733. Motivation For Behavior: The Difference Between Deficits And Benefits

733.  Motivation For Behavior:  The Difference Between Deficits And Benefits

I value rationality as one distinctive and superior quality, by which human individuals differ from instinct driven animals.  This is a premise, which many people do not share with me.   I am fully aware that those, who value being guided and determined by unconscious instincts and inclinations more than by rationality, cannot and will not agree with the following application of rationality on how to live.      

As I myself am both a non-breeder and non-religious, both are for me expression of the same rationality.   As a member of a non-breeders' group, I asked some puzzled question to religious non-breeders.    
In the entries 656. The Placebo Church  and 441. An Ingenious Self-Deception I have already expressed my wondering about the weird Unitarian Universalist placebo church.   My question to a member thereof concerning what needs and deficits were met, ended as an impasse.  

I did not get an answer, I did not even succeed to convey my question.   The exchange has inspired the following thoughts.

 

A rational person has an awareness for the importance of evaluating behaviors and actions by the consequences and by comparing them with alternative options for its causes and reasons.

1.  One important factor is the baseline.   Behavior improving the subjective wellbeing can have one or both of these effects:  It either restores the baseline to the neutral state of neither pleasure nor displeasure, or it adds pleasure above this baseline.  
This is an important distinction, because I consider only this baseline of not suffering as a human right, while seeking pleasure can only be justified when nobody else is harmed or taken advantage of.  

2.   People, whose behavior is caused by a deficit, often get additional benefits above the baseline.   Sometimes they consciously only recognize the benefits as if gaining these were the original purpose of the behavior.   They are unaware or in denial that the initial purpose was restoring the baseline.   

3.   Another factor is the experience of cognitive dissonance, when people want to be more rational than they really are.  They want to consider themselves as rationally seeking benefits and not as if they were helpless robots succumbing to urges.   The denial of urges and deficits is a method to avoid experiencing cognitive dissonance.

4.   There are different kind of subjectively perceived deficits.   Deficits can be innate or acquired, they can be physical or cognitive.   Rational behavior requires thinking about all relevant factors and about the long-term consequences before coping with the perceived deficit.   Just following the urge is often irrational.   

 

A rational way of life requires people to scrutinize carefully all their inclinations to behave.   For this purpose they ask themselves several questions.   The ones in the not comprehensive following list are important

• Which is my baseline? 
• Do I only get benefits or are there needs, deficits, urges, wishes, discontentment, dishomeostasis hidden behind the experienced benefits?
• What would happen, if I resist the inclination to this behavior?
• What alternative behaviors are there?   

When interactive behavior includes reciprocal impacts by and upon others, rational persons apply these questions to others as much as upon themselves.   Not only the choice between respect and disrespect depends upon this, but also the choice between supporting and refusing to become a victim, between continuing the interaction and avoiding the person.

A few examples:

1.  Food
 

When a hungry, not obese person eats, this is rational.
When a not hungry but also not-obese eats something for the pleasure of the taste, it is unnecessary but not irrational.  
But when an obese person eats because of boredom, stress or a similar reason, then this is irrational.

2.  Alcoholism as an addiction
 

2.1.  There is no physical or real need for drinking any alcohol at all.   Not drinking is completely rational behavior. 
2.2.  When someone drinks restricted quantities of alcoholic beverages with sufficient intervals in between, this can be be considered as rationally enjoying the taste.  
2.3.  But in the case of someone feeling an urge for alcohol intake to reach the baseline, then this is an addiction.  
In the case of denial, the addict claims to drink for pleasure and does not recognize and acknowledge the urge.   He is not aware of the irrationality of his drinking.    
2.4.  An alcoholic having asked and answered the questions can admit, that his urge to drink alcohol needs an approach, which is anything between self-control and therapy, but not drinking. 


When irrational behaviors are reinforced or even instilled by a social norm, they become an even more devastating problem.   This is unfortunate for the many people, whose life would be better without acquired, harmful urges.   

There are special dynamics at work.  People are trapped, because they are allowed to consciously experience some benefits.  These benefits do not suffice to rationally justify the amount of sacrifices, which are required.   But unconsciously these people also experience the additional relief of some urge, of which they are consciously in complete denial.   This denial impedes them from considering and attempting other, more rational methods to deal with the urges.  
The urges instilled by the social norm lead to behaviors, which override any healthy individualistic approach towards living in a balance of giving and receiving in the exchange with the social environment.   By these social norms, people are deformed towards willingly allowing to be exploited and taken advantage of while being mistaken as being important and useful.   

These victims are not aware that the social norm serves only the interest of those, who use their power, influence and greed to usurp more such advantages. 

Two of these instilled behaviors are breeding and religious behaviors.  Breeding and religion have one aspect in common with alcoholism.   There are enough non-drinkers, non-breeders and non-religious people as evidence of the existence of alternatives.

3.  Breeding
 

3.1.  In modern western societies and even in some others too, there is no individual need for breeding.   Not breeding is a completely rational behavior. 
3.2.  Under some limited circumstances in the past and in some remote places, the survival of old people depended and depends on raising children.   These people have no need to belief in alleged benefits of breeding, they are succumbing to a necessity.  
3.3.  But someone feeling an urge to breed only for reaching the baseline has a serious problem, like an addict.    
As children cannot be undone, once the mistake was made, breeders are usually in denial of any remorse.  They insist that breeding has brought them benefits.   They do not recognize and acknowledge to have succumbed to an instinctive or instilled urge.   They remain unaware of the irrationality of breeding.     
3.4.  While breeders are consciously in denial, they implicitly often show a glimpse of belated rationality, when they stop further breeding after the first child.   But this is not a conscious change to rationality concerning breeding. 

4.  Religion

4.1.  A rational way of life is not deranged by any religious behavior.   A rational, responsible and considerate treatment of others requires rationality and the absence of any religious behaviors.   No rational person is religious.   No religious person is rational.
Religion manifests itself by observable religious behaviors, which not only include personal sacrifices of money, time and comfort, but even worse it also determines how others are treated.   

