470. Men's Innate Inclinations

470.   Men's Innate Inclinations

When two persons hardly knowing each other start to communicate by written correspondence, they are prone to sooner or later encounter situations of misunderstanding and misinterpretations, leading to wrong conclusions.   Most people tend to react immediately by perceiving the other's incomprehensible statement as weird.   

Only on second thought, people reevaluate their spontaneous reaction more rationally.   This rational handling is a good indication of a man's general attitude towards women.   This attitude represents the priority of his genuine needs for either privileges or equality.   The sooner I find this out, the better for me.  

I am realistic.   I cannot make a man overcome gender roles, as long as he profits from them, while they are only to my disadvantage.   I can only help a man to overcome gender roles, of which he is oblivious, if he is in favor of equality by his own inclination, by his own wish.   I can only support someone towards equality, if he appreciates equality intrinsically as beneficial for himself.


1.  Men proceed in handling apparent weirdness of a woman in accordance with their needs.  

1.1.  The jerk

The jerk is selfish and he feels entitled to be so.  The privileges given to men by the traditional gender roles are in his favor.    Whatever flaw, defect and shortcomings he can ascribe to a woman helps him to justify to others, why his considering her as inferior suffices for him to establish a hierarchy of domination.  

The jerk wants to believe the woman to be flawed, this allowing him not to worry about others interfering with his domination.

1.2.  The emotional moron

The emotional moron is not as selfish as the jerk, he does not feel automatically entitled to have privileges.  But he enjoys the privileges, if he can have them without a bad conscience.   He welcomes anything, that offers itself to be used to reinforce his belief in his own superiority as the justification for his privileges. 

The emotional moron wants to believe the woman to be flawed, this allowing him to justify his domination to himself.

1.3.  The unconcerned

The unconcerned is ignorant and unaware of the paramount importance of equality for an egalitarian woman.   He is misled and maybe brainwashed by the christian demand for tolerance.   He is oblivious of the meaning of ascribing flaws. He is oblivious, that tolerance for alleged flaws is detrimental to developing intellectual intimacy.    He is ignorant of the importance of eliminating wrong impressions and of avoiding devaluation.   He is unaware of what attracts him mainly to a woman, her brain and personality or her body. 

The unconcerned is neutral, apparent flaws do not consciously influence his attitude towards a woman.  

1.4.  The egalitarian

The innately egalitarian and monogamous man with a genuine wish for a companion values intellectual intimacy more than having privileges, especially if having privileges are justified by nothing more than by being a man.   

The egalitarian man is intrinsically motivated to eliminate all apparent flaws, because the less he perceives a woman's brain as flawed, the more he is attracted to her.

  
2.  A man's reaction to a situation of temporary lacking comprehension for a woman is a very good indication of what to expect from him.  

2.1.  If a man wants a woman to be flawed, then this is a big red flag, he is either a jerk or an emotional moron.

2.2.  If a man is willing to tolerate a woman by allowing her to be flawed and is not concerned about this, then this is an important topic for some profound discussion about a woman's role in his life.    His real needs are hidden beyond his ignorance and unawareness,    

Most probably he would not be a jerk.  But a woman needs to know, if he is more an emotional moron or more an egalitarian.    He first needs to be made aware, that this distinction is very important for an egalitarian woman like me.   His attitude can only be discovered with his cooperation of careful introspection.     Since this is predominantly important for the woman, misunderstandings will not be cleared, unless the woman takes the initiative to do so and is not stalled by the man's obstruction. 

     
2.3.  If a man rejects intellectually flawed women, then he experiences any instance of incomprehension as disruptive and as a task to deal with.   He is not only motivated to clear all misunderstandings, but he takes the initiative to do so.  
 

When there is some disruptive misunderstanding, jerks and emotional morons can be easily recognized, because they show their appreciation of a woman's apparent flaws.  
Egalitarians can also be easily recognized, because they are themselves motivated to initiate efforts to remove wrong impression and to restore and create reciprocal respect.

The unconcerned are the real problem.  Not only is the woman the one with the onesided need to clear the misunderstandings, while the man is not bothered, but such misunderstandings happen most to persons knowing each other very little.    The woman initiating attempts to clarify a misunderstanding risks to deteriorate the situation by adding worse misunderstandings.

The next entry will give an example of how this can happen.    

469. Gender Roles, Instincts, Alleged Flaws And Inferiority

Gender Roles, Instincts, Alleged Flaws And Inferiority

This continues entry 468, where I mentioned the asymmetrical constellations of lacking reciprocity in the significance of another person.   The same allegation of flaws indicating inferiority is very often not considered or perceived as being the same but differing, when the target is either a woman or a man.   There are double standards concerning what treatment is pertinent and suitable for women but not for men.      

In the situation or disagreement with being treated as inferior by another man, a man often reacts to the insult with aggression and anger.   This is considered as only a man's appropriate reaction.  

When women are treated or considered as inferior by men, they are supposed and expected to react with acquiescence.  There is a general pattern of how easily men are prone to presume and accept a woman's inferiority without hesitation, doubt or further investigation, no matter, what the woman herself does, says, thinks or wants. 

This unfortunate pattern can be traced back to the combination of subconscious instinctive urges and more conscious gender roles serving those instincts. 

1.   Subconscious instincts

When a woman wants a companion for a relationship of two equal partners, this means for her the crucial and indispensable condition of mutual respect and appreciation.   It excludes alleging flaws, because this implies disrespect.   For such a woman, perceiving flaws or being considered flawed are indications of lacking equality and this impedes to get involved.   For her, it is equality or nothing.  
For many men, there are two levels, two alternative relationship concepts.   Even a man, who prefers to have an equal companion, does not automatically evaluate a woman as unsuitable, when he consciously perceives her as intellectually inferior, either by fact or allegation.   Instead, often instincts take control over him.   While he does not expect emotional and intellectual benefits from someone considered inferior, his instincts still react to physical attraction, and he continues to pursue her for the benefits from using her body as a utility.  

For any woman, who restricts her choice of whom to get involved with by her evaluation of being two equals, this leads to a tragic mismatch, whenever the man fails her expectations and instead degrades and devalues her as a utility due to her alleged flaws.  He subjectively feels as justified to use her as she feels justified to expect being perceived and treated as an equal partner.      

2.  Gender roles

Social gender roles represent the inclination and needs of the majority of the population.   These roles prescribe those behaviors, which are most successfully enabling this majority to live in accordance with their subconscious instincts.  This means that gender roles favor procreation.    
Gender roles therefore standardize behavior in favor of average people.   When applied to and forced upon people, who are different and not average, this is often very detrimental.   

Gender roles are installed into people's brains mostly during childhood and youth.   The gender roles still prevalent in my own generation here in Germany were based upon the asymmetry between the male breadwinner and the dependent housewife.  
These gender roles unfortunately confound innate inferiority and secondary inferiority caused by the lack of chances to develop the innate capacities, talents and skills.   
In those days men were on average better educated, better instructed, more skilled than women.   Therefore statistically, men and women more often than not found themselves in an asymmetrical situation of interaction, where the unfortunate women were intellectually inferior independent of their intelligence and their potentials.  
A woman wasting her life away as a housewife and mother was deprived of becoming an equal partner apt to participate in intellectual communication with a man, who was enabled and encouraged to cultivate his brain.  

