692. The Difference Between Abusers And Nice Guys Explained By The Dual-Process-Theory

692.  The Difference Between Abusers And Nice Guys Explained By The Dual-Process-Theory

In entry 691 I presented the dual process theory:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dual_process_theory

Speculating that the predominance of one of the two systems is distributed along a bell curve can help to explain the difference between abusers and nice guys. 


By the criteria of their behavior, men can be roughly classified into three groups:   The abusers, the nice guys and those oscillating between abuse and attachment depending on circumstances.  

These three groups represent the two extremes and the middle area of the bell curve between the predominance of either system 1 or system 2.   The two extremes are clearly defined by an innate strong tendency, while the cut off between the groups and the behavior in the middle is fuzzy and depends upon external influences. 


System 1 can explain how instinctive physical urges towards a female body lead to the attitude of objectification.  

A predominant system 1 determines men to be abusers.  They do not comprehend the meaning of commitment and/or they are unable to get emotionally attached to a woman and/or they are disabled from recognizing the value of women's brains.   They commodify women as toilets for their body waste without even considering any alternative.  
Men with a strong predominance of system 1 are most probably men with a high libido, which causes them to perceive dishomeostasis as an overwhelming discomfort and to be strongly triggered by the perception of female bodies.   They also probably have a hedonistic pleasure center getting mainly stimulated by physical stimuli.

System 1 thinking causes men to confound every coincidence of their experienced dishomeostasis and the availability of female bodies as an automatic justification and entitlement to abuse women, perceiving them as existing for the purpose of being abused.  
Men, whose thinking is determined by system 1, are not any better than animals, they are unable to anticipate or to have empathy for the consequences of ruthless copulation. 

System 2 can explain the emotional and intellectual need for companionship leading to the attitude, that women are cognitively attractive and suitable for monogamous long-term attachment.  

A predominant system 2 determines men to be nice guys.   They automatically get emotionally attached to a woman, whenever they get physically involved.   They have an own genuine emotional need for commitment and bonding.  They have rational and intellectual needs for companionship with a woman.   Whatever the strength of their libido may be, their rationality enables them to have sufficient self-control to keep away from women's body unless they choose a companion.    They are Epicureans, who are mainly attracted to, motivated and stimulated by emotional and intellectual pleasures and joys.

System 2 enables men to act with responsibility and consideration and to appreciate attachment also for themselves.  They comprehend the impact of their behavior upon women.   
Men, whose thinking is determined by system 2 are able to recognize women as their human equals with a brain.  Only these men deserve to be called human.


According to the dual-process-theory, system 1 and system 2 coexist in each human's mind. 

I am not implying all abusers to be completely void of the system 2 nor all attachment formers to be completely free from the system 1.   Many men have both tendencies in any combination of strength in themselves.   Which one defines their attitude and their behavior depends upon circumstances and external influences.    Some abusers do feel doubt, guilt or remorse or they recognize abuse as a transgression, at least when the own sister is the victim.  Attachment formers can also be tempted by triggered instincts due to the exposure to drastic stimuli.  

Men in the middle of the bell curve are thus under contradictory internal tendencies towards a choice, which is dichotomous between either abuse or attachment.  Abuse and attachment are mutually exclusive by definition.   While at any moment, only one can be chosen, some men choose abusive behavior only under some specific circumstances and refrain from it at other occasions.    They are the men, whose choice is prone to be determined or impacted by external influences.
 
While many more traditional societies force violent abuse and injustice upon women, the modern western societies are very much biased towards subtle and non-violent forms of abuse.   Such abuse is the social norm of the majority, who considers pornography as an everyday media intake and prostitution as a job like any other, and who is seriously desensitized by the drastic oversexation of every day life and the media.    Only a very strong innate tendency towards system 2 enables a minority of the most precious men to be the nice guys void of the inclination towards abuse.

The effect of this detrimental social norm can sometimes be observed as a discrepancy of the predominances in the same man.   There are men, who appear to be predominantly system 2 persons in their professional life, in the pursuit of their hobbies and even with their families and friends.   Whenever it gets known, that such a man has cheated on his wife or has been to a brothel, it seems very incongruent with his other demeanor.   Due to external influences, the control of system 1 over such men is restricted to only when women are the victims.   So far I have never heard of any reversed case, of a man behaving generally by system 1 but applying system 2 to women. 

Thus, at the extreme end of the bell curve, the abusers are persistent and permanent abusers, while the social norm reinforces the men in the middle of the bell curve to also be abusers, but they are intermittent abusers.  They cause less harm but they are nevertheless a hazard to those women who happen to become victims.     

Therefore, unfortunately, there are many more abusers than nice guys.   

665. Possible Disruptions When Avoiding To Harm

665.   Possible Disruptions When Avoiding To Harm

As mentioned several times already, I consider the Epicurean principle of not harming as the basis of how I want to interact with other people.  I prefer to avoid those, who are determined otherwise like for example religious people, who justify harming by an alleged reward in the afterlife.
 

 
When two persons respect each other as equals and are consciously motivated to avoid harming each other, this does not automatically mean the absence of disruption by involuntary harming.

Harming includes hurting the other's feelings.   This implies the involvement of two sides, one person behaving in a specific way and another person perceiving this behavior as painful.

Some causes of disruption:

1.  Misunderstanding of the situation.    

Both can be guided by disparate and incongruent implicit expectations and unverified imaginary options.   
Well meant behavior based upon one set of such implicit presumptions can be perceived as for example betrayal, disappointment, disregard or depreciation by someone with another set.     This is the case for proactive and reactive behavior. 

2.  Not knowing the other well.    

Not harming by consideration is not possible without knowledge of the other's individual resilience and sensitivities. 
The responsibility of behaving morally according to one's own standards does not suffice to avoid, that the other feels hurt by the subjective perception of for example offense, slight, humiliation or rejection.    

3.  Misinterpretation due to lacking trust.  

Trust or the lack thereof has an impact upon the interpretation of the other's behavior and utterings as either benevolent or as a cause for suspicion.   Someone not trusting and feeling slighted can jump to the conclusion, that there really is a slight.

Some methods to avoid such disruptions

1.   Avoiding ambiguity.   

Clear agreements, explicit consent and outspoken options can lead to congruity and realism of expectations.    It allows a rational choice between pursuing or abandoning an endeavor.

2.   Adding consideration to responsibility.   

Acquiring sufficient knowledge about the other's value system, focus of identity and the impact of past experiences enables people to behave with consideration.   Involuntary hurting can best be avoided by knowing as much as possible of the other's subjective perception of all relevant behaviors.    

While responsibility can be regarded as a general moral obligation, consideration adds deliberate care for the other's wellbeing.

