727. How Instincts Reinforce Each Other Thus Aggravating Harm And Suffering

727.   How Instincts Reinforce Each Other Thus Aggravating Harm And Suffering

The biological spoils of war
Study finds those who take part in violent conflict have more wives, children

The study, ......  found that, among members of an East African herding tribe, those who engaged in conflict - in the form of violent raids carried out on neighboring groups - had more wives, and thus more opportunities to increase their reproductive success through having more children

In an analysis of 120 men, Glowacki said, the data was clear - those who participate in more raids had more wives and more children over the course of their lives.

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2014-12/hu-tbs122914.php

In a scientific study, observed and observable data are presented.    From a very different point of view, I am looking at the suffering caused to individuals.   

• Raids cause deprivation and often the subsequent risk of perishing
• Raids often cause deaths, serious injuries and mutilations 
• More children mean women suffering more often the agony of giving birth.   
• There is often the additional suffering of those women, who are forced to share a husband in a polygamous situation in spite of wishing monogamy and/or to procreate more than they wish to. 

This is a clear example, how two instincts reinforce and enable each other leading to aggravated suffering.   

• The raids are an expression of the ingroup-outgroup-instinct.    The more the distinction between the groups is accentuated by this instinct, the less inhibitions there are against the ruthlessness and cruelty, upon which depends the success of raids.   Thus the success of raids both depends upon and rewards the ingroup-outgroup-instinct.   
• Procreation depends upon the combined strength of the procreation instincts and the means and occasion to act upon this instinct.   The more men are driven by the procreation instinct, the more they consider the acquisition of more wives and children as a desirable goal and a reward for embarking on a raid.  Thus a strong procreation instinct serves as a motivation for raids, such men's additional procreational behavior is enabled in the case of the raids being successful.

Would one instinct be absent, individuals would suffer less:

• Without the procreation instinct, there were less or no reasons for raids, depending on the own resources.   
• Without the ingroup-outgroup-instinct, raids were not possible, less procreation were possible due to less resources.

 

One should not shrug this off as if it were merely a remote problem in Africa.   The simple and therefore obvious mechanisms described in the study can be generalized and recognized in the sad every day occurrence, that people force disadvantages upon outgroup members in favor of advantages for their own progeny.    

• The raid can be replaced by the wider concept of exploitation in situations of asymmetrical power.  The same mechanism, that has been shown in the study above, is also at the bottom of all the outrageous injustice and cruelty of the world wide globalized system of exploitation.  
• Having more wives and more children can be replaced by the greedy accumulating of control over resources.    A person, who dies without offspring has no reason to amass more wealth than what he needs for the preferred standard of life during his own lifetime.    But someone leaving behind wealth as an inheritance bestows advantages to further generations of bearers of his own genes.   His offspring have a better chance of healthy survival, in turn they may have more offspring than without the inheritance.  

Whenever someone in the situation of direct or economic power exploits other humans, expecially slaves, illegal immigrant workers or inmates of labor camps, he has first defined them as an outgroup.   Only by this he is able to apply very different standards to them than to those people, whom he considers as his ingroup, while nevertheless not feeling cognitive dissonance with his idea of behaving morally.  

In the complex globalized system of exploitation, there are layers of ingroups and outgroups, as the example of this documentary shows.  
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Gktid0YO9s

• To the privileged social class of plantation owners, the slaves are the outgroup.   These landlords are the most directly and knowingly cruel persons.  
• To those Ivorians, who abduct people from Mali, these are perceived as outgroup by being citizens of another country.   This is a form of raids, which are not a part of remote tribal life.  
• To the companies importing the cocoa beans and to the consumers of chocolate, all Africans are outgroup.  The majority of the uninformed customer are in denial or even truly ignorant of the sufferings caused by chocolate as an apparently inland product.   But those managers, who dictate the prices, are aware of the unavoidably dire situation of workers not being paid sufficiently.  

The worst cause of human suffering are the instincts, which humans share with animals.  There cannot be a better world, until people recognize the damage done by instincts and until the control of the instincts is eliminated and replaced by the rational concept of global equality and global equal rights.         

681. Strong Instincts Are Women's And Men's Common Enemy

681.  Strong Instincts Are Women's And Men's Common Enemy
 

This blog may appear biased, because I am a woman writing about what kind of a mindmate I am looking for.  Thus I am focusing upon the harm done by men's strong instincts to women, which I want to prevent myself from suffering, while the damage done by foolish and also instinct driven women to men does not concern me.   

This omission is no denial of the reality, that both masculinity and femininity as expressions of instinctive roles, which are equally dysfunctional for individual happiness.  

Male and female instincts have evolved in the animal ancestors to complement each other for an optimized success of procreation.  These instincts force people to make both themselves sacrifices for their offspring and they force them also upon others.  By these instincts, personal sufferings does not impede procreation.  
High instinctivity leads to a high identification with and display of masculinity in men and of femininity in women.  The instinctive urges cause different varieties of harm to the other gender.   Masculinity leads to the abuse women's bodies without attachment and commitment.   Femininity leads to the exploitation of men as providers by choosing attachment only to the children.
 

The instinctive attractions are often symmetrical, men with high instinctivity expressed as strong masculinity are attracted to women with high instinctivity expressed as strong femininity and vice versa.    In this case, the most abusive men fall for the most exploitative women and the most exploitative women are also the most prone to become victims of abuse by a bad choice.

