710. Commemorating Not Just One But All Victims Of Cruelty

710.   Commemorating Not Just One But All Victims Of Cruelty

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  

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

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

703. Differing Effects Of Varieties Of The Visual Objectification Of Women

703.  Differing Effects Of Varieties Of The Visual Objectification Of Women

The objectification and commodification of women by visual representations is nothing new.  

"The female nudes in Roman mosaics exalt beauty, the carnality and eroticism, while male bodies reflect determination, strength and power. This is one of the conclusions of research that analyzed the cultural construction and ideological implications of these artistic representations in which female predominate as compared to those of males."

"The deeply asymmetric treatment of male and female bodies is evident and, therefore, constitutes a reflection of relationships based on power, according to the researchers. "

"the main male figures tend to be gods, heroes and mythological beings, or else wrestlers and athletes."

"One very revealing example is a representation of Ariadne or the Nereid that shows a nude female figure lying on a marine animal, with one arm behind her head in a position and with a gesture that has been interpreted as "availability to the other.""

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/02/140210083155.htm

The text of this video is in Spanish, but it shows some good examples of the mosaics:  
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UKVwl4leLkU

 

These mosaics are expressions of the misperception, that women were objects existing to be used by men. This misperception had been women's plight through history.  

But there is a fundamental difference between the effects upon men's brains by ancient mosaics, frescos, statues or pottery decorations and the contemporary effects by the overexposure to more or less pornographic life like representations of female bodies.

No matter how provocative and explicit the ancient representations, they were nevertheless clearly and unequivocally artifacts.   Looking at a mosaic with whatever fantasy cannot have the same desensitizing effect upon a man's subconscious instincts as that which follows the abuse of a real woman.   (I consider any use of a female body without emotional attachment and without commitment as a form of abuse.)

Today the situation is much worse.   Visual representations, especially by high quality colorful moving pictures, are so much like real life people, that the male subconscious mind cannot distinguish between seeing a real woman and seeing a filmed representation of her.  (Thanks to Kanazawa for this insight).   The fantasy of abusing a filmed woman therefore contributes to the desensitization of men as if they had abused a real woman.  
This makes pornography so devastating.  Frequent abuse causes desensitization.   Desensitization lowers the threshold for attempting and intending more abuse.   It also blurs the male awareness, that approaching a woman for abuse is often perceived by the target as an insult and offense.          

Would any model or actress enact the exact scenes of the Roman mosaics, as far as there is an effect, that by the mosaic and that by the photo of the inaction on a man's brain would be very different. 
The mosaic would reinforce a man's conscious attitude, that women are there to serve him and to be used.   The photo would trigger his instincts, and subconsciously he would perceive the picture as an available real woman. 
 
I personally cannot see any additional artistic value of nudity compared with dress in any work of art and I also see no harm in nudity, when the represented naked body is obviously and unequivocally an artifact and not a real naked body presented for abuse and commerce.    But the contemporary pictures are too much resembling real life women and thus they are confounding men's instincts.  Such pictures have a very detrimental effect upon male brains, which those Roman mosaics could never have.  

636. Epicureanism Between Philosophy And Psychology

636.   Epicureanism Between Philosophy And Psychology

Epicurus lived about 2300 years ago, under very different social and cognitive circumstances.   He was a thinker interested in a variety of subjects.  As far as his then progressive concepts concerned natural science, they are of course so obsolete, that they are only interesting as a part of the history of science.  

His other teachings focus upon suggestions of how humans should live, and these suggestions until today are attractive to some people in spite of a drastically changed social and technological environment.  

This leads to the choice of an approach to those of his original writings still available, the choice between taking them literally or adapting them.

    

Ancient philosophies are the ancestors of both modern philosophy and modern psychology and as far as they are concerned with human nature, cognition and behavior they can be seen as equally precursors of both.  

There are three main approaches to the teaching of Epicurus:

1.  Theoretically philosophical
 

Philosophy has not changed drastically in its methods of developing and evaluating thoughts by thinking.  While changing reality has an impact on the topics and on scenarios of an ideal world, the methods are timeless.  The Epicurean philosophical task and interest is learning about, extracting, interpreting and debating Epicurus' original writings literally.   But taking his teachings literally precludes the successful application in the environment of modern society.

2.  Psychological

Psychology branched off from philosophy about 150 years ago, when it started to apply scientific methods of experimentation and observation attempting to get quantifiable results about human nature.  

One of the milestones in this development was 1879 the founding of his psychological laboratory by Wilhelm Wundt.  (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wilhelm_Wundt)

Since then, scientific psychology, evolutionary biology and psychology, neuroscience together with advanced computerized statistical tools have boosted and improved the knowledge about human nature.   

Any philosophy inconsistent with or even contradicting human nature is not suitable as a guide for how to live and such attempts are futile.  
Therefore psychologically, Epicurus' teaching needs to be synchronized with the results of psychological research, before it can be considered valid as a viable suggestion of how to live today.  
  
3.  Submissive and substituting religion

Some people attempt to cope with feelings of irritation, helplessness and confusion by the submission to some guru, teacher or leader, whom they humbly venerate, admire and revere with non-skeptical blind faith in every of his utterances.  

Depending on availability and circumstances and from a wide variety of disparate options, this guru is chosen as the most appealing to individual needs.   A guru can be a religious or cult leader, a philosopher, a political leader, a therapist, a quack, even a celebrity.   

Some people choose Epicurus as a guru.   They strive to be good disciples by studying and following his teachings literally.   

Without having first hand knowledge of how life was 2300 years ago, they have sometimes a difficult task when deciding how to behave by interpreting quotes from Epicurus' writings.
While I cannot know it, I doubt that Epicurus really wanted to be venerated by humble disciples, it seems more probable, that in his garden he was some kind of a 'primus inter pares'.      


Personally, I prefer the psychological approach.    I have never searched for guidance by any philosophy or belief system.    I have no wish or need to ever be a follower or disciple to any person or doctrine.   
Ever since having discovered my own innate inclinations like rationality, atheism, frugality, low instinctivity and more, I appreciate to find myself sharing my inclinations with someone else having put them already into words.  But the coincidence of having the same inclinations does not imply for me any reason to submit in awe and even less to adopt also thoughts and behaviors, which I do not share innately.
  
Epicurus is no exception.   When I discovered his teachings, I did not shrink in awe to become an admiring disciple.   I perceive him as a kindred mind and similar brain.

