639. A Disheartening Research Result

639.   A Disheartening Research Result

People are generally motivated towards behaviors for the purpose of improving or maintaining their subjective well being (SWB) as far as ability, moral restrictions and circumstances allow it.

The following study about the positive effects of power on the SWB is very scary for women.    It implies indirectly men's asymmetrical option to enhance their SWB by harming women.

http://pss.sagepub.com/content/early/2013/01/15/0956797612450891.full

"Across four surveys representiedly different primary social roles (general, work, romantic-relationship, and friendship surveys; Study 1), and in an experiment (Study 2a), we found consistent evidence that experiencing power leads to greater SWB. Moreover, authenticity mediated this effect. Further establishing the causal importance of authenticity, a final experiment (Study 2b), in which authenticity was manipulated, demonstrated that greater authenticity directly increased SWB. Although striving for power lowers well-being, these results demonstrate the pervasive positive psychological effects of having power, and indicate the importance of spreading power to enhance collective well-being. "

The power situation between women and men is asymmetrical.    Men have a choice, which women do not have.  

Men are on average physically stronger than women.   They have the innate options to either install power over women or to voluntarily refrain from doing so.    If women have any option at all, it is only the option to avoid those men, who would use power to harm them in the case of their exposing themselves to be harmed.   Women have no option to remain unharmed once they have allowed themselves to be under the control of a man using power.   In civilized countries, women have the option to refuse and to leave a relationship with a man using power.   But there are still many societies, where women are owned, sold and married forcefully by their parents.  

If a woman and a man were stranded on a deserted island, this innate asymmetry becomes virulent.  He has a choice, while she is at his mercy.   As long as there is nobody else present to interfere, he has unlimited power over her.  He has the physical strength to do, whatever serves his convenience.    He can kill her, rape her, deprive her of supplies, coerce her, constrain her, torture her, exploit her.   

If he helps and protects her and shares the supplies, he does it by choosing this as an option.   The woman has no options.    


Women can only have power, when they either have a weapon or when their power is provided by rules, laws, law enforcements and third parties protecting her and acting on her behalf.  
A women can have the power to control something, which a man wants or needs, but only under the condition that usurping it by coercion is either made impossible or if the serious consequences are worse than not having it.   A man can use physical force to take away any object from a woman, but he cannot get at what others control on her behalf, like her bank account.   The fear of being severely punished serves in a limited way as a deterrent against men coercing women.   
  

Therefore women's safety, wellbeing, let alone happiness, all depend on men's voluntary choice of not using the power, with which they have biologically been endowed.   The result of the study implies a special hazard for relationships.   

Both genders usually enter a relationship for the purpose of enhancing the SWB.    Between egalitarian partners, this can be symmetrically, mutually and reciprocally beneficial for a shared and interdependent SWB experienced as a unit of being a couple.      
But men are favored by the asymmetrical alternative option.  They can choose to install power and thus enhance only their own SWB, while this automatically damages the women's.


While men usually know what harm they inflict when applying power or intimidating to do so for the purpose of getting what they want, they are often not aware of the detrimental effects of unintended intimidation.   

Women can never be fully sure, what those men will do to them in the future, who have so far never used the powers available to them.   Violence against women is ubiquitous and men's innate option to decide at any moment to use power and harm women is real.   Living under the permanent threat of male power is a part of women's life, no matter how much this threat is conscious or only subtle and subconscious.

   
Men are encouraged and they learn to fight and to use aggression as a way of getting their due from other men.  They choose their behavior based upon the expectation of resistance.   But when men express anger and aggression towards women, who lack sufficient physical strength for successful self-defence, the effect is intimidation due to women's realistic awareness of being at the men's mercy.    While intimidation can be subtle and subconscious, it nevertheless prevents women very often from daring to stand up for what they really want, need and consider as fair and correct.   
 

Intimidation leads to unfortunate consequences.   When a woman's only option to end being harmed by a man using power is to leave him, while she has no option to make him stop his harming behaviors and enable her to stay together, this impedes women from reacting appropriately to all transgressions, which are below the threshold for leaving.   Men do not only get away with inappropriate and harmful behavior, but they also get the wrong impression as if women would accept, what they merely do not dare to protest against due to intimidation.   Thus men are mislead to enhance their SWB by damaging the women's, even when the men are not aware nor intending to do this.           


