720. The Evolutionary Purchasability Of Women By Alpha Males

720.  The Evolutionary Purchasability Of Women By Alpha Males

I have profiles on many matchmaking sites.    One such profile I made on a site apparently according to its name just another site for finding a serious relationship.   
When I found out, that this was just a secondary name for a site catering for extremely rich men, my first impulse was to delete the profile.  On second thought I decided that I do not want to exclude any chance to find an intelligent and educated man, only because of him having too much money.  
I am not a gold digger, I am the contrary.  My best match would be someone in modest circumstances.  I feel most comfortable and at ease with a frugal lifestyle.   I prefer hostels over luxury hotels, I prefer a picnic with purchases from a supermarket over a luxury restaurant.   
I am aware of the conflicts to expect with a rich man.   I would not want to feel a beggar when accommodating his needs by partaking in his luxury standard of living.    But I also would have no right to demand him to sacrifice the comforts of his accustomed luxury.   

So while I would not initiate contact with men, who present themselves as rich, I had the curiosity to have a look at the profiles.   I also have a profile on another site from the same company using the same software, but aiming at seniors of indifferent affluence.   When running a search I noticed a considerable difference between the men's accepted age for a match between the two sites.  On the general site, my age is often accepted, on the rich men's site, I am more often than not too old.

This vague observation made me curious to take a more exact look at this difference.  I made a search for men of 65 on both sites.   While I did not limit the search geographically, most of the profiles were from the USA.   

Then I entered the age requirements of the first 50 profiles from each of the two sites into a spreadsheet.   

The result:  

The rich men want on average a woman between 22.98 years and 5.14 years younger than themselves.   The men with any income want on average a woman between 15.3 years younger and 2.98 years older.  

Of course there can be factors other than wealth contributing to the cause of this difference.    But as the differences appear nevertheless really drastic, this made me wonder about how to interpret it.  

Does this difference merely represent wishes and a subjectively felt entitlement of rich men considering themselves as alpha males?   Or are these men's aspirations and claims derived from previous experiences of success with very much younger women?  

I googled and found this:

"When analyzing first marriages, men on the Forbes list married women who were on average younger than the average difference for similar weddings across the US population (7.01 years younger versus 4.1 years younger"
"When analyzing remarriages of the very wealth men, they tied the knot with women who were on average an astonishing 22.32 years younger than them."
http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/homo-consumericus/201306/very-wealthy-men-marry-much-younger-women

Of course I cannot know, how many of these men will find a woman as young as what they would prefer, but generally seen it is once more at least a sad indication, how much evolution has a grip upon people's subconscious choices.   

Instead of being rationally able to appreciate the value of an egalitarian companionship with a woman of a similar age, men strive to be or to appear as alpha males and foolish purchasable women choose them.

677. Suitable Means Nothing Less Than Not-Unsuitable

677.   Suitable Means Nothing Less Than Not-Unsuitable

Again and again I see on dating sites calculations and concepts, which indicate the implicit assumption, that someone could be more or less a match by nothing more than only the additive presence or absence of shared and welcome traits.        

This is a very hazardous fallacy.    Relationships fail predominantly, when one partner's attributes, traits, attitudes, values or habits cause the other to feel and experience harm or at least discomfort and displeasure.    In such cases, both partners are mutually unsuitable.   

Therefore differences in how much someone is suitable are only of any significance, when there is no unsuitability at all.     

 

As a metaphor, the most delicious ingredients can be mixed elaborately into a perfect treat.  But one single addition of a foul tasting or toxic ingredient suffices to make it entirely unpalatable or dangerous.  

It is the same with a partner.   A man could have dozens of traits and attributes making him appear as nearly perfect and as a dream come true.  But one unbearable and intolerable attribute can suffice to nevertheless make the relationship toxic and devastating beyond endurance.   

 

If accidentally there is salt instead of sugar in a cup of coffee, it can be thrown out with a shrug of a shoulder and new coffee brewed.   But if there is accidentally salt in the tiramisu or chocolate cake, which had required a lot of work to make, the disappointment is much bigger.  

The same goes with a man.   The more a man seems to be perfect in many other aspects, the more it is painful, when his hurting behavior cannot be stopped.   Avoiding to be hurt by a man by avoiding him entirely is easy, as long as in all other aspects he is merely just acceptable.   Yet he is acceptable for a harmonious relationship, as long as there is no unsuitability.  

 

Suitability can be additive depending upon how much is shared.   Unsuitability is not additive.   One aspect of unsuitability is enough to define the entire unsuitability.  

If there is only a lot of salt in the coffee, it cannot be drunk.   If there is only arsenic in it, it is not to be drunk.   Salt and arsenic together would not make it any less drinkable.    The behavioral consequences of not being able to drink the coffee are the same, even when the reasons are different.

One unsuitability suffices to make a man unacceptable, no matter what he is otherwise.    For me, a man with children is unsuitable, a man with religious beliefs is unsuitable, and a man with both religion and children cannot be less suitable than any one with only one of these unsuitabilities. 

Therefore what defines someone as a match and as a suitable partner is the absence of unsuitable attributes of any kind.   What these are, varies individually.  

Such unsuitable attributes can be

• cognitive, when mental traits like attitudes and beliefs elicit disrespect, repugnance or repulsion.
• behavioral, when habits and instinctive urges cause harm and hurting
• incongruency of significance, when the need for a partner does not fit with what is offered and expected reciprocally
• situational, when circumstances impede fulfilling the other's needs.

I am not looking for a dream partner or for someone perfect.   Instead I am looking for someone, who is in no aspect unsuitable for me.   

This means the absence of anything, which impedes me from respecting and appreciating him as a mindmate and he is someone, who by his own inclinations and decision does nothing, which I experience as harm and by which I feel hurt.      

655. The Strategy Of The Self-Arranged Commitment Project

655.   The Strategy Of The Self-Arranged Commitment Project

Sometimes men give me the feedback, that they disagree with my searching strategy as is outlined throughout this blog.    This disagreement is a mixture of lacking comprehension and of the error of considering the instinct induced focus as better than a more rational but eclectic and uncommon approach.  

But my approach and my strategy are not even my invention, very learned people have similar ideas.   I already mentioned Epstein's love project in entries 29 and 385.

