703. Differing Effects Of Varieties Of The Visual Objectification Of Women

703.  Differing Effects Of Varieties Of The Visual Objectification Of Women

The objectification and commodification of women by visual representations is nothing new.  

"The female nudes in Roman mosaics exalt beauty, the carnality and eroticism, while male bodies reflect determination, strength and power. This is one of the conclusions of research that analyzed the cultural construction and ideological implications of these artistic representations in which female predominate as compared to those of males."

"The deeply asymmetric treatment of male and female bodies is evident and, therefore, constitutes a reflection of relationships based on power, according to the researchers. "

"the main male figures tend to be gods, heroes and mythological beings, or else wrestlers and athletes."

"One very revealing example is a representation of Ariadne or the Nereid that shows a nude female figure lying on a marine animal, with one arm behind her head in a position and with a gesture that has been interpreted as "availability to the other.""

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/02/140210083155.htm

The text of this video is in Spanish, but it shows some good examples of the mosaics:  
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UKVwl4leLkU

 

These mosaics are expressions of the misperception, that women were objects existing to be used by men. This misperception had been women's plight through history.  

But there is a fundamental difference between the effects upon men's brains by ancient mosaics, frescos, statues or pottery decorations and the contemporary effects by the overexposure to more or less pornographic life like representations of female bodies.

No matter how provocative and explicit the ancient representations, they were nevertheless clearly and unequivocally artifacts.   Looking at a mosaic with whatever fantasy cannot have the same desensitizing effect upon a man's subconscious instincts as that which follows the abuse of a real woman.   (I consider any use of a female body without emotional attachment and without commitment as a form of abuse.)

Today the situation is much worse.   Visual representations, especially by high quality colorful moving pictures, are so much like real life people, that the male subconscious mind cannot distinguish between seeing a real woman and seeing a filmed representation of her.  (Thanks to Kanazawa for this insight).   The fantasy of abusing a filmed woman therefore contributes to the desensitization of men as if they had abused a real woman.  
This makes pornography so devastating.  Frequent abuse causes desensitization.   Desensitization lowers the threshold for attempting and intending more abuse.   It also blurs the male awareness, that approaching a woman for abuse is often perceived by the target as an insult and offense.          

Would any model or actress enact the exact scenes of the Roman mosaics, as far as there is an effect, that by the mosaic and that by the photo of the inaction on a man's brain would be very different. 
The mosaic would reinforce a man's conscious attitude, that women are there to serve him and to be used.   The photo would trigger his instincts, and subconsciously he would perceive the picture as an available real woman. 
 
I personally cannot see any additional artistic value of nudity compared with dress in any work of art and I also see no harm in nudity, when the represented naked body is obviously and unequivocally an artifact and not a real naked body presented for abuse and commerce.    But the contemporary pictures are too much resembling real life women and thus they are confounding men's instincts.  Such pictures have a very detrimental effect upon male brains, which those Roman mosaics could never have.  

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.   

558. Harming, Commodification And Abstract Thinking

558.   Harming, Commodification And Abstract Thinking

In entry 399 I quoted

"Dr Satoshi Kanazawa, an evolutionary psychologist from the London School of Economics and Political Science, said the smarter a man is, the less likely he is to cheat on his partner."

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1254420/Men-cheat-wives-intelligent-faithful-husbands.html

The following research puts Kanazawa's quote into a wider context. 

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/08/120809151351.htm

"Research from psychological science suggests that categorizing things abstractly into broad categories (called high-level construal) allows us to psychologically distance ourselves from the pushes and pulls of the immediate moment. This, in turn, makes us more sensitive to the broad implications of our behavior and leads us to show greater consistency between our values and our behavior."

"The researchers draw together many strands of research to provide evidence for the role of these different kinds of construal in decisions involving self-control."

Abstract thinking is one facet of intelligence.  
Cheating is one variety of harming by commodification and objectification.

Therefore I rephrase the quotes above for the generalized application to my search of a partner:

There is a negative correlation between a man's ability for abstract thinking and his proneness to harm and hurt a woman.    

These are some effects:

1. A man's ability for abstract thinking leads to his interest in abstract thinking, the appreciation of a woman's abstract thinking and the wish to share it with her.    While physical needs are asymmetrical, the needs for and the joy of intellectual intimacy are symmetrical and enhance an egalitarian attitude. 
   Less abstractly intelligent men are more prone to confound women with being only bodies to be used.   Not only do they hurt women by objectification and commodification, some are unable to understand, why being used hurts women.
   
2. Some man's ability for abstract thinking creates strong cognitive needs, which are stronger than his instinctive urges.  This man's behavior is determined predominantly by his cognitive needs and not by his instinctive urges.   The total of his needs causes him to be most attracted to monogamous bonded commitment.
   A less abstractly intelligent man with instinctive urges of identical strength, but who lacks the cognitive needs, is determined by his not outweighed instincts.   He copulates like a dog from the gutter, no matter the harm experienced by the betrayed women getting attached without reciprocation.     
3. Abstract thinking allows to see the benefits of a relationship by a long term calculation.   Momentary dissatisfaction and conflicts are experienced as temporary and the investment to improve the relationship is based upon long term thinking. 
   Less abstractly intelligent men are prone to value a relationship by the requirement of it always being subjectively beneficial to their needs.   They are prone to consider dumping and replacing women as the best method to deal with a momentary dissatisfaction, lacking any consideration for the women's sufferings.  
   
4. Abstract thinking allows a deeper and more complex understanding of the dynamics of a relationship.    This facilitates constructive communication to solve conflicts. 
   Less abstractly intelligent men, who do not understand, why a woman feels hurt, are unable to do their share to improve the relationship.   They are more prone to run away when experiencing their own incompetence.  They hurt the woman by dumping her without giving her a chance. 

The above research is one more reinforcement of the importance of my mindmate to be found being able to think rationally and abstractly.    Whenever a men feels deterred by the abstraction and complexity of this blog, this is intended.    A man, who does not comprehend, what I write, is not compatible.  He is welcome to refrain from contacting me.  

Some reactions to this blog, both as comments and in emails, indicate that there are men lacking the ability to comprehend my abstract thinking.  These men are trapped in the double fallacy of overestimating their own importance and to misunderstand the purpose of this blog.

Every time a man spends his time on such reactions, no matter how much, he wastes his time.  No matter what he says, it just translates into one simple statement.   He considers me as not suitable for him as long as I remain as I am.   This thinking makes him unsuitable for me.  
Informing me by the proactive writing of an email of reciprocal unsuitability serves nothing.  (This of course has nothing to do with the politeness of someone replying to my initiative of having contacted him first).  

