549. Citizenship - The Lottery Of Life

549.   Citizenship - The Lottery Of Life 

A matchmaking site asks as one of many also the following question:

The life of one of your fellow citizens is more valuable than the lives of ten foreigners.

True
False

For an egalitarian like me the attitude expressed by such a statement is repulsive.  It is the lottery of life, into what citizenship, to what parents and with what genes people are born.   Nothing thereof is anybody's personal merit.

Nationalism, chauvinism and patriotism are irrational.   Being proud of one's citizenship is the unfounded pride of something not individually earned. The rational justification for being proud of something is the real achievement obtained by the investment of efforts.   

The citizenship of any country has benefits and disadvantages, and the lottery of life imposes both upon people.   It is irrational to be proud of having any citizenship for whatever reasons while maintaining the denial of reasons to be ashamed of it.    As far as the benefits outweigh the disadvantages, having a specific citizenship is rather a reason to appreciate being a winner in the lottery of life.  

I am German, but this does not justify neither reasons to be proud nor to be ashamed as an individual, no matter the impact, which having the German citizenship has had upon my life:
1.  A university degree is considered everybody's right in the case of sufficient intelligence.   When I studied, this right not only included free tuition, but also a grant to live on to all students, whose parents were not rich.    
I owe my degree to my German citizenship.   In many other countries like the USA, where education is a merchandise, I may have spent my life as an unhappy cashier at a supermarket.  
2.  I grew up between people, who had either participated in or at least passively enabled the Nazi terror and atrocities.   Some of my teachers had been soldiers, and I was ignorant of what the majority of adults around me had done, while I have never personally known anybody of those, who had resisted.  I suspected every adult to be guilty of having caused harm to innocent people.   As a consequence I grew up with a deep distrust and disrespect towards the entire generations before me.  This influence led me to define morals predominantly as the avoidance of harming others.      

Being a German citizen gave me both benefits and disadvantages.   But neither of it can be attributed to my person.  
Getting my degree paid for by the German government was not my personal merit.  
The guilt of German history is not my personal guilt.  

Nationalism as a justification of attributing value to individual persons is obsolete and needs to be overcome.    The only moral justification to distinguish between individuals' value can be derived by an assessment of the harm done by them to others.   

Therefore here is my personal statement:  

The life of one person, who never harms others, is more valuable than the lives of millions, who do harm. 

548. The Evolution Of Men's Brains Lags Behind The Evolution Of Women's Cognitive Needs

548.   The Evolution Of Men's Brains Lags Behind The Evolution Of Women's Cognitive Needs

The technical quality of visual and auditory imitations of people on screens has reached a level of similarity, to which human brains have not evolved.   The inability of the human brain to distinguish between real persons and their virtual representations on screens effects the subconscious mind of both genders.    

But only in men this effect aggravates and enhances their unfortunate instinctive urges so drastically, that many of them become emotionally crippled by the tragic commodification and objectification of women.   

Consumers of pornography are misled by their brains to confound the perception of pornography as if it was the experience of observing the real bodies of the objectified women.   The more often men expose themselves to this fallacy, the more this distorts their attitude, expectations and behavior towards all women.   

This fallacy is perpetuated by the discrepancy of men's conscious superficial awareness of merely looking at a screen and the subconscious susceptibility.   They are either ignorant of the damaging impact of pornography upon their subconscious mind, or they choose denial, when women attempt to warn them.  
Men are not born as commodifying jerks, they are only born with a high risk to becoming jerks by the exposure to pornography.   

As usually, writing about what I personally perceive as an outrage against women's dignity is easily dismissed as a frustrated woman's rants refusing to accept her purpose as seen by many jerks, unless my complaints are backed up by other sources.  

So I just found an article on this topic:

http://scholar.googleusercontent.com/scholar?q=cache:2pPhsT0Gex0J:scholar.google.com/&hl=de&as_sdt=0&as_vis=1

 Here are some interesting quotes:

"In The Media Equation: How People Treat Computers, Television and New Media Like Real People and Places (1996) Byron Reeves and Clifford Nass argue that there is no essential or functional difference in how the brain responds to the ‘real’ physical world, and how it responds to media images and artificial entities. According to Reeves and Nass our “old brains” have not yet caught up with our new media technologies and they do not have the sophistication to distinguish between a real physical object in the world and a media image or robotic simulation of that same object. This means that people tend to respond in essentially the same way to screen images of a person or a virtual computer persona as they would to a real person. Even though we may be consciously aware that screen images and simulated entities are not real, nevertheless, we have an ingrained unconscious tendency to treat them as if they were"

"Recent research into the phenomenon of mirror neurons also suggests a neuroscientific basis for this physical and emotional response to screen images and artificial entities. Experiments show that areas of the brain collectively known as the ‘mirror neuron system’ respond not only when individuals perform an action themselves but also when they watch someone else perform that action. Watching someone pick up an object triggers a similar response to actually picking up the object yourself. Screen-based actions and experiences also trigger mirror neuron responses and corresponding physical motor responses; pornography is a key example here."

"Of course, this tendency to treat screen images and robots as social partners means that we have a corresponding tendency to expect them to react in ways that are socially and naturally appropriate and believable. When they don’t, and our expectations are not met, the result can be one of frustration, disappointment and annoyance."

This last quote is important concerning an additional trigger for men to harm women.   While men's brains confound the realistic pornographic images with real women, these picture are nevertheless restricted to the screen and not available for tactile abuse.   This can cause men to feel frustration and anger.    

When such frustration is added to a man's already distorted general attitude towards women, he becomes an even worse hazard of inflicting real life abuse and harm upon any woman happening to be in his reach.

547. The Subtle Immorality Of Christian (Pseudo-)Morals

547.   The Subtle Immorality Of Christian (Pseudo-)Morals

This continues entries 545 and 546.   

I watched this video made by a group of people around Reisman
 

The Kinsey syndrome

http://www.drjudithreisman.com/archives/2009/03/watch_videos_on.html#table34

This video presents principally the same information concerning Kinsey's misconduct and aberrations as does Tate's documentary.    I can agree with the simple attribution to Kinsey of the onset of the sexual revolution and with Reisman's pointing out, that pornographic magazines like Playboy are one facet of the damage done by the sexual revolution.  Her elaboration of the harm of pornography in her article in entry 545 is excellent. 

I see this in a wider context of an unfortunate reciprocal reinforcement between social development and technological progress leading to the fatal oversexation of society.    Kinsey's mere claim of what and how sexual behaviors should be a social norm happened to coincide with men's instinctive predispositions to commodify women.  But only the development of a sufficiently high quality of photos, moving pictures and recorded voices made the presented virtual persons in the media such a good imitation of real people, that there impact upon the brain is nearly or completely the same as if they were real.   
   

Beyond this partial agreement, the bias of some of the conclusions, interpretations and claims of the video make me shudder.    This video is one more example, how any morality derived from a religious belief system can be very immoral, when morality is measured by how much the victims are either harmed or spared.   

The morals of any religion arbitrarily defining sin cannot be more rational to the needs of individual humans than is the belief system itself.

Bias/fallacy 1.  The video attributes Kinsey's part in the atrocities to children to his having rejected religious beliefs.    There are many possible explanations of what was wrong with Kinsey causing him to harm other humans.  Maybe his behavior was due to psychopathy or any other disorder, but it was certainly not caused by the absence of religion.  

Bias/fallacy 2.  The video condemns behaviors, even though they do no harm.    

Homosexuality is generally condemned.  The video does not distinguish between the differences in the harm caused by either promiscuity or monogamy.    A caring committed couple is beneficial to each other, independent of both partners' gender being the same or different. 

Bias/fallacy 3.  The video even condemns beneficial behaviors.   Abortion is condemned, even though legal abortion is beneficial.   Women are protected from harm, while nobody is harmed.        

Bias/fallacy 4.   The video condemns necessary preventive adaptations to reduce the risk of harm, even though the causes of the necessity cannot be changed.  

The video condemns sex education for children.    The ubiquity of the oversexation of the media makes it nearly impossible to avoid young children to be exposed to age-unsuitable material.   Age appropriate sex education can reduce the risk or prevent harm.   

