628. Theory Of Mind, Empathy, Society And The Media

628.   Theory Of Mind, Empathy, Society And The Media
 

As told before, I consider not to harm others as the core principle of any acceptable moral and not to be harmed as the core principle of basic human rights.  

To be successful in avoiding to harm others requires more than the acceptance of a moral principle.   It requires also sufficient knowledge of what others experience as harm.   While recognizing visible immediate harm is easy, this is not the case with invisible and delayed harm.

The reliance upon empathy and the working of the mirror neurons is limited to situations, when someone can spontaneously feel with the unlucky person, for example someone, on whose foot a brick has just fallen.   

But when the harm is invisible and caused by complex and abstract cognitive experiences, then empathy is not enough to prevent hurting another person emotionally.   Avoiding emotional and future harm by broken trust, by injustice, by depreciation, by commodification and such requires a mature theory of mind.    

"Theory of mind is the ability to attribute mental states—beliefs, intents, desires, pretending, knowledge, etc.—to oneself and others and to understand that others have beliefs, desires, and intentions that are different from one's own."

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

While children usually develop a basic theory of mind by innate maturation, the more complex and abstract theory of mind is a learning process enabled and enhanced by experiences of interactions.   

Nobody can know for certain, what behavior causes invisible harm to another person, unless this is based upon acquired information.    This can be achieved by either learning from the reaction and feedback by the harmed person and/or by any observing third party, or by asking the target person's advice before acting and by listening to such advice when proffered.  

It is the fallacy of immature people to deny the existence of anything, that they are ignorant of and to think that it is enough not to do to others, what they would themselves feel hurt by.   
It is also a fallacy to overlook the biological differences between women and men in evaluating the impact of behavior.   

 

An example.    Some men in the state of sexual dishomeostasis feel an urge to copulate like dogs in the gutter with any haphazard female body without getting attached.   

Those being immature believe women to be like them.  Whenever they mislead women to consent by unjustified expectations of attachment, immature men abuse women's bodies with a clean conscience.  They do not understand attachment and believe women to be stray dogs the same like themselves.  

Men with a mature theory of mind are aware, that women do get attached much more easily and rapidly and how important attachment is for women.   Jerks have no conscience and manipulate women to be used and dumped, they are not deterred by not reciprocating attachment.   Jerks consider women's getting attached as an annoying flaw.

Mature men with morals are able to acknowledge, that not getting attached is their own deficiency.    They are responsible to not make others the victims of their own deficiencies and to accept the obligation of using self-control to abstain from hurting women.  


The development of a mature theory of mind depends upon the society and culture.  

Unfortunately the modern western societies impede and thwart the moral maturation of people.   The influence of the ubiquitous media is the main factor in this.  

Desensitization:   The media are full with realistic representations of the most horrible agonies and atrocities.   But as the human brain had evolved without realistic pictures, it cannot really distinguish between TV and real life.  Watching TV is not very different from people partaking in the spectacle of public hanging and beheading.  

The consumption of the media leads to a desensitization towards suffering.   As a result, a 'mere' emotional betrayal appears as if it were only a trifle compared with the magnitude of the frequently watched atrocities both reported from real life and in the imaginary world of movies.  

Misunderstood tolerance.   Tolerance is important to protect minorities and people with special needs from any avoidable disadvantages.    But if alleged tolerance embraces also the protection of behaviors, which cause harm, it is not tolerance, but irresponsibility and a failure to protect the victims.    

Misrepresentation.   There are many perversities and deviant behaviors, which seem obviously harmful to most people, who would immediately refuse to expose themselves to be thus harmed.    Yet in the uncensored web, nearly every perversity and deviance has its adherent proponents, who propagate it publicly from their subjective distorted view as a minority right and behavior while omitting, denying and trifling the harm to the victims.   

Desensitization, misunderstood tolerance and misrepresentation have an impact not only upon the person behaving unknowingly as a transgressor, but also on the victim and on any other possible source of corrective feedback.  

