371. Interconnectedness and Breeding

371.   Interconnectedness and Breeding

The following are speculations again.  I prefer to back up my own ideas with evidence from sources of others thinking along similar lines.   But the Internet is getting flooded with the utterings of believers, with weird claims, and it gets more and more difficult to find serious, scientific, skeptical information, even by extensive googling.   

When reading about transliminality, I came across the expression interconnectedness.  But I could not find any serious approach to the question, how or why natural selection and evolution had favored the feeling or perception of interconnectedness.  Millions of woo-woo texts are praising the importance of feeling interconnected, the same sources also make claims of the beliefs correlated on the transliminality scale (entry 367). 

In entries 370, 368 and some others I have already speculated, that irrational behavior can be caused either by gullibility due to the lack of the faculty for consequencity or because a gullible belief fulfills a strong need overriding rationality.   Getting aware of transliminality having been shown in the EEG, I now include in the concept of gullibility also the belief in distorted own perceptions in addition to the belief in others' claims, which also can reinforce irrational interpretations of distorted perceptions.   For example, the vague weird feeling of a presence in the room can become the belief in ghosts, when others express this claim.

As far as I understand the woo-woo claims, interconnectedness is some feeling, perception or sensation of being in some vague, elusive and unspecified way connected with something higher and greater than the own individual self.     It is the raw material to be molded and blended with a wide variety of claims into a belief or belief system, depending on the needs of what to believe and on the social environment.

In entry 74 I defined people of high animality as those, driven predominantly by their instincts and less by rationality, as having the particle identity of perceiving themselves as being part of something superior above themselves.   Their behavior is determined in submission to the alleged role of what specific particle they belief to be.   When I wrote this, it was mainly a construct to explain the puzzle, why people choose to breed.    Interconnectedness now adds the force of an emotion compelling them to identify and act as particles.  
 

Feeling interconnectedness is therefore a behavior premise coming from the subconscious, if it is innate in the brain determining particle identity, and if transliminality enables this feeling to enter the consciousness.  

Feeling interconnected has had some function in evolution and the following is my speculations, what this could be:

Some animals like lions, chimpanzees and wolves live in groups and prehistoric humans did too.    It had a survival advantage, but when there is food and security in abundance, they continue to stay together as a group.   Obviously, there is not only an instinct to breed, and to form hierarchies and for ingroup-outgroup differences, but beyond the direct purpose of mating there is also a general instinct to be close to and to interact with other members of the own group or species.

A person determined by predominant rationality and consequencity is fully aware, that there is just one limited lifetime to make the best of it without exploiting others, while sacrificing a lot of that time in unpleasant labor for nothing better than the survival of the own genes is absurd.    Only when rationality is lacking or when gullibility and the particle identity as felt by interconnectedness deactivate rationality, people are compelled by instinct to breed.  

Gullibility and feeling interconnected instigate people to breed by two mechanism:
1.  Breeders as particles feel interconnected with some elusive and unspecified higher power, which is in reality the eternal chain of their genes.  By breeding they feel as if prolonging their own existence, but as genes and not as individuals.    Interconnectedness means to feel as one link in the eternal chain of their genes and feeling connected with this chain.    

But this chain is not linear, it is a mesh, because in one direction, the link is connected with two parents and in the other with all the offspring.  The interconnectedness is vague as with the species, but strongest by the obligation to continue the line.  
2.  Gullibility makes breeders suggestible to claims of any imaginary representation of their eternal genes in the form of whatever deity they believe to be the one rewarding them for breeding.   They need such external reinforcement to keep the rationality at bay, if it exists but is repressed.   Once they have become breeders, this is irreversible.   They are caught in the coercion for continuing the sacrifices, at least by paying, once they have succumbed to the irrationality of breeding.      

362. Influenceability - Suggestibility - Persuasibility

362.   Influenceability - Suggestibility - Persuasibility

So far, I defined gullibility as behavior based upon a belief without evidence either in the existence in some being or power, or in claims in contradiction to science or due to oblivion of science.   Gullibility is either due to lacking rational faculties or caused by strong urges to alleviate some pressure deactivating rationality.

In previous entries, I have been speculating, that gullibility is the phase in the development of a child, before the brain has developed the faculty for rational thinking.    But using the word gullibility was a bit misleading, I should have better called it suggestibility, which includes gullibility.  
Suggestibility includes being prone to all changes of the personality as a response to external influences, not only to adopt believes, and not only behavioral responses.   

Suggestibility is unfortunately a very strong detrimental force impeding people from being themselves in accordance to their own innate traits and needs.    Media in general and commercials especially deform people's minds by manipulation for the purpose of modifying tastes, needs, attitudes, preferences by imposing fashions upon them for maximizing profits.
Consequencity is rational behavior based upon premises under the exclusion of believes.    Persuasibility is the ability to be convinced logically by evidence while refuting believes and manipulation.   

People as social beings are under the influence of others, but they differ widely in how much their behavior and their cognition is changed as the consequence of being exposed to external influences.   
Influenceability means being the perceptive and receptive target of external influences.   Lack of influenceability means that the input channel is blocked, except when the person is purposefully focusing the attention upon accepting input.   In entry 341 I described the extreme case as a robot.  
 