Sadly enough, it is logical when seen as a result of evolution, that physically strong men using power on women had also the result of unwanted pregnancies and that they contributed more to the gene pool than the considerate and respectful nice guys did.   

I am wondering, if the combined effects of birth control and low risk abortion with the modern technology of intelligence being more important for survival than physical strength could influence the evolutionary trend.   

Maybe over the next many thousands of years, the difference in physical strength between men and women could dwindle?
But even if there will ever be a golden age, when men are no longer stronger than women, I will not be around to enjoy it.  

550. The Irrationality Of Diatribes In Personal Interactions

550.   The Irrationality Of Diatribes In Personal Interactions

Whenever I am the recipient of a diatribe or angry rant, I am puzzled about why people bother to approach me in this way, even though this is not a method to gain anything.   The last good example is a comment to entry 549.   

http://dictionary.reference.com

Diatribe
noun:  a bitter, sharply abusive denunciation, attack, or criticism:
Rant
noun:  ranting, extravagant, or violent declamation.
noun:  a ranting utterance.

The following is not about the benefits of people sharing the same grievances against any third party while being in harmony with each other, nor is it about someone finding relief by telling grievances to a sympathetic friend.   Many important social and political movements have been initiated by a few justified diatribes. 

It is about the irrationality of sending me diatribes by email or blog comments.    Such diatribes are as irrational as is the man's behavior in Watzlawick's story:

A man wants to hang a painting. He has the nail, but not the hammer. Therefore it occurs to him to go over to the neighbor and ask him to lend him his hammer. But at this point, doubt sets in. What if he doesn’t want to lend me the hammer? Yesterday he barely spoke to me. Maybe he was in a hurry. Or, perhaps, he holds something against me. But why? I didn’t do anything to him. If he would ask me to lend him something, I would, at once. How can he refuse to lend me his hammer? People like him make other people’s life miserable. Worst, he thinks that I need him because he has a hammer. This is got to stop ! And suddenly the guy runs to the neighbor’s door, rings, and before letting him say anything, he screams: “You can keep your hammer, you bastard.” (Paul Watzlawick, “The Situation Is Hopeless But Not Serious: The Pursuit of Unhappiness”)

There are many reasons, why any man and I are not suitable to have any beneficial contact.   The rational reaction of such a man is to zap without wasting any further thoughts on me, when while reading this blog or my profile on a matchmaking site he notices such reasons.
In the case of doubt, a friendly question invites a friendly clarification.    Any provocation on my part is not intended and it is no invitation to hostile arguments.    There is no rational reason to express anger by attacking me with diatribes.  

The irrationality of sending diatribes indicates, that the sender has some problems, concerning both the cause of his anger and his hostility when coping with it:

1.  Entitlement and grandiosity delusion. 
A man feels entitled to get anything and this is justified for him by nothing more than his wish to have it and/or he believes himself to be god's gift to women, who cannot have a valid reason to reject him.    Therefore he considers the choice of a partner only justified by his own selection or rejection. Being rejected is not acceptable to him.   Even anticipated rejection due to my clearly expressed criteria is for such a man a reason to be angry.   A woman's disagreement with his grandiosity is also a reason to be angry. 
2.  Displaced anger.   Something in my text triggers anger, which is caused by his own experiences and has nothing to do with my person.   This something can be either a provocation by any real attribute of mine or it can be something misunderstood and misinterpreted.   

3.  Paradoxical coping with the anger.   The devaluation of what is not available as in the fable of the fox and the sour grapes are a valid coping strategy as part of realistic resignation.    Attacking someone with the declarations of devaluation by email is absurd.    

When people write emails, they enhance the probability of getting a reply by showing as much appreciation for the recipient as they can do sincerely.   In the case of intended manipulation, appreciation is insincerely exaggerated.   

An email of devaluations is supplying the recipient with reasons not to reply and not to communicate.   Therefore there is no reason to ever bother to write devaluing emails, while not writing has the same effect without wasting time.  


The diatribe comment on entry 549 gives examples.   His (assuming the commenter to be a man) attacks me for being German.   This indicates displaced anger about Germany or German culture or maybe some German individual.   Now he attacks me for being German in spite of my explicit declaration of not identifying with being German.

