710. Commemorating Not Just One But All Victims Of Cruelty

710.   Commemorating Not Just One But All Victims Of Cruelty

Today christians commemorate the atrocious death of one man, whom they call Jesus and who is presumed to be one of those cruelly killed by the Romans about 2000 years ago.  

There is no rational reason to limit commemoration to just that one guy, the way christians do.  He was not special, even if he ever existed.   There is no reason to commemorate only him for any alleged qualities of his mythical person.    He he was merely one of many thousand victims, who had been crucified by the Romans:

"Crassus crucified 6,000 of Spartacus' followers hunted down and captured after his defeat in battle." 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crucifixion#Ancient_Rome

It is good to commemorate his sufferings but for what he really is:  A proxy and a representative of all those billions of people, who over the long human history have been made suffer fatal atrocities.   

A minority of them may have deserved their suffering after having first themselves caused extreme agony to others, but most of them are the innocent victims of behaviors caused and even allegedly justified by animal instincts and/or irrational and foolish beliefs.   Nothing can ever justify torturing innocent people and causing them the agony of a slow death like by being crucified.   Each of the unknown and long forgotten victims is as worthy of commemoration as is this christian mythical Jesus.  

Today is a good occasion to commemorate all victims of atrocities, and to remind oneself and to focus the awareness upon the innate option of the members of the species homo sapiens.   We can be human by behaviors clearly distinguished from those of animals. 

Being endowed with the capacity for rationality, for empathy and for having a sufficient theory of mind is not only a chance for a better life for oneself, but it also bears both the appreciation for and the obligation of consideration and responsibility for others. 

  

True and real humans have the choice to not behave like animals.   

Those who do not have this choice, are animals.   Being genetically a member of the species homo sapiens does not suffice to be called human.   This title has to be earned by dignified behavior, which includes to refrain from causing atrocities to other human beings.  

464. Religion And Charity

Religion And Charity

I am convinced that the innate gullibility to accept unproven claims by faith has evolved to serve as a mental trick to cope with the incongruity between human cognition and both the readiness to suffer and to inflict sufferings in the service of the survival of the species.  

In entry 462 I focused upon the invention of a god, who can be made responsible for the suffering caused by the ingroup-outgroup instinct and the male promiscuity instinct using women to procreate more than they really want.

But religion has many more subtle influences on society.   Charity is indirectly connected with the hierarchical instinct.  

In both animals and humans, the hierarchical instinct triggers the males to fight for a high rank in a hierarchy.   A high rank enables the holder to acquire the control over resources, which supply advantages for the survival of the own genes.   Those resources include the access to those mates with the fittest genes and to all material resources for the most healthy survival.

Competition and fighting for a privileged and powerful high rank is always a win-lose situation.   The one, who wins, knowingly hurts or damages those other human beings, whom he forces to lose.  This again can cause an evolutionary incongruity between the cognitive ability for consideration and the cruelty to nevertheless compete ruthlessly.

Acquiring the control over resources is even more beneficial for humans in monetary and assets oriented societies than it is for animals.    Human greed is not restricted to give advantage to the direct offspring.   The control over assets is an theoretically unlimited advantage for all further descendants, because the spoil can be handed on by inheritance.  

People therefore live mostly in societies with wide discrepancies between the good life of the privileged and the misery of the underprivileged.   In entry 402 about Justice By Coincidence, I give an example.

For those cruel and greedy, who made it to the top, their experiencing cognitive dissonance has been prevented by the invention of the imaginary god as a method for justifying the injustice of exploitation.   They perceive their privileges not as an unwarranted usurpation, but as an entitlement alloted to them by their god.  By being believed to be almighty, his decision cannot be criticized, therefore being privileged cannot be wrong. 
The underprivileged are made to believe, that god will reward them in the afterlife. if they submit in docility.   But some, the less ruthless of the privileged need themselves a justification.   They buy their own peace of mind by charity.   They exploit the underprivileged, but then they give back a part of the spoil as alms as their religion commands them.   This way they think to be able to buy the reward in the afterlife also for themselves and enjoy their privileges.

Unfortunately the general idea of accepting unjustified hierarchies of privileges and the positive general evaluation of charity as a substitute of justice has been subtly made part of social norms.   Now it is perpetuated even by those people, who are not religious and who do not expect anything in the afterlife.

Cooperation is a win-win situation.   It is the rationally best way to have a fair chance for all humans to have access to enough resources for a moderately good life without misery.    In a just, egalitarian society, all important work would be paid for, and everybody's needs would met at a minimum level, so that there would be not need for any charity.  

  

But even if charity could be justified as a rational compensation from all those, who happen to be the winners in the lottery of life, this would still restrict it to be only expected from those, who indeed are the winners.  Charity would not be considered as everybody's due indiscriminately.   In social reality, charity is considered as an expression of morality instead of as an act of repairing a social deficiency, that should be eliminated.

Voluntary work is a good example.    Voluntary work means to donate life time.   The privileged with well paid full time jobs usually have no life time to spare for voluntary work.   Those, who have the time for voluntary work are more often than not the underprivileged, who are unemployed with only little income.   I consider it as unwarranted to expect voluntary work from them.   Instead only the privileged, who do have a good income, should do any charity.  While those, who have time, do the work, those with a good income should donate the money, with which the poor then are paid to work for an income.