Some reactions are hostile diatribes. Others proffer patronizing advice what to do differently and how to change. Some are projections by suggesting I should get fixed by seeing a therapist. 
Some reactions are completely off, not replies to what I have written, but to what they have misunderstood and misinterpreted.   Some are not bothered to read entire posts, instead one sentence taken out of its context suffices as a trigger to contradict me for the purpose of making themselves feel good by reinforcing their belief to be right.   
All such reactions are varieties of men's belief to know better than I do, their belief that they are right and I am flawed, sometimes it is as bad as a grandiosity delusion.  

But I am not impressed.  I see these reactions as what they are: indicators of the Dunning-Kruger effect as already mentioned in entry 360 :  

 "The Dunning-Kruger effect occurs when incompetent people not only fail to realize their incompetence, but consider themselves much more competent than everyone else. Basically - they're too stupid to know that they're stupid. "

http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Dunning-Kruger_effect    

This blog is meant to be a positive filter.   I want to encourage a man to contact me, if he experiences my writings as if written by a (near)clone of his own brain.   I welcome neutral and not hostile comments asking questions or pointing out, what could be elaborated.  
But there are billions of unsuitable men out there, and the best they can do is not bother me.   To be informed of his existence by any unsuitable Joe Doe is of no interest to me.   They are most welcome to not contact me.

539. Movies Are Contributing To The Harm Done By Promiscuous Jerks

539.   Movies Are Contributing To The Harm Done By Promiscuous Jerks

I have been mentioning before, that promiscuous jerks are predisposed by instinctive animal urges, but that the harm done to the victims is magnified by the sad influence of the media propagating, enhancing and reinforcing the social norm of oversexation.  

A recent study gives some evidence, that the influence of movies is contributing to women's plight by supplying the wrong role models.    

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/07/120717162743.htm

"Adolescents who are exposed to more sexual content in movies start having sex at younger ages, have more sexual partners, and are less likely to use condoms with casual sexual partners,"

"Many adolescents turn to movies to acquire "sexual scripts" that offer examples of how to behave when confronted with complicated emotional situations. For 57 percent of American adolescents between the ages of 14 and 16, the media is their greatest source of sexual information. They often don't differentiate between what they see on the screen and what they must confront in daily life ."

What this study indicates as the fatal influence of sexual scenes in general movies, can logically be expected to be even worse in pornographic movies. 


There are other sources providing some further contextual explanations.    

1.  Kanazawa has pointed out, that people are misled to confound the mere moving pictures of people on TV with personal friends, because the evolution of the human cognition had no yet enough time to adapt to the realistic technical representations of people.   The spontaneous and subconscious human perception does not distinguish sufficiently.    

http://personal.lse.ac.uk/kanazawa/pdfs/ehb2002.pdf

This has fatal consequences.   

Commercial movies are made to entertain people, not to educate them towards responsibility and consideration.   The stories of movies are not realistic.  They are in some way extreme and often dangerously pseudo-realistic.   Women are often abused in a drastic way, which in real life would be legally punished, but the severe harm experienced by them is omitted in the movies, because it is not entertaining.    They are damaged as objects, not harmed as humans.

Adolescents need the valid and beneficial role model of the happy serenity of a bonded monogamous couple.   But what should be encouraged most for imitation lacks any entertaining thrill.  Such a couple's happiness is as beneficial for the two partners themselves as it is dull and boring to the curiosity of gossiping and scandal enjoying bystanders, not matter if in real life or on a screen.    

Therefore the perception of the adolescents watching movies is mislead by confounding the images of the role models on the screen with real people appearing as an extension of their social environment.   Thus the influence of such role models to be imitated is dangerously strong.   

The adolescents are misled to consider the unreal, fantastic and extreme events and activities of the observed stories as if this were a valid representation of real life.

For the consumers of the movies and even more of pornography, abuse seems to end without any consequences, when the movie ends.  But in real life, abuse not only concerns a transgressor, but also a victim.   The abuser's onesided perception of having terminated the abusive event does not really end it.   Real life jerks cannot fully avoid to witness the visible reactions of the victims.  Even those jerks, who are not bothered or insensitive to whatever they do themselves often do notice the suffering, when the victims are their family members harmed by other jerks.

In short, real life harm has more or less observable consequences, which serve as a deterrent.   This deterrent is lacking in the movies.  The harm done by the promiscuity shown in the movies is hidden and omitted as if it did not exist.  Thus the movies mislead adolescents towards oblivion and denial of what they do to their victims by imitating the abuse.

2.   Milgram's experiment have been lately reinterpreted:

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/07/120718164947.htm

"The researchers hypothesized that, rather than obedience to authority, the participants' behavior might be better explained by their patterns of social identification. They surmised that conditions that encouraged identification with the experimenter (and, by extension, the scientific community) led participants to follow the experimenters' orders, while conditions that encouraged identification with the learner (and the general community) led participants to defy the experimenters' orders."

Explaining the physically barbaric act of applying electro shocks by identification can be generalized to explain the emotionally barbaric act of men's promiscuous objectifying of women's bodies also by the identification with the imitated actors in the movies.

511. Evolution, The Cassandra Dynamics And Too Much Television

511.  Evolution, The Cassandra Dynamics And Too Much Television

People can close their eyes to end all visual input.  Also daylight is available on average only during half of the life time.  But people can never stop hearing, they can only filter, what they consciously listen to.   
The human brain filters on a subconscious level, which sensory input is allowed into consciousness, and which automatic reactions are elicited.   

On this level, the human brain is still in the evolutionary state of the adaption to when human interactions were limited to a restricted number of personally known people. 
 
I already have mentioned Kanazawa (http://personal.lse.ac.uk/kanazawa/pdfs/ehb2002.pdf), who describes the confounding of virtual and real people by the example of men's reaction to pornography and by the experience of persons on TV as friends.

But the more I ponder over this, the more I can see, that the flooding of the human brain with virtual people has even much more drastic effects than Kanazawa has suggested. 
 

The invention of the radio, of cheap color photography, of color movies and even more of TV and the internet has created, installed and enhanced the ubiquity of virtual humans.  

Virtual humans are all technically preserved and recorded representations of real humans.  This can be anything auditive or visual, which is realistic enough to expose the brain to the same kind of stimulation as does the presence of real persons.  

Until about a hundred years ago, such representations were rare, because only a limited number of artists were able to produce realistic paintings or sculptures and it was a time consuming occupation.  Only few people could afford to get their likeness done. 