I cannot know his level of formal education.   But his attack on my valuing a university degree makes it obvious, that he has none but does not accept this as a reason to be not suitable for me.  

He calls me 'dogmatic, unscientific, irrational, dictating, intolerant, sexist, emotional, arrogant'.   These being obviously all unacceptable attributes in his opinion, I can fully agree with him that any woman, whom he subjectively perceives as having such attributes, is not suitable for him, no matter who and how she really is.   I have no problem with being perceived as not suitable by an unknown commenter.   But his bothering to write a comment, which forfeits any communication, is weird.  


Expressing and sending a diatribe is a distorted method of counterproductive communication.    Constructive communication motivates the recipient to reciprocate an interaction perceived as beneficial.   Diatribes create antipathy for the hostile sender, who presents himself as someone to be avoided, not as someone to interact with.    Everybody writing and sending diatribes just wastes his own time and gains nothing.  

1.  One possible interpretation of diatribes is to see them as related to real life bullying.    

Based upon his physical strength, a man can sometimes succeed to get his will by intimidation.  A woman cringing under outbursts of anger does not dare to resist.   The woman suffers and is driven away by this bullying.    

Men with long term thinking and wisdom learn, that bullying gets them nowhere and nothing.   But when they are only learning short term direct effects, they are mislead to learn, that expressing anger is a successful method to get their will.    Bullies misinterpret the success of their outburst of anger as if this were a method of influencing the victim's thinking.   They mistake enforced apparent acquiescence with agreement and they believe in their power to obtain agreement by expressing anger.         

As a result of this distorted learning these men are oblivious of the limited reach of the weapon of anger.   Anger and aggression only work in direct contact, when the intimidation triggers spontaneous fear, elicited not in accordance with the probability of a physical attack but by the mere possibility.    

Therefore expressing anger at the target by email is the futile attempt of distance bullying.    Due to not eliciting fear, this does not work.   Diatribes are the consequence of a man's overestimation of the power of his anger without physical intimidation.   

2.  Diatribes are an indication of an asymmetrical attitude to women and of the intention and purpose of a relationship for getting advantages by commodification.   A man pursuing a symmetrical relationship appreciates the information of any woman's needs and preferences for his own evaluation of possible symmetry.   Finding out that he cannot give her, what she needs, is not a reason to get angry and even less to send a diatribe.   For him it is a reason to accept incompatibility.  

385. The Dynamics Of Kindling Or Killing Love

The Dynamics Of Kindling Or Killing Love

This is a continuation of entry 277, where I defined 'bonded love'.   
In entry 314 I described the difference between the instinctive and the intellectual mating strategies.
In entry 39 I referred to Epstein and his concept of 'self-arranged marriages'.   I prefer to call it 'self-arranged commitment', because feeling bound by commitment does not require a signature in the town hall.  

Bonded love consists of the combined and inseparable elements of physical, emotional and intellectual intimacy and is the stronger, the more the couple shares basic values, attitudes, tastes, interests and other traits.  

The concept of self-arranged commitment means, that a couple decides to cooperate to create a balanced bond of all three intimacies.        

Physical intimacy is triggered by instinctive urges for homeostasis, especially in men, as long as there is no repugnance or repulsiveness.    This comes by itself and needs therefore to be controlled from getting dangerously predominant.   A man drooling over a woman's body in blind infatuation is not in the state to be rational in his evaluations and decisions. 

But a couple has a lot of control and influence over the kindling or forfeiting of emotional and intellectual intimacy and thus over the quality and intensity of bonded love.    They need to be aware of what influences their love and they need to be motivated to kindle it.   

The proactive strategy of kindling bonded love has two major aspects, associative learning and reinforcement.  

1. Associative learning by sharing any activity or situation, which causes the subjective feeling of wellbeing.
   

   1.1. Simple associative learning
   When sharing joy, pleasure, pleasant thrill, bliss, pleasant sensations of any kind, no matter if it is hiking in the moonlight, enjoying the same kind of music, sharing the fascination of a visit to an interesting museum or place, then the good feelings are associated with the person, with whom the experience is shared.   
   1.2.  Complex associative learning.
   Sharing hardships, difficulties, discomforts of any kind and experiencing the partner as supportive, empathetic, understanding, reliable, trustworthy associates the good feeling of having been successful in dealing with a challenge with the partner. 
   A bonded couple is not affected by spending a night in a bus station, because the positive feeling of being together compensates for merely external discomfort.   It creates a positive memory of a shared adventure.   