Interactions with others are a two step process: 

• Step 1:  An information of any kind, a stimulus, sensory perception, claim, statement, evidence, reaches the conscious mind as an option to react upon.    This is an influence.   
• Step 2:  The information is processed by   

• gullibility as irrational behavior
• consequencity as rational behavior  
• suggestibility as a change of attitude, taste, preferences, opinions, either without being aware or by imitation instead of evaluation
• persuasibility as a change of cognition due to being rationally convinced  
• independent thinking as the rejection of an insignificant and irrelevant influence.  

The following scenario is an illustration:   Three persons A B and C are sitting in an office.    Person A complains about having a headache.   B offers A a painkiller, describes it as new and as helpful by own experience and mentions the name.     C is present but not involved in the conversation and C had not heard of that pain killer before.   C has sometimes strong headaches.

1. No influenceability:
   C does not consciously notice the conversation.   The information does not reach C's conscious mind.
2. Independent thinking:
   C is not interested and will continue to use the habitual painkiller. It is satisfactory and therefore there is no need to change the habit.
3. Suggestibility:
   C is inclined to change the choice as soon as needing a pain killer.
4. Gullibility in absence of rationality.
   C buys the new painkiller by imitation.
5. Gullibility stronger than rationality: 
   C is interested and reads some very strong claims on a web page praising this painkiller as a new homeopathic remedy and buys it.  
6. Consequencity:
   C buys the new painkiller (which of course in this case is not homeopathic) after carefully reading scientific research . 
7. Persuasibility:
   C carefully reads scientific research and decides to buy it as soon as C needs a pain killer (which of course in this case is not homeopathic).
8. Persuasibility:
   C reads claims praising it as a new homeopathic remedy and discards it as quackery.  

361. Rational and Irrational Mental Processes as Premises of Observable Behavior

Rational and Irrational Mental Processes as Premises of Observable Behavior

In entry 338 I defined consequencity as a form of rational behavior logically derived from premises in contrast to gullibility as behavior determined by believes.   

In entry 355 I declared:   I am convinced, that when two partners in a relationship are mature, rational and sane and when they share the same relationship paradigm, the same basic values and attitudes, all information about the needs and feelings of the other, then it is possible to solve conflicts rationally by using logic upon the shared information as premises. 

But I want to take this one step further.   I speculate, that all human behavior is based upon chains of if-then contingencies, that are logical in the conscious or at least in the subconscious thought process.    The difference between consequencity and gullibility are the premises used when starting the sequence.   Gullibility includes believes as premises, consequencity does not.

An example:  
Premise 1.   Getting wet is unpleasant.
Premise 2.   It rains.
Behavioral contingency:   The use of an umbrella, wearing a raincoat, not going out or something else.

Irrational Premise 1:   Young Children sometimes believe, that they grow in the rain.
Premise 2.   It rains.
Premise 3.   The wish to grow. 
Behavioral contingency:    Going out unprotected into the rain for the purpose of growing.

Using if-then contingencies in comprehending human behavior is not the same as dealing with the requirements of the observable material world by applying if-then contingencies.   It is quite obvious that when a glass falls on a hard ground, if breaks and that once a glass has been broken into shards, it cannot be restored into the unbroken state.    The same observable contingencies on the humans like a cut causing bleeding are obvious and therefore excluded from further considerations.  

 
Observable human behavior is much more complex and often determined by internal realities only directly perceptible to the individual himself by emotions or introspection.    Observable behavior does often not indicate, if the premises include irrational believes or not.   The same behavior can be caused by empathy and introspection or by a belief.   
An example:  A person can be faithful in a monogamous relationship

• based upon the belief, that a deity will punish cheating
• by the knowledge and empathy, that being cheated upon hurts and that the own refraining from cheating is a method to prevent being cheated upon in return.     
• by only needing bonded commitment

These reasons are very different, but an external observer cannot know them without precise knowledge about a couple. 

A person's valid rational premises for consequencity are genuine expressions of the own identity.   Many differences are personal choices, that are neither right or wrong, just personality traits.    Tastes, interests and needs can all be genuine personality traits as premises leading to behavior.   Emotions are also valid premises, that are different between individuals.    So are attitudes if they are derived from the identity.   (I am omitting the problem, how much people are aware of their genuine needs and how much they are manipulated.    This will be the topic of a further entry. )

Rational premises are equally valid to explain proactive behavior and to explain reactions to external stimuli and impacts.    Actions and reactions are both sequences, that can either include irrational believes or not.  

The behavioral sequence of consequencity is a direct if-then contingency.   The person perceives a need, either by feeling the emotional urge or by introspection, and acts rationally to fulfill the need.  
The behavioral sequence of gullibility inserts an intermittent belief as an additional step into the if-then contingency.  

An example: 
A student has the wish to get good marks.   The rational sequence is investing enough effort to study.    The irrational sequence is the belief, that a deity helps and that praying will equally lead to the result of getting good marks.     

If two friends in the above example both pray and go to a party, then they both probably fail.   If both study hard, they can succeed.   But if one friend spends 10 minutes in prayer and then attempts to instigate the other, who wants to study, to go partying instead, then they have a conflict.   

This example may be a bit too extreme, but it illustrates, how a conflict cannot be solved by a compromise, because as a conflict of premises, there is only the dichotomous choice between gullibility and consequencity.   Tolerance also does not serve.   If one disrespects the other as an irrational fool for praying instead of studying, and the other pities the non-believer for lack of faith, tolerance only covers fundamental differences.   