Bias/fallacy 5.   The video is not concerned about subjective harm, only about sin and fraud.  
Example 1:  The tragic case of the girl, whose father was paid by Kinsey for taking notes during his abuse of his own daughter.  
In Tate's documentary, she was presented as a suffering woman having been traumatized by an outrageous act.
In the religious video, she was presented as a witness of Kinsey's sin and fraud, her lifelong suffering was omitted.   
Example 2:   A man is interviewed about having ended his pornography addiction due to in his own words his 'fear of god'.   There was not one word of consideration, guilt or remorse concerning the victims abused directly and personally by him or indirectly by the production of the pornography.   He did not change his behavior to stop harming others, only himself.    He subjectively stopped to sin, not to harm.  

Bias/fallacy 6.   The video implicitly shows the christian attitude, that nothing done to an adult woman is a sin bad enough to be mentioned, let alone condemned.   In the christian world view, women are meant to suffer and to wait in patience until their god does his job to compensate them after their death for the plight.   

The video's attributing a lot of harm to children to the influence of pornographic magazines like Playboy is very stringent.   But there is not the least logical reason to protest against harm only when the victims are children, but to completely omit all of the harm done to women in the video's entire duration is over two hours.  

It is absurd to consider women as growing up automatically for the destiny of sufferings by male abuse and commodtification.    Harm to adult women is misinterpreted as a god's will, which therefore cannot be a sin to bother about. 


In addition of being already apistic, because this fits my rationality, any belief system, in which morals do not serve to protect and prevent all people equally from being harmed and abused, is as repulsive as it is dangerous.   
in the above example, the immorality of alleged morals happens to be christian, but this is just one example, some other religions inflict even more drastic harm on the victims by the alleged justification of a cruel pseudo-moral.  

546. Kinsey Debunked

546.  Kinsey Debunked

The article presented in entry 545 led me to Reisman's web page.

I had always thought of Alfred Kinsey as of a serious scientist until I watched this documentary:   

Secret History: Kinsey's Paedophiles
A Yorkshire Television production by Tim Tate

http://www.drjudithreisman.com/archives/2009/03/watch_videos_on.html#tate

This documentation debunks Kinsey as scientifically a fraud and as having facilitated, promoted and encouraged the molestation of children.  
Evidence of him paying money to a father for taking notes and using a stop watch while abusing his own daughter is shown.   

545. Erototoxins - What All Men Should Be Aware Of But Very Few Are

545.   Erototoxins - What All Men Should Be Aware Of But Very Few Are

In entry 544 I wrote about how the influence of the oversexation of the media has aggravated men's innate tendency towards an asymmetrical basic attitude towards women as described in entry 543. 

This is not my imagination.   There are scientific sources.    This study is about the damage done on men's brains by magazines like Playboy, Hustler and Penthouse.    

http://www.drjudithreisman.com/archives/History_and_Science_-_Erototoxic_Images_Drive_Sex_Trafficking_Demand.pdf

It is an important article to be read entirely, especially by those men, who do consume pornography with the naive illusion, that it would not affect them.    No selection of quotes could sufficiently represent the scope of the outrage reported in its 20 pages.   

This article taught me a new word:  Erototoxins.   In Reisman's own words:

"Pornography, “sexually explicit media,” function as “Erototoxins,” the toxic side of eros, converting complex persons worldwide into objects one ‘screws into’ via one or more of several orifices."

Cigarettes are sold with obligatory warnings printed upon the package as these:  

Smoking kills 
Smoking seriously harms you and others around you

Every item of pornography and other erototoxic material should have a warning too:

Pornography kills women and children
Pornography seriously harms your brain and causes you to harm others around you

544. My Fantasy Of The Golden Age Of Neuroscience

544.   My Fantasy Of The Golden Age Of Neuroscience

The last half century has been the age of great electronic and technological progress.    This enabled the ubiquity of the impact of media bringing along also the collateral damage of invisible, subtle and unrecognized emotional harm to many people.  The media have enhanced the already innately detrimental effect of the obsolete male instinctive urges even more in the wrong direction, as oversexation and promiscuity have been made a social norm.   
Men's instinctive tendency to the asymmetrical attitude towards women (entry 543) has been implicitly and subtly reinforced as a consequence of this unfortunate social norm.
 

This is generally overlooked, ignored and denied, and society pays a high price for this.  Women suffer directly and more knowingly from commodification and objectification forced upon them.   Men are deprived of the higher emotional benefits of bonded monogamous commitment, but they are usually oblivious of this, because the deprivation is hidden behind the superficial immediate satisfaction available by the abuse of female bodies.  They are not even aware of what they are depriving themselves of, as they never had a chance to experience anything better due to being exposed to the oversexation too early during childhood.         


Regularly reading newsletters informing about really amazing results of research in neuroscience has led me to wonder, whether we may now be at the onset of the age of neuroscience.  It even has the potential to become the golden age for women, would neuroscience achieve the very significant goal of removing the slippery slope of the ongoing reinforcement of the worst male behaviors and attitudes.   

While women's mere complaints about suffering from commodification and asymmetrical attitudes (entry 543) are dismissed by men as female shortcomings, the growing evidence of effects observed by brain imaging methods is more difficult to disregard.    Hard and multiple evidence could finally have an impact upon men's persistent denial, how their own instincts are a real problem requiring to be dealt with.  

If this insight would be widely accepted, then this could lead to the application of medical science and neuroscience to develop methods to reduce men's needs for sexual homeostasis down to a beneficial level, where is seizes to damage women.   While the body of unattached females would no longer trigger any urges for abuse in men, they would instead always be attracted first to a woman's mind and personality, before they are attracted to her body.  

It would certainly be easy to create some pills, which combine the bonding of oxytocin and a reduction of libido or even some appliance for brain stimulation for this purpose.    A bonding helmet for men similar to Persinger's helmet would be a great invention.   

What a dream:   A helmet stimulating a man's brain, and even the worst jerk would become a caring, responsible, bonding, monogamous nice guy, feeling a need for commitment.    This would give women the option to reject any man, who refuses to use this helmet.   A helmet could thus free humanity from the scourge of male promiscuity.  

But I am taking my fantasy even one step further to mere science fiction.    If it were not just a helmet, which a man can decide to use or not, but if it were a chip to be planted in every man's brain, this could really create a paradise on earth: 
There would only be nice and decent men never hurting a woman.   No more rape, no more adultery, no more using and dumping, no more predators making women miserable by the degradation of pursuing them as prey.   No more prostitution, no more pornography,   A woman would be safe to chose, where she wants to be at any time of the day or night without risking to be attacked.  

All the above are far fetched and unrealistic dreams, as long as men generally do not have any insight, how much their excessive sexuality does not enhance but destroy the emotional quality of life, which is a potential of human cognition but only when it is unrestricted and undistorted by instincts.   The obstacle are all those men lacking any comprehension of the benefits for themselves of any method resulting  in the replacement  of the primitivity of their being animals with true humane happiness.  

 

Men's choice to either allow themselves to be controlled by their instincts or to control the instincts are rarely ever motivated by consideration of women's dignity or by the rational question of equality or by doubting the justification of asymmetrical attitudes (entry 543).

Throughout history and up to now, sometimes men have and still do fight against their instinctive urges for sexual homeostation, but the reason is always religious or philosophical and not any consideration for women.   They focus upon their success or failure concerning their self-control as a part of their self-esteem and self-worth.   They do not reject instinctive urges as a distortion of men's cognition concerning the attitude towards women, they do not value the avoidance of damage to women.    Sparing women is not their goal, it is only a lucky collateral benefit.     
The catholic priest, who succeeds in keeping his hands off his house keeper does not do this by respect and consideration for the woman.   He does this by fear of punishment in the afterlife and as a prevention of feeling a failure and looser due to his vows of celibacy.   