Victims getting hurt are irritated and confused as to how much their felt outrage is justified.  They are often misguided to attribute their own healthy reaction instead to an own weakness.    They submit and endure instead of protesting, because they are manipulated into.self-doubt as if they were failures lacking to adapt the socially prescribed pseudo-progress.

Acquaintances are not involved enough to suffer as victims, but they often notice behavior as potentially harming to closer relations.   Would they react sincerely and show their true disapproval, this would serve as helpful feedback towards a better theory of mind.    But instead they shrug their shoulders and avoid any conflict.   

Constructive feedback can only be given by people with a mature theory of mind, who are aware of the importance of not hurting others.   People who are immature themselves are less prone to give any feedback and they are even less able to give feedback of supportive value.    What makes role models in the media attractive to the masses is often an expression of immaturity, which is then imitated. .  

Therefore some of those people, who hurt others, never had a chance to reach sufficient maturity to get aware of what they are really doing.   

603. Simple Recipes Attract Simpleminded People

603.   Simple Recipes Attract Simpleminded People

Texts presenting apparently easy recipes for about any problem or task are plenty in books, newspapers, the web and other media.    

Practical tasks sometimes do follow simple algorithms, which are not obvious without a step-by-step guide to follow through.   Recipes for cooking are an examples, manuals how to maintain and handle household appliances and machines are another.  

But most of the recipes concerning non-material topics are false promises offering pseudo solutions to very complex, difficult and strenuous tasks.  

1.  The attraction of recipes:  

Recipes are tempting to be believed and applied, whenever people struggle with the experience of failure, because they wish or crave for something, which

• can generally not be achieved
• is beyond someone's ability to achieve it
• could only be achieved by much more efforts than the person is ready and willing to invest

Recipes are expressed as assertive claims.   The apparent false authority of them misleads people to confound their mere wishful thinking as if it were something to come true as a secure success needing only limited efforts.   Recipes are most suggestive, when they are expressed in a way, which precludes doubts of failure and pretends programmed success.   

Recipes are usually either promising the certain way to reach one specific goal, or they offer a precise number of steps or items to work through towards a goal.   

2.  Some examples:

The following examples are chosen only because of the big claim made by the title.  

Examples of titles of books

Get the life you want

The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People

The 48 Laws of Power

Think and Grow Rich

The Feeling Good Handbook

How Successful People Think: Change Your Thinking, Change Your Life

Brain Rules: 12 Principles for Surviving and Thriving at Work, Home, and School

Examples of 'how to' articles found by a google search:  

How to trick people into thinking you're good looking

How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying

How to Win Friends and Influence People

How to be an expert

How to Get a Life

How to Get Out of Debt

How to Lose 20 lbs. of bodyfat in 30 days

How to Read 300% Faster in 20 Minutes

How To Become Wealthy

Examples from a dating advice site:

10 things men should never say

Seven steps to the perfect first email

5 Habits that Hurt Your Relationship

Five dating tips for spotting ‘Mr Right’

3 Key Things to Discuss Before Moving In Together

3. Classification of recipes:

Falling for simple recipes can be caused by several different fallacies. 

• Absurdity.   Recipes advising religious rituals like prayer or a pilgrimage and woo-woo remedies like homeopathy are just absurd and irrational.  
• Pseudo-science.   Pseudo-science is suggestive, because uninformed people confound it with serious science.   NLP is an example.
• Exaggerated and biased truth.   A few good, valid tips can be convincing, even when they are banalities.   These tips can supply a tiny contribution to the problem, that makes them suggestive.   But they are nevertheless very insufficient, when exaggerated into an entire recipe, not applicable for the complex problem and for the wide variety of different people and situations.  

4.  Purpose for using recipes:

The recipes are used as a crutch to reduce insecurity and anxiety in areas of life, where the access to reliable information and better methods is difficult:  

• Self-improvement towards a better ability of understanding, predicting, influencing and controlling other people
• Health improvement

5.  Gullibility to the belief in simple recipes:

Not all recipes are fully worthless, when perceived with the critical mental distance to not succumb to unrealistic expectations.    If read skeptically, knowing that there cannot be simple recipes, there is sometimes some food for thought to be integrated in a larger frame of investigating the best way to cope with an issue. 

