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.         

717. The Difference Between Animals And Humans

717.   The Difference Between Animals And Humans

Some people deny, that there is any decisive difference between animals and humans.   To me such a claim seems to be made by those in need of an excuse for allowing themselves the behavior of animals in disregard for the consequences. 

The most significant difference is the human ability of memorize sufficient knowledge and experience, which enables only humans for the long term anticipation of the consequences of their behavior.   Thus they are capable to recognize the harmful effects of instinctive behavior to an extent, which can lead to the conscious decision against such behavior.  

Under natural conditions, at some times animals find plenty of food, at others none.    Their instinct to eat as much as possible to store body fat is an evolutionary advantage for survival.   Until 10 000 years ago, and sometimes even much later, this was also the case for humans.
Today the reasoning ability enables humans to not always give in to the impulse to eat, because they want to avoid the anticipated consequence of obesity.    More precisely, the reasoning supplies the knowledge, but the balance between the power of instinctivity and the counter power of rationality and willpower determine the behavior.   Therefore some people are more than others able to keep their weight between healthy limits.  
Overfed pets just get fatter and fatter. 

It is the same concerning the survival of the species.    Animals do not hesitate to copulate, when they are driven by instincts, because they are unable to know, that at some time later, they will be severely punished with the atrocity of giving birth and the burden of raising the offspring.    

Only humans are capable to recognize early enough, that the survival of the species and procreation is a form of self-harming for the individual person.   The cognitive ability of a considerable number of humans to consciously reject procreation is a very unique trait of humans. 

The critical cognitive distance from instincts and the resulting freedom of decision is therefore what makes humans unique.   This ability to prevent self-harming comes along with the ability to also know, when the own behaviors cause harm and suffering to others.

 

When a cat catches a bird and drops it somewhere seriously wounded, the cat lacks any ability to recognize the suffering of the bird.  The same holds true too, when animals seriously hurt each other during struggles for the alpha position.   Animals cannot know, when the side effect of their instinctive behavior is strong suffering.
Humans can know this. Therefore it cannot be morally justified, that many humans use and consider their cognitive qualities only as a tool serving a more successful application of their instincts.   This aggravates the suffering of others instead of avoiding and preventing it.  People, who consciously follow their instinct, are knowingly cruel.  

This means that the cognitive ability to recognize the consequences of the own behavior brings along the moral obligation to avoid harm and suffering of others as much as of oneself.

 

Unfortunately, many people live by double standards.   When they benefit from using their rational brain, they do it.   But when others are concerned, they allow themselves willingly to be ruthlessly determined by instinctive drives. 

The same hunter, who during the day shoots animals feeling entitled to do so due to being a human, nevertheless claims in the evening his right to follow his animal nature by copulating like an alley dog with a prostitute, not perceiving the woman as an abused and degraded human being but only as an object.   Shooting at humans of another country or ethnic group driven by the ingroup-outgroup instinct, he also has allowed himself to be controlled by an animal instinct, even though his reason could recognize this as absurd, as animal but as certainly not human.

Who feels superior to animals due to being human should also be congruent in not giving in to his own animal urges.    Excusing and condoning animal behavior by misrepresenting it as the human nature is not only absurd, but also the consequences are fatal, usually for all parties involved.

716: Alley Dogs: The Regression To An Earlier Period Of Evolution

716:  Alley Dogs: The Regression To An Earlier Period Of Evolution

Definition: 

I call persons, who copulate without neither getting emotionally attached nor wishing this to happen, as alley dogs.

Copulation like alley dogs is a regression to behaviors prevalent before the specific cognitive qualities of the human brain had evolved.
  

Evolution is not a master plan. As long as a species survives, this only indicates, that in the past the evolutionary net sum of instinctive and in the case of humans also innate cognitive tendencies has resulted in a sufficient amount of procreation.  

Some millions of years ago, when the ancestors of present day humans were still only animals, they copulated by instinct as all animals do.  Some months later it was followed by the birth of the youngster(s).   

At that moment, they had no conscious memory of the copulation and they were not aware, that the agony of birth was caused by the copulation.   

When they copulated, they were also unable to anticipate, that giving birth was the punishment for the female.   

Lacking the comprehension of this causality, they also had no way to avoid the agony of further procreation.

Then the unique evolution of the human cognition began.   One of the aspects thereof is the longterm memory and the ability to anticipate the future consequences of the own and of others' behavior.  This enabled the co-evolution of purely cognitive emotions, which derive from reasoning and not from bodily sensations.   Cognitive emotions are very distinct from sensations like fear in the situation of a real danger or pain after being physically wounded.  

Some of these cognitive emotions are: 

1. Emotional attachment based upon invisible cognitive traits.  
   It is difficult to define love or to put such feeling into words.  But with certainty, whatever there is, it cannot be called love without cognition derived emotional attachment. Traits leading to emotional attachment can be honesty, reliability, empathy, but also intelligence and education, which make it rewarding to be together.
   
   
2. Rational empathy and a theory of mind.  
   By this someone has knowledge about how another person is going to react,  This is more than the anticipation of visible behavior, but also the anticipation of the invisible cognitive emotions.  This includes also those situations, when the reaction of the other will be very distinct from the own reaction under identical circumstances. 
   
   
3. Responsibility and consideration.   When being in advance aware of the consequences and impact of the own behavior upon others, responsibility is the cognitive ability to prevent hurting others by the avoidance of anticipated own cognitive emotions like guilt, shame, remorse.
    
4. Awareness for invisible emotional reactions caused by invisible experiences.   
   This includes taking full account of feelings of selfworth and identity of the self and in others and how these are elicited and effected by interactions.   Examples are appreciation, depreciation, adulation, disdain, honor, equality, indignation, injustice, pride, entitlement and much more.

Sometimes such qualities are called emotional intelligence.  

By instinct only, alley dogs are male, while females attempt to exploit a man as a provider for the children, who get her full attachment, while he gets a subscription to the repeated use of her body.

When cognition modifies the raw instincts, emotional attachment to an intimate partner happens usually fast or immediately in women.  For men usually more repetitions are needed, before the subjective experience of the alley dog copulation is converted into the emotional attachment of making love.
 

Had there been a continued linear evolution of only a growing strength of rationality and cognitive emotions like the one in the list above over instincts, this would have enabled and motivated more and more people to avoid harming others.    As a logical side effect, this would have drastically reduced procreation and maybe the human species would already have been extinct.
Until safe family planning was available, a truly considerate and responsible man would have rather refrained from physical intimacy than ever risking to cause suffering for a woman, who was not fully wishing to have children.   

But the human species did not get extinct.  Some alley dogs continue to sire alley dogs and prevail in the gene pool.  I can see several reasons. 

1. Some people, mostly men are just like animals, because they lack the human emotional restrictions which would prevent them from copulating like alley dogs.  Their behavior is not guided or determined by cognitive emotions.    They contribute more to the gene pool by having more offspring than the considerate men.  Genghis Khan is a good example.  He is reported to have raped thousands of women and his genes are supposed be present in millions of Asians.
   