3.  The benefit of the doubt.   

Restricting all evaluation of the other to using the most trustful interpretation of his behavior avoids to mistake distrusting interpretations as indicating and even evidence for the justification of distrust.   Acting as if trusting enables real trust to grow, while this does not preclude to be nevertheless prepared for discovering the justification of the distrustful interpretation.  
Someone feeling slighted can ask back for further explanation in the awareness, that what he feels is only subjective and can be based upon wrong premises.

These methods constitute a learning process accomplished by rational and constructive communication, outspoken, direct, blunt and to the point of the matter.   

It is a learning process for both sides.   Learning how to be considerate is only possible, when the one feeling hurt acknowledges and admits the own vulnerability and refrains from blaming, grudging or accusing.  

I am aware that this does not sound very romantic.   But the special situation of beginning a contact by written messages and thus void of all non-verbal information asks for specific proceedings.  

The first step is a reciprocal consent and awareness concerning the options.    This means reciprocally ascertaining, that what each wants and needs as a goal is principally indeed offered by the other.      
The second step is a phase of constructive communication, which can lead to either the planning of a real life meeting or to the decision to abandon this goal.    
 

A well prepared meeting is then also the moment to start becoming romantic.

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.   

636. Epicureanism Between Philosophy And Psychology

636.   Epicureanism Between Philosophy And Psychology

Epicurus lived about 2300 years ago, under very different social and cognitive circumstances.   He was a thinker interested in a variety of subjects.  As far as his then progressive concepts concerned natural science, they are of course so obsolete, that they are only interesting as a part of the history of science.  

His other teachings focus upon suggestions of how humans should live, and these suggestions until today are attractive to some people in spite of a drastically changed social and technological environment.  

This leads to the choice of an approach to those of his original writings still available, the choice between taking them literally or adapting them.

    

Ancient philosophies are the ancestors of both modern philosophy and modern psychology and as far as they are concerned with human nature, cognition and behavior they can be seen as equally precursors of both.  

There are three main approaches to the teaching of Epicurus:

1.  Theoretically philosophical
 

Philosophy has not changed drastically in its methods of developing and evaluating thoughts by thinking.  While changing reality has an impact on the topics and on scenarios of an ideal world, the methods are timeless.  The Epicurean philosophical task and interest is learning about, extracting, interpreting and debating Epicurus' original writings literally.   But taking his teachings literally precludes the successful application in the environment of modern society.

2.  Psychological

Psychology branched off from philosophy about 150 years ago, when it started to apply scientific methods of experimentation and observation attempting to get quantifiable results about human nature.  

One of the milestones in this development was 1879 the founding of his psychological laboratory by Wilhelm Wundt.  (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wilhelm_Wundt)

Since then, scientific psychology, evolutionary biology and psychology, neuroscience together with advanced computerized statistical tools have boosted and improved the knowledge about human nature.   

Any philosophy inconsistent with or even contradicting human nature is not suitable as a guide for how to live and such attempts are futile.  
Therefore psychologically, Epicurus' teaching needs to be synchronized with the results of psychological research, before it can be considered valid as a viable suggestion of how to live today.  
  
3.  Submissive and substituting religion

Some people attempt to cope with feelings of irritation, helplessness and confusion by the submission to some guru, teacher or leader, whom they humbly venerate, admire and revere with non-skeptical blind faith in every of his utterances.  

Depending on availability and circumstances and from a wide variety of disparate options, this guru is chosen as the most appealing to individual needs.   A guru can be a religious or cult leader, a philosopher, a political leader, a therapist, a quack, even a celebrity.   

Some people choose Epicurus as a guru.   They strive to be good disciples by studying and following his teachings literally.   

Without having first hand knowledge of how life was 2300 years ago, they have sometimes a difficult task when deciding how to behave by interpreting quotes from Epicurus' writings.
While I cannot know it, I doubt that Epicurus really wanted to be venerated by humble disciples, it seems more probable, that in his garden he was some kind of a 'primus inter pares'.      


Personally, I prefer the psychological approach.    I have never searched for guidance by any philosophy or belief system.    I have no wish or need to ever be a follower or disciple to any person or doctrine.   
Ever since having discovered my own innate inclinations like rationality, atheism, frugality, low instinctivity and more, I appreciate to find myself sharing my inclinations with someone else having put them already into words.  But the coincidence of having the same inclinations does not imply for me any reason to submit in awe and even less to adopt also thoughts and behaviors, which I do not share innately.
  
Epicurus is no exception.   When I discovered his teachings, I did not shrink in awe to become an admiring disciple.   I perceive him as a kindred mind and similar brain.

635. A Male Misrepresentation Of Epicurus' Philosophy

635.   A Male Misrepresentation Of Epicurus' Philosophy

I have been watching a video containing a male interpretation of Epicurus' philosophy.   (I am not giving the link, as I do not want to propagate any expression of sexism.)

The author is talking about the wisdom of considering before acting, what price in pain has to be paid as the consequence of indulging in pleasure.  Unfortunately he presents (or rather misrepresents) it as an entirely selfish and self-centered balancing with the limited consideration for only the own person, without any reference to avoiding the pain done to others.   

Basically this guy claims, that if someone expects to get more pleasure than pain for himself, then there is no reason to refrain from any indulgence, even when this includes the abuse of women's bodies.

He talks about a man's decision to have sex or not the same way as if he were talking about his decision to use a car or not.   He implicitly considers women as utilities, not as human beings deserving consideration, respect and to be spared pain.
By his interpretation, even Genghis Khan would have behaved in accordance with Epicurus.   Genghis Khan had the power to get away with raping thousands of women without himself suffering bad consequences.

As a woman, I am appalled by the author's very selfish, irresponsible and inconsiderate attitude, which he shows implicitly by some of his examples.   He misleads people to think that the objectification of women were in accordance with Epicurus.

One of the core statements of the Epicurean philosophy is "neither to harm nor be harmed".    This responsible perspective towards others is even mentioned first.

Based upon this, the correct application of the balancing of pain and pleasure includes the consideration and responsibility to avoid hurting and harming others and to restrict indulgence in any pleasure to when there are no suffering victims.

631. Frugality

631.  Frugality

I have labeled myself an Epicurean before, because the Epicurean lifestyle suits my own inclinations.    Or more precisely, my own lifestyle is congruent with Epicurus' philosophy.   But while a philosophy as a way of thinking can continue to be valid without modification for more than two millennia, a lifestyle based upon such a philosophy cannot be carved in stone and ever after be followed literally.   A lifestyle has to be an adaption to specific social and technical realities.   While a modern lifestyle needs to be without a contradiction to Epicurus' writings and teachings, if it is to be called Epicurean, it also needs to accommodate factors, which did not exist at his time.   