• Gullible, uneducated and simple minded people, who are prone to believe any irrational nonsense, are most prone to also fall uncritically for simple recipes.   Pressing problems like strong instinctive urges, which deactivate or blur the reason, often enhance the attraction of simple recipes.
  
• Intelligent and skeptical people with the ability for abstract and complex thinking are not prone to fall for simple recipes.   They understand the complexity and real magnitude of a task and react appropriately.  They prefer sources, which put the emphasis on the complexity of any issue and avoid any claims of easy solutions.     

6.  The authors of the recipes:

Those who produce simple recipes are

• frauds, who know, that they take advantage of other people's gullibility and simplicity to make money.  
• gullible and mislead themselves.    The feel a mission to propagate their delusional insights and wisdom.  
  
  • They want to earn a reward in the afterlife
  • They expect narcissistic supply as gurus.
  • They want to feel good about themselves by being altruistically helping others.

7.  The dangers of simple recipes for the applicants:

By relying exclusively on a simple recipe, people often enhance and prolong the problem, which they attempt to solve.  The focus on vain attempts to reach a goal with an oversimplified recipe impedes them to find a real solution.

When the wrong expectations for an easy achievement fail, a wrong attribution of this failure can damage a person's self-esteem and confidence.   This can lead to wrong decisions with long term fatal consequences in the realm of important life choices.

8.  The dangers of the impact of imposed simple recipes:

When people rely more on recipes than on direct information from the target of the applied recipe, then they can be a serious hazard to others,    The lack of any modification of the applied recipe by the target's direct influence can be caused by any combination of lacking trust, of lacking information and of failing recognition for the target being a source of information.

• Misjudgment by categorization:  
  Using astrology as a recipe of sorting people into 12 arbitrary categories and ascribing traits to them can cause harm.   A person is not treated according to how s/he really is but by ascribed traits.   A person chosen by wrongly ascribed traits as a mate or employee cannot fulfill erroneous expectations and may suffer from pressure.
  
• Misjudgment by unsuitable methods: 
  NLP includes pseudo-scientific recipes.  One such recipe claims, that specific eye movements were indicators for the difference between honesty and lying.    When trust is denied by this fallacy, this can prevent or destroy relationships and friendships.
  
• Unjustified blame: 
  When recipes promising benefits in the interaction with others fail, no matter if the goal is to be accepted or to gain control, this is a logical consequence of not perceiving the other as a partner, but as reduced to a mere target.   But due to believing in the power and correctness of the recipe, the failure is attributed to faults, flaws of defects of the target. 
  
• Enhancement of the detriments of power:  
  The more the person applying a recipe also has power, the worse the situation gets for the target.   People applying for a job or training can be rejected by invalid recipes like graphology.   Bosses, teachers, parents, wardens and caretakers in institutions can do a lot of harm by applying recipes derived from a religion, ideology or simply from an unqualified application or misinterpretation of recipes from any source.

I am personally scared of people, who believe so much in simple recipes of any kind, no matter if it is religion, woo-woo or pseudoscience, that this impedes and prevents me from influencing by proactive rationality, how I am judged and treated.    

My mindmate to be found is not simple minded, he does not use recipes upon me.  He is someone, who not only is able to think abstractly, but who also feels comfortable with cognitive complexity.  

580. Pseudoscience, Lacking Abstract Thinking And The Dunning-Kruger Effect

580.   Pseudoscience, Lacking Abstract Thinking And The Dunning-Kruger Effect

Before the internet, I took it for granted, that having a university degree were an indication of a person's ability for abstract, scientific and skeptical thinking.    The internet has opened my eyes for the fact, that people can get degrees by having a good memory even in the absence of sufficient rationality.    Therefore for such people, a university degree is no protection against falling for pseudoscience.