Therefore the real challenge in resolving conflicts is the difficult task of ascertaining to really use the same premises for behavior.  This can only be done by constructive communication.  There cannot be viable compromises while remaining ignorant of each other's premises.    

I consider conflicts between gullibility and consequencity as not solvable (more in entry 358), but as a clear indication of incompatibility.    Only genuine needs as derived from traits with equal justification can be solved by compromise.    In contrast to the conflict between praying and studying, there is no question of right or wrong, there is no belief implied, when for example one partner prefers art exhibitions, the other movies as a leisure activity.    

To sum it up:   Conflicts can only be solved by communication about the premises.     

358. Interacting With Gullible People Is A Hazard For Rational People

Interacting With Gullible People Is A Hazard For Rational People

Whenever I am in contact with someone expressing the belief in irrational claims, my spontaneous emotional reaction is a strong feeling of repugnance and aversion.    For a long time I had been wondering, why I could not just shrug my shoulders in scorn and condescension for their ludicrous need of believing.    

Finally I understood:  I am very scared of gullible people, and for very good reasons.   More precisely I am scared of the harm, that they are driven to do to whoever gets in their way.   Their harmful behavior is programmed by their belief and there is no way of protecting myself except by avoiding them.  

Every personal contact with a gullible person creates the hazard of experiencing powerlessness and helplessness and of being harmed at any moment. 

In any situation, relationship or friendship, with someone significant enough to elicit emotions, I need reliable and logically predictable influence on how I am treated.    I need the influence to be able to stop someone from making me the target of hurting, unpleasant and discomforting behavior.   I need the influence to get my needs fulfilled in return, when reciprocity of fulfilling needs is in the nature of the relationship.   
My only available method to have such influence is rational communication, when the other is able to be convinced by good reasons, and when he is able to convince me in the case of a refusal by his comprehensibly better reasons.    

I am confident to protect myself successfully from harm in the interaction with rational people, who are guided by consequencity.   With gullible people, I have no influence, because they are controlled by the power of their belief, which deactivates their accessibility by reason.    

Gullible people do not feel guilty for any harm done as a result of their believes and they do not take responsibility for it.

• They know, that their behavior is experienced as harm, but they feel justified by the belief.
• They themselves do not consider as harm, what is experienced as such by the victim.
• They consider suffering harm as an obligation of the victim.

A gullible man's treatment of a woman can be determined by irrational and immune believes

• about himself and his entitlement
• about what is right or wrong
• about what methods are acceptable and valid to control the environment and other people
• about the person of the victim
• about the authority or charisma of a deity or third party guiding him

A few examples of harmful believes:

• A narcissist believes in his entitlement to get onesided benefits from a woman perceiving her as being a commodity for him.
• A muslim believes the koran to be an absolute moral authority.  He can never be faithful in a monogamous relationship, because his religion allows him 4 wives and an unlimited number of concubines.
• A man applies the pseudoscience NLP to manipulate a woman, believing that this gives him the control over her for as long as he wants her.   
• A man does not take a woman's word for serious, because he believes the urban legend, that women do not mean, what they say.
• A man forces a onesided decision upon a woman, which can be as bad as dumping her, because of a dream or of the advice of an astrologer, clairvoyant or any other quack.  
• A man in a relationship spends a lot of the couple's shared resources on expensive quackeries.
• An man does not understand a woman's behavior and reasoning and misinterprets this as her being stupid and flawed and believes in her inferiority without ever listening to her.  
• A man believes in the superiority of men and in his right to dominate and control women by methods like intimidation and coercion.
• A man feels protected by his deity and causes an accident by reckless behavior.  
• A man chooses a woman on a dating site by her zodiac.  The false belief in alleged compatibility causes a lot of  pain.   

All these examples are experiences of what a woman does better not expose herself to.  The only way to avoid such a risk is to reject all gullible man, that means, any man, who is guided, influence or determined by any belief.    The more often a man is caught with a lie, the more probable is the next lie.     If a man is gullible to harmless believes, then the harmfull believes are also probable.    

Gullible people are not reliable and not predictable for those, who do not share their believes.   

His own behavior makes perfect sense only to a gullible man himself, due to being in accordance with his belief.   For any person not only not sharing his belief, but considering it as irrational and absurd, his behavior makes no sense at all.   What makes no sense, cannot be predicted but is haphazard and random.  
A rational non-believing person can never know, what the gullible man will do the next moment out of the blue.  She can never be prepared for the next harm.  Therefore she can neither avoid the harm nor employ any preventive methods to mitigate the impact.    Being with a gullible man means the stress of walking on eggshells, of being on alert all the time.    

A gullible man is not reliable.   He can even have the intention to comply with agreements, covenants and promises, but as soon as the power of the belief overwhelms him, nothing is binding anymore. 

     
Only a man, whose behavior is guided by consequencity, can offer me a relationship as a safe haven, because his behavior is predictable and reliable.    I can entrust myself to such a man, when agreements are binding and not at peril by overpowering believes.

348. Gullibility and Spirituality

Gullibility and Spirituality

Over the years I have been reading many descriptions and definition of what spirituality is supposed to mean or what it means to those, who are attracted to it.   But as much as I ponder over it, it remains an alien and incomprehensible concept to me, when attempting to imagine, how it feels like.  