Frugality was and is a part of the Epicurean life style.   But it is a good example of an aspect, which cannot be applied literally to today's way of life as it was suggested about 2300 years ago. 


According to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frugality,

"Frugality is the quality of being frugal, sparing, thrifty, prudent or economical in the use of consumable resources such as food, time or money, and avoiding waste, lavishness or extravagance.

In behavioral science, frugality has been defined as the tendency to acquire goods and services in a restrained manner, and resourceful use of already owned economic goods and services, to achieve a longer term goal."

Frugality means thus the lack of the motivation to act towards deriving physical pleasures from the consumption of material goods.   In this sense, frugality is the absence of hedonism.   But frugality is not anhedonia, it is not the general absence of feeling any pleasure.   Instead it means deriving a different kind of pleasure, derived from emotional and intellectual causes, which are immaterial.   

Frugality is a core trait of a personality type, whose behavior is determined more by cognition than by instinct, and which is represented consciously by attitudes coinciding with the Epicurean philosophy.  


Modern frugality embraces factors, which did not exist 2300 years ago:

1. Mass production and the price of consumption

In ancient times production was manual labor using simple tools and appliances.  (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancient_Greek_technology).  Clothing as were the Greek chitons are an example.  Produced from wool or any other fiber they needed at least spinning, before even the spinning wheel was invented, and weaving manually on a loom.  Food production also was hard labor of agriculture without machinery.   Even producing containers for food was the hard work of pottery, metallurgy or woodworking. . 
 
Under such circumstances, obtaining and consuming any necessity of life equaled the decision to obtain and/or to destroy the result of many hours of someone's hard labor.   Therefore every single act of the frugality of not consuming something had a drastic effect of saving the investment of a portion of someone's life time.

Today in our modern western society, containers for food are mass produced from plastic and considered as waste, when empty.  Anybody can buy a t-shirt, a loaf of bread or even an electrical saw for the money earned in less than one hour of even a moderately paid job.   The single act of frugality of not buying any one mass produced item brings little or no material or time benefit to anybody.   

Today the benefits of frugality are therefore predominantly immaterial.


2. Technical complexity and the second-hand principle

While there was already in ancient times a division of labor, most production required only a few basic skills, some practice and experience, but mainly it was a lot of routine work.    Many tools and utensils could be self-made or at least easily repaired, when necessary.    Repairing was usually more economical than discarding and replacing.    

Today the technological complexity of even the basic standard of living requires special knowledge, that many people are lacking.    While a mass produced electrical saw can be bought for very cheap, to construct it and to construct the machines to produce it requires long years of studying engineering.   People have thus no choice but to throw out any machine, even though it may only have a slight defect, because any repair is beyond their knowledge or beyond the availability of spare parts.    

But this does not automatically imply the justification for throwing out without hesitation also what is not broken, because in comparison with the own income it did cost so little.   

Many machines do have real value in reducing hard labor.   For example, an electrical saw has real advantages compared with a manual saw.   Therefore frugality today cannot mean to fall back on not using the available machines from mass production.  

Modern frugality includes the principle of second-hand use as a compromise of having the benefits of using helpful machines and tools while avoiding waste.   Instead of throwing out what can still be used, frugality conscious people give away or resell for cheap, what they do not need anymore.  Those, who choose to or are compelled to live frugally, receive or buy those second-hand items.


3. Practical necessities and compensatory skills 

Consuming the results of mass production requires money, which is earned by participating directly or indirectly in this same economy of mass production.    While a single item of mass production often does not cost much, the sum of the goods of mass consumption is nevertheless bought in exchange for long hours of dull, hard routine work.

While few people could build their own electrical saw, there is a lower level, where people have a choice between either paying for services and products or picking up some knowledge and skills towards being creative, self-sufficient and self-reliant.   

The option to acquire compensatory skills is another aspect of frugality.  It is a method to either gain free time or at least to add intellectual quality to the time spent to obtain the necessities of every day life.    

A conscious frugal life style means people having gained the awareness of having the option to acquire beneficial basic skills of some crafts and artisanries.   This enables them to a certain extend to avoid paying for the expensive services of electricians, carpenters, computer technicians or other specialists.      

    

The less they need to pay, the less they need to earn.   Unfortunately in real life this option is often limited, because people are not free to chose their amount of paid work.   Instead they are glad to have a job at all, working the hours required by the employer.
 
Therefore frugality by compensatory skills has material benefits mostly for the poor, but it also brings emotional pleasure to those, who enjoy learning and achieving things.  


4.  Globalized exploitation.

In the mainly regional economic system of manually production in ancient Greece, people obtained, what they needed, by exchanging goods, which where produced by similarly long hours of labor.   Some had the power to exploit slaves, but this was visible and open.   Everybody, who profited from the exploitation of others, was fully aware of this and could not deny it, not matter if having or lacking a bad conscience. 

Everybody choosing frugality by refraining from owning and exploiting slaves could rightfully have a self-concept of being a person acting responsibly and morally.

Today in modern western societies exploitation is anonymous, hidden and ubiquitous.   The life of the exploited producers of the consumer good is most probably not any better than the life of the ancient Greek slaves.  
 
Whatever someone buys here in a shop for cheap, no matter if a t-shirt, an electrical saw or a bunch of bananas, has been completely or partially produced by people in some poor country, whose wages do not allow them the minimum standard of living, which would suffice to be considered as fulfilling basic human rights.   
We all here could not indulge in our material comfort, were it not obtained by exploiting modern slaves in sweatshops far away.   Most people do not even know it and they do not want to know.   But even knowing it does not help much, because there is no real choice.  

 
Whenever I can choose between a t-shirt for 5€ or for 50€ and between an electrical saw for 10€ or for 100€, this is only a choice concerning how much I decide to pay.   There is no way to know or to decide, where the difference goes to.   I would appreciate to be able to pay a fair price for the goods, a price high enough, that those producing them get a decent wage.   But there is no way to know or to influence, how much of the higher price of some goods only fills the pockets of greedy exploitive capitalists.  

Today personal frugality has no impact upon global slavery.   Not only being exploited, but also having a materially good life made possible by others' slavery is forced upon people often against their will and wish by cruel and inconsiderate capitalists installing and maintaining the imbalance of economic power.      


To sum it up:  

A hedonist derives pleasure from consumption.   A capitalist or wanna-be-capitalist derives pleasure form his power to pay for goods and services.    Having economic power adds to his self-esteem and self-worth.   
Both enjoy, what is not a personal merit, but the result of the lottery of life, which has given them the citizenship in a country with economic power or the membership of the privileged class of some country.

