718. A Fascinating Novel - Jack London: Before Adam

718.   A Fascinating Novel -  Jack London:  Before Adam

I just finished listening to the audio version of this novel, available on Librivox.    And even though they may never know, a big thanks to all those volunteers, who give me the chance to listen to good books.   

In other entries, I have explained how the ability for emotional attachment is a part of the unique human evolution, which could only co-evolve along with the general cognitive and rational abilities.  My source of such ideas is reading a lot about recent evolutionary biology and psychology.  

Jack London wrote his novel in 1906/7, at times, when evolution was still a widely disputed concept.   While this novel contains certainly a lot of imagination based upon limited scientific reality, his achievement is nevertheless very remarkable.   He was able to brilliantly illustrate the evolutionary state of people, whose limited empathy and emotional attachment were in sync with their limited intelligence and their limited theory of mind.  

I doubt that anybody with current knowledge of evolutionary biology, anthropology and archaeology could write a much better novel.  

644. A Literary Example Of A Delusional Man

644.  A Literary Example Of A Delusional Man

I just listened to the audio version of The Golden Silence by C.N and A.M. Williamson, which is legally available at
http://librivox.org/the-golden-silence-by-cn-and-am-williamson.  
(I really appreciate the excellent work of all the volunteers at librivox.org and www.litteratureaudio.com, who have done the reading of this and many other books.)

I am aware that this book was written in 1911, more than a hundred years ago, and I know, that the world has changed since then.   I am also aware, that what is told as a fictional story, does not imply it ever having happened in real life.   
Yet somehow it seems very probable, that a man can really be as delusional and as dangerous as was that man in the story, and this is very scary.   

By circumstances of the story, a young girl got under the power of an islamic man somewhere in northern Africa.  He had become very infatuated with her beauty and he pretended and believed to love her.   According to his understanding of correct behavior and honor, he wanted her as his wife.   So he threatened to force her into marriage, if she would not consent.   

But love requires respect for an equal, which he did not have for her.   His complete disrespect for her own ability to know herself, what is best for her, caused him the delusion, that forcing himself upon her were beneficial for her, so that he could do this without having any bad conscience.   

Two quotes summing it up: 

"I do not fear thy hate. When thou belongest to me, I will know how to turn it into love."

"Give me thy love, and thou canst bend me as thou wilt.  Refuse it, and I will break thee."

Such a delusion in combination with the power to enforce it makes a man dangerous.   But when his religion also tells him, that having power over women, and having four wives and an unlimited number of concubines is the will of his deity, then he is any woman's worst possible enemy.     

While this story is an extreme example, unfortunately many men are misguided to sincerely overestimate the benefits of what they do to women and to underestimate without any doubt the harm they do.  

620. Strangers And Risk Avoidance

620.   Strangers And Risk Avoidance

It can be very difficult to find the right middle between avoiding risks and avoiding to hurt others by unfounded prejudices and racism.

Generally speaking, every first contact with a complete stranger is a risk.    It is often difficult or not possible to correctly predict a stranger's behavior.  
 

Herman Melville's novel 'Typee' is an excellent illustration of the problem.   In this story, two sailors are running away from the mistreatment by the captain of their ship.   The place is an island in the Pacific, where cannibalism was at that time some tribes' known practice. 
When starving, the heroes of the story had to decide, which path to take towards finding those natives, who would most probably help without having them for dinner.   The had only hearsay to rely upon concerning the location of those tribes considered to be the least ferocious.   
When the two sailors finally did meet some natives, there was no common language.   They were guided to the natives' village wondering what to expect, whether there they would eat or be eaten.  
Later they found out to have indeed met the one tribe, which they had been fearing the most, cannibals in the habit of sometimes eating the captives of tribal wars.   But the two sailors survived without being feasted upon.  
While the narrator of the story was puzzled, for what reasons they were spared, I could think of one possible explanation being the tribe's own definition of who belongs to the ingroup and who is outgroup.   Maybe only bellicose tribes were defined as outgroups, while their guests were enclosed into the ingroup set of behavior.  


Belonging to an ingroup is often a choice, being treated as outgroup is not a choice.

The real risk of being harmed by a stranger requires to be able to protect oneself by appropriate preventive behavior, which in turn requires to estimate the magnitude and kind of the risk.   
 

Much of today's inappropriate racism and prejudices have their origin in the times, when people living in small tribes and groups in areas of low population density were born into their ingroups.  Every person not belonging to the same community was automatically outgroup.   People mutually having no doubt about who else is ingroup were not prone to make mistakes in judging risks.   