Nobody should ever work for others without being paid.   Not by slavery, not by forced labor, and not manipulated by religion or other brainwashing by those, who profit.   

462. Religion As The Consequence Of Evolutionary Incongruity

Religion As The Consequence Of Evolutionary Incongruity

Evolutionary incongruity is the discrepancy between the cognition enabling humans to be aware of the consequences of their actions also from the perspective of the targeted victim, while the urges of subconscious animal instincts nevertheless drive them to embark on such actions.
Inventing religions is a method of dealing with this incongruity.  

Concerning pain, there are major differences between humans and animals.    

• Animals are robots driven by instincts that ultimately serve only the one purpose of the survival of the species by procreation.   Animals have no cognition and therefore no awareness of the sufferings experienced by their victims, for which they cannot be held responsible.  
  
• Animals suffer physical pain.   They also suffer discomfort from simple sensations caused by external events as is fear of a predator or grief by the loss of a herd or mate.   Animals lack the cognition to suffer from complex and abstract emotions.  
  Therefore some instinctive behaviors do not affect animals at all, while they are extremely painful for human conscious sensitivity even when there is no physical harm.

The following are two examples, how religion is applied as a method to allow humans to ruthlessly act in a way, that is experienced as cruel by the victim.     

Example 1.   Physical Cruelty

Animal Behavior
Animals know the members of their ingroup.  Outgroup members are only perceived as objects in the environment to serve their survival.  Animals know by instinct, whom to kill and eat and with whom to share the spoil of the hunt.   They have no morals guiding decisions of what is right or wrong based upon any cognitive attitude.   They have no generalized empathy for individuals, only limited empathy for ingroup members.  
Animals like for example lions, who hunt other animals by ripping them apart while still alive, inflict agony upon their prey.   But they have no cognition, they cannot know, that their survival causes agony to others.   

Human Cognition
The human cognition has evolved enough to enable humans to recognize the physical and the emotional suffering of any other human being and the physical suffering of animals and who or what is the cause of the suffering.    Humans are able to recognize and to define cruelty.   They are able to act with consideration and responsibility and to avoid cruelty.  
The advanced intelligence of humans enables them theoretically to cooperate in peace and harmony and to solve all conflicts by constructive communication.    Considering only these capacities of human intelligence, violence, cruelty, aggression, domination have become obsolete.    Human intelligence has led to a level of scientific progress, that would allow all humans to have a moderate standard of living without ever again doing harm to each other.     

Human behavior caused by animal instinct
Human cruelty is not an automatic reaction as it is in animals, it is a conscious decision.     A person determined by animal instincts to treat another person as outgroup feels subjectively justified to allow himself to be guided more by his instincts and less or not at all by his human cognition.  Harming outgroup members is done in the full awareness, knowledge and perception of the physical and emotional agony of the victims.      

Human suffering as victims of animal instincts
While animals and humans suffer the same pain from physical atrocities, humans in addition also suffer extreme emotional pain.   Being made the victim of cruelty causes a variety of abstract emotional reactions like outrage, indignation, humiliation, helplessness, betrayal and much more, depending on the circumstances.   

The evolutionary incongruity between cognitive knowledge and instinctive urges
The same person, who is ruthlessly driven by the ingroup-outgroup instinct to cruelly commit atrocities can at the same time be very sensitive when being a victim of cruelty and atrocities.   Rational people would experience this as a serious inner conflict.   They would also be confused, when the same cruelty is sometimes seriously punished and sometimes required and commanded and the difference is not due to any merits or faults of the victims as individual persons.   Instead the only difference is between the ingroup and outgroup.  It is too irrational to be morally justifiable by unencumbered cognition.
Religion solves the problem.   History is full of examples of extreme atrocities, that were committed under the justification of an alleged god's will.   In every case, the perpetrators were fully aware of the extreme suffering of their killed, tortured, mutilated and enslaved victims.    They were not ignorant of what they did, instead they obeyed an imaginary god, who had commanded them to commit the atrocities in his name and in his service.    Therefore the pain was believed to be the god's responsibility, the perpetrators felt not responsible at all, they perceived themselves only as an infallible god's well functioning tools.  

Example 2.   Emotional Cruelty

Animal Behavior
Many animal species are promiscuous, as this seems to have advantage for the procreative fitness of some species.   Animals are robots for procreation, they do not have the cognition to evaluate a mate for any qualities as being unique beyond procreational physical fitness.   They have no cognition to get emotionally attached, to bond and to suffer from separation.   Animal mating is between two bodies for the purpose of the survival of their genes.   Animal monogamy or promiscuity is symmetrical, males and females are complementary in their instinctive behaviors.   