2. Reciprocal reinforcement.
   
   Anything perceived as love between two adults triggers an urge or at least a wish to express it or act upon it.  This implies, that it is also understood and received by the target as an expression of love.  
   Verbal expressions of love are very unspecified, as long as the same word 'love' can be used also very selfishly, when someone means about the same love of getting benefits when saying: 'I love you' and saying 'I love cheese'.
   
   Expressions of love by actions and behavior are much more specific.
   Infatuation with a body urges a person towards sexual activities.    Bonded love creates an urge or wish to express love in any way, that makes the other feel loved, cared for, appreciated, cherished, respected, significant, needed, happy, content, in a safe haven.   Love is also expressed by the imperative of never harming or hurting but protecting the other from harm.
   
   The neutral baseline is the commitment governance (entry 185), that both have agreed upon.   Behaving according to the commitment governance is an accepted obligation, not an expression of love.    Expressing love is proactive behavior by a deliberate and voluntary decision to do something beneficial for the partner. 
   
   Such an expression of love is lost, if it is not experienced, perceived and interpreted by the recipient as an expression of love.   Any such proactive behavior of one partner is experienced by both as anything between being only beneficial for the other or beneficial equally for both.   
   It can be that one partner has a skill and uses it to make something for the other, it can be one partner preparing and initiating an excursion to enjoy together.  
   This leads to reciprocal reinforcement.   The more one experiences the other's expression of love, the more this kindles the own love, which enhances the wish to react also with returned expressions of love.    It is like a ball game, in which the ball thrown grows steadily.         
   This works, when both consciously want it to work, and when both are informed, what proactive behavior does make the other feel loved.  

But just as bonded love can be enhanced by applying conscious strategies, it is also fragile to being damaged and destroyed by the opposite behaviors.  

1. The same intensive situations of shared positive experiences, when love can be kindled to grow, are also the situations, where love is most vulnerable to being damaged and destroyed.    Hurting in such situations has the most detrimental effect.    Being the target of an outburst of anger during a moonlight hike meant to be romantic has much more detrimental effects than an outburst of anger while doing chores in the kitchen.     
2. Discomfort, hardship and such are enhanced, when instead of being shared, on the partner blames them on the other.
3. An expression of love is not received as such by a partner feeling entitled to the other serving his needs and taking this for granted.    The one, who considers the other as a commodity existing for the purpose to fulfill all his needs, is deprived of the experience of being loved.    Whatever the other decides to do voluntarily as an expression of love is either not of value or considered a fulfilled duty.
   Expressing love for the reward of being loved back is a decision.    Being expected and even pressed by coercion to serve the other's needs, devalues any act of doing a favor into the experience of being used.    Being under pressure to serve the other's needs impedes and forestalls any occasion of expressing love by a voluntary decision.  
4. Expressing love by proactive behavior requires communication about what behavior is perceived as expressed love.     Projecting the own needs and remaining ignorant about the partner's needs is not enough.    Hurting the other and resisting to feedback is an even worse love killer.   

Expressing caring and bonded love by proactive behavior is a method to kindle and to avoid killing love.   But it is also an important strategy for the creation of 'self-arranged commitment'.   By applying the same behaviors, that can be an expression of love, the process of creating love can also be started and triggered due to the reinforcing effect.  

338. Consequencity

Consequencity

 
Sometimes the existence or absence of a word with a specific meaning in different languages is an indication of possible cultural differences.  

The words 'consequence' in English and 'Konsequenz' in German are a good example.    Only in German the word has a second meaning, that describes a personality trait.    According to a German definition, this second meaning could roughly be translated as tenacity, pertinacity, inveteracy.   But this is not a sufficient definition of this trait, which from now on I will call consequencity.   I found this word only four times in Google, with no clear meaning or definition.   Therefore I have hijacked this word and I will use it henceforth.

Consequencity is a significant part of my personality.   Sometimes I am mistaken for being stubborn or obstinate, but this is not the case, because I am always open and even motivated to being convinced by the input of information.

