598. Commodification And Delayed Gratification

598.  Commodification And Delayed Gratification

This continues entry 597.

When one partner of an egalitarian, bonded and caring couple expresses a wish to the other partner, this is based upon the realistic expectation and trust, that the partner is motivated to gratify the wish, if and when it is possible at any unspecified time in the future.   

This includes the awareness, that the partner has a mental to do list, where the wish gets a place according to the urgency, priority and circumstances of all the other list items.   The delayed gratification is trusted to be available without any exertion of control or power. 

When a man commodifies a woman, the situation is very different.   A man using a utility like a vacuum cleaner expects a simple dichotomy: The machine either functions immediately after pressing the button or not at all, in which case it is broken.   Even programmable appliances like a video recorder are under his full control, they start to function at exactly the time, which he has determined and can thus predict.   

The commodifying man expects the same dichotomy also from the woman, whom he confounds with a utility:   
When he demands something from a woman, he expects her immediate compliance.   If she intends to gratify his wish but with a delay, he automatically misinterprets this as a complete refusal and experiences her as dysfunctional.   By confounding her with a utility, he is unable to appreciate her as a person with an own mind.   He neither trusts to get anything from her without having full control nor does he consider her able to accept his wish and gratify it later.  
He confounds the delay of gratification with a complete refusal and reacts with pressure upon her.   He is oblivious, that she would comply immediately, were this feasible.    Pressure does not make it any more feasible, therefore the pressure achieves nothing.  The motivation to do favors for the trusting and patient partner are an ingredient of a caring relationship.  

Reacting with pressure upon an only alleged refusal destroys her motivation to gratify his wishes.   By using pressure he earns a real refusal and gets less than what he would get with patience and trust.      Pressure deteriorates the relationship.   

597. Commodification And Wanting

597.   Commodification And Wanting

When a sane, mature and rational person declares to want something, this is an expression of a mere wish and of nothing more.   Wishing does not imply any assumption concerning the availability or feasibility nor does it imply any claim to get it.

Attempts towards gratification are an independent next step.   Such attempts are limited by the full recognition of and awareness for the rights of others and by the moral obligation to refrain from harming others and from usurping and seizing.     

The rational method to get gratification is earning it.  When it comes as a gift, it is received with gratitude and not taken for granted.
 

Immature and selfish jerks have a blatant delusional fallacy in their thinking.  When they say 'I want x', they really mean to say 'I demand x, because I believe myself to be entitled to get x immediately'.  They confound wanting something with the entitlement to automatically get it.  They believe, that everybody and the society owe to given to them, whatever they want and when they want it.  

Relationships are entered for the purpose of meeting specific needs.   The difference between mere wishes and claims of alleged entitlement contributes to the difference between egalitarian bonded couples and asymmetrical commodification.   

A bonded, caring, considerate couple feels reciprocally responsible for the careful use of their pooled resources.   Those expenses have priority, of which the benefits are shared by both partners   Any expenses only benefiting one partner are secondary.  Shared decision are based upon agreement as being fair.  Reciprocal gratification of wishes is perceived with gratitude as a gift or as a favor.     

The commodification of women is one special case of the fallacy of mistaking wanting as an automatic justification for claims, demands, coercion and usurpation.  A jerk informing a commodified woman of what he wants feel automatically also entitled to get it immediately. 

• Commodifying men experience and consider it as their baseline of normality, if they always get everything immediately whenever they demand it.   
  They take all received benefits for granted.  They are blind to recognize, when someone does something for them by choice and by a voluntary decision.   They do not know, what favors are.  They do not know gratitude.  
  Any expression of love, care and affection by voluntarily doing something for such a man is lost and not recognized as such.  Whatever gratification he receives, he always confounds it as if it were his due and as if she were only doing her duty. 
  
• When the reaction to commodifying men's demands is refusal,
  
  • they seize their alleged due by hook or by crook, by domination, coercion, bullying, if they have the power to do so.
  • they get extremely angry, aggressive, frustrated and unpleasant, when they lack the power to enforce gratification.

591. Commodification And (Cyber-)Stalking

591.  Commodification And (Cyber-)Stalking

Commodification while the relationship lasts and stalking after its end are connected, because they are both caused by the same distorted attitude towards women.     

People are protected by the law against real life threats from real life stalking, cyberstalking without any physical danger is a more subtle, but nevertheless a form of abuse.  There are many other kinds of cyberstalking, the following concerns the variety based upon commodification.   

When egalitarian, mature, rational and responsible people discover to have become involved by mistake, due to not having enough in common or to having irresolvable conflicts, they communicate until they end the relationship by a shared decision.

When egalitarian, mature, rational and responsible people later suggest a reconciliation, they do this based upon the insight and motivation to offer a drastic change of their own behavior.  They do not approach the ex-partner with demands while they offer nothing.    In the case, that they cannot or do not accept to change their own behavior, they recognize the final failure of the relationship.   They have the consideration of ending all contact and allow the ex-partner to forget and to heal.


Men who commodify women are neither egalitarian, nor mature, nor responsible.  They are also not rational, else they would know, that relationships are doomed by their commodification. 
Commodification is based upon the asymmetrical attitude, even entitlement and grandiosity delusion, that women exists for nothing more except to serve men's needs, wishes and whims at their convenience.    

Commodifying men believe to have been born with a free flatrate for being served with unlimited benefits by women.    

This can lead to two patterns of disastrous dynamics.   

• Pattern 1.  Commodifying men hurt women so much by domination, disrespect, coercion, control, disregard, objectification, until they are devastated and run to save themselves.
• Pattern 2. Woman having enough self-esteem and self-confidence to resist enforced commodification get dumped and discarded as being flawed, defective and dysfunctional.   

In both pattern, men do not get, what they expect according to their entitlement delusion:  Utilities always serving their needs but not asking or expecting anything in return.   Nor do they elicit women's agreement with the men's delusion of being perfect, while anybody else is to be blamed for men's every dissatisfaction.  

Cyberstalkers are angry and frustrated men.   They reproach fate, life, a deity, cosmic power or any other vague entity for failing to give them, what they feel entitled to:  Complying and submitting women.   