While being myself entirely void thereof, I am aware, how it obviously has a very real and strong emotional appeal to and power over many people.   In entry 315 I described the encounter with a religious woman, who appeared to me like drugged by her religious zeal.   Something powerful is going on in the brain of these people.

During my own christian upbringing as a child, my belief was void of any emotion (entry 11).  I never had any emotional need for the deity, whom I was temporarily believing in.  Taking the existence of a deity for granted was a child's gullibility as a part of generally never doubting what I was told.    Gullibility during my childhood was an ephemeral and skin deep state, until the maturation of my brain had enabled me to become aware of the irrationality and absurdity of the belief.   

I will never know, what being spiritual means to those, who experience this.   They cannot explain it, because it is so much a self-evident part of their personality, that they lack the imagination of how it is for me to be without.  

But I do not want to be misunderstood.   I do not miss to be spiritual at all.  I do not feel to lack anything that I would prefer to have, if this were an option.    I am a deep thinker, I can feel strong emotions in connection with real people and real life experiences, and being rational and logic is a reason to feel good about myself.   The mental and intellectual freedom from believes and spirituality is certainly the preferable way of coping with life.

Spirituality is like alcohol.   The double meaning of the word spirit is no coincidence.   Alcohol gives temporary relief from the full awareness of a painful reality, while the effect of the intoxication lasts, but as a side effects it also inhibits the motivation to solve the problems.  Spirituality does the same more permanently.   

Therefore neither spirituality nor alcohol are in anyway appealing to me as a means to cope with life.   But to better understand other people's experiences, it is good to know them myself first hand, as long as exposing myself is no hazard.  
There is nothing desirable in being an alcoholic or regularly drunk, and I rarely drink alcohol.  But I do consider it helpful to have experienced myself, how it feels to be drunk and to have a hangover.   
There is nothing desirable in being spiritual, as this means being detached from the awareness for reality and having a delusion instead.   But I am curious and I would like to know, how that feels.  

Getting oneself temporarily drunk is a simple act of one's own volition.  Unfortunately, there is no method in my power to ever elicit temporarily in my rational brain the emotions caused by the spiritual delusions.   
Maybe brain stimulation with Persinger's helmet would help.   But his laboratory is in Canada, if he would even accept me as a test subject, and similar helmets sold on the Internet are very expensive.  

Spiritual people practice their chosen creed by rituals, and there is a wide variety.  As a few examples, they chant in front of a shrine, they kiss statues, they meditate, they follow routines of elaborated body movements, they fast by schedule or live on a very selective diet, they paint or mutilate their bodies.   
Some claim or belief, that those rituals create spirituality.   But it is the other way around.    The presence or absence of a need for spirituality, for believing, for being delusional makes the difference, how the ritualistic behaviors are experienced, perceived and interpreted.  The belief installs sense into arbitrary behaviors.  The rituals only enhance experiencing, what has first been there as the motivation to perform the rituals.

Unaffiliated and unafflicted observers perceive those ritualistic behaviors as weird, preposterous and absurd hocus-pocus.   Imitating these rituals does not supply a temporary delusion leading to spiritual emotions, when such emotions are alien to the personality.  

Tai chi is an example.   For the spiritual, it creates the delusion of having or learning how to gain control over some alleged life force called chi, of which the existence has so far eluded any scientific evidence. 
Watching people performing tai chi is as hilarious as watching apes in the zoo.   It remotely looks like dancing without the music.      
Once I was obliged by circumstances to participate in a tai chi lesson.   I was bored and in a state of cognitive dissonance.   It just made no sense to make ritualistic movements to honor same non-existent chi.    I asked myself, why I should imitate dancing without music, as music is the trigger to dance.   Just as I cannot see a reason to write without paper, as wanting notes on the paper is the reason to write.    I felt as if I had joined the apes by what is called participant observation in social science.  


While I am ignorant of what people do experience, when they claim to be spiritual, I have a speculative explanation for the causes of their affliction.

Gullibility is reactive.   A gullible person it the passive target responding positively and often strongly to external influences proffered or forced upon him without his initiative.   
Spirituality takes it one step further, it is proactive gullibility.   A spiritual person is an active target feeling a strong need to be influenced and therefore searching for influences.  
In entry 345 I gave a few examples, how people choose the specific believes fitting their particular needs.   But choosing a belief means, that it is already available as an option.  It is presented as the claim of it being the solution to a specific trouble.   Spirituality is the process of first feeling and perceiving some vague, unspecified, undefined, immaterial and strong need, and then searching for some way to fulfill it.   If nothing suitable is found in the scope of known quackeries and deities, then the choice is for the delusion of the existence of some unspecified entity or power.    

All standard religions are specific instances of spirituality, but those, who do not like the rules and restrictions of standard religions, enlarge their search to other forms of spirituality.    In their search to fulfill their spiritual need, some people test several creeds, until they find the one, that suits them best.  Whatever effect is experienced due to the particular ritual is not recognized as a  personal preference, taste or inclination, instead it is attributed to the connected belief system.   

They participate in the creed's specific rituals.  By trial and error they discover, to which they react with the strongest emotions.  There they remain, tied by the delusion causing the emotions.  The absence of rationality makes them susceptible to be delusional, but they can easily replace one delusion by another.    

