659. The Innocent Targets Of The Exploiteds' Displaced Revenge

659.   The Innocent Targets Of The Exploiteds' Displaced Revenge

In entry 658 I pointed out, why those, who have the power and position to dictate the world market prices of products from poor countries, are robbers and sometimes even murderers by proxy.   In the case of the killed textile workers in Bangladesh, the victimized women had no other options.

Elsewhere, things are sometimes different.   What is the textile industry in Bangladesh, is cocoa farming in the Ivory Coast.   The cocoa farmers are under a similar pressure of dictated low prices as are the textile factory owners in Bangladesh.    The farmers just like the factory owners behave as heartless, cruel, evil and psychopathic perpetrators, but the true culprits are those, who have the power to decide and determine the price paid for the cocoa to the farmers.

  
According to this
http://documentaryheaven.com/the-dark-side-of-chocolate

Ivorian Coastal cocoa farmers are paid 1 € per kilo cocoa beans, which suffices for 40 chocolate bars.   But according to the above and other sources, those who are exploited on the cocoa farms are often not locals.   They are adults and even children from neighboring countries, who are forced into slavery.   They are abducted, detained against their will and not paid.  

There is one difference: The slaves on the farms are from neighboring countries, because the Ivorian Coastal young men have found a method to avoid being exploited on the cocoa farms.

From both my own observations when targeted as a victim to be and by many sources I have learned, that the Ivory Coast is at least a major, if not the main home of scammers targeting French speaking people.   The damage suffered by the victims adds to huge sums.   
This French documentary gives a lot of information: 

http://www.escrocs.net/reportage-des-escrocs-du-web-en-cote-divoire.htm

I am far from justifying or condoning scamming and slavery.   But the culprits in the Ivory Coast are not proactive criminals, they are reacting to a dire situation, which they have not created or chosen.  These young crooks and criminals and their parents had been deprived of any chance for a decent and honest income long before the internet enabled them to begin scamming.   They have turned in hostility against all citizens of rich countries, who from a distant perspective appear as if they were to be blamed for the Ivory Coast's misery.  The scammers are not aware, that the victims of the scams are themselves just as powerless as are the scammers to stop the exploitation.  

The real crooks are those, who use economic power to dictate the cocoa price.   

I am convinced that any of the scam victims would gladly pay a fair price for chocolate, it this would prevent hopeless youngsters from experiencing hurting others by crime as their only option.   

The Ivory Coast scamming cannot be stopped, unless the farmers are receiving a considerably higher price for the cocoa and for all other exported produce.         

658. Who Is Really Responsible For Killing The Workers In Bangladesh?

658.  Who Is Really Responsible For Killing The Workers In Bangladesh?

The tragedy in Bangladesh is once more revealing the cruel truth about capitalism.   

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-22296645

How many more victims are going to die, before people learn to attribute deaths elsewhere to the western habits of careless and unreflected consumption?  

It is easy to blame the collapse of a building upon those responsible for the illegal construction and neglect of safety.   

The real culprits are here, between us, in all the rich countries.   
 

The wholesale merchants and the managers of the big chains of markets and stores are the real murderers, they are murderer by proxy.    They use their economic power to dictate the low prices paid for the production in Bangladesh and other poor countries.   Those who there attempt to cope by disregarding building regulations and the basic human rights and needs of the workers act themselves under pressure, they are the hired killers.  They kill others to avoid perishing themselves, even when they add own greed to aggravate the workers plight.

 
When workers are not directly killed as has happened now, those dictating the prices are at least armed robbers.   They use the weapon of giving the choice of fast starvation by not having any job at all, unless they submit to be slowly destroyed by harsh and unhealthy underpaid work.

If I buy a t-shirt for 5 €, I know that it has been produced by someone suffering in misery.   But if I would pay 50 € instead for a luxury t-shirt in a fashion shop, this t-shirt would have been produced by the same exploited people in the same misery.   The additional price would add to  the profit of the shop owners or of the shareholders, it would not reach the workers.   

There are some organizations attempting to bring fair trade products upon the market.   But these products are difficult to find.    Shop managers and retailers also have power.  While those, who dictate the prices to the producers, are the primary culprits, those who decide to sell products from exploitations instead of fair trade products, are accomplices to murder and robbery.  


These culprits do not allow a choice to the consumers.   What happened in Bangladesh recently, is only an extreme example, much of what else is consumed, is also produced by killing, damaging and harming people.  Only exceptionally extreme events make it into the media.  Often it is impossible to know the truth about how much suffering was caused by the production of other goods.    

If I wanted to live without harming and exploiting anybody anywhere, I would starve and freeze to death, because there would be nothing to buy.   The entire global capitalistic system functions because of the differences between the economic power of rich and of poor countries.   


Most of these culprits do not even have a bad conscience, and they do not feel responsible.   First they offer consumers no alternative and thus they can correctly point out, that the consumers profit from their success in enforcing low prices.  Instead of feeling guilty as murderers and robbers, they feel as the consumers' benefactors.   

Therefore I have no hope, that they ever renounce the ruthless exploitation, as long as they can remain in denial and let others do the dirty work for them.  


The best remedy could be some kind of legislation, making the import of goods illegal, if they have been produced by the violation of basic human rights.    But to press politicians towards any such initiative would first need a shift in the focus and targets of pressure groups.  
Right now, those groups fighting for nature, for animals, for ecology, are much stronger and much more active than groups fighting for an improvement of the situation of exploited humans.    

Whenever the plight of suffering people in poor countries is noticed and recognized, it is wrongly considered as a need for charity by those, who are underdeveloped and incompetent and have brought the plight upon themselves.
   
It is an outrage and it is preposterous at the same time.   People exploit workers in Bangladesh by stealing the result of their hard labor from them and by thus driving them into dire undeserved misery,  Then the same exploiters condescend to relief a fraction of this misery by deeds of charity to allegedly inferior and unable savages.    

What they call charity is in reality nothing better than the restitution of a tiny fraction of what has been stolen.