But whenever there is a mismatch in the amount of instinctivity, then the partner with the stronger instinctivity is very prone to hurt and harm the less instinctive and more rational person, who does not reciprocate due to not being equally driven by instinct to cause harm.   

Thus, a battle between the genders is irrational.  Both genders have one common enemy, which is the subconscious power of animal instinctive forces over them, of which they are unfortunately usually not even aware.   If both genders would learn to reject, repress and fight against all instincts, which hurt and harm others, then male abuse and female exploitation could be if not eliminated then at least drastically reduced.  

 

Masculinity and femininity are not needed for the forming of bonded and committed couples.   The biological and therefrom deducted behavioral differences between the genders are only biologically needed for procreation.   Strong instincts only serve the compulsive production of offspring overriding any rational decision for or against breeding as a mere choice.  

There is evidence, that the difference between masculinity and femininity is obsolete for couples' happiness, when couples bond as individuals and not as breeders.  This evidence are all those lesbian and gay couples, who are getting married, where this is legal, and who are able and motivated to form longterm bonded unions based upon intellectual, emotional and physical intimacy.  

These couples can be a model for a new form of heterosexual couples, who also are focusing on equality in spite of belonging to different genders.   

When procreation is not the goal, then egalitarian models of choosing and preferring similarity are a rational option for all couples, also for heterosexual ones.   This includes the option to choose psychologically androgynous partners with only a low instinctivity towards being masculine or feminine.   

The happiness in a committed union of two individuals does not require any differences.  If only differences would attract each other, then twins, even identical twins, could not be so strongly bonded and attached as they often are.   Two persons, who are very much alike each other, could become attached like twins, with the addition of physical intimacy.

659. The Innocent Targets Of The Exploiteds' Displaced Revenge

659.   The Innocent Targets Of The Exploiteds' Displaced Revenge

In entry 658 I pointed out, why those, who have the power and position to dictate the world market prices of products from poor countries, are robbers and sometimes even murderers by proxy.   In the case of the killed textile workers in Bangladesh, the victimized women had no other options.

Elsewhere, things are sometimes different.   What is the textile industry in Bangladesh, is cocoa farming in the Ivory Coast.   The cocoa farmers are under a similar pressure of dictated low prices as are the textile factory owners in Bangladesh.    The farmers just like the factory owners behave as heartless, cruel, evil and psychopathic perpetrators, but the true culprits are those, who have the power to decide and determine the price paid for the cocoa to the farmers.

  
According to this
http://documentaryheaven.com/the-dark-side-of-chocolate

Ivorian Coastal cocoa farmers are paid 1 € per kilo cocoa beans, which suffices for 40 chocolate bars.   But according to the above and other sources, those who are exploited on the cocoa farms are often not locals.   They are adults and even children from neighboring countries, who are forced into slavery.   They are abducted, detained against their will and not paid.  

There is one difference: The slaves on the farms are from neighboring countries, because the Ivorian Coastal young men have found a method to avoid being exploited on the cocoa farms.

From both my own observations when targeted as a victim to be and by many sources I have learned, that the Ivory Coast is at least a major, if not the main home of scammers targeting French speaking people.   The damage suffered by the victims adds to huge sums.   
This French documentary gives a lot of information: 

http://www.escrocs.net/reportage-des-escrocs-du-web-en-cote-divoire.htm

I am far from justifying or condoning scamming and slavery.   But the culprits in the Ivory Coast are not proactive criminals, they are reacting to a dire situation, which they have not created or chosen.  These young crooks and criminals and their parents had been deprived of any chance for a decent and honest income long before the internet enabled them to begin scamming.   They have turned in hostility against all citizens of rich countries, who from a distant perspective appear as if they were to be blamed for the Ivory Coast's misery.  The scammers are not aware, that the victims of the scams are themselves just as powerless as are the scammers to stop the exploitation.  

The real crooks are those, who use economic power to dictate the cocoa price.   

I am convinced that any of the scam victims would gladly pay a fair price for chocolate, it this would prevent hopeless youngsters from experiencing hurting others by crime as their only option.   

The Ivory Coast scamming cannot be stopped, unless the farmers are receiving a considerably higher price for the cocoa and for all other exported produce.         

658. Who Is Really Responsible For Killing The Workers In Bangladesh?

658.  Who Is Really Responsible For Killing The Workers In Bangladesh?

The tragedy in Bangladesh is once more revealing the cruel truth about capitalism.   

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-22296645

How many more victims are going to die, before people learn to attribute deaths elsewhere to the western habits of careless and unreflected consumption?  

It is easy to blame the collapse of a building upon those responsible for the illegal construction and neglect of safety.   

The real culprits are here, between us, in all the rich countries.   
 

The wholesale merchants and the managers of the big chains of markets and stores are the real murderers, they are murderer by proxy.    They use their economic power to dictate the low prices paid for the production in Bangladesh and other poor countries.   Those who there attempt to cope by disregarding building regulations and the basic human rights and needs of the workers act themselves under pressure, they are the hired killers.  They kill others to avoid perishing themselves, even when they add own greed to aggravate the workers plight.

 
When workers are not directly killed as has happened now, those dictating the prices are at least armed robbers.   They use the weapon of giving the choice of fast starvation by not having any job at all, unless they submit to be slowly destroyed by harsh and unhealthy underpaid work.