I am convinced that the overwhelming of the brain with the stimulation by too many virtual social and psychological contacts has drastic effects upon attention and communication.  Virtual humans are only a recent technological development, the human brain has had not enough time to evolve the ability to subconsciously cope with the difference between real and virtual humans.  

I am even wondering, if ADD (attention deficit disorder) may not be a logical reaction of the brain to an environment, to which it is maladapted.   Maybe it is even more astonishing, that not more people have such problems.

  
The environment of the human evolutionary adaptation was an environment, in which hearing a human voice or seeing a human person meant automatically to be in the presence of a real human.    People lived in small groups, knowing all other group members personally or at least by sight.   Strangers were rare.   This did not change much for the majority of people living in villages until more recent times.

Under such circumstances, every perception of another human's verbal or non-verbal expression is a probable source of important information requiring and warranting attention.   The importance of any dialog with significant persons is obvious, but strangers are possibly dangerous and need to be assessed.   Usually only one person requires attention at the same time, no matter if in a dialog or being listened to as a narrator of a story.   
For people living in small groups or villages, the amount of input from human interaction usually does not exceed the attention span of people. While people's span of attention is limited, real people's ability to monologue without a pause is also limited.    Humans have evolved to be able to pay the necessary amount of attention to other humans, that allows them to thrive under such circumstances only.


There are decisive differences between the environment of evolutionary adaptation and the modern life situation, both having a drastic impact upon focusing attention.  These environmental changes confuse and irritate the brain.  

• The sensory flooding with virtual humans that are confounded with real humans as already mentioned.
• The recordings of virtual humans get never tired and can be repeated endlessly, even against the wish of those exposed.   
• The crowding and mingling with strangers, who are not social contacts but part of the environment.   Everyday life includes being in close proximity with strangers, be it in public transport, restaurants, markets, events. 

The brain gets easily habituated to repeated sensory input, as soon as it does not indicate danger.   Not consciously hearing the singing of birds most of the time is an example.   But any expression from a real human in personal contact is an important stimulus to pay attention to.   

I grew up without TV and only listening to selected programs on the radio.   Whenever I happen to enter a household, where people are talking with the TV or radio in the background transmitting spoken language, I observe a difference.  They have successfully learned to filter out all the information from the TV and focus on the conversation.   I have the problem, that the TV distracts my attention against my wish.

The brain cannot pay adequate attention to several voices at the same time.  In this situation, the brain is forced to filter and to select only the most significant information to be consciously processed. Even by repeatedly switching the attention to and fro, processing information from one source means losing information from the others.   Filtering is learned as a result of the necessity to cope with such an input overflow of information.  
When people learn to selectively listen to some chosen voices and ignore the others, this choice is determined or at least influenced by what interests them most and what is important for their personal needs.    People exposed simultaneously to more virtual and real human voices than their brain can process, their attention is predominantly attracted to what pleases, entertains, amuses, thrills or excites them.  They can afford to discard by filtering, whatever they do not like to hear.    It is the same as with food.   When food is scarce, people eat anything, that fills their stomach.   But when food is plentiful and cheap, they only eat their favorite dishes.  

In entry 507 I described the Cassandra Dynamics including the problem of a partner not listening to the warnings of Cassandra in spite of her efforts to communicate, before it is too late.   I am wondering, if the learned selective filtering by the exposition to too much TV has also destroyed the ability to be a partner in constructive communication, whenever listening to unwelcome but necessary information is unpleasant.  
 

I suspect, that growing up with the TV running all day long, including falling asleep in front of the TV, has a very detrimental effect upon people's ability to decide consciously, what to listen to, even when listening would be beneficial for themselves.  Those people, who have grown up being exposed to too much TV, are at the risk of confounding even their significant other with just another figure on the TV screen.   

On the subconscious level, the brain being generally unable to distinguish between virtual and real humans, filters all pleasant information discarding the rest, indiscriminately of its source.   A dull politician on TV or the partner attempting to communicate about serious matters are both just triggers to mentally zap to something else.  

Unfortunately, such problems are aggravated by people taking too much for granted.   Before someone can learn to listen, he first needs the insight, that listening even to unpleasant feedback is an unavoidable part of making a relationship work.   

503. Evolution And Monogamy

503.  Evolution And Monogamy

In entry 502, I pointed out, that human instinctive behavior has not yet evolved to adapt to the novelty situation of being free from survival needs, in spite of the cognitive reality, that emotional and intellectual needs have become strong influences upon human behavior.   
Under the pressure of survival needs people are coerced to make choices, which they would not make, were they free to choose by taking full account of their emotional needs.  

In this study, women's choice between polygyny and monogamy is explained by the survival benefits of the choice.   It is a very good example of the force of circumstantial restrictions upon options.   

Sathoshi Kanazawa / Mary C. Still:
Why monogamy?

http://personal.lse.ac.uk/Kanazawa/pdfs/SF1999.pdf

"If resource inequality among men is great, women choose to marry polygynously and the polygynous institution of marriage emerges. If resource inequality among men is small, women choose to marry monogamously and the monogamous institution of marriage emerges. The theory explains the historical shift from polygyny to monogamy as a result of the gradual decline of inequality among men."

The explanation makes perfect logical sense, as long as the options of the choice between monogamy and polygamy are restricted to those for physical survival.    When the choice of a man is a choice between starving and eating, the wish for an exclusive attachment is an unobtainable luxury.   There is no free cognitive choice considering also emotional needs.

Today the environment in the rich modern societies offers for the first time in history the true freedom of choice.    Relieved from the pressure of physical survival struggles, people are now able to sense and perceive their emotional and intellectual needs.   In this situation, monogamy is the best cognitive choice (entry 497)

10,000 and even 1,000 years ago, the situation was very different.   Physical survival depended upon access to scarce resources of food, clothing, firewood, shelter.   The total availability of these resources to a community, village or group was limited.   Even under the best favorable circumstances, people could not produce much surplus above their own needs.

• Everyday chores were time consuming.   Water had to be carried from the well, cooking required a fire and fire wood.      
• Without machinery, the production of all goods were slow and limited.  
• Food production depended on the climate.    Food had to be produced locally.
• Skills and knowledge were limited. 

As long as the access to fertile land, forest and water was unrestricted to all people, the sum of the resources allowed the survival of everybody on an equal low level.   But any inequality of power over such resources meant, that only the powerful men had the means to survive, while there was not enough left for everybody else.  Medieval systems of rich landowners exploiting their tenants are examples.      