Human Cognition
Humans have a cognition, that enables them theoretically to get deeply bonded in a symmetrical relationship between two persons.   Human have a cognition to perceive, experience and appreciate a mate as a unique personality.   They have evolved enough intelligence to be able to value a companion primarily for non-physical benefits, for the joy of emotional and intellectual intimacy.  
Two bonded persons can become very significant for each other.   Not only the loss of a reciprocally bonded companion, but also to be mistreated, degraded and abused in a situation of onesided bonding are causes of extreme emotional pain.  
Every human is theoretically able to know this, to refrain from hurting due to consideration and responsibility and to make a wise decision of how to avoid the risk of causing emotional pain to another human being.  This rational decision is to either get bonded monogamously or not to get involved at all.   

Considering only the capacities of human intelligence, all emotional pain from being dumped, cheated, betrayed could be avoided.

Human behavior caused by animal instinct
The instinctive urges in mammals are different for females and males.    Male animals are proactive predators, the female prey are selectively defending themselves.      
There are many men, who are so much enslaved by the animal predator instinct, that they lack the ability to get monogamously attached to one woman.  They ruthlessly dump and cheat and use women and degrade them to mere bodies.   

Human suffering as victims of animal instincts
The victims of promiscuity are usually women, who are deprived of the exclusivity and bonding, which they need.   When used, dumped and cheated upon, they suffer emotional pain, that only human cognition can feel.   They suffer humiliation, indignity, depreciation, betrayal, helplessness.  

The evolutionary incongruity between cognitive knowledge and instinctive urges
Every promiscuous person is fully capable to be aware of the emotional cruelty inflicted by dumping, cheating or degrading another person to be a used body.    There is absolutely no rational justification to do this to another human being.    The ruthlessly promiscuous men cannot avoid to know and to notice, that their behavior devastates women.  Their emotional cruelty to women is not an automatic behavior, but a decision.     
Religion solves the problem.  The promiscuous men invent a god, whom they hold to be responsible for how they treat the women.  
The men believe, that god had made them to be promiscuous.   The fact, that men are on average stronger than women is used as evidence for men's false belief, that their god wants them to dominate and control women.   Men believe it to be god's will, that they are able to rape women and to make them pregnant,   Men believe it to be god's will, that they are able to control the survival resources, so that women are dependent on the cheating and cruel men.
The women are made to believe, that god will compensate and reward them in the afterlife for their plight.    By this belief women are brainwashed to submit and to accept their sufferingas god's will and not as men's decision to be cruel.
The same men, who believe to be the creation of a god and who fervently reject to be related to apes, use the comparison with the instinctive behavior of animals as an additional excuse for their cruel promiscuity.   They claim monogamy to be unnatural, because of the predominance of promiscuity in animals.  They justify using women, dumping and cheating, by animal promiscuity, but they are so mislead and ignorant, that they completely overlook the significant fact, that animals cannot get emotionally attached as most women and high quality men with low instinctivity do.  


The less humans are driven by instincts, the less they are cruel.  
The less they are cruel, the less they need religion to justify their cruelty.  

458. Religion And Atrocities

Religion And Atrocities 

Atheists often and with justification blame religions for the atrocities committed.   
But I think, that the religions are not cause of the atrocities.  Instead religions are merely condoning the worst behavior determined by the animal instinct in people.  It frees people from feeling responsible for the consequences of their behavior and it frees them from the need to override these obsolete instincts.   Religions enable people to be robots of their instincts without getting into inner conflicts.    Indirectly religion serves procreation and the survival of the species. 

1.  Atrocities to outgroups.

Those animals, who live in groups, are driven by the gregarious instinct to be a part of the group, and by the ingroup-outgroup instinct to consider outgroup members as resources to be exploited for survival.    They kill outgroup members to get more food, sometimes they even eat them.   This gives them an advantage in the fitness for having the most success in raising healthy bearer of their genes.  

The situation is exactly the same for humans.   By killing, eating, enslaving, sacrificing or evicting from good soil the members of any outgroup, they can acquire resources for having more offspring and thus enhancing their procreative fitness.   Therefore the ruthless readiness to commit atrocities has been successfully maintained in the human gene pool.  
But humans have also evolved intelligence.  Humans are prone to ask themselves the question, why they should get punished for killing or harming their neighbor, while they are encouraged or even coerced to kill and harm others, just because they look different, speak a different language or even just live on the other side of an invisible territorial border.    This difference seems very irrational and lacking any sense justifying it.    Animals are unable to ask such a question, but some humans cannot avoid to do so.  

With enough rational thinking and the ability to have empathy and consideration, people would answer this question and solve their inner conflict by stopping the killing.   They would start to feel responsible for what they do to all people beyond the ingroup-outgroup difference.   But this would require sharing resources.  This would mean to voluntarily reduce the breeding success in contradiction to the procreation instinct.  
So instead they invented a god, who was the god of the ingroup.   Atrocities to the outgroup were ascribed to god's will and considered as god's responsibility.   Thus they freed themselves from being responsible for what they did.    Their god allowed them to be the animals, that their evolving reason hesitated to be.