By experiencing this circumstantial female inferiority, men were misled to generalize it to all women and to then treat them all indiscriminately as inferior, losing any perception to notice the exceptions.   Women were also brainwashed to expect all men as superior without even checking the reality of this myth.   Thus women omitted to correct the male prejudice and men got reinforced even more in their false belief in the general and innate female inferiority.  

Habituation and desensitization perpetuated this imbalanced situation.  Too many men continue to take women's inferiority and their acquiescence therewith for granted and natural, without consciously doubting this.  
In spite of the brainwashed average women's apparent or even real acquiescence, these gender roles are very harmful to those women, who are not average and not brainwashed.   The same attitudes and behavior, that are suitable or at least not harmful to average women, are often very hurting for egalitarian educated women.  

468. Reactions To Alleged Flaws

468.   Reactions To Alleged Flaws

The topic of entry 466 was the implication, that ascribing a flaw means the indirect claim of the allegedly flawed person's inferiority.   There is a clear distinction between a friendly and respectful noticing of someone's peculiarities and the devaluation of ascribing a flaw. 

1.  My definition of a flaw:

A flaw is a peculiar attribute, that is   

• detrimental to the own life of the flawed person or
• detrimental to the targets of flawed behavior

1.1.  A flaw is not trivial. 
It is a significant detriment according to the evaluation or experience of the one calling it a flaw.  Without being detrimental, it is a peculiarity and not a flaw.   Ascribing a flaw is a devaluation, calling something a peculiarity is not. 
Alleging a flaw without consent is always an insult, even when someone recognizes having the peculiar attribute, but disagrees to evaluate it as detrimental.  
When the alleged flaw concerns attributes or traits contributing to the person's identity, then it is not only an insult, but a rejection of the person. 

1.2.  There are detriments, that people cannot agree about, unless they share some basic values and attitudes.  

1.2.1.  A good example is the reciprocal disrespect of christians and atheists.  
For an atheist like me, a christian is flawed, because his behavior is often detrimental to others not sharing his beliefs.   Christians' belief in the reward in the afterlife is their justification to hurt others.  

Christians believe atheists to be detrimental to themselves as they are believed to suffer in hell.  

Atheists and christians can never agree on who is flawed, because they derive the logic for their mutual evaluation from incompatible premises. 

1.2.2.   When people share basic values and they are mutually significant as equals, then flaws are experienced as disruptive for their relationship.  This goes both ways, because they want to respect and to be respected.  Apparent flaws are a problem to be solved.   Both partners communicate, until there is no more misunderstanding and misinterpretation leading to the allegation of non-existing flaws.  

1.2.3.   There is a difference between permanent irreversible and temporary flaws.  

A person's real but temporary flaws like irritating bad habits or states of stress can be overcome, when the flawed partner accepts support from the other.    This requires agreement concerning the detriments and disadvantages of the flawed behavior.  Based upon this agreement, the partners can cooperate towards reducing the flaw and restoring equality. 
Innate promiscuity is an example of an irreversible flaw.    Innate promiscuity is an incurable detriment to any person with the quality of innate monogamy.    

2.  The target's reaction to the allegation of a flaw depends on the social roles and the reciprocal personal significance.

2.1.  People are usually not bothered about flaws alleged by insignificant persons.   Not sharing basic values or the awareness of each other's disrespectful opinion impedes any attraction between people.  They do not become significant. 

2.2.  There are specific problems of disruptive entanglement in family constellations, where the significance precedes the allegation of flaws.  Examples are siblings, of whom one is a christian and the other an atheist or one is a soldier and the other a pacifist.

2.3.  Situations of asymmetrical significance can be very painful.   People wish to be reciprocally considered and treated as equals and as significant by those, who are significant for them.   A person's significance determines, how much his allegations of flaws are experienced as insults, humiliations, degradations and indignities.     It is a very disruptive situation, when a person does not reciprocate his significance to another, but instead claims his superiority by alleging flaws and expecting acquiescence.   
    

2.3.1.  Between men, such an insult often provokes aggression, fighting and even bloodshed. 

2.3.2.  When women are men's targets of the same insult, they are supposed and expected to react with acquiescence.  The implications of this upon women as partners in a relationship or when choosing a mate are the topic of the next entry.  

467. Doing Harm Or Allowing Harm

467.   Doing Harm Or Allowing Harm 

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/12/111202155531.htm

"People typically say they are invoking an ethical principle when they judge acts that cause harm more harshly than willful inaction that allows that same harm to occur."

"A new study based on brain scans, however, shows that people make that moral distinction automatically. Researchers found that it requires conscious reasoning to decide that active and passive behaviors that are equally harmful are equally wrong."

"an overly competitive figure skater in one case loosens the skate blade of a rival, or in another case, notices that the blade is loose and fails to warn anyone. In both cases, the rival skater loses the competition and is seriously injured. Whether it is by acting, or willfully failing to act, the overly competitive skater did the same harm."

This is a very special example, but the problem is complexer than it seems superficially.  Therefore, morally evaluating this omission has to consider some additional factors.

• The probability of the harm.
  Someone causing harm proactively can be sure that if he succeeds, the harm has been caused by him.   
  In the case of the harm after an omission of interference, the one deciding not to interfere cannot be certain of the probability of the harm to really happen.     Something else can impede it.
  
  
• The responsibility for the cause.  
  The person, who proactively harms another, is the responsible cause of the harm, which can be attributed to his actions.  But the person, who omits to prevent another from harm, is not causing the harm, only not disabling it.  
  
• The priority of responsibility.  
  People are supposed to take care of themselves before relying upon others.   Especially in the case of a dangerous activity, the person is primarily responsible himself to carefully check the equipment to avoid harm.   This includes in the example to check the skates before using them.  
  
• The recognition of impending harm.  
  When in the example a non-skater looks at the skates, he may not even notice anything wrong. 
  
• The benefits from the omission.  
  In the example, the competitor benefits.  But often, people omit warning or protecting without any selfish motives.
  
• The negative consequences of interference.  
  Interference can be punished.   In the example of the skater, the warning could lead to an angry reaction by someone already aware of the need to fix the skates.    Someone calling an ambulance by mistake for someone not really sick could be made to pay.  

466. Implications Of Alleging Flaws And Faults

Implications Of Alleging Flaws And Faults

Assuming the following constellation (, which in this context has nothing to do with couples supporting each other by agreement):    

A woman is egalitarian and has the need to be appreciated and treated as an equal partner and companion.
A man considers, perceives and interprets an expression of her thinking or behavior as flawed, while she disagrees.  

This implies, that the man creates a hierarchy of perfection, and he ascribes to her an inferior position below himself.   He also creates a hierarchy of competency of judgement, where he puts himself above her as the one able to assess her as flawed.  
This happens in his mind, no matter if the woman knows it or not.  Her ascribed position is his solitary decision, this deprives her of any influence to change her position.   By defining her low position, he perceives her as too inferior to be an equal companion. 