617. The Irrationality Of Antisemitism

617.   The Irrationality Of Antisemitism

Being German, writing about antisemitism is a delicate topic.   But recently I was very appalled by someone mentioning his personal experience of antisemitism in the USA, which has obviously hurt him a lot. 

The tragic strength of antisemitism comes from confounding a religion to be at the same time also a defining trait of an alleged ethnic group.    Thus antisemitism gets fueled by two mutually reinforcing influences, which both are equally irrational.  

• Religious fundamentalists fighting and discriminating against any other religion.  
• The ingroup-outgroup instinct sometimes causing societies to redefine the well to do and intellectual elite into being considered as underdogs.  Thus the disadvantaged classes are manipulated to feel less bad about suffering social injustice and thus they are kept from rebelling.  
  This in my understanding is the main reason for the sad success of Hitler's antisemitism, which would not have been possible without the cooperation of the populace.    

Therefore I see today's antisemitism in the USA connected to the influence of christian fundamentalists, similar to how declaring oneself to be an atheist can sometimes cause strong hostility in some areas of the USA, while here in Germany my calling myself an atheist has no consequences.

Calling someone a Jew in absence of his being religious is a myth.  

Judaism is a religion, and a Jew is someone belonging to this religion.  I have come across the label 'secular Jew' several times.  It is a contradiction.    A Jew is religious, secular means to be not religious.

The following is not about Judaism as a religion.   From my apistic point of view, Judaism does not deserve any more respect than any other religion, as all religious beliefs are an insane deficit of rationality.


Antisemitism is literally not about a religion and not even about Jews.   

Literally it is the rejection of people who are ethnically called Semitic.   Several ethnicities in the Middle East are called Semitic, even including the Maltese.   

But those, who are discriminated against by antisemitism as alleged ethnic Jews, are not even ethnically Semitic, because the historical Semitic Jews have seized to exist long ago. 

Persons of the Jewish religion are today ethnically members of the country, where they and their immediately preceding generations have been socialized into, just as are the people of any other or no religion.

A defined ethnicity exists as long as there is continuity. 

Ethnic groups have a name and are defined by http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/ethnic

"1. Of or relating to a group of people having common racial, national, religious or cultural origins.

2. Belonging to a foreign culture."

And while this definition does not mention it, the culture also includes a shared language.

Some ethnic groups develop and evolve over a long time and have enough continuity to keep their name.
Example: Greece

There is also continuity when large groups form colonies on different territories. When nations are including large groups of not integrated subcultures of immigrants, then the nation embraces colonies.
Examples: Many Mexicans in the USA have formed colonies. The Turkish immigrants into Germany keep themselves segregated in colonies, in contrast to all other work immigrants from several Mediterranean countries, who have been integrated in the second and third generation.

Many or even most ethnic groups change so much over the centuries, that they develop into distinct ethnicities with different names.
Example: Today's Italians are the descendants of the Romans of ancient times, but they are very different.

But there is rarely any long-term continuity in the case of the migration of individuals and small groups, instead there is assimilation and integration.   Migrants become members of the host ethnicity and country after a few generations.
Example: About a hundred years ago, many people from Poland came as workers to the coal mines and other industry in an area called Ruhrgebiet and stayed.  Names ending on -ski are usually Polish.  But today, people with such names are considered as regular Germans, nobody would call them or even think of them as Polish anymore.

Except the religion, there is no continuity from the historic ethnic Jews. .

Several thousand years ago, an ethnic group called Jews lived in a territory east of the Mediterranean sea.   They spoke Hebrew and were ethnically Semitic.   They have seized to exist.   There is no continuity.  

• Today, there are no more ethnic Jews just as there are no more ethnic Romans.  
• In Israel today, Hebrew was reinstalled after having been extinct as a spoken language. 
  The Hebrew speaking inhabitants of Israel are Israelis.  
• If Israelis are also Jews, it is by their religion.   A shared religion alone, which is the only attribute, which has not changed for thousands of years, does not suffice to define an ethnic group.  
• After centuries and milllennia of migration and mixing, the descendants of the historical Jews are both culturally and genetically as related to the ethnic group of the country, of which they are citizens by passport, education and shared language as anybody with different ancestors and a different religion.  
  I do not know, if this has been done.   But if someone would compare the genetic code of alleged ethnic Jews, including the immigrants to Israel, I would expect them to be less related to the Semitic ethnicities in the Middle East and much more related to their present or previous ethnic homes.
• Even the Yiddish language spoken by some subcultures sharing the Jewish religion is no continuity from the Hebrew of the historical Jews.   Yiddish is not even related to Hebrew at all but a different language, while Italian at least has evolved from the Romans' Latin.

Religion is not hereditary. 

To achieve the cure from the insanity of religious beliefs and to succeed in becoming an atheist and an apistic is something, which for some people is a struggle and a difficult process.   They need encouragement, appreciation and respect.   While ex-christians do not always get this, at least they are usually recognized to have left behind christianity, as soon as the label themselves as atheists.   

But when someone leaves Judaism behind and is still called a Jew, it is as if his religion is confounded with a genetic defect, which cannot be rationally overcome.     Irrationality can be considered a genetic defect making someone gullible to any religion, but it certainly does not lead to choose Judaism over any other.   
It is foolish to call someone a Jew, even though he has become an atheist or converted to a different religion, only because some ancestors had belonged to the Jewish religion.  This is not less foolish than to call atheistic descendants christians only because of their christians parents or even grandparents.  

Antisemitism is a two-step mental fallacy.

Conclusions from visible traits like the color of the skin to alleged correlated invisible traits are the simple fallacy of simple racism.   But the conclusion, that an only alleged but not visibly recognizable race or genetic ethnicity is correlated to invisible traits is the double fallacy of generalized racism without even a race.     

_____

 Janurary 21, addition:

This source indicates the genetically mixed background of people with a Jewish cultural and/or religious background.    

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/01/130116195333.htm

Further analyses yielded a complex multi-ethnical ancestry with a slightly dominant Caucasus -Near Eastern, large South European and Middle Eastern ancestries, and a minor Eastern European contribution.

616. Thoughts On Volunteering

616.   Thoughts On Volunteering

In Germany as also in some other countries too, actually the social trend is such that the rich get richer, the poor get poorer and the public administration lacks the money to fulfill basic needs of the general public. 

  
Sometimes volunteers fill this gap by self-exploitation.   Considering volunteers as individual persons, this is noble and honorable behavior.   Politically and generally seen, it is nevertheless wrong, because it perpetuates the very reasons, why there is a need for the volunteers.  