• In the first pattern, they are angry for having lost a satisfying commodity.  They demand to be given back, what they consider as their rightful possession.     
• In the second pattern, they feel defrauded by having been given a dysfunctional commodity.   They feel entitled and demand not to get a discarded insufficient  possession back, but to get it first fixed, repaired and improved.       

Some cyberstalker write angry diatribes full of grudges, complaints and reproaches, claiming what they believe to be entitled to and declaring their outrage of either having lost it or of having been given only a deficient and dysfunctional substitute.    These diatribes are implicitly written to the entity, not to the woman.  They are angry with the entity, whom they consider as responsible for their frustration.   

When someone buys a faulty machine, he blames the shop keeper, not the machine in the case of a defect.   But there is no such entity, neither generally nor as someone owing them anything.   So there is nobody to which to address complaining diatribes.   Lacking any better valve for their anger, cyberstalkers misaddress and displace their diatribes to the incommodifiable women.    These cyberstalkers are like the legendary man, who was dissatisfied with his inability to use his computer, so in a burst of anger he shot a gun at it.      

This is not only a fallacy, it is completely irrational and leads nowhere.    Cyberstalkers waste their time and achieve nothing except making themselves repulsive and aversive.      At the moment of breaking up, the dumped or driven away commodified women may have moved on with still ambiguous feelings.  The annoying and obnoxious stalking behavior helps the process of killing, whatever positive feelings may have been left.  

Stalking has several effects upon the victims.

Emotional:

• Being reminded of what the victims want to forget slows their healing.  Poking into someone's emotional wounds for the purpose to delay healing is adding more cruelty to the previous abuse.   It adds repulsion to the estrangement.
• Being triggered to relive memories of the abuse during the relationship is painful.
• Post relationship harassments add to feelings of being ashamed for having been involved with an unworthy and deranged man.

Cognitive:

• Men confirm by cyberstalking their being good riddance and not valuable enough to yearn for.
• The repetition of grudges confirms their magnitude and puts emphasis upon those differences, which indicate a mismatch.   
• The vindictiveness of efforts to prevent the victims' healing clearly indicate the cyberstalkers' unworthiness.
• The irrationality of stalking without benefits not even for the stalkers themselves indicates the men's lacking of intelligence and/or sanity.  

Stalking is paradox.  Even if the cyberstalkers would really want the women back, their behavior nevertheless drives them only further away.   The cyberstalkers reassure women of their unworthiness by adding some more to their previous reasons for rejection.

549. Citizenship - The Lottery Of Life

549.   Citizenship - The Lottery Of Life 

A matchmaking site asks as one of many also the following question:

The life of one of your fellow citizens is more valuable than the lives of ten foreigners.

True
False

For an egalitarian like me the attitude expressed by such a statement is repulsive.  It is the lottery of life, into what citizenship, to what parents and with what genes people are born.   Nothing thereof is anybody's personal merit.

Nationalism, chauvinism and patriotism are irrational.   Being proud of one's citizenship is the unfounded pride of something not individually earned. The rational justification for being proud of something is the real achievement obtained by the investment of efforts.   

The citizenship of any country has benefits and disadvantages, and the lottery of life imposes both upon people.   It is irrational to be proud of having any citizenship for whatever reasons while maintaining the denial of reasons to be ashamed of it.    As far as the benefits outweigh the disadvantages, having a specific citizenship is rather a reason to appreciate being a winner in the lottery of life.  

I am German, but this does not justify neither reasons to be proud nor to be ashamed as an individual, no matter the impact, which having the German citizenship has had upon my life:
1.  A university degree is considered everybody's right in the case of sufficient intelligence.   When I studied, this right not only included free tuition, but also a grant to live on to all students, whose parents were not rich.    
I owe my degree to my German citizenship.   In many other countries like the USA, where education is a merchandise, I may have spent my life as an unhappy cashier at a supermarket.  
2.  I grew up between people, who had either participated in or at least passively enabled the Nazi terror and atrocities.   Some of my teachers had been soldiers, and I was ignorant of what the majority of adults around me had done, while I have never personally known anybody of those, who had resisted.  I suspected every adult to be guilty of having caused harm to innocent people.   As a consequence I grew up with a deep distrust and disrespect towards the entire generations before me.  This influence led me to define morals predominantly as the avoidance of harming others.      

Being a German citizen gave me both benefits and disadvantages.   But neither of it can be attributed to my person.  
Getting my degree paid for by the German government was not my personal merit.  
The guilt of German history is not my personal guilt.  

Nationalism as a justification of attributing value to individual persons is obsolete and needs to be overcome.    The only moral justification to distinguish between individuals' value can be derived by an assessment of the harm done by them to others.   

Therefore here is my personal statement:  

The life of one person, who never harms others, is more valuable than the lives of millions, who do harm. 

543. The Symmetry Or Asymmetry Of Men's Basic Attitude Determines Their Behavior Towards Women

543.   The Symmetry Or Asymmetry Of Men's Basic Attitude Determines Their Behavior Towards Women

In my reply to a comment on entry 540, I explained, how I can only prevent to be harmed and abused in a relationship by the reciprocal conscious choice of a partner, who realistically can expect to get his needs met without hurting or bullying me.   

I have outlined extensively in this blog, how I need to be treated and what treatment and behaviors are not acceptable.    This serves the purpose of enabling any interested man to check reciprocal suitability without hurting.   

This leads on to the problem of predicting the probability of being hurt as early as possible during any contact.    It is futile and even ridiculous to ask any man the direct question, if he commodifies and abuses women.    No man ever would reply in the affirmative.   Some men are not even aware of their own hidden real attitude.   What they believe to be justifiable behavior is experienced as abuse by women.

A man's real basic attitude towards women is more reliably inferred from his behavior.  Basic attitudes are usually congruent with the strength and predominance of instinctive needs and urges.   These attitudes are invisible or hidden, but the behavior is an observable expression of the attitudes.  

Men's basic attitudes towards women are either symmetrical or asymmetrical.  