 
I have speculated before, that the strength or absence of unconscious instinctive urges determines the conscious basic values and the identity of a person, and that breeders have a different identity than non-breeders.    Non-breeders consider the baseline of correct behavior as the fair exchange between themselves and their social environment focusing on individual people living now.   
Breeders are driven to make huge sacrifices for the survival of their genes and the species.    When they are exhausted and stressed, when they are disappointed by their children, when child rearing is a burden beyond denial, they have to deal with the unavoidable question, why they have deliberately brought this upon themselves.   There is no rational answer from the non-breeder's point of view.  
Spirituality serves to supply a satisfactory answer to soothe the breeders.    The unconscious representation of the eternal chain of genes never dieing in contrast to the individual bearer can be modified into the belief in the vague entity or power beyond the individual particle.   Breeders perceive a connection with their spiritual power, but unconsciously it is the connection with their eternally living genes.   This cause of spirituality is not restricted to actual breeders, it appeals to all, who by their implicit identify perceive themselves as less important than the species and the genes.  


I am void of both, of the instinct to breed and of any spirituality, and I think that both are connected.   
Some people call themselves spiritual but not religious.   To me, this distinction makes no sense.   Someone, who is spiritual can never be a real atheist, because the real difference is between either being being rational or being afflicted with any belief immune to rationality.  

The insurmountable ditch is between brains like mine, guided and determined by rationality, logic, consequencity, skepticism and brains afflicted by gullibility and spirituality in any variation.   

Therefore my mindmate is not only an atheist and skeptic, but also as void of spirituality as I am myself.   

347. Interferences Between Gullibility, Instinctivity and Consequencity

Interferences Between Gullibility, Instinctivity and Consequencity

As outlined in previous entries, three distinctive forces have an impact on the behavior of a person. 

• external influences accepted by gullibility
• urges of instinctive and innate needs and the impulses of selfish hedonistic wishes
• long-term rational considerations enabled by consequencity

1.  When one force is the strongest, this force determines the behavior.   When someone is predominantly determined by one of the forces, this is a part or his personality.   

2.  There can be situations, when all three forces are of about the same strength, and a person feels a conflict of what to do.  
An example:   An obese person not wanting to be overweight.  

• By instinct, he wants to eat, whatever food he can get.    
• Rationally he knows, that by eating less calories than he burns, he looses weight.  
• By gullibility he is tempted to buy expensive diet products promising incredibly fast results.

3.  There is also the possibility, that two of the forces are leading to the same behavior and when combined are stronger than the force that is an expression of the personality.  

• gullibility + instinctivity > consequencity
  Example:   There are some men, who indicate in their profiles to prefer fat women over slim ones.    If such a man meets a woman, who by her consequencity is able to control her weight, but he starts to cajole and seduce her to eat as much as her instincts would want her to eat, as a result she gets as fat as he wants her to be.  (By the way, my BMI is 20 and I am determined to remain like this.   Such a man is not compatible with me.)
• gullibility +  consequencity >  instinctivity
  Example:  A person with the tendency towards frustration eating when alone can be empowered to control the weight under the beneficial influence of sharing a healthy diet with a partner.
• consequencity + instinctivity > gullibility
  As long as children are growing, they need to eat as much as is in accordance with their instinct, but they can be educated to eat healthy food instead of the fast-food and sweets that they are lured to eat by commercials.  

Consequencity has two different strategies when dealing with competing influences:

• The ability to resist by knowing better and being aware of the long term consequences.
  Example:   The ability to stop eating, when no more hungry, even when the host proffers more tempting food.  
• The wisdom to avoid triggers for succumbing to influences. 
  Example:   Not buying high calorie food but only buying what is healthy.  Avoiding invitation by people, who like to overfeed their guests.  

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.  

343. Maturation and Evolution

Maturation and Evolution

This is a further generalization of my speculations in entry 328.  

I speculate, that the maturation of an individual is the process of passing through the phases of evolution.   In the best case, maturity means reaching level 3 of consequencity as described in entry 342.  
A child is born as an animal and it continues as such, until the acquisition of language enables the gullibility of the preschool infant.  Rationality is developed during schooling, and level 3 can be reached by the end of puberty.

But intelligence, brain peculiarities, extreme detrimental influences, traumatic experiences and such can disturb and distort the development.  Under such unfavorable circumstances people get stuck in an earlier phase, while only sane and mentally healthy people reach full maturity.    Robots (entry 341) have been stuck at an early age nearest to the phase of being instinct driven animals, while the puppets (entry 341) have been stuck at some time during the phase of gullibility.

Also people can get stuck in limited areas of the mind and of cognition, as if the mind were fragmented.  

• Religious and woowoo believes are usually acquired during early childhood, while scientific and skeptical thinking is acquired much later at university.   In the best case, skeptical thinking can replace the obsolete gullible believes.   Instead there is quite often the phenomenon of scientists believing in a deity without even acknowledging the contradiction.   It is as if in some part of the brain, the development had been stuck, while in another, it had continued.  
• There is the same unacknowledged contradiction, when men are otherwise highly cultivated, educated, even sensitive enough to be teachers, authors, therapists, but they are promiscuous and ruthlessly use women's bodies as disrespected commodities.   In one part of their brain, they are stuck in the phase of being animals, while other parts have been developed much further.    