1.  In the case, that the man is brainwashed to accept the traditional gender roles, forming a hierarchy based upon imaginary flaws does not disturb him subjectively at all, he experiences this as how things are naturally meant to be.   
1.1.  When he only tells the woman, that he considers her as flawed, this hurts her emotionally as an insult and degradation, she feels humiliation and indignity.   She experiences any consideration based upon alleged flaws as condescension.
1.2.  When he also expects from her proactive acceptance of her inferior position, then this is narcissistic.
1.3.  When he feels entitled to do, what he wants to do, ignoring her subjective suffering by attributing it to her own alleged flaws, then this is domination.  
1.4.  When a man is not bothered about how inferior he perceives the woman, then this is a slippery slope for her.  While she does not qualify to get her own needs met as an equal companion, he often succeeds in benefiting from her as from a utility and commodity, used without being respected.  

2.  It often happens, that someone spontaneously reacts at first to any incomprehension by ascribing a flaw to the other.   But in the case, that the man himself wants equality as much as the woman, perceiving incomprehensible expressions as a flaw causes discomfort also to himself, maybe as much as it causes her.    His own wish to perceive her as equal companion and free from flaws is as strong as her own wish to be perceived as an equal companion.  
Therefore this case is a challenge for both of them to cooperate, until the misunderstanding has been cleared.   They communicate, until they both are content to have restored equality.   If he has explicitly blamed her of being flawed, he also takes this explicitly back.  
2.1. Either she explains herself until he has full comprehension of her reasons.
2.2. Or he accepts his personal limits of empathy, understanding and imagination as his own problem of not being able to judge her.   He recognizes the existence of differences and reasons, that are valid for her independent of his comprehension.  

How someone deals in the search for a mate with his incomprehension of the other's behavior is an indication of his innate ability to be an equal partner.  
If he feels ok by claiming a partner's flaws, this is a big red flag, because it is usually the first step leading to worse and more hurting behavior like domination.   If someone feels ok by taking advantage of someone judged as inferior, there is nothing to be done by the taken advantage of victim.  There is no way of convincing someone to change his behavior, while he feels good by having got, what he wants.  
I admit, that whenever a man claims me to be flawed but considers this as no problem, this not only hurts but also scares me very much.

Only if someone is intrinsically motivated and inclined to correct his spontaneous impulses to devaluate, this is a good sign.   I can rationally convince someone, who is interested and open to be convinced.   

My quest is to find someone like this as my mindmate.

465. The Implications Of Temptation

465.   The Implications Of Temptation

Somewhere I read a man's opinion about temptations and at first I was a bit astonished.  

It was in connection with remarks about the weird focus of the christian religion upon the repentant sinner.   In christianity, the repentant sinner is valued more than the innocent person, who has never done harm.    The repentant sinner seems to be the preferred role model of displayed obedience to the deity, whose restored power is considered as more important than sparing the victims from being harmed.  

Deities seem to be more often than not imagined as somewhat narcissistic.  This is not really astonishing considering how their representatives on earth consider themselves as mirroring the deity having allegedly been created to resemble him. Those representatives do not experience enough submission to both the deity and themselves from those, who never do anything bad enough to be forgiven by the deity.    

This man stated as a generalized opinion, that he is more impressed, gives more credit and has more respect for those, who resist and conquer temptations than for those, who are free from these temptations.    This view focuses on evaluation and judging the real or potential perpetrator only and it not concerned about the potential victims.  

While the religions' repentant sinner has conquered his previous weakness of succumbing to temptation, there is a related concept of struggling with temptations, to which also outspoken atheists adhere. 


This can only be explained by looking at it from the point of what some men value themselves as their ideal of masculinity, which unfortunately includes competing, fighting and winning.   If the winning cannot be over another man, then at least it has to be a hard victory over oneself.  
Therefore in a man's perception of treating women, masculinity can be either expressed by luring them into bed or by having a strong temptation to do so, but overcoming this temptation.    The reasons to choose between the two options are both reasons according to male judgment, in both varieties the women are objects and targets, whose own wishes do not count.    The reasons to resist temptations are often religiously or philosophically motivated or else they are utilitarian for gaining some compensation or not losing further access to a specific woman's body.    It is clearly only based upon how men are judging each other, not concern or consideration for women.   Sparing the potential victims is not a part of such masculinity.

Here again is a case, where men use religion to value and justify the expression of their own subconscious instinctivity, which is consciously experienced as masculinity.   As long as they are respected by other men, their lack of concern about the impact upon women is perceived as excused. 

Seen from the point of view of someone, who does not want to be a victim, the evaluation is very different.   Because the person, who does not want to be hurt, wishes to feel more safe and less at risk and is not bothered about masculinity.

As an analogy, someone living at the bank of a river tends to feel the more safe and relaxed, the longer there had not been any flood.   But as low as the probability of a flood may seem due to the past experience of its absence, the possibility cannot be excluded.   The person is still aware of living at an unsafe place, while the person living on a hill above the river can really feel safe, because there is no probability of ever being flooded.  

The man, who is susceptible to be tempted to cheat, but who resists temptation, can be experienced as dwindling risk by estimated probability, the longer and the more often he does successfully resist temptation.   But the risk remains, because nobody can predict, if in the future he will nevertheless cheat under changed circumstances.
Only the man, who is not tempted to cheat, because he is predominantly attracted to a woman's brain and personality, offers the relaxed safe haven, which the man, who merely controls his temptations, can never offer.  

More drastically expressed:  A man fighting temptations needs will-power as a crutch for a moral disability.   The man without temptations can walk freely.  

In entries 206 and 208 I expressed my attraction to psychological androgynity.   Masculinity and femininity in thinking, attitude and subconsciously determined behaviors are a result of instinctive difference leading to distinctive gender roles.   Taking away the impact of all those detrimental instincts, there can be psychologically androgynous humans, who have no need to fight, compete, exploit or seduce.   Instead they are able to be just egalitarian monogamous humans with a brain for shared joys and companionship.   

464. Religion And Charity

Religion And Charity

I am convinced that the innate gullibility to accept unproven claims by faith has evolved to serve as a mental trick to cope with the incongruity between human cognition and both the readiness to suffer and to inflict sufferings in the service of the survival of the species.  

In entry 462 I focused upon the invention of a god, who can be made responsible for the suffering caused by the ingroup-outgroup instinct and the male promiscuity instinct using women to procreate more than they really want.

But religion has many more subtle influences on society.   Charity is indirectly connected with the hierarchical instinct.  

In both animals and humans, the hierarchical instinct triggers the males to fight for a high rank in a hierarchy.   A high rank enables the holder to acquire the control over resources, which supply advantages for the survival of the own genes.   Those resources include the access to those mates with the fittest genes and to all material resources for the most healthy survival.

Competition and fighting for a privileged and powerful high rank is always a win-lose situation.   The one, who wins, knowingly hurts or damages those other human beings, whom he forces to lose.  This again can cause an evolutionary incongruity between the cognitive ability for consideration and the cruelty to nevertheless compete ruthlessly.