Further information can be found on his website in many publications and interviews, some of it about his love project and about arranged marriages:
http://drrobertepstein.com/index.php/media-coverage

This short video gives a good introductory overview:
http://www.sandiego6.com/san-diego-living/this-week/tuesday/Science-of-Love-139242443.html



1.  The self-arranged commitment project.
 
When more than a decade ago I first read about Robert Epstein's love project, I perceived this as a very good representation of my own previously more vague inclinations and wishes.  At that time I had already implicitly developed the paradigm of my own matching strategy, but the awareness for this was still emerging.   I immediately recognized my own inclinations, convictions and attitudes in Epstein's idea and I fully agree with his principles.  

My own strategy for a 'self arranged commitment' differs only in details.        

• A signature under a contract is only of legal significance.   If there is not enough trust between two persons to feel bound by a verbal agreement, then there is no base to attempt a relationship. 
• Paying for counseling is too much of a financial burden.   In the case that not each partner is able to comfortably afford a fair share of this burden, it is not such a good idea to require financial sacrifices, which may jeopardize the project. 
• I consider a very careful choice of the suitable match as even more important than it seemed to Epstein.   He admits to not even have read most of the over 1000 emails he got after the announcement of his project.  Instead he chose for his first attempt a woman, whom he met in an airplane.  

As far as I can make a guess, Epstein developed his love project as a consequence of his psychological research and as a remedy against being misled by his own inclinations.   To me the idea of the self-arranged commitment comes as a most natural expression of my own needs.   It is the result of full awareness of my own inclinations.


2.  The influence of instinctivity.

Unfortunately, Epstein's love project is spontaneously counterintuitive to men, who react strongly to the effects of female bodies upon their instincts.   It needs some intelligence and theory of mind to comprehend its wisdom.

The self-arranged commitment project can be chosen for disparate reasons, which are connected with my recurrent topic, that individual differences in the power of instinctivity have a very strong impact upon personality, attitudes, perception, decisions and behavior.
   
Men with high instinctivity cannot help but experience instinctive reactions when interacting with possible mates.   These reactions blur and distort rational long-term reasoning.   

This works both ways.   Such instincts can cause

• strong physical attraction and fast infatuation.    
• strong frustration, when the expected infatuation is not experienced immediately.   

Both effects impede rational decision and a wise choice of a mate.  


The choice of the self-arranged commitment project is influenced by a man's instinctivity and by the quality of his theory of mind: 

• The stronger a man's instinctivity, the less he is prone to comprehend and accept my strategy of the self-arranged-commitment project.  Only a man with an exceptionally good theory of mind and ability for the long-term anticipation is able to think independently and to act rationally in spite of what his instincts urge him to and in spite of the distortion by infatuation.   
• The less physical infatuation at the beginning of a relationship, the better the chances of rational choices and reasonable behavior and long-term happiness.   Only a man with low instinctivity and high predominance of cognition can meet a possible match without any expectation for strong physical attraction and without immediate infatuation.  Only he has a sufficiently clear mind to consider long-term compatibility and to welcome a self-arranged-commitment project.   

Men's instinctivity causes often an asymmetrical constellation.    While men get immediately infatuated with bodies, women can also get infatuated and blurred in their decision, but in a very different way.   Women can get infatuated with the prospect of and hope for a safe haven, a reliable companion, a trustworthy lifelong partner, a mindmate, in short with the fulfillment of all their cognitive relationship needs.  
The asymmetry dooms the relationship.   When the man's infatuation wears out, he discovers the reality of how much or how little both have in common.   The woman, who enters a relationship for the purpose of getting her non-physical needs met, discovers after a while, that she was infatuated with a delusion, and there was no safe haven, only a man wishing to get access to a female body.   The man gets tired of the woman and the woman gets hurt.  

Starting a relationship as a self-arranged-commitment project is a method to avoid such an asymmetry.   The less a man is infatuated, when he agrees to build a relationship, the better are the woman's chances to be offered realistic prospects and no delusions.   

Therefore a self-arranged commitment project is for me a method to reduce the risk of getting hurt. 


3.  My inclinations towards the self-arranged commitment project.

I have never experienced or expected infatuation, immediate love or love at first sight or anything of this kind at the first encounter with someone, neither online nor previously offline.  It seemed natural to me to let love and attachment grow slowly.   Reciprocally meeting each other's basic criteria was to me always the starting point for the cooperation to create long-term attachment.    

I mistook this for the logical way how things were usually going.   For a long time I had the wrong impression, that most people were more rational and cognitive than they really are.   I thought that passion was an invention of novelists and that those men, who were driven be passion to annoy and to harm women, were only a sick and deranged minority.  

Only when learning about evolutionary biology and when the internet allowed me access to many public personal accounts of the experiences of real people, I understood the sad reality of the huge power of instincts over the majority of men.  It was really disheartening. 

I was not really astonished, that when Epstein created a project of what to me had always been sensible, reasonable and logical, it was perceived as an extraordinary and very novel project and stirred a lot of publicity in the media.      


4.  The scarcity of men inclined towards the self-arranged commitment project.

There is nothing wrong with being a nobody.   There is nothing beneficial in being famous.   Fame is merely the situation of being known by notoriety, admired, despised, envied or hated by lots of haphazard and insignificant persons.  

There is only one disadvantage of being a nobody.   There is no way of getting publicity, when there is a need to find something scare, rare and hidden.

Unfortunately there are very few men sharing Epstein's wisdom.  When I am in contact with men, whom I consider as hopeful candidates for a self-arranged-commitment project, they usually do not understand my intentions.   While hoping for a positive response, I am getting rejected as a consequence of their incomprehension. 
There are certainly a few men out there somewhere, who are innately suitable and motivated for a self-arranged commitment project.  Some may share this inclination, some may have been convinced by Epstein.   

Somewhere out there, there is one who would be as happy to find me as I were happy to find him.   But I just do not succeed to reach him.  
 
Epstein had one big advantage:   As the then publisher of Psychology Today, he had sufficient publicity, when he announced his love project on their homepage.    He got over a 1000 emails as a reaction, many from interested women.  

I am looking for and offering nearly the same as Epstein did.   But I am a nobody, I am unable to get sufficient publicity.  This blog is implicitly an elaborated synopsis of my self-arranged commitment project.   But writing 653 blog entries appearing in google searches in more than two and a half years has not given me even a tiny fraction of the resonance, which Epstein had in a few days. 

Life is not a novel.   If it were, a journalist from a widely read web site would discover this blog and help me to get the publicity needed to enable my mindmate to find me.   Or someone would start a matchmaking site especially for people interested in self-arranged projects of any kind and I could find my mindmate there.   