543. The Symmetry Or Asymmetry Of Men's Basic Attitude Determines Their Behavior Towards Women

543.   The Symmetry Or Asymmetry Of Men's Basic Attitude Determines Their Behavior Towards Women

In my reply to a comment on entry 540, I explained, how I can only prevent to be harmed and abused in a relationship by the reciprocal conscious choice of a partner, who realistically can expect to get his needs met without hurting or bullying me.   

I have outlined extensively in this blog, how I need to be treated and what treatment and behaviors are not acceptable.    This serves the purpose of enabling any interested man to check reciprocal suitability without hurting.   

This leads on to the problem of predicting the probability of being hurt as early as possible during any contact.    It is futile and even ridiculous to ask any man the direct question, if he commodifies and abuses women.    No man ever would reply in the affirmative.   Some men are not even aware of their own hidden real attitude.   What they believe to be justifiable behavior is experienced as abuse by women.

A man's real basic attitude towards women is more reliably inferred from his behavior.  Basic attitudes are usually congruent with the strength and predominance of instinctive needs and urges.   These attitudes are invisible or hidden, but the behavior is an observable expression of the attitudes.  

Men's basic attitudes towards women are either symmetrical or asymmetrical.  

A symmetrical attitude can be expected, when a man's innate needs are balanced, when his conscious non-physical needs for intellectual and emotional intimacy, activities and a safe haven shared with a bonded companion are at least as strong as his physical instinctive needs for homeostasis.    

Experiencing only or predominantly those instinctive needs leads to the asymmetry of the basic attitude.   

1.   Asymmetrical basic attitude.   

Commodification, objectification and peripherisation are asymmetrical varieties of the basic attitude, they all determine men to hurt and abuse women.  
These attitudes are expressed by the secondary attitude of implicit or explicit claims of entitlement, which are inappropriate, because they aim at acquiring onesided benefits only for these men.   Feeling entitled to benefits not otherwise available they also feel entitled to hurting and harming behaviors as the method to acquire the benefits.   
1.1.  In the case of the entitlement delusion, abusers are oblivious, that what they believe to be their entitlement, is considered and perceived as outrageous and preposterous by others.    Therefore it does not even occur to them to hide their entitlement delusion, to the contrary they are surprised, when the women disagree.    They get angry and aggressive bullies and they consider any woman as defective and flawed, who refuses to let them have, what they feel entitled to get.   They are the least hazard to women by being easily recognizable.
1.2.  The entitlement is combined with the awareness, that others disagree.   This makes them a hazard, because they use manipulations, tricks and pretense to get, what they feel entitled to but which is otherwise not available.   

1.3.   Sometimes men are not aware, that their behavior expresses entitlement.   Their fallacy of believing to be in agreement with a woman's symmetrical expectations makes them also a hazard.   More about this follows below.

2.  Symmetrical basic attitude.

Egalitarianism and bonded monogamy are varieties of a symmetrical basic attitude, which determines a man to have more reasons to protect a woman against being hurt and harmed than to inflict it upon them.    
These basic attitudes are expressed by secondary attitudes, as are for example responsibility, consideration, commitment as including obligations, caring, reliability, predictability, trustworthiness.    People often declare these attitudes explicitly as forming their value system, which they identify with.   But even without being consciously chosen, these secondary attitude determine specific behaviors.    


Unfortunately, things are more complicated.     The behavior is usually a fairly good indication of and congruent with the real basic attitude.   
But any verbal declaration of secondary attitudes cannot be relied upon, because they are influenced considerably by social, cultural and educational influences.   Someone's mere claim to be responsible does not imply, that he really knows, what responsibility means and what behavior expresses responsibility.      

As a consequence, when a man agrees with or even offers proactively to behave according to specific secondary attitudes, this is far from a guarantee for a woman to really be treated according to her expectations.   
In the case, that the man is not purposefully manipulating her, this is caused by the man using words without comprehending their full and correct meaning, which eludes him due to his lacking the corresponding basic attitude.   The man agrees with something, because he knows it to be expected from him or as the condition for being accepted.     But he agrees to give, what he has misunderstood as the meaning of the word, not what the woman expects by using the same word.   


Commitment is an example.     

Entitlement and feeling obligations are mutually exclusive.    When someone feels entitled to a benefit, this means he feels no obligation to give something back.  Whenever someone already considers something as his property or his due, he sees no logical reason to earn or acquire it by a deal.
Accepting an obligation is the contrary, it is the recognition of another person's entitlement to get benefits in return for what is given as part of a deal.

1.   A man with an asymmetrical basic attitude misunderstands commitment as a method of establishing entitlement by ascertaining his control over a woman.    This serves to get benefits from the woman at his convenience.  

2.   A man with a symmetrical basic attitude agrees on a deal concerning the benefits of the relationship for the woman as equally valid as his own.   He accepts commitment as including the obligation to fulfill his part of the deal in return for the benefits he gets.   

Both use the same word, commitment, but they do not mean the same.    When a man gets subjectively committed by feeling entitled and a woman subjectively gets committed with the expectations of a man being bound by obligations towards her, this will lead to serious suffering for the woman.   


The symmetry or asymmetry of the basic attitude depends on fairly stable innate traits as are the instinctive and the intellectual needs.  As long as men succeed to enforce getting benefits from commodification, they have no logical reason to give up their privileges.    Therefore it is rather improbably that a man's asymmetrical attitude changes into a symmetrical one.   

Appropriate treatment of a woman comes only natural, when it is grounded in a man's symmetrical basic attitude, while a man with an asymmetrical attitude is innately oblivious of how to treat a woman without hurting her.   

Such a man has a serious problem even when he is so much attracted to a specific woman, that this motivates him to attempt to treat her how she wants to be treated as the price for being accepted.    

He has not clue, how to behave, unless he gets a recipe for every situation.   He experiences, that every behavior, which is logical for him under the premise of his entitlement, fails and is rejected by someone, who expects him to fulfill obligations.

Whenever he is ignorant of the suitable recipe, he is prone to relapse to the inappropriate hurting behavior derived from his alleged entitlement.   
This causes a very fragile situation:  The woman is not respected as an equal, she is only a commodity temporarily treated as if she were appreciated and respected.  
This can only last, as long as this gives him subjectively more benefits then bullying her to usurp his alleged entitlement to benefits.   

She cannot be happy, because happiness requires to be perceived as an equal partner in a symmetrical relationship.  But due to his relapses she is fully aware of the indignation and degradation of not really being appreciated and respected, even though his attempts create the intermittent appearance as if. 

A woman's happiness requires a man's symmetrical basic attitude.     

542. The Fallacy Of Utilitarian Compensation Without Agreement

542.   The Fallacy Of Utilitarian Compensation Without Agreement

This continues entry 541.  

Two persons, of whom one calculates the total costs and benefits by one calculation, while the other considers pain and pleasure as independent, are a mismatch with tragic consequences.   Their basic attitudes concerning harming and hurting are incompatible.

Whenever a person is principally willing to control and restrict the own behavior for the purpose of not risking to destroy the relationship by impeding the partner's happiness, there are two options.   These option differ fundamentally in the very disparate attitude towards what constitutes happiness or unhappiness.  

• Option 1:  Happiness is defined as the difference between being hurt and being pampered, it is calculated as pleasure provided minus pain inflicted.   The more a man feels entitled to hurt a woman for the benefit of his own pleasures, the more he compensates for this by providing real or ascribed pleasures to the woman. 
  This is demonstrated in the plot of the classical Hollywood couple, where the man feels entitled to cheat, as long as he buys enough diamonds and fur coats to the wife, whose acquiescence to his transgressions can be thus bought. 
   
• Option 2:  Happiness is defined as the absence of unhappiness caused by harming and hurting behavior.   A man intending to keep a woman needs to focus all his efforts on not making her unhappy, and this requires for him to know or to learn, how to avoid hurting her.   Not being hurt is the most important ingredient of being happy.  
  As long as he does not hurt her, the man does not need to do anything else to please her.   
  In this option, transgressions can never be compensated for.   Not forgiven transgressions destroy the relationship.   Acquiescence with transgressions is not available, only forgiveness earned by the transgressor's genuine and sincere guilt, contrition, amends and full recognition of his obligation to never repeat the transgression.  