Acquiring the control over resources is even more beneficial for humans in monetary and assets oriented societies than it is for animals.    Human greed is not restricted to give advantage to the direct offspring.   The control over assets is an theoretically unlimited advantage for all further descendants, because the spoil can be handed on by inheritance.  

People therefore live mostly in societies with wide discrepancies between the good life of the privileged and the misery of the underprivileged.   In entry 402 about Justice By Coincidence, I give an example.

For those cruel and greedy, who made it to the top, their experiencing cognitive dissonance has been prevented by the invention of the imaginary god as a method for justifying the injustice of exploitation.   They perceive their privileges not as an unwarranted usurpation, but as an entitlement alloted to them by their god.  By being believed to be almighty, his decision cannot be criticized, therefore being privileged cannot be wrong. 
The underprivileged are made to believe, that god will reward them in the afterlife. if they submit in docility.   But some, the less ruthless of the privileged need themselves a justification.   They buy their own peace of mind by charity.   They exploit the underprivileged, but then they give back a part of the spoil as alms as their religion commands them.   This way they think to be able to buy the reward in the afterlife also for themselves and enjoy their privileges.

Unfortunately the general idea of accepting unjustified hierarchies of privileges and the positive general evaluation of charity as a substitute of justice has been subtly made part of social norms.   Now it is perpetuated even by those people, who are not religious and who do not expect anything in the afterlife.

Cooperation is a win-win situation.   It is the rationally best way to have a fair chance for all humans to have access to enough resources for a moderately good life without misery.    In a just, egalitarian society, all important work would be paid for, and everybody's needs would met at a minimum level, so that there would be not need for any charity.  

  

But even if charity could be justified as a rational compensation from all those, who happen to be the winners in the lottery of life, this would still restrict it to be only expected from those, who indeed are the winners.  Charity would not be considered as everybody's due indiscriminately.   In social reality, charity is considered as an expression of morality instead of as an act of repairing a social deficiency, that should be eliminated.

Voluntary work is a good example.    Voluntary work means to donate life time.   The privileged with well paid full time jobs usually have no life time to spare for voluntary work.   Those, who have the time for voluntary work are more often than not the underprivileged, who are unemployed with only little income.   I consider it as unwarranted to expect voluntary work from them.   Instead only the privileged, who do have a good income, should do any charity.  While those, who have time, do the work, those with a good income should donate the money, with which the poor then are paid to work for an income.

Nobody should ever work for others without being paid.   Not by slavery, not by forced labor, and not manipulated by religion or other brainwashing by those, who profit.   

463. The Inappropriate-Drooling-Pattern And Scientific Research

The Inappropriate-Drooling-Pattern And Scientific Research

This pattern happens very often, I call it the inappropriate drooling pattern.  

An intelligent and educated woman gets into a conversation with a man.  
She shows her interest in discussing some serious topic of her interest with him, because he appears to be interested and knowledgeable in this topic.
But the man only drools over her body and his demeanor is guided by his urge to lure her into bed. 
He is either in denial or oblivious of her brain and of the possible intellectual benefits of communicating with her.  
As soon as the woman recognizes him as a depreciating jerk, she feels repugnance and annoyance.  

Today I found an interesting article:
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/12/111213132001.htm

The results of some research explain logically, how the motivation for men to be driven to the inappropriate drooling behavior has gained so much prevalence in the gene pool in spite of being averse to women's dignity:

"Men looking for a quick hookup were more likely to overestimate the women's desire for them. Men who thought they were hot also thought the women were hot for them -- but men who were actually attractive, by the women's ratings, did not make this mistake. The more attractive the woman was to the man, the more likely he was to overestimate her interest. And women tended to underestimate men's desire."

"The researchers theorize that the kind of guy who went for it, even at the risk of being rebuffed, scored more often -- and passed on his overperceiving tendency to his genetic heirs."

But these findings allow further interpretations.   "The more attractive the woman was to the man, the more likely he was to overestimate her interest."   This is the key to the problem, why it is so difficult for any woman to avoid becoming the target of the inappropriate drooling pattern.   Not only the very attractive women are prone to become victims, but most women are, except only those drastically ugly. 
The attractiveness of a woman to a jerk is not an absolute value.   The more a jerk is driven by sexual dishomeostasis and the less other women are available, the more he subjectively perceives any woman as attractive enough to drool over her body.   A woman has no influence over this effect, she cannot avoid triggering the drooling except by avoiding the man, it even happens in spite of clear signals by her non-inviting attire.  

This somehow explains my own history of exasperation and nausea from experiencing the inappropriate drooling pattern described above too often.   I want and always wanted to attract a man for predominantly and initially intellectual intimacy, leading then to emotional intimacy next and only as the last step also to physical intimacy.  

I experienced the inappropriate-drooling pattern as a trap of being caught between Scylla and Charybdis.   It has caused me a lot of frustration, outrage and indignation, while I was younger and not even aware of its explanation by evolutionary biology.  

• Scylla:  I feel repugnance to those studs and machos, who are so much driven by their innate instincts, that they either drool over a woman's body or are not interested in her at all.   I always avoid them.  
  
• Charybdis:  I am attracted to the nice guys, who are senstitive, soft, shy, intellectual, reticent and tend to be psychologically androgynous.   I am attracted to them in the hope, that they are able to be equal partners in intellectual intimacy and not drool over my body.  
  Unfortunate, they are also those most prone to have been rejected by those women, who prefer the studs.   Their lack of success with others then enhances their subjective perception of my attractiveness, until they too drool over my body. 

All I wanted and want, is a man, who appreciates me for my brain and personality and who does not drool over my body or over any woman's body in blind disregard and ignorance of who I am and of the intellectual benefits available when perceiving me as companion and mindmate.  

462. Religion As The Consequence Of Evolutionary Incongruity

Religion As The Consequence Of Evolutionary Incongruity

Evolutionary incongruity is the discrepancy between the cognition enabling humans to be aware of the consequences of their actions also from the perspective of the targeted victim, while the urges of subconscious animal instincts nevertheless drive them to embark on such actions.
Inventing religions is a method of dealing with this incongruity.  

Concerning pain, there are major differences between humans and animals.    

• Animals are robots driven by instincts that ultimately serve only the one purpose of the survival of the species by procreation.   Animals have no cognition and therefore no awareness of the sufferings experienced by their victims, for which they cannot be held responsible.  
  
• Animals suffer physical pain.   They also suffer discomfort from simple sensations caused by external events as is fear of a predator or grief by the loss of a herd or mate.   Animals lack the cognition to suffer from complex and abstract emotions.  
  Therefore some instinctive behaviors do not affect animals at all, while they are extremely painful for human conscious sensitivity even when there is no physical harm.

The following are two examples, how religion is applied as a method to allow humans to ruthlessly act in a way, that is experienced as cruel by the victim.     

