668. Where Are The Men Like André Gorz?

668.   Where Are The Men Like André Gorz?

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

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

1.   Kind of media

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

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

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

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

2.   Effect of media

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

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

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

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

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

3.   Effect of distraction

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

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

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

4.   Effects upon men's attitude towards women

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

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

Relationships are considered as mainly between two bodies.  

Female bodies are presented as easily available and easily replaceable.  

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

101. Promiscuity is a Scourge of Humanity

Promiscuity is a Scourge of Humanity

I found one more quote: 
"André and Dorine Gorz were consistently faithful, with a relationship of unquestioning trust, according to friends, physically and intellectually."
http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/books/article2678781.ece

I am wondering, how they could get so bonded, and why men in our times are so completely emotionally disabled by promiscuity.  

After some thinking, I started to see a parallel between saksuality (misspelled on purpose) and killing.   Again as before mentioned, I see human behavior as the result of two independent evolutions, the evolution of animal instincts and the evolution of the rational brain controlling them.    Killing others of the own species to take their resources and to eat them is a part of animal evolution, just as is promiscuous copulation to spread the own genes.  
Both such behaviors are uncontrolled not only advantages, but also a hazard to the survival of a group of humans, who depend on some coherence inside the group for the entire group's survival.   So the rational brain has evolved an inhibition against starting some activities, that are only suitable for adults after some careful instructions concerning wise restrictions.     

There is a killing inhibition in all people, and if someone lives in civilized surroundings, he may never loose it.    This is especially true for the direct killing in physical fighting, which is the way of killing under savanna conditions as the result of animal evolution.    The built in inhibition to shoot at someone is probably less strong than the inhibition to strangle someone with the own hands.  
The killing inhibitions can be overcome by role models in criminal subcultures, and it is on purpose overcome by training in the military.   But once the inhibition is overrun, there comes habituation, until killing has become normal, unrestricted behavior void of emotions.   There are many activities and actions, that a person growing up experiences the first time with thrill, elation, fear and other strong emotions, but after doing them more often, they become routine, that does not elicit emotions any more. 

Once the inhibition to kill is overcome, it cannot be reinstalled.   There can be laws and rules to threaten with punishment, if the trained killer kills the members of the ingroup, but the readiness to kill will persist.    And when the inhibition to kill was removed by military training, this of course also removed the less strong inhibition to use violence as a method to gain some advantages. 

As many other traits the relative strength of the killing instinct and the evolved killing inhibitions are different between individuals.    At one end of the scales are those, whose inhibitions are maybe non-existent or very low and overcoming is easy, therefore they choose the military to be allowed to live in accordance with their natural inclinations.   Others are further evolved towards being truly human and no training can ever make them ready to kill.  

Unfortunately, the world history is a history of wars and of having armies.  As a consequence, there has always been a big amount of men, who have been made uninhibited by training and by having been a soldier in a war.   Therefore there were always those men apt to kill and to use violence in civil live.   There are enough cases of soldiers returning from war and killing or abusing their wives.   And the criminal and other violent subcultures of every society are certainly in part supplied with active members by the military training.  

But there is another development too:   The effect of the flood of realistic moving and still pictures on people's, especially on children's minds.  
I had mentioned in previous entries Kanazawa and the Savanna Principle:
http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-scientific-fundamentalist/201002/the-savanna-principle
According to Kanazawa, by evolution, the human brain is still confounding the reality of real people and the reality of pictures, that appear to look like real people, as are movies, TV and photography.   His example are people on TV becoming friends as if they were real.  
This makes so much sense, that I assume the existence of the same effect also upon the destruction of inhibitions.    The young caveman needed to observe the role model of his teacher to initiate him into killing and attacking the members of outgroup tribes.   After watching this a few times, he then could be encouraged to do it himself.   
Now already children watch killing and violence in such frequency and so realistically shown on TV from early age on, that by the time they are the first time in a situation of conflict, there inhibitions are already so fragile, that the last step to actually attack is a small one.   It seems to be a doubly detrimental situation:   While the fact of knowing well enough, that TV is not reality reduces to feel an inhibition as there would in a real situation, watching countless murders and acts of violence still causes disinhibition by the habituation of watching it.  

I explained the killing disinhibition extensively, as it is a neutral topic to make my point comprehensible.   Because I am convinced, that the evolution of the more human brain has not only evolved the inhibition to kill, but also the inhibition to promiscuity.   Only the damage of a murder is obvious, while the damage caused by promiscuity is more subtle and not so obvious to those, who are themselves void of the sensitivity for deep bonding.   
A deaf person cannot miss hearing music, as he had never been able to experience it.   A promiscuous man cannot miss the bliss of feeling a deep bond, as he had never been able to experience it.   Both are tragically disabled.

The disinhibition and desensizitation of the promiscuity inhibition are as detrimental as that of the killing inhibition.    Just as the killing inhibition prevents the first killing, so the promiscuity inhibition prevents to get physically involved with strangers, it protects the privacy of the own body from being abused.
 