If I buy a t-shirt for 5 €, I know that it has been produced by someone suffering in misery.   But if I would pay 50 € instead for a luxury t-shirt in a fashion shop, this t-shirt would have been produced by the same exploited people in the same misery.   The additional price would add to  the profit of the shop owners or of the shareholders, it would not reach the workers.   

There are some organizations attempting to bring fair trade products upon the market.   But these products are difficult to find.    Shop managers and retailers also have power.  While those, who dictate the prices to the producers, are the primary culprits, those who decide to sell products from exploitations instead of fair trade products, are accomplices to murder and robbery.  


These culprits do not allow a choice to the consumers.   What happened in Bangladesh recently, is only an extreme example, much of what else is consumed, is also produced by killing, damaging and harming people.  Only exceptionally extreme events make it into the media.  Often it is impossible to know the truth about how much suffering was caused by the production of other goods.    

If I wanted to live without harming and exploiting anybody anywhere, I would starve and freeze to death, because there would be nothing to buy.   The entire global capitalistic system functions because of the differences between the economic power of rich and of poor countries.   


Most of these culprits do not even have a bad conscience, and they do not feel responsible.   First they offer consumers no alternative and thus they can correctly point out, that the consumers profit from their success in enforcing low prices.  Instead of feeling guilty as murderers and robbers, they feel as the consumers' benefactors.   

Therefore I have no hope, that they ever renounce the ruthless exploitation, as long as they can remain in denial and let others do the dirty work for them.  


The best remedy could be some kind of legislation, making the import of goods illegal, if they have been produced by the violation of basic human rights.    But to press politicians towards any such initiative would first need a shift in the focus and targets of pressure groups.  
Right now, those groups fighting for nature, for animals, for ecology, are much stronger and much more active than groups fighting for an improvement of the situation of exploited humans.    

Whenever the plight of suffering people in poor countries is noticed and recognized, it is wrongly considered as a need for charity by those, who are underdeveloped and incompetent and have brought the plight upon themselves.
   
It is an outrage and it is preposterous at the same time.   People exploit workers in Bangladesh by stealing the result of their hard labor from them and by thus driving them into dire undeserved misery,  Then the same exploiters condescend to relief a fraction of this misery by deeds of charity to allegedly inferior and unable savages.    

What they call charity is in reality nothing better than the restitution of a tiny fraction of what has been stolen.

631. Frugality

631.  Frugality

I have labeled myself an Epicurean before, because the Epicurean lifestyle suits my own inclinations.    Or more precisely, my own lifestyle is congruent with Epicurus' philosophy.   But while a philosophy as a way of thinking can continue to be valid without modification for more than two millennia, a lifestyle based upon such a philosophy cannot be carved in stone and ever after be followed literally.   A lifestyle has to be an adaption to specific social and technical realities.   While a modern lifestyle needs to be without a contradiction to Epicurus' writings and teachings, if it is to be called Epicurean, it also needs to accommodate factors, which did not exist at his time.   

Frugality was and is a part of the Epicurean life style.   But it is a good example of an aspect, which cannot be applied literally to today's way of life as it was suggested about 2300 years ago. 


According to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frugality,

"Frugality is the quality of being frugal, sparing, thrifty, prudent or economical in the use of consumable resources such as food, time or money, and avoiding waste, lavishness or extravagance.

In behavioral science, frugality has been defined as the tendency to acquire goods and services in a restrained manner, and resourceful use of already owned economic goods and services, to achieve a longer term goal."

Frugality means thus the lack of the motivation to act towards deriving physical pleasures from the consumption of material goods.   In this sense, frugality is the absence of hedonism.   But frugality is not anhedonia, it is not the general absence of feeling any pleasure.   Instead it means deriving a different kind of pleasure, derived from emotional and intellectual causes, which are immaterial.   

Frugality is a core trait of a personality type, whose behavior is determined more by cognition than by instinct, and which is represented consciously by attitudes coinciding with the Epicurean philosophy.  


Modern frugality embraces factors, which did not exist 2300 years ago:

1. Mass production and the price of consumption

In ancient times production was manual labor using simple tools and appliances.  (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancient_Greek_technology).  Clothing as were the Greek chitons are an example.  Produced from wool or any other fiber they needed at least spinning, before even the spinning wheel was invented, and weaving manually on a loom.  Food production also was hard labor of agriculture without machinery.   Even producing containers for food was the hard work of pottery, metallurgy or woodworking. . 
 
Under such circumstances, obtaining and consuming any necessity of life equaled the decision to obtain and/or to destroy the result of many hours of someone's hard labor.   Therefore every single act of the frugality of not consuming something had a drastic effect of saving the investment of a portion of someone's life time.

Today in our modern western society, containers for food are mass produced from plastic and considered as waste, when empty.  Anybody can buy a t-shirt, a loaf of bread or even an electrical saw for the money earned in less than one hour of even a moderately paid job.   The single act of frugality of not buying any one mass produced item brings little or no material or time benefit to anybody.   

Today the benefits of frugality are therefore predominantly immaterial.


2. Technical complexity and the second-hand principle

While there was already in ancient times a division of labor, most production required only a few basic skills, some practice and experience, but mainly it was a lot of routine work.    Many tools and utensils could be self-made or at least easily repaired, when necessary.    Repairing was usually more economical than discarding and replacing.    