While volunteers do help needy persons on a short term basis, they also help to maintain the unjust distribution of income and the success of greed.   Volunteers' work has the side effect of supporting the rich to remain rich.  
Volunteers contribute to avoiding the collapse, which would at least make it unavoidable to require the rich to pay higher taxes.   Unfortunately even in the case of the collapse, as in Greece, the collapse is still not generally attributed to the wealth stolen by the rich from the public and the poor.    

Every person, who works, should rightfully get some payment, unless there is the reciprocity of helping between neighbors and friends.  All public services for infrastructure, culture, education and welfare are expenses to be reliably paid by taxes. 

As long as income, prices of goods and taxes are balanced to supply a moderate income for everybody, this can work.   As soon as some people succeed to get rich, they disrupt the balance.   The rich sit on the stolen money, that the administration rightfully should have for public services.   

I gave one example of the imbalance in entry 402 (Justice By Coincidence).   Here are some more examples.

Recently a German politician has been giving lectures and receiving ridiculously and outrageously high payment.   For one lecture he was paid 25.000 €, and similar payments seem to be quite usual for such vultures.  If he were given a decent 100€ for the lecture, there were the remaining 24.900€ available to pay for necessary community services without the self-exploitation of volunteers.      

Also this money was paid to him by a public company supplying electricity and gas to costumers, including people on welfare.  These poor people are supposed to live for more than two years on what this greedy politician pocketed for a few hours.    Electricity could be cheaper without extra expenses making a greedy rich man richer. 
   
One man got extremely rich on software, which is used on the majority of computers also in the public administration and other tax paid public institutions.    He has got millions or maybe billions of €uros paid for licenses from tax payers' money in many countries.   This money is lacking for other public services, and substituting it by the self-exploitation of volunteers is not a correct solution but repairing unnecessary damage.

While this greed is legal, morally it is theft.   When the revenue for provided goods rise, because they are widely used on a mass market, the morally correct reaction is to lower the price instead of getting immorally rich.   

The possibility of producing so many goods, that there can be Cockaigne for everybody, is a myth.   Whenever some people succeed to have a life of luxury, others are deprived and pay the price.   Whenever one person consumes more goods and services than can be produced in the same time as it is consumed, another person is deprived of some of his share in the world's total production.  

Even in spite of the growing productivity in mass production, there are many kinds of services, which cannot be provided without human working hours.   Not only are the hours of the day limited, but so is the capacity of humans to function without being physically and mentally tired.     

In a village hundreds or thousands of years ago, the farmer supplies the baker with grains. The baker supplies the farmer, the smith and the lumberman with bread.  The smith supplies the farmer, the baker and the lumberman with tools.   The lumberman supplies the smith and the baker with firewood. 

As long as they all are free to live by such a system of exchange, all is well.    But when there is a feudal owner of the village, who claims to own the fields, the buildings and the forest and who greedily demands to get a portion of all produce while not producing anything himself, then this lowers the standard of living of the farmer, baker, smith and lumberman.  They cannot compensate by producing additionally as much as is taken.  They are limited by not being able to do more than drudge from morning until night.    

This example is of course oversimplified, because it omits many other decisive factors, but the principle is still the same today, no matter how complex the society.   As long as there is a balance in the exchange of the division of labor, all can live moderately well.   

As soon, as too much of the production or its equivalent in money is taken away, the standard of living of the deprived sinks.    Whenever people are rich, their privileges are enabled by the poor people, from whom they are taken.  

In my village example, there were only the exploitative feudals and the poor villagers, so there were not volunteers to intervene.  The rich did not care, when the poor starved to death.   Today, there is a middle class between the greedy rich and the deprived poor.   They are the pool, from which volunteers are recruited and self-recruited.   

Only for middle class people, there is more or less a balance between their working efforts and their standard of life.   This balance instigates them to contribute to improving the situation for the less fortunate, while they are not themselves discontent with their own situation.   They do not see a benefit for themselves in a drastic social or political change.   They have compassion with the needy poor without attributing their misery to the injustice caused by the greedy rich.  

If every work done by volunteers and all public debts were paid out of rich people's assets, the rich could still live comfortably but in moderation.   I do not consider violence a solution.  Every political revolution has caused too much suffering to innocent victims to justify it.   

While seeing theoretically, what is wrong, I am unable to suggest, how the rich could be convinced to give peacefully back, what they have morally stolen from the rest of the population.  


I just discovered, that it rhymes:

The poor are needy,
'cause the rich are greedy.

503. Evolution And Monogamy

503.  Evolution And Monogamy

In entry 502, I pointed out, that human instinctive behavior has not yet evolved to adapt to the novelty situation of being free from survival needs, in spite of the cognitive reality, that emotional and intellectual needs have become strong influences upon human behavior.   
Under the pressure of survival needs people are coerced to make choices, which they would not make, were they free to choose by taking full account of their emotional needs.  

In this study, women's choice between polygyny and monogamy is explained by the survival benefits of the choice.   It is a very good example of the force of circumstantial restrictions upon options.   

Sathoshi Kanazawa / Mary C. Still:
Why monogamy?

http://personal.lse.ac.uk/Kanazawa/pdfs/SF1999.pdf

"If resource inequality among men is great, women choose to marry polygynously and the polygynous institution of marriage emerges. If resource inequality among men is small, women choose to marry monogamously and the monogamous institution of marriage emerges. The theory explains the historical shift from polygyny to monogamy as a result of the gradual decline of inequality among men."

The explanation makes perfect logical sense, as long as the options of the choice between monogamy and polygamy are restricted to those for physical survival.    When the choice of a man is a choice between starving and eating, the wish for an exclusive attachment is an unobtainable luxury.   There is no free cognitive choice considering also emotional needs.

Today the environment in the rich modern societies offers for the first time in history the true freedom of choice.    Relieved from the pressure of physical survival struggles, people are now able to sense and perceive their emotional and intellectual needs.   In this situation, monogamy is the best cognitive choice (entry 497)

10,000 and even 1,000 years ago, the situation was very different.   Physical survival depended upon access to scarce resources of food, clothing, firewood, shelter.   The total availability of these resources to a community, village or group was limited.   Even under the best favorable circumstances, people could not produce much surplus above their own needs.

• Everyday chores were time consuming.   Water had to be carried from the well, cooking required a fire and fire wood.      
• Without machinery, the production of all goods were slow and limited.  
• Food production depended on the climate.    Food had to be produced locally.
• Skills and knowledge were limited. 