Under such circumstances, a woman's theoretical choice between being the exclusive wife of a poor monogamous man and sharing a rich powerful man's wealth with other wives was not a free choice.   Her emotional needs were an unobtainable luxury beyond her reach, when the price for one poor man's emotional exclusive attachment was perishing and starvation for her and her offspring. 

This situation was aggravated by the lack of safe methods of family planning.   The woman was not even able to choose the monogamous poor man by restricting the number of offspring to match his resources. 

The woman's choice was further determined by her parents' power over her.  Under the pressure of lacking sufficient resources to keep all their children alive, parents coerced their daughters by dire necessity into the choice of the man, who could maintain them, even if she had to share him in a polygynous arrangement.    


Evolutionary biology and evolutionary psychology are very valuable methods to explain hidden instinctive tendencies toward certain behaviors.   But it is a fallacy to confound explanations with justification, connivance or acquiescence.  

It is historical reality, that the superior physical strength of men allowed them to first exclude women from independent access to the survival resources and that the physically strongest men usurped greedily a disproportionally high share of the totally available resources.  This enabled a minority of men to gain control over the majority of women. 

Today the cognitive perception of non-material needs are just as much a reality, including the ability to act morally, to distinguish between justice and injustice and to suffer excruciating emotional pain as the victim of injustice.   Today we have reached a situation, where the instinctive reactions, that were helpful in a different environment, have become obsolete and detrimental.   

The most rational and least instinctive people are guided by their cognition to new adaptive behaviors to the changed environment, while the majority are still driven too much by dysfunctional and anachronistic instincts.


Therefore no scientific explanation of the choice of polygyny in the past by reasons of necessity can be morally used to deny people in the present society their emotional needs for the safe haven of a monogamous exclusive commitment.    No allegedly free choice for polygamy in the past is a valid excuse today for the promiscuous cheating and dumping by desensitized jerks.
When scientific research uncovers instinctive tendencies, which hurt others emotionally, then this is a reason to teach people enhanced awareness to fight their subconscious harmful tendencies, it is not justifiable to use scientific discoveries as an excuse for cruelty.     

502. Evolution, Survival And Emotional Needs

502.  Evolution, Survival And Emotional Needs

Bertold Brecht said it quite drastically "Erst kommt das Fressen, und dann die Moral".   There are different ways to translate this, because morals can be understood differently.   The translation as 'a hungry man has no conscience' may be the closest to Brecht's meaning. 
But it can also be translated like this: 'There are no morals, unless there is grub.'   In this sense, morals are more generally any cognitive influence on the behavior.  Usually (there are exceptions), as long as someone is driven by urgent and strong physical deprivations, non-physical cognitive needs are not strong enough to determine or even influence the behavior and all emotional needs are a luxury beyond imagination.   

I have already mentioned the theory of the environment of the evolutionary adaptation.   Today we life in an environment, that has drastically changed from what the human brain has adapted to by evolution, which according to this theory is the savanna as it was about 10,000 years ago.   But this environment had only insignificantly changed until a few centuries ago.   The most drastic changes for the majority of the population in the rich western countries came only during the last century.    

Only today's physical comfort and security of unlimited food supply, bright electrical light, warm water from the tap, central heating in sturdy buildings, health care, laws and law enforcement, safe birth control and nearly unlimited access to information provide people with an environment, in which they now are free to be fully aware of their emotional needs.    

This freedom to have full access to cognitive awareness is so new, that there has not been enough time to adapt the innate automatic responses for appropriate coping with emotional needs.      People have not yet learned to use their cognition as a tool to adapt to their emotional reality.   Today people are still driven by strong instincts, impulses and tendencies, that are dysfunctional in our highly technical environment:  

1.  The human brain has had not time yet to evolve sufficiently to the difference between real people and technically reproduced life-imitating representation of voices, still and moving pictures, because these only exist since about a century.   

2.  The human cognition has evolved as an evolutionary adaptation to survive successfully.   The sensitivity to have emotional, intellectual needs and to suffer pain, when such needs are not met, are only a byproduct of the evolution of cognition.  But these non-material and non-physical needs were hidden from the awareness by the much stronger dire necessity of a daily struggle for physical survival needs.   Someone at the point of starvation and perishing due to lack of shelter or serious disease has no awareness for feelings like dignity and appreciation.  Being hidden from awareness, the by-product did not influence evolution.     

Not being aware of emotional needs like for attachment and trust and of intellectual needs like for knowledge and comprehension while being under the pressure of hunger and life threatening perils is like being unable to hear the birds sing underneath the much louder noise of an electrical drill.  The evolutionary adaptation of human instincts is like being adapted to permanent loud noise.   When the electric drill is turned off, someone hearing the birds for the first time does not know, that what he hears as an irritating sound are birds.   Since in the recently changed environment the permanent threat of perishing has been removed, this has left people without sufficient innate understanding for the own and even more for the expressed emotional needs of others.     Whatever innate empathy and mirror neurons there are, they do not suffice to enable people to avoid hurting and harming others without a cognitive decision to do so.          

The tragedy of today's situation in modern rich countries is the discrepancy of people still treating others as the same ruthless instinctive driven animals in the savanna, while the comfort and security of the standard of life has freed the cognition and enhanced the perception for pain and suffering.     

Would people only ignore their own emotional needs, they would only harm themselves.   But the worst tragedy is the harm done to others due to the general oblivion and denial of emotional needs.   While people suffer emotional pain as targets of behavior, they continue to be unaware of inflicting the exact same pain on others, when they act driven by their own instincts.

The choice of how to interact with the other gender is a good example.    Today's environment allows everybody to attempt happiness in a monogamous committed relationship with one partner.    Instead men continue to promiscuously abuse women's body, and women are driven by greed to exploit men.   These causes suffering and makes them gullible customers for psychopharmaceuticals as already explained in entry 498.   

498. Capitalism, Media, Social Norm And Monogamy

498.  Capitalism, Media, Social Norm And Monogamy

I claim: 

Some of today's decisive social norms are an artificial invention serving capitalists' profits by disregarding human cognitive and emotional needs.    

Monogamous life arrangements are the best adaptation of the human emotional needs and of the advanced evolution of the human cognition to the animal instincts also present in the human brain.
  

1.  The enabling factors of capitalistically distorted social norms.

1.1.  I call someone a capitalist, who uses financial power to ruthlessly invest money, wherever and whenever he can get the most profit, without responsibility and consideration for social and psychological consequences.   

1.2.  Until about 100 years ago, the reinforcement, persistence and influence of social norms depended on real life role models.   Role models lived successfully according to the social norm, social norms were reinforced by the example of real persons' achievements.  
While religions and philosophies also had influences, the real life experience of personally known role models restricted social norms to the correction by realistic physical and cognitive capacities of human beings.  