634. Equality And The Detrimental Effect Of Money On Men

634.  Equality And The Detrimental Effect Of Money On Men

Men are not only derailed by merely physical infatuation triggered by their instincts from making a wise choice of a companion.  The capitalistic distortion of deriving and attributing the value of people, especially of men, mainly from their financial power has additional detrimental effects on the mating behavior.   These effects are different for those, who are affluent and for those, who are not.   

  

1.  Men with low or moderate income 

  

Either in their profiles or in private correspondence, men with low to moderate income often express the expectation and fear to be automatically rejected due to lacking assets.   This frame of mind is real and thus it does not matter, if they have come to this state of mind from a realistic interpretation of their experiences.  

   

An unfortunate reaction is their loss of the ability to recognize, to trust or to accept, when a woman expresses clearly, that she is not interested in a man's money.    They appear bitter and angry, some seem to have a low self-esteem, not matter their intellectual achievements.    They are lonely and crave a relationship, but they do not dare to strife for it anymore, instead the rant and complain.  The less they expect, the less they are motivated to invest in any attempt and thus they also have no incentive for the challenge of conquering geographic distance.

It is disheartening for me, when I try in vain to encourage someone like this, but he withdraws, poofs or makes the fallacy to reject me first to prevent a wrongly expected rejection due to his financial situation. 

 

Some of them have been rejected, but for very different reasons being their behavior, habits and/or attitudes.  The attributing of rejections wrongly to lacking money has the unfortunate consequence of impeding the needed self-improvement.   Thus the not corrected reasons for rejections lead to repeated and continued rejections.

  
2.   Affluent men
 

A wealthy man is a hazard to a non-wealthy egalitarian woman.    The ability to spend money gives people power, no matter how much or how little they do enjoy having this power and how much they are not even aware of it.    

Spending money often creates a temporary hierarchy.    The English language expresses very clearly, how monetary transactions divide people between masters and servants:  The customer orders food in a restaurant, and to order is synonymous with to command.   The waiter serves the food.    Not asking a fixed full price, but maintaining the deplorable custom of tipping aggravates this undignified distinction.   The haughty master condescends to give some extra cash to a waiter, whose fake friendliness and servility is nothing better than the manipulation to get tipped.  

Buying bread at the bakers for a fixed price is a form of the division of labor.

The more a man experiences being the master with financial power as a daily routine, the more he is prone to loose all awareness of this being a situation of his asymmetrical advantage.  Instead he is desensitized to perceive this as his innate right.   

Thus he is prone to generalize his allegedly entitlement to power also to the privacy of a relationship.   This means, he is a hazard of not only attempting to dominate a woman, but also of not even understanding, that this is not justified but an outrage.  
      
There is a second hazard, which is often visible in the profiles of those men, who brag about their assets.    They attempt to buy women using material benefits.   The hazard here is the possible fallacy of thinking that by spending lots of money upon women they are dispensing themselves of any non-material obligations or responsibilities.   They mistake giving money for a sufficient substitute for any efforts to make a relationship work.
They are also prone to consider their wealth as enough reason to be eligible for considerably younger women, even though these women often do not reciprocate:  


When given all my other criteria including being in the same age group, men in a similar financial situation are elusive and discouraged, affluent men consider me as too old, while I consider men as old as 78, who have contacted me, as not suitable, no matter who and what they are.
 

There are things like no children and no religion, where compromising for me is out of the question.  But when it comes to the financial situation of a potential mate, I am willing to compromise.   

I do prefer someone of low or moderate income and the subsequent equality of sharing resources, expenses and decisions, who feels comfortable living frugally (entry 631), who does not mind nor hesitate to invest temporary discomfort for saving money, and for whom making the best of limited resources by using his brain and acquiring compensatory skills is welcome as a challenge and an achievement.  
But I am willing to accept a man of any financial situation, if he has the qualities of a mindmate.  

611. More About The Fallacy Of Teleological Thinking

611.   More About The Fallacy Of Teleological Thinking 

Yesterday I got a strange email in reference to entry 610 about teleology.   The sender, according to the name probably a guy, omits to introduce himself in any way and to tell me, why he contacts me and what he expects from me.    He merely informs me of his disagreement with my considering teleology as a fallacy in entry 610.    I am puzzled, what made him assume, that the difference between knowing or not knowing, that a person with a given email address disagrees, were of any significance to me.    

There are billions of persons on this globe, who disagree with my way of thinking.  Any of them only wastes his own and my time by informing me of the disagreement.  

This blog is not written for them.   I am elaborating my thoughts for the purpose of finding my mindmate being someone, who agrees as the result of his own independent thinking prior to reading this blog.     

The following are two quotes from his email:
"I can see no good scientific application for teleology." 
"A teleological universe remains quite possible on logical grounds."
 

These quotes show clearly, that he has not clue, what teleology really means and that he is himself someone caught too much himself in this fallacy to be able to gain mental distance from irrational beliefs of any kind.

When someone asks questions, then this indicates a reason to explain.   But someone declaring his disagreement implicitly states his own point of view as valid as mine.    A guy, who claims his teleological fallacy as equally valid as rational and scientific thinking is a clear example of the Dunning-Kruger-effect.    While such a haphazard disagreeing guy certainly as a person is of no interest to me, his email nevertheless inspires me to write some more about teleology.      

Teleology is a logical fallacy of thinking.    No scientist, who deserves to be called one, would use it consciously and deliberately as an appropriate method to explore and explain anything.  It just is not a scientific method.  The effect described in the research presented in http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/10/121017102451.htm is the tendency of the human brain to spontaneously tend to succumb to this fallacy.   This does not make teleology any less a fallacy, it is only an indication of how careful scientists need to be to avoid it. 


The fallacy can be shown by comparing the following two statements:  

1. "Trees produce oxygen so that animals can breathe"   (From the research presented in
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/10/121017102451.htm)
2. "Oxygen masks supply environmentally lacking oxygen so that people can breathe."

Superficially, both statements seem to be quite similar.    In both statements, oxygen is needed and it is supplied.   But there is a fundamental distinction between the teleological fallacy of statement one and the genuine intention in statement two.  

Oxygen masks are invented and produced by persons having knowledge and intention concerning what the masks are to be used for.   Without a known need for oxygen, such masks would not be invented and produced.   

All oxygen masks are made by humans or by human made machines.   The purpose of oxygen masks to supply oxygen when not otherwise available is the intended or expected beneficial outcome of the activity of producing it.   This is logically only possible, when there is someone performing the purposeful activity.  