Today the technological complexity of even the basic standard of living requires special knowledge, that many people are lacking.    While a mass produced electrical saw can be bought for very cheap, to construct it and to construct the machines to produce it requires long years of studying engineering.   People have thus no choice but to throw out any machine, even though it may only have a slight defect, because any repair is beyond their knowledge or beyond the availability of spare parts.    

But this does not automatically imply the justification for throwing out without hesitation also what is not broken, because in comparison with the own income it did cost so little.   

Many machines do have real value in reducing hard labor.   For example, an electrical saw has real advantages compared with a manual saw.   Therefore frugality today cannot mean to fall back on not using the available machines from mass production.  

Modern frugality includes the principle of second-hand use as a compromise of having the benefits of using helpful machines and tools while avoiding waste.   Instead of throwing out what can still be used, frugality conscious people give away or resell for cheap, what they do not need anymore.  Those, who choose to or are compelled to live frugally, receive or buy those second-hand items.


3. Practical necessities and compensatory skills 

Consuming the results of mass production requires money, which is earned by participating directly or indirectly in this same economy of mass production.    While a single item of mass production often does not cost much, the sum of the goods of mass consumption is nevertheless bought in exchange for long hours of dull, hard routine work.

While few people could build their own electrical saw, there is a lower level, where people have a choice between either paying for services and products or picking up some knowledge and skills towards being creative, self-sufficient and self-reliant.   

The option to acquire compensatory skills is another aspect of frugality.  It is a method to either gain free time or at least to add intellectual quality to the time spent to obtain the necessities of every day life.    

A conscious frugal life style means people having gained the awareness of having the option to acquire beneficial basic skills of some crafts and artisanries.   This enables them to a certain extend to avoid paying for the expensive services of electricians, carpenters, computer technicians or other specialists.      

    

The less they need to pay, the less they need to earn.   Unfortunately in real life this option is often limited, because people are not free to chose their amount of paid work.   Instead they are glad to have a job at all, working the hours required by the employer.
 
Therefore frugality by compensatory skills has material benefits mostly for the poor, but it also brings emotional pleasure to those, who enjoy learning and achieving things.  


4.  Globalized exploitation.

In the mainly regional economic system of manually production in ancient Greece, people obtained, what they needed, by exchanging goods, which where produced by similarly long hours of labor.   Some had the power to exploit slaves, but this was visible and open.   Everybody, who profited from the exploitation of others, was fully aware of this and could not deny it, not matter if having or lacking a bad conscience. 

Everybody choosing frugality by refraining from owning and exploiting slaves could rightfully have a self-concept of being a person acting responsibly and morally.

Today in modern western societies exploitation is anonymous, hidden and ubiquitous.   The life of the exploited producers of the consumer good is most probably not any better than the life of the ancient Greek slaves.  
 
Whatever someone buys here in a shop for cheap, no matter if a t-shirt, an electrical saw or a bunch of bananas, has been completely or partially produced by people in some poor country, whose wages do not allow them the minimum standard of living, which would suffice to be considered as fulfilling basic human rights.   
We all here could not indulge in our material comfort, were it not obtained by exploiting modern slaves in sweatshops far away.   Most people do not even know it and they do not want to know.   But even knowing it does not help much, because there is no real choice.  

 
Whenever I can choose between a t-shirt for 5€ or for 50€ and between an electrical saw for 10€ or for 100€, this is only a choice concerning how much I decide to pay.   There is no way to know or to decide, where the difference goes to.   I would appreciate to be able to pay a fair price for the goods, a price high enough, that those producing them get a decent wage.   But there is no way to know or to influence, how much of the higher price of some goods only fills the pockets of greedy exploitive capitalists.  

Today personal frugality has no impact upon global slavery.   Not only being exploited, but also having a materially good life made possible by others' slavery is forced upon people often against their will and wish by cruel and inconsiderate capitalists installing and maintaining the imbalance of economic power.      


To sum it up:  

A hedonist derives pleasure from consumption.   A capitalist or wanna-be-capitalist derives pleasure form his power to pay for goods and services.    Having economic power adds to his self-esteem and self-worth.   
Both enjoy, what is not a personal merit, but the result of the lottery of life, which has given them the citizenship in a country with economic power or the membership of the privileged class of some country.

A frugal Epicurean enjoys learning and applying skills and knowledge as a cognitive pleasure.   Every success and every instance of saving money or avoiding dull routine work without exploiting another human being adds to his self-esteem and self-worth.   Thus the frugal Epicurean earns doubly, by not only adding quality to his life, but by thus also having a reason to be proud of himself.     

464. Religion And Charity

Religion And Charity

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  

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

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

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

440. The Benefits Of Giving In The Balance Of Giving And Receiving

The Benefits Of Giving In The Balance Of Giving And Receiving

I claim, that only a balance of giving and receiving leads to maximized total happiness in a couple bonded by caring love.  Today I read about scientific research about the emotional benefits of giving:

'Tis Better to Give Than to Receive? Life Scientists Find That Giving Support Offers Health Benefits -- To the Giver

(http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/11/111109152213.htm)

'"When people talk about the ways in which social support is good for our health, they typically assume that the benefits of social support come from the support we receive from others, but it now seems likely that some of the health benefits of social support actually come from the support we provide to others," said Naomi Eisenberger'

"The life scientists found that when women gave support to their boyfriends in pain, the women showed increased activity in reward-related regions of the brain,"

"In addition to being a pleasure center, this region plays a role in threat- or stress-reduction by inhibiting other regions of the brain that process threats, such as the amygdala. Researchers found that the women who showed greater activity in the septal area also showed less activity in the amygdala."