   1.1.  They can be generally limited in their ability to feel cognitive emotions, as in the case of Alexithymia.   They are not aware, what pain they cause to people, who want to be loved, because they themselves do not know love and are unable to experience emotional attachment.
   
   1.2.  They know, what they do, but do not care, because they are not able to feel guilt, shame or remorse.   They are sociopaths.  

2. The availability of safe birth control has made the consideration for preventing the threat of pregnancy as the most drastic consequence of alley dog copulation obsolete.  
   It needs less cognitive quality to be able to refrain from doing something as drastic as making a woman pregnant. 
   To refrain from abusing a woman as a toilet for body waste because of respect for her brain, to spare the woman the invisible suffering of indignation, devaluation, objectification and humiliation requires a much higher level of cognitive quality in a man.  Less men have it.
   Being free of the fear of pregnancy is great.   But unfortunately it came with the price of the disgust of being (or at my age having been) too frequently approached by alley dogs.
    
3. The human brain including the ability for empathy has evolved for coping with the life in small groups or communities.   Now people are suddenly (seen in the evolutionary timeline) flooded by the media with very realistic representations of extreme atrocities.  This representations are so realistic, that the subconscious brain cannot distinguish between such pictures or movies and real life. 
   Nobody can react permanently with full empathy to this extreme amount of exposure. 
   Desensitization is an unavoidable consequence.  
   
   When a man grows up munching chips while indifferently watching a movie, in which a woman is raped, it is not really astonishing that he will consider hurting 'only' a woman's feeling as a trifle in comparison.    
   
   When a woman grows up sitting in the safety of her home in front of a TV, she also gets a very biased picture.  On TV women are presented as willingly and happily doing and wanting themselves, what really only benefits selfish men.  On TV, these women get rewarded, but never emotionally harmed.  The watching real woman is thus misguided to underestimate, what she gets herself into by making the mistake of complying or imitating behavior, which really is an expression of male instinctivity and male wishes.  When this woman unexpectedly gets very hurt, she learns to understand reality too late and the hard way.
   
4. When one person hurts another, no matter if it is the alley dog the loving woman or any other situation, there are two different perspectives.  
   

   4.1.  The difference between hurting and not hurting behavior is a choice, and therefore people with cognitive emotional quality take themselves the responsibility for what they do to others.
   They never use the behavior of the victim as an excuse, even if the victim could have avoided exposing himself to be vulnerable.
   
   4.2.  Under the impact of desensitization, people have a more selfish perspective based upon the entitlement to do, what they want.   Whoever gets hurt or harmed is attributed as either defective or too stupid to protect himself.  Therefore they feel justified to take no responsibility.   The victim of an alley dog is blamed for not being also an alley dog.  In the case that the suffering reactions of the victim annoy the alley dog, the victim is even blamed for diminishing the alley dog's benefits.
   
   This desensitization has contributed to a present social norm in many western societies, which defines alley dog copulation as allegedly healthy behavior.   Those, who get hurt, are supposed to use those remedies, which contribute to the profits of the pharmaceutical industry.

It is sad.  All the amazing progress only leads to the material standard of life getting more and more comfortable.  But when it comes to the avoidance of non-physical suffering, there is no progress, but a regress to times before the evolution of the cognition.   

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

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

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

The German newspaper "Rheinische Post" writes today.  

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Therefore I am correcting the above quotes:  

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

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

Suitability does not suffice to justify harming others.   

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

699. Is The Own Body A Merchandise?

699.   Is The Own Body A Merchandise?

"French MPs have approved a bill that will penalise anyone paying for sex.

The bill, which was adopted by a vote of 268 to 138, with 79 abstentions, establishes a fine of at least 1,500 euros ($2,030) for buying sexual acts."

"The 1,500-euro fine is for first offenders - subsequent offences could be more than double that."

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-25217185

There are some more articles concerning the controversial aspects.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/09/opinion/frances-new-approach-to-curbing-prostitution.html

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/12/05/france-s-new-prostitution-law-targets-johns-ignites-national-debate.html
 

http://www.theatlanticcities.com/technology/2013/12/across-europe-growing-sense-legalized-prostitution-isnt-working/7777/

Opposition to the new law comes not only from men, but also from misguided feminists, who are probably too desensitized to be aware of the fallacy of their thinking.  

Prostitution fills the asymmetrical gap between the magnitude of most men's biological urges and the lack of the same amount and urgency in the majority of women.   If women would enjoy copulation without emotional attachment and without commitment as much as men, enough women would want this and no men would have a reason to pay for it.
  
Prostitution is enabled by the combination of the asymmetrical male urges and men's onesided advantages of physical and/or economical power.

There are two fallacies in the demand for legalized prostitution:

Fallacy 1.

Prostitution is called sex work.   Whenever there is no direct coercion, it is alleged and claimed to be a more or less fair deal.  
It would only be a fair deal and a free choice in the case, when a woman has a real, not only a legal right and chance to get all the schooling and training she wants and a well paid agreeable job, and when in spite of this she nevertheless prefers to sell the self-abuse of her body.     
Defining a woman's last straw in a dire need for survival as a free choice and as a fair deal is a fallacy of desensitized people. 

Fallacy 2.

There is a claim, that women should be completely free to do with their own bodies, whatever they want, including selling it.  

If this is to be accepted, then this has to be applied fully and with no other restrictions.   Women then should be given the full freedom of choice, how to use their bodies as a source of an income and what kind of harm they are most willing to suffer.
  
Right now, except selling blood, in most countries other methods are not legally available.   If there are illegal practices, the owner of the bodies get themselves very little, while criminal agencies make profit.   

Comparing the non-financial costs and benefits, prostitution is undoubtedly the worst option for the abused women themselves:

1.  Prostitution 

When a prostitute sells her self-abuse, she serves as a toilet for a selfish man's body waste. 

The costs for the women are the disgust and agony during the recurrent abuse and the long-term psychological and physical damage, for example often substance abuse and the inability to ever emotionally bond with a man.
 

The only benefits are what the abusers perceive as pleasure.  

2.  Selling body parts

Would the women be allowed the choice to sell a kidney (or any other body part, which can be sold without disabling oneself) instead, this would not merely enable a man to acquire selfish abuse, but it would help someone to survive and it would also safe resources needed for the general health care.   Recurrent dialysis is extremely expensive and inconvenient.   A woman (or any person) could be paid the amount of money saved by preventing some years of dialysis.   

The costs for the women are the risk of an operation and the loss of one kidney.  
 

The benefits are for all persons getting off dialysis and having a normal life with a working kidney.

3.  Selling unwanted babies.

Even the uterus and its contents are a part of a woman's body.  If unwillingly pregnant women are allowed any choice at all, it is between abortion and donating the child for adoption.  While it is considered as suitable to impose the paid more general abuse upon women's reproductive area for the mere satisfaction of men's instincts, there is no logical reason, why they should not be allowed to sell the use of the filled uterus instead.    
Women should have the right to the alternative of selling unwanted children or of producing babies for other people as surrogate mothers.  This should be a fair option for the avoidance of the agony of prostitution.  

