653. Different Approaches To The Process Towards Knowing Someone Better

653.   Different Approaches To The Process Towards Knowing Someone Better

With whom to spend the rest of the life together is a very significant decision.  Mistakes can have very grave, long lasting, irreversible and extreme painful consequences.   

In entries 174, 176, 178 and 185 I developed a model for the process of getting to know each other.    The decision phase in entry 174 can be further divided.  
The preliminary phase is the phase of corresponding and talking over the phone to find out, if there is enough in common to rationally justify a personal meeting, the main decision phase follows the first meeting and includes further meetings.  

The duration of a phase includes a certain number x of hours of time spent by focusing the attention upon interacting by telephone, correspondence and even pondering over the prospects.   These x hours can be distributed over many months of only a short time daily or even weekly, or they can be spent with priority during a short period of time of intensive and extensive interacting.     
 

The more someone is an individual and not average, the more difficult it is to find someone suitable.  Therefore these phases, especially the preliminary phase, are usually repeated with several or even many different possible matches, before two persons find each other suitable enough for considering and attempting a relationship.   

There are principally two different approaches towards how to proceed:

The reciprocal absolute-cooperative approach: 

Goal:
 

This approach has the goal of finding just the one partner, who is minimally suitable for a relationship, but also sufficiently suitable to impede any further interest in others.   In this case, the most rational approach is to focus on only one intensive and extensive contact with one person at a time and to postpone considering and evaluating other contacts to after the possible failure.

Who:
 

The absolute approach suits and attracts those persons, who know themselves and their own needs well enough.  They are aware of what they are looking for in a partner and what they cannot accept.  

The absolute-cooperative approach only works, when two persons choose it as an option.  

Cooperation and consistency:
 

This approach is a form of cooperation.  Both share the task of discovering common ground and affinity and welcome finding them.   Every consent about any topic benefits both in getting them nearer to their goal, no matter if it is a trait, attitude, interest, habit, attribute.   The situation is transparent and to a certain degree reliable for both of them.   

No matter if the consent is more like tolerance by indifference or more like enthusiasm, as long as it is a consent between two persons, who want the consent, both can reasonably expect the other to be consistent.   Consent will not be easily converted into a reason for rejection out of the blue. 

Trust:
 

Growing reliable consent creates trust along with the growing probability of being compatible.   This reinforces and motivates to open up and to share more personal matters, which are also important for compatibility.   

Reinforcement:
 

Trust, consistency and discovering affinity and common ground reinforce the reasons for focusing upon exclusively this one possible match.  This then again reinforces the creation of trust and further affinity.

Emotional risk:
 

Every contact is of course emotionally risky.   But the risk of the absolute-cooperative approach is not so much the risk of an incomprehensible rejection.   It is mainly the risk of ending a contact by agreement because of discovering clearly defined lacking or intolerable traits and attributes.  By accepting someone's having rationally comprehensible criteria, an agreement of not meeting the criteria is not even really a rejection but the consent to be not compatible.  


The reciprocal relative-competitive approach:

Goal:
 

This approach has the goal of finding the best of all possible matches, not just one good match.   Nobody can really know, who is the best unless after having scrutinized every one of them.   As this cannot be done, every good match is considered with the doubt, that there could be a better match yet to be found.    The rational procedure for this goal is to prolong any phase and to explore and to compare many possible matches simultaneously.

Who:
 

The relative approach is often an expression of immaturity, ignorance, lacking self-awareness and having a limited theory of mind.   Some people enter the contact with haphazard persons without a clue about how little there is in common nor what they really want.  Some are attracted by looks, but beyond this they are not able to find out, what they do or do not want, unless and until they are confronted with it.  They only experience incompatibility by noticing the contrast in comparison with someone else.   They need to compare to find out, whom they want.  
Being vaguely discontented but not knowing why leads to a process of recurrently and endlessly probing, discarding and moving on attempting to find someone better.  They continue like this, as long as they are unable to decide, what and who is good enough for them.  

Whenever one person chooses the relative-competitive approach, the other has no choice to get anything else if preferred.

Competition and no consistency:
 

In the relative-competitive approach, there is not consistency.   Consent about a topic is not a reliable step forward towards a wider common ground, consent is only temporary and easily annihilated onesidedly, as soon as someone else appears to be better.   Being accepted or rejected does not depend primarily upon one's own traits and attributes, instead it depends at least as much upon those of competitors.   

These competitors are unknown powers in the background.   Ignoring both their number as well as their traits and attributes makes losing the other's consent by being compared with a successful competitor an unpredictable event coming out of the blue.    

When people are competing to get a job, they do know, that they are competing and they have some idea, what is required.  They have a clue about the qualities for being the best   This gives them a chance to attempt appearing as the best.

The person in the situation of competing against unknown competitors for an appealing partner is in a much less advantageous situation.   Due to not knowing anything about a potential match, there is no way to influence the comparison with others nor to attempt to appear being the best.  Who is perceived as better is determined by the lottery of who happens to be there to be compared.  