Rationality and logic are a method of problem solving and deciding.    Consequencity takes this one step further to also acting and behaving based upon rationality and logic.    The essence of rationality and consequencity is the collecting and evaluating of all available external and internal information, the entire combination of facts, evidence, introspection, memorized experience as the premises, and then not only drawing logical conclusions, but also sticking to them, until the premises change.   Only altered premises are a valid justification to change the decision and the behavior.    Consequencity means, that behavior will be changed only as a result of changed premises, but not under irrational and haphazard influences.  Consequencity is behavioral consistency with a conclusion, as long as the conclusion is valid.   

One example is nagging.   Many people give in to nagging and do, what they do not want to do, to stop being annoyed, pressured and stressed.    The nagging person learns, that nagging is successful and uses it more and more often.   
For a person with consequencity, if a 'no' is a 'no' the first time, then it remains a 'no' and nagging is futile.   Only if the other person supplies convincing input to change the premises, this can lead to a reevaluation of the issue and a possible change towards a 'yes'.    

Domination by the method of bullying a disagreeing target is another example.    

A relationship between a person with strong consequencity and someone, who due to his entitlement delusion expects beyond doubt to get everything he wants by merely expressing a demand is a very toxic constellation.   He feels entitled to use aggression, pressure and intimidation, when his demands are not immediately followed by compliance.   Most victims of a bully give in to get temporary relief, thus they reinforce the bully to use intimidation more and more frequently.   The price for short term relief is long-term enhancement of their own plight.   
The person with consequencity refuses to yield to being bullied, s/he will not comply with demands, unless and until the demand is justified by shared convincing premises.   In a relationship, this means it to be inside the framework of a fair balance of giving and receiving and the agreements from the relationship deal.    Resisting the bully is achieved at very high emotional costs.  Being the target of anger and rage and persisting intimidation drains and exhausts anybody to the limits of endurance.      If the bully has already learned elsewhere, how successful intimidation can be, then he will not easily stop this method.
Being bullied and dominated is the highway to devastation.  The more a woman is submissive and conciliatory, the more this prolongs the process, while consequencity accelerates it and the limit of endurance is reached faster.   


To sum it up:  If someone wants to influence the behavior of a person with strong consequencity, there is only one successful method.   It is to give a compellingly valid reason to do it.   While it is easy to refuse anything irrational, it is difficult to resist stringently convincing reasons. The behavior of a person with consequencity can only be influenced by constructive communication or else at the point of a gun.   

I am willing to give people, what is fair, I have compassion for people's needs, I am willing to consider and to comply with wishes and suggestions, when I am honored with convincing reasons.  But if someone attempts irrational methods of coercion or manipulation, then they get nothing from me except repugnance.    Anybody, who wants or needs to dominate, should keep away from me, as the catastrophe would be unavoidable.  

196. Equality or Dominance

Equality or Dominance

The laws of all modern societies proclaim equality for women, because women are mentally and intellectually equal to men.    In many African countries, polygamy is still legal.   But even while equality is prescribed by law, men's greater physical strength gives them one big advantage over women.   I already described it in entry 14. about threat and fear.   

Nearly all men are physically capable to strangle, beat up, rape or mutilate any woman with nothing but their bare hands.    Most women would need a weapon to have even a slight chance to defend themselves or to do any damage to a man.   
But a man does not even need to actually do physical harm to a woman.    Whenever he gets aggressive, angry, raging, just verbally and in his body language, this threatens, intimidates and scares her.    She can never know, how long his self-restraint will last, and when he will turn into a ferocious beast.   

Therefore a man has a choice, that a woman is lacking.    He can decide, if he wants to dominate or to behave as an equal partner.    Once he has a woman under his control, he has the power to force his domination upon her.  

The woman has one choice only, she can stay away from a man, if she knows early enough, that his choice is domination, and if the circumstances allow it, she can leave the dominating man.  But she has no means, no chance, no influence to get equality from a man, who decides to dominate.   Once she is under his control, she is at his mercy.  
If the woman is a breeder, she is even more vulnerable.   Except in modern welfare systems and countries with a very good labor market, a mother of small children depends on the man as a provider, while he does not depend on her.  

This has dire consequences:

1.   A woman, who is trapped by the power of a dominating man, is forced to practice external submission to avoid the risk of serious harm.    Of course, her enforced external submission is not a proof of her inferiority.   
The dominating man has two gigantic flaws in his thinking:
1.1.   He believes that being physically stronger means, that he is also intellectually superior.
1.2.   He believes that her submission is the proof of her inferiority, and in a vicious circle this belief enhances his belief in his justification to dominate.    