Weird ritualistic body movements only impact one person.   But often religion can cause as much damage as an alcohol addiction.     When someone wastes the family money on church donations and his time at the church service instead of with his partner, he inflicts damage on others for irrational reasons. 
Worse are those, who transgress, acquire religious forgiveness and feel free to continue transgressing.   A man, who by following his polygamous religion copulates with other women, deeply hurts his monogamous partner who experiences this as cheating. 
4.2.  Religious behavior is an expression of a belief, which can never rationally be justified.   What is based upon science and evidence, is not a belief.    Only pretending by outwardly imitated religious behavior can sometimes be rational self-defense, when needed for self-preservation.   
4.3.  Religious people's denial is extreme.   I have repeatedly asked religious people, which urges, deficits and experienced dishomeostasis causes them to be religious.   Asking this questions seems futile.  They just seem not to understand.  They enthuse about all their emotional benefits and even feel offended, when I keep on asking about the deficits.  These deficits are the core of what makes them religious and distinguishes them from rational people.     
4.4.  Some religious people overcome their denial.   When they finally get rational, the only possible reaction is to free themselves of all the religious beliefs.   But while remaining a believer, no religious person will ever admit, that they feel urges towards merely reaching a baseline of basic wellbeing, which rational non-religious people already have without any religion.      

Therefore, breeding and religion are as irrational as alcohol addiction, the only real difference is the social norm, which encourages breeding and religion, while alcoholism is considered deviant.

707. Selfish Men's Delusion And Myth

707.   Selfish Men's Delusion And Myth

Recognizing the biological reality, that only a man has a recurrent physiological urge to get rid of body waste, which women do not have, enables him to acknowledge, what a woman really does, when she contributes to his maintenance of his homeostasis.   He appreciates this as a gift of love from her.   As a caring and equal partner, he returns his own gift of love, by equally fulfilling her needs: He bonds with her in committed monogamy, he reciprocates her emotional attachment and the feeling of belonging together, and of being a unit, he shares intellectual intimacy, he enables her to feel significant and protected in a reliable save haven. 

But there are also those men, who want access to women's bodies without giving any of the above, and nevertheless they avoid to experience themselves as selfish or abusive.  The complete denial of the biological asymmetry is their method.  

These men have created a myth, which is perpetuated by the male dominated media:   This myth is a collective male delusion and fallacy, that allegedly women would have the same need for sex as men and would therefore also equally benefit.   This claim serves as these men's justification to refuse giving anything to the women or to ever accept any obligation to fulfill women's different needs.  

But it gets even worse.   Not all women are brainwashed by the oversexed social norms, some are quite aware of their own reality, that a behavior, which every animal without a rational brain does by instinct, is just too banal and stupid to be bothered about it.   For an intellectual woman, the question, how much or how little she enjoys a book, an art exhibition or a theater play is so much more significant than the question, how much she enjoys food or sex.   When a woman states this comparison about food, most men are able to grasp this.   But not about sex, which blurs male brains.   Whenever a woman has the self-confidence to insist, that she considers the male needs merely as an unavoidable banality in a relationship, most men are just unable to accept or respect this attitude.   Instead of recognizing, that some women's cognition is above such banalities, these men defame such women as flawed, inhibited or repressed.  

704. The Irrational Distinction Between The Abuse Of Women And Of Children

704.  The Irrational Distinction Between The Abuse Of Women And Of Children

A German politician has been caught as suspicious of owning child pornography.  Reported in the medias has been his possession of pictures of naked boys, which are not explicitly sexual.  Such pictures are actually not illegal in Germany.  

The German newspaper "Rheinische Post" writes today.  

"Die Bundesregierung plant, den Handel mit Nacktfotos von Kindern zu verbieten. Niemand dürfe mit den Körpern von Kindern und Jugendlichen Geschäfte machen" 

The federal government plans to make the trading naked pictures of children illegal.  Nobody should deal in bodies of children and adolescents.  

"Diese Bilder verletzen die Rechte von Kindern". 
These pictures violate the right of children.

http://www.rp-online.de/politik/handel-mit-kinder-nacktfotos-wird-verboten-aid-1.4046914     

Of course I agree with these quotes.   But it makes me angry, that all outrage and wish to protect is reserved to children, while the exactly the same treatment of adult women is considered as acceptable, normal and reasonable.   

There is a cruel fallacy in this arbitrary distinction of the victims by their age.   This fallacy is the entire focus upon the biological suitability of the victims for male needs and the subsequent denial of the damage done to victimized women.   

Abuse (by men) can be defined as the selfish, inconsiderate and irresponsible use of another human being's body, which a man in the state of dishomeostasis uses as an object for the purpose of getting rid of his body waste.  

Children are not biologically suitable for this.   Therefore nobody disputes children's need to be protected from all abuse, direct and indirect by pornographic representations.

But whenever women are concerned, the view is distorted.   Even though adult women are biologically suitable for sexuality, this does not imply any justification for abuse.  Women are entitled to be only targeted for a form of sexuality, which is no abuse, because it fulfills their emotional needs. 
It is generally accepted, that humans do not exist to be exploited as slaves, just because humans are suitable to do hard labor and others feel a need to make a profit from it.   Women do not exist to be abused, just because they are biologically suitable and men have physiological urges.   This still needs to be accepted.

This first distortion not only justifies the abuse of female bodies by their biological suitability, but the consequence thereof is also the male denial, that using a woman's body without emotional attachment and commitment even is abuse.  

The second distortion is the different interpretation of the damage done depending on the age of the abused victim. 

Only the damage done to children is recognized as such and attributed to the abuse.  
When abused women become drug addicts, alcoholics or psychiatric cases, this is not recognized and acknowledged as a consequence of what men have done to them.  Instead it is falsely attributed to genetic or personality defects.   

According to male attitudes, a sane and healthy woman can be abused without suffering, a woman, who cannot be abused without harm and trouble is defective and flawed.   Women are not considered to need protection against abuse, they are expected to be willing to be fixed, if they lack sufficient resilience.  
Women's self-abuse in exchange for material benefits is mistaken as a choice and as a healthy disposition.   Men's denial, that such self-abuse needs to be attributed to social problems depriving women of other options adds to the other male justifications of abuse.   The frequent delay between the abuse and self-abuse and manifestations of being damaged adds to the male denial of the true causes for the damage.
 

Therefore I am correcting the above quotes:  

Nobody should deal in bodies of other human beings, no matter the age.  

These [naked or pornographic] pictures violate the right of human beings of any age.

Suitability does not suffice to justify harming others.   

Those men, who consume pornography, who abuse prostitutes, who are promiscuous treating and perceiving women as mere toilets for their body waste, are hypocrites, if they demands more protection only for children. 

698. A Weird Man

698.  A Weird Man

Recently on a matchmaking site I got contacted by a man, who liked my profile.  As far as there was information in his profile, it also seemed to fit my own criteria.   He had indicated to be divorced.  

At first I was pleased.

But then he admitted, that after being separated for two years, he and his wife were still living in separate buildings but on the same jointly owned property.   In spite of the incorrect indication in his profile, he pretended or believed to be sufficiently honest by telling me this.   
  