A symmetrical attitude can be expected, when a man's innate needs are balanced, when his conscious non-physical needs for intellectual and emotional intimacy, activities and a safe haven shared with a bonded companion are at least as strong as his physical instinctive needs for homeostasis.    

Experiencing only or predominantly those instinctive needs leads to the asymmetry of the basic attitude.   

1.   Asymmetrical basic attitude.   

Commodification, objectification and peripherisation are asymmetrical varieties of the basic attitude, they all determine men to hurt and abuse women.  
These attitudes are expressed by the secondary attitude of implicit or explicit claims of entitlement, which are inappropriate, because they aim at acquiring onesided benefits only for these men.   Feeling entitled to benefits not otherwise available they also feel entitled to hurting and harming behaviors as the method to acquire the benefits.   
1.1.  In the case of the entitlement delusion, abusers are oblivious, that what they believe to be their entitlement, is considered and perceived as outrageous and preposterous by others.    Therefore it does not even occur to them to hide their entitlement delusion, to the contrary they are surprised, when the women disagree.    They get angry and aggressive bullies and they consider any woman as defective and flawed, who refuses to let them have, what they feel entitled to get.   They are the least hazard to women by being easily recognizable.
1.2.  The entitlement is combined with the awareness, that others disagree.   This makes them a hazard, because they use manipulations, tricks and pretense to get, what they feel entitled to but which is otherwise not available.   

1.3.   Sometimes men are not aware, that their behavior expresses entitlement.   Their fallacy of believing to be in agreement with a woman's symmetrical expectations makes them also a hazard.   More about this follows below.

2.  Symmetrical basic attitude.

Egalitarianism and bonded monogamy are varieties of a symmetrical basic attitude, which determines a man to have more reasons to protect a woman against being hurt and harmed than to inflict it upon them.    
These basic attitudes are expressed by secondary attitudes, as are for example responsibility, consideration, commitment as including obligations, caring, reliability, predictability, trustworthiness.    People often declare these attitudes explicitly as forming their value system, which they identify with.   But even without being consciously chosen, these secondary attitude determine specific behaviors.    


Unfortunately, things are more complicated.     The behavior is usually a fairly good indication of and congruent with the real basic attitude.   
But any verbal declaration of secondary attitudes cannot be relied upon, because they are influenced considerably by social, cultural and educational influences.   Someone's mere claim to be responsible does not imply, that he really knows, what responsibility means and what behavior expresses responsibility.      

As a consequence, when a man agrees with or even offers proactively to behave according to specific secondary attitudes, this is far from a guarantee for a woman to really be treated according to her expectations.   
In the case, that the man is not purposefully manipulating her, this is caused by the man using words without comprehending their full and correct meaning, which eludes him due to his lacking the corresponding basic attitude.   The man agrees with something, because he knows it to be expected from him or as the condition for being accepted.     But he agrees to give, what he has misunderstood as the meaning of the word, not what the woman expects by using the same word.   


Commitment is an example.     

Entitlement and feeling obligations are mutually exclusive.    When someone feels entitled to a benefit, this means he feels no obligation to give something back.  Whenever someone already considers something as his property or his due, he sees no logical reason to earn or acquire it by a deal.
Accepting an obligation is the contrary, it is the recognition of another person's entitlement to get benefits in return for what is given as part of a deal.

1.   A man with an asymmetrical basic attitude misunderstands commitment as a method of establishing entitlement by ascertaining his control over a woman.    This serves to get benefits from the woman at his convenience.  

2.   A man with a symmetrical basic attitude agrees on a deal concerning the benefits of the relationship for the woman as equally valid as his own.   He accepts commitment as including the obligation to fulfill his part of the deal in return for the benefits he gets.   

Both use the same word, commitment, but they do not mean the same.    When a man gets subjectively committed by feeling entitled and a woman subjectively gets committed with the expectations of a man being bound by obligations towards her, this will lead to serious suffering for the woman.   


The symmetry or asymmetry of the basic attitude depends on fairly stable innate traits as are the instinctive and the intellectual needs.  As long as men succeed to enforce getting benefits from commodification, they have no logical reason to give up their privileges.    Therefore it is rather improbably that a man's asymmetrical attitude changes into a symmetrical one.   

Appropriate treatment of a woman comes only natural, when it is grounded in a man's symmetrical basic attitude, while a man with an asymmetrical attitude is innately oblivious of how to treat a woman without hurting her.   

Such a man has a serious problem even when he is so much attracted to a specific woman, that this motivates him to attempt to treat her how she wants to be treated as the price for being accepted.    

He has not clue, how to behave, unless he gets a recipe for every situation.   He experiences, that every behavior, which is logical for him under the premise of his entitlement, fails and is rejected by someone, who expects him to fulfill obligations.

Whenever he is ignorant of the suitable recipe, he is prone to relapse to the inappropriate hurting behavior derived from his alleged entitlement.   
This causes a very fragile situation:  The woman is not respected as an equal, she is only a commodity temporarily treated as if she were appreciated and respected.  
This can only last, as long as this gives him subjectively more benefits then bullying her to usurp his alleged entitlement to benefits.   

She cannot be happy, because happiness requires to be perceived as an equal partner in a symmetrical relationship.  But due to his relapses she is fully aware of the indignation and degradation of not really being appreciated and respected, even though his attempts create the intermittent appearance as if. 

A woman's happiness requires a man's symmetrical basic attitude.     

471. Communication By Correspondence

Communication By Correspondence

This continues entry 470.   

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

470. Men's Innate Inclinations

470.   Men's Innate Inclinations

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

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

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


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

1.1.  The jerk

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

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

1.2.  The emotional moron

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

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

1.3.  The unconcerned

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

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

1.4.  The egalitarian

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

469. Gender Roles, Instincts, Alleged Flaws And Inferiority

Gender Roles, Instincts, Alleged Flaws And Inferiority

This continues entry 468, where I mentioned the asymmetrical constellations of lacking reciprocity in the significance of another person.   The same allegation of flaws indicating inferiority is very often not considered or perceived as being the same but differing, when the target is either a woman or a man.   There are double standards concerning what treatment is pertinent and suitable for women but not for men.      