When both partners are a match concerning the preferred option, each of the options can work for them.

But conflicts are unavoidable, whenever one person - usually the man - applies option 1 upon a woman needing option 2.  

In this case, a spiral of deterioration is automatically initiated, when the woman feels hurt by the man's specific behaviors.   She defines and experiences as transgressions, what he feels entitled to do.    Without even any agreement as to what are transgressions, they are a mismatch, and the spiral of deterioration is the logical consequence.  
It starts, when he usurps, coerces or enforces his own advantages and privileges from and upon the disagreeing woman, feeling entitled to them.    She experiences being hurt for his selfish benefits as abuse, but he disagrees.   

Getting aware of her disagreement and resistance are for him no sufficient reasons to stop his transgressions.   Nevertheless he does not want to risk driving her away, so while he refuses to renounce the benefits gained by the transgression, he instead attempts to eliminate her unwelcome reactions to his behavior by any form of compensation, which is easier for him than changing his behavior.   
Believing that pleasing her enough would suffice to be able to continue his transgressions, he bends backwards in doing and overdoing things for her, which he believes to be sufficient to please her.       
But this does not work as he expects and as he feels it to be his due.   She continues to feel hurt, because he continues his hurting behavior and his commodifying attitude of feeling entitled to hurt her.   Nothing he does and tries has any effect, as long as he does not give up the commodification and the hurting.   
The next step of deterioration is his getting angry and frustrated for not getting the expected appreciation of and gratitude for what he does for her.   In his subjective experience, he is paying for her acquiescence to how he treats her, but she does not deliver the goods.    She does not feel any gratitude, because she clearly distinguishes between what someone does for the real and sole purpose of pleasing her and what someone merely does for the purpose of buying her submission to being hurt.    This purpose devalues anything of what he does for her, no matter how much she would enjoy it otherwise.          
Yet he believes to have paid and thus he feels justified to continue transgressing.   This is another turn of the spiral of deterioration.   Wanting nothing except the termination of being hurt and abused, every new or repeated transgressions makes her more unhappy, completely unimpressed by his unasked for compensations.  All the man's intensified efforts to compensate are in vain, making him more and more angry and even feeling hurt himself. 


A deal is only a deal between (at least) two persons agreeing.    When someone wants an items owned by his neighbor, throwing any amount of money at his neighbor does not make it a deal to buy the item, as long as the neighbor refuses to sell.    

It is the same with the compensation:  It would only be a deal with the partner's agreement.   But what one person wishes and wants does not suffice to make it a deal.    A woman's acquiescence with being hurt cannot be bought from her with not matter what pampering and unasked for compensatory pleasures, if her acquiescence is not available for sale.    

541. The Distinction Between Utilitarianism And Commodification

541.  The Distinction Between Utilitarianism And Commodification

I am not very learned about the standard philosophical theories.   My paradigm of a rationally based commitment of two egalitarians as presented in this blog is the result of extensive pondering over my own relationship needs.   
I just discovered, that my own commitment paradigm coincides a lot with the philosophical theory called Utilitarianism.        

http://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utilitarianism

"Utilitarianism is a theory in philosophy about right and wrong actions. It says that the morally best action is the one that makes the most overall happiness or "utility" (usefulness). This is not limited to the happiness caused by a single action but also includes the happiness of all people involved and all future consequences."

"Bentham wrote about this idea with the words "The greatest good for the greatest number", but did not use the word utilitarianism. It was Mill, a follower of Bentham's ideas, who named the idea."

There are two ways of calculating the total costs and benefits.

• Pleasures and pains are all put together in one overall calculation. 
  This principle is accepted and lived by those people, who consider exposing oneself deliberately to serious hardships for the purpose of earning pleasures as an option.   Extreme sports are an example.
   
• Based upon the reasons, why the impact of suffering is comparatively much stronger than that of missed and renounced pleasures, both are considered separately and independently. 
  This calculation accommodates my own inclinations, which I consider as important to be shared with a mindmate.

1.  Limitations of the application of the utilitarian principle

Applying the utilitarian principle to maximize the happiness of a couple has limitations.   If these limitations are ignored, the possible benefits of the utilitarian principle are reversed into a situation even worse than that of two persons basing their interactions upon bartering and bargaining.  

1.1.  Every utilitarian decision how to behave requires the correct knowledge of the other's subjective perception and experience of this behavior depending upon individual differences of sensitivity, endurance, resilience and needs.   

The utilitarian principle only works for both partners, when

• shared decisions are based upon a correct assessment of the impact of every decision upon both.
• each partner's independent decisions are as valid as if shared, because the assumptions about the impact upon the partner are correct.  
• people are a match concerning their evaluation of the meaning and magnitude of the impact of specific behaviors.  

1.2. Haphazard people with very different individual needs and situations applying the utilitarian principle upon their shared decisions cannot expect this to lead to a fair balance of giving and receiving.
But the subjective experience of justice due to a fair balance is one important factor in what makes a relationship stable and durable.   

Therefore only two persons being a match in their needs, priorities and sensitivities are prone and able to have the combination of both, the benefits added by the utilitarian method of shared decisions and the overall long-term balance of giving and receiving.

This requires to focus upon the careful choice of a suitable and compatible partner as a matching criterion of paramount importance.    The attempt to enhance happiness by utilitarian behavior fails with a mismatch. 

To sum it up:  
The more two partners are compatible and a good match, the more the utilitarian principle can enhance happiness for both of them.   Otherwise the relationship is doomed as either a never ending battle over unresolvable conflicts or as an asymmetrical situation, where one has the power to benefit and the other has the disadvantages.   
The more there is for example a discrepancy between a man's instinctive urge to use a female body and the woman's emotional needs for a committed safe haven, the more the utilitarian principle is a onesided hazard for the woman.  


2.   The baseline of wellbeing

The neutral feeling of the absence of both pan and pleasure is the logical baseline, the state of homeostasis, of being at ease.    People can experience this baseline as sufficient wellbeing without missing anything, as long as they are not aware of its existence.   

The difference between suffering pain or displeasure and the baseline is much more drastic and significant than the difference between the baseline of homeostasis and pleasure.  

Example 1:   When air does not contain any olfactory stimulating content, this is neutral.  People would feel perfectly fine, if there were never anything to smell.    

Being exposed to stink is worse than to be deprived of fragrance.   Someone exposed to an equal mixture of stink and fragrance would most probably prefer to have none rather than both.
Without knowledge and previous experience of the fragrance of any specific flower like a rose, nobody would be attracted to walk over to a bush of roses for the pleasure of smelling them.

Example 2:   Silence is the neutral base line, suffering from noise is worse than only lacking the pleasure of hearing the favorite music.  
Someone exposed simultaneously to the same loudness of an electrical drill and of his favorite music would most probably prefer both to end.  

Someone can only actively choose a specific music for the pleasure of listening, if one has discovered the pleasure by having heard it at least once before.   

Habituation effects the prolonged exposure to pleasure and to pain or discomfort, but with different long-term consequences.  While habituation just reduces the perceived stimulation by what initially was a strong pleasure, the habituation to lasting or repeated pain, displeasure and discomfort often results in harmed health.  

 

I personally include the neutral experience of neither suffering nor enjoying as the baseline in my definition of human rights.  

• It cannot be justified to impose harm, displeasure or discomfort upon others.   If there is a purpose considered worth to be earned by suffering, it is only justifiable as a personal choice.      
  
• Nobody is entitled to have pleasures, if the price is paid by another's sufferings.  

3.   My understanding of utilitarian commitment

For me, utilitarian commitment includes the Epicurean principle of the priority of not harming and not to be harmed.  I perceive suffering by being harmed and hurt, both physically and emotionally, as much more drastic than pleasures missed, renounced or deprived of.

Based upon the reciprocity with a mindmate being a match, I am willing to be guided by the following utilitarian behavior:

• Renouncing and abstaining from a small pleasure, whenever this results in the partner's much bigger benefits.
• Suffering small pain or displeasure, whenever this results is sparing the partner a much bigger harm, pain or displeasure.  