As long as the access to fertile land, forest and water was unrestricted to all people, the sum of the resources allowed the survival of everybody on an equal low level.   But any inequality of power over such resources meant, that only the powerful men had the means to survive, while there was not enough left for everybody else.  Medieval systems of rich landowners exploiting their tenants are examples.      


Under such circumstances, a woman's theoretical choice between being the exclusive wife of a poor monogamous man and sharing a rich powerful man's wealth with other wives was not a free choice.   Her emotional needs were an unobtainable luxury beyond her reach, when the price for one poor man's emotional exclusive attachment was perishing and starvation for her and her offspring. 

This situation was aggravated by the lack of safe methods of family planning.   The woman was not even able to choose the monogamous poor man by restricting the number of offspring to match his resources. 

The woman's choice was further determined by her parents' power over her.  Under the pressure of lacking sufficient resources to keep all their children alive, parents coerced their daughters by dire necessity into the choice of the man, who could maintain them, even if she had to share him in a polygynous arrangement.    


Evolutionary biology and evolutionary psychology are very valuable methods to explain hidden instinctive tendencies toward certain behaviors.   But it is a fallacy to confound explanations with justification, connivance or acquiescence.  

It is historical reality, that the superior physical strength of men allowed them to first exclude women from independent access to the survival resources and that the physically strongest men usurped greedily a disproportionally high share of the totally available resources.  This enabled a minority of men to gain control over the majority of women. 

Today the cognitive perception of non-material needs are just as much a reality, including the ability to act morally, to distinguish between justice and injustice and to suffer excruciating emotional pain as the victim of injustice.   Today we have reached a situation, where the instinctive reactions, that were helpful in a different environment, have become obsolete and detrimental.   

The most rational and least instinctive people are guided by their cognition to new adaptive behaviors to the changed environment, while the majority are still driven too much by dysfunctional and anachronistic instincts.


Therefore no scientific explanation of the choice of polygyny in the past by reasons of necessity can be morally used to deny people in the present society their emotional needs for the safe haven of a monogamous exclusive commitment.    No allegedly free choice for polygamy in the past is a valid excuse today for the promiscuous cheating and dumping by desensitized jerks.
When scientific research uncovers instinctive tendencies, which hurt others emotionally, then this is a reason to teach people enhanced awareness to fight their subconscious harmful tendencies, it is not justifiable to use scientific discoveries as an excuse for cruelty.     

446. Varieties Of Epicureanism

Varieties Of Epicureanism

This continues entry 442.

Epicurus lived about 2300 years ago. He and his writings were a product of his epoch, valid under the circumstances of his own times   He developed a philosophy, that included a compilation of his view on topics of natural science and suggestions for a form of live.   He and some companions lived in a garden community in accordance.   

There are several variations of being an Epicurean in our times:

1.  Theoretical Epicureanism
His writings can be studied as an example of the history of science and thinking as a theoretical interest without any practical purpose or application.   The exegesis and the literal meaning of his texts are important.

2.  Epicureanism as a cult.  
His writings promise some form of a good life.   Depending on general inclinations, some people perceive him as a flawless, never erring guru of absolute and timeless wisdom.   They put him upon a pedestal and prostrate mentally in front of him as his disciples.  They take the submissive role of veneration and reverence.   They take his writings literally, any interpretation is considered as a sacrilege.  

3.  Modernized psychological Epicureanism.
This requires the clear awareness of his writings as having been progressive and valid concerning science only in the context of his own times.   Any non-historical interest in his explanation of nature is obsolete.  
His suggestions for a good life are critically evaluated as reactions to the specific circumstances of his epoch.   Nothing can be automatically applied to modern living conditions.   None of his suggestions can be adapted without reevaluating it from the perspective of our epoch, taking into account evolutionary biology, psychology, neuroscience, introspection, tit-for-tat strategy, apistia, egalitarianism, history and modern technology.  

4.  Innate Epicureanism
Some people have a brain predestined to feel most comfortable with a way of life that is congruent with Epicurus' principles.   People with such a brain are guided by the timeless essence of his writings, even if they have never heard of Epicurus.  Anybody, who has this kind of a brain, is attracted to his suggested life style.  

• The principle of not harming and not be harmed.  Valuing homeostasis more than pleasure.   
• Rational self-control is stronger than instinctive urges.
• Apistia.  
• The predominance of non-physical, emotional responsiveness and sensitivity of the pleasure center.   

Epicurus had such a brain, therefore he was able to develop his ideas, suggestions and attitudes in the specific form influenced by the circumstances of his times.   Would he live today, his writings would be different, but the essence would be the same. 


I have such a brain myself and I discovered the principles of Epicurus as fitting my own inclinations.   Only later I got fascinated by adapting, what he had written himself, to modern life.    It is a creative task to figure out, what he would write, were he to live today.   

445. Epicurus And Inequality

Epicurus And Inequality

In entry 442 I explained, that while philosophy suggests goals for a specific way of life, it needs psychology to understand the dynamics of reaching the goals.   

But to understand the definition of goals by a specific philosopher, it is also important to understand the sociological and psychological background, which influenced his thinking.  

A philosopher, who lived 2300 years ago, can only be evaluated by understanding his historical context.

Epicurus omitted to include any concept concerning equality into his philosophy.   He also seems completely void of either mentioning or noticing the harm caused by inequality.    

To find an explanation for this omission, I googled about the social situation in Athens in Epicurus' times.  A boy like Epicurus grew up into a world, where there were three different categories of people:  Free men, free women and slaves.   He grew up to take this for granted, as if there was no alternative available to get aware of.    It was a natural and normal condition of life.

He also grew up by seeing the outward behavior of women and slaves, who had submitted externally to their plight.    How much they suffered harm, was most probably not directly visible, especially not to a child. 

Free men were the only people, who had the choice, how to live.   They were the only persons, who were free to decide over their own lives and which philosophy to follow.   Schools admitted only boys, who thus had the option to read books and make choices.     

Women were excluded from public live, they were considered to exist for the purpose of procreation or as a utility for male use.   They were denied public functions and the access to many public buildings and events.   They were excluded from education but taught to do household chores.   Women from rich families, who did get education, were an exception.  Women were impeded from developing their potential and excluded from where they could give evidence of their abilities. Then they were considered as not equal, based upon having been made so.  

