674. The Omitted Cognition In The Interpretation Of Research Results Concerning Monogamy

674.   The Omitted Cognition In The Interpretation Of Research Results Concerning Monogamy

Research on questions of evolutionary biology and evolutionary psychology are very valuable methods towards explaining, why the subconscious power of instincts interferes so much with the conscious and cognitive goals and needs of humans.    But it is overdoing this, when humans are mistaken for being not more than animals with a specific instrumental intelligence only serving a better success in fulfilling instinctive urges.    The unique human cognition has some special implications, which need to be taken into account.  


Evolution of Monogamy in Humans the Result of Infanticide Risk, New Study Suggests
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/07/130729161558.htm

"Infants are most vulnerable when they are fully dependent on their mother because females delay further conception while nursing slowly developing young. This leads to the threat from unrelated males, who can bring the next conception forward by killing the infant. Sharing the costs of raising young both shortens the period of infant dependency and can allow females to reproduce more quickly."

Monogamy Evolved as a Mating Strategy: New Research Indicates That Social Monogamy Evolved as a Result of Competition
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/07/130729172244.htm

"They found convincing support for the hypothesis that monogamy arose as a mating strategy where males could not defend access to more than one female. Monogamy is associated with low density of females, low levels of home-range overlap, and indirectly, with their diets. The study showed that monogamy evolves in species that rely on high quality but patchily distributed food sources, such as meat and fruit. In contrast, in herbivores, which rely on more abundant resources, social monogamy is rare."

"The analysis did not include humans, and the researchers are sceptical that these results tell us much about the evolution of human breeding systems.

Clutton-Brock added, "It is debatable whether humans should be classified as monogamous. Because all the African apes are polygamous and group living, it is likely that the common ancestor of hominids was also polygamous. One possibility is that the shift to monogamy in humans may be the result in the change of dietary patterns that reduce female density. While another is that slow development of juveniles required extended care by both sexes. However, reliance by humans on cultural adaptations means that it is difficult to extrapolate from ecological relationships in other animals.""

This tunnel view on monogamy is another example, how the special and unique qualities of the human cognition is overlooked or omitted.   

• Humans have emotional and intellectual needs, which can be selectively fulfilled with one specific partner more than with any or with most others.  
• For some humans, these emotional and intellectual needs are stronger or at least as strong as the instinctive needs to breed.
• Humans have the ability to recognize and distinguish other humans as individuals by invisible and exteriorly unnoticeable traits, which can only be discovered and recognized by verbal and cognition based communication.
• Humans have a memory for information gained, which allows them to anticipate the modalities of the fulfillment of emotional and intellectual needs in the future.
• Humans have the ability to comprehend the consequences of their own behavior as a determinant for this future fulfillment.

Therefore monogamy in humans can be more than an evolutionary strategy towards breeding success, instead being an expression of the unique human cognitive evolution towards surpassing the yoke of the full control by animal instincts.    The unique human cognition enables them to decide, that, when and how monogamy is the best choice for a long-term fulfillment of those predominant needs, which are more than just instinctive urges to breed.   

673. More About The Facial Width-To-Height Ratio

673.   More About The Facial Width-To-Height Ratio

Already in entries 487, 518 and 641 I mentioned the possibility, that wide-faced men may be more of a hazard to women than narrow faced men.    Here is another study pointing in the same direction: 

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/06/130606223251.htm

"The study focussed on the link between the facial width-to-height ratio (FWH) and dominance in men. Participants were asked to rate different aspects of the personalities of 100 men using a single photograph.

FWH is measured as the maximum horizontal distance from the left facial boundary to the right facial boundary (width) divided by the distance from the top of the lip to the highest point of the eyelids (height). It has been suggested that development of this facial characteristic is related to differences in adolescent levels of testosterone, a hormone known to be involved in socially dominating behaviour.

In the study 30 participants viewed photos of 93 Chief Executive Officers's (CEO) from the top 100 FTSE companies (minus seven female CEO's) and were asked to judge their personality on gut instinct.

Another set of 93 photos were taken from internet (such as university websites) to act as a control group.

The results showed that the CEO's faces had a greater FWH ratio compared to the control group and were perceived as more dominant and successful."