I am not that much of an idiot to ever get involved with a married man.   

But I was curious to find out, if there was a chance, that he could be free soon.   In spite of his initial lie to be divorced, I gave him the benefit of the doubt and started to ask questions.

First he admitted, that they were attempting to sell the property and that he was postponing the divorce until after the property would be sold.  He claimed to follow the advice of a lawyer.   Yet he was not bothered to understand the legal problems.   (Sometimes lawyers advice, what brings them the highest fees, not what is best for their clients.)

He claimed that due to some outdated law in France he were forced to remain in his situation, which he presented as unchangeable, as if there were no alternative.  
This made no sense to me.  Why would owning property oblige the owner to live in it?  

When questioned further, he admitted to be at the mercy of his wife, in whose name the property was registered, while he had put his money into it.
At this point, his refusal of an immediate divorce may have made sense, but only in the case of hostility and of a legal fight between them.   

But after more questions I found out, that there was no battle, but that the wife had already agreed to pay a fair share after the selling, and that he trusted her to do so.  

Thus, even if he could not afford to live somewhere else until he had his money, there was certainly not the least logical reason for him to remain married.  As long as he was willing to remain alone, it made not much difference, because there are no implications upon anybody else except the still married couple. 
But in accordance with his wish to find someone else, he needs a speedy divorce.  A man, who has the option to get divorced, but refuses to do so under whatever pretenses and excuses has no moral right to approach single women.  

He believes himself to be an honest and decent person, but he behaves as inconsiderate and irresponsible as a jerk.   He not only contacts women under the false pretense to be single, but he intends to remain a married man for an undefined and unpredictable time. 
Selling property needs two parties.  Waiting until not only there is a buyer, but even one, whose offer is accepted by his wife, can cause him to remain a married man for a long time.   

But it gets even weirder.   When I pointed out to him his rational option to get a divorce as soon as possible, if he would choose so, he was not able to give any rational reason against doing it.  Nevertheless he did not accept, that a profile and contacting women on a dating site imply a moral obligation to get divorced.  Instead he claimed to not feel married anymore, expecting this to make him as available as a free man, as if this would entitle him to be considered as such.
 
He defined his persistent legal marriage as merely a piece of paper.   

I can fully agree with this definition of a legal marriage only as a very logical reason to omit legal marriage as obsolete and unnecessary.  Given sufficient emotional and cognitive commitment, a legal certificate cannot make it more binding than it already is.  

By getting legally married, people succumb to the acceptance of legally binding mutual obligations, by which they are henceforward bound, no matter if they like this or not.   Those who do get legally married do this, because at least at that moment they have subjectively sufficient reasons to accept being thus bound.    

Once accepted by signature, the ties and obligations of a legal marriage continue to exist, no matter how much or how little someone like this guy feels married and attached.  Only divorce or death can end the ties, which are henceforward no more at the disposition of an individual's choice.  

  
For any rational person, this guy is a married man, who refuses the get divorced.  Mistaking not feeling married anymore as being as free and single is a very weird and hazardous form of denial.
No matter this denial, as long as he remains married, his wife is like a time bomb, who could get into circumstances forcing him back to her at any time.  
Marriage laws may differ slightly between European countries, but in essence, wife and husband are obliged to take care of each other in any situation of need.   Assuming the age of that guy's wife to be probably at least near sixty, she could become helpless and dependent at any moment, no matter if by accident, sickness or mental states like dementia. 
As long as there is a husband, he is the one who is legally obliged to take care of her, not any welfare or social services.   Nobody would let him of that hook, just because his claim to not feel married anymore.  

This man's denial of such legal entanglements makes him a fool.  Some people are hazards not by being malicious but by being too foolish to understand the implication of their behavior and their denial.  

615. Social Change And Psychotherapy

615.   Social Change And Psychotherapy

I have been mentioning the growing amount of harm done either carelessly or ignorantly by promiscuous jerks as the consequence of the social norm of oversexation and the subsequent desensitization and lacking empathy for the suffering of the abused women.   (Entry 493:  The Social Norm Of The Drooling Men)

In a world, where men have their on average greater physical strength as an advantage enabling them to gain power and control over resources including media by hook or by crook, the instinctive reaction of many, if not most men is subconsciously welcoming the social norm of oversexation.  While some men would not consciously admit this, I have rarely found anybody explicitly pointing out the damage caused by it.   

By considering the appropriate place for sexuality being the privacy of couples' bedrooms I am sometimes even called a prude.   But I consider it as much better to be a prude than an animal blindly driven by instincts.  

Therefore I was very pleased to have found George Simon's web page.  He is a clinical psychologist and therapist, who has described this unfortunate social development with much better words than my limited English allows me to do.     The emphasis in the following quote is mine.

"Character Disturbance is indeed “the phenomenon of our age.” That’s because the intensely socially repressive atmosphere of earlier times has been supplanted with an atmosphere of entitlement, permissiveness, and license. It’s not as common for people’s shame and guilt to be so unreasonably intense and unyielding that they become pathologically debilitated with anxiety. Rather, it’s more common for folks to lack enough shame or guilt to inhibit them from doing harmful things to themselves as well as others. So, it would be fair to say that character disturbance is indeed more prevalent these days, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that significantly disturbed characters are everywhere."

http://counsellingresource.com/features/2011/10/10/are-they-everywhere/

But Simon not only expresses with better words than myself similar concerns about contemporary permissiveness and lacking inhibitions and constraint.   Simon takes this further to a very clever observation, which had never occurred to me:  The assumptions, upon which psychotherapeutic interventions are usually and implicitly based, have become obsolete and are lacking behind and failing to react to the real problems caused by the drastic social changes of the last decades.      

Therapeutic interventions helpful for people being overwhelmed with unbearable negative emotions about themselves are counterproductive to people, whose problems is predominantly the harming and exploiting of others, while harming themselves is only secondary by depriving also themselves of the benefits of close and harmonious relationships.  

Simon explains the example of denial:

"In classical (psychodynamic) psychology, denial is an unconscious ego defense mechanism.  Basically, that means that a person unwittingly puts up a barrier to experiencing what is too painful to consciously bear."

