716: Alley Dogs: The Regression To An Earlier Period Of Evolution
Definition:
I call persons, who copulate without neither getting emotionally attached nor wishing this to happen, as alley dogs.
Copulation like alley dogs is a regression to behaviors prevalent before the specific cognitive qualities of the human brain had evolved.
Evolution is not a master plan. As long as a species survives, this only indicates, that in the past the evolutionary net sum of instinctive and in the case of humans also innate cognitive tendencies has resulted in a sufficient amount of procreation.
Some millions of years ago, when the ancestors of present day humans were still only animals, they copulated by instinct as all animals do. Some months later it was followed by the birth of the youngster(s).
At that moment, they had no conscious memory of the copulation and they were not aware, that the agony of birth was caused by the copulation.
When they copulated, they were also unable to anticipate, that giving birth was the punishment for the female.
Lacking the comprehension of this causality, they also had no way to avoid the agony of further procreation.
Then the unique evolution of the human cognition began. One of the aspects thereof is the longterm memory and the ability to anticipate the future consequences of the own and of others' behavior. This enabled the co-evolution of purely cognitive emotions, which derive from reasoning and not from bodily sensations. Cognitive emotions are very distinct from sensations like fear in the situation of a real danger or pain after being physically wounded.
Some of these cognitive emotions are:
- Emotional attachment based upon invisible cognitive traits.
It is difficult to define love or to put such feeling into words. But with certainty, whatever there is, it cannot be called love without cognition derived emotional attachment. Traits leading to emotional attachment can be honesty, reliability, empathy, but also intelligence and education, which make it rewarding to be together.
- Rational empathy and a theory of mind.
By this someone has knowledge about how another person is going to react, This is more than the anticipation of visible behavior, but also the anticipation of the invisible cognitive emotions. This includes also those situations, when the reaction of the other will be very distinct from the own reaction under identical circumstances. - Responsibility and consideration. When being in advance aware of the consequences and impact of the own behavior upon others, responsibility is the cognitive ability to prevent hurting others by the avoidance of anticipated own cognitive emotions like guilt, shame, remorse.
- Awareness for invisible emotional reactions caused by invisible experiences.
This includes taking full account of feelings of selfworth and identity of the self and in others and how these are elicited and effected by interactions. Examples are appreciation, depreciation, adulation, disdain, honor, equality, indignation, injustice, pride, entitlement and much more.
Sometimes such qualities are called emotional intelligence.
By instinct only, alley dogs are male, while females attempt to exploit a man as a provider for the children, who get her full attachment, while he gets a subscription to the repeated use of her body.
When cognition modifies the raw instincts, emotional attachment to an intimate partner happens usually fast or immediately in women. For men usually more repetitions are needed, before the subjective experience of the alley dog copulation is converted into the emotional attachment of making love.
Had there been a continued linear evolution of only a growing strength of rationality and cognitive emotions like the one in the list above over instincts, this would have enabled and motivated more and more people to avoid harming others. As a logical side effect, this would have drastically reduced procreation and maybe the human species would already have been extinct.
Until safe family planning was available, a truly considerate and responsible man would have rather refrained from physical intimacy than ever risking to cause suffering for a woman, who was not fully wishing to have children.
Until safe family planning was available, a truly considerate and responsible man would have rather refrained from physical intimacy than ever risking to cause suffering for a woman, who was not fully wishing to have children.
But the human species did not get extinct. Some alley dogs continue to sire alley dogs and prevail in the gene pool. I can see several reasons.
- Some people, mostly men are just like animals, because they lack the human emotional restrictions which would prevent them from copulating like alley dogs. Their behavior is not guided or determined by cognitive emotions. They contribute more to the gene pool by having more offspring than the considerate men. Genghis Khan is a good example. He is reported to have raped thousands of women and his genes are supposed be present in millions of Asians.
1.1. They can be generally limited in their ability to feel cognitive emotions, as in the case of Alexithymia. They are not aware, what pain they cause to people, who want to be loved, because they themselves do not know love and are unable to experience emotional attachment.
1.2. They know, what they do, but do not care, because they are not able to feel guilt, shame or remorse. They are sociopaths. - The availability of safe birth control has made the consideration for preventing the threat of pregnancy as the most drastic consequence of alley dog copulation obsolete.
It needs less cognitive quality to be able to refrain from doing something as drastic as making a woman pregnant.
To refrain from abusing a woman as a toilet for body waste because of respect for her brain, to spare the woman the invisible suffering of indignation, devaluation, objectification and humiliation requires a much higher level of cognitive quality in a man. Less men have it.
Being free of the fear of pregnancy is great. But unfortunately it came with the price of the disgust of being (or at my age having been) too frequently approached by alley dogs.
- The human brain including the ability for empathy has evolved for coping with the life in small groups or communities. Now people are suddenly (seen in the evolutionary timeline) flooded by the media with very realistic representations of extreme atrocities. This representations are so realistic, that the subconscious brain cannot distinguish between such pictures or movies and real life.
Nobody can react permanently with full empathy to this extreme amount of exposure.
Desensitization is an unavoidable consequence.
When a man grows up munching chips while indifferently watching a movie, in which a woman is raped, it is not really astonishing that he will consider hurting 'only' a woman's feeling as a trifle in comparison.
When a woman grows up sitting in the safety of her home in front of a TV, she also gets a very biased picture. On TV women are presented as willingly and happily doing and wanting themselves, what really only benefits selfish men. On TV, these women get rewarded, but never emotionally harmed. The watching real woman is thus misguided to underestimate, what she gets herself into by making the mistake of complying or imitating behavior, which really is an expression of male instinctivity and male wishes. When this woman unexpectedly gets very hurt, she learns to understand reality too late and the hard way. - When one person hurts another, no matter if it is the alley dog the loving woman or any other situation, there are two different perspectives.
4.1. The difference between hurting and not hurting behavior is a choice, and therefore people with cognitive emotional quality take themselves the responsibility for what they do to others.
They never use the behavior of the victim as an excuse, even if the victim could have avoided exposing himself to be vulnerable.
4.2. Under the impact of desensitization, people have a more selfish perspective based upon the entitlement to do, what they want. Whoever gets hurt or harmed is attributed as either defective or too stupid to protect himself. Therefore they feel justified to take no responsibility. The victim of an alley dog is blamed for not being also an alley dog. In the case that the suffering reactions of the victim annoy the alley dog, the victim is even blamed for diminishing the alley dog's benefits.
This desensitization has contributed to a present social norm in many western societies, which defines alley dog copulation as allegedly healthy behavior. Those, who get hurt, are supposed to use those remedies, which contribute to the profits of the pharmaceutical industry.
It is sad. All the amazing progress only leads to the material standard of life getting more and more comfortable. But when it comes to the avoidance of non-physical suffering, there is no progress, but a regress to times before the evolution of the cognition.