Today in the complexity and globalization of modern societies, people often cannot know, if at all and how strongly they are considered as outgroup by strangers.    They cannot even know, if they are recognized correctly as members of any group or only confounded with members of any especially hated or loathed outgroup.    

Eating outgroup members is certainly an extreme, but when outgroup members are beaten, exploited, stolen from, insulted, socially excluded, ridiculed, abused as prey (entry 619) it is nevertheless caused by the same instinct.   

On that Pacific island, the probability of someone being a cannibal was certainly high only in those, who were visibly natives, while it could be assumed that the Europeans were no cannibals.   But considering them as cannibals because they were racially natives is a fallacy.   It just happened to be a correlation between the foe eating culture having developed, where only the natives were living, while the culture of not eating humans had been brought there by the Europeans.  This fallacy of mistaking a correlation with a genetic predisposition has contributed to deriving absurd assumptions from external traits like the color of the skin.   Such anachronistic fallacy has lead to the irrational, stupid and sick racism disturbing even modern civilized countries with mixed populations like the USA. 

There are two possible mistakes with very different consequences.   

Someone underestimating the risk from strangers just perishes and cannot hand on the knowledge.  Nor would his absence of gullibility to prejudice become prevalent in the gene pool.   Had the sailors in the story been eaten, nobody would ever have heard of to take it as a warning.    

Someone overestimating probabilities or only imagining non-existing ones, perpetuates irrational and unrealistic prejudices and racism.  
The guy, who kills or avoids the strangers, can never find out, if he did this for good reasons or not.    Had the sailors in the story had weapons and had they killed the natives and survived by eating their food, they may have well told later without any doubt to have killed cannibals to prevent being eaten.   They would never have felt to have murdered and robbed people. 

Lacking any knowledge about a stranger as an individual, estimates of these probabilities are based upon pre-concepts, previous experiences and knowledge or hearsay about the group, tribe and society, to which the stranger belongs.   These pre-concepts can be more or less valid or completely invalid.   All pre-concepts, which are not suitable to predict real risks based upon real attitudes and evident behaviors, are a fallacy.  

Both of the above mentioned mistakes impede the correction of the pre-concepts and perpetuate the fallacies.  

To predict a stranger's behavior requires a lot of estimating and guessing.

1.  The probability of specific attitudes leading to, enabling or facilitating specific behaviors.
2.  The probability of the stranger's having such specific attitudes.  
2.1.  The direct probability of specific attitudes being expressed and indicated by attires and body modification.  
2.2.  The two combined probabilities of the membership in a specific ingroup indicating the presence of specific attitudes and of specific attires and body modification indicating the membership in a specific ingroup.
3.  The probability to be considered as outgroup in contrast with an ingroup, to which the stranger is so much affiliated, that outgroup members are prone to be harmed.

Estimating and guessing the invisible is difficult in complex societies.

1. Subjectively felt affiliations with specific ingroups are often by choice.   Shared attitudes and other invisible attributes can cause strong subjective affiliations, which are hidden from and not noticeable for ignorant strangers.    The members of ingroups sometimes know how to recognize each other, while the indicators for this recognition are unknown to the outgroup members.   
Religions, political parties, social associations or sports teams are examples.    Easily defined traditional ingroups as are ethnicities, villages or neighborhoods are not always automatically experienced as ingroups.

2. The stronger someone identifies with an ingroup, the stronger he is prone to feel hostility towards outgroups.    To every ingroup, there can be more than one outgroup, who for a variety of reasons do not all elicit the same amount of hostility.    



The line between either a drastic misjudgment of probabilities towards being merely too cautious or the irrational, stupid and gullible belief in claims with zero probability is delicate and often blurred.   
 

Being aware, that every interaction with strangers is bearing a risk is by itself not a prejudice. 
The real problem is the correct estimation of the particular risk and what harm to prevent.     Not every caution is a fallacy, only because it is denounced as prejudice or racism by those being themselves the hazard.   Both previous behavior and expressed attitudes in favor of specific behaviors are indicators of real risks.   

Examples of alleged prejudices justified by the probability of a real risk:

1.  Most prisoners are in jail as a consequence of having harmed individual persons, therefore it is statistically probable, that someone just released from jail is not trustworthy.   Not wanting him as an employee or tenant is not a prejudice but a rational avoidance of a risk.    Those few, who are reformed and will not repeat criminal harm, have brought it upon themselves.   