Trust:
 

When the rejection can come at any moment out of the blue and cannot be predicted, there is no reliable consistency.   This impedes trust.  The relative-competitive approach keeps contacts superficial and less personal.   The possibility of a rejection out of the blue does not motivate anybody to open up and get more personal.   

Reinforcement: 
 

The fragility of a contact adds to the maintenance of some mental distance.    Being prepared for a pending rejection at any time makes the own relative-competitive approach the most reasonable behavior.   If the rejection by the preference for someone else can happen at any time, then it is beneficial to also have other contacts to fall back upon.   The fragility and superficiality of the relative-competitive approach also reinforce it by preventing trust and closeness.   
 
Emotional risk. 
 

The main emotional risk is the unpredictability of a onesided incomprehensible rejection at any moment and for unknown reasons.   Having such a rejection imposed upon oneself without having any part in causing it is much more painful than an end by agreement.


When the situation is asymmetrical, then the person following or preferring the absolute-cooperative approach is the one having all the disadvantages.   

Jerks play games and pretend to follow also the absolute-cooperative approach, until they find the someone to prefer and then they reject the flabbergasted other out of the blue.  

When the situation is clear, the person with a preference for the absolute-cooperative approach has two options, either to recoil directly or to go along while also continuing to search, but not to find someone better but someone, who shares the preference for this approach.     

The relative-competitive approach is probably enhanced or rather aggravated by the social norm of the lifestyle in capitalistic countries, where people are encouraged and brainwashed towards consuming and discarding, towards the greed of wanting always more and always something better.    

When people are made to buy a better car, a better computer and a better cell phone every few months or years instead of using things until they break, then it is not really astonishing, that they generalize this consumers' attitude also to human relations. 

647. Masculinity Is Obsolete And An Anachronism

647.  Masculinity Is Obsolete And An Anachronism

Ruthless capitalistic people do not hesitate to enhance their profit, and propagating masculinity is just one example:

"Where male attitudes are concerned, a new study implicates magazine advertisements specifically aimed at men as helping to reinforce a certain set of views on masculinity termed "hyper-masculinity.""

"Hyper-masculinity is an extreme form of masculine gender ideology comprising four main components: toughness, violence, dangerousness and calloused attitudes toward women and sex."

"Vokey's results are consistent with considerable prior research showing a positive association between hyper-masculine beliefs and a host of social and health problems, such as dangerous driving, drug use and violence towards women. "

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/02/130228113359.htm

Masculinity is not only a hazard to women and sometimes also to other men, it is also obsolete and an anachronism when considering the circumstances of modern life.


What is usually defined and understood by the word masculinity, are either physical traits or traits and behaviors derived thereof. 

• Strength, endurance, stamina, high libido
• Muscles, speed and fitness acquired by physical exercise
• Skills acquired by sports and exercises like catching and throwing objects, fighting, riding, climbing
• Aggression, violence, competition, risk taking, fearlessness, domination.

Masculinity does not include any intelligence and cognitive skills, which depend exclusively upon the quality of the brain.   Masculinity is understood as what distinguishes men from women.   The cognitive qualities, which women can have as much as men, are not used to define masculinity.    This reduces masculinity to physical traits.
Men can easily demonstrate their innate physical advantage by beating up, abusing and raping defenseless women, while any male claim of higher intelligence contradicts reality.   Only fools deny the evidence of women's cognitive equality.       

A positive attitude to their masculinity is men's pathetic attempt to interpret their biological advantage of merely physical strength as an alleged superiority.    It really is both sad and ludicrous to consider it a sign of superiority, when someone is physically able to force his will upon a helpless victim.


In prehistoric times the survival of hunter and gatherer societies depended upon men's attributes of masculinity.  

• Hunting for food and fighting for the protection against wild animals and marauders required physically strong and fit men, who cultivated masculinity.   
• Leaders had to proof their abilities by fighting and competing over other men.    
• When resources were extremely scarce, fighting over access to the resources was fighting over who would live and who would perish.  
• High male libido deprived women of a choice and caused many unwanted pregnancies.  This may have contributed to the survival of the human species by compensating for the high mortality.

Today, masculinity is obsolete.  

• Any intelligent, trained and educated person of both genders even with physical disabilities can do research and construct or invent machines, tools, appliances, chemicals, which are stronger and faster and more efficient than any prototype of an extreme masculine man could ever be.   
• Politicians, leaders, rulers, bosses need to be elected for their wisdom, responsibility, justice, intelligence, education and the ability to cooperate and to communicate.   Those who get to the top by successful fighting are the wrong ones to be there.   I suspect that masculinity contributes to the Peter principle.   
• Today, the global resources suffice for a modest, frugal life for all living humans, a fair distribution requires cooperation.   Fighting over resources today is fighting for unjust greed, not for basic survival.
• Today, male high libido causes women's suffering and global overpopulation.   Today, those who invent the best and safest birth control methods compensate for the damage, that male libido does.  