When a man is guided by these two principles, this is an indication of his being an egalitarian partner.


4.  The distinction between utilitarianism and commodification

But I refuse to accept the sacrifice of suffering any pain, displeasure or discomfort, as long as this only serves to give or enhance the partner's mere pleasure.   This is out of proportion.   Maintaining the baseline of neither pain nor pleasure is more justified.   

When a man expects and demands a disagreeing woman to suffer for his pleasures, this indicates his attitude to commodify women.

When a man uses any power and advantage to coerce and force a resisting woman to suffer for his pleasures, this is active commodification and abuse.  

540. Accepting Obligations By Agreement Or By Marriage

540.   Accepting Obligations By Agreement Or By Marriage

The rational choice of a partner for a relationship is based upon long-term cost-benefit calculations with the result of the deal being advantageous for both partners.   Such cost-benefit calculations use consent and realistic knowledge concerning costs and benefits not only for oneself but also for the partner to be.

Given sufficient intelligence, wisdom and maturity to accept the golden rule and the tit-for-tat principle, this implies to have accepted the costs as obligations, before deciding to start profiting from available benefits.   

Any attempts to get long-term benefits while refusing to accept obligations are doomed.  Accepting obligations and feeling bound by them once and for good is a part of what defines genuine commitment.  Such obligations are an indispensable requirement for making a relationship a safe haven of reliability, predictability and trustworthiness for each other.  
 

Unfortunately, there are substantial differences between the subjective definition of commitment and especially the perception of when it starts.  

Serious emotional disaster for women is caused by the unfortunate instinctive difference concerning the emotional impact of the first act of physical intimacy or the lack thereof.   

Some men, who are not jerks by feeling entitled to objectify women, are nevertheless caught by their need for homeostasis in the trap of the fallacy, that their being triggered to copulate with female bodies without emotional attachment were based upon the reciprocity of mere objectification not creating commitment.
Many women get emotionally attached and committed automatically by physical intimacy and their fallacy is to assume the automatic commitment to be reciprocal.  

 

1.   Commitment by agreement

Commitment by agreement is the reciprocal acceptance of obligations which starts, as soon as a couple agrees to be committed.   It is based upon both partners' full awareness of both fallacies and of the hazard of women's risk to be harmed and men's risk to be the one causing harm.    

While this is the only viable basis for a long term relationship, it can only work given full consent and awareness about what creates and constitutes commitment in the experience of the partner.   

Commitment by agreement is intrinsic commitment, the obligations accepted are to the partner as someone, whose needs are an expression of the individual personality.          

2.   Commitment by legal marriage

The signature at the town hall as the act of legal marriage is also an act of implicitly accepting obligations.   But these obligations are based upon the marriage laws of the country.    Legal marriage means accepting standard obligations, which are not a conscious choice based upon the recognition of the partner's real and individual needs. 
  

Commitment by legal marriage is extrinsic commitment.

3.   Comparing both commitments

Commitment by agreement is a deal between two persons.   While it is based upon the real needs of both partners, it depends entirely on their deliberate choice to continue to fulfill the obligations.   The partners have no legal power over each other.  (Any use of usurped power by physical or situational advantages is a transgression and breaking the agreement of two equals.)  The only power they have is leaving, when the other fails or commits transgressions.  

Commitment by legal marriage is a twofold deal with society as represented by the country's laws.   

It is a deal between each partner and society, and the focus of the legal obligations are financial and they do not matter, unless they are claimed and backed up by the power of the enforcing law.   Therefore legal marriage has the most impact not when there is harmony, but when there is failure.  
Commitment by legal marriage is also a deal between both partners and society as a power to give practical benefits, when being together is otherwise as problem, because both partners do not share the same citizenship.  


4.   Which commitment for whom?

4.1.   When a couple is compatible, bonded by the shared need for intellectual intimacy and companionship and their focus is upon the immaterial benefits of being each other's safe haven, then commitment by agreement and cohabitation are all they need.    Legal marriage brings no further benefits to the quality of their commitment.  

4.2.  In the case, that both partners are not from the same country then sometimes legal marriage is needed to enable being together.    But in this case, legal marriage cannot be a substitute for having been bound first by the agreed obligations of commitment.  

5.  The refusal to accept obligations without legal marriage indicates commodification

Some men consider legal marriage as the only possible and binding form of commitment.   They do not feel any obligations to a woman until marriage, while they do not hesitate to use her body at their convenience.    This is big red flag of commodification.  

Commitment by agreement as a deal with a woman requires the perception of her being significant as a partner with a mind.    A man, for whom a woman is a commodity or utility, is unable to perceive her as a person to make a deal with.

  
No man makes a deal with car about how to use it.   If a man makes a deal about the car, it is with the owner as how to use it and for what costs.   
When a man refuses to accept any obligations other than by legal marriage, he is like someone leasing the woman from society.   Legal marriage is such a man's deal with society for the goal of getting control over the commodified woman.

What the commodified woman wants and needs herself does not matter and is insignificant.  Such a man accepts as a price, whatever social norms, gender roles, religion or the political system behind the marriage laws in his country demand.   In his mind, he deals with society, which supplies a woman to him for the purpose of homeostasis and for other services, and he accepts the price demanded by society as his due.  
 

It is not enough to rely on a man's claims of wanting commitment, it is a fallacy to mistake a man's willingness to get married as an expression of commitment.   If there can be any valid indication of a man's attitude towards women, this can only be his acceptance and recognition of explicitly described and defined obligations.   

A wise woman never allows a man to touch her unless he accepts that this is the begin of commitment and of having obligations.   

A wise woman never marries a man, unless his behavior before marriage is very unequivocally guided and restricted by his acceptance of and full compliance with agreed upon obligations.

If a man cannot commit in his behavior without marriage, it cannot be expected that he will agree upon any obligations beyond those imposed by the marriage laws.    He will not behave any better after being married than before.

539. Movies Are Contributing To The Harm Done By Promiscuous Jerks

539.   Movies Are Contributing To The Harm Done By Promiscuous Jerks

I have been mentioning before, that promiscuous jerks are predisposed by instinctive animal urges, but that the harm done to the victims is magnified by the sad influence of the media propagating, enhancing and reinforcing the social norm of oversexation.  

A recent study gives some evidence, that the influence of movies is contributing to women's plight by supplying the wrong role models.    

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/07/120717162743.htm

"Adolescents who are exposed to more sexual content in movies start having sex at younger ages, have more sexual partners, and are less likely to use condoms with casual sexual partners,"

"Many adolescents turn to movies to acquire "sexual scripts" that offer examples of how to behave when confronted with complicated emotional situations. For 57 percent of American adolescents between the ages of 14 and 16, the media is their greatest source of sexual information. They often don't differentiate between what they see on the screen and what they must confront in daily life ."

What this study indicates as the fatal influence of sexual scenes in general movies, can logically be expected to be even worse in pornographic movies. 


There are other sources providing some further contextual explanations.    

1.  Kanazawa has pointed out, that people are misled to confound the mere moving pictures of people on TV with personal friends, because the evolution of the human cognition had no yet enough time to adapt to the realistic technical representations of people.   The spontaneous and subconscious human perception does not distinguish sufficiently.    

http://personal.lse.ac.uk/kanazawa/pdfs/ehb2002.pdf

This has fatal consequences.   

Commercial movies are made to entertain people, not to educate them towards responsibility and consideration.   The stories of movies are not realistic.  They are in some way extreme and often dangerously pseudo-realistic.   Women are often abused in a drastic way, which in real life would be legally punished, but the severe harm experienced by them is omitted in the movies, because it is not entertaining.    They are damaged as objects, not harmed as humans.

Adolescents need the valid and beneficial role model of the happy serenity of a bonded monogamous couple.   But what should be encouraged most for imitation lacks any entertaining thrill.  Such a couple's happiness is as beneficial for the two partners themselves as it is dull and boring to the curiosity of gossiping and scandal enjoying bystanders, not matter if in real life or on a screen.    