2.  Atrocities to women.
Biologically seen, the survival of mammals including humans depends upon the willingness of the females to bear and raise children.   Animals do not think, they have no option to be either willing or not, they are the robots determined by their procreation instinct.  
But human females have such an option, unless men succeed in depriving them of the choice.   Evolution has made men physically stronger enabling them thus to establish control over women.   Polygamy, male power over all resources for survival, women being the property of men, were and are common social situations.   The male have the option to rape women and to force pregnancies upon them.  
As a result of the evolution of the human mind, men are able to feel empathy and to have consideration for other people's suffering.  They are capable to be conscious of causing the woman's plight, and this creates an inner conflict with the urges of the procreation instinct.   Rational responsibility requires, that they avoid causing a woman's suffering by making her pregnant, unless she agrees.    
But Instead men solved the inner conflict in favor of their subconscious procreation instinct.  They invented a god, who sends children as his divine gift and expects women to raise them in gratitude and docility.   The men made the women's suffering god's responsibility.   They consider establishing power and control over women as justified by god's will.    In obedience to this god, they now can ruthlessly force childbearing upon women without feeling any inner conflict.   This includes even atrocities to any person, who helps women with birth control.  

Religion helps people to continue to be guided by the worst animal instincts still existing in their subconscious brain.   Religion impedes them to become truly humane.   Religion impedes the evolution towards eliminating the readiness to atrocities from the gene pool.        

447. Oxytocin, Testosterone, Promiscuity And The Plight Of Women

Oxytocin, Testosterone, Promiscuity And The Plight Of Women

I have already written before, that I consider promiscuity as a scourge of humanity.   A recent study allows me to have a more thourough look at the reasons, how the 'kindness gene' in combination with testosterone and the christian norm for behavior and thinking cause the women's plight from male promiscuity.     

"An earlier UC Berkeley study looked at three combinations of gene variations of the oxytocin receptors AA, AG and GG."
"Widely known as the "cuddle" or "love" hormone, oxytocin is secreted into the bloodstream and the brain, where it promotes social interaction, bonding and romantic love, among other functions."

"Kogan said. "What we found is that the people who had two copies of the G version displayed more trustworthy behaviors -- more head nods, more eye contact, more smiling, more open body posture. And it was these behaviors that signaled kindness to the strangers.""
""It's remarkable that complete strangers could pick up on who's trustworthy, kind or compassionate in 20 seconds when all they saw was a person sitting in a chair listening to someone talk," said Aleksandr Kogan"

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/11/111115103510.htm

 I was curious and googled for the prevalence.

AA: 6 (11.5%)
AG or GA: 18 (34.6%)
GG: 28 (53.8%)
http://manuelcorpas.com/
    
n = 4 AA,
n = 22 AG,
n = 19 GG)
http://www.frontiersin.org/psychopharmacology/10.3389/fpsyt.2011.00060/full

Promiscuity means the perception of other human beings not as persons, but as a commodities to be used.   Promiscuous behavior is mainly dumping after use and cheating.  

The monogamous bonding victim gets deeply emotionally hurt.   But in our culture, which is implicitly based upon christian thinking, invisible harm is condoned and tolerated as the god given fate.   People are supposed to suffer without complaint or protest.   They are promised reward and justice in the afterlife.    They are brainwashed, expected, coerced to submit to the postponed compensation. 

This is aggravated by the fact, that christian religion was invented and shaped by men, who considered their own promiscuity as their entitlement.   The implicit christian demand for women to suffer the damage of promiscuity is not a contradiction to the god's outspoken declaration of promiscuous behavior as sin.   The sin is between the sinner and the god, the suffering of the victim is not considered.    A christian cheater has to repent and earn his god's forgiveness by expiation and penitance.   Once he has paid or prayed enough, he is free to sin again.    The sin is not the damage to the woman, the cheater's sin is the unauthorized use of another man's right to the exclusive use of his property.  
As a result, most women are desensitiezd and damaged in their own self-esteem.   They do not consider the attitude and practice of promiscuity as an outrage and violation to their dignity.   

Instead they either attempt to adapt to it and even to imitate it.   When the vicitms of promiscuity suffer pain, depression, damage, not only the men, but even many of the women consider this themselves as the woman's flaw and weakness.   Women cope by taking psychopharamceuticals or alcohol and they get sick.   Cheated upon wives withdraw and use their stock of oxytocin to bond only with their children.  

Testosterone is known to be the main hormone influencing the strength of the male instinctive urge for promiscuity and of the male tendency towards aggression and cruelty.  

This leads to several constellations of GG genes and testosterone with different impacts upon women:

1. Women with GG genes and men with the GG genes and a low level of testosterone (LT) are able to get monogamously bonded by their oxytocin.   
2. Men with GG genes and a medium level of testosterone (MT) are able to be monogamous, if they consciously are aware of the destructive consequences of promiscuity.
3. Men with the AA genes and high or medium levels of testosterone (HT) are jerks, who can be easily recognized and avoided by monogamous women.  
4. Men with AA genes and LT may be monogamous for lacking the urge for promiscuity but without getting bonded.   
5. Women with AA genes can agree on reciprocal using each other without being emotionally harmed.    But as AA genes have the lowest prevelance, such women are a minority, who unfortunately contribute to the myth of female promiscuity.  These few women, who truly remain unharmed by being used, serve as an excuse for the widespread ruthless and inconsiderate use of and harm to monogamous women. 
6. The tragic hazard for GG women are GG/HT men.    They attract women by appearing kind, empathetic, considerate, responsible and monogamous.   This causes women to make the mistake of getting involved with a temporarily monogamous man, who sooner or later succumbs to his testosterone, and the painful consequences thereof.   The combination of the high testosterone causing urges to be promiscuous and a tendency to cruelty together with the christian brainwashing condoning women's suffering overrides the beneficial effects of the GG genes in these men.    The women's own christian acceptance of the suffering makes them then prone to submit to the fate.  

