more judgmental in holding others responsible.   Tolerance for unacceptable cruelties is being an indirect accomplice in the cruelty to the victims.    

311. Courting: Gender Divergence or Convergence

Courting:  Gender Divergence or Convergence

By animal instincts, men are predators driven to spread their genes, and women are prey in self-defence against becoming pregnant by a man with unsuitable genes.   This is the result of evolution, which was not influenced by modern possibilities of birth control.   
In a less drastic form, these instincts determine the different behavioral tendencies in courting and mating even today.   
It is very important to be aware of the differences in the instinctive predispositions of men and women.   But that does not imply any rational reason to accept these differences as good and as unchangeable.

For people, who accept egalitarianism and equality, who do not consider a relationship as a division of labor for the goal of procreation but as a unit for the happiness of two partners, accepting obsolete instinctive urges makes no sense and is very counterproductive.   
An egalitarian man needs to overcome his predator behavior and learn to respect the woman's wishes and respect her abilities as a competent person.   A woman has to learn to accept obligations in return for her equal rights, and not be a passive prey waiting for the predator to chase her.  

Yet when I am reading the advice on dating sites for both women and men, the gist of all the advice is the acceptance of the instinctive tendencies of the other gender and submission.    Men are encouraged to pursue women with the disrespect of not taking her expression of her wishes for serious, not taking a 'no' for a 'no'.  (I already wrote entry 274 about this.)   Women are encouraged to be exploitative instead of being fair, they are encouraged to play games like that of pretending to be hard to get.  People play such insincere and disrespectful games during courting, but they are quite often neither aware of the problem, nor able to drastically change their attitudes after getting involved, when they would need to be mutually sincere and respectful as caring partners. 

Predators focus on the success of the hunt, they are oblivious and unconcerned about what follows, once they have gained control over the prey.  

 
These leads to serious problems:

Both partners cannot know, if the other is playing the allegedly expected courtship game or just expressing the true personality.
If a woman accepts the disrespect of not being taken for serious in her expressed wishes during courtship, she cannot know, if the man would ever take her for serious or always disrespect her.  
If a woman allows and accepts to be pampered during courtship, the man cannot know, if she is selfish and would forever take advantage of him or not.    
By misinterpreting the other's unsuitable personality as only playing a game, people can end up with an incompatible and unsuitable partner.    
Courting is the time before making a decision, therefore honesty and sincerity are of paramount importance during the time of courting.   

In entry 310 I already described the situation, that by a man's instinctive affliction to be blurred in his judgement and getting involved as a result of infatuation with a body, a couple can discover too late, that as a person the woman is insignificant to the man.   The woman suffers, when the man does not give her the emotional and intellectual commitment, that she craves.   If a man plays the predator game, this enhances a woman's risk to end up as insignificant, when she confounds his pursuing her as prey with being significant for him.  

In my opinion, all dating advice, that encourages men to take the role of a predator, and women to take the role of prey, is not only wrong, but dangerous.    Instead, people should be encouraged to be honest and sincere, to show and to be guided by their true amount of interest, their true behavioral inclinations and needs.   People should base their courting and the decision, whom to court, on a roughly equal amount of attraction and interest.   Happiness for a long time and the importance of a committed relationship are too serious to play games.   

310. Women's Insignificance

Women's Insignificance

Some days ago I read a young guy's complaints about how disappointed he was by his girl friend.  He had so much appreciated her independence, but after getting involved, now she wants togetherness, sharing, commitment.   I have read similar complaints before, from both sides, also from women disappointed because they did not get enough commitment.  

It is an unfortunate pattern for women.    Simplified, when a man wants an independent woman, he wants her not to find out, how insignificant she is for him outside the bed.  

Most women want a relationship providing closeness, affection, sharing and commitment.   There are many men, who in theory agree to want this too.  But in their behavior, they are the victims of their own innate animal affliction.    Their need for sexual homeostasis blurs their reason and their ability for sound judgement.   Their instincts determine, that they make the wrong choices.