Example 1.   Physical Cruelty

Animal Behavior
Animals know the members of their ingroup.  Outgroup members are only perceived as objects in the environment to serve their survival.  Animals know by instinct, whom to kill and eat and with whom to share the spoil of the hunt.   They have no morals guiding decisions of what is right or wrong based upon any cognitive attitude.   They have no generalized empathy for individuals, only limited empathy for ingroup members.  
Animals like for example lions, who hunt other animals by ripping them apart while still alive, inflict agony upon their prey.   But they have no cognition, they cannot know, that their survival causes agony to others.   

Human Cognition
The human cognition has evolved enough to enable humans to recognize the physical and the emotional suffering of any other human being and the physical suffering of animals and who or what is the cause of the suffering.    Humans are able to recognize and to define cruelty.   They are able to act with consideration and responsibility and to avoid cruelty.  
The advanced intelligence of humans enables them theoretically to cooperate in peace and harmony and to solve all conflicts by constructive communication.    Considering only these capacities of human intelligence, violence, cruelty, aggression, domination have become obsolete.    Human intelligence has led to a level of scientific progress, that would allow all humans to have a moderate standard of living without ever again doing harm to each other.     

Human behavior caused by animal instinct
Human cruelty is not an automatic reaction as it is in animals, it is a conscious decision.     A person determined by animal instincts to treat another person as outgroup feels subjectively justified to allow himself to be guided more by his instincts and less or not at all by his human cognition.  Harming outgroup members is done in the full awareness, knowledge and perception of the physical and emotional agony of the victims.      

Human suffering as victims of animal instincts
While animals and humans suffer the same pain from physical atrocities, humans in addition also suffer extreme emotional pain.   Being made the victim of cruelty causes a variety of abstract emotional reactions like outrage, indignation, humiliation, helplessness, betrayal and much more, depending on the circumstances.   

The evolutionary incongruity between cognitive knowledge and instinctive urges
The same person, who is ruthlessly driven by the ingroup-outgroup instinct to cruelly commit atrocities can at the same time be very sensitive when being a victim of cruelty and atrocities.   Rational people would experience this as a serious inner conflict.   They would also be confused, when the same cruelty is sometimes seriously punished and sometimes required and commanded and the difference is not due to any merits or faults of the victims as individual persons.   Instead the only difference is between the ingroup and outgroup.  It is too irrational to be morally justifiable by unencumbered cognition.
Religion solves the problem.   History is full of examples of extreme atrocities, that were committed under the justification of an alleged god's will.   In every case, the perpetrators were fully aware of the extreme suffering of their killed, tortured, mutilated and enslaved victims.    They were not ignorant of what they did, instead they obeyed an imaginary god, who had commanded them to commit the atrocities in his name and in his service.    Therefore the pain was believed to be the god's responsibility, the perpetrators felt not responsible at all, they perceived themselves only as an infallible god's well functioning tools.  

Example 2.   Emotional Cruelty

Animal Behavior
Many animal species are promiscuous, as this seems to have advantage for the procreative fitness of some species.   Animals are robots for procreation, they do not have the cognition to evaluate a mate for any qualities as being unique beyond procreational physical fitness.   They have no cognition to get emotionally attached, to bond and to suffer from separation.   Animal mating is between two bodies for the purpose of the survival of their genes.   Animal monogamy or promiscuity is symmetrical, males and females are complementary in their instinctive behaviors.   

Human Cognition
Humans have a cognition, that enables them theoretically to get deeply bonded in a symmetrical relationship between two persons.   Human have a cognition to perceive, experience and appreciate a mate as a unique personality.   They have evolved enough intelligence to be able to value a companion primarily for non-physical benefits, for the joy of emotional and intellectual intimacy.  
Two bonded persons can become very significant for each other.   Not only the loss of a reciprocally bonded companion, but also to be mistreated, degraded and abused in a situation of onesided bonding are causes of extreme emotional pain.  
Every human is theoretically able to know this, to refrain from hurting due to consideration and responsibility and to make a wise decision of how to avoid the risk of causing emotional pain to another human being.  This rational decision is to either get bonded monogamously or not to get involved at all.   

Considering only the capacities of human intelligence, all emotional pain from being dumped, cheated, betrayed could be avoided.

Human behavior caused by animal instinct
The instinctive urges in mammals are different for females and males.    Male animals are proactive predators, the female prey are selectively defending themselves.      
There are many men, who are so much enslaved by the animal predator instinct, that they lack the ability to get monogamously attached to one woman.  They ruthlessly dump and cheat and use women and degrade them to mere bodies.   

Human suffering as victims of animal instincts
The victims of promiscuity are usually women, who are deprived of the exclusivity and bonding, which they need.   When used, dumped and cheated upon, they suffer emotional pain, that only human cognition can feel.   They suffer humiliation, indignity, depreciation, betrayal, helplessness.  

The evolutionary incongruity between cognitive knowledge and instinctive urges
Every promiscuous person is fully capable to be aware of the emotional cruelty inflicted by dumping, cheating or degrading another person to be a used body.    There is absolutely no rational justification to do this to another human being.    The ruthlessly promiscuous men cannot avoid to know and to notice, that their behavior devastates women.  Their emotional cruelty to women is not an automatic behavior, but a decision.     
Religion solves the problem.  The promiscuous men invent a god, whom they hold to be responsible for how they treat the women.  
The men believe, that god had made them to be promiscuous.   The fact, that men are on average stronger than women is used as evidence for men's false belief, that their god wants them to dominate and control women.   Men believe it to be god's will, that they are able to rape women and to make them pregnant,   Men believe it to be god's will, that they are able to control the survival resources, so that women are dependent on the cheating and cruel men.
The women are made to believe, that god will compensate and reward them in the afterlife for their plight.    By this belief women are brainwashed to submit and to accept their sufferingas god's will and not as men's decision to be cruel.
The same men, who believe to be the creation of a god and who fervently reject to be related to apes, use the comparison with the instinctive behavior of animals as an additional excuse for their cruel promiscuity.   They claim monogamy to be unnatural, because of the predominance of promiscuity in animals.  They justify using women, dumping and cheating, by animal promiscuity, but they are so mislead and ignorant, that they completely overlook the significant fact, that animals cannot get emotionally attached as most women and high quality men with low instinctivity do.  


The less humans are driven by instincts, the less they are cruel.  
The less they are cruel, the less they need religion to justify their cruelty.  

461. The 'DEITY DELUSION' - Six Years Before Dawkins' Book

The 'DEITY DELUSION' - Six Years Before Dawkins' Book

In the year 2000, I had started a msn-group called the Nonconformists' And Freethinkers' Haven, which like all other msn-groups does not exist anymore.  Microsoft stopped running the groups.

I make no claim to be original, and considering religion as a mental illness is certainly not such an extremely novel idea.   Probably quite a few other people had the same thought too.   

But when I used the expression 'deity delusion' in the following text published in the group in April of 2000, this was 6 years before Dawkins' book 'God Delusion'.        

This is a part of a page about aspects of nonconformity, it is the last version, that I had saved, all spelling mistakes are unaltered:
 

-----

believing and the deity delusion

There are many long discussions of atheists trying to prove to christians and other religious people how their belief is unlogical and irrational. They even seem to enjoy telling those religious people how stupid they are. But all they really do is waste a lot of arguments on people who are far beyond the reach of any rational argument.

