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.  

692. The Difference Between Abusers And Nice Guys Explained By The Dual-Process-Theory

692.  The Difference Between Abusers And Nice Guys Explained By The Dual-Process-Theory

In entry 691 I presented the dual process theory:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dual_process_theory

Speculating that the predominance of one of the two systems is distributed along a bell curve can help to explain the difference between abusers and nice guys. 


By the criteria of their behavior, men can be roughly classified into three groups:   The abusers, the nice guys and those oscillating between abuse and attachment depending on circumstances.  

These three groups represent the two extremes and the middle area of the bell curve between the predominance of either system 1 or system 2.   The two extremes are clearly defined by an innate strong tendency, while the cut off between the groups and the behavior in the middle is fuzzy and depends upon external influences. 


System 1 can explain how instinctive physical urges towards a female body lead to the attitude of objectification.  

A predominant system 1 determines men to be abusers.  They do not comprehend the meaning of commitment and/or they are unable to get emotionally attached to a woman and/or they are disabled from recognizing the value of women's brains.   They commodify women as toilets for their body waste without even considering any alternative.  
Men with a strong predominance of system 1 are most probably men with a high libido, which causes them to perceive dishomeostasis as an overwhelming discomfort and to be strongly triggered by the perception of female bodies.   They also probably have a hedonistic pleasure center getting mainly stimulated by physical stimuli.

System 1 thinking causes men to confound every coincidence of their experienced dishomeostasis and the availability of female bodies as an automatic justification and entitlement to abuse women, perceiving them as existing for the purpose of being abused.  
Men, whose thinking is determined by system 1, are not any better than animals, they are unable to anticipate or to have empathy for the consequences of ruthless copulation. 

System 2 can explain the emotional and intellectual need for companionship leading to the attitude, that women are cognitively attractive and suitable for monogamous long-term attachment.  

A predominant system 2 determines men to be nice guys.   They automatically get emotionally attached to a woman, whenever they get physically involved.   They have an own genuine emotional need for commitment and bonding.  They have rational and intellectual needs for companionship with a woman.   Whatever the strength of their libido may be, their rationality enables them to have sufficient self-control to keep away from women's body unless they choose a companion.    They are Epicureans, who are mainly attracted to, motivated and stimulated by emotional and intellectual pleasures and joys.

System 2 enables men to act with responsibility and consideration and to appreciate attachment also for themselves.  They comprehend the impact of their behavior upon women.   
Men, whose thinking is determined by system 2 are able to recognize women as their human equals with a brain.  Only these men deserve to be called human.


According to the dual-process-theory, system 1 and system 2 coexist in each human's mind. 

I am not implying all abusers to be completely void of the system 2 nor all attachment formers to be completely free from the system 1.   Many men have both tendencies in any combination of strength in themselves.   Which one defines their attitude and their behavior depends upon circumstances and external influences.    Some abusers do feel doubt, guilt or remorse or they recognize abuse as a transgression, at least when the own sister is the victim.  Attachment formers can also be tempted by triggered instincts due to the exposure to drastic stimuli.  

Men in the middle of the bell curve are thus under contradictory internal tendencies towards a choice, which is dichotomous between either abuse or attachment.  Abuse and attachment are mutually exclusive by definition.   While at any moment, only one can be chosen, some men choose abusive behavior only under some specific circumstances and refrain from it at other occasions.    They are the men, whose choice is prone to be determined or impacted by external influences.
 
While many more traditional societies force violent abuse and injustice upon women, the modern western societies are very much biased towards subtle and non-violent forms of abuse.   Such abuse is the social norm of the majority, who considers pornography as an everyday media intake and prostitution as a job like any other, and who is seriously desensitized by the drastic oversexation of every day life and the media.    Only a very strong innate tendency towards system 2 enables a minority of the most precious men to be the nice guys void of the inclination towards abuse.

The effect of this detrimental social norm can sometimes be observed as a discrepancy of the predominances in the same man.   There are men, who appear to be predominantly system 2 persons in their professional life, in the pursuit of their hobbies and even with their families and friends.   Whenever it gets known, that such a man has cheated on his wife or has been to a brothel, it seems very incongruent with his other demeanor.   Due to external influences, the control of system 1 over such men is restricted to only when women are the victims.   So far I have never heard of any reversed case, of a man behaving generally by system 1 but applying system 2 to women. 

Thus, at the extreme end of the bell curve, the abusers are persistent and permanent abusers, while the social norm reinforces the men in the middle of the bell curve to also be abusers, but they are intermittent abusers.  They cause less harm but they are nevertheless a hazard to those women who happen to become victims.     

Therefore, unfortunately, there are many more abusers than nice guys.   