"Sometimes, denial is truly an unconscious psychological state.  Sometimes, it’s a refusal to admit a problem.  Sometimes, it’s a tactic of manipulation and impression management.  And the basic tactic of denial can be expressed in several other subtle variations such as feigning innocence, feigning ignorance, and acting surprised.   But no matter what form in which it comes, it’s most often merely a way of lying. "

"Disturbed characters of all sorts frequently engage in denial.  It’s extremely rare, however, that they do so because they are in such inner distress over their behavior that they simply can’t consciously accept what they’re doing.  Most of the time, they know exactly what they’re doing, but they want you to think otherwise."

http://www.manipulative-people.com/denial-what-it-is-and-isnt/

"Disordered characters often won’t admit when they’ve done something wrong, and resist looking at any role their behavior patterns have played in creating problems in their lives.  They lie to themselves and others about their malevolent acts and intentions as a tactic to get others off their back.  If their denial is forceful and convincing enough, others will likely be successfully manipulated. "

"Denial is not only an effective manipulation tactic, but it’s also a sure sign someone is not about to change his or her way of behaving.  A person who won’t acknowledge their wrongs in the first place isn’t likely to feel any inclination to correct them.  Habitual denial is the way many disordered characters resist internalizing the values and standards of conduct that could make them more socially responsible."

http://www.manipulative-people.com/denial-manipulation-tactic-4/

586. Jerks With Halos

586.  Jerks With Halos

In entry 381 I described Diego Rivera as a jerk with a halo.   He is just one specimen of many, and it is a pattern of very detrimental and unfavorable dynamics.

I consider people (usually men) as jerks with a halo, when they are accomplished or outstanding in some area, as artists, writers, scientists, actors, politicians or even as benefactors for many people, while they also inflict a lot of suffering upon persons close to them.   

Jerks are jerks, and the suffering of their victims is real and no halo seen by any third party does reduce this suffering, it only hides it in an unjustifiable way.
  
Accomplishments need to be evaluated by themselves, without any impact upon the subjective recognition of the magnitude of personal transgressions.   The harm done to the unfortunate victims is an unacceptable moral failure, this is independent of any coexisting achievements.   

Accomplishments do not exempt people from being responsible for what they do to others.  

But this is unfortunately not reality.   Instead, there is a general tendency to condone unacceptable, immoral and cruel behaviors in proportional accordance with the transgressor's fame due to his accomplishments.  By this fallacy of accepted compensation, someone can buy by his accomplishments the right to harm without consequences.

This fallacy is enhanced and perpetuated by any combination of several factors, which all lead to the underestimation of the harm done to the victims: 

1.   Women's apparent and alleged compliance when continuing to expose themselves to their plight.   
1.1.  Women are dependent upon the material support by the man, especially by raising children.   They would leave the jerk, if the could.  
1.2.  Women in asymmetrical relationships have got onesidedly emotionally attached to the jerk, who in return has an entitlement delusion.  His fallacy is his belief, that women exist for his convenience, his accomplishments justifying their commodification.  I described this in entry 268 (The Jerk Attachment Syndrome).

2.  The generalization of suggestive influences of religion, especially christianity, upon both the jerks and the victims.  The jerks with halos subjectively consider their accomplishment as their currency to buy the right to harm women. 

In religion, sin is believed to be compensatable by penitence, so that after having paid for the previous sin, there is no cognitive obstacle to prevent the next sin.  Replacing penitence by accomplishments is a fallacy, which is not very far fetched, considering the weirdness of the religious beliefs in themselves.
Thus jerks are not only haloed by others, but they also halo themselves by believing, that their accomplishments entitle them to privileges, even when the privileges harm others.  

Women allow men to harm them for the purpose of buying the reward after death with the currency of their forgiving the unforgivable and by their prolonged suffering .  

3.  Sometimes people feel a vague, fuzzy and unspecified need to improve themselves, but are uncertain, how to proceed.  When they discover persons, whom they do not know personally, but only by the presentation in their work and in the media, such persons are chosen as role models.   The nearer the role models appear to be perfect, the stronger the appeal to imitate them.  The successful imitation boosts the self-esteem and causes good feelings.  This motivates to maintain the idealization of the role model, even when it is not at all justified in the case of haloed jerks.   As a consequence, the idealization of such a role model is protected by the denial of unpleasant and dark sides.    The focus is restricted to the perception of the halo, while the jerk underneath is willfully overlooked.   

Seen from this perspective, many admired and famous men are in reality only jerks with halos.  

548. The Evolution Of Men's Brains Lags Behind The Evolution Of Women's Cognitive Needs

548.   The Evolution Of Men's Brains Lags Behind The Evolution Of Women's Cognitive Needs

The technical quality of visual and auditory imitations of people on screens has reached a level of similarity, to which human brains have not evolved.   The inability of the human brain to distinguish between real persons and their virtual representations on screens effects the subconscious mind of both genders.    

But only in men this effect aggravates and enhances their unfortunate instinctive urges so drastically, that many of them become emotionally crippled by the tragic commodification and objectification of women.   

Consumers of pornography are misled by their brains to confound the perception of pornography as if it was the experience of observing the real bodies of the objectified women.   The more often men expose themselves to this fallacy, the more this distorts their attitude, expectations and behavior towards all women.   

This fallacy is perpetuated by the discrepancy of men's conscious superficial awareness of merely looking at a screen and the subconscious susceptibility.   They are either ignorant of the damaging impact of pornography upon their subconscious mind, or they choose denial, when women attempt to warn them.  
Men are not born as commodifying jerks, they are only born with a high risk to becoming jerks by the exposure to pornography.   

As usually, writing about what I personally perceive as an outrage against women's dignity is easily dismissed as a frustrated woman's rants refusing to accept her purpose as seen by many jerks, unless my complaints are backed up by other sources.  

So I just found an article on this topic:

http://scholar.googleusercontent.com/scholar?q=cache:2pPhsT0Gex0J:scholar.google.com/&hl=de&as_sdt=0&as_vis=1

 Here are some interesting quotes:

"In The Media Equation: How People Treat Computers, Television and New Media Like Real People and Places (1996) Byron Reeves and Clifford Nass argue that there is no essential or functional difference in how the brain responds to the ‘real’ physical world, and how it responds to media images and artificial entities. According to Reeves and Nass our “old brains” have not yet caught up with our new media technologies and they do not have the sophistication to distinguish between a real physical object in the world and a media image or robotic simulation of that same object. This means that people tend to respond in essentially the same way to screen images of a person or a virtual computer persona as they would to a real person. Even though we may be consciously aware that screen images and simulated entities are not real, nevertheless, we have an ingrained unconscious tendency to treat them as if they were"

"Recent research into the phenomenon of mirror neurons also suggests a neuroscientific basis for this physical and emotional response to screen images and artificial entities. Experiments show that areas of the brain collectively known as the ‘mirror neuron system’ respond not only when individuals perform an action themselves but also when they watch someone else perform that action. Watching someone pick up an object triggers a similar response to actually picking up the object yourself. Screen-based actions and experiences also trigger mirror neuron responses and corresponding physical motor responses; pornography is a key example here."