There cannot be any intentional production without a producer, but things can exist and offer collateral benefits without having been produced by anybody.   

The teleological fallacy is thinking as if there were a causality, where there is none at all.   To believe that the trees have been produced by an acting entity the same way as the oxygen masks is the fallacy of simpleminded and gullible persons.   They invent a creator deity, which serves for them not only but also as an explanation for the existence of trees and more generally of anything, of which they derive benefits and which exists without having been produced intentionally by any human.      
 

Scientific research to look for evidence of oxygen masks which are not produced by humans is an option.   As long as such evidence has not been found, it can be considered as established, that oxygen masks are produced by persons, who can be traced.    

Any scientific attempt to find the producer of the trees is equally futile as the attempts to find evidence of the existence of any deity.    

Also the person selling oxygen masks knows, that they are produced by humans and what for.   The person planting trees to enhance the oxygen in the air knows, that trees produce oxygen.   But as a rational person he also knows, that the trees have not been produced by any person or entity for the purpose of breathing.   The rational person knows, that the existence of trees and of beings needing oxygen can either be coincidence or co-evolution, in which the evolution of beings in need of oxygen has been enabled by the evolution of the emittance of oxygen by the trees.

The teleological fallacy and the deity delusion are therefore related and reinforcing each other.   But it is difficult to know, which was first.
I doubt Pararajasingham's suggestion (http://www.reasonism.org/main-content/articles-by-other-authors/item/285-the-telos-drive-a-neurobiological-basis-for-religious-belief), that the telos drive having been there first suffices to explains religious beliefs.    

It is at least as probable, that the gullibility to the delusion of deities has been an evolutionary advantage to the species for very different reasons.   

Those women, who accept the self-harming by accepting the biological abuse of their bodies for procreation due to expecting a reward in the afterlife, have more offspring than those, who refuse to accept self-harming.  

Those men, who harm women by making them pregnant due to displacing the responsibility for doing this to a deity, also have more offspring than the more considerate men.   

Thus the gullibility to believe in the existence of deities has been incorporated into the gene pool.   Once someone believes in the existence of a creator deity, then the conclusion of attributing the existence of any not human made phenomena and entities to be allegedly produced by such a creator is apparently and subjectively logical to such a believer.   

But neither the deity delusion nor teleological thinking is logical to rational, skeptical and apistic persons like me.   

601. Anecdotal Evidence: How Instinctive Urges Blur, Distort And Deactivate A Man's Reason

601.   Anecdotal Evidence:  How Instinctive Urges Blur, Distort And Deactivate A Man's Reason

A few days ago, a man's profile gave me the impression of his being a nice, decent, and considerate guy.    He used words like honesty, sharing, loving, kind and compassionate in his profile.   He told me, he were fitting my own profile, where I have explicitly mentioned, that I do not want any contact with promiscuous men.   

He seemed interested in further contact with me.   We exchanged a few emails and he agreed also with the importance of communication and of intellectual compatibility.   

But when I had another look at his profile, I was really puzzled.    He had changed his declared intention from actively seeking a relationship to dating but nothing serious.   When I asked him about this unexpected and seemingly incongruous change, his answer was so different from what he had appeared before, that he appeared like a different person.  
.   
He wrote,
1.  that he was "totally discouraged with online dating"
2.  that he now intended to have "a hookup, nothing serious. Dinner, movie, and sex."

For a moment I was speechless.  When he wrote this, it was morning in his time zone.  Had he written this in the evening, I would have suspected him to be drunk.  
  
1. Even by not being his dream woman, according to his initial interest, the contact with me could more logically have encouraged him.
  
2. Something is strange, when someone with this man's profile decides on such a project.  It is not something to achieve with honesty.   Most women, to whom a man would unequivocally suggest "a hookup, nothing serious. Dinner, movie, and sex" would feel insulted by this objectification and disrespect.  They would consider him a ridiculous fool for having such expectations.   
Most men, who succeed in getting "a hookup, nothing serious. Dinner, movie, and sex", do this by lies, manipulation and other methods of misleading a woman to consent based upon the false hope of beginning a relationship.    This is abuse. 

It seemed incongruous and inconsistent, that a man, who had declared himself as valuing compassion and kindness, suddenly plans coldblooded abuse.   It is incomprehensible, how someone suddenly decides to abuse a female body as a toilet for his body waste in spite of his claim of wanting intellectual compatibility.

The following are of course only speculations, as there is no way to find out the truth. 

Desensitization to full comprehension for how much a woman gets hurt, when she is used and discarded is not enough to explain this contradiction.  Desensitization to harming others works best in the absence of compassion.    

The most plausible explanation is this man's overreacting to a state of strong physiological dishomeostasis.    The guy seems to have been reduced from a thinking and feeling human being to a mere animal, being completely under the power of overwhelming instinctive forces.   In this state as an animal, all his human reason appears blurred, distorted or deactivated.    

Any option for behavior guided by human compassion and kindness seems to be concealed behind the predominant urge to copulate like a dog in the gutter, and behind the drive to be a predator and to ruthlessly hunt for prey.   This state as an animal lasts until homeostation restores humanity.

I replied, that a man, who objectifies women, is not worthy of me.    His reaction was "F**k you, you crazy broad. Go back to the asylum."    I was merely blunt, but the animal in him became vulgar.


While I am scared of men's dangerous instincts, I also feel sorry for them.   They are afflicted with instincts, which destroy for them the chance to get, what is most beneficial to their human cognition, especially in the case of men, who are intelligent and educated, and only deranged when they experience dishomeostasis.   

This guy is just one example.   Without being deranged temporarily by his instincts, he could have a happy symmetrical committed and bonded relationship with a woman like me.   But his instincts reduce him to a disgusting beast, who temporarily sinks so low as to intend to abuse women as a toilet for his body waste.   No decent woman with dignity and self-respect wants anything to do with such a man.   

It is very difficult for me to imagine, how men's specific physiological sexual dishomeostasis of needing to get rid of body waste feels.   Biologically, women's bodies do not provide this same experience of dishomeostasis.   
My best attempt to comprehend the magnitude of men's problem is to compare it to the urge of an addiction like alcoholism or even an extreme deprivation as is starvation.   Sometimes an extremely strong craving deactivates and overrides all higher cognitive and moral consideration.  The craving person ruthlessly applies any atrocity, which allows him to restore homeostasis, even killing, stealing and robbing. In the case of men, it can be abuse and rape of women.       