I read an estimation that about 30% of the population of Athens were slaves.    The life of a slave in the Roman empire is well illustrated in the move Spartacus.   I have no doubt, that a slave's life about 200 years earlier in Athens was not much different.   Those beautiful Greek temples were certainly built by slaves, and most probably also the people's houses, including the one, in which lived Epicurus and his community.   Even if a slave did not physically suffer from hard toil, the lost dignity of being owned like an object is certainly a form of emotional harm.   

The admittance of women and slaves into Epicurus' garden is used as an evidence of his progressive thinking.   Obviously, Epicurus did not hesitate to own slaves or accept his community members to do so.  Without first owning someone as a slave, nobody could have ever brought a slave into the garden community.   

In the absence of any expression of his disagreement with such blatant and brutal inequality, I consider his merely making exceptions as inconsistent and a contradiction to his principle of not harming nor being harmed.   Allowing women and slaves into the garden was a humiliating act of mercy, of generosity and a condescension, as long as he did not doubt their ascribed general inferiority as justifiable.  
 

Making exceptions without vehemently condemning inequality was obviously the limit of how progressive and humane Epicurus was able to be as a product of his social environment.   

But I am convinced, that would Epicurus live today, he would include equality in his philosophy.  

424. Would Epicurus Today Be Childfree?

424.   Would Epicurus Today Be Childfree?

I have already been expressing my personal opinion, that people with an Epicurean brain are especially well suited to get bonded in monogamous long-term commitment, no matter if legally married or in any other form.   I consider persons as having an Epicurean brain, if they are guided predominantly by rationality and less by instinctive needs for any kind of homeostasis, and if they are more sensitive, perceptive and responsive to emotional and intellectual stimulation of the pleasure center and less to physical stimulation.

But according to learned scholars' disagreement about how to interpret, what has been preserved of Epicurus' original writings, he was either completely opposed to marriage or he accepted marriage as acceptable, when the circumstances were appropriate.   

I claim, that if Epicurus would live today, he would be in favor of committed couples as the best way to a happy life.   I can even imagine Epicurus today as a happy member of the childfree movement.  

I attribute his reluctance or opposition to marriage directly to his principle of doing no harm as a primary guidance for behavior.

 
Pregnancy, childbirth and raising children cause a lot of pain to a woman.   Today, women who choose to have children, do this as a consequence of an urge to reduce dishomeostasis due to a strong instinctive urge to procreate.   They suffer, but they subjectively get a benefit from their pain.   But because of the progress of medicine it is their own choice, not a consequence of being involved in any kind of a relationship.     

In the times of Epicurus, the medical knowledge was much less advanced than today, and giving birth, having an abortion and using the then available rudimentary methods of attempted birth control, were all very dangerous and painful for a woman's life and health.   This suffering was not a choice, it was the inevitable and automatic consequence of marriage.    Marriage meant for a woman the risk of being harmed and for a man the risk of doing harm.

It is somehow very logical, that Epicurus wanting to avoid harming any woman, was aware of the serious responsibility, had he caused the pregnancy of a woman, even in the case, that she were willing to procreate.   Even then, with enough empathy, Epicurus would probably still have felt guilty of the suffering of the woman.   

His choice to suggest reluctance towards marriage was the only available method of being responsible and considerate.

421. Was Epicurus A Concealed Atheist?

Was Epicurus A Concealed Atheist?

This is a continuation of entry 418. 

According to this quote from Epicurus' letter to Menoeceus, Epicurus was not an atheist as we understand it today.

"First believe that God is a living being immortal and blessed, according to the notion of a god indicated by the common sense of mankind; and so believing, you shall not affirm of him anything that is foreign to his immortality or that is repugnant to his blessedness. Believe about him whatever may uphold both his blessedness and his immortality. For there are gods, and the knowledge of them is manifest; but they are not such as the multitude believe, seeing that men do not steadfastly maintain the notions they form respecting them. Not the man who denies the gods worshipped by the multitude, but he who affirms of the gods what the multitude believes about them is truly impious. For the utterances of the multitude about the gods are not true preconceptions but false assumptions; hence it is that the greatest evils happen to the wicked and the greatest blessings happen to the good from the hand of the gods, seeing that they are always favorable to their own good qualities and take pleasure in men like themselves, but reject as alien whatever is not of their kind."

http://www.epicurus.net/en/menoeceus.html

In this quote, he completely rejects the deities of his culture, who were the representation of the most evil, most dangerous, most destructive behaviors of what humans were considered as capable of, in addition of having immortality and the power and ruthlessness to harm.  

These gods were a kind of super-jerks.   

They were positive role models of acceptable behavior for those having political, military, financial or religious power.    
They were negative role models for the average people, who compared themselves with the gods.  This enabled them to excuse their own evil behavior as relatively less outrageous.  

But I wonder, if Epicurus' explicit claim of the existence of special gods, who are very different from those actually believed in in his culture, is his true conviction or if he has told this for a purpose.      

To me it seems plausible, that Epicurus' claim of gods was made for external purposes only.

1.  In his letter to Herodotus, his explanation of nature is completely materialistic.   
http://www.epicurus.net/en/herodotus.html.   

While in his entire letter the word 'god' does not occur, not even once, the gist is clearly a view, in which there is neither a function nor a place for a god.    While assuming a god does not seem to contradict, he is just obsolete.  

2.  From what I have understood, the community lived in Epicurus' garden exactly like atheists in the sense, that they lived, as if there were no gods,   They were not bothered about any gods, who may or may not have been hidden somewhere outside the walls.  

3.  Epicurus background is a world, where inexplicable and incomprehensible experiences and effects are a frequent part of everyday life.   Nobody could explain lightning, eclipses, solstice, earthquakes, sickness.   Living with the inability to explain such experiences, assuming the impact of an unknown deity as the cause of incomprehensible phenomena was not as irrational then as it is today to people, who from early childhood on are more informed.   Therefore no matter what Epicurus believed himself, he had much less reason to include the existence or non-existence of gods as something of importance into his philosophy.   He was concerned about the impact of the belief in gods on the human behavior, not about gods without an impact.

4.  Life at Epicurus' time was both, more really dangerous and more appearing dangerous than today.   But there was no modern therapy, neither psychological nor pharmaceutical, against fear, anxiety, phobia and paranoia.   The most powerful remedy was the placebo effect of bribing the gods to benevolence by sacrifices and rituals.    While Epicurus did encourage people to not fear the gods, he probably considered it as wise of not depriving people of the placebo effect.  