"Of course, this tendency to treat screen images and robots as social partners means that we have a corresponding tendency to expect them to react in ways that are socially and naturally appropriate and believable. When they don’t, and our expectations are not met, the result can be one of frustration, disappointment and annoyance."

This last quote is important concerning an additional trigger for men to harm women.   While men's brains confound the realistic pornographic images with real women, these picture are nevertheless restricted to the screen and not available for tactile abuse.   This can cause men to feel frustration and anger.    

When such frustration is added to a man's already distorted general attitude towards women, he becomes an even worse hazard of inflicting real life abuse and harm upon any woman happening to be in his reach.

397. Recognizing Or Condoning Reality

Recognizing Or Condoning Reality

Corresponding with someone I expressed my outrage and frustration about some instances of injustice and exploitation.    He replied with the suggestion, that I should be realistic and see things as they are.   

But I did disagree with his contrasting attitude and realism.   Perceiving clearly, what is reality, does not determine, how to evaluate reality in comparison with a personal value system.   Being in the situation of participating by receiving advantages without having a choice makes me neither responsible nor guilty.   It is reality, I am aware of, and there is nothing that I can do about it.   Denial does not change the reality, only the awareness thereof.    This includes also the denial of the consequences of reality on others.

I personally would consider it as a form of moral bankruptcy, if I would condone or consider as justifiable any fate of the victims, only because it cannot be changed or because I cannot change it.   Even when I am completely powerless to change things, at least I have to keep up my own standards of evaluating, what is right and what is wrong. 

The best example is consumption of food and other consumer goods in the time of globalization.   A lot of what is sold in supermarkets comes from poor countries, where the prices and wages for those doing the labor are so low, that their basic necessities of life like clean water, healthy food etc. are not met and they live in a misery, that is outrageous.   

Those persons with economical and political power, who decide this, are out of my reach or influence.   Donations are no solution, the outrage is that people are deprived of what they have rightfully earned, and alms instead are adding an insult to the injustice, if they even reach those, who are exploited.

  
There is nothing that I can do.   Boycotting most everything sold as food or consumer goods would get me into malnutrition and would not change the situation.   But the denial of the injustice would make me feel ashamed of myself, because then I would be in league with those, who are guilty of the exploitation.  

313. Nudists: Fools, Naive or Conscious Animals?

Nudists:  Fools, Naive or Conscious Animals?

I just ended the contact with someone, because he admitted to be a nudist.   I consider nakedness as part of the exclusivity of the intimacy of a couple.   If a man would expose himself in public or if he would frequent places, where women are exposing themselves, this is a form of cheating.  

As I have already written about in several previous postings (232, 236, 238 and 240 -Chemistry and Subconscious Instinctive Communication), the animal instincts in the subconscious mind of people are triggered by visual and olfactory stimuli.   Those instincts are not leading to the choice of an intellectually and emotionally compatible partner for the happiness of a couple, but to the choice of the best body for having healthy offsprings.   When those instincts are triggered, especially when men are in need to restore their sexual homeostasis, their reasoning capacity is blurred, and they make foolish choices, that allow the survival of their genes for the price of individual unhappiness. 

Therefore, wise people cover their bodies, as long as they attempt to find a mindmate for long term happiness in commitment, and avoid the triggering of instincts, until they are rationally sure to have found someone compatible. 


Nudists do the contrary.   The expose themselves, automatically sending triggering signals into everybody's subconscious, and they are also receiving the triggering signals, as soon as they look at another naked body.    These are the biological facts.  

Nudists claim, that they are not affected by any visual triggers.    They may be naive and believe it, they may subconsciously or even consciously want the triggers, they may have successfully desensitized themselves from consciously displaying their subconscious reactions.    But they are all in denial of the true but subtle power of their instincts.   

The web is full of texts perpetuating the denial, but I found one text admitting the reality:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2007/jun/06/comment.comment

Nudists justify being naked as being natural.   But there is so much behavior, that can be called natural, and nobody would justify it.  
In some societies, cannibalism triggered by the outgroup instinct has been natural, and in times of scarce food, it may have been the natural way for a group to survive.     
It is natural to eat and store body fat for the next winter of starvation, but it is not justified in the circumstances of modern society.  
And nudity cannot be justified as beneficial for those people, who want to be guided by reason in their choice of a mate, and not by instincts.

290. A Metaphor for Denial

A Metaphor for Denial

A man drives underneath a steep cliff.    In front of him lies a boulder on the road.    Any person of normal intelligence drives around or stops.   A moron drives straight on until he hits the boulder with full speed.    His reason is his denial of reality in favor of his belief of what should be.  
The moron in denial believes that there cannot be any obstacles, because a road is made to drive upon it without obstacles.    If he is alone in the car, he is a candidate for the Darwin award.   But if there is a woman with him in the car, who repeatedly warns him with growing urgency, and he ignores her warnings, then he is responsible for the harm, that hitting the boulder does to her.   He believes his definition of a road more than he believes the perception of reality of the woman.

The emotional moron is just like that man.   He has entered a relationship and believes that by using domination, the road is free with no obstacles to get all his needs out of the woman, whom he believes to be a commodity.   The woman repeatedly warns him, that he is running with full speed towards the destruction of the relationship.   He is in full denial until it is too late, and the relationship is over.  He is responsible for the harm, that he does to the woman by ignoring her warnings.  He believes his delusion of the woman's appropriate role as a commodity more than her attempted explanation about her reality.   

Maybe there should be a Darwin award for the most stupid way to destroy a relationship and to drive a woman away.   

261. Commitment and Pseudo-Honesty

Commitment and Pseudo-Honesty

Commitment requires unrestricted and uninhibited honest communication about the true innermost feelings, based upon mutual trust and enabling mutual support.   

Bonding disabled men often believe themselves to be honest, because they tell no direct lies.    But by hiding things, that would be important for their partner to know, they are not sincere.   When the partner of such a man experiences few or even no lies ever, she trusts his honesty much more than is justified.    This form of pseudo-honesty is a trap and can be very misleading to a committed woman.     Either she wrongly assumes that he is really sincere and what he tells her is all there is and there is nothing hidden.   Or she projects her own commitment upon him, filling the untold gaps with what she takes so much for granted, that she omits to be explicit about it.    Both mistakes often have very painful consequences.