In the situation or disagreement with being treated as inferior by another man, a man often reacts to the insult with aggression and anger.   This is considered as only a man's appropriate reaction.  

When women are treated or considered as inferior by men, they are supposed and expected to react with acquiescence.  There is a general pattern of how easily men are prone to presume and accept a woman's inferiority without hesitation, doubt or further investigation, no matter, what the woman herself does, says, thinks or wants. 

This unfortunate pattern can be traced back to the combination of subconscious instinctive urges and more conscious gender roles serving those instincts. 

1.   Subconscious instincts

When a woman wants a companion for a relationship of two equal partners, this means for her the crucial and indispensable condition of mutual respect and appreciation.   It excludes alleging flaws, because this implies disrespect.   For such a woman, perceiving flaws or being considered flawed are indications of lacking equality and this impedes to get involved.   For her, it is equality or nothing.  
For many men, there are two levels, two alternative relationship concepts.   Even a man, who prefers to have an equal companion, does not automatically evaluate a woman as unsuitable, when he consciously perceives her as intellectually inferior, either by fact or allegation.   Instead, often instincts take control over him.   While he does not expect emotional and intellectual benefits from someone considered inferior, his instincts still react to physical attraction, and he continues to pursue her for the benefits from using her body as a utility.  

For any woman, who restricts her choice of whom to get involved with by her evaluation of being two equals, this leads to a tragic mismatch, whenever the man fails her expectations and instead degrades and devalues her as a utility due to her alleged flaws.  He subjectively feels as justified to use her as she feels justified to expect being perceived and treated as an equal partner.      

2.  Gender roles

Social gender roles represent the inclination and needs of the majority of the population.   These roles prescribe those behaviors, which are most successfully enabling this majority to live in accordance with their subconscious instincts.  This means that gender roles favor procreation.    
Gender roles therefore standardize behavior in favor of average people.   When applied to and forced upon people, who are different and not average, this is often very detrimental.   

Gender roles are installed into people's brains mostly during childhood and youth.   The gender roles still prevalent in my own generation here in Germany were based upon the asymmetry between the male breadwinner and the dependent housewife.  
These gender roles unfortunately confound innate inferiority and secondary inferiority caused by the lack of chances to develop the innate capacities, talents and skills.   
In those days men were on average better educated, better instructed, more skilled than women.   Therefore statistically, men and women more often than not found themselves in an asymmetrical situation of interaction, where the unfortunate women were intellectually inferior independent of their intelligence and their potentials.  
A woman wasting her life away as a housewife and mother was deprived of becoming an equal partner apt to participate in intellectual communication with a man, who was enabled and encouraged to cultivate his brain.  

By experiencing this circumstantial female inferiority, men were misled to generalize it to all women and to then treat them all indiscriminately as inferior, losing any perception to notice the exceptions.   Women were also brainwashed to expect all men as superior without even checking the reality of this myth.   Thus women omitted to correct the male prejudice and men got reinforced even more in their false belief in the general and innate female inferiority.  

Habituation and desensitization perpetuated this imbalanced situation.  Too many men continue to take women's inferiority and their acquiescence therewith for granted and natural, without consciously doubting this.  
In spite of the brainwashed average women's apparent or even real acquiescence, these gender roles are very harmful to those women, who are not average and not brainwashed.   The same attitudes and behavior, that are suitable or at least not harmful to average women, are often very hurting for egalitarian educated women.  

468. Reactions To Alleged Flaws

468.   Reactions To Alleged Flaws

The topic of entry 466 was the implication, that ascribing a flaw means the indirect claim of the allegedly flawed person's inferiority.   There is a clear distinction between a friendly and respectful noticing of someone's peculiarities and the devaluation of ascribing a flaw. 

1.  My definition of a flaw:

A flaw is a peculiar attribute, that is   

• detrimental to the own life of the flawed person or
• detrimental to the targets of flawed behavior

1.1.  A flaw is not trivial. 
It is a significant detriment according to the evaluation or experience of the one calling it a flaw.  Without being detrimental, it is a peculiarity and not a flaw.   Ascribing a flaw is a devaluation, calling something a peculiarity is not. 
Alleging a flaw without consent is always an insult, even when someone recognizes having the peculiar attribute, but disagrees to evaluate it as detrimental.  
When the alleged flaw concerns attributes or traits contributing to the person's identity, then it is not only an insult, but a rejection of the person. 

1.2.  There are detriments, that people cannot agree about, unless they share some basic values and attitudes.  

1.2.1.  A good example is the reciprocal disrespect of christians and atheists.  
For an atheist like me, a christian is flawed, because his behavior is often detrimental to others not sharing his beliefs.   Christians' belief in the reward in the afterlife is their justification to hurt others.  

Christians believe atheists to be detrimental to themselves as they are believed to suffer in hell.  

Atheists and christians can never agree on who is flawed, because they derive the logic for their mutual evaluation from incompatible premises. 

1.2.2.   When people share basic values and they are mutually significant as equals, then flaws are experienced as disruptive for their relationship.  This goes both ways, because they want to respect and to be respected.  Apparent flaws are a problem to be solved.   Both partners communicate, until there is no more misunderstanding and misinterpretation leading to the allegation of non-existing flaws.  

1.2.3.   There is a difference between permanent irreversible and temporary flaws.  

A person's real but temporary flaws like irritating bad habits or states of stress can be overcome, when the flawed partner accepts support from the other.    This requires agreement concerning the detriments and disadvantages of the flawed behavior.  Based upon this agreement, the partners can cooperate towards reducing the flaw and restoring equality. 
Innate promiscuity is an example of an irreversible flaw.    Innate promiscuity is an incurable detriment to any person with the quality of innate monogamy.    

2.  The target's reaction to the allegation of a flaw depends on the social roles and the reciprocal personal significance.

2.1.  People are usually not bothered about flaws alleged by insignificant persons.   Not sharing basic values or the awareness of each other's disrespectful opinion impedes any attraction between people.  They do not become significant. 

2.2.  There are specific problems of disruptive entanglement in family constellations, where the significance precedes the allegation of flaws.  Examples are siblings, of whom one is a christian and the other an atheist or one is a soldier and the other a pacifist.