I do not agree with the assumption stating all christians being less intelligent than atheists. Their problem is of a completely different origin: They have a mental disorder which I suggest to call the 'deity delusion'. As you all certainly know there are those people who have the delusion of being someone like Napoleon or a chicken or that their neighbour - who really is just a friendly fellow - is trying to kill them. They are convinced beyond any doubt that their absurde ideas are real. But once you put yourself temporarily into their frame of mind and assume leniently their conviction as if being founded on reality and truth, all their subsequent behaviour could be regarded as stringent, rational and adaquate. It is just one or a few absurde axioms followed by a set and system of behaviour that is more or less logical and intelligent when examined separetely from the underlying conviction. Hardly any sane person would discuss with a imaginating Napoleon the real Napoleon's war strategy. If anyone would try to argue about him not being Napoleon the next day he might have shifted into considering himself as Nelson instead. His basic delusion would thus not stop.

Now consider the special case that the absurde conviction is the belief in the existence of a deity of whatever kind and you have got the model of him, that devote believer in any god, allah or whomever. And as much as it is futile to argue with a "Napoleon" it is futile to argue with those religious people about any content of their faith.

Now if there is a whole asylum full of these cases of deity delution reinforcing themselves mutually in their delusion and there you have got a religion!

But our afflicted congregation is very lucky - they do not have a psychosis, but only a neurosis aquired or formed during early childhood by the brainwashing process of religious education. Therefore some of them have the luck to get cured, either by their own thinking (spontanious remission) or by being exposed to the right arguments. So here are a few of us filling pages like this...

The bad thing is the same as with any other mental disorder too: Hardly any one can be cured while he is not intrinsically motivated by subjectively suffering from his ailment. Thus though I pity those christians for their condition I have stopped taking any initiative to argue with them instead I am regarding this as a futile effort.

But one could even look at the deity delusion as one special case of a collective delusions which seem to be quite frequent. Just try to compare the deity delusion with any other collective delusion in history. One good example are the nazis. Their conviction - I think we could even call it a believe - that some groups of persons are inferior to the extent of serving as a justification for their extermination is beyond doubt a horrible delution. By being reinforced mutually between the members of the population this delution grew and developped into a powerful collective delusion. Only a minority was not afflicted and this minority was exposed to heavy pressure and threat.

I am not comparing the consequences of two different delutions on their respective victims, but when you look at the patterns of both delutions then you can hardly deny their similarity. I even think that the easy spreading of the nazi collective delution was facilitated a lot by the prevalence of the deity collective delution in pre-nazi germany and in the heads of the majority of the population. Once one delusion has found its way into someone's thinking it is not very difficult to enlargen it by integrating a few more absurde assumptions into it. There was not much resistance against the nazis from neither of the two big churches but a lot of those who did resist were atheistic socialists and communists....

460. Religion And Male Dominance

Religion And Male Dominance
   
In entry 448 I listed some subtle long term detrimental effects upon non-religious people, which are caused by the social norms derived from christianity.  

I omitted one specific indirect religious justification of male dominance.   According to the creation myth in the bible, the god created first Adam and then Eve.    For christians, their god is allegedly almighty.  Therefore a christian believes humans as a perfect creation.   Neither their phenotypes nor their behavioral predispositions are to be criticized.   
 

Average men are physically stronger than average women.   Most men are physically able to force their will upon women, they can enslave them, beat them, rape them, make them pregnant.   They can gain control over women directly by forcing them into polygamous harems or indirectly by usurping control over the resources for survival.    Most women are physically unable to defend themselves against male dominance.   Men can establish control by beating women, and they can maintain it by the threat of beating them.     

Biologically, men have the choice to dominate or to refrain.   Women have no such choice but depend on the men's choice.     Even in our modern times, the law can punish men severely for atrocities to women.   This does not take away men's choice to decide to harm or spare a woman, when she is unprotectedly available to be harmed.  

Seen from my point of view of being an apistic female, the physical ability to do so is no justification at all to actually do dominate women.  Domination is abomination, it is an outrage.  
But christians do not see it as an outrage.   They are brainwashed to believe, that the physical aptitude of men to dominate women is an expression of their god's will.   They believe that their god made men strong for the purpose of dominating women.   Christian men feel allowed and commanded by the bible to dominate women in defiance or oblivion of the women's suffering.   Christian women are brainwashed to believe, that suffering from male dominance is their god's will and that they will get rewarded in the afterlife for submission and docility.

The entitlement to dominate and the alleged superiority of any person for no other reason than their being male is a false belief without any rational basis.   This belief is as false as the belief in the god, who is considered responsible for the alleged male superiority.  
Therefore any atheist should rationally also give up the false belief of male superiority.   Unfortunately, this often is not the case.   When male christians become atheists, they gladly get rid of any behavioral restrictions, which they had felt from religion.   But they cling on to all the privileges, that christianity had brainwashed them to have been born to, including the false belief to be entitled to dominate women.    

Even when atheistic men give up any cruelty to install domination, this does not mean, that they have really given up their deeply rooted belief of being entitled to dominate.    Even when men do not coerce women under their domination, they still feel attracted to women, who are still under the effects of the christian brainwashing and allow male dominance without coercion.      

Therefore unfortunately too many atheistic men prefer tolerance to christian women as the price to pay for undisputed dominance instead of accepting an atheistic women, who offers intellectual intimacy based upon equality but rejects to be dominated.   

459. Religion And Harm

Religion And Harm

For a non-religious person, Epicurus' principle of the importance of not harming and not being harmed is a rational principle for human interactions. 

But christianity and some other religions teach people, that it is ok to suffer and to inflict harm, because compensation and reward will come in the afterlife granted by their god.  

This has serious consequences, when a religious majority installs a level of harm as the social norm of what people are expected to suffer without resistance or protest.   The non-religious minority is damaged in a subtle way.  

 

1. Comparing two victims, the religious victim RV and the non-religious victim AV.  
When both are exposed to the same harm inflicted upon them, they both experience the same pain.   But their external reactions are very different.  
Victim AV disagrees to be harmed and therefore resists, shows signs of pain and expresses outrage and protest.  
Victim RV submits to be harmed with self-control, resignation and docility.   The suffering as accepted god's will requires compliance and submission to enhance the reward in the afterlife.  
As a consequence, the same harm appears outwardly to do much worse damage on victim AV than on victim RV, while in reality, both suffer the same.

 

2.  Comparing two harm-doers, the religious harm-doer RD and the non-religious harm-doer AD.  
The religious harm-doer RD accepts to do harm and delegates all responsibility to the god.  Therefore RDs cannot be influenced by the difference of the victims' either expressed or hidden suffering.   They harm AVs and RVs with the same lack of feeling responsible.  In the worst case, the RDs even believe, that harming is beneficial by enhancing the victims' reward in the afterlife.  

The real tragic problem are the consequences of the religious attitude to harming upon the ADs.   