Those jerks, who always copulate like dogs in the gutter, oblivious of the damage done to the abused women, are just animals, who have never really become fully human.  
But assuming, that the guy in this incident knows the full meaning of the words used by him in his profile, like kindness and compassion, makes me wonder, what happens after he had his night in the gutter.   How will he feel, when he is back temporarily in a state of homeostasis, becoming fully aware of what he had done to the woman by luring her into his gutter?    Will he feel the same shame and regret as the addict, who in the state of homeostasis wishes to be free from the addiction?

600. Review

600.   Review
This is blog entry number 600 and there have been over 20,000 page views since I started this blog on July first, 2010.  

I am amazed, that I have still not run out of ideas to write about.   Blogging has helped me to clarify my own world view.  

But mainly I am disappointed.   I had hoped to find my mindmate long before arriving at entry 600.   

I cannot know, how many different people have contributed to those 20,000 page views, nor how many ever really read the page, which they had opened.  But it is disappointing, that nobody has ever recommended me as an apparent match to anybody.    While I do not expect strangers to care for me, also nobody seems to care enough to make a friend or family member happy by telling him about me.       

I am an atheist and a realist.   I do not expect anything good ever coming from fate or a deity.  Nor do I expect any hazard to happen to me more often than by its statistical probability.  The only realistic way to gain or acquire anything is the investment of efforts to earn it.    Sometimes the return of an investment is certain, sometimes the mere hope for a return is proportional to the investment.  

A happy relationship is something to be earned.   This earning is a two step process.   While the second step of cooperating in the effort to make a relationship work needs the combined effort of two partners, the first step of finding a suitable and compatible partner is entirely my own job.  
My mindmate is out there somewhere, but this does me no good, as long as he is not aware of my existence.    Getting in contact with him requires efforts to be noticed by as many persons as possible, until one of them is either my mindmate or knows him and recommends me.    The more people know about my search, the more there is hope.
 
Writing blog entries is a part of this strategy.   Every time someone finds and reads an entry as a result of a google search, this adds a tiny chance, that this person may get interested and even fascinated by my way of thinking as the expression of my personality and is either my mindmate or can recommend me to him.   

Therefore I will continue to write blog entries, until I find him or am found by him.  This is one part of creating hope and thus making myself to feel less desperate.

584. Rejection And Objectification

584.   Rejection And Objectification

The more someone is valued and appreciated as a person, the more a rejection by this person hurts.   Experiencing such rejections is a reason to select carefully, whom to approach as a method to preclude avoidable rejections.

This is not only the case in real life, but also when initiating contact on the internet.   

Of course, there is no justification to take a rejection by a complete stranger personally.   The contacted person rejects not the unknown real personality of the contacting one, but merely the apparent impression and perception as presented by the profile. 
But this is principally a rejection of a person by a person, even when the rejected person only exists as a distorted imagination.

Many men contact women in a haphazard and indiscriminate way, without even reading profiles, taking not at all for serious, what the women want.   As a result, they get rejected very often.   Yet this seems not at all to bother or discourage them, they continue as if being rejected had no impact upon them.   

I have got aware of the probable reason.   While women reject these men as unsuitable, or even as weird and foolish for even trying the unattainable, these men do not experience the refusal as being rejected by a person.  
They are like hunters, who have attempted to shoot a rabbit and missed.   Such hunters do not feel rejected by the rabbit, they merely experience this as the failure to have hit one target, which requires to move on and try the next.   They may interpret the rejections as being themselves losers, failures, clumsy, but it is all about have missed to gain access to the use of an object.   Women are no subjects in this, only hunted objects.

They are predators hunting prey, not humans in search of a companion.   

Whenever predators objectify women by hunting them as prey, this automatically precludes their feeling rejected when they fail.    

Whenever men lack to feel rejected, this indicates objectification.  

576. Politics And Instincts

576.  Politics And Instincts

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/08/120827122410.htm

"recent studies suggest that genes also strongly influence political traits. Twin studies show that genes have some influence on why people differ on political issues such as the death penalty, unemployment and abortion."

Political differences are basically different attitudes somewhere between the egalitarian view of all humans being entitled to equal rights, and the attitudes of inequality by justifying privileges and restricted access to resources either for specific groups or for the holder of specific positions of power.   This favorable attitude towards inequality represents either one or both of the ingroup-outgroup instinct and the hierarchy instinct.  

Thus it seems logical to me, that high or low levels of these two instincts do predispose people to lean towards specific political ideas.   My emphasis is only on political general ideas, programs, goals, not on what politicians and parties really do.  

Oversimplified it seems:

• Fascism and Nazism are attractive for those driven by a high ingroup-outgroup instinct.
• Globalized capitalism is attractive for those driven by a high hierarchy instinct.  
• Other forms of conservative politics are attractive to those driven by a combination of both instincts.   
• Those low on these instincts are more attracted to leftist and ecological political ideas.

As the level of instinctivity is innate, it seems plausible to expect people's political preferences to be partly and indirectly determined by their genes.

In my quest to find a mindmate, I am using a man's expressed political leanings, whenever they are indicated in a profile, not only as a direct indication for either propinquity or the lack thereof.   

Even though the correlation between political preference and instinctivity is mere speculation, the probably high level of general instinctivity of a man with right wing preferences could indicate that such a man is also so much driven by his physiological urges towards female bodies, that he is an especially high risk for women being commodified and objectified by him.    

There is also the risk, that a man with a strong hierarchy instinct also is more prone to establish and enforce a hierarchy of his domination over a woman.  

564. Foolish Lies

564.  Foolish Lies

Trust in a close, bonded and committed relationship requires sincerity and honesty without exceptions.   But with strangers and unrelated people, there can be situations, in which lies are a necessity of self-protection.
 

Independent of any moral consideration of the possible harm done by lies, there are rational and irrational lies.   Rational are those with a high probability of getting away with.  Irrational and foolish lies are those, which are determined to be discovered.    In the latter case, being caught with the lies often does more damage than the truth would have done.

Lies in profiles on matchmaking sites are extremely foolish by any person using such a site for its real purpose.   During real life encounters, many of these lies will be discovered immediately.  

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/13/fashion/online-dating-as-scientific-research.html?_r=1&pagewanted=all

"about 81 percent of people misrepresent their height, weight or age in their profiles,"

http://www.nypost.com/p/news/national/exagger_dating_7N5Irwi6wBf636XjbJjV3O

"Men are on average 2 inches shorter than they say in their profiles, while women are an inch shorter. About 50 percent of daters fib about their weight. Almost everyone exaggerates their income by 20 percent,

"*24.3% of men and 13.1% of women lie about their age
* Men are on average 2 inches shorter than they say in their online profiles, women are 1 inch shorter
* 59% of women lie about their weight, 55% of men lie about their weight
* People tend to inflate their salaries by 20%
* It rises with age: 20-year-old men and women inflate by 5%; jumps to around 35% for men and women at 50 years old."