A frugal Epicurean enjoys learning and applying skills and knowledge as a cognitive pleasure.   Every success and every instance of saving money or avoiding dull routine work without exploiting another human being adds to his self-esteem and self-worth.   Thus the frugal Epicurean earns doubly, by not only adding quality to his life, but by thus also having a reason to be proud of himself.     

589. The Difference Between Philosophy And Religion

589.  The Difference Between Philosophy And Religion

I am calling myself atheistic as a part of being apistic.  But there are many people, who call themselves atheists in spite of being religious.  They do not consider this as a contradiction, as long as their preferred religion does not include personalized deities. Buddhism is an example, which is wrongly defined as a philosophy by those alleged atheists.    

There is a fallacy, when the decisive distinctions between philosophies and religions are underestimated or ignored.  

1.  Philosophies are thoughts.   These thoughts can exist only in one person's head, they can be taught, shared and talked about, they can be preserved on media and read or listened to.   

The philosophies are immaterial, they have no impact upon the material world.     Whenever people's actions are influenced by a philosophy, this is an independent consequence, not a part of it.    The behavior following a philosophy can be determined by it, but the philosophy can exist without causing any behavior.   
As an example, Epicureanism is a philosophy.   Living in the garden of Epicurus was some people's individual choice.  But one can be an Epicurean without living in the garden.

Discussing, teaching or learning about a specific philosophy is independent of agreeing with it.   


2.  Religions are more than just irrational and delusional beliefs and claims in people's heads.  Material and physical expressions are an intrinsic constituent of all religions. Participation is the expression of conscious genuine or faked agreement with the beliefs.

I mentioned before, how the behavior of christians in Lourdes is a weird spectacle. when seen from my mental distance.   But Lourdes is only an example, which can be generalized, based upon what I have either observed in real live or watched as documentaries of what is offered as spectacles by christianity, islam, judaism, hinduism, sikhism, buddhism and a few other creeds.   

Each of these religions is defined by the display of certain behaviors, both ritualistic as scripts learned by rote and more flexible reactions to situations, which all appear more or less weird, hilarious, ludicrous and senseless to any person not sharing the belief.   

Each of these religions is materialized by buildings and objects, which are useless without the belief, not serving any non-religious purpose, except those of amusing and entertaining tourists.

• Buildings for public religious behaviors like temples, churches, sanctuaries
• Furniture like altars, shrines, confessionals
• Objects like wands, statues, vessels
• Alleged special immaterial values of redefined simple objects like bones, pieces of textile, splinters of wood 
• Conformity like prescribed attires and body modifications
• Noises not qualifying as enjoyable music, like chanting, screaming, bells, drums, gongs
• Non-communicative body movements like prostrating, bowing, gestures and gesticulations 
• Chemical hazing of the brain like by incense, scents or drugs
• Abandoning and wasting goods like food on altars, candles or material sacrifices for the embellishment of the religion's material environment

All of these observable expressions of religion are driven by the motivation to obtain benefits.  They have also a perpetuating effect upon the mind.

When a christian prays for the fulfillment of a wish, this is implicitly the expectation of starting a sequence of two steps of causation.   The deity is a black box containing a kind of a relay, which, when activated, has the alleged power to fulfill the need.   The praying person believes, that the prayer presses a button on the black box, which in turn then activates the relay and causes the wish to be granted, even though the fulfillment of the wish is not considered to be in the realm of own direct action.

This pattern is not restricted to black boxes imagined as deities.    All religious behaviors are the attempt to activate some fuzzy black box, which as a consequence would then cause something beneficial for the believers.   This is a general part of all religious beliefs, that irrational behavior, which makes no sense to apistics, is expected to be sufficiently effective to obtain benefits.

An example:  When a buddhist chants, which means him to be positioned in front of a shrine, swaying some parts of his body and producing weird, funny and to the bystanders annoying noises, this is essentially the same pattern as the christian praying.   The buddhist's black box is not a personalized deity, but he too does something, which has no direct benefits whatsoever, but is based upon the mere belief of causing indirect benefits.  

Religious behaviors, especially rituals following a routine learned by rote, have a strong effect upon the brain, which is enhanced by the presence of olfactory, auditive and visual stimuli.    Thus the cognition gets temporarily blurred, blunted, dulled and hazed.   The sense for the own individuality is diminished, rationality reduced and the reason disabled.   
This enhances gullibility freeing it from rational control.   The hierarchy instinct to submit and be humble and the gregarious instinct to feel as a particle of some vague entity are also relieved from cognitive control.   This temporary heightened gullibility reinforces the religious beliefs and gets the person even more entangled.  


Along with mistaking religions like buddhism for a philosophy, people also confound it as a method of self-improvement.   This is a fallacy.  Self-improvement requires insights and introspection, which are best gained in a state of the most undisturbed and undistorted faculty for reasoning.    Self-improvement cannot be any better than the ability to be rational and the knowledge of scientific psychology and neuroscience.   
Dimmed cognition as a result of religious behavior is certainly counterproductive to self-improvement.  

554. The Ubiquitous Desensitization To Harming

554.    The Ubiquitous Desensitization To Harming

The biological asymmetry of the survival of the human species depending on pregnancies and births being severe harm only to women, while men are spared, is no rational justification for accepting harming as natural.  

In entry 552 I attributed the evolution of the gullibility to believe in delusional deities to supplying both resilience to the victim and displacement of responsibility to the perpetrator following his instinctive urges.  

As a consequence, people are misguided to principally accept harming as a normal part of living and not as an outrage and a derangement and distortion of the potential of human cognition.    

While the religious beliefs served or facilitated the initial establishing of the acceptance of harm, but from then on it becomes independent of its religious roots once it is part of the social norm.

The awakening reason of the maturing brain enables some people to comprehend the irrationality of believing in a non-existent deity.   This enables them to throw over the religious beliefs, they had grown up with,    But they do not automatically also get aware of how much more of their thinking needs also to be reconsidered as an indirect consequence of the religious beliefs.

The logical next step after discarding the belief in a deity would be to also adjust the moral justification of behaviors.  The principle by Epicurus of not harming and not be harmed and the golden rule are rational guidelines, while the belief in being rewarded in the afterlife and the belief of harm being justified by the responsibility of a deity are obsolete and irrational.  

Unfortunately, the general acceptance of harming is rarely questioned, even by those, who have freed themselves from the religious beliefs.   In western societies, the acceptance of harming is a part of the culture.   Children grow up with it until they take it for granted and cannot even think of it as just an option with alternatives.   Harming is not connected with religion but taken for granted as if it were a law of life.   