672. Avoiding Commitment Is Unhealthy

672.   Avoiding Commitment Is Unhealthy

Often people, who are not in a relationship, especially those, who had been hurt, cope with this situation by distributing their emotional and social needs over a variety of sources, children, family, colleagues, buddies.   What first starts as a method of substitution, sometimes reduces or eliminates all subjectively felt need to find a partner and the situation is perpetuated. 

  
Women in such a situation often claim to not need a man at all.  Thus they at least do not harm anybody.  
Men in such a situation unfortunately are also a jeopardy for women needing a companion, because while they can fulfill all their emotional and social need by combined substitutes, they continue to have physiological needs.  They restore their homeostasis by the temporary abuse of female bodies, but refuse commitment.   

According to this research, such a system of substitutes does not suffice to maintain optimal health:

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/07/130703101607.htm

"New BYU research finds that people in happy marriages live less "in sickness" but enjoy more of life "in health."

In a 20-year longitudinal study tracking health and marriage quality, BYU family life researcher Rick Miller found that as the quality of marriage holds up over the years, physical health holds up too."

This has unfortunate implications.   The more people feel a deficit, the more they are motivated to change this actively.   Men on dating sites, who have settled in such a system of substitutions, are often not motivated to make the least efforts towards finding a committed relationship, while they are still healthy and fit.   They make the big mistake of waiting passively and with inertia, until some perfect dream woman would falls from the sky directly into their bed.    

In my age group, these men's mistake can be fatal.   They are in denial, that once they have undermined their health and are already sick, frail and in need of a caring woman, then it is too late to find one.   Few women are interested to start a relationship as a nurse.        

671. Research On Predators' Brains

671.   Research On Predators' Brains

There is a wide variety of men when judging them by the harm, which they inflict on women.  

Nice, responsible, considerate guys know how to treat a woman without hurting her.   They feel an own innate wish for bonding, for monogamy, for a close and committed relationship with a woman perceived as a person.  

Predators, jerks, abusers are instinct driven alley dogs, who make women's life miserable by mistaking their bodies as toilets for male body waste.  

Both varieties exist and of course there are mixed forms between these extremes.   Explaining the difference includes defining the baseline.

 

1.  One possible way to interpret this distinction is to see the abuse of women as the direct and logical effect of unconstrained male libido.   What enables some men to be nice and decent is their special talent or gift to appreciate and respect women to an extent, which suffices to deactivate all destructive and excessive impacts of their libido.   Their recognition and perception of women as companions is an achievement based upon this special aptitude, which may be an expression of emotional intelligence or even an independent cognitive ability.    It is something, which is lacking in animals and in abusers.

2.  The alternative interpretation is defining drastic behavioral urges as a disorder and call it hypersexuality, which is supposed to be an addiction.   This interpretation and definition omits and overlooks to take into any account the impact upon the abused victims.   Their suffering is condoned and misinterpreted as normal, as merely collateral damage.   Hypersexuality is only considered as problematic, when there are unintended and not wished for consequences for the abusers themselves.

I consider the first explanation as more plausible, because the human species is still evolving further towards the development of predominant cognitive talents and abilities.   This ongoing evolution of the unique qualities of the human brain to be more rational than driven by instinctive urges strengthens the ability to make wise decisions, which can override the power of animal instincts.  

 

There has been done a study on abusers' brains.

Sexual desire, not hypersexuality, is related to neurophysiological responses elicited by sexual images.
Vaughn R. Steele, PhD, Cameron Staley, PhD, Timothy Fong, MD and Nicole Prause, PhD.  

http://www.socioaffectiveneuroscipsychol.net/index.php/snp/article/view/20770/28995
 

"Background: Modulation of sexual desires is, in some cases, necessary to avoid inappropriate or illegal sexual behavior (downregulation of sexual desire) or to engage with a romantic partner (upregulation of sexual desire). Some have suggested that those who have difficulty downregulating their sexual desires be diagnosed as having a sexual ‘addiction’. This diagnosis is thought to be associated with sexual urges that feel out of control, high-frequency sexual behavior, consequences due to those behaviors, and poor ability to reduce those behaviors. However, such symptoms also may be better understood as a non-pathological variation of high sexual desire. Hypersexuals are thought to be relatively sexual reward sensitized, but also to have high exposure to visual sexual stimuli. Thus, the direction of neural responsivity to sexual stimuli expected was unclear. If these individuals exhibit habituation, their P300 amplitude to sexual stimuli should be diminished; if they merely have high sexual desire, their P300 amplitude to sexual stimuli should be increased. Neural responsivity to sexual stimuli in a sample of hypersexuals could differentiate these two competing explanations of symptoms."