Such a man gets infatuated with a body, but as soon as he reaches temporary homeostasis, he gets aware, that he is not attracted to spend any time with the woman.   He perceives the woman's body as a commodity with an insignificant personality added as an unwanted extra in the package.    If the man could, he would deposit her in a storage room and only retrieve her, whenever his need for homeostasis reawakens.   When the woman wants more than what he offers her, the relationship fails, and he attributes the failure to the women wanting more than her due, not to his own wrong choice determined by his instincts.
If this happens a few times to a man, he could gain the maturity and learn how to make a better choice.    An immature man concludes instead, that a woman is just not someone worth to spend time with.   He reduces a woman's place in his life to only serving his needs in bed.   From then on he consciously chooses a woman for being or appearing independent.   He assumes that an independent woman would not be interested in spending much time with him, thus she would never find out, that she is too insignificant for him to spend time with her.   With this woman, he is not only unable to get bonded and not expecting to get bonded himself, but also that she herself would not wish to bond.   Instead he intends to keep her as a convenience as long as possible.  

I am not even claiming, that wanting an insignificant independent woman is a conscious deceit.   It is more that the instinctive infatuation with a body disables most men's awareness for what they really want or what would really be the best for their own long term happiness.  They may even be disappointed themselves by their lack of interest in the woman, when homeostasis restores their reasoning ability.   The man's instincts lead him and the woman into a trap of incompatible needs.  
Many men are so convinced of being always rationally in self-control, that they are usually in denial of being misguided by their instincts to get involved with women, whom they then do not respect and appreciate.    Due to this denial, due to their full acceptance and even pride of being studs, they never learn to think very carefully, if they want a woman as a body or as a personality.   

It is pattern with detrimental consequences also for the men themselves.   It seems to be a bad trick of evolution.   The man makes the mistake to get involved with the wrong woman, and ends up with a subscription for homeostasis, while he does not give the woman closeness and sharing.   That subscription means, he may even marry her.   So if the woman is a breeder, she reacts to being treated as insignificant by having children.   She get bonded with the children, and the man is excluded.   Now he is insignificant but he is obliged to work hard to provide for them all.    Had he been wise and careful in his choice, he could be a bonded partner and live happily as a childfree couple.    In the end, he is also punished for using the body of a woman, who is insignificant as a person.   


Men choosing apparently independent women have a very wrong concept of the meaning of independence for a woman.    Independence does not mean bonding-disability or low interest in him or in any man.   Independence does not mean the consent to be friends with benefits instead of commitment.  

Independence is both, it is a survival skill and it is an attitude to acquire survival skills.   Being able to be independent can be an accomplishment, that can contribute to a woman's self-esteem.    There is no joy in being independent, nor is it emotionally rewarding.    It is an acquired skill and it often is compensatory, when someone develops this skill by having no other choice.  

Independence is the best way to cope with life while being alone.   But the interdependence of a couple is a much better form of coping together with the troubles and inclemencies of life.  
An independent woman can find ways to transport things at the edge of her physical strengths instead of moaning about being helpless, an independent man can learn to sew buttons even though he is clumsy, instead of throwing the garment without a button in the garbage.   Two interdependent people can pool their skills and make life easier for each other.  
An independent woman and an independent man can each go alone to a lecture and ponder about it.  But as a couple communicating they may supply a lot of additional food for thought to each other.
Independence is only a bad substitute for the benefits of interdependence.  
Interdependence means: A problem shared is a problem halved, but a joy shared is a joy doubled.  

I am capable to be independent. But I do not want to be independent, I want to find a mindmate and live in interdependence.   
Any man, who wants my body as that of an independent and insignificant person, should just move on and find his victim elsewhere.      

309. The Control Freak's Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde Cycle

The Control Freak's Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde Cycle

In entry 285 I attempted to explain the abuse hoovering cycle, in which women experience, how a narcissist converts inexplicably from a nice Dr. Jekyll into a nasty Mr. Hyde by his oscillating between feeling uplifted by a valued woman and uplifting himself by devaluing a woman.  