657. An Example Of An Emotionally Hazardous Man

657.   An Example Of An Emotionally Hazardous Man

In entry 650 I compared the asymmetry in how male and female singles are coping with their needs and instincts.    Singles of both genders can successfully established a network of sources for their intellectual and emotional needs.   By this network of family, colleagues, friends, buddies, all cognitive needs are fulfilled.  What remains unfulfilled, are only the instinctive urges.  

Under such circumstances, men continue to be driven by dishomeostasis towards the use of female bodies.    But women are in the fortunate situation of not being afflicted with the same recurrent urge to get rid of procreative body waste.    Therefore women in the same situation either feel no additional needs of a kind, which requires a man's body.   When women are driven by instincts, it is towards breeding and towards a man as a provider.   Only very few women are ever driven towards a man for the mere purpose of copulating with a body.   Women who want nothing better are very rare, while there are many men preferring them.  

The consequence is a very unfortunate imbalance.   There are many men with no other relationship needs except for a female body, but whose basic decency causes them to refrain from paid abuse.   They search in vain for women, who also have no needs or demands for anything better than a male body.    When they get instead in contact with those women, who need a bonding companion, a safe haven based upon emotional and intellectual intimacy, these women are at a very high risk of being hurt.

This risk is aggravated by some men's insufficient theory of mind.   Being unaware of the implications, that women are not afflicted by the same body waste dishomeostasis as men are, they have instead the delusion, that women share the same instinctive needs.    Only those men, who know, when they hurt and abuse women, have a choice to refrain from doing so.   

A woman needs to be very perceptive for red flags indicating the hazard of being hurt, the earlier and the better she notices them, the more she can protect herself.    


The following is a good example.

I have been contacted by a man, who has listed some search criteria in his profile.
Unfortunately he did not reply to my asking permission to quote him literally, so I try to paraphrase him with the least distortion.   And of course, the following are conjectures from limited information.

    
Two of his criteria are red flags, and his replies to my reservations about these issues made the red flags grew even bigger. 
   
1.   By his criteria, a woman should not require to be his only female friend.   In his reply he claims that jealousy is poisonous and a consequence of a weak relationship.

2.   By his criteria, a woman should not hold him responsible for her emotional wellness.   In his reply he claims that a whole person cannot be hurt by anybody, that being vulnerable means a need to work on oneself and that people are only accountable to themselves for what they feel.  


This man is a nightmare for any woman, who wants a bonded companion, an exclusive confidante, a safe haven, a mindmate.   With him, there is nothing better available than a body in bed.   When his denial of a woman's non-physical needs and his emotional cheating with other women hurt her, he does not take responsibility but blames it upon her flaw and weakness.   Oversimplified, the gist is that if a woman disagrees with how he treats her, it is the woman's defect, while nothing he does, can be wrong.  

1.   For simple minded and immature people, the simple definition of cheating is not getting physically involved with any other person.   Anything else is not understood as cheating and is considered as permissible.   Any objection is rejected as unjustified jealousy.
People without a mature theory of mind are unaware of the harm done as a consequence of this oversimplified definition.   
When such a man's entire non-physical needs are met by his network, he can be misled to firmly believe to be a trophy husband, as long as he spends every night in the bed shared with his partner and does not touch other women.    

When he shares his innermost feelings and troubles with female confidantes other than his bed partner, whom he emotionally and intellectually excludes from being a companion, he feels justified and entitled to do so.  
When he knows in advance his strong permanent and persistent need for multiple important female friends, this clearly indicates, that no woman has ever any chance to become exclusively significant as his one and only bonded companion and confidante.    The exclusivity of only one significant partner is beyond his imagination.        

A different man, mature and with a good theory of mind, is able to draw a clear line between female acquaintances, who are kept at a sufficient and safe emotional distance.   He is able to understand the importance of having close friends as common friends.

2.  Healthy people do not get hurt by insignificant persons, and they are capable to choose, who is significant.    People with a healthy emotionality are vulnerable to what significant people do to them.  Entering a meaningful personal relationship with a significant other implies to make oneself vulnerable.   It implies to give the significant other the power to have an impact upon the emotional wellbeing and it is based upon the trust, that this power is not abused.
People, whom nobody can hurt, are either robots, monsters or psychopaths, or they are unable to perceive someone as significant and to allow anybody to become significant.   One method to interpret this man's normative statement is to imply, that he avoids being vulnerable by not allowing any person to get close, not even a woman in a relationship.  
If this man does, what he claims, he would not hesitate to return every night to the bed of a woman, who lies, cheats and betrays him, and the lacking emotional impact of her behavior upon him clearly indicates, that to him, she is not a person of significance, but only a body and an object.    As long as the availability of her body serves his physiological needs, nothing else of what she does matters.   And if he considers this as normal, then he obviously has never in his life experienced a woman as significant.  

Enhancing the shared happiness is a common goal of a bonded couple, while it is an illusion to passively expect to be made happy by the other's proactive actions.  A partner has no obligation to add to the other's emotional wellbeing.   But the trust of making oneself vulnerable causes and justifies the other's moral obligation and responsibility to avoid hurting, harming and damaging the emotional wellbeing.   It cannot be justified, that one partner profits from a relationship and in return damages the other's emotional wellbeing.    The baseline has to always be Epicurus' principle of not harming and not being harmed.   

656. The Placebo Church

656.   The Placebo Church

In entry 441 I was expressing how a weird institution called Unitarian Universalist Church (UU) puzzled me, because it makes no rational sense.    They claim not to be a religion but they behave like one.  

In entry 589 I defined religion by also showing behaviors based upon irrational beliefs other than only the one in the existence of a deity.    These behaviors can be seen as rational methods of coping with irrational beliefs, while without such beliefs, the behaviors themselves are irrational.


In this sense the UU is a placebo religion.   

A person, who has by own experience or by reliable observation learned, that taking a painkiller brings relief from pain, can often experience the relief from pain by unknowingly taking a placebo, which is a pill without any chemical content.    It is a placebo by still looking like a pill, only the active ingredient is omitted.    