The choice to either lie or to be correct about facts and to apply the cautious preference of understatements in the case of attributes with only fuzzy self-evaluation allows some conclusions about the person's motivation and goals.   

It is the choice between disappointing and surprising.  

The preference to risk disappointing is the attempt to manipulate someone to meet once.  
If the disappointing person is a man, he probably is convinced to be such an irresistible guy, that he can seduce the woman for a night, even though his lies have forfeited any trust in him.  
If the disappointing person is a woman, she probably just wants to take advantage of a man paying for an expensive dinner.   

The preference for hoping to be a pleasant surprise is the method to find someone for a long term relationship.    When correct information and understatements are already sufficient to be acceptable for a meeting, then a pleasant surprised adds to attraction and eligibility.      

559. Haphazard Women

559.  Haphazard Women

Objectification of women implies a man's being attracted to the body of a woman while accepting any haphazard personality inside the body.   This is not only expressed by predators' behavior of annoying and abusing women, it can also be observed by much more subtle indicators.   The less significant a woman's personality, the less a man has a reason to read a profile.   

http://news.discovery.com/tech/men-dont-read-online-dating-profiles-120207.html

"Researchers used eye tracking technology to follow people's eye movements as they perused online profiles. The results show that men spend 65 percent more time looking at photos than women. Women, on the other hand, spent 50 percent more time than men actually reading the profiles."

555. Cognitive Poison Ivy

555.  Cognitive Poison Ivy

Too many repetitions of stimulation can lead to desensitization, but there is also the possible opposite reaction of sensitization and allergization.   
Physiologically, impaired hearing due to too much noise too often is an example of desensitization.   Touching poison ivy is known as initiating an allergic reaction, which gets worse with every repeated contact.   

Exposure to immaterial stimuli can also cause both kinds of a reaction.   Just as people get desensitized be their repeated inflicting harm, people can also get allergic due to being exposed too often to annoying, disgusting, discouraging, disturbing, hurting or in any other way unpleasant cognitive input.    I will call such allergenic input cognitive poison ivy.    

There is an expression about pushing someone's button.   Cognitive poison ivy is something different.   A button in the expression is an individual's peculiarity.  What is a button to one person has not effect upon another.   Poison ivy is toxic, becoming allergic is not a peculiar weakness.    Commodification harms every woman, if it is forced upon her too often and too drastically.   

The availability of cheap mass media has lead to the possibility of exposing oneself to extensive and intensive cognitive stimulation, which can have the side effects of either desensitization or allergization.
   

I have internet access at home since 1998.  This was a turning point in my access to authentic informations about very varied people.  Without the internet, information was either second hand through the filter of those writing, producing and publishing books, newspapers, magazines, radio, movies, tv.  Else it was limited to the experiences of the preselected kind of people, whom I chose to mix and socialize with.     

On the internet I started to avidly read forums of all kinds, where I found people's authentic and unfiltered expression of their opinions, attitudes and accounts of their subjective perception of their own life experiences.   
My wish to end my loneliness and to find a mindmate requires to be active by reading men's profile and taking the initiative to contact those appearing suitable.   
Doing this is for me like searching for one nice flower on a meadow overgrown with poison ivy, which I cannot avoid to expose myself to.    To find happiness, I have to invest a lot of annoyance of walking through the gutter, of developing a growing allergic reaction to too much filth.  

As a result of my exposure to the internet I got aware of the real seriousness and magnitude of two nuisances and annoyances, which I had previously thought to be able to keep away from.    The commodification of women and gullibility to irrational beliefs are so ubiquitous on the web, that they became cognitive poison ivy for me.

Before the internet, I mistook both nuisances as merely vague and drastic dysfunctions of a limited and clearly recognizable number of people.  

• I thought that those predators, who insulted me with their wish to abuse my body were a bad minority from the gutter, while there were also enough decent, monogamous and committing men.  
• I thought that all people, who called themselves atheists, really were rational.
• I overestimated the prevalence of decency and the prevalence of rationality.  

Since then, by reading information, by a lot of thinking and drawing my own independent conclusions, I have learned a lot more about commodification and irrationality:

• They are quite ubiquitous and exceptions are rare.  
  
• Both have as a general basis the disposition towards distorted thinking, which can lead to become manifest in many different variations.   Not only the manifestations are the nuisance, but also the disposition.
  
  • The disposition for commodification is the asymmetrical attitude towards women, which causes many different harming behaviors.
  • Gullibility is the predisposition, which is manifest in very different irrational beliefs leading to different harming behaviors.   

•  While the harming behaviors are drastic, the dispositions can be recognized by subtle, indirect indicators, which are superficially not easily noticeably and tend to be overlooked and underestimated.  
  I got more aware and attentive to recognize the real significance of such indicators as red flags.   
  
• Some of the damage done directly and indirectly to victims is beyond what I had imagined as possible.

• People's self-labeling and self-attributions are often not correct.  When these persons appear sincere, this can be misleading.    It sometimes takes a while to find out, that they are not aware of the real meaning of what they appear to say.
  
  • Self-labeled atheists believing in reincarnation, astrology or chi are not less irrational than christians.  
  • A man's declared intention to commit does not imply symmetry, even marriage can be mistaken by some men for a variety of commodification.
    
• Those causing the nuisance are unable to comprehend, what they are doing, even when they are told or notice any disruption, they blame it on the victims of commodification and of irrational behaviors. 
   
• The worst nuisance are those men, who combine commodification and irrationality. While a rational men has theoretically the potential to reconsider and change his asymmetrical attitude towards women, irrationality protects the commodification.   
  
  

With growing awareness for the indicators of both nuisances, I started to consciously encounter them more often and I became more alert as to their significance.   While ignorance had spared me previously thereof, I experienced annoyance more frequently.  I was waking up to the real extent of two major dysfunctions of the cognition.
   
I am using the words annoyance and nuisance.  It is difficult to describe emotions.  Every instance of reading about women being degraded or about some irrational belief triggered in me this feeling of sighing a 'not again' and of cringing from this unpleasant aspect of life.    The more often this happened, the stronger I experienced the unpleasantness.   By now it has become an allergic reaction of disgust, tedium and nausea.    Commodification and irrationality have become cognitive poison ivy for me. 