5.  In Epicurus' time, some of those, who had acquired political, military, financial or religious power were cruel without limitation, and provoking them meant risking death, incarceration, mutilation or torture.   I consider it at least as possible, that by accepting publicly the existence of gods, Epicurus protected his garden community from prosecution.   

418. The Gods In Epicurus' World

The Gods In Epicurus' World

The reason or triggers to become atheistic differ, depending on the kind and trait of the deity to be discarded and the general level of available scientific knowledge.   

The question, how much Epicurus was a theist and why he did not become an atheist as would be consistent with his philosophy as expected from our modern view, can only be answered by looking at the social and intellectual background of his time.   

1.  It was during the lifetime of Epicurus, that Alexander the Great invaded territories as far away as what is now Pakistan.   Therefore his soldiers certainly brought back vague and phantastic tales of very strange people and animals like elephants in far away countries, tales of outgroups, that appeared capable of anything.   
The Greek gods had not only human bodies.  Instead of having the fame of at least being allegedly benevolent and benign, the were the representation of every atrocity, that is usually ascribed to outgroup members: cheating, killing, raping, abducting, incest, cannibalism.    These gods were predominently so evil, that humans could feel good in comparison, when in reality they were only less evil.    But these gods were also considered as so powerful, that this was an excuse to not interfere.   Usually ascribing evil to an outgroup is the justification for war, extinction, slavery.     

Some info about those gods:
http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0197622.html
Therefore it seems probable, that the Greek gods were more perceived and imagined as a special outgroup living on Mount Olympus, whom nobody ever happened to meet personally.
Even a Centaur was probably another tale from far away, comparable to the elephants, that Alexander's army did fight against.

In short, these gods were probably not perceived as divine in the same way as the christian god is by the believers.

2.  As long as the knowledge of natural phenomena and science was very rudimentary, many things were incomprehensible and unexplainable.  Nobody could explain the nature of lightning and thunder, before there was any knowledge of electricity.    Today's skeptical ability of seeing the difference between contingency, coincidence and correlation is enabled by enough knowledge of the rational distinction between natural and supernatural.    When unexplainable phenomena happen as the normal occurrence of every day life, then the difference between incomprehensible and supernatural is blurred.  

Therefore Epicurus' part of his philosophy suggesting to not be bothered about the gods is in his times as good as not believing in the existence of a god in our time.  

417. Speculations About Progress

Speculations About Progress

Agriculture started roughly 15,000 to 10,000 years ago.   But until about 1500, the life of the majority of people, being mostly farmers or craftsmen, did not change very much.  They toiled in hard physical labor, there were animals but there was not much machinery driven by either wind or water.    Farmer worked during daylight hours, after that they were exhausted and needed the hours of darkness to recover.  

Except the idle minority of the powerful class, people's entire time was consumed by survival activities.   

But in only about four centuries from about 1500 until 1900, the combination of mainly three factors started the development, that lead to today's level of technology.

1. Printed books made more knowledge available to more people.
2. First bright oil and gas lamps and later electricity replaced fire and candle as brighter light to spend more hours reading the books.
3. Mass importation of coffee and tea enabled people to keep longer hours fully awake.

This created a surplus of time for people to learn, get trained and focus on reading, abstract thinking, scientific and technological inventions.   

This also gave more people a chance to make use of their talents and skills.   
It reduced the power of beliefs over people's thinking.  
The resulting inventions enhanced overall productivity, which led as a result to even more surplus time.

Of course, this is a very simplified look at history.....

396. What If Romeo And Juliet Had Lived?

What If Romeo And Juliet Had Lived?
 
Scenario: A priest marries a girl of not yet 14 years of age with a boy only slightly older, without the knowledge of the parents.    Both have known each other for about a day.
Seen from today's perspective, it would be preposterous, except the consequences being too serious, so it is more an irresponsible madness. 
The priest should be adult and mature enough to know better than to marry two children, who are too immature to know the difference between loving a person and being infatuated by a body.    Probably the priest was stupid and immature himself.   Otherwise he would have chosen a more rational career than that of spreading a public delusion.

Yet this story is supposed to be the most romantic love story in literature, and countless people consider Romeo and Juliet as the prototype of a loving couple.   But it is only the tragic end, that did set their union and story apart as special.  

Had they survived, they would have ended like so many other couples with a similar social background of belonging to the nobility in the Italy of the 16th century.     There and also in the England of 1593 to 1596, when Skakespeare wrote the play, maturity seemed to be considered as the physical and educational fitness to fulfill very disparate gender roles.  

A boy's like Romeo's education focused primarily upon sportive fitness in every discipline serving his role as a fighting man, especially sword fencing, riding and being knowledgeable about horses, and secondary upon his role as a member of the ruling class.   
A girl's like Juliet's education focused upon preparing her for her role as an attractive possession of a man, a breeding womb and a refined organizer of a household.  
The only thing both genders of their class were taught was instruction to follow their religion, to dance, to sing, to play music and to write or recite poetry.   All of this was not enough to keep a couple interested in each other for a long time, if they were brought together merely by infatuation.  

Romeo was exiled to Mantova, where he could have received enough money from his parents to enable Juliet and himself the same luxury life as they had been used to in Verona.  But had Romeo taken Juliet to Mantova, the romance would not have lasted, their infatuation would have faded like it always does, if there is nothing deeper.   They would have drifted apart for having nothing to talk about, getting bored with each other's company.   When Julia got the first of a dozen children, she would have turned her affection and attention to the children, probably she would had grown obese too.  Romeo would have gone back to a world of leisure with his buddies and sooner or later would have cheated on Juliet with the servant girls.   

In entry 301, I commented on Shakespeare's other play: 'The Taming Of The Shrew'.    It is set in the same culture and time as Romeo and Juliet.   The jerk mistreating Kathrina had the typical attitude towards woman as had most men of his times, he was in addition also extremely cruel and inconsiderate.   But even a considerate and caring Romeo was certainly not able to consider Juliet as an equal partner.    On a more subtle level, Juliet and Romeo would have encountered similar conflicts as there were between Kathrina and Petruccio.  

395. Is This As Weird As It Can Get?

Is This As Weird As It Can Get?

I am an atheist and I am already well aware, that once people are driven by a delusion like the one of the existence of a deity, there is nothing crazy, that is beyond their scope of possible behavior.  