The christian religion has some psychological benefits for some people.  Their imaginary god's attributes help them to cope with human suffering.   The christian religion is especially attractive to victims finding an alleged sense in their sufferings and to perpetrators and evil doers finding alleged justification for harming others.   

• The belief in being rewarded by the alleged god in the alleged afterlife misrepresents senseless suffering as if it were a valid method to earn such a reward.
• The belief in an alleged god's alleged wisdom being beyond human comprehension attributes hidden reasons to suffering.
• The belief in an alleged god's alleged wisdom and rewarding in the alleged afterlife allows the perpetrators to harm others without a bad conscience.   They perceive the alleged god as the proxy, who is considered the one responsible for the harm. 
• The belief in an alleged god's alleged reward for forgiving is misused as the unjustified demand for being forgiven for unforgivable harm.  

The only active ingredient of any christian church is the god's impact upon the endurance of suffering and the inflicting of harm.   By being interwoven with the entire culture the christian religion has over its long history incorporated the additional supplying of many secular benefits.  As a result, many people completely lost all awareness for the differences between those benefits, which were due to the core of the religious beliefs, and those collateral and independent benefits, which were only added but not religious. 

This vague and indiscriminate notion of a church as being beneficial in a generalized and very special manner is the reason, why so many people experience it is possible to delete the god and create a placebo church, which still appears to be a church.    Just like the placebo pill looks like a pill.  

The placebo effect of a sugar pill is impossible for any person ignorant of the existence of painkillers, like some ingenious people in a remote area.   (Any similar effect would need other explanations like a general gullibility to suggestions and claims.) 

It is the same with the church.   Those, who have never experienced the christian religion as beneficial, are not prone to experience a placebo church as offering any benefits, which cannot be obtained elsewhere.   

But there is one decisive difference between taking a placebo pill and joining a placebo church:  

The placebo pill works, when the person does not know, that the pharmaceutical ingredient is lacking.   The placebo church is chosen for being the placebo, for having the god as the active ingredient eliminated.   

A person without pain needs neither a pharmaceutical nor a placebo painkiller.   The sugar in the pill can be obtained anywhere and in any form, the person without pain eats sugar when he wants to.   He does not make it look like a painkiller first.
I have never heard of anybody eating placebos, knowing that there is no medicine in them, only because of the sweet taste.   They rather eat real sweets. 

A person without religious needs does not need a church, neither one with a god nor a placebo church.  Such a person finds and enjoys the collateral benefits found in christian churches directly in secular alternative institutions.   He does not combine them to appear like a church.    

Self-labeled atheists in the UU are like people, who knowingly eat placebos for the taste instead of getting the real thing elsewhere.   

When a church already exists for those, who benefit from the delusion of the existence of a deity, then the additional use of such an institution for other benefits and also by non-religious persons can be rational.    

All the benefits offered by the UU are benefits available elsewhere, where each by itself can be experienced and enjoyed as secular.   Combining them as a placebo church is a deliberate bias.    Creating a placebo church for only non-religious benefits is irrational.   

I can think of only one explanation for this is a fallacy: 

It seems that there are two distinct types of self-labeled atheists.  

• Those who are independent thinkers, to whom the insight of the irrationality of religious beliefs has come as an unavoidable conclusion and consequence of thinking.   Atheism and feeling free from needing any religion is emotionally beneficisal for them, because it makes them feel good about themselves.  
• Those who have a strong need for the benefits of the delusion of the existence of a god, but who were so much disappointed by some event in their life, that they were unable to continue to believe.   They suffer from their persistent craving for their lost paradise of the delusion. A placebo church gives them the best relief for that craving.   
  As members of the UU they remain fence sitters, who look in the direction of atheism, but their behind is still entangled in christian religious needs.   
  The choice of an institution with the style of buildings and terminology as a placebo church accommodates the fence sitters' needs to remain in surroundings resembling their lost paradise.   
  

An example:  Somebody with sufficient knowledge in philosophy can either be the speaker giving a lecture in an auditorium or he can be the minister giving a sermon in a church with or without a god.   

They may even talk about the same topic, but there is a huge difference:
 

Independently thinking atheists attend the lecture.   They listen to information, which they afterwards reflect upon and which maybe influences their attitudes and their behavior.   But they actively process the information and choose what to make of it.

People, who prefer to attend services and to listen to sermons, do this in a more passive and submissive way.   Naming an event a service indicates, that there is a target, who is served by humble servants, who expect guidance and who are emotionally ready to be told what to do.   They do not choose or process, they attempt to follow, and rarely doubt the wisdom of someone with the halo of being called a minister.  

Becoming an atheist is only the first, but not sufficient step for rational people.   The logical next step is a rational reevaluation of all attitudes, values, opinions.   Whatever makes no sense without the christian belief, of which it had been derived, has to be reconsidered.

  
But the choice of a placebo church indicates the clinging to the values and world view of christianity and the wish to change nothing except having lost or deleted the god.

    

The following is a list of benefits as experienced and perceived by a member of the UU.   With his permission, I am quoting him literally. 

 
All these benefits do not need a church but can be obtained as good or better elsewhere.    My comments point to alternatives.  

1. fabulous live music of all kinds

No church is needed for life music.   There are many secular places offering concerts.    Anybody who wants to play in public, has a wide choice of places.  

2. liberal religious education, fellowship and musical training for children, making them aware of the great variety of religions and non-religious views

The place for education is the school.  Community colleges offer music lessons beyond the level of schools.  Pupils need to be taught scientific and skeptical thinking.   The place for information concerning religion are in history and social science lessons with sufficient mental distance.   They need to be taught, that religion is obsolete and enhances harming behavior.

Pupils also need to be taught interactive skills like communication, theory of mind, and a value system based upon rationality.   