People determined by consequencity are able to get aware of contradictions.  They experience cognitive dissonance as a corrective enabling them to eliminate contradictions.   Those who are partially stuck, are mindblind and void of cognitive dissonance. 

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.

341. Interaction Style, Influence and the Predominant Motivational Force

Interaction Style, Influence and the Predominant Motivational Force

There are three major determinants of human behavior:

1. Consequencity, which I have already described in entries 338 and 339
2. Social and environmental external influences, their impact depending upon the innate gullibility.
3. Instinctive urges, not only those directly and indirectly connected with procreation, but also hedonistic selfish urges of any kind.

Usually, each of these motivational forces leads or can lead to different, often contradictory behaviors.   Therefore people may experience internal conflicts prior to acting, but the visible behavior is determined by the strongest of these forces. Which force dominates the behavior is innate and a part of the personality.  

The sharing, agreements and consent being vital to a bonded committed relationship can only be reached, when both partners are able to influence each other.    Influence in its most basic and general form means, that when one partner expresses a wish, need, suggestion, this information enters the conscious mind of the other, who processes it and arrives at a decision.    Even the conscious decision not to react in a specific situation is the result of an influence.    Blocking the input of information is impeding all influence.  

When mindblind filters as for example denial, willful not listening or projection impede the other's messages from entering the conscious mind, then there cannot be a decision and there is no influence.   Applying the mindblind filters can be unconscious and involuntary, or it can be a conscious decision to generally use mindblind filters against all utterances from the partner or even from all women.  This is an indication of immaturity, temporary psychological troubles or mental illness. 

In a viable bonded committed relationship, both partners allow enough influence from each other.  The mutual influence is distinctly stronger than other influences.    

One difference of the three determinants is the kind of influence possible in the interaction with a partner in a relationship.   

1.  In entry 338 I defined consequencity as an important personality trait.   In entry 339 I enlarged the concept, in which the best decisions are reached by consequency and skepticism.   It is obvious, that my description of what I am looking for in a mindmate, as I have been writing much about already in this blog, implies that he is also predominantly motivated by consequencity and able to be skeptical.  
In entry 338 I described consequencity in reactive situations, when I am willing to do only, what rationally makes sense, while I refuse to yield to unjustified pressure, nagging and bullying.   

But consequencity has also an important proactive aspect.  For a fair balance of giving and receiving it is not sufficient, that the partner initiating the influence upon the other with a suggestion considers this as fair, it is important that both partners agree.   Proactive consequencity means not to just express wishes and suggestion, but also to explain them.   It also means not to insist on anything, not to make demands, even less use pressure, but to discuss the topic until achieving to convince the other, that it is a fair and rational suggestion.   
Refusing something without a discussion is denying the other a fair chance of convincing.  Such a refusal is even an expression of disrespect, whenever it implies, that he other is irrational, has no good reasons or is not able to convince.   Accepting with a hidden grudge every suggestions in preference to the effort of mutually convincing discussions also impedes the fair balance and damages the relationship.  

That means that I am looking for a partner, who agrees with me, that both is important:  to convince and to allow to be convinced, and that this is the only constructive method of sharing decisions.  And the partner is also able to participate in this strategy.       

The following characteristics are a bit exaggerated.   I will call the extremely gullible puppets, and those extremely driven by selfish urges robots.   Both are high hazards of making the relationship toxic for a partner with consequencity, because the influencing is distorted.  

2.  The puppet.   The gullible person is too easily influenced by anybody and anything.   The partner's influence is not strong enough in comparison with external influences leading to selfish or irrational behaviors doing damage to the partner or the relationship.   

Some examples:
The puppet believes rumors, even those about his partner and his behavior is effected by the rumors.  

He gets sucked into religious groups and esoteric sects and invests time and money, that is needed for the relationship, and/or he neglects his partner.   

He is an easy prey to scams and frauds, he is the sheep of the commercials, buying what he is manipulated to.  
He is taken in by any woowoo, like homeopathy or feng-shui and he is immune to reason and doubts.  
His partner can easily influence him temporarily or to make promises, but he cannot be relied upon, because as soon as he is under a different influence, the promise will not be kept and he will change his mind or abandon a started endeavor.   She walks on eggshells never knowing, what he will do the next moment.  

3.  The robot.   The robot is completely determined by his instincts and hedonistic urges.   He is completely selfish.   He has no interaction with others in the sense of perceiving them as persons or as human beings the same as himself with equal rights or needs.   Everything around him is environment, people are the inventory items therein, they are living tools, commodities, utilities, he perceives their existence as justified only for the purpose of serving his convenience.   

For the robot, there is not much difference between a partner and for example a bicycle.   He wants both to function well and takes care of what he considers appropriate maintenance.    He can love the benefits from being able to ride a bicycle very much, and he can love the benefits of having a partner with the same ardency as loving his bicycle.  
He does not notice, it just does not even occur to consider or to wonder, if and that she has a mind of her own, a personality, needs, emotions, opinions, that are hidden from external observations, but nevertheless real.    He is not only oblivious and mindblind to all this, he is also just not interested or bothered.    

