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.  

544. My Fantasy Of The Golden Age Of Neuroscience

544.   My Fantasy Of The Golden Age Of Neuroscience

The last half century has been the age of great electronic and technological progress.    This enabled the ubiquity of the impact of media bringing along also the collateral damage of invisible, subtle and unrecognized emotional harm to many people.  The media have enhanced the already innately detrimental effect of the obsolete male instinctive urges even more in the wrong direction, as oversexation and promiscuity have been made a social norm.   
Men's instinctive tendency to the asymmetrical attitude towards women (entry 543) has been implicitly and subtly reinforced as a consequence of this unfortunate social norm.
 

This is generally overlooked, ignored and denied, and society pays a high price for this.  Women suffer directly and more knowingly from commodification and objectification forced upon them.   Men are deprived of the higher emotional benefits of bonded monogamous commitment, but they are usually oblivious of this, because the deprivation is hidden behind the superficial immediate satisfaction available by the abuse of female bodies.  They are not even aware of what they are depriving themselves of, as they never had a chance to experience anything better due to being exposed to the oversexation too early during childhood.         


Regularly reading newsletters informing about really amazing results of research in neuroscience has led me to wonder, whether we may now be at the onset of the age of neuroscience.  It even has the potential to become the golden age for women, would neuroscience achieve the very significant goal of removing the slippery slope of the ongoing reinforcement of the worst male behaviors and attitudes.   

While women's mere complaints about suffering from commodification and asymmetrical attitudes (entry 543) are dismissed by men as female shortcomings, the growing evidence of effects observed by brain imaging methods is more difficult to disregard.    Hard and multiple evidence could finally have an impact upon men's persistent denial, how their own instincts are a real problem requiring to be dealt with.  

If this insight would be widely accepted, then this could lead to the application of medical science and neuroscience to develop methods to reduce men's needs for sexual homeostasis down to a beneficial level, where is seizes to damage women.   While the body of unattached females would no longer trigger any urges for abuse in men, they would instead always be attracted first to a woman's mind and personality, before they are attracted to her body.  

It would certainly be easy to create some pills, which combine the bonding of oxytocin and a reduction of libido or even some appliance for brain stimulation for this purpose.    A bonding helmet for men similar to Persinger's helmet would be a great invention.   

What a dream:   A helmet stimulating a man's brain, and even the worst jerk would become a caring, responsible, bonding, monogamous nice guy, feeling a need for commitment.    This would give women the option to reject any man, who refuses to use this helmet.   A helmet could thus free humanity from the scourge of male promiscuity.  

But I am taking my fantasy even one step further to mere science fiction.    If it were not just a helmet, which a man can decide to use or not, but if it were a chip to be planted in every man's brain, this could really create a paradise on earth: 
There would only be nice and decent men never hurting a woman.   No more rape, no more adultery, no more using and dumping, no more predators making women miserable by the degradation of pursuing them as prey.   No more prostitution, no more pornography,   A woman would be safe to chose, where she wants to be at any time of the day or night without risking to be attacked.  

All the above are far fetched and unrealistic dreams, as long as men generally do not have any insight, how much their excessive sexuality does not enhance but destroy the emotional quality of life, which is a potential of human cognition but only when it is unrestricted and undistorted by instincts.   The obstacle are all those men lacking any comprehension of the benefits for themselves of any method resulting  in the replacement  of the primitivity of their being animals with true humane happiness.  

 

Men's choice to either allow themselves to be controlled by their instincts or to control the instincts are rarely ever motivated by consideration of women's dignity or by the rational question of equality or by doubting the justification of asymmetrical attitudes (entry 543).

Throughout history and up to now, sometimes men have and still do fight against their instinctive urges for sexual homeostation, but the reason is always religious or philosophical and not any consideration for women.   They focus upon their success or failure concerning their self-control as a part of their self-esteem and self-worth.   They do not reject instinctive urges as a distortion of men's cognition concerning the attitude towards women, they do not value the avoidance of damage to women.    Sparing women is not their goal, it is only a lucky collateral benefit.     
The catholic priest, who succeeds in keeping his hands off his house keeper does not do this by respect and consideration for the woman.   He does this by fear of punishment in the afterlife and as a prevention of feeling a failure and looser due to his vows of celibacy.   