The effects of installing harming as acceptable behavior into the perpetrators' brain and to be harmed as unfortunate but acceptable fate into the victims' brains reinforce each other as complementary.

Perpetrators: 

Perpetrators become desensitized by repeating behaviors, to which they, usually by empathy, had initially felt inhibited, until the cruelty becomes a routine.   
Desensitization to being cruel can become irreversible.   Desensitization to inflicting pain on others usually happens at a young age under the influence of education, role models and social norms, which are also an expression of the morals of the predominant religion.  

War as a drastic example is an expression of the ingroup-outgroup instinct.   If nobody would be considered as outgroup, there were no wars.    Sometimes the ingroup is defined by sharing the same religion.   
Parts of the training of soldiers is the desensitization to overcome any killing inhibition.  
This desensitization is usually permanent.    Soldiers coming back from the war may well have the insight and the self-control not to kill members of the ingroup, but they have no inhibition to do so.  

But the most common and ubiquitous desensitization causes subtle and invisible harm by emotional cruelty like manipulating, betrayal, cheating, playing games, intrigues, mobbing, mocking, humiliating, ridiculing.   These are just a few examples from a long list of cognitive and emotional methods of harming.  They suffice to illustrate the kind of hurtful weapons serving the instincts to procreate and to gain access to resources available to those having high positions on hierarchies.      

Victims:

The acceptance of being harmed as unavoidable has been installed by the delusion of it being the deity's will.   The resilience to suffer in submission and resignation has been installed by the delusion of the reward in the afterlife.   
Logically, as soon as someone discards the belief in the deity, this obsolete and irrational acceptance of being harmed should be discarded immediately.  Harm should be recognized as what it really is: an outrage against human dignity.  
Instead irrational expectations of a resilience out of proportion of the serious impact of harm has become a social norm not only by the perpetrators but also by the victims themselves.  
The social norm of irrational resilience is based upon the perpetrators' expectations, that their desensitization would lead automatically to an equal desensitization of the victims, who should not suffer but are instead supposed to agree with the harm allegedly being appropriate treatment,   They are expected not to suffer due to being oblivious of the injustice and the absurdity of the instinctive behaviors.   

Those not resilient as victims of not physical and thus invisible cruelties are considered as flawed, defective, weak and in need to be fixed.   And too often they accept this themselves.   They do not resist, rebel or protest, they do not demand better treatment, instead they take psycho-pharmaceuticals, go to therapy, or cope in even more unhealthy ways.   They get sympathy and compassion as failures, not the solidarity needed as the victims of wrong behavior.  


Discarding irrational religious beliefs does not suffice.    Required is also a revision of the entire attitudes and habits as to what behaviors of religious roots are not only irrational but cause damage.  This revision means to focus on taking full own responsibility by gaining full awareness and knowledge of the perception and experience of the target of behaviors.  Even though some desensitization cannot be undone, full awareness can be a method of learning how to avoid harming after having decided to do so.

553. Harm And Kant's Categorical Imperative

553.   Harm And Kant's Categorical Imperative

In entry 552 I pointed out, how the human dilemma of being torn between instinctive urges to harm and cognitive reasons to refrain from harming is sometimes solved by externalizing the justification to the responsibility of some higher authority.    This authority can be the imaginary deity or deities of religions.  

But there are other options to externalize responsibility.    One is following Kant's categorical imperative: 

"Act only according to that maxim whereby you can, at the same time, will that it should become a universal law."

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

I am not basing the following thoughts upon having read Kant.   As far as it concerns human behavior, I prefer to read modern scientific texts based upon research in psychology and neuroscience.   

But the categorical imperative is often quoted as a guidance by people, who most probably also have not read Kant.   So more precisely this is about the potential to externalize responsibility by a literal interpretation of the quoted text of the categorical imperative.     

The hazard is the definition of a universal law by the wish of the acting person and the disregard of the perception and experience of the target or victim as to the harm done to them.   

Any universal law cannot include the avoidance of harm, which is not universal but a subjective and individual reaction to the exposure to specific experiences.    Any universal law is a way of balancing benefits and disadvantages, else the law would not be needed.    

Not harming by a conscious decision in the sense of Epicurus needs a careful assessment of what would harm any individual before being able to avoid it.  
 

In Kant's time, women did not count and the categorical imperative could be thus reworded for better explaining the hazards.     

Any own behavior can be justified by a man, whenever he also wants all men making each other the target of the same behavior.   

To this very day. men still confound laws and rules applicable to most or all men with universal laws. 

But biological differences are real and some behaviors cannot be evaluated equally depending on the actor's and target's gender.   Due to the biological differences I use agreement for those behaviors, where prescribing identical behaviors for women and men is not possible, only reciprocal agreement with unilateral behaviors.  

Any own behavior can be justified by someone, whenever he also wants everybody else to agree with.   

Behavior based upon this principle can lead to the belief, that harming the target were justified. 

1.  Existing laws are mistaken as the moral justification of the behavior.    When the authority represented by the law installs slavery, then owning slaves is not considered as harming humans.    

2.  When enough persons want the same and have sufficient political power, they convert their intention into laws.   
Example:
Men wanting wives to be commodities for their convenience as financially dependent house keepers.   Where enough men had this wish, they made laws not allowing women to get a job without the husband's permission.    The alleged authority of the multitude profiting from the same law served to justify the harm to the wives.  

3.  Any mental or intellectual problem or deficiency causing someone to wish weird and unacceptable behaviors to be shared by the majority automatically justifies the behavior for himself.  
Example:
A men believing himself as an excellent driver, not only disregards speed limits and other traffic rules but believes, that all traffic rules should be abandoned.  Only a few excellent drivers like himself should be allowed to drive, anybody else should yield the roads to them.   Any person getting run over had been in the way. 


There are certainly other ways of interpreting the categorical imperative.   But I cannot think of any, which would allow to see it as a method to protect victims from being harmed. 

552. Harm And The Evolution Of The Gullibility For Religion

552.   Harm And The Evolution Of The Gullibility For Religion


In entry 547 I compared two videos revealing the atrocities suffered by the children in Kinsey's research.    While one was as seemingly unbiased documentary, the other was biased by the christian religion.  

This brought me back to the old question, why a level of intelligence in the human brain inventing advanced technology did co-evolve with a level of irrationality causing delusions like the one of the existence of deities and all subsequent nonsense.   

Gullibility to delusional beliefs did evolve for a reason.   Falling for such beliefs was in some way beneficial in the adaptation to coping with the challenges of the survival of the species, no matter how unfortunate it is for the oblivious individuals.