Today, many of those people of both genders, whose qualities enable them to contribute to the technological, medical, chemical and social progress, would have been failures and losers as cave men.  The females would have been wasted as breeders.    Femininity is as obsolete as is masculinity.   


When persons of both genders are wearing comfortable clothes like jeans and t-shirts, the most prominent visual distinction between natural and unmodified men and women would be a man's beard.   A beard is in fact the only distinctive sign a man's maleness, which neither does harm women nor can be used to do so by a man's choice.  
It is weird and absurd, that men shave off this sign of being men and then they compensate for the lost distinction by enhancing and accentuating what they consider as masculinity and what makes them hazardous.    A man with a beard presents himself so unmistakably as a man, that neither muscles nor aggression can add anything to this.     


What is needed is a model of humanity, which is contrasted with animality and which replaces the gender distinction.  Those cognitive qualities, which are the enabler of progress are gender-neutral.
Only primitive fools derive their identity from their masculinity and as being different from women.   Wise intellectual men derive their identity from the cognitive qualities of their brains.  They recognize this as shared with women but as a decisive distinction from animals.

Nothing of what I and many other educated and intelligent women wish to share with a man requires masculinity.   

595. Communication: The Importance Of The Correct Conveyance Of Information

595.   Communication:  The Importance Of The Correct Conveyance Of Information

Communication is a process of conveying non-obvious information from one brain into another.   Cooperation, agreement, consent require the availability of the same information to all parties involved.   

Whenever information does not reach the recipient (listener or reader) unaltered from how it was supplied by the sender (speaker or writer), the result is distorted communication and subsequent unsolved and unsolvable conflicts.  In this case, relationships are doomed by the accumulation of more and more unsolved conflicts.   

Communication works best, when the information sent is neither redundant nor insufficient but conveys just all, which is really needed based upon a realistic evaluation of the targeted recipient's knowledge.     
Communication is distorted, when the information contained in the sender's statements does not match the needs and expectations of the recipient.

The cause of distorted communication and incomprehension can be on both ends:

1. Information provided by the sender does not correctly reach the recipient.  

• The recipient fails to listen.
  
  • He believes to know already, what will be said, based upon his assumptions, prejudices, preconceptions and misinterpretations.   
  • He underestimates the sender and does not consider his statements as worth to listen to.
  • The topic does not interest the recipient, no matter how important it is to the sender.
• The recipient confounds, what is really said, with what he only imagines as said or has heard elsewhere.   This creates a false memory, by which the recipient believes to have heard, what in reality was never said.  
  
  
• The recipient receives only a selection of the information sent. 
  
  • He listens not for the purpose of receiving information, but for the purpose of finding something to contradict and to believe himself to be right.
  • He listens for the purpose to find a hidden agenda or hidden truth in the distrusted sender's statements.   The interpretation is believed and confounded with what is really said but lost.
  • He filters the conscious reception of information to avoid hearing, what would make him feel bad. 

2. The sender fails to communicate well.   Too much redundancy forfeits attention, in which case also important information is lost.  This has a similar effect as has insufficient information, it leads to incomprehension.  

• The sender can have a memory problem. 
  • He forgets, what he has already told and repeats it too often.
  • He confounds, what he only thought about and intended to say, with what he really had told.

• The sender overestimates his own importance and expects the recipient to have paid attention and to remember everything told just once.   

• The sender is generally unable to evaluate, what information is required to be understood.
  
  • He cannot distinguish between general information to be expected from the target recipient, and specific information only available to himself.
  • His statements are omitting some information replacing them with  implicit interpretations and conclusions, which are not comprehensible, unless the recipient shares some cognitive common ground of shared values and attitudes.   
  • He is influenced by hidden and invisible sensations and emotions and is not aware, that the recipient cannot mindread and does not share his state.  

3.  The sender conveys a specific level of informational content, which is suitable for preselected recipients only,   

• He fails to adjust the level of information correctly to the recipients.
  
  • He overestimates the recipients cognitive ability and knowledge, and this leads to incomprehension.   
  • He underestimates the recipient's comprehension and ability to remember, what was already told,  The redundancy bores the recipient.  Too banal and obvious information can appear as the assumption of lacking intelligence.   

• The recipient overestimates himself and chooses communication situations, where his incomprehension is unavoidable.   

Communication can only be constructive, when both partners are both able and motivated to make it thus.   

When the communication is distorted with dynamics like described above, then a couple can spend years together and never find out, who and how the other really is.  

Instead of getting to know each other better, they reciprocally create false alleged personalities of the other.  With every conflict and misunderstanding the false image gets more extremely distant from the misjudged person's reality.   Being treated as the alleged false personality can be very painful and the relationship is doomed.

471. Communication By Correspondence

Communication By Correspondence

This continues entry 470.   