3. fellowship and fun with people of liberal, non-religious and liberal religious views

People need fellowship with likeminded people.     Non-religious and liberal religious are contradictions.   Someone can either belief in a god or not.  This impedes fellowship.   There is a mental abyss between those, who belief in any god and those, who do not.   Something is weird when they join a placebo church instead of associating with their own kind.  

Liberal is a political term and has its place in a political party.  

4. promotion of enlightened values, including earth-friendly values among others, and tolerance for people of differing views.  

Tolerance for differing views (not different needs or tastes, unfortunate life situations or disabilities) is an indication of ignorance, stupidity and/or irrationality.   The careful evaluation of all views leads to the conclusion, which of them is rationally superior or is the only rational one.  From then on, differing views do not deserve tolerance.    Tolerance is the admittance of insufficient thinking.  
Rational non-religious people need secular non-religious and atheist groups, where religious people are excluded as a nuisance and annoyance.    Only fence-sitting atheists have tolerance for delusional believers.  
Enlightenment is the contrary of tolerated stupidity.   

5. social justice activities

This is the realm and task of political parties and task oriented pressure groups..

6. places where people can evolve their views as they are exposed to new or different ideas, not to mention help and healing in recovering from past indoctrination from dogmatic theology

This is the realm of secular psychological self-help, self-improvement and self-awareness groups and courses at community colleges.     The worst indoctrination is the delusion, that there are deities, afterlife, an immortal soul and such.   Any alleged help, which includes tolerating such insane beliefs would not be a real help, only a slight reduction of the damage. 

7. promotion of an open-minded approach to life in general

This is the realm and task of secular psychological self-help, self-improvement and self-awareness groups and of schools and all educational institutions.

8. non-religious weddings, child dedications, coming of age celebrations, and funeral services

All these celebrations are rituals based upon some interaction with a god.   A wedding means vows to a god, they are obsolete without a god.   People can best organize their celebrations according to their own individual needs.  

9. counseling and support for people going through difficult times

This is the task of qualified secular and rational psychologists.   A minister's kitchen psychology can do more damage than good.

10. community outreach supporting other organizations serving the most needy people in our communities and beyond

This is the realm and task of political parties and task oriented pressure groups.  They have to influence any country's government to fulfill its obligation to care and provide for the needy by getting sufficient tax from the rich.

11. a forum for the free expression of views which sometimes may run counter to those of the populous in general, e.g. opposition to war, oppression, etc.

This is the realm and task of political parties and of task oriented pressure groups.. 

12. an insitution where people can come together on a regular basis to meditate quietly and calmly on their lives and so on

This is the realm of secular psychological self-help, self-improvement and self-awareness groups and courses at community colleges and other educational institutions.    

13. a welcoming congregations accepting of people of different genders, sexual orientations, races, ethnicities, etc.

This is the common ground and every day situation of every functional group of people, who have joined it to pursue a hobby, sport, interest of any kind.  

14. all of these things and more available from one organization existing often like an island of liberality in the midst of a land of conservative religious people and their churches

It is pathetic to imitate, what one rejects.   Independent thinking atheists need a real alternative, not a placebo church.    

15. a denomination demonstrating a democratic way of functioning in the midst of many non-democratic, paternalistic institutions

A democratic way of functioning is the common ground of every functional group of people, who have joined it to pursue a hobby, sport, interest of any kind.  

There is no objective need for a placebo church to provide anything from this list.   A placebo church caters only for the need of people with a specific precondition.  

655. The Strategy Of The Self-Arranged Commitment Project

655.   The Strategy Of The Self-Arranged Commitment Project

Sometimes men give me the feedback, that they disagree with my searching strategy as is outlined throughout this blog.    This disagreement is a mixture of lacking comprehension and of the error of considering the instinct induced focus as better than a more rational but eclectic and uncommon approach.  

But my approach and my strategy are not even my invention, very learned people have similar ideas.   I already mentioned Epstein's love project in entries 29 and 385.

Further information can be found on his website in many publications and interviews, some of it about his love project and about arranged marriages:
http://drrobertepstein.com/index.php/media-coverage

This short video gives a good introductory overview:
http://www.sandiego6.com/san-diego-living/this-week/tuesday/Science-of-Love-139242443.html



1.  The self-arranged commitment project.
 
When more than a decade ago I first read about Robert Epstein's love project, I perceived this as a very good representation of my own previously more vague inclinations and wishes.  At that time I had already implicitly developed the paradigm of my own matching strategy, but the awareness for this was still emerging.   I immediately recognized my own inclinations, convictions and attitudes in Epstein's idea and I fully agree with his principles.  

My own strategy for a 'self arranged commitment' differs only in details.        

• A signature under a contract is only of legal significance.   If there is not enough trust between two persons to feel bound by a verbal agreement, then there is no base to attempt a relationship. 
• Paying for counseling is too much of a financial burden.   In the case that not each partner is able to comfortably afford a fair share of this burden, it is not such a good idea to require financial sacrifices, which may jeopardize the project. 
• I consider a very careful choice of the suitable match as even more important than it seemed to Epstein.   He admits to not even have read most of the over 1000 emails he got after the announcement of his project.  Instead he chose for his first attempt a woman, whom he met in an airplane.  

As far as I can make a guess, Epstein developed his love project as a consequence of his psychological research and as a remedy against being misled by his own inclinations.   To me the idea of the self-arranged commitment comes as a most natural expression of my own needs.   It is the result of full awareness of my own inclinations.


2.  The influence of instinctivity.

Unfortunately, Epstein's love project is spontaneously counterintuitive to men, who react strongly to the effects of female bodies upon their instincts.   It needs some intelligence and theory of mind to comprehend its wisdom.

The self-arranged commitment project can be chosen for disparate reasons, which are connected with my recurrent topic, that individual differences in the power of instinctivity have a very strong impact upon personality, attitudes, perception, decisions and behavior.
   
Men with high instinctivity cannot help but experience instinctive reactions when interacting with possible mates.   These reactions blur and distort rational long-term reasoning.   