312. An Online Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

An Online Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

I stumbled upon a web page, where people discussed a video and its author, who had published it on YouTube.  

In this video, he claims evolution to be flawed and attributes his own unfortunate life situation to this.   Evolution has by natural selection favored the hierarchy instinct, which makes people fight for a high position in a hierarchy, and as a consequence thereof some people at the top have lots of privileges, while others at the bottom suffer deprivation.   While evolution itself cannot be described as flawed, because it is not concerned about people's pain, but only about he survival of the species, the consequences of natural selection on the wellbeing of individuals can be described as flawed from the subjective perspective of the underprivileged.   

He talks about his own deprived life situation, having little formal education, a minimum wage job, no friends, no relationship.  
He speaks with agitation, and I watched the video with a lot of sympathy and compassion.   I was touched, and I admit that I thought for a moment, how someone like him, but in my age group and with a university education could just be the clingy, needy guy for me.

So I got curious and went to YouTube, where he has published about 150 more videos.  I started to watch another one.   For about one minute, I was at a loss to even understand, what it was all about.  He was calling a hearing-aid company for information.  Being still under the impression of the guy being an unfortunate sensitive person, it took me a while, until I got aware, that it was a prank.   He was misunderstanding the man from the hearing-aid company on purpose.  That man most probably is an employee, who would have lost his job, had he lost his temper.   That employee was probably fully aware of being the victim of a cruel prank, but had no choice except to go along.    

At that moment, all my temporary sympathy for the prankster dwindled.   It was the victim of the prank, who deserved my compassion.  After watching 5 minutes I skipped most of the video.   When I watched the end, that employee had kept his countenance for 15 minutes.   I admire his patience.    As much as I have empathy with the victims of circumstances, I have more empathy with the victims of malice.  

The alleged and pretending victim of social injustice was in reality a self-centered guy, completely absorbed in self-pity, cruelly letting out his own frustration by playing heartless pranks on others, who have never done anything wrong to him.  (I am assuming, that he talked to a complete stranger at the hearing-aid-company, which of course I cannot know.)   He complains about the lack of compassion of those people, who had been favored by evolution to have a better life than himself.    But he has himself not the least compassion for the victim of his prank.    It makes me shudder, how by a short video people including myself can get taken in so easily to have sympathy and compassion for someone, who does not deserve it.     

But what saddened me the most was the complete insensitivity and lack of compassion, let alone outrage, elicited by his prank.   On YouTube, there were dozens of comments congratulating him on his hilarious performance.   On the other site, there are several hundred postings discussing his life situation.    Some people just call him a loser who should do something instead of ranting, but some others melted in compassion.   

His pranks were mentioned less than 5 times and the most critical comment was calling him a hypocrite.    It really puzzles me, how the same people, who pity him as a victim of a harsh and ruthless capitalistic society, are not at all taken aback by his own cruelty with his victim.    Is only the prankster a hypocrite or are they also hypocrites?

I am not sure about what is the cause, but it seems that people have become very insensitive to cruelty and moral failures, as long as they are emotional, subtle and without visible damage.    That prank alone may not affect a resilient employee, but if he were already mobbed, maybe it would be adding to the burn-out of the man.    The prankster just cannot know, what damage he is doing.

Maybe the desensitization of being exposed by the media to the worst atrocities and agonies on a daily basis, not only of crime, but also of accidents and natural catastrophes, makes appear emotional cruelties as if they were only trifles.  

I think that many people need to be resensitized to take responsibility for the pain, that they cause others. But they need not only take more responsibility for themselves.  They should also reestablish higher standards in their expectations of others by being much more judgmental in holding others responsible.   Tolerance for unacceptable cruelties is being an indirect accomplice in the cruelty to the victims.