But of course this does not imply, that people, who only give, while receiving nothing, would be the most happy.   The subjective benefits of giving are not indiscriminate of whom they are bestowed upon.   Giving is most beneficial when based upon experienced and expected reciprocity.   The conscious evaluation of the partner as someone worthy, benign, decent and trustworthy is crucial to the experience of the own giving behavior as subjectively beneficial.   

When one partner is selfish and only takes all benefits obtainable from the other, while giving nothing or too little, this has consequences.   The giving partner experiences this as being used and exploited, as being disrespected, depreciated, devalued.    This causes pain, that outweighs the benefits from giving.

  
Happiness in long-term commitment is only possible, when giving and receiving are balanced. 

429. Religion, Atheism And Emotional Pain

Religion, Atheism And Emotional Pain

A while ago I defined the most fundamental difference between humans and animals as the conscious ability to choose between either breeding or not breeding as an individual preference.    This is of course also the case with the choice to override other instincts.

Animals are robots, whose behavior is driven primarily by recurrent instinctive urges to restore homeostasis and secondarily by the pleasure center.  In this pursuit they are reactive to the environment by learning.  

Human have the same robot built into their brain, but the conscious mind having rational control is superimposed.  Impulses for homeostation and the appeals to the pleasure center are modified by checking with the memories of past experience and the expectation of long-term consequences before execution of the appropriate behavior.    

The conscious mind experiences complex and abstract emotions, that can be very strong.   Appreciation, confidence, pride, attachment, joy, elation, betrayal, humiliation, indignation, outrage, grief are a few examples of emotions, that only humans can feel, because such emotions are the result of knowledge conveyed and created by cognitive processes, which animals do not have.    

Since the animal robot in the human brain has evolved earlier, it does not know these abstract emotions.   The instinctive urge for homeostasis is independent of how the resulting behavior impacts or creates these emotions in the self and in the target.   The conscious mind has the capacity to be aware of the emotional consequences of allowing to be determined by the instincts and it has the choice to resist as a result of emotional considerations.     But the conscious mind has no control over perceiving instinctive urges towards behaviors, that would cause emotional devastation on others.

Promiscuity is a very good example.     

When dogs copulate, two bodies as robots copulate with each other, they restore the homeostasis of their instinctive urges, and afterwards their brains are as unaffected as if it has never happened.  They have no mind to recognize a unique personality in the other dog and therefore they cannot feel attachment. 

There are many men - luckily not all - whose animal robot is so strong, that they are driven like dogs to use a female body for homeostasis, while the personality inside the female body is insignificant.  Like the dogs, they copulate with a body without getting emotionally attached, the next day they are emotionally unaffected as if it has never happened.  
But more often than not, the mind and personality inside the female body does get emotionally attached.  The woman suffers emotional pain of grief, betrayal, outrage, humiliation, when she gets dumped and discarded after having been used, especially when the promiscuous male had manipulated her to consent by creating wrong expectations.  

The male human and the male dog do the same driven by the same instinct.   But while the female dog is not affected by emotions, of which her brain is void, the human female suffers strong emotional pain.   

The man, who is driven to copulate like a dog, lacks empathy for the pain of the woman getting automatically attached.   But in contrast to the dog, he knows in theory, that women get attached and have an emotional need for monogamy.  He either knows of the emotional damage done or in the very least always risked by dog-like dumping and cheating, or else he is in denial of available knowledge.    

Consciously he has a choice, how he can feel comfortable about himself and his behavior.   He can either adapt his behavior to be considerate to women's emotional needs and avoid hurting them, or he can find reasons to justify his ruthless and cruel behavior.  

The claim, that men cannot be monogamous, because animals are also promiscuous, serves as a sufficient excuse to accept themselves as being driven by instinct and not fight against it.    But in addition they also need a justification for knowingly inflicting pain on women.   

There is no rational reason to hurt others for personal benefits without the unfavorable own acceptance as and social reproach for being selfish and antisocial.    Therefore the promiscuous men found a very successul solution:  

They invented a god, who appreciates humans' sufferings as a devotion to him, and who compensates people in the afterlife.  The more people submit to suffering on earth, the more they get rewarded later.   Then the men made the women believe all this.  They added monogamy as the alleged preference of the god to make the religion more appealing to the women.   Soon women were manipulated to accept their emotional sufferings as unavoidable fate.   

Promiscuity is just one example.   The behaviors caused by the hierarchy instinct and the ingroup-outgroup instinct like exploitation, slavery and alike also cause extreme emotional pain and are backed up by the same excuse of the compensation by a god in an afterlife.  
 

The consequence of this are tragic.   Because once the social acceptance of suffering as an unavoidable collateral damage of human interaction had been established along with the religiion, this caused a subtle general desensitization towards a growing acceptance of inflicting emotional pain without feeling guilty.   Emotionally hurting someone is not considered an outrage any more, but feeling hurt is instead considered a flaw of the victim.   
Promiscuous religious men justified their emotional cruelty by their victims' hope of being rewarded in the afterlife.   As atheists, men should be aware that there is only a short life until death, and that they are personally responsible for all the emotional pain inflicted by them, and that there is no god on to whom to shift the responsibility.    