Methods: Fifty-two (13 female) individuals who self-identified as having problems regulating their viewing of visual sexual stimuli viewed emotional (pleasant sexual, pleasant-non-sexual, neutral, and unpleasant) photographs while electroencephalography was collected.

Results: Larger P300 amplitude differences to pleasant sexual stimuli, relative to neutral stimuli, was negatively related to measures of sexual desire, but not related to measures of hypersexuality.

Conclusion: Implications for understanding hypersexuality as high desire, rather than disordered, are discussed. "

"In conclusion, the first measures of neural reactivity to visual sexual and non-sexual stimuli in a sample reporting problems regulating their viewing of similar stimuli fail to provide support for models of pathological hypersexuality, as measured by questionnaires. Specifically, differences in the P300 window between sexual and neutral stimuli were predicted by sexual desire, but not by any (of three) measures of hypersexuality. If sexual desire most strongly predicts neural responses to sexual stimuli, management of sexual desire, without necessarily addressing some of the proposed concomitants of hypersexuality, might be an effective method for reducing distressing sexual feelings or behaviors."

The study backs up my notion, that male libido is by itself a problem causing harm to women.   Therefore it should be not only considered as problematic, when it has detrimental effects upon the men themselves, but whenever is causes degradation, commodification and objectification of women.   It should be considered already as a problem, while it still is restricted to men's deranged attitudes, before any harm is done to women.  

670. The Compartmentalized Mind

670.   The Compartmentalized Mind

This continues entry 669.

There is one more pattern, which on a subtle and hidden level can be even more devastating to unfortunate victims.   

A person has learned a system of rules, values, morals or psychological concepts, which to him are logically convincing.   He accepts them as generally valid and as a wise basis and guideline for human interaction. 
But he nevertheless excludes himself entirely from applying this system upon himself.  He does not do this consciously, he is unaware of the compartmentalization of his mind.   He has and pursues the same goals as George Simon's (entries 629 and 661) disturbed characters.   These goals are derived only from the subjectively alleged entitlement to the unrestricted fulfillment of all own needs.  

I call him a robot, because he is controlled by two programs.    The main program is the goal program, which determines, that he always pursues his own needs and wishes with unhesitating priority.   The second program is the auxiliary methods program.  It contains all general human rules of interactions and expectations needed as instrumental intelligence.    This program is to be applied only selectively, whenever it serves to get advantages from others.   

This robot lives in a divided mental world, where real and virtual or distant people are perceived as categorically distinct.  

The robot theoretically accepts rules as generally valid for all humans but fails to ever recognize any person in real life as a human of the quality to whom to apply the rules.   Instead he experiences himself as only interacting with entities, whom he mistakingly perceives as mere commodities existing for his convenience.  He experiences them as either functioning, when they serve his needs or else as being flawed, when they refuse or fail to function.  

In the robot's perturbed minds, none of those entities, whom he meets in real life, is ever considered as a human suitable to mentally apply the system of accepted behavioral rules to. He is unable to recognize such humans, when he meets them.   Instead, the robot experiences humans as elusive abstract sources of text or other creative and intellectual stimulation.    A robot's real world is populated by commodities, while humans to be treated with respect and consideration are figures from fairy tales.   

A robot with a good memory can become an excellent bluffer as described in entry 287.   He can reproduce learned thoughts of others to an amorphous audience, while he himself does not understand any of what he is theoretically talking about.   Due to his inability to recognize real humans as non-commodities, he deprives himself of ever experiencing in real life, what he reproduces verbally like a parrot.      

The robot is impeded from the benefits of feedback.   He considers the commodified victims as too insignificant and flawed to take any heed of their disagreement.   Abstract distant humans, with whom he may have contact, are ignorant of his commodifying real people.    

The robot does not attempt to hide his intended commodification, as he is not aware of the disagreement to be elicited.  People usually are able to avoid harm from such a robot, when they meet him in real life and are immediately and overly treated as commodities.      


On the internet, such a robot is a high risk for a woman.   By any form of initial communication over any distance, a woman is represented mainly by emails, a few pictures or at the most a voice over the telephone.   Thus she is abstract and not real, as long as she is not in the direct reach of the robot's commodification.     