People, who seal a bond of emotional and intellectual intimacy with a bond of physical intimacy do not overcome an inhibition, because when there is emotional and intellectual intimacy, there is no involvement with a stranger.    Two people can have a bond of the combined intimacy and still keep their promiscuity inhibition intact preventing them from cheating.   They feel a strong emotional and intellectual bond, and when they add the physical bond, it is forever associated with the strong emotions of a bond.  
It is the same effect as with Pavlov's dog.   First his mouth watered, when he saw food, then when he saw the food and heard the bell, and then when he only heard the bell.   First the couple feels bonded and committed by emotional and intellectual intimacy, then the feel bonded by adding physical intimacy to emotional and intellectual intimacy, and then even the physical intimacy by itself makes them feel bonded.   With their sensitivity intact, they can forever preserve a healthy promiscuity inhibition, that makes them recoil from physical encounters without a bond.  

I admit, I am void not only of empathy but even of the imagination, how someone can perceive his body as so alienated from his mind and personality, that he can have his body use a woman's body as a tool, a kind of a toilet, and forget her completely unaffected afterwards.   But I know, that the majority of men are such emotional cripples.   Even worse, they even claim, that their disability should be considered as the norm of society.     

Dorine and André Gorz met in 1947 and married in 1949.   When I grew up in the 50s and 60s, the environment was still pretty much the same as it was for them.   I grew up with no TV.   But even though TV started in Germany in the 50s, it was black and white for years to come, and the effect of confounding pictures with reality seems logically depending on color pictures.    In those days, saksuality was a part of the world of adult couples, there was abstract knowledge, there were weird rumors between curious kids, there were novels, but there was no visual pollution of every day life.   Curious kids had to seek information, it was nowhere pushed upon them.    Women were decently dressed, there were no commercial selling things by using saks to do so.   Physical intimacy had its place in the privacy of the couple.   Therefore young people had a chance to enter their first intimate relationship or marriage with their full potential of the sensitivity to get deeply bonded by the combined treble intimacy.   

Nowadays children grow up in the visual pollution of an oversexed world.   This pollution is everywhere, on TV, on newspapers, commercials and the web.   People's minds get poisoned by that visual pollution and it is as unhealthy as the pollution by bad air.    A child, who has seen countless saksual activities on TV with the same emotional understanding as watching people play tennis together, is too desensitized to ever learn to associate physical intimacy with creating an emotional and intellectual bond.   If the promiscuity inhibition has been destroyed by role models, norms of society, TV, the web or peer group pressure, before the person has reached the maturity to be able to feel an emotional and intellectual bond with a partner, then this person has lost a quality and ability most probably irreversibly, that makes humans truly human.  

Ruthless promiscuity of the fittest has been a way of evolution to increase the fitness of the species, so the tendency for promiscuity would have spread accordingly, causing more and more suffering to individuals, who needed monogamous bonding to be happy.   Fortunately spreading of promiscuity was limited successfully by saksually transmitted diseases until very recently.    Monogamous couples were spared, while the more someone was promiscuous, the more he risked to be killed by such a disease, before he could spread his horrible genes too much.   Then slowly, human evolution added the promiscuity inhibition as an additional stop to the spreading of promiscuity.  

But now, things are changing in a dangerous way.   The promiscuity inhibition has lost its protective influence, and the progress in medicine has gone so far, that saksually transmitted diseases do not rid the gene pool of the promiscuous, before they can spread their genes.  
The future is bleak.   One of the most valid results of the evolution of the human brain, the capacity for monogamous deep bonding, is at the risk of disappearing and being replaced by the predominance of animal instinctivity.   

100. Homage to Dorine and André Gorz

Homage to Dorine and André Gorz

This is entry 100, and this is the right moment to sum up my search with a role model.   Dorine and André Gorz are the modern Baucis and Philemon.  

http://www.radicalphilosophy.com/default.asp?channel_id=2191&editorial_id=25733
http://www.dominiquesvillas.co.uk/en/News_and_Features/Books/Lifetime_of_Love.cfm
http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/books/book_extracts/article2651472.ece

They were together for nearly 60 years, and loved each other so much, that he could no bear to survive his beloved Dorine, so they ended their lives together.    They were happy without having children.   
She was his one and only.  Even though I cannot know it I am convinced, that they created a bond of intrinsic commitment when they got involved, that most probably it has never even occurred to him to cheat on her nor to impose a harem of ex-partners upon her.     


They are the role model of a couple attached to each other by a truly human bond of profound quality.   

I wished I could find a precious man like André Gorz.   There is enough left of life to share some years of the same kind of a deep bond as they did.  

Such a man is out there somewhere and he is craving to find me as much as I am craving to find him.   But were is he?   How can we find each other?    

Compared with André Gorz, I cannot help but to perceive all those pseudo-progressive men, who admit being promiscuous as if this were human decency, as trash and riffraff.   They are animals void of the precious quality of true humanity, that I see in André Gorz's bond with Dorine.