She is a good woman and he loves her, as long as she is functional by giving him the required benefits.  If she resists, he automatically perceives and believes her as flawed and dysfunctional.  Treating her according to what he believes to be his entitlement, he is unable to perceive and acknowledge any unwanted or unpleasant behavior of hers ever as a reaction to his treatment.    

Acknowledging a reaction means to understand being in an interaction with another human being.  But according to his attitude, the purpose of a utility is to serve and not to interact and thus not to react in any way except as required by functioning according to expectations..
The robot is completely uninfluenced and unimpacted by whatever she thinks of him or tells him as feedback to his behavior.   Once he has established control over her, he experiences this as having acquired her as his property once and for ever, and he feels entitled to get all his needs met as long as he wants it.   
For him, all is well and he is content, as long as he succeeds to get his needs met, oblivious of and not bothered about what she wants or feels.    She can grow into disrespecting and even loathing him, he is mindblind to this. 

There is no improvement possible until the relationship fails and ends after having become too toxic for her.  While being out of the relationship is a relief for her, if he got his needs met until the end, he then stalks her for years wanting to regain control over his property.   He cannot be stopped, no matter how drastically she tells him that it is over and that she does not want him anymore.   

Her will and wish just cannot influence him to choose one of two reasonable paths, he neither even considers to change his attitude and his behavior towards her, accepting her conditions and attempting to win her back by learning to treat her as she needs to be treated, nor does he accept to leave her alone, if he is not willing to change.   

He only stops stalking and considering her as his property, if he finds another commodity fulfilling his needs at least as well as she did.   In this case, she is discarded from his inventory list as a piece of garbage, that does not warrant any further consideration.   She is to him like the bicycle.   If it is stolen or has disappeared, he claims it back.   As soon as it is replaced by a new one, it can go to the garbage dump without any regret.  

340. The Suffix -ITY

The Suffix -ITY

I just received an email telling me, that 'consequencity' were a nonsense word.    When I defined this word in entry 338 for the use with a specific meaning, I did not even create this word but only hijacked it.   It was already used a few times, as I found out by googling, but I could not discover the exact meaning of those few usages. 

When I hijacked 'consequencity' for my purpose, I followed my fuzzy intuitive feeling for using suffices to modify words.  
The suffix -tas in Latin, -tad in Spanish, -ité in French and -ity in English words with a Latin root converts a verb, adjective or noun into a noun describing a trait, state, property or quality.   Ability, sensitivity, creativity are a few examples.  

I was willing to admit, that it may be a bit of an audacity to define words in a language other than my native German, when the words are not in the dictionary (I am using http://dict.leo.org), until I found this:
http://www.uefap.com/writing/feature/complex_lexcomp.htm
My intuitive understanding of the suffix -ity conforms entirely to the definition of this source.   
Furthermore, according to this text, I had picked up a common practice:
"Adding affixes to existing words (the base) to form new words is common in academic English."

339. Quality of Conscious Decisions - Consequencity and Gullibility

Quality of Conscious Decisions - Consequencity and Gullibility

In entry 338 I was describing the personality trait of consequencity.    In entry 328 I speculated about the evolution of gullibility, but when using the word 'gullibility', this implicitly included credulity.   Credulity and rationality are describing thought processes, while gullibility and consequencity describe the interaction with influences from the environment.    Gullibility includes credulity, consequencity includes rationality and logic, but it is not automatically also the reverse, as acting is also impacted by factors others than cognition.     

The following are some more general thoughts about decisions, consequencity and gullibility.   This entry is concerned with the influence of external sources upon decisions in general.   This includes also the decision of the choice of a partner and the decisions concerning the behavior as a partner in a relationship.   All considerations of the influence of unconscious, 'intuitive' decisions are omitted in this entry.   These are not unimportant, but including them would make this topic too complex. 

The quality of a decision as evaluated by its execution depends upon the amount of skepticism, the freedom of choice and the trait of consequencity or gullibility.   Conscious decisions are based upon the premises of information derived from both, external sources and introspection.     Skepticism and credulity or rationality have an impact upon the quality of the chosen premises, consequencity or gullibility has an impact upon the process of deciding to act in according to the chosen premises and freedom has an impact on the execution of a decision.    

1. Skepticism is a talent and a skill in processing the input of information and stimuli.   It can be compared to many other achievements, where talent is the needed, but the skill has to be developed by learning and training.  Scientific thinking as a part of the education at university certainly is one good method to develop skepticism.   Skepticism is probably distributed along a bell curve.    High skepticism allows a better choice of the most appropriate information to be used in a decision.    Credulity includes unverified believes into the premises, incredulity and rationality refuse all believes, but skepticism helps to make the best choice of premises with a high probability of being valid.
   
2. Decisions can only be executed they way they are derived from the premises, when there is the freedom to act in accordance.    When people are coerced by circumstances, they often yield and do, what they do not want to do.  They end up suffering cognitive dissonance.
   