2.3.  Situations of asymmetrical significance can be very painful.   People wish to be reciprocally considered and treated as equals and as significant by those, who are significant for them.   A person's significance determines, how much his allegations of flaws are experienced as insults, humiliations, degradations and indignities.     It is a very disruptive situation, when a person does not reciprocate his significance to another, but instead claims his superiority by alleging flaws and expecting acquiescence.   
    

2.3.1.  Between men, such an insult often provokes aggression, fighting and even bloodshed. 

2.3.2.  When women are men's targets of the same insult, they are supposed and expected to react with acquiescence.  The implications of this upon women as partners in a relationship or when choosing a mate are the topic of the next entry.  

466. Implications Of Alleging Flaws And Faults

Implications Of Alleging Flaws And Faults

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

456. The Harm Of Asymmetrical Relationships

The Harm Of Asymmetrical Relationships

A symmetrical committed bonded relationship between egalitarian partners is based upon the combination of physical, emotional and intellectual intimacy in balanced reciprocity.  

In asymmetrical relationships one partner has privileges and the other has disadvantages.   

There are three kinds of asymmetry due to an imbalance, that is often very painful for a woman:

1.  Physical asymmetry.  
A man has a polygamous harem.    
A man cheats on his wife.

2.  Emotional asymmetry. 
One partner offers and needs emotional exclusivity of reciprocally being the most important and most significant person on earth for the other.   The partner refuses to concede such exclusivity.   He is only available on the condition of sharing his emotional ties with outsiders, often his children and/or his ex-partners.

3.  Intellectual asymmetry. 
Physical and emotional asymmetry are easily recognizable, because other persons are involved as intruders and obstacles. Intellectual asymmetry is more subtle, less easily recognizable.  It can be very damaging, even though the man may be convinced to be a considerate and moral person.  
Intellectual asymmetry is the consequence of attitudes concerning the perception of the role, qualities and place for the partner in life.  The disadvantaged partner offers and expects more, than what the other is interested and motivated to give and to share.  

Men are generally prone to cause asymmetry in relationships because of their subconscious animal instincts.  Too often a man feels justified to initiate physical involvement with a woman by nothing better than the mere infatuation with her body.   He even is ignorant, that this is not, what the woman wants.   

For a woman with self-respect, this is not a sufficient reason to agree and comply.   She allows him access to her body, only when she not only considers him as suitable to be her companion, with whom she wants to share everything for the rest of her life, but when she also is convinced, that this is reciprocal.  
Unfortunately, women are often mislead and mistaken.  Instead of becoming appreciated egalitarian companions, they get themselves into the situation of onesided and very painful disadvantages.

Even if a man commits to be monogamous, and even if he forces no intruders upon her as a source of physical and emotional asymmetry, this does not automatically ascertain intellectual intimacy and symmetry.   The woman wants a companion based upon equality, she wants to share everything with him.   But If he is satisfied with her nightly availability in bed, while she is of not other significance for his life and he has not wish to share anything except her body, he is the one, who gets, what he wants, but this is far from what she wants and needs.   

The one, who wants less is always the one, who has the power to dominate and to enforce his conditions.   When he only wants her body, this is a form of asymmetry, that makes her helpless and defenseless.  
The woman in an asymmetrical relationship is powerless to make it symmetrical.   When a man only perceives her body and is oblivious and in denial of all her invisible qualities, then there is nothing, that she can do.   No matter, how much she deserves being appreciated and valued as an equal, significant, trusted companion, she has no power to get, what she needs and wants, if the man is not able to perceive, notice and value her qualities.  

When the woman wants to share decisions, but the man does instead, what he wants and forces his decisions upon her, he has the power to do so, but she has no power to stop him.   She suffers.
When the woman wants to share all innermost feelings with a mindmate, he has the power to refuse to communicate.   She has no power to make him listen nor to make him tell her, what he feels and thinks.   She suffers.  
When the woman wants to share time and activities with the man, but he prefers to spend his time without her, he has the power to go and leave her behind, whenever he wants.   She has no power to hold him back and make him stay with her.   She suffers.
When the woman wants to be mutually significant and to be the most important person, but the man treats her as a commodity and as insignificant, he has the power to do so, but she is powerless to defend herself.  She suffers.

An egalitarian woman with self-respect suffers humiliation, indignity, degradation, disrespect, devaluation, depreciation, when she is powerless in an asymmetrical relationship.   When the circumstances make her powerless, she cannot fight for what is out of her reach and not obtainable.     
But suffering without fighting does not imply mental acquiescence, even though it may superficially appear as if she would accept her disadvantages.  The man, satisfied in an asymmetrical relationship, is often oblivious and in denial.   Her silent experiencing of outrage and indignation cause devastation, but the suffering is hidden behind resignation and apparent submission.   The relationship is toxic and the woman has no other way out except leaving the relationship.

So men have the power to choose wisely, if they are aware of this, before it is too late:  

They can make a relationship symmetrical by giving a woman, what she really needs and wants: The respect and appreciation for a person in a balance of giving and sharing physical, emotional and intellectual intimacy.

They can enforce an asymmetrical relationship upon a woman, profit from this, as long as possible, until they have devastated one woman and move on to the next.
Women have only the choice of prevention, they can refuse to enter a relationship, when the risk of asymmetry is recognizable.   Once they have made the mistake of entering an asymmetrical relationship, they are doomed.   They cannot make it symmetrical against the will of a man, who prefers the benefits of the asymmetry.   

455. Epicurus And The Hierarchical-Gregarious Brain

Epicurus And The Hierarchical-Gregarious Brain

This continues entries 452, 453 and 454.  

One of Epicurus' principles is not to harm and not to be harmed.  This principle makes his philosophy coincide so much with my own needs in how to live.  Yet equality or inequality and the pain caused by humiliation and indignity due to be forced into a lower position was never mentioned in what is known of Epicurus' philosophy.   For a long time I was very puzzled, how he could even own slaves and appear oblivious of their pain.  