When I am corresponding with someone, who could be a possible mindmate, I do this for several purposes

1. It is important to discover mutually, how much there is in common and if there are dealbreakers.   Superficially, this means mainly to check for common or incompatible attitudes, and for shared interests and hobbies as declared by direct statements.   
2. I like to find out the role and purpose of a woman in the man's life but not only from his own declarations.   Men can theoretically claim to value and respect women and to agree about women's equality.   They can be very convincing, when they believe themselves, what they say.  People can use the same words like equality and sharing and still not mean the same.
   Jerks do not hide, who they are.    But someone can seem to be a potential mindmates just by misunderstanding.   I need to find out, if it is real, when someone believes himself to be an egalitarian.   Therefore I am paying a lot of attention to all indications, whether someone is capable to be a genuine companion, or if there is a risk of domination.   
3. I like to find out, how much intellectual intimacy is possible.  This means, how much he is interested and motivated to communicate on a deep and complex level, how important it is for him to find agreement and mutual comprehension, how much he is also sensitive to be attracted to feel the joy of consent.  

The following is an example, how a correspondence can be disrupted, even though I did attempt to be the least possible antagonistic in my emphasis on what is important for me. 

Recently I thought to be on the way of discovering some common ground with a correspondent, until he called an expression of a personal taste and inclination of mine explicitly a flaw, even though it was something, which was of no detriment to nobody.    Had he called it a peculiarity, I would have accepted it.   Calling me flawed is an insult.  
He ended the correspondence instead of giving me a chance to influence his opinion about me. 


Calling me flawed implies defining my partial inferiority.  It is a big red flag, when someone calls me flawed without being bothered.    Obviously pursuing a woman does for him not depend on her mental qualities.   If a man is not influenced by a woman's mental qualities, he logically perceives a woman mainly as a body.   Calling me flawed was the first devaluation.  I wondered, how many more flaws he would ascribe to me, devaluing me more, and yet continuing to be interested in my body.   That scared me.    Being rejected for a reason, which I can logically comprehend as a man's dealbreaker would scare me less, because this would indicate, that he is not prone to want only my body.  

An insult does not have to be carved in stone.   Any person can be mistaken, gain an insight, and apologize.   Conflicts can be solved, as long as someone is open to be influenced.   But when I lack the influence on what someone thinks of me, then I am also lacking the influence on what he does to me.   Insulting by alleging flaws can be the first step to domination.   
Therefore it scares me, when someone decides to consider me as flawed, and I cannot influence him.   Therefore in the situation of an alleged flaw, it is important to solve the issue and correct the wrong impression.  

This man was obviously mistaken, that alleging a flaw were acceptable behavior to a woman.   He had no clue, that I felt insulted and disrespected. 
I want to avoid antagonism.   Had I suggested to him to apologize for the insult, things would have escalated.   Instead of blaming him for insulting me, I attempted to gain comprehension by rationally explaining my reasons.   I did not need an apology, just a corrected and more appreciative opinion of me.    But my rational communication did not work this way.   The harder I tried to make him understand me, the less he seemed to understand, neither my reasons nor the importance of correcting his opinion of me.  

Constructive communication only works, when both persons concerned not only cooperate, but are also convinced of the necessity of cooperation.   I am motivated to communicate about any discrepancy until there is agreement.  I do not feel at ease with unresolved disagreements pending.    Even when the agreement is only the shared conclusion of insurmountable differences, it is still preferable to end the contact by agreement.  
My correspondent was oblivious of the necessity and importance of reconsidering his judgment.  An allegation of a flaw is similar to an accusation of some wrong doing.   It warrants a chance for self-defence.   This man denied me the defence, he did not give me a chance to influence his opinion of me.  
I experienced his insult as a serious disruption of our communication, he experienced my refusal of acquiescence with his allegation as the disruption.     

470. Men's Innate Inclinations

470.   Men's Innate Inclinations

When two persons hardly knowing each other start to communicate by written correspondence, they are prone to sooner or later encounter situations of misunderstanding and misinterpretations, leading to wrong conclusions.   Most people tend to react immediately by perceiving the other's incomprehensible statement as weird.   

Only on second thought, people reevaluate their spontaneous reaction more rationally.   This rational handling is a good indication of a man's general attitude towards women.   This attitude represents the priority of his genuine needs for either privileges or equality.   The sooner I find this out, the better for me.  

I am realistic.   I cannot make a man overcome gender roles, as long as he profits from them, while they are only to my disadvantage.   I can only help a man to overcome gender roles, of which he is oblivious, if he is in favor of equality by his own inclination, by his own wish.   I can only support someone towards equality, if he appreciates equality intrinsically as beneficial for himself.


1.  Men proceed in handling apparent weirdness of a woman in accordance with their needs.  

1.1.  The jerk

The jerk is selfish and he feels entitled to be so.  The privileges given to men by the traditional gender roles are in his favor.    Whatever flaw, defect and shortcomings he can ascribe to a woman helps him to justify to others, why his considering her as inferior suffices for him to establish a hierarchy of domination.  

The jerk wants to believe the woman to be flawed, this allowing him not to worry about others interfering with his domination.