1.3.  According to the theory of being determined by the adaptation to the environment during evolution, the human cognition has not yet adapted to the technological environment, in which we are living now.  
It was first Kanazawa, who pointed out, that people are led to confound people on TV with personal friends.    http://personal.lse.ac.uk/kanazawa/pdfs/ehb2002.pdf 

But this effect can be seen even more generalized as being effective, whenever recorded voices, movies, live size color pictures trick the subconscious brain to confound the preserved representations of persons with real present role models.

1.4.  The more often something is heard and repeated, the more people believe it.   Real life role models are not willing to repeat the demonstration of their endeavors for the purpose of influencing others.    Movies and audio tapes can be replayed endlessly and they have therefore more impact.    

1.5.  The technical progress created the influence of virtual role models confounded as if they were real people.  
The realistic voices from the radio started this.   The Nazi ideology would probably have not been so widely accepted by the German population, had not the radio repeated this ideology in a way, that people were misled subconsciously to be listening to personal role models.
When the color TV enabled capitalists to send role models as commercials into every home and repeating their messages endlessly, they established several new social norms, which do not correspond to people's real needs as cognitive humans.   

Instead these social norms were established to create profitable markets.    

  

2.  Distorted social norms optimize capitalistic profits

The general principle of the capitalistic social norm claims enhanced wellbeing as something to be bought by consumption.    The even more powerful and more devastating principle are those artificial, unrealistic and distorted social norms, which make people feel deviant and willing to spend money on remedies to reduce the alleged deviance, while there is nothing wrong with them.  

Capitalists, predominantly male, have created distorted social norms for both genders:

• Men have extremely high libido, they are promiscuous and successful in discarding the monogamous commitment to be successful predators consuming women.   
• Woman want to be prey as much as men enjoy to be the predators.   Due to the fundamental biological difference, only men have a physiological need for sexual homeostasis, while women have no biological reason to need sex unless there are also emotional benefits.   Therefore by this social norm consumption and material benefits are the substitutes for the not available emotional benefits as women's reward for their acquiescence to be compliant prey. 

As shown in entry 497, the safe haven of living as a dyad is the best adaptation of the human need to combine cognition and physiological needs.   People using their cognition to earn and create happiness, who work hard on their relationship by communicating, by solving conflicts, by sharing time and activities, by learning to trust and to cooperate, bring no profit to capitalists.  
People, who spend most of their time working for money, guided by the belief, that happiness could be bought, are doubly profitable to the capitalists:  They produce and they consume.    Someone, who is too busy to invest time and effort into cognitive improvements of a monogamous happiness, is lured by the social norms to instead invest money in acquiring the prey's compliance by buying consumption goods for her.       

• The role model for men invests money to offer general consumption to women.
• The role model for women invests money in her body to attract men to spend money on them.  

3.    The markets of deviance.

This social norm creates two levels of feeling insufficient and deviant, and the capitalists sell alleged remedies: 

Market 1:  The sex market, which is primarily a market for male customers.   

The social norm makes men believe that they are deviant and deficient, unless they have a very high libido.  This is unrealistic when compared with the biological bell curve of libido, where in reality the extreme libido is deviant.  (More in entry 496 on Demisexuality And Cognition)

The sex market sells

• remedies to physically enhance the libido of the predators:
  
  • medical treatment, pills, hormones

• remedies to subconsciously enhance the stimulation of the predators' libido: 
  • pornography tricking the subconscious brain to confound being stimulated by mere pictures with being in the presence of a real woman

• remedies to physically enhance the success of triggering another's instinctive physiological reaction:
  • pheromones, fashion, cosmetics, body modifications

• remedies to enhance the predator's manipulation skills: 
  
  • The market of PUA (pick-up-animals) training.

• remedies to avoid failing as a predator by being a customer instead: 
  
  • prostitution.

Market 2:  The Psychotropic Drug Market

The capitalists established the social norm, that any person, who cannot be happy and striving as an unattached predator or prey, but who is sensitive, vulnerable and suffers as a result of the deprivation of commitment, is deviant and needs to be treated by taking psychopharmaceuticals.  
They have created the psychotropic drug market, which is extremely profitable and still growing.  This is an excellent documentary:   
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UDlH9sV0lHU

Psychological and social problems like depression, outbreak of psychiatric disturbances in vulnerable people under emotional stress, trauma, aggression, burn-out, alcoholism, illegal drugs abuse, crime, juvenile delinquencies are a few examples of what happens to people and their dependents, when basic emotional needs are not met.  Such sufferings are symptoms indicating the needed change of the toxic or noxious circumstances of their life situation.  If people's emotional needs were fully recognized, many psychological and psychosomatic health issues could be prevented by appropriate interventions.    But in this case, there would be no profit for the capitalists.  

The artificial social norms of defining as deviance, what really are healthy reactions to serious life challenges, have therefore two detrimental effects:

• Effect 1.  Those taking the psychopharmaceuticals deliberately, accept themselves as deviant in comparison with the artificial social norm.  People deprived of the social, emotional and psychological benefits of the safe haven of a reliable dyad as outlined in entry 497, react with maladaptive coping behavior.   Instead of attempting to get the needed benefits of a monogamous relationship, they take pills.    They are manipulated to believe this as the easy and only way out.
    
• Effect 2.  Those, who involuntarily hurt and harm others in spite of believing to act morally, consider their victims as deviant.  They influence or even coerce them to take pharmaceuticals as the apparently only remedy to restore them to cope better under the artificial social norm.  
  As already elaborated in entry 489 (Demisexuality And Morals), one of the collateral devastations of the artificial capitalistic social norm is the effect upon the behavior of those people, who are willing and wishing to be moral. They believe to act as good people according to the social norm, but they are oblivious of the damage done by them.    They harm others, but instead of changing their own behavior, they feed them with pills to repair the alleged flaw.   People doing damage with a clean conscience cause sometimes the worst harm.

An example:   

The proverbial broken heart can physiologically be expressed by symptoms of a real health issue, according to this study: 

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/02/120207121928.htm
"Broken heart syndrome occurs during highly stressful or emotional times, such as a painful breakup,
Broken heart syndrome also is called stress cardiomyopathy. Symptoms are similar to those of a heart attack, including chest pain and difficulty breathing.
During an extremely stressful event, the heart can be overwhelmed with a surge of adrenalin and other stress hormones."

Without the distorted capitalistic social norm, a sensitive caring person would feel responsible and avoid breaking another person's heart.   But the social norm of the oversexation and of promiscuity has destroyed the realistic recognition of the human need for attachment, consideration and responsibility.  