This works both ways.   Such instincts can cause

• strong physical attraction and fast infatuation.    
• strong frustration, when the expected infatuation is not experienced immediately.   

Both effects impede rational decision and a wise choice of a mate.  


The choice of the self-arranged commitment project is influenced by a man's instinctivity and by the quality of his theory of mind: 

• The stronger a man's instinctivity, the less he is prone to comprehend and accept my strategy of the self-arranged-commitment project.  Only a man with an exceptionally good theory of mind and ability for the long-term anticipation is able to think independently and to act rationally in spite of what his instincts urge him to and in spite of the distortion by infatuation.   
• The less physical infatuation at the beginning of a relationship, the better the chances of rational choices and reasonable behavior and long-term happiness.   Only a man with low instinctivity and high predominance of cognition can meet a possible match without any expectation for strong physical attraction and without immediate infatuation.  Only he has a sufficiently clear mind to consider long-term compatibility and to welcome a self-arranged-commitment project.   

Men's instinctivity causes often an asymmetrical constellation.    While men get immediately infatuated with bodies, women can also get infatuated and blurred in their decision, but in a very different way.   Women can get infatuated with the prospect of and hope for a safe haven, a reliable companion, a trustworthy lifelong partner, a mindmate, in short with the fulfillment of all their cognitive relationship needs.  
The asymmetry dooms the relationship.   When the man's infatuation wears out, he discovers the reality of how much or how little both have in common.   The woman, who enters a relationship for the purpose of getting her non-physical needs met, discovers after a while, that she was infatuated with a delusion, and there was no safe haven, only a man wishing to get access to a female body.   The man gets tired of the woman and the woman gets hurt.  

Starting a relationship as a self-arranged-commitment project is a method to avoid such an asymmetry.   The less a man is infatuated, when he agrees to build a relationship, the better are the woman's chances to be offered realistic prospects and no delusions.   

Therefore a self-arranged commitment project is for me a method to reduce the risk of getting hurt. 


3.  My inclinations towards the self-arranged commitment project.

I have never experienced or expected infatuation, immediate love or love at first sight or anything of this kind at the first encounter with someone, neither online nor previously offline.  It seemed natural to me to let love and attachment grow slowly.   Reciprocally meeting each other's basic criteria was to me always the starting point for the cooperation to create long-term attachment.    

I mistook this for the logical way how things were usually going.   For a long time I had the wrong impression, that most people were more rational and cognitive than they really are.   I thought that passion was an invention of novelists and that those men, who were driven be passion to annoy and to harm women, were only a sick and deranged minority.  

Only when learning about evolutionary biology and when the internet allowed me access to many public personal accounts of the experiences of real people, I understood the sad reality of the huge power of instincts over the majority of men.  It was really disheartening. 

I was not really astonished, that when Epstein created a project of what to me had always been sensible, reasonable and logical, it was perceived as an extraordinary and very novel project and stirred a lot of publicity in the media.      


4.  The scarcity of men inclined towards the self-arranged commitment project.

There is nothing wrong with being a nobody.   There is nothing beneficial in being famous.   Fame is merely the situation of being known by notoriety, admired, despised, envied or hated by lots of haphazard and insignificant persons.  

There is only one disadvantage of being a nobody.   There is no way of getting publicity, when there is a need to find something scare, rare and hidden.

Unfortunately there are very few men sharing Epstein's wisdom.  When I am in contact with men, whom I consider as hopeful candidates for a self-arranged-commitment project, they usually do not understand my intentions.   While hoping for a positive response, I am getting rejected as a consequence of their incomprehension. 
There are certainly a few men out there somewhere, who are innately suitable and motivated for a self-arranged commitment project.  Some may share this inclination, some may have been convinced by Epstein.   

Somewhere out there, there is one who would be as happy to find me as I were happy to find him.   But I just do not succeed to reach him.  
 
Epstein had one big advantage:   As the then publisher of Psychology Today, he had sufficient publicity, when he announced his love project on their homepage.    He got over a 1000 emails as a reaction, many from interested women.  

I am looking for and offering nearly the same as Epstein did.   But I am a nobody, I am unable to get sufficient publicity.  This blog is implicitly an elaborated synopsis of my self-arranged commitment project.   But writing 653 blog entries appearing in google searches in more than two and a half years has not given me even a tiny fraction of the resonance, which Epstein had in a few days. 

Life is not a novel.   If it were, a journalist from a widely read web site would discover this blog and help me to get the publicity needed to enable my mindmate to find me.   Or someone would start a matchmaking site especially for people interested in self-arranged projects of any kind and I could find my mindmate there.   

654. Gender Differences As A Research Result

654.   Gender Differences As A Research Result

I am aware of what I have learned by my own experiences and perception of men's behavior and of the huge distinction between how much most men are under the power of animal instincts and how little I am myself afflicted by such instincts.  

My own needs for attachment, commitment, companionship, appreciation of and respect for my brain and the recognition, that I deserve something better than being mistaken for a commodity are the contrary of many men's instinctive urges towards using female bodies without commitment.
  
But this awareness does not imply, that I am able to generalize correctly from myself to other women without a bias.   There are too many women presented on the web as allegedly and apparently by choice promiscuous, prostitutes and porno-stars to not be puzzled.   

The truth about this and about how many of them remain unharmed cannot be obtained from the standard media.  Feminist publications present this very differently.   Those of these women, who suffer later from irreversible psychological damage, are often either not presented or the damage is attributed to any other cause but not the self-afflicted compliance with being abused. 

Many people are gullible to social norms and external influences distorting their attitudes and evaluation of their own behavior, both as perpetrators and as victims.   In many societies, especially in modern western cultures, this favors men.   Women are fooled to underestimate the self-inflicted harm and men are fooled and fool themselves, that there is nothing wrong with what they do.   It is a sad reality, that too many men are naive and stupid enough to believe, that what they experience as beneficial for themselves, cannot cause harm for women.  Because they feel an urge to copulate like alley dogs, they cannot comprehend, that this harms women.   It is a good example, that a good theory of mind would be a better protection against harming others than is simple naive empathy.  