To declare not harming and not be harmed as the essence of a good life is a part of the wisdom of Epicurus.    Harm is the key explanation of the evolved susceptibility to religious beliefs, because the success of the survival of any species is enhanced and enabled by harm to individuals.  

Generally speaking, instincts lead often to behaviors, which as a side effect cause harm to the self and to other individuals of the same species. 

Procreation:   In mammals, pregnancy is a hazard, burden and source of pain for the female.

Ingroup-outgroup:   Herds and groups of animals hunt and eat members of their own species not belonging to the own group.   They kill outgroup members in defense of their territory.   They rob and steal outgroup members' prey from hunting and cause their starvation.  All this is done by instinct to enhance the resources for the own offspring.

Hierarchy and competition:   Male animals fight to become alpha males and to gain control over as many females as there are.  These fights sometimes lead to serious wounds, mutilations and deaths.   Sometimes new alpha male not only usurp control over all the females, but also over their fertility by infanticide.  

Spider cannibalism is an example.  

"...a female spider kills and eats a male of the same species before, during, or after copulation."
"his indirectly contributing nutrition to the eggs. "

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

Male spiders have observed other males being eaten are nevertheless unaware, that by following their instinctive urges to get near the female spider, they will also be eaten.   Had the male spiders a conscious choice to run away and keep at a safe distance from all female spiders, they would prevent being harmed as individuals, but their species of spiders would get extinct.  
The female spider also has no cognitive option to refrain from eating the male as a choice to spare him harm.   Would she do this, this may lead to less surviving offspring due to malnutrition.  

Animals are determined to follow their instinctive urges, because they have no cognition sufficiently evolved to allow them to anticipate future events, nor to attribute effects correctly to their own behavior, even in the case of empathy.  They lack the consciousness of having a choice.   Animals suffer harm at the moment, when it happens, there is no cognitive anticipation.    Following their instincts but lacking cognition, animals cannot be held responsible for harming.   


In humans, the instinctive behaviors leading to the successful survival of the species are the same as in animals, but the human cognition adds unique aspects to the subjective experience of the collateral suffering of the harm.  There is an unfortunate correlation between reproductive success and its price of harm suffered by individuals.  

1.  Mirror neurons, empathy, remembering own experiences and understanding causality enable humans to anticipate the harm inflicted by their intended behavior before acting.  Humans have a conscious choice between harming and not harming.
2.  Human cognition includes abstract emotions and intellectual needs, which can be invisibly and non-physically harmed.    Humans do not suffer only momentarily, but for a long time and sometimes in advance. 

3.  The victim and the perpetrator both know, that harm is a decision and a choice of someone being responsible. 

Examples of the harm to humans due to the major instincts

Procreation:  Jerks harm women emotionally by commodifying and objectifying them due to their need for sexual homeostation.
Men harm women physically by inflicting pregnancy upon them.

Ingroup-outgroup:   Victims are seriously harmed by varieties of exploitation like war, slavery, colonization used as methods to acquire resources for successful procreation:

Hierarchy and competition:   In every competition, where there is a winner, the loser at least suffers emotionally.   But in more drastic fights for higher places in hierarchies, the harm can be much worse, serious material damage, physical mutilations or even death.  

The evolution of the cognition and the evolution of being determined as animals to pursue instinctively the advantages for the survival of the fittest seem to be mutually exclusive.

To live without or with reduced harming is possible, when people remain childfree and cooperate in peace and harmony.   But with such people, the human species would get extinct.

    
Being determined by instincts became a cognitive problem as a by product of the evolution of the human cognition.  As the result of the developing understanding of causality and the awareness of the self as an actor, at some point of their evolution humans started to comprehend the responsibility of how specific behaviors cause harm to others and of having the option to either inflict the harm or to refrain from doing so.    The brain's mirror neurons and ability to experience some empathy added the knowledge of the other's experiencing harm.
 

From that time on, harming seized to be an animal's automatic behavior, instead it required moral justification, that rationally does not exist.    

The evolution of the gullibility to irrational beliefs including the imagination of one or more deities with ascribed responsibility solved the problem.    The delusion of the deities justifying harming and the existence of harm has solved the evolutionary contradiction.

  

Religions are very outspoken to point out the benefits for the recipients of harm.   The side effect of the delusion of being rewarded after death does indeed
- make some people more resilient to suffering.
- motivate people to choose to suffer by making specific sacrifices to earn the reward.

But religions seldom admit the other side of the coin.   Religions also create, enable and enhance the suffering, which requires the resilience to cope with.      

The Milgram experiment has shown, that people are prone to harm others and accept it as justified to do so, whenever someone of authority takes the responsibility.   Generalizing this supplies an explanation of the attraction of religion.  
 
The authority of the real life researcher in Milgram's experiment can be replaced by the authority, power or superiority of a delusional and imaginary figure of a deity.  
The specific proactive act of harming by the application of electrical shocks when being told can be replaced by the permission to do every act of harm, unless it is explicitly forbidden as a sin.   In this case the authority's ascribed responsibility is not limited to one act, but to all behaviors unless they are explicitly excluded.    Everything appears as allowed, which the deity has not explicitly forbidden and everything allowed is done under the deity's responsibility.   
Taking own responsibility is based upon the subjective conscious and sufficient justification for the choice of a behavior.   Acting under someone else responsibility implies to be void of an own justification but considering someone else having a hidden and elusive justification.    When the justification is ascribed to a deity, who does not even exist, then anything can be believed, ascribed or defined as justified.  

All religions, that I know of, allow harm caused by instincts to a certain degree.   The specific definitions of sins have indirectly also favored the evolution of the fittest religions.   These are those religions, in which the definition of sin is an optimized balance between enhancing reproduction by disregarding the individual suffering and limiting all harm bad enough to damage the reproductive success.

But the deity as an imaginary figure of authority is not only considered as the one justifying all harming, which is not defined as a sin.   This figure is also a bargaining partner for prospective and retrospective deals to earn permission to sin.   In such deals, the harmed person is insignificant.   

Sin is bought in advance or compensated for afterwards by sacrifices.   The definition of sacrifices is also ascribed to the deity.   This is most successful in those religions, where sinning and paying is more attractive than not sinning.  

In this sense, here is my definition of religion:

  

Religion is the purposeful invention of an imaginary authority, who is believed to be able to justify harming other people, whenever the own hidden reasons for harming are instinctive and therefore cannot be rationally justified.    

The deity's permission serves as a sufficient justification to harm, either due to the deity having alleged unknown rational reason or by having earned it as part of a deal.    Religion frees the harming person from any consideration for the victim.        