Pseudoscience is a blend of scientific methods and gullibility to irrational beliefs.   The fallacy of pseudoscience can be on both ends of research, either by using the claimed belief as if it were a proven fact to be further investigated, or by interpreting results as if they were a proof of an unproven claim, and of course there can be both.   Sometimes even the methods are only pseudo-scientific.

This is a list of examples of pseudoscience:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_topics_characterized_as_pseudoscience

Those people, whose belief in a non-existent deity is blatantly absurd, often are at least aware, that their specific belief is not of general validity, but only shared by a limited number of people.   They can be aware of the impossibility of convincing others of a mere claim, which they cannot proof.  

Some believers in pseudoscience are even worse, because due to their impaired abstract thinking, they are not aware, that they confound pseudoscience with valid serious science.  They are duped by the superficial resemblance.  They are even more prone to be duped, when the pseudoscience appears to fulfill some of their dire needs.  

They expect to be rationally able to find general agreement based upon the validity of the results, the same way as if they were evaluating serious science.    

When a seriously ill person is religious, he may do both, praying and getting scientifically based standard medical treatment   Someone believing in pseudoscience as if it were science, gets duped to prefer quackery over standard medicine, believing it to be the most advanced science. 

The belief in pseudoscience leads to a variety of the Dunning-Kruger effect.   Someone believing in some variety of pseudoscience has often the delusion to be the one knowing better than the skeptical and rational person, who rejects and disbelieves it.   The rejection is misinterpreted as ignorance. The believer does not reconsider his belief, instead he feels a mission to instruct the allegedly ignorant.

People believing in pseudoscience are as annoying as are religious people.    It is better to avoid them, when the contact is not superficial enough to be able to avoid such topics.    I once attempted to explain to someone, why NLP is pseudoscience.   It was as futile as talking to a wall.    It is much more pleasant to interact with fellow apistics, who feel themselves annoyed by religion and pseudoscience.   

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.

429. Religion, Atheism And Emotional Pain

Religion, Atheism And Emotional Pain

A while ago I defined the most fundamental difference between humans and animals as the conscious ability to choose between either breeding or not breeding as an individual preference.    This is of course also the case with the choice to override other instincts.

Animals are robots, whose behavior is driven primarily by recurrent instinctive urges to restore homeostasis and secondarily by the pleasure center.  In this pursuit they are reactive to the environment by learning.  

Human have the same robot built into their brain, but the conscious mind having rational control is superimposed.  Impulses for homeostation and the appeals to the pleasure center are modified by checking with the memories of past experience and the expectation of long-term consequences before execution of the appropriate behavior.    

The conscious mind experiences complex and abstract emotions, that can be very strong.   Appreciation, confidence, pride, attachment, joy, elation, betrayal, humiliation, indignation, outrage, grief are a few examples of emotions, that only humans can feel, because such emotions are the result of knowledge conveyed and created by cognitive processes, which animals do not have.    

Since the animal robot in the human brain has evolved earlier, it does not know these abstract emotions.   The instinctive urge for homeostasis is independent of how the resulting behavior impacts or creates these emotions in the self and in the target.   The conscious mind has the capacity to be aware of the emotional consequences of allowing to be determined by the instincts and it has the choice to resist as a result of emotional considerations.     But the conscious mind has no control over perceiving instinctive urges towards behaviors, that would cause emotional devastation on others.

Promiscuity is a very good example.     

When dogs copulate, two bodies as robots copulate with each other, they restore the homeostasis of their instinctive urges, and afterwards their brains are as unaffected as if it has never happened.  They have no mind to recognize a unique personality in the other dog and therefore they cannot feel attachment. 

There are many men - luckily not all - whose animal robot is so strong, that they are driven like dogs to use a female body for homeostasis, while the personality inside the female body is insignificant.  Like the dogs, they copulate with a body without getting emotionally attached, the next day they are emotionally unaffected as if it has never happened.  
But more often than not, the mind and personality inside the female body does get emotionally attached.  The woman suffers emotional pain of grief, betrayal, outrage, humiliation, when she gets dumped and discarded after having been used, especially when the promiscuous male had manipulated her to consent by creating wrong expectations.  