I was projecting my own strong egalitarian emotions indiscriminately upon others.   Epicurus' brain was obviously strongly hierarchical-gregarious and so was the brain of all those, who were his disciples by their own free choice.    I am completely void of the hierarchical-gregarious instinct.  

Epicurus lived in a society, where there were three categories of people, free men, free women and slaves.  About 30% of the population were slaves.  Free women were very restricted in their lives.   Their main function was to reproduce.   They were excluded from schools, from public offices and from entering many public buildings and from participating in public events.   They were free only as far as not being owned or sold, but they were not free to do, what they wanted, their life was restricted by their dependence on husbands or other men to act on their behalf.

Epicurus seems to be completely void of any empathy, consideration or responsibility for the harm done by pushing people down to and holding them in inferior conditions and situations.   Not all people experience this as equally harmful, because their subjective experience depends upon the predisposition of their either more egalitarian or more hierarchical-gregarious brain.   But at least some people do get harmed by enforced hierarchy.   

A philosopher teaching a general way of life supposed to be valid for everybody should take such harm into consideration.   Therefore there is a contradiction between his benevolent philosophy of homeostasis and enjoying life on this earth and his unconcern about the pain, that he was inflicting himself upon those hierarchically lower.    He himself did own slaves.   He did allow women and slaves to enter the garden community, but it was doing them a merciful favor as exceptions.   He seems to have been void of any comprehension for the unjustified humiliation of this attitude.  

Epicurus was the infallible guru, the never erring teacher, whose wisdom was above the criticism of his disciples, whose veneration and reverence was ascertained by an oath to adhere to his teachings.    He was someone, who enjoyed the power, praise, prestige and influence of being the guru on the pedestal.    He had a narcissistic need for veneration, but he earned it with real achievements, so he was successful in fulfilling his needs.   The benefits from his place on his pedestal were his motivation and compensation for the certainly hard work, stress and exhaustion of doing, what was expected from him.  
The followers accepted their devote role as the price to be allowed into the community.   Those free men having a choice, whose egalitarian brain was determined by the need for the dignity of being equals, were not attracted to become Epicurus' disciples but deterred to stay away.   The slaves of course were not asked.  Women with an emotional need for equality got treated better than elsewhere and had to be content with the emotional alms given to them.   There were no places offering the appreciation of full equality to women, they had to take the best there was.              

Epicurus had a psychological need for submissive disciples, succeeded in attracting them, got reinforced by their willingness to allowing him the place on his pedestal.   People with egalitarian brains were deterred from getting near him, therefore he was deprived of even noticing their existence.  The entire garden community including Epicurus' himself were driven together by the shared very strong hierarchical-gregarious instinct.   The hierarchy established was logical only to those choosing it, while it was a deterrent to those with an egalitarian brain.    Epicurus' blind spot was the conclusion, that the deliberate submission of his disciples was not the choice of some self-selected persons, but a ubiquitous human trait.

Epicureanism as it has come to us from 2300 years ago needs to be adapted and modified by two major additions:  

Apistia and egalitarianism.    

453. The Egalitarian Or Hierarchical-Gregarious Brain Scale

The Egalitarian Or Hierarchical-Gregarious Brain Scale

This continues entry 452.  

I speculate that there is a bell curve of the innate strength of the gregarious instinct.  

1. At one extreme end of the scale are the people with the hierarchical-gregarious brain.   They are very much driven towards other people by a strong gregarious instinct.   They accept domination, deliberate and enforced submission as morally acceptable.  They perceive the acquiescence with any position in a hierarchy as a natural part of life.  They accept this not only concerning positions due to individual differences, but also to externally ascribed and enforced differences, that are sometimes haphazard, irrational and not justified by any trait or quality of the individual.  

They are equally prone to accept disadvantages from having low positions on the hierarchy and to ruthlessly inflict suffering upon those, who are on a lower position.   They inflict such pain on those, whom they have pushed down by competition and by power struggles and on those, who have such positions by haphazard circumstances.    They are often either not aware of causing pain or they are in denial.

2.  At the other extreme of the scale are the people with the egalitarian brain.  They are void of the gregarious instinct.  They consider all people as entitled to have equal chances in accordance with their individual traits, talents and skills.    They accept only individual differences as reasons limiting what someone can get and achieve in life.   They do not want to form hierarchies, they prefer a just exchange between people.   They choose to interact with some individuals and to avoid others.    They prefer to stay away from hierarchies and to cooperate selectively.    By consideration and responsibility they refrain from pushing people down to a lower position, because they are aware of the pain of being forced into an undeserved inferior position.       

Unfortunately, the innate inclination on the scale often does not correspond with the possibilities and circumstances.  The position in the hierarchy of external options is not a choice.  Racism, slavery, discrimination by gender, discrimination by the place of birth are examples of reasons morally accepted by those with a gregarious instinct as a justification to force a low position upon individuals without allowing them an alternative.   
A person with an egalitarian brain, who happens to be born in a privileged position has the choice to refuse the option of a high rank.   A person born into an underprivileged position does not have any choice.    
This has very detrimental consequences:  A person with an egalitarian brain suffers emotional pain when forced into a low position for unjustified reasons.    This person feels humiliation, indignity, abasement.   But the person with the gregarious brain, who has a high position and who is well meaning, caring and patronizing is unable to understand the pain of the egalitarian brained subordinate. 

Slavery is a good example.   A master and a slave of equal intelligence and talents experience the hierarchical situation very differently.    While the slave with an egalitarian brain suffers extreme pain from being in such a predicament of unjustified indignation, the master with a hierarchical-gregarious brain is oblivious of doing any harm, if he subjectively treats the slave with care and consideration for all his ascribed and alleged needs.   Instead he feels to be a good person for treating the slave better than required by law and social norms.   He may even feel entitled to gratitude from the slave for such mercy done to him.  

448. The Impact Of Christianity On Western Culture

The Impact Of Christianity On Western Culture

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

410. A [Unfavorable Evaluation Omitted] With A Halo

A [Unfavorable Evaluation Omitted] With A Halo

When reading the following quotes:

"I truly believe that men were created to lead."

"Most of the women I’ve counseled have longed for their husbands to step up and lead the family."

