630. A Rare Case Of A Man With Self-Awareness

630.   A Rare Case Of A Man With Self-Awareness

I just read this story, which is another example for how much some men are biologically challenged:

"A dentist acted legally when he sacked his attractive assistant because he and his wife thought the woman was a threat to their marriage,"

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/9762472/Dentist-legally-allowed-to-sack-irresistible-assistant.html

First of all, of course it is wrong and not acceptable, that this man has used his power to burden the consequences of his own affliction and weakness upon someone else.   The solution chosen by him was not appropriate, but the need to act and solve the problem was real.     

This man's rare self-awareness deserves admiration.  He bluntly admits, that his instinctive urges towards abusing the body of his assistant were overwhelming his reason and disabling him from doing his job properly.  In contrast to many dangerous jerks, he owned his weakness of an insufficient cognitive control over his too strong instincts.   

He acted, before it was too late, by taking responsibility towards his own wife, towards the assistant's marriage and towards his patients.  He prevented dire consequences of his detrimental instinctivity.   

If all men would admit their weakness and act, before they have harmed others, the world would be a better place. 
Whenever other peoples' life or health depends upon a person's work, no matter if he is a dentist, a pilot or a general, it is important to avoid jeopardies.   While it is obvious that a dentist with hemiparesis or a pilot having become blind are no more fit for their work, it is time to recognize and acknowledge, how much a man's too strong sex drive is also a risky disability, which becomes virulent in the presence of attractive women.   It is time to take this into account and give up the denial, which causes so much harm.  

While the dentist in this case principally did the right thing by ending the dangerous collaboration with this assistant, it was his moral duty to do this by bringing the damage upon himself instead of harming her.   It was his moral obligation to find another appropriate work for her and to not deprive her of her source of income.   As long as he did not succeed, he owed her to continue to pay her salary without her working.

But this case is also a reminder, that women should be more supportive and considerate to men fighting against their affliction of a too strong instinctivity.   Wise women appear at work in an attire suitable to avoid triggering male instincts, they reserve seductive and lascivious attire to the privacy of their own relationship.   

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.

464. Religion And Charity

Religion And Charity

I am convinced that the innate gullibility to accept unproven claims by faith has evolved to serve as a mental trick to cope with the incongruity between human cognition and both the readiness to suffer and to inflict sufferings in the service of the survival of the species.  

In entry 462 I focused upon the invention of a god, who can be made responsible for the suffering caused by the ingroup-outgroup instinct and the male promiscuity instinct using women to procreate more than they really want.

But religion has many more subtle influences on society.   Charity is indirectly connected with the hierarchical instinct.  

In both animals and humans, the hierarchical instinct triggers the males to fight for a high rank in a hierarchy.   A high rank enables the holder to acquire the control over resources, which supply advantages for the survival of the own genes.   Those resources include the access to those mates with the fittest genes and to all material resources for the most healthy survival.

Competition and fighting for a privileged and powerful high rank is always a win-lose situation.   The one, who wins, knowingly hurts or damages those other human beings, whom he forces to lose.  This again can cause an evolutionary incongruity between the cognitive ability for consideration and the cruelty to nevertheless compete ruthlessly.

Acquiring the control over resources is even more beneficial for humans in monetary and assets oriented societies than it is for animals.    Human greed is not restricted to give advantage to the direct offspring.   The control over assets is an theoretically unlimited advantage for all further descendants, because the spoil can be handed on by inheritance.  

People therefore live mostly in societies with wide discrepancies between the good life of the privileged and the misery of the underprivileged.   In entry 402 about Justice By Coincidence, I give an example.

For those cruel and greedy, who made it to the top, their experiencing cognitive dissonance has been prevented by the invention of the imaginary god as a method for justifying the injustice of exploitation.   They perceive their privileges not as an unwarranted usurpation, but as an entitlement alloted to them by their god.  By being believed to be almighty, his decision cannot be criticized, therefore being privileged cannot be wrong. 
The underprivileged are made to believe, that god will reward them in the afterlife. if they submit in docility.   But some, the less ruthless of the privileged need themselves a justification.   They buy their own peace of mind by charity.   They exploit the underprivileged, but then they give back a part of the spoil as alms as their religion commands them.   This way they think to be able to buy the reward in the afterlife also for themselves and enjoy their privileges.

Unfortunately the general idea of accepting unjustified hierarchies of privileges and the positive general evaluation of charity as a substitute of justice has been subtly made part of social norms.   Now it is perpetuated even by those people, who are not religious and who do not expect anything in the afterlife.