But when the narcissist is a control freak driven by anxieties, there can also be a different explanation, especially for short term switches between the two personalities.    Dr. Jekyll can be nice and friendly, when he is in control or when he believes to be in control, his fears and panic temporarily being alleviated or numbed, so that he can feel relaxed. 

As soon as she innocently does something by her own initiative, this simple little proactivity is experienced by him as a serious indication, that he lacks the control he wants and needs.    When his fear overwhelms him again, from one moment to the next, he mutates into the nasty Mr. Hyde, who attempts to reestablish his control with any method that seems to promise success.   He rages at her, hollers at her, until she freezes in terror and intimidation.   As soon as she freezes or withdraws and seizes any proactivity, he believes to have regained control, and he calms down and again becomes Dr. Jekyll for a while.  

Most people like it, when someone does them a favor.   A favor is a deliberate act by choice and goodwill as a result of sympathy, appreciation, maybe affection.    As paradox as it seems, a control freak does not feel honored by favors, but provoked into another Dr. Jekyll session to reestablish control.   Because when doing a favor, someone is a proactive and under his own control. 
In the control freak's perception, favors are logically impossible.    If the favor is something of value for the control freak with an entitlement delusion, getting it is his due and nobody is supposed to have an own decision to deny or to grant it.    The control freak experiences a favor as getting something by having lost control, that he feels entitled to get and to have control too.     Therefore the control freak prefers coercion over receiving favors.  

308. Control Freak or Dominator

Control Freak or Dominator

Domination is abomination.  I have already written several blog entries about how devastating it is for a woman to be dominated.   Domination over a woman can have many reasons.  

1. It can be an expression of the hierarchy instinct, a man is sometimes misguided to establish a hierarchy in his private life, when he had to struggle in competition to earn his living.    
2. Over centuries in western societies and in many societies it is still like this today, that women on average had and have less access to get an education appropriate to their intelligence.   Men dominated and dominate over women, who having been deprived of developing their real intellectual potential. 
3. Domination over a woman can also be the misguided consequence of having grown up under feudalism as a member of the ruling class being so used to be served on command.  A man takes his entitlement to dominate over everybody including a woman for granted.  

Dominators, who are no Control Freaks, can be quite content with their own life.  They dominate by a distortion of their thinking and judgement only.  Petruccio in 'The Taming Of The Shrew' (entries 301 and 302) is an example of a jerk, who just takes his entitlement for granted.    In spite of the ludicrous ending of the play, it could have ended very differently, if he would have matured to learn, that Kathrina is an intelligent and educated partner, who could enhance his life much more as an equal partner than under domination.   
Mark Twain's 'The Prince And The Pauper' is an example from literature, how someone can discover, that there are alternatives to dominate.    

Such dominators dominate, as long as they get rewarded by benefits from domination, but they are able to give it up, should equality become more beneficial.

Control Freaks as already described in entry 307 are a subform of dominators, who are driven to alleviate their pathological fears and anxieties by control over people, including the women in their life.   Control Freaks are very unhappy people, who have succeeded in using domination as a method to reduce their own suffering by making others suffer as their proxy and scape goats.    Control Freaks dominate as a consequence of emotional problems, that are often enhanced by the delusion of being entitled to do so.    Control Freaks are driven to dominate by an urge to reduce their own suffering and they do not experience having any choice to give up control.

This is a good description of Control Freaks:
http://home.comcast.net/~pobrien48/Control_freaks.htm

There are several scenarios of control freaks, depending on the severity of the morbidity or co-morbidity.