1.  Such men omit telling the woman things, because they perceive themselves as singles with a woman peripherally attached, and therefore they consider a lot as their own private matters and as none of her business.     But a woman, who perceives herself in a committed relationship, feels the need and considers herself as entitled to know.   
As an example, a bonded couples decides together, what to spend their shared resources of money on, while a single man considers his money as his personal property, even when they share expenses, and he perceives it as his unlimited right to buy, whatever he wants to buy, without consulting her.   

There are two varieties of such a disruptive situation:
1.1.   The man does not talk with the woman about important issues, because it does not even occur to him, that it could be important to inform her.    He believes to be telling her everything she has a right to know.   
1.2.   The incompatible situation of a non-bonded man with a committed woman expecting commitment from him leads to conflicts, and he feels it as his right to slyly and sneakily keep information from her to avoid unpleasant arguments.   He is unaware of the fact, that by this method of avoiding conflicts, he also impedes any improvement of the relationship.   

2.   Sometimes bonding disabled men believe to be sincere, because they have some kind of psychological trouble, that either makes them unaware themselves of what they hide from her, or they lie to themselves and then expect the others to share their believe in their own lies.    When they are in denial of unpleasant realities or when they project their own problems upon others, they are dishonest with themselves.   
Narcissists are a good example.   They are emotional weenies behind a mask of bullies on the outside.   They firmly believe in their own grandiosity and expect reverence and adulation even from people, who are more skilled and better educated.    They hide the vulnerable, anxious weeny from themselves and therefore they cannot reveal the truth to a partner.   

In all these cases, there is a vicious circle.    Lack of sincere and unrestricted communication impedes bonding, and lack of bonding impedes sincere and unrestricted communication.  

My mindmate is someone, who reveals his true self to me, who shares his innermost feelings with me, who wants me to know him as he really is, with all his strengths and also all his weaknesses.   He is someone, who can accept support from a partner and who asks for support.   He is someone, who does not feel any need to play a role and hide himself behind a mask.     He is someone, who needs a relationship and a partner, and who is able to admit it.    
My mindmate is someone, who is not only honest by not telling lies, but who is sincere also in not hiding anything from me.  

260. Instincts and the Cognitive Dissonance of Intellectual Men

Instincts and the Cognitive Dissonance of Intellectual Men

This continues entry 256.

Animals and stupid, uneducated men enjoy their indulgence in what their instincts determine them to do, because they are not able to do anything better with themselves.    They are hedonists, because they lack the ability to be Epicureans.    They do not experience instincts as a force in themselves, their identity is determined by their instincts.   They copulate like dogs in the gutter with any consenting female body as a good way of life without even having any awareness of the alternative of considering women as persons available also as companions.   

But not only the alley dogs, but also most other men experience the lack of sexual homeostasis more or less strongly as a cognitive disabling affliction, making them temporarily dysfunctional due to the obsession and compulsion of the need for homeostasis.   

Rationally seen, the mere physiological experience of copulation for the purpose of restoring homeostasis is a very banal, dull and boring activity, if compared with intellectual pursuits.    The true value of physical intimacy is enhancing the bonding and the feeling of belonging together as a committed couple.   But enhancing means, it cannot create bonding, if the bonding is not the result of intellectual and emotional intimacy.  

Those men, who are intelligent, educated, cultivated, are prone and at risk to experience cognitive dissonance between the urges of their instincts and their cognitive interests and abilities.  

Wise mature intellectual men acknowledge that their banal need for restoring sexual homeostasis is an unwelcome affliction, that is detrimental to their intellectual life.    They would not want to waste time an energy to get only homeostasis, this would make their cognitive dissonance worse.   Therefore these men get committed to a companion, so that they have homeostasis as a side effect, while the companionship gives them something much better.   Such men want to enhance the feeling of being bonded for both themselves and their companions, and they appreciate, that this also keeps them in the homeostasis, which they need.   

Bonding disabled men avoid experiencing cognitive dissonance by one or both of the following methods:

1.  They accept the banality of sex by degrading women to instruments and commodities.    They experience the need for sex similar to constipation, and women are not more to them than a laxative.    They buy women's services as they buy the laxative.    This impedes them to experience, perceive and consider women as equals, as companions, they are not able to respect and appreciate the mind and personality of women.  

2.  They are in complete denial of the fact, that sex is dull and banal.   They idealize it as if it were the most beneficial and rewarding purpose of their life.    They identify with their instincts and are proud to be studs.    As absurd as this is, they are proud of their animal instincts.    Whenever they are at risk of experiencing sex as banal, they consider this as a challenge to invest resources into getting more thrill out of it.   
These misguided fools choose a woman not for her emotional and intellectual qualities, but for the amount of infatuation, they can get from her body for a limited time.   After that time, they discard her and replace her by another body, where they get more thrill.   

In their pathetic hunt for sexual thrill these fools pay incredible sums of money to a vast market of selling anything between sex toys and pornography in the vain attempt to get excitement from something too banal for the intellectual needs of mature men.        

As soon as a man is wise and mature enough to acknowledge, that sex by itself is a banality not worth to allow his life to be determined by it, he is ready to become a bonded companion.  

If bonding-disabled men would spend their money not for the temporary thrill sold by the sex business, but on therapy and counseling in how to learn bonding and finding homeostasis as a part of commitment, they would do less damage to themselves and to many of their female victims.    They would even find the happiness, that they can never find, as long as they focus on finding sexual thrill as a pathetic substitute. 

_______________________

I just added a new page with the tilte 'The Relationship Deal'.   I am explaining, what I offer and what I expect in return from a partner, this includes also the topic of homeostasis in a relationship.

254. Procreation and Cognitive Dissonance

Procreation and Cognitive Dissonance

Sometimes there are thoughts, that are so obvious, that they should have occurred to me but just did not, until I read them elsewhere.  

I got this link via a childfree people's mailing list:
http://healthland.time.com/2011/03/04/why-having-kids-is-foolish/print/#ixzz1G2uk2Puc

This articles explains the attitude of parents glorifying and redefining raising children as a rewarding experience and their denial of all the unpleasantness by their attempt to avoid cognitive dissonance.  
This is obvious and logical.   I have been explaining some behaviors before by the avoidance of cognitive dissonance.     Yet it somehow did not occur to me to apply it to procreation.  

But there are some more implications to the attempts of resolving cognitive dissonance:

• The behavior causing cognitive dissonance can be either an individual and personal decision or a general behavior.   
• The decision can be reversible or irreversible.    

The choice of a career is an individual and reversible decision from available alternatives.   When for example someone decides to give up his job as a banker and become an artist, he does this only for himself and not because he thinks that there should be no bankers but only artists.  