The costs for the women are the inconvenience, suffering and expenses of pregnancy and giving birth.   For those women, who do not want to breed, there are no emotional costs. 

The benefits are the fulfilling of the breeding urges of those people, who are unhappy without children.  They would be spared futile fertility treatment and more babies would be available to be adopted.  The benefits are also for the babies, who grow up as wanted.

 

Selling body parts and babies has to be restricted as a direct deal between the giver and the health insurance or the receiver, without any greedy third party making profit from it.

Of course I cannot know it, but I am convinced, that many prostitutes would prefer to sell a body part or a baby, if only they were allowed to do this to prevent the agony of being abused. 

Either the own body is a merchandise to be freely used by its owner, then all forms of use have to be legal.   If it is not a merchandise, then prostitution cannot be defined as an exception, only because those powerful men with the influence over legislation are too often themselves the abusers wishing to perpetuate their privileges.   

 

It is an outrage that even in rich countries, some women are deprived of any other means of survival except the use of their bodies.   But it is even more an outrage, that these women are not even allowed a fair choice, how to use their bodies to acquire survival with the least harm for themselves.   

As long as it is considered as morally wrong to sell body parts or a baby, prostitution cannot, neither logically nor ethically, be justified by the right of women to do with their body, what they want.  
As long as it is legally impossible to sell a body part or a baby, men taking advantage of women selling self-abuse as this being their only legal option are abusers, who deserve to be punished.  

690. Can Women Be Protected By Electronic Tagging And Monitoring The Known Beasts?

690.  Can Women Be Protected By Electronic Tagging And Monitoring The Known Beasts?

Abuse happens, whenever a victim is available and a (usually not-partnered) man

• is in the state of dishomeostasis, which causes his perceiving an urge to use a female body as a toilet for his body waste.
• has the attitude, that women exist for the purpose to be abused, independent of the women's own wishes and experience.

Abuse can be either violent or by payment, deceit and manipulation, the choice depending upon the abuser's ability for self-control and his subjective estimation of the probability of unpleasant consequences as are legal or social punishment.  

Women have brains to at least attempt to avoid deceit and manipulation, and not all blatant female stupidity can be blamed on men.   But women have no chance against violence of someone stronger than themselves and they need to be protected.  

Violent abuse can be caused or facilitated by not expecting any risk of being punished.   In this case a man with sufficient self-control refrains from further acts of violence after having learned a lesson by the first punishment.  

But there are those, who repeat violent abuse in spite of being sentenced and imprisoned several times.  This indicates their behavior as being completely determined by strong urges and by the lack of sufficient self-control.   These beasts are too dangerous to be ever let out again.  In too rare cases, here in Germany they are indeed kept in Sicherheitsverwahrung (preventive detention).   Unfortunately by some flaw in legal proceedings, some of these beasts where recently set free:

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/10/131025091830.htm
 

"Criminologists at the University of Tübingen will lead research into the effectiveness of electronic monitoring of criminal offenders in Germany."

"Some 60 offenders in Germany are monitored using the electronic tag around one ankle."

"Electronic tagging is used on those convicted of serious violent or sexual offences who have served their prison sentence but have had to be released from preventative detention. The monitoring devices are used as part of the supervision of their conduct and are meant to prevent former offenders from relapsing into criminal behavior. The tags must be worn at all times and may not be manipulated. Some of the tagged offenders are not permitted to enter or to leave certain areas. Electronic monitoring was introduced in Germany in 2011 in response to a European Court of Human Rights decision, which held that certain forms of preventative detention contravened human rights law. Electronic tagging is now used to maintain a watch on offenders who prior to 2011 would have been kept in preventative custody."

This is absurd and an outrage to women, whose safety is at stake.   Women and their own human rights to be protected from harm are sacrificed in favor of the human rights of beasts, who have proven not to meet the standards of behavior which would justify to call them human.  
Nobody would put an electronic tag around a lion's ankle and expect the lion to refrain from killing prey.  These criminals are as much beasts as are lions.   As a woman, I prefer not to meet neither lions nor violent abusers without a strong fence or wall between them and me.  

I do hope that the study comes to the conclusion, that such dangerous beasts are just not fit to be allowed to be free.  

685. An Important Recognition Of A Real Problem But An Unjustified Restriction Of The Focus

685.  An Important Recognition Of A Real Problem But An Unjustified Restriction Of The Focus

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/09/130925132333.htm

"Commercial sexual exploitation and sex trafficking of minors are serious problems in the United States with long-term adverse consequences for children and society as a whole, and federal agencies should work with state and local partners to raise awareness of these issues and train professionals who work with youths to recognize and assist those who are victimized or at risk, says a new report from the Institute of Medicine and the National Research Council.Minors who are prostituted or sexually exploited in other ways should be treated as victims rather than arrested and prosecuted as criminals, as they currently are in most states, the report says."

"Despite the hard work of prosecutors and law enforcement in many jurisdictions, individuals who sexually exploit children and adolescents largely escape accountability, the report says. All jurisdictions should review and strengthen laws that hold exploiters, traffickers, and solicitors accountable for their role. These laws should include a particular emphasis on deterring demand, both through prevention efforts and penalties for those who solicit sex with minors."

This is a tiny but important step in the right direction towards the full recognition of the damage done by all sexual abuse.   But it is an outrage to restrict the focus only upon children.   This implicitly conveys and enhances the dangerous attitude, that for women abuse were less harmful.  
Only the physiological difference between children and women is real.  Women are biologically suited for sexuality, while children are not yet.   Notwithstanding it is a disastrous fallacy to conclude, that a mere biological option were sufficient as a justification for the objectification of women.   This is the same as the fallacy of using the option, that a human body is eatable as the justification for practicing cannibalism.   A possibility due to a trait or an attribute does not constitute a fate, a destiny or a purpose.  

Abuse hurts, causes suffering, harm and longterm psychological damage, no matter the age of the victim. Due to the physiological differences, it is easy to acknowledge all sexual activities between adults and children as abuse.   But it is much more difficult, especially for men, to really distinguish between a woman's true and free choice and self-abuse.   Unfortunately, many men have a very blurred notion of the difference between a true personally beneficial choice and a mere apparent and alleged choice for what is hidden self-abuse.   There is a fundamental difference between a woman's choice for physical intimacy as a part of committed companionship and the self-abuse of those women, who are under the pressure of circumstances and/or already pre-damaged.     

A woman's participation in self-abuse does not make a man's taking advantage thereof less cruel and less abusive.   It is obvious, at least to decent men, that rape is an immediate trauma for the victim.   But the self-abuse of prostitutes is more like those behaviors, of which the detrimental effects are only accumulative and long-term and not immediately visible.  
Someone, who provides an addictive drug to someone else may only notice the immediate improved wellbeing and may even be reinforced by gratitude.  The long-term damage of many such events is not obvious, even though it can be known.  
The client of a prostitute also only notices the appreciation of the woman having earned needed money.  The long-term damage of her repeated self-abuse is not obvious to the client, who is in denial of being an abuser.   