1. The basic factors are a combination of pathological fears, anxiety, paranoia and worries, in combination with an inability to trust.  The Control Freak has never trusted anybody in his life.   Therefore even forcing himself to try behaving as if trusting is not an option for him.    He has as little imagination of trusting as has a person born blind of colors. 
   If someone with anxiety issues were able to trust, a loving and caring partner could support him to live with his troubles without harming her. 
   But when there is no trust, then the control freak is caught in the trap of his morbidity.   Without trust, he can never let go of his control and attempts to control, so he can never make the experience of what would happen without control.   He is deprived of ever making the experience, that without control, he would get just as much of a fair deal by consideration and compassion, as he gets by coercion.   He makes the woman's life miserable and gains nothing by this except a reduction of his fears. 
   
   In this scenario, he keeps the woman at bay as a friend with benefits, with whom he limits his interaction to his own convenience.
   
2. If the Control Freak is additionally afflicted with selfishness and the delusion of being entitled to get more than he gives, then controlling serves a dual purpose.   Not only does it reduce his fears, but it is also a cruel but logical method to usurp his selfish wants and needs, that he would not get otherwise.   In this case, he uses rage, intimidation and other means of extortion to get advantages and benefits.   The relationship is a power struggle between his selfish greed and her attempts to get a fair deal and to protect herself.    She is exploited, but as someone taken for serious, a respected enemy in the war for resources. 
   
   In this scenario, he expects the woman to have the role of a mother with benefits.  The mother gives all her unconditional love to a child, but the child does not give anything back to her.  
   
3. Another scenarios is the control freak, who is also a narcissist.   He adds a grandiosity delusion to anxiety, distrust and entitlement to selfish advantages.    That means, he adds disrespect and depreciation to the pain of being dominated.   He considers her as faulty and inferior, as someone, who should be grateful to be allowed to be under his control.    He believes himself to be a good person by doing what he does, because in his delusion, his behavior is what he perceives as correct by his birthright, while her inferior role is her purpose in life.   Being aware, that she has some needs, he cares for her only by giving her, what he believes that she needs.    This believe is a combination of projections of his own needs and of what he has gathered from hearsay as how women should allegedly be treated.   It does not even occur to him to consider direct information to be obtained from her concerning her real needs.  
   
   In this scenario, the woman is like a well cared for pet with benefits.   Just like a pet owner, he may consult with other women owners about how to care for the women, but he does not ask the woman herself.    Had he no physical needs, he would choose a pet, where control is easier and socially more acceptible.    Instead he gets the benefits in bed, but controls her just like the pet, that he would prefer.
   
4. In a variety of scenario 3, the woman is not a pet with benefits, that is taken and treated as a being with innate limits.    He takes on the role of a father, whose task is to improve his daughter with benefits and to fix her.   He believes that he is doing this as a favor to her.     The power to modify her to better serve his convenience is an even more rewarding form of control than just forcing her to do, what he wants.   So his believe to be able to fix her is especially effective in reducing his fears.      
    
5. In a more extreme variety of scenario 3, he is a not only a narcissistic control freak, but also an emotional moron.   He confounds caring for her with the maintenance of a commodity and utility, as if her body needs to be maintained to function similarly to the maintenance of a robot. 
   
   In this scenario, the woman is a painstakingly maintained robot with benefits. 
   
6. The worst scenario is the narcissistic control freak, who is psychopathic.   He has no conscience, and he knows exactly, that all the atrocities done by him to the woman are hurting her, and are not, what other people consider correct and moral behavior.    He commits transgression knowingly, but he is just not bothered or concerned.   
   
   In this scenario, a woman is a utility with benefits, used and then thrown away, not considered worth neither care nor maintenance.     

Control Freaks of all subtypes are the most devastating dominators.    I am willing to be a supportive partner to anybody, who has problems and entrusts himself to my support.   But without trust, a relationship is doomed to become toxic.  

307. Alleged and Real Control Freaks

Alleged and Real Control Freaks
I have been accused of being a control freak a few times in my life.    Maybe what I am writing in this blog may also give a wrong impression.    I am a rationality freak, but not a control freak.    