The choice to procreate is an irreversible decision.    Once people have children, they are doomed to raise them or at least to pay for them to be raised and taken care of.    They cannot attempt to cope with all the disadvantages of raising children and after a few years decide, that it is enough and time to get rid of the burden.  
The choice to procreate is also not experienced as an individual choice.   Breeders consider themselves as normal, as doing the only right thing.    They do not consider it as a choice with an alternative, but as their determined purpose in life.   They glorify breeding not only for themselves, they also firmly believe this to be true for everybody else.    Also they glorify breeding as being heroes by doing a sometimes unpleasant duty. 

Therefore breeders are not free to fully resolve their cognitive dissonance by reconsidering the decision, their only option is to glorify breeding.   Resolving the cognitive dissonance does not mean, that they can really convince themselves that changing stinking napkins is a joyful and rewarding occupation in itself.   All they can do is repress and deny themselves the full awareness of the true amount of this unpleasantness and glorify instead the fulfillment of an alleged duty.    Therefore their cognitive dissonance cannot really be resolved, only reduced. 

Would they allow themselves to feel fed up with their children and regretting to have them, they would feel guilty and ashamed.  Instead they project their guilt and shame on all those people, who declare that they do not want children.   When breeders attack the childfree with anger, it is the anger at the repressed own regret of breeding not being as rewarding as it appears in their conscious glorification.

246. Women's Conscious and Subconscious Fears

Women's Conscious and Subconscious Fears

This continues entry 245.  

Many men think, that the progress of technology has created so many tools and instruments, that women can compensate for their relative lack of strength.   With modern weapons and tools, women can become soldiers and construction workers.    As long as this concerns competition and cooperation, it is true.   
But even the most women friendly men are oblivious for the fact, that on the individual level of every day life, no technology has changed anything since the age of the cave men.    In any isolated one to one situation, women are as vulnerable and at the men's mercy as ever.  
In every situation, when a women has a chance encounter with a stranger or a man, whom she does not know enough to trust, she is in real danger, if they are at a place, where there are no other people around.   

Luckily enough, I have never been raped, but short of that, I had my share of enough unpleasant experiences, that have taught me the truth about how dangerous men can be.   I told one minor example in entry 119.   It was a scary and stressful situation for me to face the two alternatives of either spending a night on a park bench or sharing a room with an unknown man.    

Men just do not get into this kind of a situation.   

The statistical chance of being attacked may be low.   But every time a man expresses his instinctive inclinations towards a woman's body in a noticeable way, and that happens very often, the woman cannot know, if he has the self-control to stop short of an attack.    She experiences herself at the mercy of a potentially dangerous animal.  
When a man hikes up to some deserted and remote ruins of an old castle on the top of a hill, he can sit there relaxed and enjoy his picnic.   In the same situation, I as a woman alone can never really be relaxed, and when a man appears, I am on alert and I start to get scared.   
When I miss the last bus and have to walk home from the railway station at midnight, I am scared.   

Weapons are not an answer.   They would make life only more risky.   Here in Germany, luckily enough, weapons are strictly controlled.   Most of the average cultivated and decent people have never in their life even had a gun in their hands, except those, who had been soldiers.   
Were this legal here, should a person like me, who hates weapons, train to learn to shoot, because some men are dangerous?   Should I carry a gun to explore ruins?   
Then if I get scared, I would either shoot in panic at someone, who was not really attacking me.  Then I would end up in prison for murder.   If I would hesitate too long, and the man would take the gun from me and then he would be even more dangerous.    And if even every woman runs around with a gun, then the men attempting to attack a woman would also have a gun.   When nobody has a weapon, a woman has at least a chance to run away.   If the man points a gun at a woman, she cannot even run away.   
I am very glad, that normal people in Germany do not have guns, not even at home.  

Men have often no clue, what it means to experience the threat of a life of being a potential prey to predators all the time.   There is a widespread denial of the danger for women, and many women are very naive themselves. 

In the western world, a woman is like an antelope in the savanna, where there are lions, who are allegedly tamed, but not all are.  
In the islamic world, there is much more awareness for the women's danger, but the prey is punished by being locked away and made walk under a tent, while the predators are allowed the freedom.    

They put the antelopes in the cages, while the lions are free.  

In the USA, there are those ghettos, where sometimes only people of one skin color do live.  Any person looking differently is in real danger to be attacked by just entering the ghetto.   But they have the choice to keep out of the ghetto.   

For a woman, the entire world is a men dominated ghetto.    

238. Chemistry and Subconscious Instinctive Communication - 3

Chemistry and Subconscious Instinctive Communication - 3   

This continues entry 236.   By the way, my limiting the considerations of instincts to the effects on heterosexual interactions does not imply the non-existence of the effects of the interactions between males.   As a woman, this is outside my scope of interest.

The instincts are the same in modern times as described for our prehistoric ancestors.   Men feeling strong urges for sexual homeostasis approach women, people develop chemistry as a consequence of reducing the distance between them, and the result is copulation for the restoring of the sexual homeostasis of both.  
In my prehistoric scenario, the male initiated the process by entering the female's social space.   In modern times, circumstances bring people into each other's social and personal space all the time without them having any intention of mating.   In both situations, the instincts are triggered automatically by the approaching of two bodies, but only modern people can know by cognition, if the approaching was by choice for the purpose of mating, or an unavoidable consequence of our crowded modern life.   

People in the crowded modern life situation therefore need mechanisms, how to cope with the unwanted sharing of their social and personal space.   Desensitization and denial are these mechanisms, and they make a huge difference between our ancestors and modern societies.   Due to these mechanisms, there is no conscious perception for the working of chemistry between two individuals, until the strength of the chemistry reaches a threshold.  

But things are more complex.

1.  Checking without restoring distance can lead to attraction or aversion.
In our ancestors' times, the automatic process of instinctive mating had two options after approaching, either reciprocal checking and mating or distancing to avoid mating.    When the requirement of modern life impedes restoring enough distance in spite of an inclination to do so, a woman feels molested by men's onesided checking. 
Therefore, desensitization and denial serve two purposes.   They avoid low level attraction by chemistry to be kept out of consciousness, but also low level aversion to male chemistry checking out of a woman's consciousness.   Low level welcome chemistry is often mistaken for platonic sympathy, low level feeling molested is often mistaken for platonic antipathy.    

2.  There are individual differences of the magnitude of this threshold.  
For the most desensitized, the threshold is so high, that once chemistry is strong enough to rise over the threshold, this immediately triggers behavioral drives towards copulation.    
For more sensitive people, especially women, the threshold is low enough to perceive danger or aversion much earlier, either when feeling molested or when being fully aware of very good reasons of not succumbing to chemistry.   This lower threshold gives more sensitive people more options for appropriate actions. 