2. Religious people are morally guided by rules established by their religion.    The more someone feels compelled to consider the guide book of his religion as absolutely imperative to his conduct, the more he feels a good person by following the book, no matter what the victims of his behavior experience or say.   

There are many muslim men on French dating sites and chats.   Rejecting them for being muslims frequently leads to the accusation of being either a racist or prejudiced.   Letting aside my general rejection of men with any religious belief, muslim men are especially hazardous to women, who want a monogamous man without sharing him with other women.  

The islam does of not only allow but prescribe unlimited promiscuity to men.   The koran explicitly allows a man four wives and an unlimited number of concubines.    What a non-islamic woman considers and defines as cheating and as a transgression, is therefore normal and morally correct behavior for a male muslim guided by the koran.   

In the possible case, that a muslim restricts himself to only one woman, this is in contradiction to his religion.  It can be due to a lack of either a wish or an opportunity, or it is only temporary, but it is not a moral attitude of feeling any obligation towards a woman to be monogamous.   

The egalitarian attitude, that a woman is equal to a man, and being a muslim, are mutually exclusive.  Any muslim's claim to treat a woman as an equal cannot be trusted, unless he leaves the entire abusive religion behind and becomes an atheist.    Therefore a woman rejecting muslim men is not prejudiced, but acting wisely based upon the awareness of a real risk.    By accepting to be muslims, men bring the rejection by monogamous women upon themselves.     

614. Changing Role Models

614.   Changing Role Models

For the purpose of reducing the boredom of doing household chores, I am sometimes listening to simple and superficial stuff like old radio shows.  Thus I also listened to a serial about a private detective called Richard Diamond, consisting of several dozen episodes broadcasted around 1950.  
As it is a Hollywood production, the hero was created as what at that period of time was the fictional prototype of masculinity.    Being a prototype, Diamond was certainly the role model for many contemporary young men.   Just as was and is James Bond for the generation of their sons and grandsons. 

Diamond and Bond have a lot in common (, as much as I can know from only having ever seen one unpleasant Bond film without any wish for more).  
Both role models are aggressive and tough, never have any fear, being very apt with weapons, fists and also with verbal flippancy.   Both are not destroyable, no matter how much they get beaten up or injured.  Both are never impacted by any guilt or emotional effects after having killed anybody as an everyday event of no consequence.

But there is one very decisive distinction between both role models. 

James Bond is a disgusting promiscuous women abusing jerk.  Were he real, he would be every decent woman's nightmare.  
 
Richard Diamond appears to be principally a decent guy.  Throughout the entire series, he has the same girlfriend, Helen, treating her correctly.    Being the prototype of a stud, he is portrayed as catching every woman's interest and as flirting with all of them, but this is the limit.   He is not only a role model of being true to Helen, but he is shown as being true by choice, not by lack of opportunity.   
Diamond is also presented as not merely infatuated with Helen's body but also attached to her as a person, whom he appreciates enough to spend a lot of his spare time with her, including shared non-physical activities.   
Monogamy is an implicitly and indirectly expressed part of this role model.  Whenever Helen expresses jealousy of one of his female clients, he does not reproach her, but defends or clears himself as being true to her.  An such jealousy is a part of Helen's being also a role model, it is not at all shown as inappropriate. 

Richard Diamond is certainly not my ideal of a man, because I prefer non-aggressive intellectuals.   But at least he is not someone abusing women as does his thoroughly repulsive successor James Bond.    

As far as role models have an influence, someone like Diamond can bring out the relatively best in men, but Bond certainly reinforces their worst.   

587. A Jerk With A Halo - 2

587.  A Jerk With A Halo - 2

Someone mentioned in an email his affinity with Ernest Hemingway.   It was already years ago, since I had read a few of his books.  Only having a vague idea about enjoying the books but disliking his machismo, I read his Wikipedia biography and discovered, that he was another jerk with a halo. 

According to this biography, Hemingway has ruthlessly repeated a cruel pattern with three of his wives.   First he cheated on them, then dumped and replaced them with the accomplice of the cheating.    This makes him a jerk with a halo as defined in entry 586.  

But he was not only a jerk with a halo put upon him by many of his readers, he also haloed himself: 

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/16/opinion/sunday/dowd-a-farewell-to-macho.html

"Hemingway needed a new wife for every big book. And even when he was cheating on a wife with her friend, he painted himself as a victim of predatory and trusting women.