Therefore the perception of the adolescents watching movies is mislead by confounding the images of the role models on the screen with real people appearing as an extension of their social environment.   Thus the influence of such role models to be imitated is dangerously strong.   

The adolescents are misled to consider the unreal, fantastic and extreme events and activities of the observed stories as if this were a valid representation of real life.

For the consumers of the movies and even more of pornography, abuse seems to end without any consequences, when the movie ends.  But in real life, abuse not only concerns a transgressor, but also a victim.   The abuser's onesided perception of having terminated the abusive event does not really end it.   Real life jerks cannot fully avoid to witness the visible reactions of the victims.  Even those jerks, who are not bothered or insensitive to whatever they do themselves often do notice the suffering, when the victims are their family members harmed by other jerks.

In short, real life harm has more or less observable consequences, which serve as a deterrent.   This deterrent is lacking in the movies.  The harm done by the promiscuity shown in the movies is hidden and omitted as if it did not exist.  Thus the movies mislead adolescents towards oblivion and denial of what they do to their victims by imitating the abuse.

2.   Milgram's experiment have been lately reinterpreted:

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/07/120718164947.htm

"The researchers hypothesized that, rather than obedience to authority, the participants' behavior might be better explained by their patterns of social identification. They surmised that conditions that encouraged identification with the experimenter (and, by extension, the scientific community) led participants to follow the experimenters' orders, while conditions that encouraged identification with the learner (and the general community) led participants to defy the experimenters' orders."

Explaining the physically barbaric act of applying electro shocks by identification can be generalized to explain the emotionally barbaric act of men's promiscuous objectifying of women's bodies also by the identification with the imitated actors in the movies.

538. The Proof Is In The Pudding....

538.   The Proof Is In The Pudding....

(Which correctly quoted should be as 'the proof of the pudding is in the eating'.)    While there are clues in men's profiles (the topic of a future entry) concerning their general attitude towards women, better clues can be derived from corresponding.  

Someone's reaction to my disagreement with the implicit expression of the acceptance of relationships as asymmetrically beneficial for men is very informative.   

Based upon my need for intellectual intimacy as a relationship essential, my profile on matchmaking sites contains this statement:  

Geographical distance is easier to overcome than mental distance. 

 

The following is a good example of an exchange of messages, which do not even require any further comments.  

His first message:

"NOTE: MENTAL distance is much easier to overcome than Geographical distance."


My reply: 

'Without any conclusions about you personally, in general this attitude tells me, that a man denies a woman her vital need for intellectual intimacy. Mental distance deters intellectual intimacy.
Whenever a man is not bothered about mental distance, he is an abuser, who intends to objectify a woman's body, while he does not value her enough for intellectual intimacy.'


His first reaction: 

"With your 'caustic' attitude, I honestly think that you would really be what is called in North America, a 'Royal Pain in the Ass'."

His additional second reaction: 

"Your "Presumed Intellectual Capacity", very nuch exaggerated in your own mind, is comparable to a Mental Midget.
You greatly over estimate your capacity with another human being who may be a 'thinker', and I think that anyone who would waste 'time' to keep corresponding with you is one, sad, foolish human being.
I cannot wish you 'Much Success' since that would be undermining the intellectual capacity of a possible interested man who might be 'taken in' with your 'mental onslought'."

537. The Golden Rule - A Modified Version For Men

537.   The Golden Rule - A Modified Version For Men

The Golden Rule as quoted from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_Rule

"One should treat others as one would like others to treat oneself"

"One should not treat others in ways that one would not like to be treated."

The second form of the golden rule does not prevent women from being objectified and commodified, the first form even encourages men to do so. 

When men are driven so much by their instinctive urges for homeostasis, that it deactivates their cognition and blurs their reason, they perceive every female body as a potential target for their animal needs, at least subconsciously.   

In this situation, jerks and psychopaths do not feel any need for justification, they ruthlessly act upon their entitlement delusion for promiscuity.   They are determined to get homeostation by hook or by crook, their methods include seducing, paying, manipulating and coercing.    Their abuse of women is out of the reach of any moderation by the influence of the golden rule.

But many of those men, who consciously attempt to be guided by the golden rule, fatally misinterpret it as an encouragement to project their own inclinations, wishes and needs upon women.   Many men in the state of dishomeostasis dream, hope, wish or even wait to be proactively approached by self-objectifying women offering homeostation without demanding or expecting anything for themselves.   As this is a denial of reality, these men take the initiative and approach women for the purpose of objectification.   Subjectively they follow the golden rule: They are doing to the women only exactly what they wish done to themselves.   
This misinterpretation of the golden rule impedes these men from being aware, that and how much they are insulting women with this depreciation, devaluation and indignation.  

While men in the state of dishomeostasis are prone to be unaware of what they themselves are doing, this does not automatically distort their general judgment.  The same men, who themselves do not hesitate to sleep around like alley dogs, may well feel outrage, when their mother/sister/daughter becomes the prey of his fellow alley dogs. 

Therefore I suggest this golden rule for men:

A man should treat women as he would like others to treat his mother/sister/daughter/wife/girl friend.

A man should not treat women in ways that he would not like his mother/sister/daughter/wife/girl friend to be treated.

536. Peripherisation And The Lack Of Intellectual Intimacy

536.    Peripherisation And The Lack Of Intellectual Intimacy

Commodification and objectification are blatantly painful for many women, and the resulting deterioration and destruction of the relationship is usually a fast and unavoidable process. 

But there is another detrimental asymmetrical attitude, which is more subtly painful while less blatant and obvious.   It is the peripherisation of a woman's place and role in a man's life.  
In the best case, this is quite different from the full degradation by commodification.  
Peripherisation does not exclude a man to be considerate and responsible by exclusive monogamous commitment enabling physical and emotional intimacy with her as a person.   But she is not allowed the mental closeness of the bond of intellectual intimacy.   Her place is restricted to the periphery of his inner self and his cognitive life.   Therefore I call this peripherisation.   


Intellectual intimacy means to me:

• Experiencing the joy of consent and agreement. 
  This joy is not someone's agreement with what I have been saying.   It is also not the agreement after me influencing someone to change his mind and thereafter to agree with me.    It is the joy of someone saying, what I agree with, before he even knows, what I think, while he is still ignorant of my agreement.    It is the expression of him and me innately and independently thinking alike.  
  Once I can be reasonably certain, that what someone says or does is a genuine and sincere expression of his personality, and there is consent, then I experience every repetition as an intellectual hug.  
  Such intellectual hugs are to me as important and as enjoyable as are physical hugs.  
  
  
• Psychological bonding.
  Psychological bonding means that the shared discovering, exploring, reflecting and revealing concerning the innermost personality of both partners is experienced as a source of joy and of fascination.   Spending time communicating about the dynamics of the relationship, the interactions, the reasons for behaving and for reacting in a specific way is experienced by both partners as rewarding. 
  The benefit of such communication is the reduction of misunderstanding, wrong assumptions, ambiguities, suspicions, insecurities.  This contributes to the growth of reliability, trust and predictability.  Therefore it is an important activity towards making the relationship a safe haven. 
  I experience the partner's interest in the dynamics and quality of the relationship and his motivation to communicate as a very important intellectual expression of affection. 
• Intellectual pleasures.
  Passive participation in and exposure to events and sources of intellectual quality are not much more than high level consumption, if this does not lead to someone also experiencing active reflecting and pondering about the intellectual stimulation as a pleasure. 
  Sharing activities like watching movies and theater plays or visiting museums and exhibitions together does not enhance intellectual intimacy, unless it is followed by the exchange of thoughts and impressions as a shared pleasure, which enhances the experience of such events for both partners. 
  Not only can another person point out additional unnoticed aspects and creative thoughts.   As a side effect, it also provides additional occasions to experience the joy of consent, whenever the partner expressed the same reaction as is the own. 
   

I consider and experience any relationship without intellectual intimacy as worthless.  

Intellectual intimacy makes the difference between being used and being appreciated.  