But instead of accepting monogamous attachment as the way of being considerate and responsible to women, many atheists wrongly interpret monogamy as a part of religion limiting men's freedom.  While ridding themselves of the obsolete faith in the god, they allow themselves also the relief by getting rid of any moral obligation towards monogamy.   As a consequence of the desensitization during millenia of religious indoctrination, atheistic men just as the religious ones consider feeling hurt as the women's flaw.   They are void of feeling any need for a justification, instead they feel free to allow themselves ruthless promiscuity without feeling guilty for the collateral emotional damage.  

Atheists should wake up to the full awareness, that due to the lack of compensation for pain in the afterlife, taking responsibility to avoid hurting others is of paramount importance. 

422. Epicureanism, Objectivism And The Predisposition Of The Brain

Epicureanism, Objectivism And The Predisposition Of The Brain

It is often assumed, that people either develop or adopt a philosophy and then consciously decide to live in accordance.   

I am convinced, that it is the other way around.   People first feel comfortable with a specific way of life, which is innate in their brain, and then they develop or adopt the philosophy most suitable as a conscious representation.   People following their own inclinations are prone or at risk to experience cognitive dissonance, as long as they consider themselves as deviant from what they are supposed to conform to.   The change of the philosophy allows them to be in harmony and congruence with themselves.

I speculate, that there is a bell curve of what drives human behavior.   At one end, there is the hedonist brain, which has a high urge to restore homeostasis as a consequence of instinctive needs, and which also gets the strongest stimulation to its pleasure center from physical stimuli.    At the other end is the Epicurean brain, which is guided predominantly by rationality and less by instinctive need for homeostasis, and which is most sensitive and responsive to emotional and intellectual stimulation of the pleasure center.    The brains of the majority of people are more balanced in the middle between the two extremes.  

Since the hedonistic and balanced brain is sufficiently in accordance with the Darwinian fitness for procreation and the survival of the species, people with such brains often do not need a philosophy except they just consider themselves as normal.    Only people with the predominantly Epicurean brain feel often compelled to define themselves by a philosophy, because the get marginalized due to their apparent defiance against the animal nature. 

Epicurus has done a very good job in formulating a philosophy fitting this kind of a brain.   He had the wisdom to limit his advice to telling individuals, what they can do to live a happy life for themselves and in interaction with others.    As far as I know, he does not claim, that his philosophy is equally suitable for everybody, he only offered it to those, who choose to share his garden community or who were interested.  
 
Someone suggested to me the objectivism of Ayn Rand.   It seems to me, that she created this philosophy to accommodate her Epicurean brain.   But in contrast to Epicurus, she projects her subjective experience of her own brain upon others and believes that her philosophy is equally suitable for all human beings.  

This text is her own summery: 
http://www.aynrand.org/site/PageServer?pagename=objectivism_intro.    

 "Man—every man—is an end in himself, not the means to the ends of others. He must exist for his own sake, neither sacrificing himself to others nor sacrificing others to himself."  

This quote makes a statement clearly against procreation.  Ayn Rand omits to acknowledge, that hedonistic and average brains are not suitable for her philosophy, because these brains are driven by the urge to procreate, which reaches homeostasis by the sacrifice of raising children.   Raising children is a sacrifice.    Not only the childfree, but most parents agree with this, but they consider themselves as doing a duty and earning society's gratitude.  

There is more information about her omitting evolution:
http://rebirthofreason.com/Articles/Parille/Ayn_Rand_and_Evolution.shtml

Her projecting of her own inclination to all people has lead her to propagate capitalism.   

But capitalism is a direct consequence of the urge to procreate and to favor the bearer of the own genes over other genetically unrelated people.  Capitalism is the greedy expression of acquiring control over as many resources as possible by ruthlessly competing and exploiting others for the sole purpose of supplying the own genetic offspring for as many generations as possible with the advantage of accumulated wealth.    Without procreation, capitalism would be obsolete.   Someone, for whom his own life and his genes die at the same moment, can die poor and he has no need to be greedy.

Therefore I identify as an atheistic Epicurean, but I cannot identify myself as an objectivist.   

402. Justice By Coincidence

Justice By Coincidence

Religious people believe in a higher power sometimes doing justice.   As a non-believer, I certainly disagree.   But sometimes justice happens by coincidence.     The following is an example.  

One of my neighbors had a job with a cleaning company.   In the year 2000, before the €uro, she got paid 10 DM per hour (1 €uro = 1.96 DM).   After the deduction of taxes, health and pension insurance, I estimate that what was paid to her was about 1200 DM per month, barely enough to survive.      

She worked hard for outrageously low wages and the owner of the company got rich from her and her colleagues' hard labor.   He was able to afford for himself and his wife a luxury vacation in the Caribbean, which according to a web page was available for a minimum price per person of 11.000 DM and upwards. 

They paid for the vacation, but they never got there.    They travelled in the Concorde, the air plane that crashed in Paris in the summer of 2000.    It was a tragic accident, and nobody deserves such a horrible death.  
But these people have brought it upon themselves with their cruel and ruthless greed of exploiting the hard working cleaners.   Had they paid decent wages and lived more modestly, they most probably would still be alive. 

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.  