Writing in “A Moveable Feast” about dumping his older first wife, Hadley, for his older second wife, Pauline, he whinged that “the oldest trick” is “that an unmarried young woman becomes the temporary best friend of another young woman who is married, goes to live with the husband and wife and then unknowingly, innocently and unrelentingly sets out to marry the husband.”

“He’d acted like a boor and a bully and an overly competitive jerk,” "

427. The Philistene's Sour Grapes Of Knowledge

The Philistine's Sour Grapes Of Knowledge

http://stevenpaulleivasthisnthat.blogspot.com/2011/09/new-clothes-for-shakespeare-and.html

In this article the author recounts his conversation with someone, whom he describes as anti-intellectual and whom I would also call a philistine.   This guy is proudly declaring, that what he does not like, is not worth being bothered about, he feels not in the least embarrassed about his willful ignorance.  The author of the article quotes his specimen as calling Shakespeare's plays crap.   The author calls it the arrogance of ignorance.  
Such philistines devalue and discard other people's cognitive production not by learned judgment, they devalue, what they themselves are either too dumb to understand, or what they are too lazy to invest effort in to first understand, before they judge.  

But devaluing, what is out of easy reach, is part of a more general pattern.   Aesop's fable illustrates the same pattern:   

"Driven by hunger, a fox tried to reach some grapes hanging high on the vine but was unable to, although he leaped with all his strength. As he went away, the fox remarked, 'Oh, you aren't even ripe yet! I don't need any sour grapes.' People who speak disparagingly of things that they cannot attain would do well to apply this story to themselves."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Fox_and_the_Grapes

This is the pattern:   Someone wants something, but it is either out of his reach or the efforts to obtain it are subjectively out of proportion of his need, wish or interest to get it.    The resulting cognitive dissonance is resolved by devaluing the object to become less or undesirable.  
In the case of the grapes, the object is material.  In the case of the philistine, cognitive achievements and knowledge as a source of self-esteem and self-worth are emotional and immaterial.   
The fox refocuses his attention towards easily available food.   The philistine refocuses his attempts to boost his self-esteem towards less intellectually challenging sources like wealth or physical fitness.  

There is a special constellation, where the arrogance of ignorance is especially detrimental.    It is the behavior and attitude of many men towards intelligent and educated women.
Such a woman expects a man to be a mindmate, a companion sharing with her intellectual intimacy and the reciprocal joy of consent.   For any man, the task of understanding the woman, of making himself understood, of sharing his thoughts and listening to her, of communicating can be difficult or beyond his abilities.   But if a male animal is in addition driven by an urge to get homeostasis, this task is tiresome and a strain on his patience.
When he experiences giving her, what her brain needs, as out of his reach as are the grapes for the fox, he does not even try.   Instead he becomes a commitment philistine.   
With the same ignorance as described in the article, the male animal denies, that the woman even has a brain.   With the same arrogance, he devalues all women to be nothing more than bodies existing as commodities to be used.    They are perceived and hunted as prey.   As a predator and stud, he derives the self-esteem, that he does not expect to get by intellectual attempts.      

 
The pattern of devaluing, what cannot be reached, is known since millennia.   But I see a trend, that the willingness to earn anything with a lot of effort, is dwindling.   Choosing only, what is easy to get and devaluing everything else seems to be a growing general tendency. 
The social development away from the goal of monogamous long-term commitment and towards a male promiscuous throwaway mentality towards women is one example.  

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

380. Atheism In Literature - E. G. Howe

Atheism In Literature - E. G. Howe
In entry 374 I described the difference between innate and converted atheists.      Innate atheists are void of the need for and inclination towards any belief, while converted atheists struggle against a need, that they know is stupid and irrational. 
 
But under strong influences of the ubiquity of belief and religion, sometimes innate atheists are led to consider themselves as lacking a belief, they should have or would be better off having.   

I am reluctant to fill this blog with long passages of text not my own, but the following text from pages 103 to 105 of the novel 'The Mystery Of The Locks' by Edgar Watson Howe illustrates the situation.   The novel was published in 1885.   

In the following dialogue, a newly wed couple discusses her wish to be reunited in heaven after death, and he expresses his wish, this could be true, in spite of his lack of religious belief.   

"I have never thought about it much, and investigated but little," he answered. "It has always been natural for me to think of the grave as the end of everything, so far as I am concerned. But I have confidence in your intelligence and judgment; if you have investigated, and believe, that is enough for me; _I_ believe. Please do not worry about it any more; I will try very hard to remain with you."