The male human and the male dog do the same driven by the same instinct.   But while the female dog is not affected by emotions, of which her brain is void, the human female suffers strong emotional pain.   

The man, who is driven to copulate like a dog, lacks empathy for the pain of the woman getting automatically attached.   But in contrast to the dog, he knows in theory, that women get attached and have an emotional need for monogamy.  He either knows of the emotional damage done or in the very least always risked by dog-like dumping and cheating, or else he is in denial of available knowledge.    

Consciously he has a choice, how he can feel comfortable about himself and his behavior.   He can either adapt his behavior to be considerate to women's emotional needs and avoid hurting them, or he can find reasons to justify his ruthless and cruel behavior.  

The claim, that men cannot be monogamous, because animals are also promiscuous, serves as a sufficient excuse to accept themselves as being driven by instinct and not fight against it.    But in addition they also need a justification for knowingly inflicting pain on women.   

There is no rational reason to hurt others for personal benefits without the unfavorable own acceptance as and social reproach for being selfish and antisocial.    Therefore the promiscuous men found a very successul solution:  

They invented a god, who appreciates humans' sufferings as a devotion to him, and who compensates people in the afterlife.  The more people submit to suffering on earth, the more they get rewarded later.   Then the men made the women believe all this.  They added monogamy as the alleged preference of the god to make the religion more appealing to the women.   Soon women were manipulated to accept their emotional sufferings as unavoidable fate.   

Promiscuity is just one example.   The behaviors caused by the hierarchy instinct and the ingroup-outgroup instinct like exploitation, slavery and alike also cause extreme emotional pain and are backed up by the same excuse of the compensation by a god in an afterlife.  
 

The consequence of this are tragic.   Because once the social acceptance of suffering as an unavoidable collateral damage of human interaction had been established along with the religiion, this caused a subtle general desensitization towards a growing acceptance of inflicting emotional pain without feeling guilty.   Emotionally hurting someone is not considered an outrage any more, but feeling hurt is instead considered a flaw of the victim.   
Promiscuous religious men justified their emotional cruelty by their victims' hope of being rewarded in the afterlife.   As atheists, men should be aware that there is only a short life until death, and that they are personally responsible for all the emotional pain inflicted by them, and that there is no god on to whom to shift the responsibility.    

But instead of accepting monogamous attachment as the way of being considerate and responsible to women, many atheists wrongly interpret monogamy as a part of religion limiting men's freedom.  While ridding themselves of the obsolete faith in the god, they allow themselves also the relief by getting rid of any moral obligation towards monogamy.   As a consequence of the desensitization during millenia of religious indoctrination, atheistic men just as the religious ones consider feeling hurt as the women's flaw.   They are void of feeling any need for a justification, instead they feel free to allow themselves ruthless promiscuity without feeling guilty for the collateral emotional damage.  

Atheists should wake up to the full awareness, that due to the lack of compensation for pain in the afterlife, taking responsibility to avoid hurting others is of paramount importance. 

344. Reinforcement of Gullibility

344.   Reinforcement of Gullibility

In entry 343 I speculated that gullibility had been adaptive at some past period of evolution, while by now, consequencity has become a much better adaptation, but that people during childhood pass through a phase of gullibility, before the brain has fully matured to be able to function with consequencity.  

The following is a further elaboration.  

1.   When people are stuck in the gullible reactions to influences while having reached an age, when they should have matured enough for consequencity, this can be due to two different reasons:

1.1.   Gullibility is due to ignorance and the absence of the ability to know any better.  
When describing in entry 342  the levels of consequencity, I focused on dealing with emotions.   More generally there are different levels of the ability of thinking.  

Level 1. 
Concrete thinking.   Simple contingencies, like thunder following a flash are understood.   But in the absence of a clear concept of pseudocontingencies and coincidences, often irrational behavior is applied for the purpose of creating a contingency.
Level 2.
Abstract thinking.   This means the understanding of the difference between coincidence and contingency, also by detecting contradictions with the accumulative storage of previous experience.  This enables extrapolation into the future by estimating probabilities. 
Level 3.
Complex thinking.  This means deriving a consistent value system and ethical guidance from the abstract thinking in level 2.   Internal and external stimuli requiring behavior are processed in accordance with it.  