A control freak is a person, whose high level of anxiety, fear, paranoia, insecurity drives him to get alleviation and reduction of these feelings by establishing control over his environment and all people in it.   
A control freak can appear to be a nice person, when he either really is in control or believes to be in control, because people of goodwill do him favors or just happen to accidentially do, what he wants.   A control freak becomes a nasty jerk, as soon as he feels out of control and attempts to reestablish it, ruthlessly oblivious or unconcerned of what harm he does to his victims.  

I fear wild animals like bears, I fear male animals using physical force to abuse of my body.   I feel fear, when I stand inside a house during an earthquake, and I would certainly feel fear of any real threat to my life.    Nothing of this gives me any reason to want to control people.    I am lacking the kind of anxiety to be a control freak. 

Rationality is in the core of my identity.  I want to live in an environment controlled by rationality.  But I do not want to fight for rationality, I wish it to just be there without me making any efforts.   

I can be nice and tolerant to anybody, whose brain is wired differently, who is religious, gullible and who believes in any nonsense, no matter if god or homeopathy.    I am polite and I hide my true opinion, but I have compassion for their bad luck of having this dysfunction and delusion wired in their brains.  But they have to be kept at a distance.  These kind of people just do not qualify to be my intellectual equals in a relationship.   It is not possible that I can respect someone like this enough to get involved with.  

It is obvious, that a relationship is doomed, when one partner considers the other as stupid and with a dysfunctional brain.    Therefore a rational person like me can only have a relationship with a truly rational partner.  

As a consequence, I may feel very strong about some topics, not to control someone's thinking, but to find an agreement based upon shared rationality.    I do not like the word control, so I want a relationship guided and determined by rationality and logic.

Also I am very eager to comprehend people's good rational reason for what they do.    If someone's behavior is incomprehensible, I feel uncomfortable, because this gives me the suspicion that he could be a believer and a gullible person, whom I cannot respect, and I feel an urge to restore respect by comprehending his rational reasons.    Therefore I have no wish to be right, I am just as content to be convinced, that I am wrong, as long as I can respect the reasons of the other as rational

To illustrate the difference between my importance of rationality and a control freak, the following is a hypothetical scenario.   It is immediately comprehensible to everybody, whose rational brain enables him to know, that NLP is  pseudoscience and a cult.   

In this scenario, I get in contact with someone, who claims to be an atheist and a skeptic.   Before I really know him well, he tells me, that he just has read his first book about NLP and that he has booked a course to learn more.    When I hear something like this, a flash of disappointment goes immediately through me, and my respect for that man is temporarily damaged, while I wonder, what is wrong with his brain.   

There are four different possible continuations.

1.  I explain, that NLP is pseudoscience, I give him the link to some skeptical articles and I let his rationality do the rest.  He will find out the obvious for himself, which he would find out sooner or later anyhow.   I do not control his thinking, I just give him a hint to avoid a detour to the obvious.

2.  All my explanations about NLP being pseudoscience bounce off him with no effect, as if he were deaf.   He really is a control freak, who grasps at NLP with some urgency, because NLP promises simple tricks how to manipulate people to gain power.    He believes to have found a method of control, that he perceives as too important for his survival in a hostile fear invoking world to allow himself to be deprived of by allowing reasonable doubts.    

Depending on my level of interest in him, I may continue my futile compulsive efforts to point out the facts to him much longer than it would make sense.    Reasoning with him is futile, because as little as NLP does, what it promises, for an anxiety driven control freak already the believe to have found a method to gain control helps him to reduce his anxiety.    So from then on, my respect is damaged and thus is my interest for this man.   
For him, I appear as If I were a control freak attempting to control his thoughts.    For him, agreement or not is of no importance, he wants to gain power by his learning NLP tricks.   He would allow me to disagree with NLP as much as I do, he concedes me tolerance, because what I think it not important, only gaining control over me is.     