He said it lightly, yet there was enough seriousness in his manner to convince her that his love for her was honest, even if his religion was not.

"Religion is not natural with me: I feel no necessity for it or lack of it," he said again. "But I have no objection to it; on the contrary, I have always liked the idea, but I lack the necessary faith. It would be pleasant for me to believe that, in the next country, a day's journey removed, good gifts might be found; but if I could not believe it, I could not be reasonably blamed for my refusal to attempt the journey. I might even regret that the accounts were not true; but I would not insist that they _were_ true against my honest convictions, because I _hoped_ they were. I am religious enough in sentiment, but my brain is an inexorable skeptic. Nothing is more pleasing to me than the promise of your faith. What a blessed hope it is, that after death you will live in a land of perpetual summer; and exist forever with your friends where there is only peace and content! I am sure I can never see as much of you as I want to in this life, and I cannot tell you how much I hope we will be reunited beyond the grave, and live forever to love each other, even as we do now. I am willing to make any sacrifice necessary to ensure this future; it would be a pleasure for me to make greater sacrifices than are required, according to common rumor, for they are not at all exacting, except in the particular of faith; but that I lack, to a most alarming extent, though I cannot help it. You cannot have faith because it is your duty any more than you can love because it is your duty. I only regret that I cannot be religious as naturally as I love you, but I cannot, though I try because you want me to. I want to believe that men do not grow old and become a burden to themselves and those around them; but I know differently, and while I hope that there will be a resurrection, I know that those who have gone away on the journey which begins with death send back no messenger, and that nothing is known of heaven except the declaration of pious people that they believe in it. I love to hear the laughter of children, but it does not convince me that all the world is in a laughing mood, and that there are no tears. No one can find fault with your religion except that they cannot believe in it. Everything in nature teaches us that we will return to dust, and that we will be resurrected only as dust by the idle winds. You don't mind that I speak freely?"

"No."

"I have tried all my life to convince myself that I possessed the spark of immortality, but my stubborn brain resists the attempt. All my reasoning convinces me that I live for the same reason that my horse exists. I am superior to the faithful animal only in intelligence, for in physical organization I am only an animal. When an animal dies, I see its body dwindle away until there is nothing left; it becomes dust again. I _hope_ that I may share a different fate, but I _believe_ that I shall pass away in precisely the same manner. Understand me; I want to be religious, but I cannot be. There are some people--I suppose there are a great many, though I never knew but one personally--who ought to live forever; they are too rare to die. You are one of them, but I fear you will be lost to the world in the course of nature. You ought to be preserved for the good you can accomplish by playing the organ. I never believe in heaven so much as when I am in the back pews listening to your music. There is more religion in the old organ when you are at the keyboard than in all the people who listen to it put together; and I sometimes think that those who write the music and the songs are inspired, though when you know them, their personal characters do not encourage that impression."

She put her hand to his mouth as if to stop him, but he pushed it away with a laugh, and continued,--

"Let me finish, that you may know what I really am, and then I will never mention the subject again. But don't think me worse than other men for my unbelief; they nearly all think as I do, though only the bad ones say so. All good men rejoice that there is a pleasing hope in religion, and encourage it all they can, but only a few of them have your faith."

"All be well yet, Allan," the wife answered. "You have promised to try and get rid of your unbelief, and I know that you will be honest in it. The Master whom I serve next to you--I fear I am becoming very wicked myself, for you are more to me than everything else--"

"There it is again," Dorris said, looking at her, half laughing. "That expression wasn't studied, I know, but it pleases me greatly. You are always at it, though you have a right to now."

"He is more considerate than any of us imagine, and if He knows you did not believe, He will also know that you could not, and did not intend any disrespect."

"There is something in that," he answered. "I loved you before I knew you, though I did not believe you existed."

"But you _did_ find me. Is it not possible that you will find Him, though you do not believe He exists?"

"That is worth thinking about. The next time I take a long ride into the country I will think it over, if I can get you out of my mind long enough. One thing, however, is certain; I want to follow you, wherever that leads me. Let me add, too, that in what I have said I intend no disrespect. It would be impudent in me, a single pebble in the sands surrounding the shores of eternity, to speak ill of a faith which is held by so many thousands of intelligent and worthy people. I speak freely to you, as my wife, my confidant, that you may know what I am."


http://www.freefictionbooks.org/books/m/24070-the-mystery-of-the-locks-by-edgar-watson-howe?start=102

332. A Mythological Winner of the Darwin Award

A Mythological Winner of the Darwin Award

Someone mentioned the Greek mythological story of Hero and Leander in an email and we disagreed about the interpretation.   He perceives the story as romantic, blaming the tragic end entirely on the carelessness of Hero, while I think that Leander is a fool, who deserves the Darwin award.  