I am a allergic to any male attitude towards commodifying and objectifying women.  I am aware that many other women on the web appear to protest and to reject abuse much less than I do and to tolerate and to condone male harming transgressions more easily.   I cannot know the reasons, why they differ from me.  
I wonder if they really suffer less as the victims of male instincts.  Maybe the real difference between them and me is my greater resistance to being manipulated.   The socially propagated female gender role is not a part of my ideal self nor of my identity.   As an independent thinker I am immune to be made to believe, that what men do to women is automatically appropriate and that women should therefore not disagree but attempt to accommodate men by submission to their needs and repressing own needs.     


Therefore I always welcome research, which shows, that other women too are not the complying animals for copulating alley dogs, even though men prefer and misperceive them as such:  

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/04/130410192806.htm
 

"Women saw the maintenance of their romantic partnerships as a team sport, involving equal input from both partners with shared goals and beliefs being the key to success. Further, their happiness and contentment were intimately bound up in both their best friendships and romantic partnerships.

In contrast, men were found to exist at a greater distance from both of their closest relationships. When asked to score themselves against their best friends and romantic partners on a range of attributes their responses indicated that, consciously or not, they continued to act as though they were members of the dating market despite being in committed relationships."

"Dr Machin concluded that: "Our research shows that successful relationships are much more essential to women's well-being than men's. Men seem to keep their relationships at arm's length with one eye on the dating market. It seems that regardless of our culture of monogamy and commitment the biological imperative still operates, to a greater or lesser degree, for men. The war of the sexes is still alive and kicking within our relationships.""  [My emphasis]

653. Different Approaches To The Process Towards Knowing Someone Better

653.   Different Approaches To The Process Towards Knowing Someone Better

With whom to spend the rest of the life together is a very significant decision.  Mistakes can have very grave, long lasting, irreversible and extreme painful consequences.   

In entries 174, 176, 178 and 185 I developed a model for the process of getting to know each other.    The decision phase in entry 174 can be further divided.  
The preliminary phase is the phase of corresponding and talking over the phone to find out, if there is enough in common to rationally justify a personal meeting, the main decision phase follows the first meeting and includes further meetings.  

The duration of a phase includes a certain number x of hours of time spent by focusing the attention upon interacting by telephone, correspondence and even pondering over the prospects.   These x hours can be distributed over many months of only a short time daily or even weekly, or they can be spent with priority during a short period of time of intensive and extensive interacting.     
 

The more someone is an individual and not average, the more difficult it is to find someone suitable.  Therefore these phases, especially the preliminary phase, are usually repeated with several or even many different possible matches, before two persons find each other suitable enough for considering and attempting a relationship.   

There are principally two different approaches towards how to proceed:

The reciprocal absolute-cooperative approach: 

Goal:
 

This approach has the goal of finding just the one partner, who is minimally suitable for a relationship, but also sufficiently suitable to impede any further interest in others.   In this case, the most rational approach is to focus on only one intensive and extensive contact with one person at a time and to postpone considering and evaluating other contacts to after the possible failure.

Who:
 

The absolute approach suits and attracts those persons, who know themselves and their own needs well enough.  They are aware of what they are looking for in a partner and what they cannot accept.  

The absolute-cooperative approach only works, when two persons choose it as an option.  

Cooperation and consistency:
 

This approach is a form of cooperation.  Both share the task of discovering common ground and affinity and welcome finding them.   Every consent about any topic benefits both in getting them nearer to their goal, no matter if it is a trait, attitude, interest, habit, attribute.   The situation is transparent and to a certain degree reliable for both of them.   

No matter if the consent is more like tolerance by indifference or more like enthusiasm, as long as it is a consent between two persons, who want the consent, both can reasonably expect the other to be consistent.   Consent will not be easily converted into a reason for rejection out of the blue. 

Trust:
 

Growing reliable consent creates trust along with the growing probability of being compatible.   This reinforces and motivates to open up and to share more personal matters, which are also important for compatibility.   

Reinforcement:
 

Trust, consistency and discovering affinity and common ground reinforce the reasons for focusing upon exclusively this one possible match.  This then again reinforces the creation of trust and further affinity.

Emotional risk:
 

Every contact is of course emotionally risky.   But the risk of the absolute-cooperative approach is not so much the risk of an incomprehensible rejection.   It is mainly the risk of ending a contact by agreement because of discovering clearly defined lacking or intolerable traits and attributes.  By accepting someone's having rationally comprehensible criteria, an agreement of not meeting the criteria is not even really a rejection but the consent to be not compatible.  


The reciprocal relative-competitive approach:

Goal:
 

This approach has the goal of finding the best of all possible matches, not just one good match.   Nobody can really know, who is the best unless after having scrutinized every one of them.   As this cannot be done, every good match is considered with the doubt, that there could be a better match yet to be found.    The rational procedure for this goal is to prolong any phase and to explore and to compare many possible matches simultaneously.

Who:
 

The relative approach is often an expression of immaturity, ignorance, lacking self-awareness and having a limited theory of mind.   Some people enter the contact with haphazard persons without a clue about how little there is in common nor what they really want.  Some are attracted by looks, but beyond this they are not able to find out, what they do or do not want, unless and until they are confronted with it.  They only experience incompatibility by noticing the contrast in comparison with someone else.   They need to compare to find out, whom they want.  
Being vaguely discontented but not knowing why leads to a process of recurrently and endlessly probing, discarding and moving on attempting to find someone better.  They continue like this, as long as they are unable to decide, what and who is good enough for them.  

Whenever one person chooses the relative-competitive approach, the other has no choice to get anything else if preferred.

Competition and no consistency:
 

In the relative-competitive approach, there is not consistency.   Consent about a topic is not a reliable step forward towards a wider common ground, consent is only temporary and easily annihilated onesidedly, as soon as someone else appears to be better.   Being accepted or rejected does not depend primarily upon one's own traits and attributes, instead it depends at least as much upon those of competitors.   