For those, who have not or not yet developed levels 2 and 3 of consequencity, gullibility is the only way of coping in social interactions.      Only Level 1 and gullibility are not mutually exclusive.  

1.2.   Gullibility is reinforced, when it becomes virulent as a consequence of some severe psychological trouble, which impedes a person either in reality or in his subjective perception from fulfilling important needs by consequencity, especially emotional and immaterial needs.   The person remains stuck in a gullible state (entry 343), while the ability to act by consequencity exists in the brain, but is deactivated.    This gullibility is often in contradiction to evidence and basic reasoning.    The stronger the unfulfilled or unfulfillable needs, the more people are gullible and susceptible to uncritical submission under external influences. 

2.   Gullibility determines the perception and acceptance of being the target of any influences.   How the behavior of the gullible people is influenced depends upon the availability, strength and kind of the influences.
2.1.  In pre-media times, usually people were exposed to one set of influences only, one religion and the rules of one society.   Depending on their gullibility and on how much the external influences contradicted their true personal needs and inclinations, their only choice was between fully conforming, externally resisting and risking punishment or external submission in spite of better judgment and different wishes.
2.2.  Since traveling and books became available, and even more with TV and the Internet, for gullible persons life is a warehouse of influences to choose from.    While they cannot resist to have a strong need to fulfill by being gullible, they are free to choose, what belief suits them best and there are countless religions, cults, quackeries.    For every trouble, there is a belief as a pseudo-remedy.      

3. Gullibility and self-improvement are mutually exclusive.   Self-improvement as the path of maturation requires consequencity of level 3.  Only awareness for rational procedures based upon understanding and influencing real contingencies allows change.  Gullibility and the belief into fake change impede real change.

Gullible people, who turn to religion or to woowoo in the hope of self-improvement are confounding self-improvement with self-modification.    They move from being taken advantage of and manipulated as the puppet of one influence to being the puppet of another.   I know of the case of someone, who after the upbringing in a less extreme christian family first choose to become a mormon, then a buddhist, then a believer in NLP and then a taoist.   Nothing of this ever helped him to solve the problem, which caused his wish to improve.  

342. Concequencity - Gullibility - Instinctivity - Emotions

Consequencity - Gullibility - Instinctivity - Emotions

In entry 341 I described the three forces behind human behavior, but I omitted to explicitly mention emotions.   I consider emotions not as a force by itself, but as a trigger for behavior, together with sensations, especially those of dishomeostasis (entry 330).    The other triggers are stimuli from the environment. 

Instinctivity and gullibility are both scalable by their strength.   The impulses elicited by the same emotions or sensation can be of very different magnitude depending on the individual wiring of the brain.    

Consequencity is different, because there are individual differences in the ability of reasoning.   When consequencity determines the behavior, it is not by it having its own strength, but by the innate absence of the deactivating forces of gullibility and instinctivity.   Both are archaic forces from the dawn of the human evolution.  At some time, instinctivity and gullibility had been important for the survival of the species, but today they are obsolete and a relapse.   In entry 338 I have speculated, why gullibility has been beneficial for the survival during the evolutionary phase between instinctivity and rationality.  

As outlined in entry 339, consequencity means acting by decisions, that are logically derived from wisely chosen premises.   The choice of the premises can have three levels, depending on the quality of cognition in the combination of maturity, emotional intelligence and abstract thinking.   Each level means the ability to understand and identify the emotion and what causes it, to distinguish between contingency and coincidence, and to be aware of the difference between an emotion being reactive or spontaneous.   

Level 1.  
Simple sensations and emotions with the focus only on the moment, like attraction, repugnance, fear, joy. 
Level 2.
Abstract emotions in relation to another person in the context of previous experience and expectations or hopes for the future, based upon empathy, like trust, reliability, disappointment, fairness, regret, remorse.  
Level 3.
Complex emotions, in which the relation to another is experienced in connection with a value system, attitudes, moral, ethics, like betrayal, integrity, indignation, outrage, decency, guilt.  