311. Courting: Gender Divergence or Convergence

Courting:  Gender Divergence or Convergence

By animal instincts, men are predators driven to spread their genes, and women are prey in self-defence against becoming pregnant by a man with unsuitable genes.   This is the result of evolution, which was not influenced by modern possibilities of birth control.   
In a less drastic form, these instincts determine the different behavioral tendencies in courting and mating even today.   
It is very important to be aware of the differences in the instinctive predispositions of men and women.   But that does not imply any rational reason to accept these differences as good and as unchangeable.

For people, who accept egalitarianism and equality, who do not consider a relationship as a division of labor for the goal of procreation but as a unit for the happiness of two partners, accepting obsolete instinctive urges makes no sense and is very counterproductive.   
An egalitarian man needs to overcome his predator behavior and learn to respect the woman's wishes and respect her abilities as a competent person.   A woman has to learn to accept obligations in return for her equal rights, and not be a passive prey waiting for the predator to chase her.  

Yet when I am reading the advice on dating sites for both women and men, the gist of all the advice is the acceptance of the instinctive tendencies of the other gender and submission.    Men are encouraged to pursue women with the disrespect of not taking her expression of her wishes for serious, not taking a 'no' for a 'no'.  (I already wrote entry 274 about this.)   Women are encouraged to be exploitative instead of being fair, they are encouraged to play games like that of pretending to be hard to get.  People play such insincere and disrespectful games during courting, but they are quite often neither aware of the problem, nor able to drastically change their attitudes after getting involved, when they would need to be mutually sincere and respectful as caring partners. 

Predators focus on the success of the hunt, they are oblivious and unconcerned about what follows, once they have gained control over the prey.  

 
These leads to serious problems:

Both partners cannot know, if the other is playing the allegedly expected courtship game or just expressing the true personality.
If a woman accepts the disrespect of not being taken for serious in her expressed wishes during courtship, she cannot know, if the man would ever take her for serious or always disrespect her.  
If a woman allows and accepts to be pampered during courtship, the man cannot know, if she is selfish and would forever take advantage of him or not.    
By misinterpreting the other's unsuitable personality as only playing a game, people can end up with an incompatible and unsuitable partner.    
Courting is the time before making a decision, therefore honesty and sincerity are of paramount importance during the time of courting.   

In entry 310 I already described the situation, that by a man's instinctive affliction to be blurred in his judgement and getting involved as a result of infatuation with a body, a couple can discover too late, that as a person the woman is insignificant to the man.   The woman suffers, when the man does not give her the emotional and intellectual commitment, that she craves.   If a man plays the predator game, this enhances a woman's risk to end up as insignificant, when she confounds his pursuing her as prey with being significant for him.  

In my opinion, all dating advice, that encourages men to take the role of a predator, and women to take the role of prey, is not only wrong, but dangerous.    Instead, people should be encouraged to be honest and sincere, to show and to be guided by their true amount of interest, their true behavioral inclinations and needs.   People should base their courting and the decision, whom to court, on a roughly equal amount of attraction and interest.   Happiness for a long time and the importance of a committed relationship are too serious to play games.   

219. Correlation of Dominance, Promiscuity and Immaturity

219.  Correlation of Dominance, Promiscuity and Immaturity

I assume, that male dominance over women, promiscuity and immaturity are correlated.   Therefore also the male ability to be an egalitarian committed partner is correlated with maturity and the intact promiscuity inhibition.  

This is a follow-up to entries 101, 104, 108 and 109 about promiscuity, entries 213 and 214 about domination and entry 113 about bonding disability.

1.   The non-promiscuous man gets bonded to his partner by the symbolic and meaningful act of entering physical intimacy as an addition to emotional and intellectual intimacy.   Non-promiscuous means, he experiences this as a special event and feels bonded and attached from then on.    Feeling bonded includes non-selfish caring love, which means automatically equality.  It is mutually exclusive with domination and exploitation.    Feeling bonded, he also wants to stay together and not jeopardize the relationship by harming his partner.    Maturity enables him to know, that only a fair balance between giving and receiving leads to a viable and lasting relationship.

2.   The promiscuous man cannot get bonded, because the promiscuous routine of using any haphazard female body as a toilet and forgetting her in a jiffy has destroyed once and forever his ability to experience the mental connection between physical intimacy and commitment.  
A promiscuous man can get infatuated with a woman's body to the extend, that he wants to secure its long-term use.   For this purpose, he even marries her.   But that does not create the emotional bond of unselfish caring love.    He is married or extrinsically committed (entry 98) to her for the selfish purpose of getting his own needs, wishes and whims out of her.    Domination and exploitation are logically the most successful method to acquire his privileges and advantages.    Being promiscuous, it is logical to discard and replace her, as soon as he no longer gets enough advantages out of her.   Therefore he has no reason to treat her well to make the relationship last.   An unmarried non-bonded man is prone to dump, a married non-bonded man is prone to cheat.   He is selfish and dominant, because he is immature.   

In entry 113 I described the bonding disability as a consequence of immaturity.   But promiscuity is not independent of immaturity.    Those men, who desensitize themselves to become promiscuous by emotionally detaching the use of a woman's body from perceiving the existence of a person inside the body, usually do this during puberty and young adulthood.   It happens at that age, when their sex drive is the highest, while they are still too immature to be aware of the resulting psychological damage.         

If such a man stays immature, he will never be able to feel bonded.   He will remain one of those men dominating women as described above.