My personal conclusion:  Theorectically, my mindmate is a man with GG and preferably LT, maybe MT, but certainly not HT.   But as we have not yet arrived at the times, when everybody has his genome printed out, I will have to continue to avoid jerks by more traditional methods of scrutiny.   

312. An Online Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

An Online Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

I stumbled upon a web page, where people discussed a video and its author, who had published it on YouTube.  

In this video, he claims evolution to be flawed and attributes his own unfortunate life situation to this.   Evolution has by natural selection favored the hierarchy instinct, which makes people fight for a high position in a hierarchy, and as a consequence thereof some people at the top have lots of privileges, while others at the bottom suffer deprivation.   While evolution itself cannot be described as flawed, because it is not concerned about people's pain, but only about he survival of the species, the consequences of natural selection on the wellbeing of individuals can be described as flawed from the subjective perspective of the underprivileged.   

He talks about his own deprived life situation, having little formal education, a minimum wage job, no friends, no relationship.  
He speaks with agitation, and I watched the video with a lot of sympathy and compassion.   I was touched, and I admit that I thought for a moment, how someone like him, but in my age group and with a university education could just be the clingy, needy guy for me.

So I got curious and went to YouTube, where he has published about 150 more videos.  I started to watch another one.   For about one minute, I was at a loss to even understand, what it was all about.  He was calling a hearing-aid company for information.  Being still under the impression of the guy being an unfortunate sensitive person, it took me a while, until I got aware, that it was a prank.   He was misunderstanding the man from the hearing-aid company on purpose.  That man most probably is an employee, who would have lost his job, had he lost his temper.   That employee was probably fully aware of being the victim of a cruel prank, but had no choice except to go along.    

At that moment, all my temporary sympathy for the prankster dwindled.   It was the victim of the prank, who deserved my compassion.  After watching 5 minutes I skipped most of the video.   When I watched the end, that employee had kept his countenance for 15 minutes.   I admire his patience.    As much as I have empathy with the victims of circumstances, I have more empathy with the victims of malice.  

The alleged and pretending victim of social injustice was in reality a self-centered guy, completely absorbed in self-pity, cruelly letting out his own frustration by playing heartless pranks on others, who have never done anything wrong to him.  (I am assuming, that he talked to a complete stranger at the hearing-aid-company, which of course I cannot know.)   He complains about the lack of compassion of those people, who had been favored by evolution to have a better life than himself.    But he has himself not the least compassion for the victim of his prank.    It makes me shudder, how by a short video people including myself can get taken in so easily to have sympathy and compassion for someone, who does not deserve it.     

But what saddened me the most was the complete insensitivity and lack of compassion, let alone outrage, elicited by his prank.   On YouTube, there were dozens of comments congratulating him on his hilarious performance.   On the other site, there are several hundred postings discussing his life situation.    Some people just call him a loser who should do something instead of ranting, but some others melted in compassion.   

His pranks were mentioned less than 5 times and the most critical comment was calling him a hypocrite.    It really puzzles me, how the same people, who pity him as a victim of a harsh and ruthless capitalistic society, are not at all taken aback by his own cruelty with his victim.    Is only the prankster a hypocrite or are they also hypocrites?

I am not sure about what is the cause, but it seems that people have become very insensitive to cruelty and moral failures, as long as they are emotional, subtle and without visible damage.    That prank alone may not affect a resilient employee, but if he were already mobbed, maybe it would be adding to the burn-out of the man.    The prankster just cannot know, what damage he is doing.

Maybe the desensitization of being exposed by the media to the worst atrocities and agonies on a daily basis, not only of crime, but also of accidents and natural catastrophes, makes appear emotional cruelties as if they were only trifles.  

I think that many people need to be resensitized to take responsibility for the pain, that they cause others. But they need not only take more responsibility for themselves.  They should also reestablish higher standards in their expectations of others by being much more judgmental in holding others responsible.   Tolerance for unacceptable cruelties is being an indirect accomplice in the cruelty to the victims.    

292. Poofing and Dumping

Poofing and Dumping

Once I was contacted on a dating site by a German, who had emigrated to some far away country as a young man and was considering returning to Germany.    I exchanged a few emails with him.   I got suspicious that he may be a new 'reincarnation' of someone else under a different name, whom I had been in contact with.  Therefore I googled my new contact, I will call him C.    I found a touching appeal of a distressed woman, asking if anybody has any information about a man with the name of C.   