Under such circumstances the woman elicits initially the robot's response and behavioral disposition for humans.   She is prone to be mislead, when he talks convincingly about things, which in reality he has no comprehension for.   She develops wrong expectations, she hopes to be treated by him as in reality only the author of the parroted books would have treated her.

 
Meeting him means disaster for her.    As soon as she appears as a real person in his life, she is automatically redefined in his perception to be henceforth a commodity like every real life person.   Everything of what he had expressed to her as to someone being considered a human, is instantly annihilated.   Nothing of it remains valid.   As a commodity, she now is outside the scope of any previously accepted obligations to her.    Now he expects all to be at his convenience.           

669. The Difference Between Instrumental Intelligence And Wise Intelligence

669.   The Difference Between Instrumental Intelligence And Wise Intelligence

Entry 648 was about a chimpanzee's amazing cognitive accomplishments.    But he is not the only animal with astounding achievements:   
http://www.zoo.ox.ac.uk/group/kacelnik/lb_movie_s1.mov
This movie shows, how a cockatoo solves a complicated puzzle to get access to food.  

This is once more an example for what I consider the fundamental difference between what I will call instrumental intelligence and wise intelligence.    This difference is often overlooked and confounded.   Animals can show some form of instrumental intelligence.   But wise intelligence requires cognitive abilities, which are found only in humans, and by far not in all of them. 

Ayumu and the cockatoo will repeat difficult cognitive task, whenever their body is inclined to eat the reward.    Nothing else has an impact upon the application of instrumental intelligence to a perceived need and to the goal of fulfilling it.   Attempting a task, no matter the amount of instrumental intelligence needed, is not a decision, but an automatic reaction to a need or an urge.  

A human too usually needs some instrumental intelligence to acquire food.   No matter if this means the skills to hunt, to gather or to farm, or if it requires to earn money and to buy food, or even to steal it.   But a human's wise intelligence first evaluates the goals in a complex mental context, before applying instrumental intelligence towards reaching it.   A human can for example decide, if he wants to spend money on food or on a book, if he wants to eat or to lose weight, if he wants to acquire food for himself or for some other person.  

Instrumental intelligence is a tool, which serves to pursue goals, which are derived from either instinctive urges or external influences or any interaction between both.    These goals are exempt from any rational evaluation.  

Wise intelligence also uses instrumental intelligence as a general principle and as much upon the own person as upon others.    Goals, attitudes, morals, value systems and behavior are chosen and evaluated by the same rationality and logical procedures as is the subsequent pursuit of the goals.   Wise intelligence includes having a theory of mind, and it is more than emotional intelligence, which can be misused to the disadvantage of others.  

To illustrate this, here are some examples of humans doing a lot of harm by using instrumental intelligence in the absence of wise intelligence:
   

• A scientist explores methods how to build lethal bombs for the purpose of serving his religion as a terrorist.
• A scientist designs weapons for war as a means of strengthening his own ingroup.
• PUAs (pick up animals) learn and teach elaborated tricks for the purpose of luring women into situations, in which they can be abused.
• Greedy sales people learn special psychological techniques to get money from reluctant customers.
• Power hungry politicians use elaborate intrigues and strategies to get to the top of hierarchies.

There are several different patterns of dynamics, when people apply instrumental intelligence as a means of asymmetrically pursuing goals.   Some believe, that the fittest and strongest are naturally entitled to privileges, whenever they can achieve them.  They outrightly reject the concept of equality.  Some believe at least, that everybody competes and fights for benefits adn that doing the same to protect themselves legitimates it. 

George Simon's (entries 629 and 661) disturbed characters are of these patterns.   The persons are aware of what they are doing and that many targets and victims disagree with how they are treated.   There is no denial of the collateral damage caused.    

While targets and victims are usually not able to stop such behaviors, they often have the option of avoiding, what can be easily recognized.   
Simon's disturbed characters do not accept the validity of other people's rules for themselves, but they pretend to do so, when this serves their purpose.
When disturbed characters fail to succeed, they are usually aware to be the losers in a competition fought with all the weapons supplied by instrumental intelligence.   

668. Where Are The Men Like André Gorz?

668.   Where Are The Men Like André Gorz?

I already mentioned Dorine and André Gorz in entry 100.    I have now finally read his entire book 'Letter To D.'.    

It is a very touching book.   It sadly reminds me of the role in a man's life, which I am craving for.   Those men, who are able to concede so much significance to a woman, are very elusive.  I have never met one.  