• The person suffering the broken heart fights the allegedly deviant reaction with psychopharmaceuticals. 
• The person, who had broken the heart, feels entitled to do so and considers the other as in need of pharmaceuticals.     

To sum it up, capitalists have used the media to artificially create the social norm of the oversexation of society and of men's high libido in addition to the general market of selling alleged consumable happiness and wellbeing.   
The discrepancy between biological reality and the distorted social norm has created two markets, one of remedies for those men attempting to comply with the sexual norm, and the other of pharmaceutical remedies for both men and women, who are psychologically damaged by this norm.

401. Monogamy And Intelligence - 2

Monogamy And Intelligence - 2

In entry 399, I have already quoted 

"Dr Satoshi Kanazawa, an evolutionary psychologist from the London School of Economics and Political Science, said the smarter a man is, the less likely he is to cheat on his partner."

Looking at it by considering the stimulation of the pleasure center in the brain (entries 388 and 389), this makes sense and can be easily explained.  

My age cohort here in Germany was about equally divided at the age of around 10 by their subsequent schooling in one of three groups.  
Group H:  About one third went to high education leading to university.
Group M:  About one third went to a middle level of education of ten years of schooling      
Group L:   About one third went to the lowest level of education of eight years of schooling

To show the contrast, I am comparing, what happens in the pleasure center of two prototypes, one is ManH from group H, and the other is ManL from group L.   

ManL leaves school at the age of 14.  He then either starts manual labor or learns a craft or trade.   In his short time of schooling, he learns basic skills, but it does not prepare him for the enjoyment of intellectual activities.   

He spends his leisure time with sports, drinking with his buddies, watching superficial stuff on TV.   He is inclined to compete with others to buy status symbols like a fancy car.   He may even work over time to be able to afford this, therefore he may also be too tired to ever be interested in anything intellectually challenging.    Lacking any intellectual accomplishments, for such a man his body and its instinctive use is his major source for self-esteem.   

In short, besides food, sexuality is the biggest stimulus for his pleasure center in his else rather dull life, because there is nothing else available.   Logically he easily gets infatuated with a woman and often he marries her, who is not any more educated than him.   She lives a different life interested in children, cooking, household and fashion.   

When the infatuation wears off, she turns to her offspring, the man starts to get less stimulation from being with her, and his instincts trigger his relapse into the promiscuous predator cheating whenever he has the occasion.     Alcohol may contribute to this.

ManH is very different, because he has some or many intellectual interests, that are at least as strong a stimulation for his pleasure center as are physical stimuli like food and sexual homeostation.   Therefore logically, any one of many possible stimuli is by far not as important, when there are many others to focus upon and compensate with.   When infatuation with his chosen companion wears off, ManH does not loose his most satisfying and major stimulation of his pleasure center, there is so much else to enjoy.    There are many shared cultural and intellectual activities, which are enough so that he can continue to be happily bonded in a monogamous relationship and not feel deprived of the thrill of the initial infatuation.   
I once heard a scientist talk about, how he could not even stop thinking about his research while being intimate with a woman.    Not knowing anything more about the circumstances, I cannot judge him, even though being the counterpart in this situation is certainly a reason for a woman to feel abused and humiliated.    But it is also a good sign, because it shows, that there are men, who can be more interested in intellectual joys than driven by instincts and they have no reason to cheat.   
Of course I prefer to find someone, whose preferred intellectual joys are those shared with a mindmate, and not his work excluding her.  
  
Therefore I am not only looking for an intelligent, educated and intellectual man to have enough shared interests to create intellectual intimacy, but also, because he can appreciate being with me for many reasons other than my body and he will be less prone to chase other women.

399. Monogamy And Intelligence - 1

Monogamy And Intelligence - 1

In a previous entry I already mentioned the importance of finding a mindmate on the same level of intelligence as myself.   Because I do not want to dumb down, nor do I want someone to dumb down based upon the delusion, that he is superior, because he cannot understand me.   I am looking for a relationship of two intellectually equal partners.

But there is also another aspect.  I am looking for a man, whose intelligence is sufficient to enable him to be absolutely monogamous. 

I found an interesting article titled

"Why you'd be stupid to cheat on your wife: Unfaithful men have lower IQs, say scientists"
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1254420/Men-cheat-wives-intelligent-faithful-husbands.html

Some quotes:

"Dr Satoshi Kanazawa, an evolutionary psychologist from the London School of Economics and Political Science, said the smarter a man is, the less likely he is to cheat on his partner."

"Dr Kanazawa explained that entering a sexually exclusive relationship is an 'evolutionarily novel' development for them.

According to his theory, intelligent people are more likely to adopt what in evolutionary terms are new practices  -  to become 'more evolved'.

Therefore, in the case of fidelity, men who cannot adapt and end up succumbing to temptation and cheating are likely to be more stupid."


"Analysing the American National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health, he found young adults who regarded themselves as 'very liberal' had an average IQ of 106, while those who saw themselves as 'very conservative' had an average IQ of 95."

"Similarly, those who identified themselves as 'not at all religious' had an average IQ of 103, while those who saw themselves as 'very religious' had an average IQ of 97"

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.   

49. The Different Speed of the Two Evolutions

The Different Speed of the Two Evolutions

I just came across another very interesting source by a Canadian scientist, Joseph Henrich, who defends the superiority of the benefits of monogamy on society in a court case defending against an appeal to legalize polygamy.  

http://www.vancouversun.com/pdf/affidavit.pdf

He explains the benefits of enforced monogamy on society and why monogamous societies have an advantage.    I restrict my comments to one main aspect: One important reason is that monogamy spares society the bad effects of those young men, who become nasty and aggressive, because they cannot have mates, when polygynous men have usurped most of the women for themselves.   

As natural selection works on both levels, the fitness of the individual and the fitness of groups, then the puzzling question is, why polygyny did ever evolve in individuals at all?

According to the plausible theory of Kazanawa, males in the tribes in the Pleistocene fought for dominance and the fittest ones usurped all the women.  Therefore there were surplus men raiding for women outside their own tribe.  They either succeeded to acquire a mate or they got killed and the equilibrium of procreative possibilities was restored.  