I talked with the woman on the phone.  She told me the story.   C. had been staying with her for a few weeks.   When he left to return to his home, he disappeared into thin air at the place of a stopover.    She never heard from him again.   She wrote him emails, tried to call his land line and his cell phone, wrote him SMS, but he never replied.    She was so worried, that some accident could have happened, that she even contacted the embassies.   
We compared notes and she had no doubt, that my new contact was her C.    At that time I shared her impression, that he was an extreme but rare case of a jerk.  By now I have got aware, that such jerks are unfortunately by far not as rare. The behavior has even a name, it is called poofing and others have told their stories on dating forums.
  
Dumping is principally similar to poofing, but at least the jerk spares the woman to worry about him, as he declares to her in some short but unambiguous way, that he has no intention to continue the relationship.   He prefers email, SMS or maybe the phone, but usually does not bother to have a personal talk about his reasons.  He decides to dump, and the dumped woman has no influence upon his decision. 
As long as the contact is platonic, I do not call it dumping.  While two persons are still attempting to find out, if they are compatible enough, each has still the moral right to decide not to enter a relationship.   But as soon as they are intimately involved, ending a relationship, that both had agreed to enter, by dumping is cruel, brutal, and a very serious moral transgression.   

I consider poofing and dumping as the logical consequence of the spreading of the emotional plague of promiscuity as a socially accepted behavior and a social norm in modern western cultures.    (More about this in entry 104, Promiscuity is Emotional Psychopathy and entry 101, Promiscuity is a Scourge of Humanity.)  
Men have always been afflicted by an instinctive urge to promiscuously use women's bodies.   But as long as monogamy was considered the social norm and the only morally acceptable way to maintain sexual homeostasis, men usually had at least the theoretical knowledge, that using a woman's body without commitment is doing emotional harm to her.  
Since the fatal so called sexual liberation, unfortunately that knowledge has been widely lost.    Today even men, who want to be good, caring and responsible men, have the fatal delusion, that if they use a woman's body for a night without being personally affected and forgetting her the next day, the woman experiences it the same way.  They are oblivious of the harm done.  This delusion causes serious damage to women, poofing and dumping is part of it.  

Poofing and dumping men are either ignorant or unconcerned by a lack of any conscience, that when a decent and sensitive woman allows them the intimacy of her body, she entrusts her dignity to him, she trusts him, that she is valued as a bonded partner and not degraded to be used only as a body and a commodity.   She trusts, that by taking possession of her body, he accepts his obligations and responsibility.   

1.  As long as they are not physically involved, he is responsible to be guided by the usual rules of correct behavior between true friends.   But by getting intimately involved, he is responsible for not hurting her dignity and her feelings.   He is responsible for every pain she suffers as a result of being with him, if he uses, devalues, degrades her to be a commodity at his convenience and not an equal partner in intrinsic commitment.    He is responsible not only for what he does deliberately, but also for what he does accidently.    He is responsible for everything experienced by her as a result of becoming intimate.    A decent and mature man, who does not want this responsibility, has the moral obligation to abstain from getting involved. 

2.  His obligations from physical intimacy are to do anything possible to make the relationship work.    If he feels an impulse to end the relationship, his duty is self-control over his impulse, his duty is to communicate with the woman about his impulse and to give her a fair chance to influence the reasons for his impulse.   

• There can be a misunderstanding, that can be cleared. 
• There can be a conflict, that can be solved by a compromise. 
• He can have a personal or psychological problem, for which he needs to ask and accept her support.

In short, he owes the woman a chance for a shared decision based upon an agreement.  The agreement can either be the decision to continue the relationship as a result of his making efforts to change his reasons for his impulse, so that he wants himself to continue the relationship.    Else he owes her to communicate until she is convinced herself, that it is also better for her to end the relationship.   

Physical intimacy creates both partner's duty to stay together, until they both agree to end the relationship.    Of course, the intention or agreement to end the relationship can be expressed peacefully and decently by direct communication, or it can be expressed indirectly by committing a very grave moral transgression.    A man, who cheats, implicitly agrees to end the relationship, even though it is not his conscious intention.    Not cheating was an implicit or explicit part of the relationship deal.   Breaking the deal is an implicit intention to end the relationship.     That means, that when  the victim of  a serious transgression decides to end the relationship, this is not dumping but agreeing to the end a relationship already destroyed by the transgression. 

The man, who dumps the woman, only superficially and technically ends the relationship by leaving her.   In her experience, the end of the relationship is really caused by his serious moral transgression of forcing his disrespectful solitary decision upon her instead of communicating for an agreement.  This destroys her trust and therefore the foundation of the relationship.  

The jerk, who dumps a woman in search of a better commodity, but who believes in the back of his mind, that she will be available to be hoovered back at his convenience (entry 285), is not aware, that his behavior is a serious moral transgression.    The woman, who allows to be hoovered back, has been desensitized to feel appropriate outrage.   

It is not only sad and unfortunate, that so many jerks, psychopaths and emotional morons consider promiscutiy, dumping and poofing as acceptable behavior, it is even more sad, that many women have lost the perspective of what is acceptable behavior, they have been desensitized to consider being dumped as bad luck and not as an outrage.   They believe that entering a relationship is accepting the risk of being dumped like being out in a thunderstorm and risking to be hit and hurt by a flash.   Therefore too many women allow to be hoovered back by worthless psychopaths.