Many ADs are able to have empathy, consideration and responsibility.  They change their behavior, whenever they get aware of having accidentally harmed someone.   This is easy, as long as they are interacting mostly with AVs, whose reactions reflect the real amount of harm suffered.   These ADs are motivated to avoid harming and to learn how to avoid it.  
 

Unfortunately in a society, where the majority of victims are religious, ADs are misled by not getting feedback from the harmed RVs.   The more often harmed RVs seem outwardly not to be affected, the more often an AD is misled to wrongly assume, that the actually harming behavior were by far not as bad as it really is to any AV.   Over time this leads to a tragic desensitization of ADs, who lose realistic awareness of what harm they are really doing.
When then the desensitized AD gets feedback from a harmed AV, the rare AV's strong reaction is compared with the lacking or weak reaction displayed by the majority of outwardly submissive RVs. The reaction, that is adequate to the harm, appears extreme by comparison with the suppressed reaction of the RVs.  

The desensitized AD does not intend to harm, but has lost the awareness for the magnitude of the harm done and the ability to comprehend the need to improve the behavior as a consequence of the AV's feedback.   

Instead the desensitized AD considers the AV's subjective experience of being harmed as a personal problem and defect of the AV.   The AD has been misled to consider the majority of RVs as normal and expects healthy AVs to be like RVs.   

 

The delusion of the religious majority in a christian society has the detrimental effect, that non-religious persons are as prone to inflict harm as are the religious believers.       

458. Religion And Atrocities

Religion And Atrocities 

Atheists often and with justification blame religions for the atrocities committed.   
But I think, that the religions are not cause of the atrocities.  Instead religions are merely condoning the worst behavior determined by the animal instinct in people.  It frees people from feeling responsible for the consequences of their behavior and it frees them from the need to override these obsolete instincts.   Religions enable people to be robots of their instincts without getting into inner conflicts.    Indirectly religion serves procreation and the survival of the species. 

1.  Atrocities to outgroups.

Those animals, who live in groups, are driven by the gregarious instinct to be a part of the group, and by the ingroup-outgroup instinct to consider outgroup members as resources to be exploited for survival.    They kill outgroup members to get more food, sometimes they even eat them.   This gives them an advantage in the fitness for having the most success in raising healthy bearer of their genes.  

The situation is exactly the same for humans.   By killing, eating, enslaving, sacrificing or evicting from good soil the members of any outgroup, they can acquire resources for having more offspring and thus enhancing their procreative fitness.   Therefore the ruthless readiness to commit atrocities has been successfully maintained in the human gene pool.  
But humans have also evolved intelligence.  Humans are prone to ask themselves the question, why they should get punished for killing or harming their neighbor, while they are encouraged or even coerced to kill and harm others, just because they look different, speak a different language or even just live on the other side of an invisible territorial border.    This difference seems very irrational and lacking any sense justifying it.    Animals are unable to ask such a question, but some humans cannot avoid to do so.  

With enough rational thinking and the ability to have empathy and consideration, people would answer this question and solve their inner conflict by stopping the killing.   They would start to feel responsible for what they do to all people beyond the ingroup-outgroup difference.   But this would require sharing resources.  This would mean to voluntarily reduce the breeding success in contradiction to the procreation instinct.  
So instead they invented a god, who was the god of the ingroup.   Atrocities to the outgroup were ascribed to god's will and considered as god's responsibility.   Thus they freed themselves from being responsible for what they did.    Their god allowed them to be the animals, that their evolving reason hesitated to be.

2.  Atrocities to women.
Biologically seen, the survival of mammals including humans depends upon the willingness of the females to bear and raise children.   Animals do not think, they have no option to be either willing or not, they are the robots determined by their procreation instinct.  
But human females have such an option, unless men succeed in depriving them of the choice.   Evolution has made men physically stronger enabling them thus to establish control over women.   Polygamy, male power over all resources for survival, women being the property of men, were and are common social situations.   The male have the option to rape women and to force pregnancies upon them.  
As a result of the evolution of the human mind, men are able to feel empathy and to have consideration for other people's suffering.  They are capable to be conscious of causing the woman's plight, and this creates an inner conflict with the urges of the procreation instinct.   Rational responsibility requires, that they avoid causing a woman's suffering by making her pregnant, unless she agrees.    
But Instead men solved the inner conflict in favor of their subconscious procreation instinct.  They invented a god, who sends children as his divine gift and expects women to raise them in gratitude and docility.   The men made the women's suffering god's responsibility.   They consider establishing power and control over women as justified by god's will.    In obedience to this god, they now can ruthlessly force childbearing upon women without feeling any inner conflict.   This includes even atrocities to any person, who helps women with birth control.  

Religion helps people to continue to be guided by the worst animal instincts still existing in their subconscious brain.   Religion impedes them to become truly humane.   Religion impedes the evolution towards eliminating the readiness to atrocities from the gene pool.        

457. Desensitization To Violence

Desensitization To Violence

Here is some evidence for the desensitization of male brains to violence.   

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/11/111130095251.htm

"Sustained changes in the region of the brain associated with cognitive function and emotional control were found in young adult men after one week of playing violent video games"

"For the first time, we have found that a sample of randomly assigned young adults showed less activation in certain frontal brain regions following a week of playing violent video games at home," said Yang Wang, ....."The affected brain regions are important for controlling emotion and aggressive behavior."

""These findings indicate that violent video game play has a long-term effect on brain functioning," Dr. Wang said. "These effects may translate into behavioral changes over longer periods of game play.""

The evidence for desensitization to violence can be taken as an indication, that the harm done to monogamous women by promiscuous men is most probably caused by the desensitization of male brains as a consequence of the ubiquitous oversexation of the media, of everyday life and of the easy availability of pornography.  

Unfortunately, violence is recognized by men as a problem, because the victims are often men, so men are themselves at  risk.    The desensitization to promiscuity is not equally recognized as a problem, because men profit, and only women are the suffering victims.   

456. The Harm Of Asymmetrical Relationships

The Harm Of Asymmetrical Relationships

A symmetrical committed bonded relationship between egalitarian partners is based upon the combination of physical, emotional and intellectual intimacy in balanced reciprocity.  

In asymmetrical relationships one partner has privileges and the other has disadvantages.   

There are three kinds of asymmetry due to an imbalance, that is often very painful for a woman:

1.  Physical asymmetry.  
A man has a polygamous harem.    
A man cheats on his wife.

2.  Emotional asymmetry. 
One partner offers and needs emotional exclusivity of reciprocally being the most important and most significant person on earth for the other.   The partner refuses to concede such exclusivity.   He is only available on the condition of sharing his emotional ties with outsiders, often his children and/or his ex-partners.

3.  Intellectual asymmetry. 
Physical and emotional asymmetry are easily recognizable, because other persons are involved as intruders and obstacles. Intellectual asymmetry is more subtle, less easily recognizable.  It can be very damaging, even though the man may be convinced to be a considerate and moral person.  
Intellectual asymmetry is the consequence of attitudes concerning the perception of the role, qualities and place for the partner in life.  The disadvantaged partner offers and expects more, than what the other is interested and motivated to give and to share.  