These competitors are unknown powers in the background.   Ignoring both their number as well as their traits and attributes makes losing the other's consent by being compared with a successful competitor an unpredictable event coming out of the blue.    

When people are competing to get a job, they do know, that they are competing and they have some idea, what is required.  They have a clue about the qualities for being the best   This gives them a chance to attempt appearing as the best.

The person in the situation of competing against unknown competitors for an appealing partner is in a much less advantageous situation.   Due to not knowing anything about a potential match, there is no way to influence the comparison with others nor to attempt to appear being the best.  Who is perceived as better is determined by the lottery of who happens to be there to be compared.  

Trust:
 

When the rejection can come at any moment out of the blue and cannot be predicted, there is no reliable consistency.   This impedes trust.  The relative-competitive approach keeps contacts superficial and less personal.   The possibility of a rejection out of the blue does not motivate anybody to open up and get more personal.   

Reinforcement: 
 

The fragility of a contact adds to the maintenance of some mental distance.    Being prepared for a pending rejection at any time makes the own relative-competitive approach the most reasonable behavior.   If the rejection by the preference for someone else can happen at any time, then it is beneficial to also have other contacts to fall back upon.   The fragility and superficiality of the relative-competitive approach also reinforce it by preventing trust and closeness.   
 
Emotional risk. 
 

The main emotional risk is the unpredictability of a onesided incomprehensible rejection at any moment and for unknown reasons.   Having such a rejection imposed upon oneself without having any part in causing it is much more painful than an end by agreement.


When the situation is asymmetrical, then the person following or preferring the absolute-cooperative approach is the one having all the disadvantages.   

Jerks play games and pretend to follow also the absolute-cooperative approach, until they find the someone to prefer and then they reject the flabbergasted other out of the blue.  

When the situation is clear, the person with a preference for the absolute-cooperative approach has two options, either to recoil directly or to go along while also continuing to search, but not to find someone better but someone, who shares the preference for this approach.     

The relative-competitive approach is probably enhanced or rather aggravated by the social norm of the lifestyle in capitalistic countries, where people are encouraged and brainwashed towards consuming and discarding, towards the greed of wanting always more and always something better.    

When people are made to buy a better car, a better computer and a better cell phone every few months or years instead of using things until they break, then it is not really astonishing, that they generalize this consumers' attitude also to human relations. 

652. The Tit-For-Tat Meta Addition To The Golden Rule

652.  The Tit-For-Tat Meta Addition To The Golden Rule

"The Golden Rule or ethic of reciprocity is a maxim,[1] ethical code or morality[2] that essentially states either of the following:

(Positive form of Golden Rule): One should treat others as one would like others to treat oneself.[1]

(Negative form of Golden Rule): One should not treat others in ways that one would not like to be treated (also known as the Silver Rule)."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_Rule

Like expressed above, the golden rule is quoted often.   But for people using the tit-for-tat strategy as a basis of interacting, the following is an important logical consequence of the golden rule:

Do not blame others for treating you the same way, as you have treated them before.  

The tit-for-tat strategy does not suit morals, which are openly or even subtly influenced by a christian background of society.   Even rational non-religious people are often under this impact without being aware of this. 

Christianity promises the reward in the afterlife as a compensation for the acceptance of suffering, for unconditional forgiving, for turning the other cheek.    This is inconsistent with the tit-for-tat strategy, which chooses reactions to behavior as mirroring this behavior. 

Some people misunderstand the tit-for-tat strategy as a way of being vindictive.    This is not the case.  

• Non-criminal vengeance is an emotional behavior.   Under limited circumstances it can be a way of finding relief from suffering helpless outrage as the victim of a transgression.  
• The tit-for-tat strategy is a rational way of maintaining a balance of giving and receiving and of preventing disruptive imbalances.  

Vengeance can even be an apparently paradoxical reaction to following the christian demands under social pressure and misguidance while not being intrinsically agreeing.  Following these christian demands can lead to an extremely unbalanced situation of one person taking advantage and one suffering until a breaking point is reached.   

The tit-for-tat strategy can prevent this, because it leads to both persons involved reaching a point of ending a futile situation much earlier,   This does not escalate until one suffers enough to feel vindictive, when both do not gain any advantage.  

But tit-for-tat only works, when both agree on and are aware of its justification.   When one persons uses tit-for-tat, but the other expects christian submission to and compliance with bad treatment, then this leads to disruptive and unstable interactions.   

651. Modern Human Sacrifices

651.  Modern Human Sacrifices

I grew up here in Germany taking it for granted, that nature and forests are safe places.   As a child I had known of wolves and bears only from fairy tales as of a historical peril to humans in times long gone by.  I also took the general consent for granted that having eliminated all dangerous animals from densely populated Germany centuries ago was beneficial beyond doubt.  
I took this so much for granted, that I was not even grateful for the safety of German forests.  Today I am grateful to live, where there are no dangerous animals except those safely in cages in the zoo.  (It is bad enough, that some men are not better than dangerous animals.)  

But I do not take this for granted anymore.   I just watched a documentary about how humans are ruthlessly exposed to dangers by irresponsible people.

http://topdocumentaryfilms.com/predators-in-your-backyard/

"The cougar is also commonly known as a puma, mountain lion, mountain cat, catamount, or panther. The sub-population in Florida, which is the only population east of the Mississippi River, is known as the Florida panther.
At least 20 people in North America were killed by cougars between 1890 and 2011"

 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_fatal_cougar_attacks_in_North_America

Preserving the wild life is certainly important, but it is immoral to force risks upon people, who suffer without a choice, and who have no option to protect themselves.   There should be barriers like fences separating humans from predators.   Those who enable panthers or bears to enter peoples' gardens are irresponsible and cruel.   When such beasts invade a backyard, the people are helpless victims of a situation forced upon them.     

Adding the dangers of wolves to the already existing danger of bears in Yellowstone Park is a different situation, because people have a choice to keep away from such dangerous areas.   But to make this a real option of safety, such parks need to be fenced in to guaranty the safety outside.  