3.  I know that it is never good to jump to conclusions.   As soon as I mention, that NLP is pseudoscience, he agrees immediately and explains, that he does not believe in it at all, but that he wants to have some first hand experience about the kind of gullible people, who attend such a course.   He may be writing an article about why quackery attracts people.    So something only appears weird, until I get a rationally convincing explanation.  


To sum it up:  My mindmate is someone, who really is rational, an atheist and a skeptic down to the bone.    Only in this case mutual respect, appreciation and valuation can be maintained.  

306. Wisdom

Wisdom

Someone, whom I had mistaken for an atheist, because he called himself one, but who in reality only is a pseudo-atheist (entry 305), calls the bible a book of wisdom.   

That inspired me to ponder over the meaning of the word wisdom.    

Skeptics, atheists and rational people define wisdom differently from believers and all gullible people, who are irrationally confounding other people's claims with truth.  

In my own words I would define wisdom as some high level of understanding and knowledge how to live one's own live and how to interact with others based upon the ability to enhance the benefit and wellbeing for all.  

On http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wisdom  there is a better phrased definition.
"Wisdom is a deep understanding and realizing of people, things, events or situations, resulting in the ability to choose or act or inspire to consistently produce the optimum results with a minimum of time, energy or thought. "

But what someone considers and values as wisdom, depends on the personality and on the wiring of the brain.   For an atheist, wisdom is different from what it is for a believer in woo-woo or a god. 

For a rational, non-believing person, wisdom is gained by learning scientific information about all aspects of life.  Concerning the connection with other humans, this means the focus on scientific psychological research.    Wisdom is enhanced by evaluating experiences based on psychological knowledge.    Wisdom can be gained by listening and reading to learned and wise people.   But that does not mean to believe anything, because someone of higher learning and intellectual authority says it, but because such a person can provide food for thoughts to see things from a different angle or to consider new ideas, that had never before occurred.   But all wisdom is adapted only, when it is rationally convincing, when it is based upon given evidence. 

A gullible believer accepts claims made by others as wisdom without any critical evaluation.   Believers accept those claims as true, because those claims fulfill a need for them.   Everything, that can serve as a psychological crutch is perceived and taken in as wisdom.    Adapting rules for behavior as wisdom reduces their insecurities and fears and gives them a false feeling of control over their life.    Unfortunately for the gullible people, the blind acceptance of believes as pseudo-wisdom keeps them forever oblivious and ignorant of true wisdom.     

And so, very logically, for a believer, the bible is a book of wisdom, but for an atheist it is nothing more than mental diarrhea.  

305. Atheists, Agnostics and Pseudo-Non-Believers

Atheists, Agnostics and Pseudo-Non-Believers

There are people, who claim to be atheists, they believe themselves to be atheists, but they are not.   

Atheism is derived from the Greek prefix a~ for the absence of something and ~theos, which means god.    That means, that an atheist is void of considering the existence of a god, he is someone, who lives as if he had never even heard of the claim, that there could be a god.   An atheist wonders as much about the existence of a god as a Neanderthal man wonders about the existence of a computer.    It just does no occur to him to consider the possibility.    An atheist is certainly not someone to believe in the non-existence of a god, as many people wrongly assume.

Agnosticism is derived from the Greek prefix a~ for the absence of something and ~gnosis. which means knowledge.   Agnostics make a point, that they cannot know, if there is a god or not. 

Both atheism and agnosticism are based upon the scientific thinking, that the non-existence of something cannot be proven, while the existence could be proven by evidence, which so far has not been found yet.  

Atheists and agnostics are therefore two varieties of non-believers.    The real difference between atheists and agnostics and pseudo-non-believers is the difference in their estimation of the probability of the existence of a god.

For an atheist, the probability of the existence of a god is so extremely low, that only the unprovability of non-existence makes the probability any different from zero.   
For an agnostic, there is no estimation of probability, he has no opinion, if the existence or the non-existence of a god would be more probable.  