But there could be another explanation too.   In those days, life for men was very dangerous.   Hunting huge animals like mammoth with simple weapons was a hazard, but there were bears, wolves, lions, that the group needed to be defended against.  Maybe the weakest and unfittest of young men got killed when hunting and defending against dangers.  Maybe outgroup raids were attempted for resources like good hunting grounds, and the captured men from the other tribes were mutually just eaten.   There are archaeological findings indicating prehistoric cannibalism.   
So polygyny could with equal plausibility explained as the cause or as the consequence of the men reacting to the scarcity of women.    That means that in those days polygyny solved a procreative problem of male scarcity, and therefore became a part of the genetic heritage as adaptive, while under different circumstances it now in fact leads to disruption by the surplus nasty young men.   

But this is more of an explanation of the disadvantages of polygyny than why monogamy could become an option for personal choice.
 
According to Henrich, monogamy was first made compulsory in Greece about 2500 years ago.   This means, the first historical evidence is available for this time.   It does not mean, that there could not previously have been a slow development leading towards monogamy during a considerable time span. 

It seems interesting to see this turning point on the background of other developments.   It is estimated that for a long time until 12.000 years ago, the earth's entire population was about 1 million.    4.000 years ago, it is estimated to have grown to 27 million, 3.000 years ago to 50 millions and 2.000 years ago to 200 million.   
This can only explained by the general progress in better adaptation to the environment, as
in this phase of the human history, important skills have been developed, building big dwelling from stone, life in large cities, farming, pottery, the use of metals.    All this is well explained by Savanna-IQ Interaction Hypothesis.  

But why did the people, who already 35.000 years ago painted animals on the walls of caves, not yet start to farm or build stone houses or write philosophical texts on the walls?  
As far as I know, they mainly painted animals on the cave walls, but never any pictures of loving couples.  
I suspect, that couples or polygynous families in those days were formed entirely based upon the urge to procreate, that they had not yet evolved the capacity to have any emotion of the kind of what we nowadays can feel as romantic love between a couple, which is based upon the feeling of emotional and intellectual bonds, independent of procreation.   
I assume, that the evolution of this kind of love was the reason, that people started to choose to institutionalize monogamy 2500 years ago.   


Written texts can be traced back nearly 5000 years, and the Greek philosophy started with the Milesian school roughly contemporary with the institutionalised monogamy.  
The same growing ability for abstract thinking, that had enabled philosophy and science to emerge, obviously also has lead to more awareness for the individual needs of personal happiness, and allowed people to consider monogamy as more rewarding for individuals and for the society as a whole.    Rationality allowed to consider the instinctive urges from a mental distance.  
Such a better adaptation itself can only be explained by a rapid evolution not only of intelligence and rationality, but also of human consciousness, abstract emotions and emotional intelligence.  


I only can see one plausible hypothesis as a more general explanation:   The evolution of the species homo sapiens as an animal with instincts to survive and procreate under the conditions of the savanna is independent of the evolution of the specific human abilities of the brain, which I am as a simplification have been and am calling rationality as the counterforce to instinctivity.   But it really means a lot more, like cognition, abstract thinking,  intelligence, self-awareness, emotional intelligence and communication.   
The development of instinctive survival and mating strategies like polygyny or monogamy in groups and in adaptation to external factors of the environment are in no way specifically human, and have become part of the genetically based instincts of animals during many millions of years.   Logically, they are very persistent and not easily changed in a fairly short time.  

It seems that during the last about 15.000 years, there had been a rapid evolution of rationality, that seems to have been accelerating until our present time, and this evolution of rationality has not modified or influenced the persistent instinctive urges.   It seems much more, that instinctivity and rationality are two independent forces competing to determine behavior.   

If instinctivity is a gas pedal and rationality is a brake, then a human is like a car driven at full speed, and rationality is a brake also pressed to max.  The gas pedal is fixed to its maximum position, because this is the result of the long history of animal evolution. 
In the beginning of the evolution of rationality, the brake was very weak, and could hardly slow the speed, but with further evolution, the brake got stronger, and the influence of the instincts could be more and more reduced.    Now in some people, the brake has evolved so far, that it stops the car entirely.    No more instincts drive us childfree people to breed, our rationality is stronger.   While the gas pedal is fixed, not all cars without a brake would run at the same speed, because there is a wide variety of the strength of the engines, so a weaker brake can already stop a car from moving, when the engine also is weaker.   

As I had mentioned already before, rationality can either control instinctivity or not, depending on the relative strength of both.

47. Feminism, Identity and Self-Worth of Women

Feminism, Identity and Self-Worth of Women

So far in this blog, I looked at the huge difference between the identity of instinct driven procreators and rationally determined childfree people more in general than by considering the differences between the genders.  
Because I am convinced, that high rationality and low instinctivity women and men have more of a common identity than have high instinctivity and low rationality persons of each gender with their low instinctivity and high rationality counterparts.  
High rationality and low instinctivity women and men share the same identity as predominantly individuals.   The instinctive urges for procreation causes high instinctivity low rationality women and men to very different adaptive behaviors, with very different identities and values as a consequence.   

Feminism is a good example.   This word has been used diffusely for a long time.     But in reality, there are two completely different varieties of feminism.   One is based on the rational individuals, it it based on the egalitarian principles, that the haphazard of having been born as one of two genders does not justify any of those inequalities, that at any time in history and at any place on this globe has been forced upon women.    This individualistic feminism declares, that women are entitled to equal rights, equal votes, equal pay, equal political influence, equal access to all professions.  

There is also the procreative feminism, that is based on the diversity of roles as the best way of enabling the survival of their genes.   This feminism demands that all chores, activities and occupations, that are a necessary consequence of child raising, should be valued more and as much as the economically oriented occupation of the men in the traditional role of bread winner.  
As much as one hour in the lifetime of a scientist and a housewife has the same value and is the same sacrifice if given to an unpleasant chore, nobody can rationally compare the rewarding quality of changing stinking napkins and washing dishes with the satisfaction of for example doing research work.   It is absurd to demand to give value to unpleasant chores so that they are more easily ascribed as a valuable domain of women.   

The individualistic feminism only makes sense on the background of a deficit in equal rights to the disadvantage of women, else it should be considered as an incomplete expression of egalitarianism, that means equal rights for all individuals.

Both kind of feminism are based on a perceived injustice and imbalance of chances, influence, resources in disadvantage for women.    But this perception is mostly a development of the last few centuries.   The amount of acquiescence, that women seem to have shown to situations, that I would define as outrageous, like polygyny, this is beyond my personal imagination.   

There is only one explanation, and that is that even the awareness for the question, the thought, the feeling of outrage and injustice of having or lacking self-esteem, self-worth, self-respect as a woman are abstract concepts, that are based on a minimum of intelligence and rationality that has evolved much later than the instincts.   

I described the polygynous situation in entry 23. Interdependence of Instincts as a reason, why men evolved to ruthlessly fight for dominance over other men and also over women.  