Abuse is abuse, and self-abuse for hidden reasons does not justify abuse.         

Women need as much protection as do minors.   Men's superior physical strength and frequent social and financial power makes them as much a threat to women as to children, whenever men choose to abuse.

All abuse should be punished and prevented independent of the victim's age.  

682. The Hazard Of Being A Woman

682.   The Hazard Of Being A Woman 

When only looking at attitudes, morals and intentions, there may be as many women not hesitating to exploit men as there are men not hesitating to abuse women.    But the harm actually done depends not only on the intentions, but also on the power to enact them.  

Men's advantage of greater physical strength gives them power to succeed in causing harm to women, who in spite of whatever their intentions are nevertheless restricted to be victims rather than perpetrators.

http://www.world-science.net/othernews/130910_rape

"Nearly a fourth of men in the Asia-Pa­cif­ic re­gion ad­mit to hav­ing raped some­one-at least, if they’re asked about it in a way that avoids the word “rape,” a study has found.

Re­search­ers sur­veyed more than 10,000 men aged 50 and un­der from six dif­fer­ent coun­tries in the re­gion, from both ur­ban and ru­ral ar­eas."

"The sur­veys were con­ducted in Bang­la­desh, Cam­bo­dia, Chi­na, In­do­ne­sia, Pap­ua New Guin­ea, and Sri Lanka."

"Elev­en per­cent re­ported hav­ing raped a wom­an who was not their part­ner. When men who re­ported hav­ing raped a part­ner were in­clud­ed, this pro­por­tion rose to 24 per­cent. Of those men who re­ported hav­ing com­mit­ted rape, 45 per­cent said they had raped more than one wom­an.

When asked why they had com­mit­ted rape, 73 per­cent said that they did so for rea­sons of sex­u­al en­ti­tle­ment, 59 per­cent for some sort of en­ter­tain­ment, and 38 per­cent for what they per­ceived as pun­ish­ment."

Of course this does not warrant any misinterpretations of Asian men as being more instinct driven animals than men elsewhere.   They only live in societies, where they risk less punishment than their equally abusive peers in western societies, who are restricted to pay for abuse or to apply trickery and manipulation instead of violence.   

The sad biological reality, that by instinct men are attracted to and perceive female bodies as mere toilets for their body waste, blurs all men's comprehension of the magnitude of the atrocity experienced by the victims of rape.   Even many well meaning and decent men are deprived of empathy for many women's very different reaction to unwelcome close contact with strangers' bodies.   This reaction is disgust and nausea.  

There are many suggestions as to how rapists should be punished.   But in my personal opinion neither imprisonment nor even the death penalty are appropriate as sufficient punishment.   
Instead, every rapist should be forced to suffer the same amount of disgust and nausea as his victim.   He should be forced to eat something like dog shit, vomit or rotten meat with maggots.   And every man, who trivializes the full atrocity of rape should imagine, what he would feel, were he to suffer the disgust of eating such substances.                 

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.

679.   The Subtly Detrimental Influence Of Movies - An Example

Recently I watched the movie 'You've Got Mail'.   I had heard of this movie before as if it were simply a nice and friendly romantic story of an internet match.  

I was quite surprised, when I discovered its detrimental subtle message.  


When only looking at the dynamics of the story, it could be a very exemplary story of the slippery slope of how the allegedly and mistakenly innocent initial behavior of chatting first escalates into emotional cheating and ultimately leads to the breakup of two couples.  

Unfortunately, the movie is not at all a warning for considerate and responsible people to beware of this slippery slope.    To the contrary, it reinforces and encourages people to pursue their own selfish goals without any consideration for their partners, without feeling any commitment and obligation.   The movie is a story about how ruthless and irresponsible transgressions are rewarded.   

Already the secrecy in the first scenes shows, that both protagonists are fully aware of doing something, which they know as not being accepted by their respective partner.  It is clearly emotional cheating. 
Additionally, both couples are shown as being principally in harmony, the respective partners are not presented as having done anything to deserve being dumped.   When the two protagonists decided to cheat, they had not the least excuse in their partners' behavior.

 
Movies are fictional stories, but movies like 'You've Got Mail' are realistic enough to influence people's behavior and their moral compass.    This movie contributes to the desensitization of people towards denial or unawareness for the hurting consequences of how they treat others.  

The fiction of this movie is very unrealistic by presenting the dumped partners as not suffering but both ready to get involved with each other.  
In real life, a dumped partner rarely ever goes through such an ordeal without being wounded and scarred.  

The two protagonists could not foresee this exceptionally benign outcome of their transgression.   When they made the first step upon the slippery slope towards emotional cheating, they decided to do this in spite of the then very real risk of deeply hurting their partners.  


Such movies propagate the fallacy as if it were morally acceptable to look for someone new and dump the previous partner, even though he did nothing whatsoever to deserve this.

Of course this is just one movie, but those people seeing such movies frequently often end up desensitized.   When they hurt others and the others are damaged and show this by their demeanor, the transgressors are unable to comprehend, what they themselves have done.   Instead of taking responsibility, they define the damage done to the hurt person as a weakness, a flaw, a defect.   Even those not directly involved are under the fallacy of blaming the victims for lacking resilience and not seeing the transgressor's full responsibility. 


Sometimes people do worry about the effects of violence in movies and computer games upon people.   But hardly ever anybody worries about the subtle desensitization of superficially harmless movies, which are teaching people to be ruthlessly selfish, irresponsible and inconsiderate.

678. Misconceptions Of Commitment Impede Relationships From Being A Safe Haven

678.   Misconceptions Of Commitment Impede Relationships From Being A Safe Haven
 
Since reading ads and profiles on the web, I have been getting more and more aware of several misconceptions of commitment. 

The following is not about those nasty promiscuous guys, who abuse women by outrightly and consciously refusing any commitment.  It is about misconceptions, which lead to hurting behavior in spite of this not being intended.
 

For many women a relationship is a simple deal, even though they may themselves not be aware of this or they may even deny to put it as bluntly as I do.   Realistically seen, when they supply their bodies for men's instinctive urges, it is meant as the price for getting a safe haven in return.  
But when men are ignorant of women's non-physical and non-material needs, they do not comprehend this deal.  Their misconceptions are harmful to women.   

When such a woman allows a man the access to her body, she instantly wants the safe haven to be given to her.  Not as a vague expectation for the future, but immediately in return, as in a fair deal.   But due to misconceptions, the man does not or not yet pay this price.  This often leads to situations, when women feel like creditors, while men do not comprehend, that they have a debt or what they owe.  

 

When there are misconceptions, there is no malice and not even selfishness, but just ignorance and misguidance by those men, who deprive women of a safe haven..    

  

Misconception 1.    Men project their instinctive cravings upon women and are not aware, that this is not symmetrical due to physiological differences.   They are unaware, that women expect the safe haven as a price owed to them.  

When, as a metaphor, an alcoholic and a non-alcoholic sit down together to drink a bottle of wine, they can seem superficially to do the same.   Both appear to enjoy the flavor of the wine.   But it is not the same.   The alcoholic craves the wine for the alcohol, he has no choice to refrain from drinking.  He would drink any other alcohol, even horribly tasting stuff.  The non-alcoholic drinks the wine as a conscious choice to do so, he is free to not drink what he does not like to drink.   