268. The Jerk Attachment Syndrome

The Jerk Attachment Syndrome
In entry 255., I was attempting an answer to the question, why decent women stay too long with jerks.    I was mainly explaining the cognitive dissonance of a woman between her dignity and the fact, that she herself was mislead to assume being a partner in mutually intrinsic commitment and as a consequence has allowed a man to use her body.

In entry 155, I already explained the concept of the love bank.

After some more thinking, I have come to the conclusion, that things are probably more complex than what I had written in entries 155 and 255.       

A decent women in a relationship with a jerk or an emotional moron sometimes develops something similar to the Stockholm Syndrome.    

"In psychology, Stockholm syndrome is a term used to describe a paradoxical psychological phenomenon wherein hostages express adulation and have positive feelings towards their captors. These feelings are generally considered irrational in light of the danger or risk endured by the victims, who essentially mistake a lack of abuse from their captors as an act of kindness."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stockholm_syndrome

I will call it the Jerk Attachment Syndrome.    (This expression was my own idea, but once again, I am not original, some woman already had used it on her blog.    But as she has not defined it, I continue to use it with my own psychological definition.)

Of course, there is one big difference.  A hostage has been forced into the situation, while a woman has entered the relationship by her own decision.  She has become a hostage only of her love and her need to have a relationship as a home, a safe haven.    But a woman's attachment to an abusive man can be as irrational as that of a hostage to the captor.   

The love bank concept balances the input of caring behavior with the withdrawal by hurting behavior.    A relationship is at a balance of 20 units towards doom, when the man applies 100 units of hurting and only invests 80 units of caring.    This works as a rational evaluation of the relationship, but only, if the woman is fully rationally capable to base her decision upon this evaluation.   When the woman stays, in spite of the man having a huge debt at the love bank, then she is probably a case of the Jerk Attachment Syndrome.   
 
Emotionally the two sides of the account are often kept apart, because they are in inconvertible currencies.    While the hurting, the transgressions, the despair and depletion piles up, attachment during the few good moments of respite continues to grow also, even though it seems a paradox.    This leads a person into the inner struggle of being torn apart in the classical situation of someone being at the same time too bad to stay with and yet appearing too good to leave.   

When a person experiences something pleasant, especially something eliciting strong emotions of wellbeing, for example listening to the favorite music or enjoying a specially beautiful place, often the brain associates the good feelings with any person, who is present.   This even happens, when the man, with whom she attends a concert, is hurting a woman frequently.   As a result, she gets attached to someone unworthy of her.    

She may well experience the man as a kind of double personality, like a Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hide.    When he hurts her, she is still aware, that there are sometimes good moments, and she has the illusionary dream, that she could have good moments only at some time in the future, if only she has the patience and endurance.    During the good moments, she cannot relax and feel at ease, because she is fully aware, that from one moment to the next, out of the blue, he could do something hurtful again.     She experiences both personalities as never fully separated, when one is in the foreground, she is prepared for the other to appear at any moment.    

People taking hostages are in a similar way often double personalities, especially when they are using the cruel and criminal method of taking hostages for legitimate political reasons and good causes.    They have a goal, which often they want to reach without doing harm to the victims, who are instruments and not their personal enemies.   Sometimes the captors attempt to minimize the victims' suffering by kind acts.   

This is, why I think, that the paradoxical reactions of the Stockholm Syndrome and of the Jerk Attachment Syndrome are very similar.

197. Infatuation, Dominance, Cruelty

Infatuation, Dominance, Cruelty
This continues entry 195 about cruelty and entry 196 about dominance.  

In entry 195 I described a man's cruelty as continued hurtful treatment for a woman in spite of knowing, that she feels hurt.   

In entry 196 I described domination as a man's usurping onesided privileges and advantages from a non consenting woman by using his innate physical strength or the threat thereof.   Would she consent rationally to let him have, what he wishes, it would not be domination.   Being coerced and intimidated hurts.  

That means, domination is a form of cruelty.    A man with caring love for a woman, for whom cruelty to the beloved woman is a taboo, logically does not dominate her.   He perceives, treats and considers her as an equal.   
Therefore the absence of caring love is the precondition enabling or determining a man's domination.  

A rational woman can avoid to be treated with cruel domination by avoiding to get under the power of a cruel jerk, she attempts to find a man with caring love.  
But if all women were as rational as that and no woman would ever get herself into the ordeal of being dominated, then by natural selection the greater physical strength of men and their ability to dominate would disappear.     Instead they seem to have evolved serving a purpose in the survival of the species, which unfortunately is paid for by the cost of the suffering of the individual. 

While a hypoanimalistic woman can use her brain to avoid dominating men, evolution has blurred the more instinct driven women's judgement by the combination of the procreation instinct and the trap of infatuation.  