I want to find a mindmate for a relationship, which is a safe haven, from where commodification and irrationality are both banned.  Filth and stupidity are kept outside the surrounding walls.   I wish to be never again exposed to cognitive poison ivy.  

But where is my mindmate?

551. Neuroscience - The Cognitive Reaction To Touch

551.   Neuroscience - The Cognitive Reaction To Touch

The following study has a very important result.   It shows the impact of cognition as a filter upon the emotional interpretation of sensory input.  

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/06/120604155709.htm

"A nuzzle of the neck, a stroke of the wrist, a brush of the knee -- these caresses often signal a loving touch, but can also feel highly aversive, depending on who is delivering the touch, and to whom."

"The team measured brain activation while self-identified heterosexual male subjects lay in a functional MRI scanner and were each caressed on the leg under two different conditions. In the first condition, they saw a video of an attractive female bending down to caress them; in the second, they saw a video of a masculine man doing the same thing. The men reported the experience as pleasurable when they thought the touch came from the woman, and aversive when they thought it came from the man. And their brains backed them up: this difference in experience was reflected in the activity measured in each man's primary somatosensory cortex."

"Unbeknownst to the subjects, the actual touches on their leg were always exactly the same -- and always from a woman"
""We see responses in a part of the brain thought to process only basic touch that were elicited entirely by the emotional significance of social touch prior to the touch itself, simply in anticipation of the caress that our participants would receive.""

The method of this study is a starting point for further research to settle the question, how far monogamy has evolved as a predominant cognitive need and if therefore men's claim of women's alleged promiscuity is an excuse for abuse and objectification.  

I would like to see the results of the following variations of the research design:

1.  Monogamy or adultery:

1.1.  Men
Subjects:  Heterosexual men in a committed relationship 
Compared stimuli:   Touch by
- the intimate partner
- a single woman
- a woman in a relationship

1.2.  Women
Subjects:  Heterosexual women in a committed relationship 
Compared stimuli:   Touch by
- the intimate partner
- a single man
- a man in a relationship

 2.  Commitment or promiscuity

2.1. Men
Subjects:  Single heterosexual men looking for a mate
Compared stimuli:   Touch by
- a single woman presented as only available for commitment
- a single woman presented as available easy prey
- a woman in a relationship

2.2. Women
Subjects:  Single heterosexual men looking for a mate
Compared stimuli:   Touch by
- a single man presented as only interested in commitment
- a single man presented as a habitual predator
- a man in a relationship

3.  Desensitization

The number of previous intimate partners is a possible intervening variable causing desensitization and habituation to touching strangers and if this effect is different between men and women.  

Stimulus: Touch by a stranger of the opposite gender
Comparing: 
- heterosexual men with few previous intimate partners 
- heterosexual men with many previous intimate partners
- heterosexual women with few previous intimate partners 
- heterosexual women with many previous intimate partners

Such a study could answer, which of the following hypothesis is the most probable.  

1.  Animal instincts are still the predominant force in both genders, making men promiscuous predators to women selecting men by the quality of their genes.  Cognitive restrictions of behavior are merely superposed by culture, social norm and education.  

2.  The evolution of cognition has led to the predisposition in both genders to experience the emotional and mental need for monogamous bonding, but the instincts are still so strong, that they can become the dominant force.    The animal urges compete in both genders with the advanced cognitive evolution of equally strong bonding needs.   

Men's animal instinctive urges towards using women's bodies are unilateral, only men are prone to succumb to instinctive behaviors overriding their cognition in a way, that hurts women.   Women's instincts merely drive them to breed and not to hurt men.   

Behaviors are modified by culture, social norm and education, but the modification does not override the emotional reactions determined by the real innate needs.    Social norms cause suffering for both genders.

3.  The evolution of the predominance of cognitive needs for monogamous bonding has been stronger in females than in men.   Women have already evolved to have cognitive bonding needs stronger than the mere animal procreation needs, while for men, animal promiscuity urges are still stronger than there slowly developing cognitive needs for bonding.   

Women are ahead in their cognitive evolution, while men are lagging behind.   

Behaviors are modified by culture, social norm and education, but the modification does not override the emotional reactions determined by the real innate needs.    Social norms are accommodating men and cause women to suffer.  

Such studies are important because of their potential to help reduce human suffering

Even without hard data, one observation cannot be denied by anybody, who has read enough suffering people's personal accounts on the web:   

Emotional pain caused by not reciprocated exclusive emotional attachment in a dyadic relationship is at least one of the most frequent causes of human non-physical suffering.

Any social change to end this kind of suffering needs to be based upon knowing the cause, which is a task for neuroscientific research.  

Women, who do not want to be hurt anymore, do certainly not want to wait, until men have improved and evolved beyond being animals.   Women need a method to prevent being hurt.  
In entry 525 I already mentioned the benefits for women, if men could be sent to a brain scan before risking the tragic mistake of getting involved with and hurt by a commodifying jerk.   

The study quoted above is another indication, that the technical possibilities already exist for brain scanning as a part of a wise choice of a mate. 

 
As soon as brain scanning becomes affordable for common use, people could be tested by a brain scan for a score on a scale between monogamy and promiscuity.   Research as what I am wishing for would be the basis of such a score.   Prospective partners could then be evaluated for how much hazard they are to a partner needing exclusive committed bonding.        

538. The Proof Is In The Pudding....

538.   The Proof Is In The Pudding....

(Which correctly quoted should be as 'the proof of the pudding is in the eating'.)    While there are clues in men's profiles (the topic of a future entry) concerning their general attitude towards women, better clues can be derived from corresponding.  

Someone's reaction to my disagreement with the implicit expression of the acceptance of relationships as asymmetrically beneficial for men is very informative.   

Based upon my need for intellectual intimacy as a relationship essential, my profile on matchmaking sites contains this statement:  

Geographical distance is easier to overcome than mental distance. 

 

The following is a good example of an exchange of messages, which do not even require any further comments.  

His first message:

"NOTE: MENTAL distance is much easier to overcome than Geographical distance."


My reply: 

'Without any conclusions about you personally, in general this attitude tells me, that a man denies a woman her vital need for intellectual intimacy. Mental distance deters intellectual intimacy.
Whenever a man is not bothered about mental distance, he is an abuser, who intends to objectify a woman's body, while he does not value her enough for intellectual intimacy.'