I was speechless for a moment.  Against my habit of giving the source, I quote this anonymously, because this does not deserve my contribution to publicity.

If this were just a man's private opinion, it would not be worth a comment, because unfortunately he shares this attitude with millions of men.   But the author of the quotes is "a licensed marriage & family therapist."

A therapist has a responsible function.   In this role, it is his professional task to teach and support people to become equal partners.   He does the contrary.    He implicitly declares equality and the cooperation of egalitarian partners as unnatural.      
What he considers and proclaims as therapy means in reality to convert a healthy decent nice man into a sick jerk, who wants to lead.   

He sees psychologically deformed woman wishing to be led and dominated as clients in counselling.  But he does not recognize them as the partner with the disturbence.   Instead he perceives her as a prototype of a healthy woman suffering because of a sick man.   

As a result, a healthy nice guy and a sick docile woman enter therapy.  When he considers the couple as cured, they have reached the balance of what is called d folie à deux, a form of mental illness, where both partners are complementary in their insane behavior and delusions.   After what he considers successful therapy, the man is sick enough to dominate, and the women is still as sick as before wanting to be dominated.  

The entitlement delusion of being born to lead for no other reason than being genetically male is a part of male narcissism.  By proclaiming the man's justification of leading with the authority of a therapist, he dangerously enhances narcissism instead of curing it.  
A man's usurpation of the leading role can cause a lot of conflict and pain, when the woman disagrees.    A man, whose narcissism is still only at a low level, is still able to seek counselling, because he still considers the possibility, that he may be contributing himself to the failure of relationships.   He is at a decisive crossroads of his further development.   

A responsible therapist teaches the man to renounce the leading entitlement delusion in favor of becoming an egalitarian partner.    An irresponsible therapist, who reinforced the entiltlement to lead, can fix the narcissism beyond cure and deprive the man of ever finding happiness in egalitarian commitment.    

352. Brainism and Egalitarianism

 Brainism and Egalitarianism

After having written entry 351 I got aware, that I may superficially appear as inconsistent and even contradictory with my emphasis on being egalitarian.    This requires some further explanations:

1. Egalitarian in a relationship means to carefully choose a partner, who can be fully respected and appreciated as equal.   The subjective evaluation of a partner's equality is of vital importance.    Egalitarian means to avoid getting infatuated with the body of a haphazard person and then coping with insurmountable differences.  
2. Egalitarian means equal rights and equal chances for all, without any advantages due to some limited difference being used as a pretence to dominate or create a hierarchy of power and of access to resources.  
3. Egalitarian does not deny differences of measurable and definable superiority and inferiority in specific areas of life.   More learning, training and developing of skills and talents it superior to less. 
4. Egalitarian does not disallow the choice, whom to associate with as equal and whom to avoid as a result of the perceived lack of equality. 

Individuals have the right to allow perceived measurable inequality guide their personal behavior in a reactive and passive way, but they have no right to force disadvantages due to inequalities upon others.

I as an individual can consider all irrational believes as inferior to rationality and consequencity and I have the right to avoid all gullible believers, because of their believe.   But just as I have no right to interfere with their lives, they have no right to interfere with mine.

In my example in entry 351 of the German law forbidding the opening of shops on sundays, the gullible force an irrational law upon the rational non-believers, and that cannot be justified.   But it would it is equally wrong, if rational employers would coerce religious people to work on sundays, if their delusion leads to pain due to the paranoia of being punished by their deity.   

If one of a person's trait, skill or talent is of high significance to his identity, then this can be a valid reason to reject a person with partial inferiority in this attribute as a partner for an egalitarian relationship.   

While I as a very rational and logical person consider myself superior to gullible people believing in any absurdity, be it a deity, an obscure power like chi, reincarnation or whatever, there are also areas of life, where a man has the same valid reason to consider me as inferior.    When it comes to talents, my worst deficit is musicality.   I can't sing, I can't play an instrument and I am unable to learn both.   Though loving all folklore music, complex classical concerts are to me as unpleasant as the sound of an electrical drill.    For a professional musician, to whom music is an important part of his identity, I am inferior in this area and certainly not suitable. 

The important point is here, that superior or inferior are a real difference of a limited aspect, that can be important enough to justify behavior, but it does not justify to devalue the entire person.  

The gullible believer, whom I cannot respect as a thinker, can be a caring and kind partner to another gullible person sharing the same delusion.    

A person has the right to judge others according to the own value system and identity, but this does not imply any entitlement or justificatioin to harm anybody as a consequence of personal attitudes.  

  

326. Theory of Mind

Theory of Mind
I have just been reading a discussion about the quality of the research in evolutionary psychology, and about the misrepresentation of results.     Sometimes research is presented on the web or by the media in a way, that does not enable the readers to evaluate, if it is flawed or based upon careful procedures and highly significant statistics.    

In my own stance, evolutionary psychology is the foundation of my theory of mind.   

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

The better people's theory of mind, the better they can understand and predict other people's behavior, and the better they can protect themselves.

About 15 years ago, I started to learn about evolutionary psychology, and the result was a drastic change of my theory of mind.  

Before then, I thought that most men were good and decent.  I projected, that they would also want a monogamous relationship, getting automatically bonded by entering a physically intimate relationship.   I considered promiscuous men as an unpleasant minority of animals, whom I perceived as sick.   I had the wrong impression, that the majority of men were decent and monogamous, but hidden somewhere, while I experienced it as my personal misfortune, when I was too often targeted as prey by disgusting predators hoping to gain access to my body.   (Stories in entries 318 and 119 are examples.)    My flawed theory of mind caused me to feel puzzled, why I was not honored by men with the intellectually valuable communication, that I craved for.

Since my learning about evolutionary psychology, I have developed a much more realistic theory of mind, which I have been elaborating in this blog.   I know by now, that the majority of men are driven to some more or less detrimental extent by the same instincts as animals.   Only a minority of men have the rare talent of being able to treat a woman as an equal, of being fully aware of her having a personality and of being able to communicate with her intellectually.   Only a minority of men have the rare quality of not being blurred by the instinctive trigger of a woman's body.    My quest is finding one of them as a mindmate.