1.2.  The emotional moron

The emotional moron is not as selfish as the jerk, he does not feel automatically entitled to have privileges.  But he enjoys the privileges, if he can have them without a bad conscience.   He welcomes anything, that offers itself to be used to reinforce his belief in his own superiority as the justification for his privileges. 

The emotional moron wants to believe the woman to be flawed, this allowing him to justify his domination to himself.

1.3.  The unconcerned

The unconcerned is ignorant and unaware of the paramount importance of equality for an egalitarian woman.   He is misled and maybe brainwashed by the christian demand for tolerance.   He is oblivious of the meaning of ascribing flaws. He is oblivious, that tolerance for alleged flaws is detrimental to developing intellectual intimacy.    He is ignorant of the importance of eliminating wrong impressions and of avoiding devaluation.   He is unaware of what attracts him mainly to a woman, her brain and personality or her body. 

The unconcerned is neutral, apparent flaws do not consciously influence his attitude towards a woman.  

1.4.  The egalitarian

The innately egalitarian and monogamous man with a genuine wish for a companion values intellectual intimacy more than having privileges, especially if having privileges are justified by nothing more than by being a man.   

The egalitarian man is intrinsically motivated to eliminate all apparent flaws, because the less he perceives a woman's brain as flawed, the more he is attracted to her.

  
2.  A man's reaction to a situation of temporary lacking comprehension for a woman is a very good indication of what to expect from him.  

2.1.  If a man wants a woman to be flawed, then this is a big red flag, he is either a jerk or an emotional moron.

2.2.  If a man is willing to tolerate a woman by allowing her to be flawed and is not concerned about this, then this is an important topic for some profound discussion about a woman's role in his life.    His real needs are hidden beyond his ignorance and unawareness,    

Most probably he would not be a jerk.  But a woman needs to know, if he is more an emotional moron or more an egalitarian.    He first needs to be made aware, that this distinction is very important for an egalitarian woman like me.   His attitude can only be discovered with his cooperation of careful introspection.     Since this is predominantly important for the woman, misunderstandings will not be cleared, unless the woman takes the initiative to do so and is not stalled by the man's obstruction. 

     
2.3.  If a man rejects intellectually flawed women, then he experiences any instance of incomprehension as disruptive and as a task to deal with.   He is not only motivated to clear all misunderstandings, but he takes the initiative to do so.  
 

When there is some disruptive misunderstanding, jerks and emotional morons can be easily recognized, because they show their appreciation of a woman's apparent flaws.  
Egalitarians can also be easily recognized, because they are themselves motivated to initiate efforts to remove wrong impression and to restore and create reciprocal respect.

The unconcerned are the real problem.  Not only is the woman the one with the onesided need to clear the misunderstandings, while the man is not bothered, but such misunderstandings happen most to persons knowing each other very little.    The woman initiating attempts to clarify a misunderstanding risks to deteriorate the situation by adding worse misunderstandings.

The next entry will give an example of how this can happen.    

466. Implications Of Alleging Flaws And Faults

Implications Of Alleging Flaws And Faults

Assuming the following constellation (, which in this context has nothing to do with couples supporting each other by agreement):    

A woman is egalitarian and has the need to be appreciated and treated as an equal partner and companion.
A man considers, perceives and interprets an expression of her thinking or behavior as flawed, while she disagrees.  

This implies, that the man creates a hierarchy of perfection, and he ascribes to her an inferior position below himself.   He also creates a hierarchy of competency of judgement, where he puts himself above her as the one able to assess her as flawed.  
This happens in his mind, no matter if the woman knows it or not.  Her ascribed position is his solitary decision, this deprives her of any influence to change her position.   By defining her low position, he perceives her as too inferior to be an equal companion. 

1.  In the case, that the man is brainwashed to accept the traditional gender roles, forming a hierarchy based upon imaginary flaws does not disturb him subjectively at all, he experiences this as how things are naturally meant to be.   
1.1.  When he only tells the woman, that he considers her as flawed, this hurts her emotionally as an insult and degradation, she feels humiliation and indignity.   She experiences any consideration based upon alleged flaws as condescension.
1.2.  When he also expects from her proactive acceptance of her inferior position, then this is narcissistic.
1.3.  When he feels entitled to do, what he wants to do, ignoring her subjective suffering by attributing it to her own alleged flaws, then this is domination.  
1.4.  When a man is not bothered about how inferior he perceives the woman, then this is a slippery slope for her.  While she does not qualify to get her own needs met as an equal companion, he often succeeds in benefiting from her as from a utility and commodity, used without being respected.  