When a woman needs and wishes intellectual intimacy, but a man does not provide or offer it, this can have many reasons:

1. It is just one facet of commodification and objectification.
2. He is not a match for her, because he lacks sufficient intelligence and/or education.
3. He is not a match for her, because while there is the potential of his having the cognitive qualities and abilities, he experiences the behaviors for creating and maintaining intellectual intimacy as stress, burdensome, unpleasant.   He is not motivated to do, what he perceives as the contrary of joy.       
4. One of several varieties of peripherisation impedes intellectual intimacy.   Each different aspect or facet of what in combination could constitute the intellectual intimacy in a relationship is felt as a need or motivation to share it.   But what should be an important ingredient of a relationship is shared instead with others as substitutes.   They can be coworkers, friends, buddies, family of origin.
   
   

   Peripherisation 1:
   
   Intellectual intimacy with a woman is impeded by the fallacy of the man's ignorance or unawareness of its existence as an option and of its importance for women.   The man deprives himself of the benefits of intellectual intimacy by not pursuing it as it is beyond his imagination,
   
   This can be due to men's general underestimation and prejudices concerning women's cognitive capacities or to the man's definition of the purpose of a relationship as an interaction restricted to the realm of his need of homeostasis and his pursuit of easy pleasures.   
   
   Usually both fallacies, the underestimation of women and their limited role in a man's life are reinforcing each other.
   
   Peripherisation 2:
   
   A man has chosen a woman too much by the instinctive attraction of her body.   For reasons in himself, for example ignorance, misinterpretation, misunderstandings, overreaction to bad experience, distorted perception, he is not able to trust her or to appreciate her qualities.  
   
   Even when they have both the wish and the potential for intellectual intimacy, he is the obstacle.   (There are also many female obstacles, for examples breeders pursuing a man only as a provider.  But this is outside the scope of this topic.) 

Finding a mindmate for shared intellectual intimacy is difficult, because it requires someone, 

• who is cognitive able
• who enjoys it
• for whom the mate in a relationship is his first choice of the person to seek intellectual intimacy with, while anybody else can never be more than an insufficient substitute.  

This is rare and hard to find.   When I am reading men's profiles on matchmaking sites, I am looking for clues for the probability of intellectual intimacy.    

This will be the topic of another entry.  

535. Commodification, Inappropriate Behavior And The Dynamics Of Escalation

535.   Commodification, Inappropriate Behavior And The Dynamics Of Escalation

I am using burping in the following thoughts as a prototypical inappropriate behavior.    It is a placeholder for many other similar behaviors, this is not specially about burping in particular. 

• Burping is generally considered as inappropriate behavior in most western societies, especially at the dinner table.
• Everybody with a minimum of culture, education and intelligence is aware of burping being considered as inappropriate.  Most people agree.
• People feel embarrassed, when they burp accidentally.  They are anxious to avoid it. 
• The magnitude of the embarrassment depends upon the subjective importance of the witnesses' good opinion.

Therefore the common reaction to be expected after any accidental burp is a more or less embarrassed apology.  How much someone feels embarrassed depends upon the subjective significance of the witness.   Burping is experienced as less embarrassing, when the other at the dinner table is a sibling than when it is the boss to be during the interview for an attractive job. 

 

Someone (unless this person is seriously retarded or disordered) burping freely and without any sign of the least embarrassment is thus sending a significant message concerning the attitude towards the witness.   This message tells, that the witness's opinion is insignificant, that the witness's perception and experience do not matter.   
 

For a woman in the context of searching for a mate, being thus burped at is a big red flag indicating the man's attitude of commodifying women.  
Nobody sane feels embarrassed, when the witness present during burping is only a utility like a vacuum cleaner.  When a man burps freely in the presence of a woman without feeling embarrassment, this is a very strong indication, that he does not really distinguish between a vacuum cleaner and a woman.   Both are commodities perceived as only existing to serve him without any significance as persons.   


When traditionally two persons have a date while knowing very little about each other and thus having few misguided expectations, a woman would probably notice the uninhibited burping as a sufficient reason to refrain from meeting again.   She may not consciously recognize the commodification due to not even be bothered about the reasons for his inappropriate behavior, which suffices by itself to recoil. 

But the situation is different with online contacts, when two persons meet personally only after a long phase of correspondence.   Nobody can burp by email.   When in this situation the woman experiences the man's uninhibited burping during dinner for the first time, this is to her not an unambiguous red flag.  Instead it conveys a message, which is very contradictory to her expectations.   

While the correspondence has triggered her to expect being appreciated and respected, the burping makes her experience the emotional effects of being commodified.   She feels disrespected by what appears to her as a lack of either manners, consideration or politeness.    
Her goal is being shown by his behavior as much of the alleged appreciation, as what she had deducted from his emails.   As long as her focus is upon his burping as if it were a mere bad habit and not on the more serious and significant message of not valuing her enough to feel embarrassed, she attempts to influence him by showing feedback.   

As long as she is oblivious of his underlying attitude of commodification as the true problem, she is mistaken to think that she can influence him to correct his behaviors.   She is mistaken to attempt to be supportive to a shared wish to improve the relationship, while the absence of sharing is a part of his attitude of commodification.   Her feedback is meant as support to enable him to directly improve his behavior as his contribution to his alleged shared goal to improve the relationship.  

Her feedback starts gently and subtly, but gets more and more drastic, whenever it elicits no reaction.   The lacking reaction magnifies her discomfort and suffering from experiencing her insignificance.   
The first hint may be just a frown, followed by a disgusted expression, the next step being a polite remark to please stop burping, repeated in less polite tones and words.   If this escalation continues without any improvement, it ends with her calling him a pig and a plebeian or whatever is the worst word she has in her vocabulary.  

 

But these dynamics are much more than the escalation of her becoming impolite and offensive in her language, it is also a shift of her attitude towards him.   She starts with the attempt to influence him towards solving the contradiction, as long as she still is considering him able to express as much appreciation by his behavior as she had expected as a result of interpreting his emails.  Her goal is the reciprocity of the expression of as much respect and appreciation as she has for him.   

When the escalation reaches the point of her calling him a pig and a plebeian, the contradiction has been resolved the opposite way.   Experiencing the persistent lack of respect in his behavior has caused her to also lose all her previous respect for him.   Her emotional counterpart to being commodified is loathing and detesting him as unworthy.   

Behavior based upon the attitude of commodification forfeits the victim's respect in many ways.  I used burping as an illustrative example.   There are similar escalations, when a man forces harm due to irrational behavior upon a woman and does not react to any rational discussion until she calls him an idiot, and when she cannot stop him from hurting her by transgressions until she calls him an a**e.    The kind of harm due to his behavior differs, when he drives her to consider him either a pig, or an idiot or an a**e.   The dynamics follow the same pattern.


Escalations due to not reacting to the feedback from someone mistaken for and mistreated as a commodity, whose opinion, experience and perception does not matter, destroy a relationship.   The one, who feels offended and blames the other for name calling, instead of asking himself, what he has done to provoke the escalation, is the one, who dooms the relationship.  

534. The Pseudo-Evidence Fallacy

534.   The Pseudo-Evidence Fallacy

Whenever someone bases the decision, how to treat another person, on a belief, which is so strong, that it impedes and overrides the rational perception and comprehension of evidence and reality, there are more or less fatal consequences for at least the misjudged person, often for both. 

Examples:

1. A very drastic example was the alleged proof of who is a witch by throwing the unfortunate victim into the water to see if she floated or drowned.    Men believed in this cruel irrationality, even though their brain had nevertheless enabled them to become fluent in Latin.   
2. In some cultures, parents not only decide, whom to marry their children to, but they choose an alleged match following an astrologer's advice.   This has certainly caused millions of people to suffer from being tied for a lifetime to a mismatch, the worst fate being that of women being abused by a man, whom they would not have chosen.  
3. Today people are less prone to fall for very blatant irrationality.  But the more the irrational claims and beliefs mimic science, the more people are gullible to mistake pseudo-science for science.   
   NLP is a good example.   In entry 177 (The Jerks' Fascination with NLP) I already elaborated, why NLP is a belief system, and why this blend of some elements from scientific psychology with irrational and unscientific claims make this so attractive to people with a distorted self-concept as if being rational.  