"Hero and Leander,  two lovers celebrated in Greek legend. Hero, virgin priestess of Aphrodite at Sestos, was seen at a festival by Leander of Abydos; they fell in love, and he swam the Hellespont at night to visit her, guided by a light from her tower. One stormy night the light was extinguished, and Leander was drowned; Hero, seeing his body, drowned herself likewise."
http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/263413/Hero-and-Leander

There is a longer text, from where the following quotes are taken:
http://www.maicar.com/GML/Hero.html

"This unstable arrangement did not last more than the warm season."

He obviously continued his nightly swimming for a considerable time without even considering to improve his method of seeing her.  

"in AD 1810, by the English poet Lord Byron, who swam from Sestus to Abydus in one hour and ten minutes". 

Someone doing this twice every night, needed rest in the day time.   That means, that Leander was certainly not a hard working laborer, but had enough money to have options. 

Therefore he had alternatives to risking his life:

• He could have bought a boat and rowed or sailed.  
• He could have moved to live somewhere near her, so he could visit her without crossing the water.
• He could have eloped with her to a place, where nobody knew about her obligation to remain a priestess.   

Seen from a rational perspective, he was a fool, who brought his death upon himself.   That is, why he deserves the Darwin award.   And if she never suggested less risky options, she was as much a fool as he.


But this is a mythological tale, and only interpreting it like I did above is missing an important aspect of reading such old tales.   As much as its message of Hero and Leander being role models is obsolete, the story is an interesting illustration of how the subconscious animal instincts are represented consciously by attitudes. 
A mythological story tells, what is commonly accepted as normal at the times of its origin.   

By animal instincts, female breeders are driven to prefer the genes of the strongest and most daring studs, surviving all risks to his life before being allowed to procreate.  In this story, Hero's instincts did not allow her to choose a prudent, intelligent male using the safety of a boat, just as Leander's instincts drove him to risk his life to win her favors, instead of wooing a woman preferring intelligence.   

The first known written sources of this story date back not much more than 2000 years.   But maybe the tale is much older and dates back to the times before the evolution of rational thinking had an influence upon the choice of a mate.   Here I am speculating again.  
If I would start to analyze more old myths, fables and fairy tales, many could probably be reduced to a positive attitude towards instinctive behaviors not only of breeding, but also of ingroup-outgroup, of hierarchy forming, enhanced by gullibility.  

308. Control Freak or Dominator

Control Freak or Dominator

Domination is abomination.  I have already written several blog entries about how devastating it is for a woman to be dominated.   Domination over a woman can have many reasons.  

1. It can be an expression of the hierarchy instinct, a man is sometimes misguided to establish a hierarchy in his private life, when he had to struggle in competition to earn his living.    
2. Over centuries in western societies and in many societies it is still like this today, that women on average had and have less access to get an education appropriate to their intelligence.   Men dominated and dominate over women, who having been deprived of developing their real intellectual potential. 
3. Domination over a woman can also be the misguided consequence of having grown up under feudalism as a member of the ruling class being so used to be served on command.  A man takes his entitlement to dominate over everybody including a woman for granted.  

Dominators, who are no Control Freaks, can be quite content with their own life.  They dominate by a distortion of their thinking and judgement only.  Petruccio in 'The Taming Of The Shrew' (entries 301 and 302) is an example of a jerk, who just takes his entitlement for granted.    In spite of the ludicrous ending of the play, it could have ended very differently, if he would have matured to learn, that Kathrina is an intelligent and educated partner, who could enhance his life much more as an equal partner than under domination.   
Mark Twain's 'The Prince And The Pauper' is an example from literature, how someone can discover, that there are alternatives to dominate.    

Such dominators dominate, as long as they get rewarded by benefits from domination, but they are able to give it up, should equality become more beneficial.

Control Freaks as already described in entry 307 are a subform of dominators, who are driven to alleviate their pathological fears and anxieties by control over people, including the women in their life.   Control Freaks are very unhappy people, who have succeeded in using domination as a method to reduce their own suffering by making others suffer as their proxy and scape goats.    Control Freaks dominate as a consequence of emotional problems, that are often enhanced by the delusion of being entitled to do so.    Control Freaks are driven to dominate by an urge to reduce their own suffering and they do not experience having any choice to give up control.