Men are generally prone to cause asymmetry in relationships because of their subconscious animal instincts.  Too often a man feels justified to initiate physical involvement with a woman by nothing better than the mere infatuation with her body.   He even is ignorant, that this is not, what the woman wants.   

For a woman with self-respect, this is not a sufficient reason to agree and comply.   She allows him access to her body, only when she not only considers him as suitable to be her companion, with whom she wants to share everything for the rest of her life, but when she also is convinced, that this is reciprocal.  
Unfortunately, women are often mislead and mistaken.  Instead of becoming appreciated egalitarian companions, they get themselves into the situation of onesided and very painful disadvantages.

Even if a man commits to be monogamous, and even if he forces no intruders upon her as a source of physical and emotional asymmetry, this does not automatically ascertain intellectual intimacy and symmetry.   The woman wants a companion based upon equality, she wants to share everything with him.   But If he is satisfied with her nightly availability in bed, while she is of not other significance for his life and he has not wish to share anything except her body, he is the one, who gets, what he wants, but this is far from what she wants and needs.   

The one, who wants less is always the one, who has the power to dominate and to enforce his conditions.   When he only wants her body, this is a form of asymmetry, that makes her helpless and defenseless.  
The woman in an asymmetrical relationship is powerless to make it symmetrical.   When a man only perceives her body and is oblivious and in denial of all her invisible qualities, then there is nothing, that she can do.   No matter, how much she deserves being appreciated and valued as an equal, significant, trusted companion, she has no power to get, what she needs and wants, if the man is not able to perceive, notice and value her qualities.  

When the woman wants to share decisions, but the man does instead, what he wants and forces his decisions upon her, he has the power to do so, but she has no power to stop him.   She suffers.
When the woman wants to share all innermost feelings with a mindmate, he has the power to refuse to communicate.   She has no power to make him listen nor to make him tell her, what he feels and thinks.   She suffers.  
When the woman wants to share time and activities with the man, but he prefers to spend his time without her, he has the power to go and leave her behind, whenever he wants.   She has no power to hold him back and make him stay with her.   She suffers.
When the woman wants to be mutually significant and to be the most important person, but the man treats her as a commodity and as insignificant, he has the power to do so, but she is powerless to defend herself.  She suffers.

An egalitarian woman with self-respect suffers humiliation, indignity, degradation, disrespect, devaluation, depreciation, when she is powerless in an asymmetrical relationship.   When the circumstances make her powerless, she cannot fight for what is out of her reach and not obtainable.     
But suffering without fighting does not imply mental acquiescence, even though it may superficially appear as if she would accept her disadvantages.  The man, satisfied in an asymmetrical relationship, is often oblivious and in denial.   Her silent experiencing of outrage and indignation cause devastation, but the suffering is hidden behind resignation and apparent submission.   The relationship is toxic and the woman has no other way out except leaving the relationship.

So men have the power to choose wisely, if they are aware of this, before it is too late:  

They can make a relationship symmetrical by giving a woman, what she really needs and wants: The respect and appreciation for a person in a balance of giving and sharing physical, emotional and intellectual intimacy.

They can enforce an asymmetrical relationship upon a woman, profit from this, as long as possible, until they have devastated one woman and move on to the next.
Women have only the choice of prevention, they can refuse to enter a relationship, when the risk of asymmetry is recognizable.   Once they have made the mistake of entering an asymmetrical relationship, they are doomed.   They cannot make it symmetrical against the will of a man, who prefers the benefits of the asymmetry.   

455. Epicurus And The Hierarchical-Gregarious Brain

Epicurus And The Hierarchical-Gregarious Brain

This continues entries 452, 453 and 454.  

One of Epicurus' principles is not to harm and not to be harmed.  This principle makes his philosophy coincide so much with my own needs in how to live.  Yet equality or inequality and the pain caused by humiliation and indignity due to be forced into a lower position was never mentioned in what is known of Epicurus' philosophy.   For a long time I was very puzzled, how he could even own slaves and appear oblivious of their pain.  

I was projecting my own strong egalitarian emotions indiscriminately upon others.   Epicurus' brain was obviously strongly hierarchical-gregarious and so was the brain of all those, who were his disciples by their own free choice.    I am completely void of the hierarchical-gregarious instinct.  

Epicurus lived in a society, where there were three categories of people, free men, free women and slaves.  About 30% of the population were slaves.  Free women were very restricted in their lives.   Their main function was to reproduce.   They were excluded from schools, from public offices and from entering many public buildings and from participating in public events.   They were free only as far as not being owned or sold, but they were not free to do, what they wanted, their life was restricted by their dependence on husbands or other men to act on their behalf.

Epicurus seems to be completely void of any empathy, consideration or responsibility for the harm done by pushing people down to and holding them in inferior conditions and situations.   Not all people experience this as equally harmful, because their subjective experience depends upon the predisposition of their either more egalitarian or more hierarchical-gregarious brain.   But at least some people do get harmed by enforced hierarchy.   

A philosopher teaching a general way of life supposed to be valid for everybody should take such harm into consideration.   Therefore there is a contradiction between his benevolent philosophy of homeostasis and enjoying life on this earth and his unconcern about the pain, that he was inflicting himself upon those hierarchically lower.    He himself did own slaves.   He did allow women and slaves to enter the garden community, but it was doing them a merciful favor as exceptions.   He seems to have been void of any comprehension for the unjustified humiliation of this attitude.  

Epicurus was the infallible guru, the never erring teacher, whose wisdom was above the criticism of his disciples, whose veneration and reverence was ascertained by an oath to adhere to his teachings.    He was someone, who enjoyed the power, praise, prestige and influence of being the guru on the pedestal.    He had a narcissistic need for veneration, but he earned it with real achievements, so he was successful in fulfilling his needs.   The benefits from his place on his pedestal were his motivation and compensation for the certainly hard work, stress and exhaustion of doing, what was expected from him.  
The followers accepted their devote role as the price to be allowed into the community.   Those free men having a choice, whose egalitarian brain was determined by the need for the dignity of being equals, were not attracted to become Epicurus' disciples but deterred to stay away.   The slaves of course were not asked.  Women with an emotional need for equality got treated better than elsewhere and had to be content with the emotional alms given to them.   There were no places offering the appreciation of full equality to women, they had to take the best there was.              

Epicurus had a psychological need for submissive disciples, succeeded in attracting them, got reinforced by their willingness to allowing him the place on his pedestal.   People with egalitarian brains were deterred from getting near him, therefore he was deprived of even noticing their existence.  The entire garden community including Epicurus' himself were driven together by the shared very strong hierarchical-gregarious instinct.   The hierarchy established was logical only to those choosing it, while it was a deterrent to those with an egalitarian brain.    Epicurus' blind spot was the conclusion, that the deliberate submission of his disciples was not the choice of some self-selected persons, but a ubiquitous human trait.

Epicureanism as it has come to us from 2300 years ago needs to be adapted and modified by two major additions:  

Apistia and egalitarianism.