Andrè Gorz appreciated Dorine as a person, she was very significant to him.   He cared, what she thought, he valued her feedback, he accepted to be influenced by her.   He was intellectually and emotionally bonded with her.  She was even more than just a part of his life, she was the essence of their being a unit transcending the limits of being two persons.   

Dorine got the dignified and appropriate place in his life, which she deserved.   He never tired of her, the longer they were together, the more he felt attached and the more he learned to admit and recognize this. 

When the book 'Letter To D.' was published, the reactions in the media were not about an example of a happy marriage, they sounded more like the review of a fairy tale of a marriage.  

 

Men today are the victims of the subtly devastating collateral damage of the technological and economical progress which began, when my generation grew up and was in the decisive years of being most susceptible to being influenced.  

One generation earlier, the Gorzes grew up in a very different world, which facilitated the development of deep thoughts, while today this is more impeded than facilitated:

1.   Kind of media

When the Gorzes were young, there were movies shown in the cinemas, but the majority of media was printed text, and that was what people had at home to occupy their minds with.

Reading a book is a completely different process compared with watching a movie.   I grew up without TV, but it started in Germany, while I was a child.   In those days, any program on TV was continuous and could not be stopped or rewound.   If some part or some important scene was missed or not understood, it was gone without retrieval.   

This trained people to accept as normal the superficial consumption of what was not available for any deeper reflection.    

Reading a book allows people to process it much more thoroughly than a TV program.  One can put a book aside and think, one can go back and reread some chapters or talk about it.  Therefore books allow people to reach a profounder understanding of the content than do movies, when they cannot be stopped at one's own convenience.  Thus people can learn deeper thinking much better from reading than from TV.   

2.   Effect of media

I have already mentioned Kanazawa and his savanna theory.     
http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-scientific-fundamentalist/201002/the-savanna-principle
His suggestion, that people's minds mistake persons on a TV-screen as friends, has made me aware of a much broader effect.   The human brain has not evolved to subconsciously distinguish between merely technical representations and real life experiences, whenever the quality of the representation is a good enough imitation of real life.   This is true for TV, movies and sound in the quality, which exists now since several decades.  
 

When people read a story in a book, it is easy to be aware, that this is an imaginary story and not a description of reality.    But when people see the drastic imagination of extreme behaviors acted out by real people, these actors as role models on a TV screen can subtly change the standards and the sense of what is morally right.  This effect of role models on a screen is much more devastating than the influence of books.   
Behavior based upon consideration and responsibility does not entertain people.   What entertains people, is drastic and extreme.    Consciously, people know, what is real and what is not.   But the subtle subconscious devastation nevertheless happens. 

Reading Casanova's written stories about his abuse is much less a lecture instigating men to abuse women in real life, than are movies presenting the hero-jerk's abuse of women as a positive role model.
 

The quantity of the exposure to the readily available mass of movies presenting the most extreme and outrageous behaviors has a strong impact upon the subconscious mind. This deforms and distorts, what is considered as normal and acceptable.    

Not only does this change social norms, it also leads to the desensitization towards the suffering of the victims of those imitating the role models.  Since people's standards have been damaged, hurting, cruelty, abuse, inconsideration have become so ubiquitous, that people have lost the awareness for the monstrosities done or at least tolerated.   

3.   Effect of distraction

A couple in the times of the youth of the Gorzes had not much alternatives to spend their time together except by communicating.  At least at home, there was not much entertainment available, and events outside the home were expensive compared with people's income.  

Communicating leads people to knowing and appreciating each other and to growing deeper in their connections.    Becoming deeper as persons makes communication more attractive and enjoyable.    

Today people can entirely avoid communicating by the permanent distraction of easily and affordably available superficial entertainment and activities.    A couple can thus never even discover the benefits and joy of a deep level of communication as was the life style of the Gorzes.  

4.   Effects upon men's attitude towards women

The above listed factors have damaged men's behavior and attitudes towards women.   

Men's instinctive tendency to perceive women as bodies are enhanced, while they are impeded to recognize and to notice, let alone to appreciate the benefits of women's intellectual abilities.

Relationships are considered as mainly between two bodies.  

Female bodies are presented as easily available and easily replaceable.  

Conflicts and troubles do not lead people to work on their relationship and develop depth and bonding.   By discarding and replacing their mates too easily, people never experience depth and are unable to recognize and value it in others.