This is a good description of Control Freaks:
http://home.comcast.net/~pobrien48/Control_freaks.htm

There are several scenarios of control freaks, depending on the severity of the morbidity or co-morbidity.

1. The basic factors are a combination of pathological fears, anxiety, paranoia and worries, in combination with an inability to trust.  The Control Freak has never trusted anybody in his life.   Therefore even forcing himself to try behaving as if trusting is not an option for him.    He has as little imagination of trusting as has a person born blind of colors. 
   If someone with anxiety issues were able to trust, a loving and caring partner could support him to live with his troubles without harming her. 
   But when there is no trust, then the control freak is caught in the trap of his morbidity.   Without trust, he can never let go of his control and attempts to control, so he can never make the experience of what would happen without control.   He is deprived of ever making the experience, that without control, he would get just as much of a fair deal by consideration and compassion, as he gets by coercion.   He makes the woman's life miserable and gains nothing by this except a reduction of his fears. 
   
   In this scenario, he keeps the woman at bay as a friend with benefits, with whom he limits his interaction to his own convenience.
   
2. If the Control Freak is additionally afflicted with selfishness and the delusion of being entitled to get more than he gives, then controlling serves a dual purpose.   Not only does it reduce his fears, but it is also a cruel but logical method to usurp his selfish wants and needs, that he would not get otherwise.   In this case, he uses rage, intimidation and other means of extortion to get advantages and benefits.   The relationship is a power struggle between his selfish greed and her attempts to get a fair deal and to protect herself.    She is exploited, but as someone taken for serious, a respected enemy in the war for resources. 
   
   In this scenario, he expects the woman to have the role of a mother with benefits.  The mother gives all her unconditional love to a child, but the child does not give anything back to her.  
   
3. Another scenarios is the control freak, who is also a narcissist.   He adds a grandiosity delusion to anxiety, distrust and entitlement to selfish advantages.    That means, he adds disrespect and depreciation to the pain of being dominated.   He considers her as faulty and inferior, as someone, who should be grateful to be allowed to be under his control.    He believes himself to be a good person by doing what he does, because in his delusion, his behavior is what he perceives as correct by his birthright, while her inferior role is her purpose in life.   Being aware, that she has some needs, he cares for her only by giving her, what he believes that she needs.    This believe is a combination of projections of his own needs and of what he has gathered from hearsay as how women should allegedly be treated.   It does not even occur to him to consider direct information to be obtained from her concerning her real needs.  
   
   In this scenario, the woman is like a well cared for pet with benefits.   Just like a pet owner, he may consult with other women owners about how to care for the women, but he does not ask the woman herself.    Had he no physical needs, he would choose a pet, where control is easier and socially more acceptible.    Instead he gets the benefits in bed, but controls her just like the pet, that he would prefer.
   
4. In a variety of scenario 3, the woman is not a pet with benefits, that is taken and treated as a being with innate limits.    He takes on the role of a father, whose task is to improve his daughter with benefits and to fix her.   He believes that he is doing this as a favor to her.     The power to modify her to better serve his convenience is an even more rewarding form of control than just forcing her to do, what he wants.   So his believe to be able to fix her is especially effective in reducing his fears.      
    
5. In a more extreme variety of scenario 3, he is a not only a narcissistic control freak, but also an emotional moron.   He confounds caring for her with the maintenance of a commodity and utility, as if her body needs to be maintained to function similarly to the maintenance of a robot. 
   
   In this scenario, the woman is a painstakingly maintained robot with benefits. 
   
6. The worst scenario is the narcissistic control freak, who is psychopathic.   He has no conscience, and he knows exactly, that all the atrocities done by him to the woman are hurting her, and are not, what other people consider correct and moral behavior.    He commits transgression knowingly, but he is just not bothered or concerned.   
   
   In this scenario, a woman is a utility with benefits, used and then thrown away, not considered worth neither care nor maintenance.     

Control Freaks of all subtypes are the most devastating dominators.    I am willing to be a supportive partner to anybody, who has problems and entrusts himself to my support.   But without trust, a relationship is doomed to become toxic.  

302. Literature: The Prototype of the Jerk - 2

Literature: The Prototype of the Jerk - 2

This continues entry 301 about Shakespeare's 'The Taming Of The Shrew'.    I wrote all my thoughts omitting one factor:   The breeding instinct.   
It is well known in evolutionary biology, that some women are prone to subconsciously and by instinct want the genes of the most horrible jerks as material for healthy offspring, even though they would not want to be exposed to their abuse.  