2.  It often happens, that someone spontaneously reacts at first to any incomprehension by ascribing a flaw to the other.   But in the case, that the man himself wants equality as much as the woman, perceiving incomprehensible expressions as a flaw causes discomfort also to himself, maybe as much as it causes her.    His own wish to perceive her as equal companion and free from flaws is as strong as her own wish to be perceived as an equal companion.  
Therefore this case is a challenge for both of them to cooperate, until the misunderstanding has been cleared.   They communicate, until they both are content to have restored equality.   If he has explicitly blamed her of being flawed, he also takes this explicitly back.  
2.1. Either she explains herself until he has full comprehension of her reasons.
2.2. Or he accepts his personal limits of empathy, understanding and imagination as his own problem of not being able to judge her.   He recognizes the existence of differences and reasons, that are valid for her independent of his comprehension.  

How someone deals in the search for a mate with his incomprehension of the other's behavior is an indication of his innate ability to be an equal partner.  
If he feels ok by claiming a partner's flaws, this is a big red flag, because it is usually the first step leading to worse and more hurting behavior like domination.   If someone feels ok by taking advantage of someone judged as inferior, there is nothing to be done by the taken advantage of victim.  There is no way of convincing someone to change his behavior, while he feels good by having got, what he wants.  
I admit, that whenever a man claims me to be flawed but considers this as no problem, this not only hurts but also scares me very much.

Only if someone is intrinsically motivated and inclined to correct his spontaneous impulses to devaluate, this is a good sign.   I can rationally convince someone, who is interested and open to be convinced.   

My quest is to find someone like this as my mindmate.

448. The Impact Of Christianity On Western Culture

The Impact Of Christianity On Western Culture

My wish is to live in a society, where apistia, egalitarianism and Epicurus' principle of not harming and not to be harmed were the basis of a life in cooperation, justice, security, consideration and responsibility.    Only there is no such society.  
Unfortunately people can free themselves from the childhood christian indoctrination and brainwashing, while they continue to be implicitly influenced by the secondary religious thinking.

1.  The acceptance of and tolerance for suffering
Christianity claims that people get rewarded and compensated in the afterlife for the sufferings before their death.   As a consequence, christians are motivated and feel justified to irrational behaviors:
1.1.  They are prone to endure suffering without feeling outrage, protest or rebellion.
1.2.  They Inflict suffering upon others without feeling guilty.  
1.3.  Sometimes they consider inflicting suffering as beneficial for the vicitms due to creating their alleged entitlement to be rewarded after death.    

2.  The value of life
Life is considered as a gift from the god, belonging to him and being at his disposition only.   The individual is not considered as having an own right to subjectively evaluate if life is worth living or not. 
2.1.  Abortion is not socially accepted and/or forbidden by law.
2.2.  People are not considered to have the unrestricted right over their own life including the evaluation of the quality of life.  They are not allowed the option to decide, if it is worth living or not.  Terminally ill persons are not given the right and help to end their sufferings.  
2.3.  But taking lives in favor of any cause serving higher goals than the individual is accepted, as is in forcing men to be soldiers and women to risk their lives in child birth.

3.  Injustice combined with the acceptance of suffering
3.1.  Forgiving is considered a positive behavior, even without the transgressor's remorse, insight or amends.  Transgressors feel entitled to be forgiven.   Victims are morally coerced to forgive.  They are brainwashed to believe that forgiving benefits themselves.  This kind of forgiving is dangerous, because the transgressor is indirectly condoned for his evil and is prone to repeat damaging others as a consequence of getting off the hook too easily.   
3.2.  The legal system does not focus on protecting the innocent from becoming victims of transgressions.   According to christianity, only the god is entitled to do justice.   This god is presented as someone more in favor of the repentant sinner than of the innocent, who never hurts another person.   

Evil is an imbalance between the transgressor and the god.   Gaining benefits by doing evil is considered as a deal between the god and the transgressor.  The evil is a debt to the god, until the price is paid, the account balanced, and god and transgressor are even again.   The christian sins, pay for his sin by rituals, prayers, sacrifices.  As soon as he feels forgiven by the god, he can be oblivious of the victim.   The victim is insignificant.  

The law focuses on the breach of rules and evil is something paid for by the penalty, by which it then is legally undone.   The victim of physical violence like rape, assault, robbery is often traumatized and damaged irreversibly.  The culprit goes to jail for a few years, is only limited in his freedom, gets maybe even the benefits of training for a job.    After the release, he is considered as having paid his debt to society.   For him, it is over, while the victim still suffers.    The suffering of the victims is often much worse than the legal penalty for the culprit. 

The culprit is enabled to damage another victim.    This is considered the next victim's bad luck and unavoidable fate.   Nobody really sees the outrage of the lack of protection for the innocent.   

4.  Inequality
Inequality is a part of the teaching of the bible.   Atrocities to outgroup members are not only accepted but commanded as service to the god.  Women are not accepted as equals, but as wombs serving to supply more lives to the god as due to him.   Slavery is accepted too.  
4.1.  As a consequence, while discrimination by explicit behavior is often outlawed, subtle and implicit discrimination is prevalent, condoned and tolerated. 
4.2.  A god being the top being and the clerical hierarchies serving him are the model for the general acceptance of hierarchies of power and access to resources.   Forming such hierarchies is done by ruthless, cruel and devastating competition, which has general social acceptance.