For a pseudo-non-believer, the situation is very different.  He is deriving his momentary absence of a belief from his personal experience and not from scientific thinking.   He may even estimate the existence of a god as very probable, while personally not yet having experienced any evidence of the existence of a god, he is waiting for this to happen in the future.  
He either has an unfulfilled wish for a god, or he is a disappointed religious believer, who hoped in vain for a god's help in a crisis.    

Pseudo-non-believers often declare themselves as atheists or agnostics, not knowing the true meaning.   When rationality is not a part of their personality and when they have never had a chance to learn scientific thinking, they can be sincere in their self-labeling.   Pseudo-non-believers are gullible people temporarily not under the manipulative influence of a religious belief system.    They are somehow between believes as are unemployed people between jobs. 

For an atheist in search of a fellow atheist as a mindmate, religious people are easy to avoid.   But pseudo-atheists are dangerous, when they not only claim to be atheists, but are themselves convinced to be.   As soon as it comes to the necessity of solving life's challenges, there are fundamental differences in the approach.  
The atheist wants to solve conflicts by rational decisions derived from constructive communication.  
The gullible pseudo-atheist wants to get some higher authority to solve the problems for him.    He buys self-help books of any kind to get recipes.   If he cannot prey to a god to solve the problem for him, he instead believes for example in pseudo-science like NLP as a tool that allegedly enables him to gain control over others.   

304. Emotional Morons and the Evolution of Cognition

Emotional Morons and the Evolution of Cognition
I think that humans are like cars, where the accelerator and the brake are both pressed and the speed depends on the relative force used on both.   The accelerator are the instincts for individual survival and for the survival of the species by breeding, the brake is the power of cognition counteracting and controlling the innate urges.   The steering wheel is handled by culture and social influences.

Depending on individual differences, some people are more driven by instincts, like the breeders and hedonists, who become unpleasant any time for no more reason than that they are hungry and do not get food immediately.   There are the childfree and the epicureans, who can get absorbed with intellectual and social joys and do not even notice, when they are hungry.
 

Survival on the instinctive level does not require cognition, as long as a species survives in any habitat, where there are sufficient resources for the instinctive survival behaviors.   That means, that by instinct, humans at any time during evolution could survive in appropriate surroundings independent of how far cognition had already developed.   

This leads me to the idea, that maybe the intellectual, emotional and social development  during childhood is a representation of human development during evolution.   Due to the shorter life expectancy I will compare the level of maturity and intellectual achievements at the age of 25 and not the wisdom some people acquire at old age. 

Studies of chimpanzees, bonobos, gorillas comparing their social behavior, tool use etc sometimes compare them to have as adults roughly the mental age of a very young human child.   The evolutionary split between the apes and homo sapiens has taken place several million years back.   So maybe one million years ago, 25 year old adults of our ancestors could have reached the mental age of a child today of any age below ten.   Maybe 500.000 years ago 25 year olds reached a mental age of an adolescent of today.   Today in our complex society, a child of that age is helpless and unable to survive by itself.   But in an adult body in those past times, the instincts guarantied survival, and the mental development was enhancing survival but not a necessity.   

To speculate even more, I am wondering, if persons, who in our epoch remain immature or retarded in adulthood are maybe genetic relapses to an earlier phase of evolution.    Maybe someone, who today appears as an emotional moron would have been a very average and fully adapted and successful caveman 100.000 years ago.   Maybe in those days all humans were selfcentered, considered others as commodities, had not yet developed full empathy, abstract morals and emotions or a conscience and were guided by punishment and reward.    Maybe even psychopaths are just cavemen living in the wrong time.   