666. Reading Praise Of Animality Makes Me Cringe

666.  Reading Praise Of Animality Makes Me Cringe

 
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/06/130605133712.htm
 

"In addition to humans' place in the animal kingdom at a scientific level, Lestel also highlights our essential, existential animality in his opening comments with fellow editor, Hollis Taylor. "A key question now is to know how the human of the 21st century can reactivate his animality and animalize himself anew when all Western thought since the Greeks tells him that he is human precisely because of this rupture with animality," Lestel suggests, building on his critique of the very philosophical foundations of the ethological tradition. "To be human does not mean to have fled animality, but on the contrary to live within it and to let it live within us…we are animals and animals are us.""

Where animality is not only allowed but made the basis of politics, we get Nazis, Fascists and the like.   Animality means the acceptance, facilitation and enhancement of instincts without any consideration for the victims.   

Recent German history is a good example for the political animality of the Nazis.     

• Under the ingroup-outgroup instinct, members of outgroups were murdered, exploited and driven from their territory.   
  
• Under the hierarchy instinct, the most stupid men cultivated their physical fitness and fought by aggression to the top, while the intellectual elite was killed and driven away.    Those at the top were ruthless in keeping their position of power.   
  
• Under the procreation instinct, women were reduced to be wombs, abused for breeding as if they were rabbits.  
  
• Under the gregarious instinct, people willingly merged with the obedient masses.  
  

We need a better world, where humanity is prevalent, and where animality is restricted and controlled by cognition and rationality.  

200. Naturality or Humanity

Naturality or Humanity

I am talking here of naturality and humanity as two life philosophies, as two basic value systems determining different attitudes and behaviors.   

For some people, nature is a kind of a holy cow.   What is natural, is automatically considered as good, as benign, as healthy, just because it is natural.   Some people venerate their Mother Nature as a deity.    The contrary of natural in this understanding is artificial.   Everything artificial is in this thinking automatically bad.

This is irrational.   The rational questions are: 
Which artificial things are beneficial and which are detrimental?   
What ethical paradigm defines humanity as being different from naturality being the blind submission to nature?
 

In my following thoughts, naturality as a philosophy means the acceptance, that whatever happens naturally, as a consequence of natural dynamics, is accepted as good.   Naturality as a reverence to nature means implicitly the acceptance of individual suffering not only as an unavoidable aspect of life, but as a kind of duty in the service of the deity called nature.

• Nature means the priority of the survival of the species over the wellbeing of the individuals. From the subjective perspective of the experienced suffering of the individual, nature is cruel.
• Nature means suffering and pain to all beings, especially in the food chain of carnivores.   
• Nature means the survival of the fittest, not only of humans, but also of the fittest viruses, bacteria, insects, vermins, pests of any kind.   
• Nature is permanent battle between the fittest of all species, and the less fit of all species suffer automatically.
• Nature means that instinct driven urges cause suffering to others.  

Humanity means a different priority:   

• Under the paradigm of true humanity as an ethical imperative, avoidance of individual sufferings has the highest priority, much higher than the survival of any species.    Already living individuals have higher priority than those who will live in the future.   
• Humanity means therefore to conquer nature, where this spares pain, by fighting against all instincts, that lead to the pain of others, and by making wise choices between allowing nature to rule and overriding nature by artificial means of chemical, biological and technological inventions.  
• Humanity means the clear basic value, that non-existence is better than a suffering and painful existence.   This includes for example, that an abortion is more human than forcing a miserable life upon an unwanted child or a child, for whom there is not enough provision.   It also includes the acceptance of the right to end their lives to people, whose life has become too painful for example in the case of an incurable illness.  
• Humanity allows even to contemplate such provocative questions:   What is more cruel, to let a baby die from starvation and disease, or to give just enough charity to the mother, so that the child does not die, but has a life of agony from the lack of all the basics of life, being forced into child labor?    What is more cruel, to give insufficient help to 100 people, who live in agony and misery, or to give sufficient help to 10 and allow the others to die instead of suffering without remedy?   
  These questions concern the basic attitude and are of course independent of the outrage, that the misery in the third world has been caused by the exploitation by the rich nations, who then pretend to do charity, where they have in reality a huge material and moral debt to pay.    See entries 52 and 53 for more about this.    Entries 189, 21 and 57 are also related topics.

Most religions claim, that life has been given by the deity and therefore it has a value in itself, no matter, how much the individual suffers.    This is not human, it is a very cruel approach.   It is especially cruel, when it is applied to justify inflicting sufferings upon others.  

Naturality as the reverence to nature as benign is making it a deity.  By the irrational glorification of nature, naturality has become a kind of religion.  Being truly human requires a rational approach and the absence of religious commands blurring rationality.    
Therefore naturality and humanity are in some important basic values mutually exclusive.