5.  Restricting rules
When the rules of specific religious behavior are fixed as laws, they also restrict the life of non-religious persons.   An example is the law in Germany forbiding shops to open on Sundays as being holy.   Laws against blasphemy are another example.  

229. Dominance or Cooperation

Dominance or Cooperation

I have been talking about dominance and domination, without ever defining it.  
Domination has one or several victims, dominance can either have a victim or would make any available person a victim.
Submission is yielding to perceived power.   Submissiveness is the willingness to submit, when there is power.   

Not every situation, when one person leads, instructs, guides or organizes, is domination.   

Domination is defined by the following criteria:
1. The higher position in the hierarchy is obtained and maintained by power, expressed by aggression, violence, intimidation, coercion.   There is a ranking by power.   
2. The position of the dominator on the hierarchy cannot rationally be justified by any reason or quality.   It is based entirely upon power, either physical or due to the possession of resources.
3. Without the power, no healthy person would consent to being dominated by the dominator.   But the dominator has the delusion to be qualified by competence to have the power. 
4.  Domination serves selfish purposes of the dominator.   
5.  Domination is perpetuated and defended.    The dominator needs to remain stronger than others to keep his position on top of the hierarchy, therefore he makes efforts to maintain the difference in power.  


These examples are not domination:
1.  The control of parents over their children, of wardens over prisoners, of institutions over severely disturbed mental patients.
2.  When one person has superior knowledge about a skill and trains another with inferior skills, then he is tutoring or guiding the other, but not dominating.   The goal is to reduce the difference, so that they both will have the same level of skills sometime in the future.   
Learning is a form of cooperation to improve skill or knowledge.   
3.  If someone is given the role by consent of all as the organizer and coordinator of the division of labor, even though he then decides to whom he gives assignments and chores.    


Here are several scenarios.   This can be 100 000 years ago or 1 000 000 years ago, when prehistoric people lived in small tribes, their survival depending on the cohesion of the entire group.   
A dozen men have set off on a hunt.   Each of them has his special skill and strength, there is the fastest runner and the strongest fighter.   One has the most dexterity to build a fire, one has the best skills to make weapons.   One has the best memory for animal behavior and good places for hunting, one has the best eye sight and one the best ears.  
Scenario 1.   Domination:
The strongest has defeated them all in wrestling, and has become the chief.   They all fear him.   He is strong, but lacks intelligence.    He leads the hunt, commands anybody to do anything, but is ignorant of different skills of the others.   He has the top position, but he is incompetent and the hunting success is meagre.  He believes to be the most competent hunter, this his subjective justification for his domination.    He claims and keeps the best and biggest share of the prey.  
Scenarios 2 and 3:   They are all equals, who share the work and the prey.    No one has any power over any other. 
Scenario 2.   Cooperation by consent, knowledge and insight.
They are only a small group, and they know each other well.   Therefore there is an implicit and explicit agreement on the division of labor, they do not need a chief, because each of them knows what to do and when.  
Scenario 3.   Cooperation by selected leader
They elect a leader for a limited time like for one hunt, whose job is to coordinate the activities.   He knows the talents and skills of all and is able to choose wisely whom to give which assignment.   


People differ in talents, skills, training and knowledge.    At any given moment, there can be a ranking according to their relative skill in a specific area, but this hierarchy is very flexible, as learning modifies it rapidly.   Cooperation based upon equal rights enhances progress, while hierarchies of power can be a hindrance.    If the powerful but incompetent chief of a group of hunters enforces his incompetent methods on others, this is detrimental, while in a cooperative setting all can learn and improve their methods together.

As a consequence, domination usually leads to two disparate hierarchies.   The hierarchy based upon the ranking of power and the hierarchy based upon the ranking of competence.    Many times the powerful incompetent repress the more capable, who are powerless.   

The Peter Principle is strictly understood not about power:

"The Peter Principle is stated in chapter 1 of the book with the same title: "In a hierarchy every employee tends to rise to his level of incompetence"."

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

But even when the hierarchy in any organization is based more upon power than upon skills, the result can be a case of the Peter Principle.   By power someone climbs the ladder, but when he reaches a position, where his skills do not match his power, he fails and messes things up.  


Concerning couples, the decisive competence is the one for commitment, which consists mainly of emotional intelligence and maturity, empowering and enabling a person to be egalitarian and to contribute to mutual happiness.   A couple of two egalitarian partners does not form a hierarchy, they cooperate by sharing decisions, by consent, insight and a division of labor.    

A man forcing a hierarchy of domination upon a woman is immature and an emotional moron and therefore incompetent.   Any egalitarian woman with average emotional intelligence is more competent than he is.  

 
By establishing his domination, he creates two disparate hierarchies.   The hierarchy of power, where he has the higher position, and the hierarchy of commitment competence, where has the lower position.    Domination and commitment competence are mutually exclusive.    A man dominating by using power is incompetent.    The essence of commitment competence is not dominating and not using power.  