3.  The checking instinct triggered by proximity consists of an active and a passive component.   The passive component is the ability to perceive, consciously or subconsciously, when being checked.   The active component is the own checking, when driven by a need either to procreate or to gain sexual homeostasis or both.   
There are considerable intra-individual and inter-individual differences in the innate strength of both components.    I already described the differences between breeders and hypoanimalistic people in previous entries.   

4. Desensitization and denial of the instinctive forces have the consequence, that our modern western societies are afflicted with several dangerous collective delusions, which have led to social norms, that are detrimental for the more sensitive and less instinctive persons.  
Collective Delusion 1. When the true force of instincts is not consciously perceived, they are underestimated as either not existent, very weak and/or no causing harm.  
Collective Delusion 2. The ability to rule over instincts successfully by self-control and willpower is overestimated. 
Because of these delusions, the powerful, the most instinct driven, the most desensitized are forcing suffering and harm upon the sensitive, the hypoanimalistic, the non-breeders, the egalitarians, the epicureans.     

More in another entry.  

236. Chemistry and Subconscious Instinctive Communication - 2

Chemistry and Subconscious Instinctive Communication - 2

When I wrote entry 232, I had omitted the important factor of personal space.    I already wrote, that I consider it as impossible, that two person of the opposite gender can have a relaxed platonic friendship, if for at least one of them the instinctive attraction to the chemistry of the other's body is so strong, that it overrides the denial and gets conscious.  

I am using the word chemistry in the sense of dating sites, where it means the physical attraction of two bodies with the conscious result of feeling passion and infatuation.   Chemistry is the result of the checking of all visual, auditory and olfactory stimuli, that indicate good genes and immunocompetence for having healthy offspring. 

People have an instinctive urge to keep invaders out of their personal bubble around themselves.    The size of the bubble differs between individuals and between cultures. 

"Intimate space, at 0 to 1.5 feet, is the closest distance possible and is appropriate when engaging in activities such as dancing, hugging, or having sexual intercourse. Personal distance falls between 1.5 and 4 feet, and is used when communicating with those that one is comfortable with and knows well. Social distance is used when interacting with strangers and ranges from 4 to 12 feet of spacing. "

http://www.psychwiki.com/wiki/Personal_Space

I consider it as probable, that the three layers of the bubble correspond to three different phases of the mating process.   In the social space the visual and auditory checking takes place, in the personal space the olfactory checking, and in the intimate space all activities leading to the copulation.

The prototypical dynamics of mating behavior can be described as a process following a pattern.   For a description I am assuming our ancestors of a million or more years ago, still not very advanced in the realm of cognition and language, in a situation of enough food and enough space to live.    Male instinctive urges are stronger than those of females.

"l can imagine myself being comfortable and enjoing 'casual' sex with different partners" agreed 48 percent of men and 12 percent of women in another survey of 4901 Australians (Bailey & others, 2000).

http://159.191.14.141/.docs/pg/400/rid/13333/f/Development_1.pdf

As a consequence of this difference, I consider the males initiating the process of the first mating encounter between a female and a male.  

1.  A male feels a need to regain sexual homeostasis, therefore he enters the social space of a female.
2.  The female either moves away or they start reciprocally the process of visual and auditory checking.
3.  When one is not satisfied with the result, he or she moves away.
4.  When both are satisfied with the result, the male enters her personal space.
5.  Here they reciprocally start the process of olfactory checking the information from the pheromones.
6.  When one is not satisfied with the result, he or she moves away.
7.  When both are satisfied with the result, they have established chemistry.  This triggers the sexual instinct in both.
8.  The male enters her intimate space and they copulate.   

In these steps, only the first step is caused by an innate urge of the male.   The checking is an instinctive reaction to the distance inside the space, the reaction cannot be stopped while the distance is maintained, it can only be stopped by enlarging the distance.   
 

This is only describing the dynamics of the instincts, independent of what happens afterwards.    This process can take a long time, it can be interrupted and resumed, for example in the case of danger by predators.  

This process can have variations, depending on the circumstances.   When there is male domination, then it is only a onesided checking for chemistry:   The male invades the woman's space without her consent, he checks chemistry from his side only and coerces her to procreate.

I think, that the same instincts are still virulent in modern people, only their expression is modified by different factors, due to the evolution of cognition.
1.  Wearing clothes and cleanliness reduce the impact of the visual and olfactory stimuli.
2. People are to some degree able to be conscious of instinctive impulses.  They can make conscious decisions in contradiction to them, because they are aware of the consequences.
3.  Living in social density forces people to regularly accept situations of sharing the personal space with strangers or people, whom they do not want to be near to.   Sometimes this is forced upon people, who have no choice.
4.  Social rules, norms and laws focus on prevention or punishment to restrict detrimental consequences of the instincts.
5.  Cognition enables some persons to have an identity, that chooses a mate not by chemistry, but by intellectual and emotional criteria. 


In the process described above, if there is any chemistry, then the development is a gradual process, automatically starting at the male's entering the female's social space.    In a society, where people are forced to share their personal space with strangers as part of everyday life, sometimes for hours in public transport and crowds, this would have serious detrimental effects.    The lack of distance would trigger the permanent checking.    I am omitting the consideration of the permanent aggression between men in each other's bubble.
Therefore people have adapted to the temporary loss of personal space with the mechanisms of desensitization and denial.   Thus they are able to avoid conscious perception of any chemistry below a threshold.    This threshold can be individually higher or lower. 

Denial means, that the instincts do check and subconsciously perceive the signals from the other body, but as long as they are weaker than the threshold, they are not reaching consciousness.    Denial can also be collective, when the majority of people shares the threshold and denies the existence of anything below it.

But there is at least one exception, the Metro of Mexico City.   In the rush hours, the first wagon of every train is reserved for women and children.   The authorities there are not in denial, that it is not correct to expose women to men misbehaving due to their stimulated instincts.

Desensitization means, that the instincts check subconsciously for chemistry, but when the strength of the stimuli is below the threshold, the instincts stop checking or postpone rechecking and register it as no chemistry.   Desensitization can grow with habituation to being in crowded situations. 
Example:  Incest inhibition by desensitization.    Children, who grow up together, do rarely develop chemistry, even when they are not genetically related as when adopted.   But if genetic siblings only meet as adults, they can develop chemistry.   There was a tragic case of a brother and sister, who had children together and the man was put to jail for this. 

Desensitization and denial are unavoidable in all densely populated life situations.    But they has very detrimental consequences.    This will be continued in another entry.