3. Between light and darkness, there is a scale of shades.    But darkness as one end is absolute, it is the complete absence of light, while all the rest of the scale means more or less of light.   There is always darkness, when there is no light, but the light is stronger than the darkness, and the shades of light deactivate the power of darkness upon the visual perception of humans and many animals.  
   This metaphor is a good description of the scale between gullibility at one end and consequencity at the other.   There is one limitation, though.   To human perception, there is always either light or darkness, even with closed eyes.   There is no perception of a nothing, that is neither light nor darkness.    But while there are no conscious decisions when there is neither gullibility nor consequencity, there is still behavior, determined by instincts alone.  
   Therefore I am limiting this entry to conscious decisions that require human cognition, defined in a simplified way by the presence of enough rationality to understand simple if-then logic and contingencies.   
   Then in analogy to my metaphor, a human decision can be fully derived by consequencity only in the absence of all gullibility, while gullibility more or less deactivates consequencity depending on the strength of gullibility. 
   
   This leads to a more precise definition of consequencity as a personality trait, which includes not only the complete absence of gullibility, but also a low level thereof. 

A person with high skepticism and high consequencity has the best predisposition to make good decisions, but this is not automatically predetermining optimized decisions.   While religion and simple quackeries like homeopathy are easy to discard and to reject, there are often situations, in which a person is impeded by the inability or impossibility to evaluate information to react in an appropriate way to an influence.   
Modern life is too complex to be well informed about everything, many claims are spread, of which the verifications are beyond reach, some important premises can be overlooked or are not available, there are misunderstandings, misinterpretations, manipulations, lies and there are more possible interferences.    A person can often be in the situation, that a decision is required or expected, while there is no way to choose or access enough valid premises.   

For gullible people, this is no obstacle, they let themselves be influenced by others without even hesitating.   But this situation leads people with predominant consequencity either into inertia, or they make consciously a haphazard decision by flipping a coin or some similar method, but they refuse to be influenced by any irrationality, and that makes them appear as stubborn and obstinate.    Another possible mistake is rejecting proffered good premises as irrational.    

High skepticism and high consequencity together help to enhance the quality of decisions, but this is limited by many other factors, and many decisions later on turn out to have been a mistake.   This includes the unfortunate choice of an incompatible partner.  

338. Consequencity

Consequencity

 
Sometimes the existence or absence of a word with a specific meaning in different languages is an indication of possible cultural differences.  

The words 'consequence' in English and 'Konsequenz' in German are a good example.    Only in German the word has a second meaning, that describes a personality trait.    According to a German definition, this second meaning could roughly be translated as tenacity, pertinacity, inveteracy.   But this is not a sufficient definition of this trait, which from now on I will call consequencity.   I found this word only four times in Google, with no clear meaning or definition.   Therefore I have hijacked this word and I will use it henceforth.

Consequencity is a significant part of my personality.   Sometimes I am mistaken for being stubborn or obstinate, but this is not the case, because I am always open and even motivated to being convinced by the input of information.

Rationality and logic are a method of problem solving and deciding.    Consequencity takes this one step further to also acting and behaving based upon rationality and logic.    The essence of rationality and consequencity is the collecting and evaluating of all available external and internal information, the entire combination of facts, evidence, introspection, memorized experience as the premises, and then not only drawing logical conclusions, but also sticking to them, until the premises change.   Only altered premises are a valid justification to change the decision and the behavior.    Consequencity means, that behavior will be changed only as a result of changed premises, but not under irrational and haphazard influences.  Consequencity is behavioral consistency with a conclusion, as long as the conclusion is valid.   

One example is nagging.   Many people give in to nagging and do, what they do not want to do, to stop being annoyed, pressured and stressed.    The nagging person learns, that nagging is successful and uses it more and more often.   
For a person with consequencity, if a 'no' is a 'no' the first time, then it remains a 'no' and nagging is futile.   Only if the other person supplies convincing input to change the premises, this can lead to a reevaluation of the issue and a possible change towards a 'yes'.    

Domination by the method of bullying a disagreeing target is another example.    

A relationship between a person with strong consequencity and someone, who due to his entitlement delusion expects beyond doubt to get everything he wants by merely expressing a demand is a very toxic constellation.   He feels entitled to use aggression, pressure and intimidation, when his demands are not immediately followed by compliance.   Most victims of a bully give in to get temporary relief, thus they reinforce the bully to use intimidation more and more frequently.   The price for short term relief is long-term enhancement of their own plight.   
The person with consequencity refuses to yield to being bullied, s/he will not comply with demands, unless and until the demand is justified by shared convincing premises.   In a relationship, this means it to be inside the framework of a fair balance of giving and receiving and the agreements from the relationship deal.    Resisting the bully is achieved at very high emotional costs.  Being the target of anger and rage and persisting intimidation drains and exhausts anybody to the limits of endurance.      If the bully has already learned elsewhere, how successful intimidation can be, then he will not easily stop this method.
Being bullied and dominated is the highway to devastation.  The more a woman is submissive and conciliatory, the more this prolongs the process, while consequencity accelerates it and the limit of endurance is reached faster.   


To sum it up:  If someone wants to influence the behavior of a person with strong consequencity, there is only one successful method.   It is to give a compellingly valid reason to do it.   While it is easy to refuse anything irrational, it is difficult to resist stringently convincing reasons. The behavior of a person with consequencity can only be influenced by constructive communication or else at the point of a gun.   

I am willing to give people, what is fair, I have compassion for people's needs, I am willing to consider and to comply with wishes and suggestions, when I am honored with convincing reasons.  But if someone attempts irrational methods of coercion or manipulation, then they get nothing from me except repugnance.    Anybody, who wants or needs to dominate, should keep away from me, as the catastrophe would be unavoidable.