541. The Distinction Between Utilitarianism And Commodification

541.  The Distinction Between Utilitarianism And Commodification

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

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

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

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

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

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

1.  Limitations of the application of the utilitarian principle

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

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

The utilitarian principle only works for both partners, when

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

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

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

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

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


2.   The baseline of wellbeing

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

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

3.   My understanding of utilitarian commitment

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

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

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

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


4.  The distinction between utilitarianism and commodification

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

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

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

509. The Fallacy Of Tantra

509.   The Fallacy Of Tantra 

The word Tantra in a man's profile makes me suspicious.   The word Tantra in the context of our western culture can have two meanings, both indicating something, that I prefer to avoid.  

Those who claim to be sophisticated, experience and define Tantra as one of many eastern woo-woo cults.  In entry 508, I already presented the debunking by the Great Tantra Challenge.   A man with such beliefs is not more my mindmate than is any other believer in some irrationality.   

But there is an even cruder interpretation, which reduces Tantra to a technique of instinct-enhancing gymnastics.  
While I react with repugnance towards the vulgarity of Penn & Teller, the last part of their show is nevertheless an example of how people are trained in Tantra:  
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2jFj_RL5QvM
 

The documentation shows people in the public activity of near-copulation, the pornographic display reminds me of the behavior of dogs from the gutter, void of any human dignity.    I cringe at the mere idea of getting involved with a man, who has participated in such a session.

It was not even clear, if the participants were committed couples.  But assuming them as couples attempting to improve something wrong between them, learning Tantra is not more an appropriate remedy for their problem as would be fighting a headache by hitting the head with a hammer.   The enhanced pain and enhanced pleasures are both only stronger sensation covering temporarily a persistent and not solved real problem.  

Long term happiness as a couple requires more than attractive bodies, but also specific psychological conditions.  When a couple is dissatisfied with what happens inside their bedroom, Tantra cannot be more than a pseudo remedy.  

Their real problems are very different, they are a consequence of the general mating fallacy.     
In many mammals including homo sapiens, the physiological male needs for sexual homeostasis and the motivation to pursue this by the stimulation of the pleasure center in the brain has evolved to trick people into procreation.  The infatuation between bodies has evolved to produce healthy offspring, but it has not evolved to last, especially not as long as people live today.    

The sad consequence of this is promiscuity.  

But there has also been the second evolution of human cognition including both emotional and intellectual needs and cognitive abilities to be guided by long-term thinking, non-physical enjoyments and self-control. 

The more the human intelligence has evolved enabling people acquiring education, sophistication and intellectuality, the more they are able to enjoy intellectual and creative pleasures.  Logically, in comparison with non-physical enjoyments, sexuality becomes a dull banality and less rewarding.  

The theoretical consequence is the cognitive ability to find happiness in monogamous close long-term bonding based upon intellectual and emotional intimacy.

In spite of the benefits of the advanced evolution of the cognition compared with the evolution of the more primitive instincts, many humans continue to fall into the trap of the general mating fallacy.   Due to this fallacy, people continue to consider sexual satisfaction as the purpose of and the reason for having a relationship and as the criterion for the choice of a mate.    

This fallacy is maintained and enhanced by the social norm of oversexation as already explained in entry 498 and entry 493.   

I would not be astonished, if some of the participants in the Tantra course were even singles and as mislead as to believe, that such skills would be of more advantage in the competition for a mate than personality and intelligence.   

Mistaking Tantra as a remedy when experiencing physical dissatisfaction as a couple is a behavioral expression of this general fallacy.  

1. How affective physical intimacy is experienced depends on the quality of the intellectual and emotional intimacy of the couple.   The quality of physical intimacy is a measuring device for the emotional quality of the relationship. 
   When there is a distortion of physical intimacy, it is absurd to apply mechanical remedies like Tantra.  Instead the couple needs to find out, what is wrong in the relationship.   When unresolved conflicts are damaging the emotional intimacy, then the couple needs to solve the conflict and repair the emotional bond.   When they restore the close bond, they also restore the non-verbal message of belonging together expressed by physical intimacy.    If external help is needed, couple's therapy improves much more than Tantra instruction. 
   
2. Some people are innately hedonists, and hedonists are the kind of consumers, who bring the most profits to capitalists.   Therefore they are the preferred role models as shown in entry 498.
   Others are Epicureans with predominantly cognitive and emotional needs.   It is absurd, when Epicureans are manipulated by the capitalistically propagated hedonistic social norms to attempt to experience the same as do hedonists.   Methods like Tantra are used to override Epicurean innate preferences.   
   Some Epicurean couples are mislead by the general fallacy to expect much more benefits from sexual activities, than there really are, when seen realistically with an unmanipulated mind.  Sexuality is nothing more than an instinct shared with animals, who have no cognition, who cannot enjoy anything better.   Animals have no choice, but humans do.
    
   Only maintaining a man's physiological homeostasis is a necessity for a relationship, but nothing more.  There is no rational reason to artificially attempt to get more pleasure from something, when it is experienced and considered as a mere banality.   
   
   If intelligent and educated people would be free from the detrimental social norm of oversexation and would instead fully recognize that they can enjoy a visit to a museum, a lecture or a good movie together more than bed activities, this would enable them to just shift their focus in a positive way to share, what they really enjoy most.    They would be out of the reach of capitalists selling Tantra.  

If a man believes in the possibility of improving a relationship by methods like Tantra, this scares me.   I am looking for a man as my mindmate, who shares the full awareness and recognition, that the quality of the affective physical intimacy depends only on the emotional quality of the relationship.

496. Demisexuality And Cognition

Demisexuality And Cognition

I claim:  Demisexuality (defined as "sexual attraction to people they know personally, usually based on some kind of emotional connection, whether platonic or romantic. They can’t feel sexually attracted to strangers, celebrities, or people they don’t very well." by http://outlawroad.tumblr.com/post/10265976595/gray-asexuality) is not a deviance, it is the appropriate evolutionary adaptation of sexuality as a part of the evolution of human cognition.  

Demisexuality as a concept causes a lot of confusion, as long as it is not explained as a part of a general model of human sexuality.   

The following model includes two main factors, sexual dishomeostasis and sexual behavior.    Because of biological differences, I am simplifying my model to only exploring the male side, which is determined by physiologically obvious indications.    In females, the procreation instinct interferes too much.  

The reasons for my simplification are shown in this research:
http://www.elainehatfield.com/79.pdf 
Cark/Hatfield: Gender differences in receptivity to sexual offers
In two studies, when a stranger was approached by a woman saying "I have been noticing you around campus.  I find you to be very attractive." and "Would you go to bed with me tonight?", the majority of men agreed.   In 1978, 75% did, in 1982, 69%.   In the reverse situation, all woman approached by a man refused.