303. A Metaphor for the Relationship Deal

A Metaphor for the Relationship Deal

A sane and mature man planning to buy a car first decides, what kind of a car he needs, how much he needs it and how high a price it is worth for him personally to pay for having a car at all.   
Then he visits the car dealer and evaluates the cars as being worth the price demanded for them.   The prices are fixed.   (I am omitting that sometimes people can bargain for a few extras.  But no serious and correct car dealer sells a car for only a fraction of the price demanded at first.)
The mature man's decision, which car to buy, depends on how much he needs the car and which car he considers is worth the demanded price.  He may look around at all cars in the shop, and when a 4wD, that can run 300 km/h per hour looks very appealing on the outside, he may look at it and notice that it looks nice, but he does not even consider wanting it, because he has no need for it on the paved streets with speed limits, where he is going about.   

A moron walks into the car dealer's shop, sees a car, that looks nice to his taste, but it is a 4wD and can run 300 km/h.    The moron does not need such a car, because he always drives around a city on paved streets, where there is stop and go traffic and speed limits.   The car is offered for 10,000 units of their currency and the car is also expensive to drive, because it uses a lot of petrol.   
The moron does not even ask for the price, but demands to be sold the car for 1,000 units, because that is, how much value he would get from using the car.    The dealer points out to him, that there are many cars available for 1,000 units, but if he wants this one, he has to pay 10,000 units.    On the dealer's refusal, the moron starts to argue, that the car is a piece of garbage because of the high consumption of petrol, and the dealer should be grateful to him for be able to dispose of it for 1,000 units.   But the dealer is not impressed, because he owns the car, he evaluates its value and he decides to sell it or not and at what price.   When the moron starts a temper tantrum as if he is entitled to buy the car at his own price, the dealer starts to see him as a moron and more or less politely removes him from his shop.     

The emotional moron does the same, when he wants a relationshp.    He visits the relationship fairy, looks at her catalogue and gets infatuated with the looks of a woman.   She is intelligent, educated, cultured, ethical, a good companion for an epicurean.   She is of high emotional maintenance, she needs a lot of sharing innermost feelings, communication, rational shared decision, responsibility and consideration.    He wants a woman as a commodity for his predominently physical and hedonistic needs, her immaterial qualities are lost on him, he lacks the perception and awareness for them.        
This woman is available for the price of full intrinsic commitment, bonding, cherishing and devotion.    The emotional moron offers food, shelter, clothes and household appliances, because at that price he values the fulfilling of his hedonistic needs by any woman.    The fairy points out to him. that there are many materialistic and superficial women as commodities available for that price.   But if he wants this special and specific woman, he has to pay the full price of intrinsic commitment.    
On the fairy's refusal the emotional moron starts to argue, that this woman is seriously flawed because of the high maintenance by the required fulfilling her immaterial needs of a relationship being a safe haven, and the fairy should be grateful to him for helping her to get rid of such a woman for the material subsistence offered.
But the fairy is not impressed.   She has the woman under her protection, she evaluates her value and she decides, to whom to entrust her for an appropriate offer.   When the emotional moron starts a temper tantrum as if he were entitled to get control over that woman at his own price, the fairy starts to see him as an emotional moron and more or less politely removes him from her premises.     


Both, morons and emotional morons in my metaphor are pathetic.   They want something valuable, but refuse to pay an appropriate price, because they feel entitled to get it for what they are willing to pay.   But what they can really get for what they are willing to pay is not good enough and they reject it.    They want too much and they get nothing.

302. Literature: The Prototype of the Jerk - 2

Literature: The Prototype of the Jerk - 2

This continues entry 301 about Shakespeare's 'The Taming Of The Shrew'.    I wrote all my thoughts omitting one factor:   The breeding instinct.   
It is well known in evolutionary biology, that some women are prone to subconsciously and by instinct want the genes of the most horrible jerks as material for healthy offspring, even though they would not want to be exposed to their abuse.  

So what could have happened in the inconsistent movie:   The instincts could have overridden the battle of both the jerk and Kathrina.   She could have wanted children so badly for the purpose of having someone to cling too as a compensation for being the trapped wife of a jerk.   He could have ended his abuse as a consequence of getting infatuated with her body.    They could have made a deal of any kind.   They could even have made a deal to get money out of others by prearranging her alleged submission as a ruse to win the bet.