Dumping can serve as an example to show the differences.   Dumping is the onesided ending of a relationship without allowing the dumped person any influence upon this decision.  

The gullible puppet from entry 341 can be influenced by outsiders to dump someone without feeling guilty because the gullibility including a submission to the validity of the judgment of others. 
The selfish robot from entry 341 dumps ruthlessly, when the partner refuses or resists to be a commodity, or if being used as such has devastated her to the point of becoming dysfunctional.
Consequencity includes as one basic principle equality and therefore reciprocity and mutuality.   When there is onesidedly motivated for selfishness, this is not consequencity, but the behavior of the robot.   
On level 1 of consequencity, the dumping person is only aware of the pain of separation, which in his perception is the same for the dumping and for the dumped.    Believing to suffer the same as the victim, there is nothing preventing him from dumping as a procedure appearing logical.  
On both levels 2 and 3 of consequencity, dumping is rejected as an option.  The one dissatisfied with the relationship is aware of the breaking of trust and of the pain of feeling helpless by having a decision forced upon.  He does not inflict on others, what he has empathy for and does not want to happen to himself.   Dumping would make him feel guilty for hurting his partner.  
The one dissatisfied with the relationship instead initiates attempts to resolve the conflicts and repair the relationship, or else he convinces his partner, that separation is the best for both of them.
On level 3 of consequencity, the one dissatisfied with the relationship is additionally aware, that by the decision to get involved he has implicitly and automatically accepted the obligation of commitment as a part of the shared value system and therefore as binding as carved in stone.    He owes fulfilling his obligations to his partner and to his own self-esteem as an ethical person.  He considers dumping as a serious transgression, that would make him feel unworthy of her.  

The restraint by empathy and care on level 2 can be as strong as the moral restraint on level 3.   But the general evaluation of dumping is more serious and grave, when it is considered as a moral transgression compared with considering it merely as the inconsiderate inflicting of pain.  

Someone, who is only able to function on level 1 of consequencity is an emotional moron and he can be as damaging to a partner as are the puppets and the robots.   They are not suitable as my mindmate.    I would feel most comfortable and a relationship could be a safe haven with someone sharing level 3 of consequencity, but I would consider also someone, who is mostly guided by level 2.

273. Subjective Reality - 1

Subjective Reality - 1

A bonded intrinsic committed relationship implies, that both partners share a common reality.   

The conflicts of my examples in the entries 271 and 272 are extreme situations, because one partner is an emotional moron.   But those examples illustrate the extreme situation, when each partner in a relationship has a different reality, is ignorant of the reality of the other, either denies the existence of the reality of the other or rejects it as unsuitable for himself to adapt and compromise.    The meaning of the shared realities of mature people will be the topic of another entry.

The woman's reality is based upon her value system, that having a physical relationship is inseparably connected with sharing and intrinsic commitment, and that from the beginning of physical intimacy on, both have mutual obligations to each other.  One of these obligation is to consult each other and share decisions and never ever force solitary decisions upon the other.    Her reality is determined by her strong sensitivity for abstract and complex emotions like dignity, respect, equality, humiliation and such.
In the man's reality determined by his impaired abstract thinking, every woman in a relationship is a friend with benefits, if there is not marriage, and if he accepts any obligation, it is the one not to cheat.   He has no doubt, that he is justificed to decide alone, because he is a single man and therefore she is not a part of his life, but only a peripheral addition to it.    

Every time, when he imposes a solitary decision upon her without consulting her, she feels extremely hurt, while he believes to be a good man doing nothing wrong.   

In the worst case, they both are clueless about each other's reality.  They both project their own reality upon the other and take it for granted, that the other has the same reality.  Therefore they have wrong expectations of each other.
She is extremely hurt, because she perceives his behavior as betrayal and she considers him as a jerk, as selfish and abusive.    He is annoyed about her incomprehensible behavior, because he cannot understand, that she has reacted in a logical way to his behavior.    The visible behavior of a person can be immediately understandable as the pain and outrage after having been hurt, while it would appear puzzling and weird to someone ignorant of her pain.