Cooperation is a win-win situation.   It is the rationally best way to have a fair chance for all humans to have access to enough resources for a moderately good life without misery.    In a just, egalitarian society, all important work would be paid for, and everybody's needs would met at a minimum level, so that there would be not need for any charity.  

  

But even if charity could be justified as a rational compensation from all those, who happen to be the winners in the lottery of life, this would still restrict it to be only expected from those, who indeed are the winners.  Charity would not be considered as everybody's due indiscriminately.   In social reality, charity is considered as an expression of morality instead of as an act of repairing a social deficiency, that should be eliminated.

Voluntary work is a good example.    Voluntary work means to donate life time.   The privileged with well paid full time jobs usually have no life time to spare for voluntary work.   Those, who have the time for voluntary work are more often than not the underprivileged, who are unemployed with only little income.   I consider it as unwarranted to expect voluntary work from them.   Instead only the privileged, who do have a good income, should do any charity.  While those, who have time, do the work, those with a good income should donate the money, with which the poor then are paid to work for an income.

Nobody should ever work for others without being paid.   Not by slavery, not by forced labor, and not manipulated by religion or other brainwashing by those, who profit.   

448. The Impact Of Christianity On Western Culture

The Impact Of Christianity On Western Culture

My wish is to live in a society, where apistia, egalitarianism and Epicurus' principle of not harming and not to be harmed were the basis of a life in cooperation, justice, security, consideration and responsibility.    Only there is no such society.  
Unfortunately people can free themselves from the childhood christian indoctrination and brainwashing, while they continue to be implicitly influenced by the secondary religious thinking.

1.  The acceptance of and tolerance for suffering
Christianity claims that people get rewarded and compensated in the afterlife for the sufferings before their death.   As a consequence, christians are motivated and feel justified to irrational behaviors:
1.1.  They are prone to endure suffering without feeling outrage, protest or rebellion.
1.2.  They Inflict suffering upon others without feeling guilty.  
1.3.  Sometimes they consider inflicting suffering as beneficial for the vicitms due to creating their alleged entitlement to be rewarded after death.    

2.  The value of life
Life is considered as a gift from the god, belonging to him and being at his disposition only.   The individual is not considered as having an own right to subjectively evaluate if life is worth living or not. 
2.1.  Abortion is not socially accepted and/or forbidden by law.
2.2.  People are not considered to have the unrestricted right over their own life including the evaluation of the quality of life.  They are not allowed the option to decide, if it is worth living or not.  Terminally ill persons are not given the right and help to end their sufferings.  
2.3.  But taking lives in favor of any cause serving higher goals than the individual is accepted, as is in forcing men to be soldiers and women to risk their lives in child birth.

3.  Injustice combined with the acceptance of suffering
3.1.  Forgiving is considered a positive behavior, even without the transgressor's remorse, insight or amends.  Transgressors feel entitled to be forgiven.   Victims are morally coerced to forgive.  They are brainwashed to believe that forgiving benefits themselves.  This kind of forgiving is dangerous, because the transgressor is indirectly condoned for his evil and is prone to repeat damaging others as a consequence of getting off the hook too easily.   
3.2.  The legal system does not focus on protecting the innocent from becoming victims of transgressions.   According to christianity, only the god is entitled to do justice.   This god is presented as someone more in favor of the repentant sinner than of the innocent, who never hurts another person.   

Evil is an imbalance between the transgressor and the god.   Gaining benefits by doing evil is considered as a deal between the god and the transgressor.  The evil is a debt to the god, until the price is paid, the account balanced, and god and transgressor are even again.   The christian sins, pay for his sin by rituals, prayers, sacrifices.  As soon as he feels forgiven by the god, he can be oblivious of the victim.   The victim is insignificant.  

The law focuses on the breach of rules and evil is something paid for by the penalty, by which it then is legally undone.   The victim of physical violence like rape, assault, robbery is often traumatized and damaged irreversibly.  The culprit goes to jail for a few years, is only limited in his freedom, gets maybe even the benefits of training for a job.    After the release, he is considered as having paid his debt to society.   For him, it is over, while the victim still suffers.    The suffering of the victims is often much worse than the legal penalty for the culprit. 

The culprit is enabled to damage another victim.    This is considered the next victim's bad luck and unavoidable fate.   Nobody really sees the outrage of the lack of protection for the innocent.   