When a man and a woman get physically involved, the situation is equally asymmetrical.   The man's instincts crave to copulate with a female body because of his recurrent physiological dishomeostasis.  If he is also attracted to the woman's brain, it is only an additional bonus, not a significant reason.    The woman is free from such compulsions, she has a real choice.   She is able to choose physical intimacy, when enjoying it is part of the whole package of also intellectual and emotional intimacy, which are the preconditions for a safe haven.   She has no need for a mere male body, if she gets nothing better than a body.  
 

This misconception impedes men from comprehending the women's deal.  They are in full denial, that they owe a safe haven in return for homeostasis.  

Instead these men have the delusion of a different deal, by which they were merely obliged to satisfy allegedly equal female instinctive urges.  In the case of apparent success, they sincerely believe to have no further obligations.    They are dangerous fools.     


Misconception 2.   This misconception equates commitment with monogamous exclusivity.  

Under this misconception, people choose or attempt to find relationship constructions, which are sometimes called LAT (Living Apart Together) or by others friends with benefits.    When and as far as they feel committed, they confound this with the mere restriction of physical intimacy to only one partner, while they do not feel any further obligations or responsibility for what they do to the other. 

Thus a man can acquire sufficient access to a woman's body to maintain his homeostasis and nevertheless keep her completely out of his own life, but continue to live at his own convenience as a bachelor.   

He fulfills his physiological needs without paying a price. In combination with misconception 1 he is oblivious that this favors only his onesided advantages but harms the woman, who is denied a safe haven.


Misconception 3.   Only the legally binding act of an official marriage with a signature is considered and perceived as commitment.  

Under this misconceptions, all obligations of marriage under the respective laws of any country are accepted as binding, but nothing else.   This is not a safe haven.    Legal obligation care for the spouse's material minimal requirements, but not for emotional needs.  

This misconception has several possible consequences.   

Consequence 1.   When a man does not understand the real meaning of a safe haven, but wishes to fulfill a woman's non-physical needs, he may be prone to hasten to marry before both have discovered, if they really are a good match.  

Consequence 2.   When a man mistakes the fulfillment of legal requirements with fulfilling a woman's needs, the laws of a country, especially gender asymmetrical ones, can make a man to wrongly believe to be a good husband.  But when he dominates, forces his will upon her for his convenience, then there cannot be a safe haven for a woman.
 

Consequence 3.   For those persons, who understand the real meaning of a safe haven and of intrinsic commitment, the obligations to each other are morally indistinguishable between a legal marriage and cohabitation without the signature.   But a man, who does not feel committed unless he is married yet who intends to be decent, is motivated to get engaged to be married.   The phase of being engaged is especially beneficial for his combined needs.

With such a man, aggravated by misconception 1, the premarital phase of physically intimate engagement can be very destructive and hurting for the woman.   She expects the safe haven to have already been created, while the marriage to come is only a tiny insignificant addition.   

But for such a man this engagement phase is subjectively as if he could temporarily eat as much cake as he wishes and continue to keep it all.  
He has the illusion to be decent and correct, because he has principally accepted to start having obligations, but only at some moment in the future.   He already fully enjoys the use of the woman's body, while temporarily not feeling obliged to already pay any non-material price.   

While being merely engaged he still feels the uncommitted freedom of the bachelor.   He still feels no obligation to share any decision with the woman.   He still feels entitled to have everything at his convenience and to enforce this.   He still considers his time and his money as his own.  
For the women, this is very painfully the contrary of a safe haven.  
For some such men, this is a very agreeable situation to be prolonged by delaying the marriage.    


As a result of the prevalence of any or all these misconceptions, a woman cannot get the pursued safe haven in return for allowing a man the access to her body.   All these misconceptions are especially found in persons, who experience themselves as singles in the interaction with someone perceived as very distinct. 

A safe haven is based upon a general intrinsic attitude towards the partner, which leads to behaviors enabling her to feel and experience emotional safety.  

Life is an never-ending sequence of problems, troubles, inclemencies, pressures, which are prone to exhaust and burn out those persons, who are forced to cope alone.    Household items and installations break, neighbors, bosses or family members cause struggles and disputes, legal and financial problems arise. 
 
The person, who is alone when afflicted with any such problem, is often ultimately very helpless.    Platonic friends and non-cohabiting LAT partners can be or at least can attempt to be supportive by listening, by giving advice or by supportive actions.   But in the end, it is not their own problem.   They have a backdoor, they can sooner or later withdraw and go on with their own life.   Being supportive is merely their choice, a onesided altruistic act, for them it is not an own necessity.   In the end, the person remains still alone with the problem.      

A safe haven is very different.   A safe haven means, that both partners intertwine their lives and their circumstances so much, that they both are concerned and struck together by such problems. They have an identity as being two halves of a unit.  Whatever happens to one automatically also happens to the other, because it happens to the unit.  The shared life causes being struck together by the impact of the same circumstances and events.   Both partners have no choice and no backdoor, they need to cooperate to solve common problems by common activities.    Whatever they do or fail to do causes either benefits or damage to both.   

677. Suitable Means Nothing Less Than Not-Unsuitable

677.   Suitable Means Nothing Less Than Not-Unsuitable

Again and again I see on dating sites calculations and concepts, which indicate the implicit assumption, that someone could be more or less a match by nothing more than only the additive presence or absence of shared and welcome traits.        

This is a very hazardous fallacy.    Relationships fail predominantly, when one partner's attributes, traits, attitudes, values or habits cause the other to feel and experience harm or at least discomfort and displeasure.    In such cases, both partners are mutually unsuitable.   

Therefore differences in how much someone is suitable are only of any significance, when there is no unsuitability at all.     

 

As a metaphor, the most delicious ingredients can be mixed elaborately into a perfect treat.  But one single addition of a foul tasting or toxic ingredient suffices to make it entirely unpalatable or dangerous.  

It is the same with a partner.   A man could have dozens of traits and attributes making him appear as nearly perfect and as a dream come true.  But one unbearable and intolerable attribute can suffice to nevertheless make the relationship toxic and devastating beyond endurance.   

 

If accidentally there is salt instead of sugar in a cup of coffee, it can be thrown out with a shrug of a shoulder and new coffee brewed.   But if there is accidentally salt in the tiramisu or chocolate cake, which had required a lot of work to make, the disappointment is much bigger.  

The same goes with a man.   The more a man seems to be perfect in many other aspects, the more it is painful, when his hurting behavior cannot be stopped.   Avoiding to be hurt by a man by avoiding him entirely is easy, as long as in all other aspects he is merely just acceptable.   Yet he is acceptable for a harmonious relationship, as long as there is no unsuitability.  

 

Suitability can be additive depending upon how much is shared.   Unsuitability is not additive.   One aspect of unsuitability is enough to define the entire unsuitability.  