Evolutionary psychology supplied me with the paradigm for my new theory of mind.   I have been reading a lot about this subject, I have attempted to attribute some probability to whatever seems plausible.   Where I have not yet found better information, I have even been speculating.    I make no claims about scientific truth of any kind.    

A relationship cannot be better than the theory of mind, upon which it is based, and this implies, that both partners need to share the same theory of mind.    

287. The Narcissistic Bluffer

The Narcissistic Bluffer

A narcissist has a never satisfied need for adulation, adoration, admiration.   Even when he has successfully got a woman into the role of his doormat, he still wants to get more narcissistic supply from additional sources.   

If he were really good with some skills or qualifications, he would have no reason to be a narcissist, he could feel good about his true accomplishments.    But his intelligence and general aptitude are somewhat limited.   If he has a good memory and enough talent in his verbal expression to compensate for other deficits, then he is predestined to become a bluffer.  

First of all, he carefully chooses his audience.    They are all people, who have some kind of a problem, either psychologically or intellectually.  From his subjective perspective, he chooses his suitable ditch full of people, to whom he can feel superior.   All new age, religious and selfhelp groups are the ideal playground for the bluffer.  Either he only pretends to have the problem of the group's focus, or maybe he has it very lightly, or he may only believe to be afflicted himself.    He has not real convictions, in the core of his personality his is just gullible.    He can change his religious and new age believes easily and radically, if he has exhausted the patience of one group and moves on to another.    Everything except the narcissism is only skin deep, all the bluffer's convictions, attitudes and his pseudo-wisdom.

The bluffer enters the group apparently as a member like everybody else.   But as soon as he gets the occasion, he climbs on a pedestal and starts to impress the group with his monologues.   He comes well prepared, he has read books about the specific problem or belief system of that group, and he has memorized a lot of theory and advice, that he now pours out over the awe stricken audience.   For them, it is impressive, but they have no clue, that he repeats, what he has read, without any deeper comprehension.    Even though he has elevated himself upon a pedestal, the ground above the ditch is still much higher.  

For an observer from a distance, all his pseudo-wisdom is nothing more then mental diarrhea.    He pours out so much of it, that hardly ever anybody has a chance to get a word in.   But he only focuses on his own performance, and he does not even notice, that when the genuine sufferers in the group talk about their experiences, he lacks empathy and understanding.    He is a parrot and not a participant.   

In religious groups the bluffer learns the specific scriptures of the group by rote and preaches from his pedestal.  Here his role is even easier, because the religious believes make no rational sense to nobody except the believers.   Only skeptical people outside are able to be critical about it.   
He appears quite genuine and convincing, with an assertive body language and a strong voice.   He is not consciously bluffing the others, he is also bluffing himself.    He is oblivious, that what he repeats from books are only words for him, and that there is a more abstract and complex meaning for others, that he looses completely.  
   

If anybody would ask really learned questions, it would fast become obvious, that the bluffer has no comprehension of what he talks about.     It would be obvious to anybody but the bluffer himself.    The bluffer reads some books about a topic, and then he believes he knows it all and is the specialist.   When he meets a real professional with a degree, and he cannot comprehend him, the bluffer does not recognize his own limitations, instead he declares the professional as incompetent.    

 
He succeeds to bluff the people in the groups, because all he does is talk.   He could for example preach about the importance of responsibility, even though he himself has no clue, what responsibility means and how to apply responsibility to his own behavior.
The narcissistic bluffer could even join a self-help group of victims of jerks.   He would sincerely believe to be himself the victim of abuse, even though he has a suffering doormat at home.  When at the end of the micro cycle of abuse (entry 286) he himself had driven the woman into outbursts of calling him idiot or a**hole, he starts to believe her to be the abuser.  

The bluffer does not communicate, he only distributes his mental diarrhea.   Input by perception of the utterings of others is impeded.    He has a filter, which allows the narcissistic supply in form of praise and admiration pass through a wall, of which most of other people's utterings, especially the critical ones, bounce off.    He does not bother to listen, because while he believes that everybody else can learn from his alleged wisdom, he does not expect any valuable input from others.   He does not listen to people's feedback, so he avoids to ever be made aware, that in reality he has no clue of what he talks about.

When one group tires of him, he just moves on to another.   People, who recognize his performance as mental diarrhea shrug their shoulders and shun him.   Those who attempt to give him any critical feedback are shunned by him.   The bluffer has many superficial acquaintances, whom he has impressed.  As long as he impresses them, they are blind to what is behind his bluff.     

But he is very alone, because whenever people get close, they do not stay close for long.    They experience the inconsistencies and discrepancy between his words and his behavior, and his hurting and annoying treatment drives them away, before they can become real friends, who would bother to give him the sincere feedback, that he would need.   Instead they just avoid him.    

He has no chance to ever improve.   Over time the bluffer looses the touch with reality.   He believes more and more in his grandiosity and expects, that everywhere the pedestal is already waiting for him, not only in the ditch, but also, when he moves around on the ground above.  
   

With women, his method is similar.   He bluffs any woman ready to be bluffed to believe, that he were the kind of man she is looking for.  What person she is, makes no difference, as long as she looks up to him, accepts his pedestal as his birthright and gives him narcissistic supply.    Not having a real personality, he again bluffs himself to believe to be the match for any woman, who gives him narcissist supply without resistance.      

But if he ever errs in his choice of his victim and bluffs a fervently egalitarian woman to mistake him for an egalitarian man wanting a close and committed relationship, then trouble starts.   When such a woman experiences in real life, that his behavior is the contrary of his big words, then his bluff stops to be impressive for her.   
They are not in the ditch, and when he climbs onto his pedestal to be above her in his attempts to get her adulation, she pulls him down from the pedestal.   The bluffer becomes furious.   If he is not allowed to be above her on the pedestal, then he considers her appropriate place below him in the ditch.   When he attempts to push her down into the ditch, she resists and they struggle until she can free herself.    

At the time, when he bluffs her into the relationship, she considers him to be at par with herself.  But as soon as she starts to see through his bluff, she wonders, if it is not he, whose place is down in the ditch.