In these as also in many more examples, there is a pattern of a specific fallacy:  

The person

• bases a rational decision process upon incorrect or insufficient information acquired by absurd, weird, preposterous or insane methods.   
• is unperceptive, mindblind, immune to or otherwise not impacted by any information coming directly from the target of the behavior.   The target has no influence upon what information is used to determine, how s/he is treated.
• imposes the decision upon the target or attempts to, feeling entitled and justified to do so. 

This fallacy impedes trust and as a consequence it impedes a relationship from becoming a safe haven, which is impossible without trust justified by trustworthiness.   
Trustworthiness can only be assessed by the rational method of evaluating evidence.  This method compares all of someone's verbal and non-verbal expressions and behaviors at any moment with all of this at any another time, and also with external independent sources.   
The more often this comparison is consistent, congruent and without contradictions, the more the person's overall trustworthiness can be estimated as probable.   Never discovering a lie is a part of this.

Any other method, which relies on unverified and unverifiable clues, is a hazard and misleading.   Earning trust depends not only on the own trustworthy behavior, it also depends upon the partner's ability to recognize trustworthy behavior as such by the correct perception of evidence.    Trust cannot be earned from a person using unsuitable methods.  

An honest person never lying is nevertheless not trusted by a partner using flawed methods to evaluate honesty.   The delusion of being able to rely upon firmly believed pseudo-clues makes him oblivious of reality.      
Fools believing in NLP derive the pseudo-evaluation of alleged honesty or lack thereof from the target's eye movements.   This is a hazardous fallacy, as the study quoted below clearly shows.    Eye movements can be caused, influenced and diverted by many triggers.  During any conversation, people's attention can be easily caught momentarily by events at the periphery of their vision.   
The haphazard location of such events suffices to determine the erroneous attribution of an alleged trait towards one of two errors:      
Accidental eye movements of a honest person can forfeit the chance to be trusted.  
The blind believer in NLP can also easily be mislead to trust by a liar's accidental eye movements.  

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/07/120711205943.htm

"For decades many NLP practitioners have claimed that when a person looks up to their right they are likely to be lying, whilst a glance up to their left is indicative of telling the truth."

"Professor Richard Wiseman (University of Hertfordshire, UK) and Dr Caroline Watt (University of Edinburgh, UK) tested this idea by filming volunteers as they either lied or told the truth, and then carefully coded their eye movements.  In a second study another group of participants was asked to watch the films and attempt to detect the lies on the basis of the volunteers' eye movements.

"The results of the first study revealed no relationship between lying and eye movements, and the second showed that telling people about the claims made by NLP practitioners did not improve their lie detection skills,” noted Wiseman. "

The pseudo-evidence fallacy and commodification share the common defective acquisition of information.    In both situations, the target is excluded from being considered as a possible source when choosing, which information is used for the decision how to behave.  Both situations indicate depreciation and disrespect of the target, but it works differently.

In the case of commodification, the target is mistaken for a passive utility in a onesided relationship and therefore not considered as able to be a proactive source supplying any information.  
The pseudo evidence fallacy disregards, devalues and rejects the information input coming directly from the target.   The real information is noticed but replaced by the false beliefs.   The target is considered as a proactive source of irrelevant or worthless information.  

533. Cohabitation And The Safe Haven

533.  Cohabitation And The Safe Haven

Some days ago, I exchanged a few emails with someone, who appeared as a good match by the first superficial impression.   But the futility of pursuing this contact became evident, when he explained his situation:   By marrying or cohabiting, he would loose his rather high widower's pension.  

I personally consider a happy relationship being a safe haven as worth much more than money.   I would not hesitate to accept a man, who is suitable and compatible, no matter his poverty.  I would reject an unsuitable and incompatible man, no matter his affluence.  Generally I think this widower's priority of his money is a mistake.   
But when it comes to considering my own person, I do not even expect, let alone demand from someone to value living with me as preferable over his money or any other priorities.  A man has his priorities and choices, and whenever they are incongruent with mine, I do not consider myself as a sufficient reason to modify them.   Any decision in my favor would only be valid, if it is based upon a man's need, independent of any influence from my side. A man's incongruent priorities are a reason to keep away from him, not a justification for stupid and futile attempts to influence him   

The essence of a bonded and committed relationship is for me the safe haven, which it cannot be without cohabitation.    Only a cohabiting couple really sits in the same boat, for better or for worse.  Only when sharing the home and applying the shared survival resources, both financial and skills, then all troubles, inclemencies and problems of everyday life really concern both partners equally without a back door. Whenever something breaks or goes wrong, the partner in a LAT-relationship can feel relaxed as he is not under the same pressure to solve the problem.  Having still his own home to retreat to, he has the back door to abandon the partner in need.   

Practical problems like when a needed household appliance or installation breaks cause situational pressure.  The less there is the alternative of affording the easiest and most comfortable solution, the stronger is the pressure upon me.  My resources are more skills than money.  Being alone under the pressure of needing to cope with situational problems of any kind drains and exhausts me, no matter how successful I am in solving it.   Even when I find a solution making me feel clever and adding to my confidence, the coping process nevertheless leaves me drained.    

The safe haven of a cohabiting relationship, in which the partner is equally concerned by situational pressures of any kind, is the relief I need to not get drained.   Being alone when problems require coping is what drains me.
Of course, being equally concerned does by itself not suffice as a relief.  A safe haven requires not only to be equally concerned as a team by all problems, but also to share basic agreements about rational coping strategies derived from the same evaluation of the shared situation and resources.   Only this enables a couple to be a team in problem solving and a source of relief to each other. 

Someone adding more pressure upon me than the problem itself can instead make the situation even worse. 

I cannot accept a man's putting pressure upon me to waste my own money.   If a man is as poor as I am, I expect him to support me in solving problems by the principle of compensating for expenses by efforts.  He can give me the best relief by sharing the efforts.  

Only if a man can afford himself the comfortable expensive solutions preferred by him, it is his choice.   

But the poor man putting pressure upon me to waste my own limited money on the comfortable solution sparing him efforts drains me even more, having to cope with the combined pressure of the technical problem and from him.     

A safe haven can bring reciprocally many protecting and relieving benefits, no matter if the problems are practical, social, psychological, physical.  The emphasis is on the reciprocity.     The more a man also needs a safe haven, the more I can expect to be given one in return.    This is very significant. 

A man's refusal to cohabit tells me, that his goal is not the same kind of a safe haven as is mine and logically then a safe haven is also not available for me.   

A LAT arrangement enables a man to get all the benefits of using a woman's body at his convenience, as this can be achieved without cohabitation.   But a LAT arrangement also enables a man to limit, what he decides to give to the woman.     

A man's refusing to cohabit indicates and implies the presence of some or all of the following good reasons justifying suspicion.  While his superficial reasons may appear as convincing as is the example of the widower's pension of my contact, but the following reasons are probably hidden behind:
1.  A man does not expect a safe haven available from any woman, because he commodifies her and he is blind to even notice any other option besides using her.   A man can experience a safe haven only, if he is aware and appreciative of women being persons with cognitive qualities sufficient as providers of a safe haven.    
2.   A man has already a fragmented supportive system consisting of any combination including his family of origin, friends and even exes and children.  He does not feel a need for a safe haven, which would motivate him to provide one for a woman.   Having sufficient supply for all other social and psychological needs, a woman is only a body.   Only homeostasis is not available from his supportive system.   

3.   A man is so powerful and affluent, that he solves all problems by paying services, no matter if it is the craftsman or the therapist.    If he is decent, he prefers a monogamous relationship for his homeostasis over paying prostitutes.      


As I mentioned already before, the decision to get involved with someone has to be a very careful rational decision, which certainly cannot be rushed into without a high risk of failure.   What matters is is the shared goal of cohabitation and the shared need of a safe haven.  Sharing the goal of cohabitation is very different from making the mistake to rush into cohabitation with a haphazard person.

The refusal of cohabitation is a good reason not to pursue a contact, but the shared goal alone is only one of many necessary but not sufficient criteria for compatibility.