Infatuation means a strong attraction of two bodies, while there is no or little other attraction.   If there were an attraction of the mind, the intellect, the personality, then dominating a woman and using her as a utility would be a contradiction to this attraction.    A man's attraction to a woman's intellectual capacities and personality leads to the logical requirement for a man to consider and treat her as an equal.    Only the absence of such an attraction and a considerable infatuation with her body allow a man to logically justify to himself to dominate her.     

A man gets infatuated with a woman's body for his physical needs without feeling caring love for her.   A woman with a breeding urge also gets infatuated, but mainly with some signals from a specific man's body by the instinctive choice of him having the best genes for the prospect of healthy offspring.   

An infatuated man hides his true intentions, he postpones domination and cruelty, until he has his prey trapped under his power.   The woman misinterprets his initial fake caring behavior as if he had true caring love for her, and her own infatuation leads her into the trap.    As soon as the man has control over her, the mask of care falls and the cruel domination starts.     If the woman is a breeder and a man has gained power over a woman, he can use this power to keep her vulnerable and depending by the coercion to procreate.  

There can be the less drastic case, when a woman loves a man, who is only infatuated with her body.   But she is not a breeder or she has not yet been made vulnerable by breeding.    If she only gets aware of his domination after having got involved by mistake, having had the delusion to be loved with care, at least she can end her being exposed to cruelty by ending the relationship. 

Infatuation is a trap for both genders.   A man's infatuation can get him into a lifelong obligation to provide financially for offspring that he never wanted.    But his trap is limited to the legal requirements.    His innate power to choose to dominate allows him to burden all the painful consequences of the fatal initial infatuation upon the woman.    

An infatuated man is a huge risk of suffering for a woman.    A man, who chooses a woman by her personal qualities without being infatuated, is much less of a risk.   

195. Cruelty

Cruelty

Men are often driven by their instincts and physical needs to get infatuated with a woman's body.   Then they either are jerks, who consciously manipulate the woman to let them use their body.     Or they are immature or emotional morons (entry 156), who seriously believe themselves to love her.
They tell the woman dozens of times every day, how much they love her, they even do little things for her and buy her gifts.   Only from this behavior, there is no way to find out, if such a man's proclaimed love is caring love or selfish infatuation.

But there is a way to find conclusive evidence for the absence of caring love:   It is cruelty.   

 

Caring love and cruelty are mutually exclusive.
 

A man with caring love is never cruel to his partner.    A cruel man does not feel caring love, but uses a woman as a utility for his selfish needs.

The only realistic method to judge a man is judging him by the worst things that he does. 

The difference between cruelty and painful moments in a relationship is the attitude to and the perception of his partner's pain. 
For the cruel jerk, the pain of his partner is either of no significance, meaningless, indifferent, of no importance to him, or he even enjoys his power to be able to inflict pain on her.   He has no conscience about hurting his partner.
For the caring loving man, it is of paramount importance not to cause pain to his partner, he is very motivated to avoid everything, that would hurt his partner.    Having caused pain to his partner makes him feel unhappy, therefore he is eager to learn, what would cause her pain, before it ever happens. 


Cruelty implies three factors:

• A man's behavior causes a woman to get physically or feel emotionally hurt.
• He can know it.   That means, that he either knows already, what hurts her, or that she gives him feedback about it or that she asks him to stop an action, while he does it.     
• He continues or repeats his behavior.

Cruelty is,

• when a man feels entitled to do something, in spite or defiance of knowing that she feels hurt by his behavior.   
• when a woman gives a man feedback, that his behavior hurts her, and he continues his behavior as if she has never said anything.   
• when a woman gives a man feedback, that his behavior hurts her, and he tells her that it is her flaw and defect, that she feels hurt, and he continues or repeats the same behavior.
• when a man disregards her feedback and denies to take it for serious or to believe her, that she feels hurt, and continues or repeats his behavior.
• when a man commits a transgression, but does not feel guilty and does not earn her forgiving, because he considers the transgression as appropriate according to his depreciation, devaluation and disrespect for her.   
• when a man uses aggression and rage to intimidate the woman to give up her resistance to being the target of his hurtful behavior, and to coerce her to do what causes her pain when doing it.    
• when a man does not react, when the woman asks him to postpone some action and communicate about it.
• when a man refuses the woman's wish to communicate how to prevent hurting her in the future.

An example for cruelty is the public scene in the bus, as given in entry 190.   The man can see the growing pain of embarrassment in the woman's face, when she implores him with growing urgency to stop drawing attention from the spectators nearby.   To continue the scene with the intention to enhance her embarrassment is an act of so much cruelty, that I have no doubt, that this man does not love that unhappy wretch.  


It is not cruelty:

• when a man hurts a woman once by ignorance and is keen and eager to learn, how to never do it again.
• when a man commits a forgivable transgression (cheating is not forgivable) and feels as guilty as she feels hurt and makes all amends and restitutions, until she can forgive him, and he learns how to never repeat this transgression.

Example: A man commits a social blunder due to his lack of knowledge of cultural differences and it is embarrassing for the woman.   But he is eager to communicate about the topic until he has learned how not to repeat the blunder. 


It is obvious, that I do not want ever get near a cruel jerk, but I am aware, that learning how not to hurt each other is a process, that needs a lot of communication.