But what I just stumbled upon is remarkable:
In 897, a trial was held over a pope's corpse exterred eight months after his death.

 
http://www.law.uga.edu/dwilkes_more/his31_cadaver.html

 

In 1868/9, Robert Browning wrote a long poem, "The Ring And The Book" , which includes a description of the event:

“And at the word, the great door of the church
“Flew wide, and in they brought Formosus’ self,
“The body of him, dead, even as embalmed
“And buried duly in the Vatican
“Eight months before, exhumed thus for the nonce.
“They set it, that dead body of a Pope,
“Clothed in pontific vesture now again,
“Upright on Peter’s chair as if alive.

“Then, swallowed up in rage, Stephen exclaimed
“‘So, guilty! So, remains I punish guilt!

“‘Strip me yon miscreant of those robes usurped,
“‘And clothe him with vile serge befitting such!
“‘Then hale the carrion to the market-place;
“‘Let the town-hangman chop from his right hand
“‘Those same three fingers which he blessed withal;
“‘Next cut the head off, once was crowned forsooth:
“‘And last go fling all, fingers, head and trunk,
“‘In Tiber that my Christian fish may sup!’

“So said, so done: himself, to see it done,
“Following the corpse, they trailed from street to street
“Till into Tiber wave they threw the thing.

http://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/b/browning/robert/ring/book10.html

357. The Social Environment Defining Deviance

The Social Environment Defining Deviance

In recent years, more and more syndromes and disorders have been defined and used to label people with behavior deviant from the expectations in their social environment.   The recent addition of NLD is an example and in entry 356 I have been wondering, if NLD is just another label for intellectual immaturity hidden behind verbal proficiency.    Therefore, when I use the word immaturity in the remainder of this entry, it will include NLD together with psychosocial and intellectual immaturity.  

There are two possible hypotheses concerning the potential for maturity as defined in entry 356.  

1. Every person is born with the potential for developing full psychosocial and intellectual maturity indicated by full consequencity and freedom from gullibility, according to the present day evolution of the brain.  
   Only a fraction of all people does ever realise this full potential.   Not reaching it is a result of external circumstances like lacking access to resources, psychological and social influences, challenges and limitations, physical harm and health problems.
2. The innate potential of the possible maximal maturity to be reached under optimal circumstances is distributed along a bell curve as are other traits like body size and talents.    

Most plausible is a combination of both, but the second hypothesis probably has a limited scope of variability, while the first one can have more drastic impacts.


There are different social environments in regard to the importance of maturity: 

1. Maturity is neither required, enabled nor empowered for the majority of the population.   Their potential maturity remains hidden.    Circumstances allowing and enabling full maturity are a privilege of a minority.  
2. Reaching maturity is expected from everybody and required from the majority.    The lacking or loss of the potential is considered as a deficit and called immaturity.  

Environment 1: 
During millenia of human history, life was organized mainly in villages and small towns, tribes, guilds, nomadic hordes, hoods.  Under their circumstances, maturity was obsolete and not reached.   
Psychosocial maturity is only needed to make wise choices, when there are options and the freedom to select one.    In those heavily structured communities, people's behavior was and is determined by strict rules, enforced by anything between exclusion, expulsion, deprivation from help and drastic punishments.   
Intellectual maturity is not needed in situations, where most of the activities for survival are manual labor and simple routines.  Tiresome toiling in the fields or simple crafts of making pots, baskets or building huts does not lead to someone ever reaching the limits of his abstract abilities, no matter how high or low they are.

Environment 2:
Since the industrial revolution and the advancement of technology, and since the widespread availability of tv and the web, the situation has been reversed.  
Psychosocial maturity: Children are already so overflowed and desensitized with oversexation and violence during the most susceptible phase of gullibility.  By the time, when their brain is ready for developing maturity, they are already too emotionally crippled and dwarfed and their potential to ever reach maturity is severely damaged.  
Intellectual maturity:   Everyday life has lately reached a complexity of ubiquitous technology.  Those with a lower potential for intellectual maturity are noticed and considered as deviant.  They are given labels like NLD.   In a rural society in historical times, they would have been shepherds or farm hands, and nobody would have seen them as having a disorder.  

301. Literature: The Prototype of the Jerk - 1

Literature: The Prototype of the Jerk - 1
Often, while things are bad enough in real life, literature tops it with even worse examples.    I lately watched Shakespeare's play 'The Taming Of The Shrew'.    Years ago I have seen in a theater, and all I remember is the anger, that I felt.
Now I happened to find two versions of it, both obviously using the original text, but the adaptation and acting was quite different, so was the selection of the text used.   

1.  There is a very well made animated version made by the BBC, it is a cartoon appearing as if played by puppets.   
It is the sad story of a woman, Kathrina, who gets so much under a psychopath's ruthless power, that she not only is helpless under his domination, but her entire personality gets so much crippled, that she not only submits externally to her inferior role, but finally accepts it as appropriate for her.    
This is even worse than the Stockholm Syndrome and the Jerk Attachment Syndrome in entry 268.    In both syndromes, the victims gets in a paradox way attached to a jerk or a captor, but their sanity is at least as far preserved, that they are still aware, that they are the victims of an outrage.    Poor Kathrina in the play is in the end so brainwashed and mentally deformed, that she believes herself, that what had been done to her was to her own best.   She has not only been broken, but made believe to have been improved.    She is not herself any more.

The play was written more than 400 years ago, and set in a social situation, where the unlucky Kathrina had no chance to have any independent existence.    Not only her happiness and her subjective wellbeing, but her survival depended first on her father and then on the mercy of a husband.    Her father is a cruel brute, who merciless marries her off without even considering her consent.   His cruel decision to forbid the marriage of his younger daughter before Kathrina having been married has also divided and estranged the sisters.   Her sister wants her sacrifice for selfish reasons.    Kathrina is alone and has nobody to trust and to support her.   

The father marries her to a psychopath, who only wants the father's money and is not interested in Kathrina as a person.   She is a body for Petruccio, a commodity, an object to be used and abused at his convenience.  He values her not more than he values a dog or a horse, whose will he considers needs to broken.    Kathrina is not more than a piece of degraded and devalued merchandise traded between her father and Petruccio.   

Insensitive people think that this play is a comedy.   But even though it is superficially funny, in reality it is the tragedy of a broken destroyed life of a woman, who looses her dignity and ends as a  paradoxically happy doormat.    Maybe that was her only way of surviving the trauma of being married against her will to a psychopath.   She was married for life, in catholic Italy in those days, there was no way out for a woman from her plight, except maybe to escape to a convent.   