If there is only a lot of salt in the coffee, it cannot be drunk.   If there is only arsenic in it, it is not to be drunk.   Salt and arsenic together would not make it any less drinkable.    The behavioral consequences of not being able to drink the coffee are the same, even when the reasons are different.

One unsuitability suffices to make a man unacceptable, no matter what he is otherwise.    For me, a man with children is unsuitable, a man with religious beliefs is unsuitable, and a man with both religion and children cannot be less suitable than any one with only one of these unsuitabilities. 

Therefore what defines someone as a match and as a suitable partner is the absence of unsuitable attributes of any kind.   What these are, varies individually.  

Such unsuitable attributes can be

• cognitive, when mental traits like attitudes and beliefs elicit disrespect, repugnance or repulsion.
• behavioral, when habits and instinctive urges cause harm and hurting
• incongruency of significance, when the need for a partner does not fit with what is offered and expected reciprocally
• situational, when circumstances impede fulfilling the other's needs.

I am not looking for a dream partner or for someone perfect.   Instead I am looking for someone, who is in no aspect unsuitable for me.   

This means the absence of anything, which impedes me from respecting and appreciating him as a mindmate and he is someone, who by his own inclinations and decision does nothing, which I experience as harm and by which I feel hurt.      

671. Research On Predators' Brains

671.   Research On Predators' Brains

There is a wide variety of men when judging them by the harm, which they inflict on women.  

Nice, responsible, considerate guys know how to treat a woman without hurting her.   They feel an own innate wish for bonding, for monogamy, for a close and committed relationship with a woman perceived as a person.  

Predators, jerks, abusers are instinct driven alley dogs, who make women's life miserable by mistaking their bodies as toilets for male body waste.  

Both varieties exist and of course there are mixed forms between these extremes.   Explaining the difference includes defining the baseline.

 

1.  One possible way to interpret this distinction is to see the abuse of women as the direct and logical effect of unconstrained male libido.   What enables some men to be nice and decent is their special talent or gift to appreciate and respect women to an extent, which suffices to deactivate all destructive and excessive impacts of their libido.   Their recognition and perception of women as companions is an achievement based upon this special aptitude, which may be an expression of emotional intelligence or even an independent cognitive ability.    It is something, which is lacking in animals and in abusers.

2.  The alternative interpretation is defining drastic behavioral urges as a disorder and call it hypersexuality, which is supposed to be an addiction.   This interpretation and definition omits and overlooks to take into any account the impact upon the abused victims.   Their suffering is condoned and misinterpreted as normal, as merely collateral damage.   Hypersexuality is only considered as problematic, when there are unintended and not wished for consequences for the abusers themselves.

I consider the first explanation as more plausible, because the human species is still evolving further towards the development of predominant cognitive talents and abilities.   This ongoing evolution of the unique qualities of the human brain to be more rational than driven by instinctive urges strengthens the ability to make wise decisions, which can override the power of animal instincts.  

 

There has been done a study on abusers' brains.

Sexual desire, not hypersexuality, is related to neurophysiological responses elicited by sexual images.
Vaughn R. Steele, PhD, Cameron Staley, PhD, Timothy Fong, MD and Nicole Prause, PhD.  

http://www.socioaffectiveneuroscipsychol.net/index.php/snp/article/view/20770/28995
 

"Background: Modulation of sexual desires is, in some cases, necessary to avoid inappropriate or illegal sexual behavior (downregulation of sexual desire) or to engage with a romantic partner (upregulation of sexual desire). Some have suggested that those who have difficulty downregulating their sexual desires be diagnosed as having a sexual ‘addiction’. This diagnosis is thought to be associated with sexual urges that feel out of control, high-frequency sexual behavior, consequences due to those behaviors, and poor ability to reduce those behaviors. However, such symptoms also may be better understood as a non-pathological variation of high sexual desire. Hypersexuals are thought to be relatively sexual reward sensitized, but also to have high exposure to visual sexual stimuli. Thus, the direction of neural responsivity to sexual stimuli expected was unclear. If these individuals exhibit habituation, their P300 amplitude to sexual stimuli should be diminished; if they merely have high sexual desire, their P300 amplitude to sexual stimuli should be increased. Neural responsivity to sexual stimuli in a sample of hypersexuals could differentiate these two competing explanations of symptoms."

Methods: Fifty-two (13 female) individuals who self-identified as having problems regulating their viewing of visual sexual stimuli viewed emotional (pleasant sexual, pleasant-non-sexual, neutral, and unpleasant) photographs while electroencephalography was collected.

Results: Larger P300 amplitude differences to pleasant sexual stimuli, relative to neutral stimuli, was negatively related to measures of sexual desire, but not related to measures of hypersexuality.

Conclusion: Implications for understanding hypersexuality as high desire, rather than disordered, are discussed. "

"In conclusion, the first measures of neural reactivity to visual sexual and non-sexual stimuli in a sample reporting problems regulating their viewing of similar stimuli fail to provide support for models of pathological hypersexuality, as measured by questionnaires. Specifically, differences in the P300 window between sexual and neutral stimuli were predicted by sexual desire, but not by any (of three) measures of hypersexuality. If sexual desire most strongly predicts neural responses to sexual stimuli, management of sexual desire, without necessarily addressing some of the proposed concomitants of hypersexuality, might be an effective method for reducing distressing sexual feelings or behaviors."

The study backs up my notion, that male libido is by itself a problem causing harm to women.   Therefore it should be not only considered as problematic, when it has detrimental effects upon the men themselves, but whenever is causes degradation, commodification and objectification of women.   It should be considered already as a problem, while it still is restricted to men's deranged attitudes, before any harm is done to women.  

669. The Difference Between Instrumental Intelligence And Wise Intelligence

669.   The Difference Between Instrumental Intelligence And Wise Intelligence

Entry 648 was about a chimpanzee's amazing cognitive accomplishments.    But he is not the only animal with astounding achievements:   
http://www.zoo.ox.ac.uk/group/kacelnik/lb_movie_s1.mov
This movie shows, how a cockatoo solves a complicated puzzle to get access to food.  

This is once more an example for what I consider the fundamental difference between what I will call instrumental intelligence and wise intelligence.    This difference is often overlooked and confounded.   Animals can show some form of instrumental intelligence.   But wise intelligence requires cognitive abilities, which are found only in humans, and by far not in all of them. 

Ayumu and the cockatoo will repeat difficult cognitive task, whenever their body is inclined to eat the reward.    Nothing else has an impact upon the application of instrumental intelligence to a perceived need and to the goal of fulfilling it.   Attempting a task, no matter the amount of instrumental intelligence needed, is not a decision, but an automatic reaction to a need or an urge.  

A human too usually needs some instrumental intelligence to acquire food.   No matter if this means the skills to hunt, to gather or to farm, or if it requires to earn money and to buy food, or even to steal it.   But a human's wise intelligence first evaluates the goals in a complex mental context, before applying instrumental intelligence towards reaching it.   A human can for example decide, if he wants to spend money on food or on a book, if he wants to eat or to lose weight, if he wants to acquire food for himself or for some other person.  