When capitalists' interests are protected, the money to build a fence is raised, as shows the fence along the border between the USA and Mexico.   But to protect humans from being killed by bears or panthers brings no commercial benefits, thus people are not protected by fences.

 

I am very glad for the restricted legal access to firearms here in Germany.    But I have full understanding for anybody, who needs a weapon as a means for self-defense against panthers and bears.      

I consider the safety of the home from invading dangerous animals as a basic human right. It seems absurd, that shooting a panther leads sometimes to less tolerance and condoning than shooting a burglar.   

It is criminal to endanger people by forcing the access of dangerous beasts upon them.   It is a form of murder by proxy, if someone gets killed by predators like bears and panthers released near human homes.  

It is even a variety of human sacrifices.   In many cultures through history, humans were sacrificed to deities, who were considered as more significant and more valuable than the lives of the sacrificed victims.  
Bringing or allowing panthers and bears enter human habitats is a variety of sacrificing humans.   The deity is substituted by some more vague entity as is nature, the planet, wildlife,.   This entity too is considered as having more value and more significance than the risked life of individual humans.   

There is just one difference.   The sacrificing priests were themselves consciously killing the victims and feeling justified to do so.   Those sacrificing human life by imposing predators upon victims do not feel responsible, because the do not do the killing themselves and consider it only as collateral damage.
(I am wondering, how many of those, who welcome and protect the panthers in Florida, at the same time define abortion as murder.   For them, a woman is required to have any unwanted child, but if the panther would kill the child, they accept this as collateral damage.)

650. Independence And Interdependence

650.  Independence And Interdependence

Sometimes I am reading in men's profile their expressed wish to find an INDEPENDENT woman.    After some pondering I have come to the conclusion, that this is a huge red flag, because quite often it can mean something very different from what a woman herself would consider as being independent.   

Logically, dependence cannot be evaluated by probing only one person, instead dependence concerns at least two entities, of which one depends upon the other.   Absolute independence would mean, that there were no dependence whatsoever of no other entity.   

But to survive, humans do depend upon resources and usually also on other humans supplying such resources.   Any need creates a form of dependence upon the source of fulfillment, the stronger the need, the stronger the dependence.   

As therefore there cannot be absolute independence, all independence is partial and defined by the absence of the dependence upon a specified entity.    Calling oneself independent can mean a wide variety of even contradictory things.   A man wanting an independent woman and independence as a part of a woman's identity can be not only different but mutually exclusive.   

Personally, I as a woman value in both genders independent thinking, independence from social norms and especially the independence from being determined by instinctive urges.  

But I suspect, that a man preferring an independent woman means something very different.   He expects from such a woman the convenience of not being bothered by her with any relationship needs to be fulfilled by him.  He expect to be allowed to use her body without giving her anything in return.   

Not giving what is not wanted nor needed is subjectively for him very different from denying a woman to fulfill her expressed needs.   Independence understood this way allows him to use her body without any reason for having a bad conscience.   His imagines an independent woman as one, who is an animal like himself, not needing, wanting or demanding emotional attachment, cohabitation, a safe haven, bonding. 

This is a consequence of the biological differences between the genders in the situation of coping with being singles.    Singles organize the provision for their needs as well as possible by a network of many sources.   

• Emotional needs of both genders are fulfilled by the family of origin, by the own children, by close friends and buddies.   
• Intellectual needs of both genders are fulfilled at work, by educational institutions, in hobby groups and with colleagues.   
• Physical needs are asymmetrical.  Many female singles are content with their sources for emotional and intellectual needs and they do not miss the physical interactions with a man.   But many men are driven by their recurrent sexual dishomeostasis to need a female body, while all other needs are met.  

The worst male animals do not hesitate to pay for the abuse of prostitutes or to behave as alley dogs abusing any female body they can lure into bed.    

The more decent, mature and considerate ones consciously want to refrain from any such abuse.   They are willing to get involved in an exclusive long-term relationship with one woman.  As all their non-physical needs are already cared for, this leads to an imbalance of giving and taking.  Having only physical needs, nothing else a woman offers has any value or attraction for them.  Fulfilling a woman's needs is therefore perceived as a price and a sacrifice, which do not supply sufficient benefits.   Men in such a situation wish for independent women, who need and want nothing from them yet appear content to maintain these men's homeostasis.  

A female body is easily replaced, a man's mere physiological needs do not suffice for the stability and durability of a relationship.    A relationship is fragile, as long as a man's entire human cognitive needs are fulfilled elsewhere, while only the animal in him needs the woman.   

A relationship, which is a reliable and trustworthy safe haven for a woman, requires a balanced mutual and reciprocal interdependence, the stronger the better.    Interdependence between two humans develops, when also the man enters the relationship with unfulfilled cognitive, emotional and intellectual needs and when he chooses his partner for her individual personal suitability for these needs.    Interdependence then means, that both partners need each other as unique sources for a wide variety of aspects of wellbeing and that they are fully aware, that the other is not easily replaced.    Under such circumstances, interdependence is not experienced as a burden, but as a beneficial arrangement for both partners.  

Interdependence has two aspects.  

One is the mutual enhancement of the joy of any shared activity.   The other is the reciprocal fulfillment of each other's onesided individual needs.   
All those joys, which are gender-neutral and cognitive, can be mutual as is for example the visit to a museum and the exchange of thoughts and impressions   

But where there are biological differences, it is reciprocal concerning different needs.    Keeping one emotionally attached partner in homeostasis is a fair deal, when he in return protects her against the dishomeostasis of all other men, who as predators would otherwise attempt to abuse her body.    

As I really like traveling, this is a good example of the balanced giving and receiving of very disparate needs.  Traveling alone means for a woman the unavoidable stress of permanent vigilance, recurrent fear and hazardous situations.   Traveling with a partner makes it a relaxed and safe joy.    The reciprocity of homeostasis in return for secure traveling is a very beneficial deal for both partners.