2.   Then I saw the movie from 1967 with Elizabeth Taylor.   That movie is unfortunately rather inconsistent.   In the beginning, Kathrina is presented as a weird and uncontrolled fury, who would even today be brought into therapy for anger management or even some more severe diagnosis.  
From the moment of the marriage on, she has become the unhappy intelligent woman with an independent spirit under the brutal domination of a jerk, similar to the other version.   Petruccio is presented a bit less cruel but still a dire fate for Kathrina, who seems to try to play the role of the pseudo-docile wife, as she is at the mercy of this psychopath and avoids anything, that would provoke more atrocities upon her.  
But the end does not fit, because the brainwashing into a deliberate doormat comes too abrupt and too sudden, and it is not clear, what caused it.   


No matter the divergent interpretations of the two versions, the play is psychologically dangerous, because emotional morons, jerks and other immature men are encouraged to become abusive.    The gist of the play is the message, that abuse succeeds.
The play feeds their dangerous delusion, that it is not only possible and acceptable to cruelly abuse a woman until she is broken and does not resist anymore to the life of a commodity, but even worse, that the woman in the end would be happy as a doormat.    If they get wrong ideas, that abuse is justified by the final acceptance of the victims, this encourages them to become abusers to real women.

Also interestingly enough, Kathrina is presented as if nobody would want to marry her.   The question, if maybe her father had caused an early death to his wife by his cruel treatment, and that Kathrina was justified in preferring not to marry to avoid the sad fate of her mother.   The play implicitly insinuates, that it is always beneficial for a woman to be married, even to a psychopath or a cruel jerk.   

After having written this far, I googled and found out, that there are quite a lot of other people also calling Petruccio a psychopath and an abuser and also explaining Kathrina's incomprehensible downfall as the Stockholm Syndrome.  As far as I have understood, these interpretations were based upon the text by Shakespeare, not upon any enacted interpretations.   Once again, I had my own ideas about the play, but they were too obvious to be original, others had them before me.      

103. German History and the Particles Identity

German History and the Particles Identity

I grew up in Germany not too long after the end of WW2.  The fact, that most of the German population of the generation of all adults around me had at least agreed, if not participated in a political system committing atrocities, was far beyond my comprehension.  

It took me decades, until I finally can see an explanation.  
I perceive civilization as the attempt to balance the instinctive urges for the survival of the species with the wish for individual wellbeing as the result of the evolution of intelligence, rationality and deeper emotionality.   Therefore in civilized societies, hierarchies are formed by those, whose fitness is not only physical, but also intellectual or even predominantly intellectual.    Those, who would have been the Alpha-males in a savanna tribe, are not capable to be equally successful in a complex society.   

But the balance is fragile, as can be seen in this worst case scenario.  If a non-sportive leptosome intellectual and a sportive stupid brute would survive a shipwreckage and meet on an deserted island, the stupid brute is capable to kill the other to obtain any scarce resources or even eat his body, and he has no way to defend himself.   The brute takes, what he wants, before the intelligent has a chance to use his brain for more sophisticated methods of survival.   
Whenever the stupid brutes have a short term advantage, they can overrun the long term advantage of intelligence.    The day has only so many hours, and it takes a long time to become a learned specialist in any subject, just as it takes a long time of training to become physically fitter and stronger than others.   Therefore unfortunately, the intellectuals, even when they would feel inclined to, just cannot become strong enough to defend their brain power physically against the stupid brutes.  

It does not really matter, how one would define the intellectual elite of any country, nor if by such a definition they are 10% or 30% of the population.   They are always the minority.   They are always at risk to be overrun.   
But I dare to even assume, that hypoanimalistic individuals contribute more to this elite, while the less educated masses mostly consist of breeding particles.  

When two things happen, a catastrophe becomes probable:  The breeding particles gain enough power and control over a society, and they share the delusion, that they are entitled to live according to all their instincts as this being morally acceptable behavior.  

I am not enough instructed in history to know, how the particles gained the power over the intelligent elite in Germany leading to Hitler being elected in 1933.   But I can clearly see, that the Nazi ideology represents every strong instinct of the savanna principle as morally not only good but as the obligation of every citizen.    As soon as the gullible breeding particles were given the delusion of being a large pleistocene tribe, called Arians, they were released of all constraints to enact the procreation instinct, the ingroup-outgroup instinct and the hierarchy instinct.
Women were reduced to be wombs, raising children was officially their purpose in life, and men's dominance over them was not disputed.  
All non-arians were the outgroup, as much inside the country as outside.   War was initiated to gain resources, for the explicit purpose to gain country to expand and to find a home for all the progeny, that those wombs were supposed to produce.    Non-arians were killed or first temporarily used as slaves.   Enforced labor is not legally considered slavery, but it was nothing better.   
New hierarchies were formed, but by the criterion of the dominance of the physically fittest.  In a speech in 1935, Hitler wanted the German youth be "Flink wie Windhunde, zäh wie Leder und hart wie Kruppstahl".    This means:  Fast as greyhounds, tough as leather, hard as steel.   Those qualities were helpful for someone to become a leader of a pleistocene tribe, as they were vital for the survival in the savanna.  
Intelligence and rationality were not valued.   The core of the intellectual elite of Germany was destroyed, just because some of their ancestors happened to have come from Palestine 2000 years ago instead of being barbarians sitting at the Rhein river and throwing the bones over their shoulder after eating.
In every hierarchy, there are always those, who are not content, because they are at the bottom.   Now, in this new hierarchy, they had nothing to achieve, no own qualities or efforts to invest, just by identifying themselves with being arians, they had got the underdogs to look down upon.   Their former intellectual superiors had become their underdogs, either by being enslaved or otherwise deprived of all status and influence, driven out of the country or even killed. 
The true intellectual elite of Germany was destroyed and replaced by an caste of power, who had enough intelligence to rule over the less intelligent, but whose intelligence was only a tools serving their even stronger instinctivity.   Being controlled of the delusion of the superiority of the Arian tribe themselves, they used their tool of intelligence to spread the delusion.   The gullible masses were more than ready to shake off the restraints of civilization.  

This is another example of how even highly capable brains can still be overridden by the forces of instinct an delusion.   There is not much difference, if someone has the brain to learn Latin, Greek and Hebrew and still believes in god and witchcraft and therefore burns people alive as part of the inquisition, or if someone has a brain to study law or medicine and then has the delusion of being a member of an arian tribe justifying the destruction of colleagues just because they are not members of his tribe.