Then I found another very interesting article by Kanazawa: 
http://personal.lse.ac.uk/Kanazawa/pdfs/JOP2009.pdf  
Until reading it, I considered tribal war against outgroups as a valve for aggression and as a method to acquire food and other resources for survival.  

Kanazawa plausibly has a much more drastic theory:   Women were more urged to procreate than to have the exclusivity of a man's love to themselves, they even choose sharing a rich man over the exclusivity of a poor man, and the poor men then went on raids to rob women from outgroups.  

The force of the genes to survive is ruthless towards the individuals.    As long as human evolution had not lead to a minimum level of rationality, high instinctivity made men brutal predators perceiving themselves as doing nothing wrong, while it made women to perceive and experience themselves just as wombs with not own rights as individual persons.  Therefore they did not only allow themselves to be considered and treated as baby-pots with the same functionality as flower-pots, they even complied with it.   

Therefore while I agree 100% with the concept of Kanazawa and others in evolutionary psychology, that the innate instincts are still the adaptation to the environment of 10.000 or 100.000 years ago, I differ by thinking, that the evolution of rationality and intelligence has continued and even accelerated under the changed environment.   During most of this evolution, it continued to serve procreation, by changing the methods of acquiring the goal.    The man with high instinctivity and low rationality might as a caveman have robbed a woman from her husband in another tribe, killed her children, forced her to raise his instead.   The man with high instinctivity and medium rationality 1000 years ago might instead have bought her from her father after using his rationality to acquire the wealth.   

But to become aware of the outrage of this, to become a feminist, rationality had to evolve even further, until it was at least nearly as strong as the instinctivity.    To become childfree and to be aware of the damage of procreation upon the individual, rationality had to evolve so far, that it got stronger than instinctivity in the most evolved individuals.     

Women, who were sold, robbed, abducted and raped with brute force had no chance to resist physically.   But if they in those times would have perceived the coercion as an outrage, they could have resisted in many other ways.   The could have killed their abductors, they could have run away, they could have killed the unwanted children.    But they did not, because they had not yet evolved enough rationality to develop any self-esteem first.        

____

And by the way I have read several articles of Kanazawa in scientific journals and perceived them all as serious science.   
When I found this attack on feminism:
http://www.psychologytoday.com/node/31586
it seemed just too absurd to have been written by the same person.    I am not even bothered to comment on it.   Others have done that.   
But it seems to me, that he also is prone to fall back into caveman's behavior.    I suspect that he had a date with a feminist woman, who rejected him, he got drunk and wrote the article.    The caveman would have attacked the woman by beating her up.   He attacked all feminists by beating them with words instead.   

43. Rationality and Values

Rationality and Values

In entry 6 I declared the denial of incompatible differences by tolerance as a highway to unhappiness, and in entry 20 I pointed out the importance of creating closeness by solving problems with the method of constructive communication.    But constructive communication requires the common ground of shared values, upon which an agreement of what is rational can be reached.    People, who have incompatible value systems, can only avoid conflicts by keeping distance and tolerance, they cannot get mentally close.    By using tolerance as a tool for the denial of incompatibility, they can well get infatuated with each other, and even emotionally attached the same way people get emotionally attached to pets, who have no value system.   A deep mental bond can only be created upon shared values.  

As much as I dislike to do so, I have to acknowledge, that the basic values of a person cannot be judged as rational or irrational.    What can be evaluated in the light of rationality, are only the derived attitudes and behavior, when the values are influencing the coping under the conditions of the environment and circumstances.   

I suspect, that the relative strength of the several instincts in comparison with rationality determines the identity of a person as either an individual or as a module in a chain of bearers of genes and more generally as a particle of something greater.   This identity determines the value system as its conscious consequence and representation.   

I am a predominantly rational person, I perceive myself as an individual in exchange with other individuals.   That makes me an egalitarian.   My value system declares every person, who is no doing damage to others, as deserving the same right to a good life.   One hour of the life of the factory worker is of equal value as the life of the factory's owner.    One hour in the life of a person in any poor third world country is of equal value as that of a person in Europe.    The misery of the first and the much better life of the latter are in no way justifiable.  
If the worker and the manager are born with about the same potential and talents, it is an unacceptable injustice that they did not get the same chances to develop and that at some later time in life the measured intelligence of the factory worker has become much lower than that of the owner.  
Nobody has any justifiable right to inflict disadvantages upon strangers in favor of anybody because of a shared gene pool.   

The factory owner, having a dozen children, being the owner of the factory in the fifth generation, being determined by the procreation instinct and the hierarchy instinct, perceives himself in his identity as a member of an eternal chain of handing on his genes and the material achiements of the previous bearers of his genes down to the future bearer of his genes.   His value system is subjectively to him very moral as having obligations to his genes more than to all genetically unrelated human beings.   
He perceives the inequality of himself having privileges as justified by being a member in a chain of powerful, rich and capable bearers of genes, his privileges being the requirement and necessity for his gene chain's survival as part of the survival of the gene pool of the entire group or society.    He perceives himself as fitter by natural selection, as a garanty for the survival of the species, and therefore as deserving his priviledges.    He is driven by the principle, that the fitter the genes, the more they are entitled to privileges.    He might exploit, even kill genetically unrelated persons, and subjectively believe himself a good person doing his duty to whoever he consciously considers above him, but who on the instinct level are his genes.

I personally loathe that factory owner.   But there is no ultimate absolute way to logically call his doings wrong, I can only subjectively loathe him based upon my own values.   But I cannot claim my values to be more rational than his.   I wished I could.  
Evolution and natural selection and the power of the genes are facts, that are beyond any value judgement.     Procreation and inequality are as rational for the survival of the species as they are irrational for the individual.   

It is a dilemma.   Subjectively, I cannot accept his values as equal to mine and be tolerant, because they are too alien to my whole being.    I cannot refute his values rationally as being wrong compared with mine.    So all I can do is avoid people with such values.   


I had written the above before I discovered the research of Kanazawa, and again, in a rough way, I see my ideas backed up, when he connects differences in values with differences in intelligence.     
http://personal.lse.ac.uk/Kanazawa/pdfs/JBS2009.pdf

But again, I see things more drastic than he does.   He seems to see that the increase of intelligence as still completely under the realm of the selection of the fittest serving the species.   He sees evolution still in progress to improve the general fitness of the human species.   That being childfree could be a result of evolution having overstepped its own purpose does not seem to be included in his theories.   I did not find any biography of his, so I wonder, if he is a breeder himself or wishing in vain to breed and is caught inside his own genetic determination.