This couple has reached an impasse and a dead end.    Each other's behavior based upon the subjective reality is hurting or disturbing, and neither of them knows why.   

Theoretically, they could either both become friends with benefits, or both become committed.    But this is not a real solution.  

Even when the woman has enough insight to find out, that he is an emotional moron and not a jerk, and that he does not intent to hurt her due to having not the slightest comprehension, that and why she feels hurt, and even if she can see, that in his way of thinking, there is no commitment without marriage, this does not mean, that becoming a friend with benefits is emotionally an option for her.   She would only exchange one extreme pain, that of being disrespected and betrayed by the refusal to be a partner in making decisions, with the other extreme pain of hurting her dignity and self-respect by allowing a man to use her body without giving her the respect of commitment.    She would jump from the frying pan into the fire.  
Therefore she is trapped in a relationship, that will always be painful.  

In entry 272 I described the mechanisms, how the emotional moron with impaired abstract thinking is trapped by his own impairment and immune to being influenced by the woman.    With the man described there, the relationship is doomed, he will never stop to hurt her without knowing, what he does.     He is moron variety A, who lacks trust and who attributes failure to others rather than to himself.  

But there can be a different kink of the emotional moron with impaired abstract thinking, I will call him variety B.  

• He fully trusts the woman and takes at face value, what she says.
• He acknowledges his limitation in understanding her abstract way of thinking and feeling.  
• She is very important to him and he acknowledges and admits it.

Moron A is convinced not to do anything wrong, and attributes all her incomprehensible behavior to her flaws.   What he does not know, does not exist.    He does not trust her.   Whatever she says, he doubts it, because he suspects her of having a hidden agenda of attempting to take advantage and dominate him.  He thinks that she exaggerates as a part of her agenda.  When she attempts to tell him, that she feels very hurt by his behavior, he reinterprets this as if she said that she feels a tiny bit uncomfortable.   But most of the time he is not bothered to listen at all, because from a flawed person he does not expect anything worth listening.     That is, why he cannot help it but to start the spiral of causing her more and more pain and interpreting her more and more devastated behavior as her being more and more flawed.

Moron B is very different.   He has accepted that his impairment makes it sometimes very difficult to understand people's abstract and complex reasoning and emotions.    He is aware that he has the problem and needs supportive people to explain things to him with patience.    He acknowledges, that her reality is sometimes different from his, because of her abstract and his concrete thinking.    He does not blame his failure on others, he does not project his own deficit on the woman as her flaw.  
When she tells him, that she feels pain, because he had excluded her from the decision, he takes this at face value.  He accepts, what she tells him, without doubting it, even though he takes being friends with benefits so much for granted, that he himself also does not expect from her to consult him prior to a decision.    He neither doubts the magnitude or her pain nor that he is the cause, even though he did not intend it.    He is willing to take responsibility.
He attempts to understand her explanations, but even if he cannot, he asks her, what she expects him to do.   He does not want to cause her pain.    He is an emotional moron and his abstraction ability is impaired, but caring for her is important for him.   He cares for her wellbeing without projecting, and due to his being limited by concrete thinking, his guidance in caring is her feedback, what of his conduct is good and what is painful for her.  
If he does not understand, what betrayal, commitment, obligation, responsibility mean in the world of abstract thinking, then he just asks her for instructions of how to treat her.    In this example, they can agree on a simple rule, that whenever there is something to decide, they talk about it first and that he never decides anything without consulting her.  Slowly, rule by rule, he can learn to behave exactly like a committed partner, even though he cannot understand the abstract concept of intrinsic commitment.   
This can work, but only, if he entrusts himself without restrictions and hesitations to her guidance. 

Not all emotional morons are doomed to remain alone or drive a woman into despair, but when they have the additional affliction of narcissism and distrust, then it means disaster for the woman.