Instrumental intelligence is a tool, which serves to pursue goals, which are derived from either instinctive urges or external influences or any interaction between both.    These goals are exempt from any rational evaluation.  

Wise intelligence also uses instrumental intelligence as a general principle and as much upon the own person as upon others.    Goals, attitudes, morals, value systems and behavior are chosen and evaluated by the same rationality and logical procedures as is the subsequent pursuit of the goals.   Wise intelligence includes having a theory of mind, and it is more than emotional intelligence, which can be misused to the disadvantage of others.  

To illustrate this, here are some examples of humans doing a lot of harm by using instrumental intelligence in the absence of wise intelligence:
   

• A scientist explores methods how to build lethal bombs for the purpose of serving his religion as a terrorist.
• A scientist designs weapons for war as a means of strengthening his own ingroup.
• PUAs (pick up animals) learn and teach elaborated tricks for the purpose of luring women into situations, in which they can be abused.
• Greedy sales people learn special psychological techniques to get money from reluctant customers.
• Power hungry politicians use elaborate intrigues and strategies to get to the top of hierarchies.

There are several different patterns of dynamics, when people apply instrumental intelligence as a means of asymmetrically pursuing goals.   Some believe, that the fittest and strongest are naturally entitled to privileges, whenever they can achieve them.  They outrightly reject the concept of equality.  Some believe at least, that everybody competes and fights for benefits adn that doing the same to protect themselves legitimates it. 

George Simon's (entries 629 and 661) disturbed characters are of these patterns.   The persons are aware of what they are doing and that many targets and victims disagree with how they are treated.   There is no denial of the collateral damage caused.    

While targets and victims are usually not able to stop such behaviors, they often have the option of avoiding, what can be easily recognized.   
Simon's disturbed characters do not accept the validity of other people's rules for themselves, but they pretend to do so, when this serves their purpose.
When disturbed characters fail to succeed, they are usually aware to be the losers in a competition fought with all the weapons supplied by instrumental intelligence.   

665. Possible Disruptions When Avoiding To Harm

665.   Possible Disruptions When Avoiding To Harm

As mentioned several times already, I consider the Epicurean principle of not harming as the basis of how I want to interact with other people.  I prefer to avoid those, who are determined otherwise like for example religious people, who justify harming by an alleged reward in the afterlife.
 

 
When two persons respect each other as equals and are consciously motivated to avoid harming each other, this does not automatically mean the absence of disruption by involuntary harming.

Harming includes hurting the other's feelings.   This implies the involvement of two sides, one person behaving in a specific way and another person perceiving this behavior as painful.

Some causes of disruption:

1.  Misunderstanding of the situation.    

Both can be guided by disparate and incongruent implicit expectations and unverified imaginary options.   
Well meant behavior based upon one set of such implicit presumptions can be perceived as for example betrayal, disappointment, disregard or depreciation by someone with another set.     This is the case for proactive and reactive behavior. 

2.  Not knowing the other well.    

Not harming by consideration is not possible without knowledge of the other's individual resilience and sensitivities. 
The responsibility of behaving morally according to one's own standards does not suffice to avoid, that the other feels hurt by the subjective perception of for example offense, slight, humiliation or rejection.    

3.  Misinterpretation due to lacking trust.  

Trust or the lack thereof has an impact upon the interpretation of the other's behavior and utterings as either benevolent or as a cause for suspicion.   Someone not trusting and feeling slighted can jump to the conclusion, that there really is a slight.

Some methods to avoid such disruptions

1.   Avoiding ambiguity.   

Clear agreements, explicit consent and outspoken options can lead to congruity and realism of expectations.    It allows a rational choice between pursuing or abandoning an endeavor.

2.   Adding consideration to responsibility.   

Acquiring sufficient knowledge about the other's value system, focus of identity and the impact of past experiences enables people to behave with consideration.   Involuntary hurting can best be avoided by knowing as much as possible of the other's subjective perception of all relevant behaviors.    

While responsibility can be regarded as a general moral obligation, consideration adds deliberate care for the other's wellbeing.

3.  The benefit of the doubt.   

Restricting all evaluation of the other to using the most trustful interpretation of his behavior avoids to mistake distrusting interpretations as indicating and even evidence for the justification of distrust.   Acting as if trusting enables real trust to grow, while this does not preclude to be nevertheless prepared for discovering the justification of the distrustful interpretation.  
Someone feeling slighted can ask back for further explanation in the awareness, that what he feels is only subjective and can be based upon wrong premises.

These methods constitute a learning process accomplished by rational and constructive communication, outspoken, direct, blunt and to the point of the matter.   

It is a learning process for both sides.   Learning how to be considerate is only possible, when the one feeling hurt acknowledges and admits the own vulnerability and refrains from blaming, grudging or accusing.  

I am aware that this does not sound very romantic.   But the special situation of beginning a contact by written messages and thus void of all non-verbal information asks for specific proceedings.  

The first step is a reciprocal consent and awareness concerning the options.    This means reciprocally ascertaining, that what each wants and needs as a goal is principally indeed offered by the other.      
The second step is a phase of constructive communication, which can lead to either the planning of a real life meeting or to the decision to abandon this goal.    
 

A well prepared meeting is then also the moment to start becoming romantic.

661. Comparing Disturbed Characters And Chimpanzees

661.  Comparing Disturbed Characters And Chimpanzees

I already mentioned George Simon before (entries 615, 618 and 629).  After having read his book 'In Sheep's Clothing' with unencumbered fascination, I just finished reading another of his books:  George Simon: Disturbed Characters.  

As far as he describes and analyses disturbed characters, it is also an excellent book.   But it seems that between the two books, he has relapsed into the grasp of religion.  He preaches submission under a god as an important ingredient of his suggested alternative to being a disturbed character.  This is annoying.  

I also disagree with his claim, that there is a free will, which gives people an option to either be a disturbed character or not.    

Two other books already mentioned are:
Martha Stout:  The Sociopath Next Door (entry 137)
Robert Hare:  Without Conscience (entry 160).         

All these books implicitly consider socially acceptable, considerate and responsible behavior as the baseline of what can be expected of all sane humans.   They have no answer, why and due to what reasons disturbed characters are deviant from such an baseline.

I doubt, that the qualities constituting this assumed baseline, are sufficiently frequent to justify this assumption.   With a realistic view at the amount of atrocities regularly forced by beings of the species homo sapiens upon suffering human victims, the ability to live by little or not harming others is only found in a minority.   Only they have the privilege of deserving to be called true humans.   Even they are not born like this but get there only after a long process of maturation and socialization. 

My explanation of disturbed characters is derived from looking at the power of instincts and at different levels of the evolution of cognition and rationality.

1. Human evolution as a process.  
 

Phase 1: 
There were early ancestors, who just like animals were automatically and fully driven by instinctive urges, which had evolved for optimizing procreation.  Due to lacking any mental capacities for comprehending the consequences of behavior, instinctive behaviors of animals are not at all impacted by any awareness for harming, hurting and suffering.  