But if he grows into maturity, if he rationally understands that meaning of a committed relationship, but his ability to automatically feel a bond by entering physical intimacy has been destroyed, for such a man it is very difficult to get bonded.      
If he is already in a relationship, where he dominates a woman, with whose body he is infatuated, then there is the possibility, that as a part of maturation, he slowly grows into feeling emotional and intellectual intimacy and a more caring love, while his domination will be gradually reduced.    He may develop a bond even though physical intimacy is disconnected from it.   This bond can become strong enough to motivate him to stay on and treat the woman with decency, once the infatuation has faded.    It can happen.  

If he is not in a relationship, the situation is more difficult.    Even with the best intentions to get committed, as soon as he enters physical intimacy, emotionally he falls back into the psychological rut of the promiscuous perception of temporarily controlling a body, that is just a utility.    The only remedy for him is to be for a considerable time under circumstances, which force him into close platonic contact with a woman, while the use of her body without a bond is impeded and postponed.     For example they could be colleagues during a scientific field trip, working together but living in a camp with little privacy, slowly developing intellectual and emotional intimacy as a result of the shared work.    When they finally also get physically involved, they already have such a strong mental bond, that his inability to feel bonded by the physical intimacy cannot diminish the bond.   
 
I already called promiscuity a scourge of humanity.   It really is.   It damages the men's psyche, while they themselves are not even aware of their emotional disability.  The men are inflicted with this abomination, but they themselves do not suffer, instead they make the women suffer as their proxies.   The men's inbuilt capacity for domination makes the suffering of the victims more horrific.  

217. Domination and Exploitation

Domination and Exploitation

In entry 213 I defined domination in a relationship of adult mates.   The basic attitude of the dominator is his selfish entitlement to get all the benefits and advantages from the dominee, no matter what methods of coercion he uses.   The dominee is not considered and perceived as a partner, but as a utility serving the dominator's selfish purposes.  
This is even true, when the dominator firmly believes, that what he forces upon the dominee were in her best interest and beneficial for her.    In this case, he uses the dominee to gain and enhance the delusion of being a good person.   

The dominator gets his selfish advantage by actively using coercion on the dominee.   Domination is a constellation enabling exploitation. 
There is also a different variety, it is the exploitation by the loading the own burden upon others:

It concerns people with a special disability or limitation.   Long ago, I have known a woman, whose one leg was amputated below the knee as the consequence of an accident.   From then on, she allowed her disability dominate everybody.   Obviously, she felt, that the world owed her to serve her whims and wishes, she felt entitled to get all benefits and advantages she could get as a compensation.   In reality, it was much more than a compensation, it gave her additional benefits.  
They made her an artificial limb, but it would have needed effort and even some initial pain to learn to walk with it.   She did not bother to even attempt to learn using it.   She preferred to have people push her around in a wheelchair and go on errands for her.   There were always some people having compassion and a wish to help, I was one of them.   She just took all and everybody's help for granted, she did not perceive, that people decided voluntarily to help.   She subjectively experienced being served her due.

I have met or heard of many more cases, when someone with some special need or disability feels entitled to get any advantage and benefit, that he can get, without any gratitude.

I could call the refusal to limit the burden upon others the dominance by passivity or by inertia.  Someone has the choice to either put the burden of a problem upon someone else or make active efforts to reduce the burden.  

Examples:

1.  The woman could have learned to walk with the artificial limb and have become independent of other people's help.   She choose to remain dependent on others as it was more comfortable.    The burden would have been on her partner, had she been in a relationship.  

2.  The woman with the flight fear in entry 216 has the same choice.   She can either work on reducing and eliminating the fear, or she can feel entitled, that her partner submits to the consequences of never flying to a vacation destination together.  

3.  Someone is scared to drive.   S/he can either take advantage of the partner to be her taxi driver, whenever s/he wants to go somewhere, or s/he can conquer her fear and get a driver's license.   

4.  Someone has low self-esteem and lacks confidence.   He can either accept the partner's support and maybe get other help, or he can abase and demean the partner and reduce her to a source of narcissistic supply. 

5.  An addict, no matter if it is alcohol, drugs or whatever, has the choice to either do something about his problem, or to burden the partner with his behavior.     If the partner complies, this is called codependency.  

There are many more constellations, where one has the choice, whom to burden with his trouble.   It is the choice to exploit or not.   I can see a pattern, when it concerns couples in a relationship between an exploitor and an exploitee.   
The exploitee is committed, bonded and feels caring non-selfish love.   Therefore the exploitee is motivated to support and help the other.   The exploitee behaves and treats the exploitor as if he were an egalitarian partner.  The exploitee suffers by this mistake and error of judgement.  
The exploitor may value the exploitee as a precious utility and may be infatuated, but any uncaring love is absent.   The more advantages the exploitor gets, the more he values the exploitee.  He does not value the exploitee as a person, but as a resource.  The absence of care, of emotional restrictions, of commitment gives the exploitor the power.
This pattern is not so much about material exploitation, but more about emotional exploitation.   The exploitee gets emotionally exhausted, devastated, burned-out, depleted.   The exploitor gains emotional resources to continue living with and to avoid coping with his special problem.  
The exploitation ends, when the exploitee is spent to the point, when the exploitor discards the exploitee, because there is nothing left to gain, or when the exploitee gets aware of the outrage of the situation and leaves.    An exploitor does not stop, as long as he can get something.