He grows into these believes from the role models he sees as a child.
It is tragic for the woman, that the man dominates her by physical strength, but believes to dominate by intellectual superiority.

2.   When someone accepts a compromise as fair, it generally is by meeting half-way between what both would want.    When a man is willing to compromise between his wish to profit from his innate privilege to enforce dominance, and a woman wants equality, then such a compromise would not be equality, but it would still be dominance, only less and in a milder version.    True equality means a man's renunciation of all privileges, that his superior physical strength gives him over the woman.    Many men are not willing to do so, because they are too much driven by instincts, while they do no value the intellectual and emotional benefits of equality.  

3.    Accepting full equality is subjectively in the man's experience the renouncing of the privileges of dominance without getting anything in return.   The woman has no privileges to renounce as her part of the bargain.   He feels like giving alms to the woman, when he gives up some of his innate privileges.    Often he expects to get something in return and the relationship becomes asymmetrical.   While he appears to have accepted equality, in reality he perceives to have bought from her the gratitude, that obliges her to put his needs above hers, and again, there is submission.   It is a subtle and different form of dominance under the disguise of equality.    

4.   The man has been born with the innate power to impose his conditions on a woman for the purpose to get privileges in a relationship.    Therefore his baseline of what is normal, correct and appropriate is not the same as the woman's baseline.    A man is often completely unable to even know, what true equality means for a woman.  
Even in the best of all situations, when a man does agree to be equals, without his having any privileges, many times men and women define and perceive equality as very different.    What a man sincerely defines as equality is in the woman's perception and experience just reduced domination.    What a woman defines as equality, a man perceives it as the woman's attempt to dominate him.    This leads to a lot of disruption.


To sum it up:   I assume, that the more a man is proud of his body and the more he identifies with his physical strength, the higher the risk for a woman to be dominated.    While a man, who identifies with his intellectuality, where he can experience women as equals, is more able to treat a woman as an equal.
Therefore, everything else the same, if there were two men, one a stud and a package of muscles due to spending 10 hours per week at the gym, the other has never seen a gym from inside and spends his 10 hours reading good books, being physically weak but intellectually strong, I would not hesitate one second to choose the intellectual.    I would be prone to trust the intellectual and to be scared of the stud.

14. Threat and Fear

Threat and Fear

In some dating-site questionnaire, I was asked, what I was afraid of. My reply was along these lines:

I am afraid of wild animals like bears, and of men, who are animals, because their instincts are stronger then their rational self-control. With both, I have no chance to defend myself in a rational communication, and that makes me helpless and leaves me unprotected.

The average man is physically stronger than the average woman. That means, the average man is stronger than the majority of women, and the average woman is weaker than the majority of men. This has dire consequences for women. Average men are born with the means to physically force their will upon average women, who are unable to defend themselves as long as they do not use weapons.

When a man abstains from actually using his physical advantage, it is his deliberate choice. Even when laws are there to protect women, it is still his choice to risk punishment or behave according to the law. He really has a choice to use his advantage or to accept equality and behave accordingly. A woman does not have any choice to ever stop an individual man from using physical force on her. The only choice, that she has under favorable circumstances, is the attempt to get away from him or to avoid ever getting near him.

Physically, I am not very strong, I would not have much chance to defend myself against being beaten up. I know this, and a man would know it immediately. Any man, who feels entitled to dominate, makes me cringe, when he gets angry and into rages, when I resist his dominance. Even when he never gets physically violent, the sheer knowledge of the combination of his entitlement delusion and his physical strength makes me perceive anger as a threat of violence. Whatever reasons make him control himself and not beat me, it is not the value of respecting me, but the fear of consequences. That is not enough to feel safe.

Even if I would accept a relationship to be a power struggle, where I might in many ways have equal means and weapons to fight, a man would always have that one ultimate weapon, that only he has: Physical violence. I would have lost a power struggle before even starting it.

Only someone, who is in his own value system aspiring for the ERCP would not even want to dominate, and he would not be a subtle threat. Only with a man, who has nothing of value for him to gain by power, could I feel save and in an emotional home.