The study was done on college students.  Such women have above average education and intelligence and no pressing need to marry a provider.   The men are at an age of high biological libido and before being restricted with obligations to a wife and children.  
Therefore the proportion of how many men agreed in this study is not representative for other social and cultural groups.  
But the different reaction of men compared with women in this study allows to conclude, that the reason for self-labeling as demisexual by considering it as a deviance is also different for men and for women.  
It is predominantly a male problem to experience deviance from the social norm of oversexation as a physiological deficit.  Females are under social pressure to act against their natural inclination and perceive their own demisexuality as a social deviance.   I explained this already in entry 493. (The Social Norm Of The Drooling Men)

My model of male sexuality is based upon two factors:

• Perceived sexual dishomeostasis
• Sexual behavior as a reaction to the presence and availability of a target body

As I mentioned before, I consider the strength of the libido in every age group of men as a continuum with a distribution along a bell curve.   The perceived strength and urge of sexual dishomeostasis represent the innate strength of the libido. As this is a model, I omit the effects of health issues.

Simplified, at both extreme ends of the scale, the libido determines the sexual behavior.   In the middle of the bell curve, sexuality is controlled and modified by human cognition.

1.  At one extreme end of the curve are the dangerous promiscuous jerks, who are so oversexed with high libido, that they are not only drooling over every woman's body but who are ruthless emotional psychopaths, who use and discard women without any conscience or consideration, even by force and coercion.  

2.  At the other extreme of the bell curve are the truly nonsexuals, who have no or very little libido and no need for sexual homeostation.

3.  In the middle of the bell curve, there is a moderate perception of dishomeostasis, but the experience and practice of sexuality is modified and controlled by cognition.   The cognitive control over sexual reactiveness to the perception of stimuli is a byproduct of the evolution of cognition.   

Without cognition, a man would not be different from any non-human animal.  A man without cognition and in the state of the recurrent dishomeostasis after the latency time since his last copulation, would drool over every woman's body, who is genetically suitable to trigger his instincts.   In the animal world, whenever a male feels dishomeostasis and perceives a target body, sexual behavior is the automatic reaction of a robot determined by instincts only.  

In this middle part of the bell curve of libido, there are several possible reasons, why at a given moment an available target body does not lead to sexual behavior.   A target body is the body of a woman, who is a stranger and whose physical attributes are such, that they trigger the automatic sexual behavior of every high libido jerk.  

3.1.  A man in a relationship, which maintains his homeostasis, never gets into the situation of being driven by so much dishomeostasis, that he is tempted to make use of the target body.   This situation shows the benefits of bonded and committed monogamy.  

3.2.  Other needs, urges and sensations are temporarily stronger than the stimulation by the target body, examples are hunger, fatigue, danger, sickness.   This effect limits the behavior of all men, no matter the strength of the libido.  

3.3.  A man has enough cognitive control to resist the instinctive responsiveness to the target body.   In contrast to animals, humans do not react automatically to stimuli.   Human cognition allows to base decisions upon the memory of past experiences, the knowledge of consequences and the knowledge of not directly visible additional factors.    The refusal to react to a target body with sexual behavior can be based upon the anticipation of better alternatives or of the unwanted consequences.   This rational evaluation can avoid the plight of some women, but it does not avoid those men's behavior, who have come to the conclusion, that they can get away with the abuse of a woman.   

3.4. A man's cognition interferes with the responsiveness to the target body.   This is, what is usually defined as demisexuality.   But this is more complex, because the human cognition can override instincts on several different levels of demisexuality.

Level 1.   Stimuli are filtered from perception, before they reach the brain.

• Some people with autism and Asperger's are known to be oblivious to incoming non-verbal signals.   An example are persons, who bore others with endless monologues, because they are mindblind to the non-verbal expression of others' boredom, annoyance, disapproval.
  It is possible, that the sexual stimuli from the target body can be filtered the same way.   I have been speculating before, that there is a personality type, that is a part of Asperger's, but which can also be found in people, who are far from having any clinically relevant symptoms.   Maybe demisexuality is a part of this personality.    

Level 2.  Cognitive needs are stronger than physical needs. 

Stimuli from the target body are discarded or deactivated subconsciously, when emotional needs are stronger.  Such cognitive and emotional needs can be:

• The needs to feel self-confidence, self-esteem and self-worth in accordance with an identity as a person with morals, education and intelligence.   In this identity, the body is only the container and supply system for the brain.  
• A value system, in which human cognition is valued highly, while animal instincts are despised.   There is a strong need to avoid cognitive dissonance by living up to the own standards.
• An Epicurean personality, to which emotional and intellectual stimulation causes generally stronger pleasure and joy than physical stimulation.   This includes the subjective experience of intellectual intimacy as very beneficial.
• Sensitivity and empathy blocking the perception of sexual stimuli, unless the partner shows unequivocal signs of happiness and attachment

Level 3.  Competing conscious stimuli

The stranger inside the target body not only sends out sexual stimuli, but also other stimuli, that are competing and by being stronger, override any sexual attraction on a conscious level.   

• Disgust sensitivity to a stranger's body impedes promiscuity.  Only a slow process of creating emotional closeness can be strong enough to override the disgust.   More in entry 108.   (Promiscuity and Disgust Sensitivity)
• Repulsion or fear based upon nonverbal signals or knowledge about the person as for example can be a contagious sickness or a criminal record.   

4.  The social norm has a strong impact upon what sexual behavior men consider as appropriate, no matter how much or how little it corresponds with their real needs determined by their place on the bell curve of libido.  In entry 493  (The Social Norm Of The Drooling Men), I pointed out the detrimental effects of the social norm of extremely and unrealistically high libido for all men.   But the social norm of celibacy, that prevents the catholic priests from marrying the housekeeper, with whom they have developed a monogamous attachment, is equally unrealistic.   
  
There is a need for a new social norm, which focuses upon both, the realistic recognition and acceptance of every man's individual level of libido and upon consideration and recognition of the real needs of women.  
The drooling promiscuous jerks, who are not controlled by cognition, are deviant and sick.   It is absurd to consider them as the role models for men in the current social norm.    A social norm is most suitable, when it fits best the needs of the majority, while it controls the hazard of the deviant and protects the weak and vulnerable.  

Monogamy is the most suitable concept for the men in the middle part of the bell curve, whose libido is at a healthy medium level.    Monogamy provides the best protection for women against being hurt and harmed.  
A new social norm of moderate libido and monogamy is the most appropriate to suit the actual evolutionary level of the human cognition. The oversexation of societies, which value the high libido of the men, who drool over every woman's body, is outdated and anachronistic.