The dominating man is stuck in his incompetence, and the woman is stuck in the position of her competence being overruled by his incompetent power.  

Domination is abomination, and I as an egalitarian woman am looking for an egalitarian man as a mindmate.   

187. Right or Wrong in Cooperation and Competition

Right or Wrong in Cooperation and Competition


This entry is not about moral transgressions, it is about being right or wrong concerning knowledge and decisions for actions based upon that knowledge.  

There is a fundamental difference between the meaning of being right or wrong for couples having a relationship based upon the ERCP and couples based upon the hierarchy enforced by a dominating man.

1.  The cooperation of the egalitarian couple

For an egalitarian couple, the temporary disagreement, who is right and who is wrong, is an emotionally neutral situation.    The difference between being wrong and right or between being less and more right is merely the difference between the available amount and quality of relevant information about an issue.     Being wrong is the situation of ignorance before embarking in a process of learning and collecting information.  
When the partners in an egalitarian relationship disagree, who is right or wrong about an issue, this requires cooperative learning by verbal communication. 
The first step is comparing notes, sharing and pooling the disparate knowledge about that topic and maybe researching additional information from external sources.  
The second step is evaluating together the new aspects and draw new conclusions, until the new knowledge is convincing to both.   They both learn something and enjoy it, and nobody is wrong anymore, instead they are both right by consent.   The final conclusion may well be different from what each had thought before.   The focus is on finding and enlarging the common ground.    This way, people can grow closer by communicating. 

2.  The dominating competitive man in a power struggle with a woman

For a jerk, who perceives a relationship as a power struggle for dominance and superiority, being right is connected with strong emotions.   For him, being right as often as possible is an important source of justification of his entitlement to dominate, because he is giving evidence of his superiority and of having been successful in his dominating behavior.    He has an urge to believe to be right, and when he does, he feels good, even triumphant, while not being able to feel right causes him anger and frustration.  
Believing himself to be right means automatically also his believing her to be wrong.   Since his main need is the justification of his dominance, a disagreement about some topic is not the beginning of a learning process.    He wants to maintain his believe of being right, in oblivion of reality.

If he really has the better information, he is not motivated to give up, what he perceives as his superiority.   Therefore he has subjectively no reason to share his advanced information in a convincing way by giving evidence, so that the woman could rationally agree with him.   If she would come by her own thinking to the same conclusion as he, based upon the same information, he could not consider himself as right anymore in contrast of her being wrong.   To be able to rejoice in his superiority, he needs to be able to claim that she is wrong by his contradiction and defiance of her opinion.  

If his belief to be right is a delusion, then he is even more motivated to maintain it.    Her information, her reasons would jeopardize his justified superiority and domination, so he is strongly inclined not to allow her to convince him. 
No matter, how right or wrong he really is, as long as he believes himself to be right, communicating about the conflict has not the least advantage for him, it would only be a risk to his allegedly established superiority.   From his perspective, his obstruction to communicate or to solve the problem rationally, is very logical.     He already firmly believes to be right, so he has no reason to listen.   All he considers as needing to do is utter his claims and enforce by coercion, what he considers as right.   

The woman feels bad, because she feels depreciated and disrespected by being considered and treated as inferior without any chance to ever improve her position. 
If she is wrong, he deprives her of the evidence allowing her to learn, and if she is right, she has no chance to ever convince him.  
They are stuck in an impasse, they cannot grow together, their mental distance is maintained by the distance created by the hierarchy.  

16. Competition or Cooperation

Competition or Cooperation

I assume a village, that is isolated enough to be self-sufficient in based products. I assume also, that there is one potter or one baker or one blacksmith, who can have a decent life without extravagances by working 30 hours a week. When there is demand for the production of 60 hours a week, there are different scenarios, as soon as a second person with equal skills and some money appears.

In a cooperative village of egalitarians, the second person becomes a partner, buys his share of the business, and from then on they both work 30 hours each, do not change the price of the product, and earn equal money.

Of course, the cooperation of egalitarians also implies, that the potter, baker, blacksmith calculates his prices to the costumer on a fair basis of an income per hour, that corresponds with the average income of all the people in the village, that he does not use his monopoly to demand unfair prices.

In a village of competing, instinct and delusion driven people, the second person starts another business and competes for costumers. They have the expenses of twice the workshop and tools, that in the case of cooperation they only need once.

For the purpose to get costumers, the second business has to sell his products cheaper than the first business. Then he gets all the costumers, so the first is forced to also lower his prices. It will not take long, until both work 60 hours per week to earn the same money, that the only supplier had earned in 30 hours. Depending how much they are driven by instinct, they might not even stop at this point but sell the products at the end so cheap, that one has to give up. Then the other has the monopoly to raise the prices to any exorbitant level. If he was ruthless enough to ruin the competitor, he is also ruthless enough to exploit the costumers.

Cooperation with cooperative people is much more beneficial for the individual than competition. I recoil from any competition.