4.  Inequality
Inequality is a part of the teaching of the bible.   Atrocities to outgroup members are not only accepted but commanded as service to the god.  Women are not accepted as equals, but as wombs serving to supply more lives to the god as due to him.   Slavery is accepted too.  
4.1.  As a consequence, while discrimination by explicit behavior is often outlawed, subtle and implicit discrimination is prevalent, condoned and tolerated. 
4.2.  A god being the top being and the clerical hierarchies serving him are the model for the general acceptance of hierarchies of power and access to resources.   Forming such hierarchies is done by ruthless, cruel and devastating competition, which has general social acceptance.

5.  Restricting rules
When the rules of specific religious behavior are fixed as laws, they also restrict the life of non-religious persons.   An example is the law in Germany forbiding shops to open on Sundays as being holy.   Laws against blasphemy are another example.  

419. Epicurean Or Christian Legal Paradigm

Epicurean Or Christian Legal Paradigm

In Christian societies, the legal paradigm is based upon the belief, that real justice is not the task of society, but it is their god's job in the afterlife.   This belief favors the transgressors occasion to become recidivists. 
Their previous and future victims are at a disadvantage.

• Christian faith postpones the reward for sufferings to the afterlife.   This serves as a justification to expose people to sufferings and to unnecessary risks of suffering without their consent and against their will.   They are not given a choice, if they want to suffer and be rewarded or not.
• Christian faith requires victims to forgive without justice or amends.  They are not only supposed to yield doing justice to their god, they are even scared to be punished themselves in the afterlife if they refuse to forgive.     
• Christian faith requires the victims to accept their fate as their god's will.    Therefore society does not take legal precaution to protect the innocent from becoming victims. 
• Christian faith enables transgressors to have the delusion, that their god has forgiven them.  As a consequence, they do not earn the forgiving of the victims and make no amends.    

The legal paradigm of a society, where justice is truly not biased by religion, should focus on the Epicurean principle of not harming and of a basic right of not being harmed.  Such a legal system should focus on the protection of the innocent.   Persons, who have proven to be dangerous to others by having harmed them personally by crimes like murder, rape, robbery, assault etc, should be locked away forever, not as punishment, but to protect the innocent from becoming victims.

   
Punishment for the evil doer after a crime cannot undo the damage to the victim.  Society's primary duty is prevention and protection, punishment is not a substitute.   Every time, when a victim gets seriously harmed and traumatized by a recidivist, who has been released from jail, this is an outrage.  This crime on the victim has indirectly been committed by the society, that fails to protect the innocent.   

It is a very drastic thing to do to lock someone away for a lifetime.   But comparing this with the plight of the victims, who are damaged, mutilated, traumatized also for a lifetime, the suffering of someone, who has proven to be dangerous is more justified than the suffering of an innocent victim.    The evil doer had a choice, the victim has none.  
There is the legal principle to rather release a criminal than to lock away someone, who is innocent of the crime he is accused of.    This also is an implicit legal choice between two kinds of sufferings.   The unfortunate person innocently in jail suffers less than the victim, who is seriously and irreversibly harmed by the recidivist criminal, because he has been wrongly acquitted.     

In an ideal society, every person can be at any place and at any time of the day or night, without being in danger of becoming a crime victim.     

This is another hen or egg question:    Is the delusion of a god's justice in the afterlife a rationalization to cope with the innate easiness of harming others without a bad conscience due to animal instinctive urges, or do people harm others without a bad conscience as a consequence of the Christian delusion?  

402. Justice By Coincidence

Justice By Coincidence

Religious people believe in a higher power sometimes doing justice.   As a non-believer, I certainly disagree.   But sometimes justice happens by coincidence.     The following is an example.  

One of my neighbors had a job with a cleaning company.   In the year 2000, before the €uro, she got paid 10 DM per hour (1 €uro = 1.96 DM).   After the deduction of taxes, health and pension insurance, I estimate that what was paid to her was about 1200 DM per month, barely enough to survive.      

She worked hard for outrageously low wages and the owner of the company got rich from her and her colleagues' hard labor.   He was able to afford for himself and his wife a luxury vacation in the Caribbean, which according to a web page was available for a minimum price per person of 11.000 DM and upwards. 

They paid for the vacation, but they never got there.    They travelled in the Concorde, the air plane that crashed in Paris in the summer of 2000.    It was a tragic accident, and nobody deserves such a horrible death.  
But these people have brought it upon themselves with their cruel and ruthless greed of exploiting the hard working cleaners.   Had they paid decent wages and lived more modestly, they most probably would still be alive.