Phase 2: 
The cognition started to evolve.   Rudimentary intelligence became a powerful tool supporting and serving instincts.   But instincts still continued to completely determine the entire behavior, including the overall goal of breeding.  
 

Phase 3:  
The unique human theory of mind evolved.   This capacity of anticipating or evaluating the effects of behavior upon others or upon the own person in the future with the additional help of a memory gives a unique option only to human.    The unique ability to act in defiance of instincts, to override momentary instinctive urges in favor of cognitively preferred alternative behavior is the decisive distinction between humans and animals.    This includes also the unique ability of humans to prefer and decide to not procreate as the result of a cognitive evaluation and perception of the own identity.    Only humans can be childfree by choice.   There are no childfree animals.  


2.  Chimpanzees

Chimpanzees and humans started to evolve separately about 6 million years ago.   Either the common ancestors had at this time already reached the threshold towards phase 2, or chimpanzees continued to evolve at a slower pace in the same direction as humans.   Today's chimpanzees are a good illustration of phase 2.  They show some amazing skills, which nevertheless always serve instinctive goals.  

In entry 648 I presented the chimpanzee Ayumu, who does better than humans on a task requiring fast perception and short term memory, as can be seen in this video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cPiDHXtM0VA
 

While Ayumu's abilities are amazing, they yet are only isolated and not connected to any higher cognitive control.  He only does the task, because he is immediately after every run rewarded with a treat.   He cannot apply his talents for any abstract or generalized goal.  

Solving the elaborated and complex task on the screen is not different from the more simple achievement of other chimpanzees using tools to get food as is shown here. 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Cp7_In7f88
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EaEDeRJKN0s

But chimpanzees also kill and are aggressive.  
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/06/26/baby-chimpanzee-killed-at_n_1629318.html

They are even cannibals
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uU1zUzXkTtw

Other amazing skills and behaviors have also been observed in chimpanzees, but they have never reached any ability as found in humans in phase 3.  Ultimately the chimpanzees are completely determined by instincts, and all their amazing capacities only support these instincts.    No cognition has evolved, which would enable them to act in defiance to instincts by consideration or empathy.


3.  The evolutionary level of disturbed characters

I think that the human evolution is in a state of transition.   The evolution of instincts has been established millions of years ago, while the cognitive evolution is still continuing.   I see the determination of the behavior as distributed along a bell curve between phase 2 animals at one end and phase 3 humans at the other.   The majority of people are somewhere in the middle.  They are acting by the combined impact of both subconscious instinctive urges and some cognitive control. 
 

Whenever persons, mostly men, commit atrocities of any kind like murdering, torturing, raping, cannibalism, slavery, they seem puzzling, when compared with what is required and expected from humans.   But if they were instead compared with animals, they would appear as healthy and sane chimpanzees. 

I consider severely character disturbed persons, including those labeled psychopaths and sociopaths, as beings, whose cognitive evolution has relapsed, failed or is delayed and retarded.    In spite of belonging genetically to the species homo sapiens, they are not less animals than are the chimpanzees.   Their cognition only suffices to serve their instincts and to enhance their being a hazard.  But their cognition is insignificant as a determinant of personal goals.    

Chimpanzees use skills to acquire food.  Disturbed characters have a more advanced cognitive knowledge about other human and their behavior, but they use this knowledge also only as a tool.   They succeed to get more than food, they also abuse woman, gain power or pursue other instinctive and selfish goals.   While chimpanzees just lack rationality, these disturbed characters are instead determined not only by instincts but also by irrational beliefs, which serve to excuse and allegedly justify the consequences of instinctive behavior.  

It is a very sad and unfortunate reality, that the survival of the human species depends on the worst and most devastating forces in people, their instincts.   
While the extreme disturbed characters are a hazardous minority, the same instincts are virulent to a lesser degree also in the subconscious mind of the majority of the non or less disturbed people.   This lesser degree of the impact of the same instincts leads to an unfortunate bias towards too much tolerance for and condoning of harming others.  Many damaging behaviors are thus considered as still in the scope of normality, in spite of the extreme suffering of the victims,   Their suffering is not recognized as an outrage, but as unavoidable collateral damage.   


4. Distinguishing animals from humans

It is an unfortunate fallacy, that the distinction between humans and animals has always been only drawn along the genetic borders between species. 

 
In the christian tradition, humans are believed to be special, because a god allegedly created them to be so, and thus, there is a thinking taboo to reconsider and recognize anyone as an animal, no matter how much he behaves as one. 
In recent times, some people are debating, if there is really any decisive distinction at all. 

But to my knowledge, nobody has ever suggested, that the quality of being human, let alone of being more or less human, is an individual trait of the level of the individual cognitive evolution..
   
I claim:  To be considered as human requires more than the genes of homo sapiens, it also requires sufficient cognitive control over the instincts.  

This has far reaching implications.  

The concept of a general human dignity and basic human rights can rationally only be valid for humans, it is a fallacy to automatically attribute and assign it to all members of the species homo sapiens.   When someone acts like an animal, he should be treated as one.   An animal with the liberty only suitable for humans is too much of a hazard.    

The home of chimpanzees is in the wild, but in the zoo or lab, they are for good reasons kept in cages.  
http://www.ippl.org/gibbon/a-tragedy-in-eden/

If extremely disturbed characters would be recognized as animals lacking the basic human capacity of cognitive control, then this could lead to realistic methods of dealing with them.  Once disturbed characters have done serious harm, they should be recognized as animals and treated the same as dangerous chimpanzees.   The need to be protected against becoming a victim is independent of the species of the animals, which are dangerous predators.

The innate predisposition for instinctive or cognitive determination is not carved in stone, but malleable by education and social influences.    Socialization can enhance the cognitive control over instincts, when there is something to enhance.   When there is no rationality and cognition as a constituent personality trait, then no upbringing can convert an animal into a human, no matter the genetic species.   

All children start as instinct driven beings, they need socialization to develop the capacity to use cognitive control, when this talent is innate.    
When a chimpanzee is raised like a child, as in the tragic case of Moe, this does not stop him from biting off someone's finger.  
(http://www.theflamingvegan.com/view-post/Chimpanzees-as-Pets-When-Something-Goes-Wrong).  
I doubt, that a completely instinct determined disturbed character could ever become more human than Moe, no matter the quality of education.   Such a child may not bite off fingers, but bully other kids instead, before committing worse atrocities as an adult.    

Any person is entitled to be given the benefit of the doubt to be human, until he behaves like an animal and thus demonstrates, that he is an animal.   Committing atrocities as an animal forfeits the privileges reserved to humans.  Treating and considering an animal nevertheless as if he were human is an unjustifiable slap into the face to his victim(s).  


4.  The brain

Brains scans have shown differences between the brains of psychopaths and those of non-psychopaths.  

"So, once again there’s some convincing evidence that the brains of psychopaths not only work very differently from those of non-psychopathic individuals, but also may even be ‘wired’ differently than most human brains."
http://counsellingresource.com/features/2013/05/06/abnormal-brain-psychopaths/

I wonder, what would be discovered, if the brains of psychopaths were compared with the brains of chimpanzees.