So what could have happened in the inconsistent movie:   The instincts could have overridden the battle of both the jerk and Kathrina.   She could have wanted children so badly for the purpose of having someone to cling too as a compensation for being the trapped wife of a jerk.   He could have ended his abuse as a consequence of getting infatuated with her body.    They could have made a deal of any kind.   They could even have made a deal to get money out of others by prearranging her alleged submission as a ruse to win the bet. 

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.      

137. A Book and Movie Recommendation for Women

A Book and Movie Recommendation for Women

I am writing this blog to find my mindmate.   But I know from her comment on entry 113, that there is at least one woman reading this blog, whose aversion to jerks seems to match mine.

For her and other likeminded women, I recommend two very good books:   

Kathy Krajco:  What Makes Narcissists Tick?

Martha Stout:  The Sociopath Next Door

Sandy Hotchkiss:  Why Is It Always About You?

These three books are a very good training program in recognizing jerks before getting involved with them.   

And as a special treat, I recommend also the movie SWITCH. 

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0103016/
In that movie a jerk gets, what he has deserved.

33. Emancipation, Rationality and Instinctivity in Literature

Emancipation, Rationality and Instinctivity in Literature

In 1892 the novel 'Beyond The City' by Arthur Conan Doyle was published.   The text can be downloaded at http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/356

In this novel, Doyle clearly attempts mockery upon the emancipation of women.    As far as the topic of his irony is the adopting of bad habits, which are detrimental to men and women, but in those days were still only the habit of men, he made a point.   

But he also stated attitudes, opinions and values of his female protagonist, which are absolutely logical, rational and sound, and which are not in the least ironical to any person, who evaluates them on the basis of the axiom, that every individual is entitled to personal wellbeing and has no obligation to make sacrifices in favour of the survival of the species.  

On first sight, this is very puzzling.   The creator of a the prototypical logical thinker, Sherlock Holmes, makes the most logical statements in favour of the equality of women, and in spite of this, he does not mean it but ridicules it.

 

But there is an explanation:  While Doyle is capable of advanced logical reasoning, this is not a decisive part of his personality, but just a tool, while his instinctivity is stronger.    By instinct Doyle, as many other men, was a slave to the urge for procreation, his own 5 offspring are a strong indication for assuming this.   

As it is easy to see, the less a woman was emancipated in accordance with what he wrote in 'Beyond The City' as the basic concepts of emancipation, the more a woman had not alternative but bear and raise the children and serve the man's urge to procreate.    An emancipated woman has alternatives allowing her to refuse procreation.   A woman with an alternative serves less the purpose of giving progeny to a man.

Therefore, while Doyle is mentally capable for perfectly sound reasoning in favour of the equality and emancipation of women, his own mind is blocked against his own logical reasoning.  His instincts dominate his mind and we have the paradoxical mockery of his own logic.       

The novel 'Beyond The City' is just an extreme example.   I have read some more novels of Doyle and of other authors of the same epoque.    There is a general male hypocrisy prevailing.    Women were generally considered so extremely delicate, that the slightest business problems, family worries and other troubles outside their home sphere were always kept away from them.   They were treated as if women were not capable to bear and to cope with any problem, as if they would just faint and break down at the least unpleasantness.  

Yet the same men did not hesitate one moment to demand of women the most painful and dangerous experience, which men are spared by the clemency of nature, the horror of having a parasite growing inside their belly and finally getting rid of it in an most atrocious act, called birth.   

Were the consideration of men for the delicacy of women in the least sincere, they would never inflict this upon a woman.   They tried to spare women anything except this horror, as if sparing them any other troubles aimed at nothing else except to keep them fit and resilient for this one ultimate horror, which they considered women's justification of existence.   

It reminds me of how sometimes convicted prisoners are carefully cured medically with the only goal of keeping them alive for the scaffold.

After having written so far, I did some googling, hoping to find any review or comment about the topic of mocked emancipation in this book, but I have found nothing.    I am astonished that there seems nobody else ever having bothered to disagree with the attitude of Doyle towards emancipation.

__________________________

I used to run a little msn-group, that was deleted, when Microsoft discontinued the groups.    It was called the Nonconformists' and Freethinkers' Haven.  

I will add some texts to this blog, that I had written for that group.   This is the first of them.