His first reaction: 

"With your 'caustic' attitude, I honestly think that you would really be what is called in North America, a 'Royal Pain in the Ass'."

His additional second reaction: 

"Your "Presumed Intellectual Capacity", very nuch exaggerated in your own mind, is comparable to a Mental Midget.
You greatly over estimate your capacity with another human being who may be a 'thinker', and I think that anyone who would waste 'time' to keep corresponding with you is one, sad, foolish human being.
I cannot wish you 'Much Success' since that would be undermining the intellectual capacity of a possible interested man who might be 'taken in' with your 'mental onslought'."

535. Commodification, Inappropriate Behavior And The Dynamics Of Escalation

535.   Commodification, Inappropriate Behavior And The Dynamics Of Escalation

I am using burping in the following thoughts as a prototypical inappropriate behavior.    It is a placeholder for many other similar behaviors, this is not specially about burping in particular. 

• Burping is generally considered as inappropriate behavior in most western societies, especially at the dinner table.
• Everybody with a minimum of culture, education and intelligence is aware of burping being considered as inappropriate.  Most people agree.
• People feel embarrassed, when they burp accidentally.  They are anxious to avoid it. 
• The magnitude of the embarrassment depends upon the subjective importance of the witnesses' good opinion.

Therefore the common reaction to be expected after any accidental burp is a more or less embarrassed apology.  How much someone feels embarrassed depends upon the subjective significance of the witness.   Burping is experienced as less embarrassing, when the other at the dinner table is a sibling than when it is the boss to be during the interview for an attractive job. 

 

Someone (unless this person is seriously retarded or disordered) burping freely and without any sign of the least embarrassment is thus sending a significant message concerning the attitude towards the witness.   This message tells, that the witness's opinion is insignificant, that the witness's perception and experience do not matter.   
 

For a woman in the context of searching for a mate, being thus burped at is a big red flag indicating the man's attitude of commodifying women.  
Nobody sane feels embarrassed, when the witness present during burping is only a utility like a vacuum cleaner.  When a man burps freely in the presence of a woman without feeling embarrassment, this is a very strong indication, that he does not really distinguish between a vacuum cleaner and a woman.   Both are commodities perceived as only existing to serve him without any significance as persons.   


When traditionally two persons have a date while knowing very little about each other and thus having few misguided expectations, a woman would probably notice the uninhibited burping as a sufficient reason to refrain from meeting again.   She may not consciously recognize the commodification due to not even be bothered about the reasons for his inappropriate behavior, which suffices by itself to recoil. 

But the situation is different with online contacts, when two persons meet personally only after a long phase of correspondence.   Nobody can burp by email.   When in this situation the woman experiences the man's uninhibited burping during dinner for the first time, this is to her not an unambiguous red flag.  Instead it conveys a message, which is very contradictory to her expectations.   

While the correspondence has triggered her to expect being appreciated and respected, the burping makes her experience the emotional effects of being commodified.   She feels disrespected by what appears to her as a lack of either manners, consideration or politeness.    
Her goal is being shown by his behavior as much of the alleged appreciation, as what she had deducted from his emails.   As long as her focus is upon his burping as if it were a mere bad habit and not on the more serious and significant message of not valuing her enough to feel embarrassed, she attempts to influence him by showing feedback.   

As long as she is oblivious of his underlying attitude of commodification as the true problem, she is mistaken to think that she can influence him to correct his behaviors.   She is mistaken to attempt to be supportive to a shared wish to improve the relationship, while the absence of sharing is a part of his attitude of commodification.   Her feedback is meant as support to enable him to directly improve his behavior as his contribution to his alleged shared goal to improve the relationship.  

Her feedback starts gently and subtly, but gets more and more drastic, whenever it elicits no reaction.   The lacking reaction magnifies her discomfort and suffering from experiencing her insignificance.   
The first hint may be just a frown, followed by a disgusted expression, the next step being a polite remark to please stop burping, repeated in less polite tones and words.   If this escalation continues without any improvement, it ends with her calling him a pig and a plebeian or whatever is the worst word she has in her vocabulary.  

 

But these dynamics are much more than the escalation of her becoming impolite and offensive in her language, it is also a shift of her attitude towards him.   She starts with the attempt to influence him towards solving the contradiction, as long as she still is considering him able to express as much appreciation by his behavior as she had expected as a result of interpreting his emails.  Her goal is the reciprocity of the expression of as much respect and appreciation as she has for him.   

When the escalation reaches the point of her calling him a pig and a plebeian, the contradiction has been resolved the opposite way.   Experiencing the persistent lack of respect in his behavior has caused her to also lose all her previous respect for him.   Her emotional counterpart to being commodified is loathing and detesting him as unworthy.   

Behavior based upon the attitude of commodification forfeits the victim's respect in many ways.  I used burping as an illustrative example.   There are similar escalations, when a man forces harm due to irrational behavior upon a woman and does not react to any rational discussion until she calls him an idiot, and when she cannot stop him from hurting her by transgressions until she calls him an a**e.    The kind of harm due to his behavior differs, when he drives her to consider him either a pig, or an idiot or an a**e.   The dynamics follow the same pattern.


Escalations due to not reacting to the feedback from someone mistaken for and mistreated as a commodity, whose opinion, experience and perception does not matter, destroy a relationship.   The one, who feels offended and blames the other for name calling, instead of asking himself, what he has done to provoke the escalation, is the one, who dooms the relationship.  

512. Discarding The Myth Of The Free Will

512.   Discarding The Myth Of The Free Will

While learning about evolutionary biology and evolutionary psychology, I got more and more aware of how much people are determined by subconscious instinctive urges and impulses. As a side effect, already for a long time I have been implicitly and slowly discarding the myth of the free will, but postponing to consciously think this through.   
Implicitly this entire blog is based upon the concept of finding a partner, whose fulfilling my own relationship needs is not a decision by an alleged free will of his.  Instead I am looking for someone sharing with me the same innate inclinations towards the same behaviors and activities, thus enabling both of us to simultaneously fulfill the own and the partner's needs.

But as often, someone else has expressed my implicit idea already much better than I can.   There is an excellent video, in which Sam Harris discards very convincingly the myth of the free will:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=pCofmZlC72g#!

Human behavior is very complex.   It is too complex to be sufficiently logically explained during social interaction.  The mere observable behavior of any human does not reveal all or enough of what contributes to determine it.   This makes the attribution of any behavior to a free will a very tempting fallacy.   But the mere inability to fully understand the complexity is no justification to accept the myth of the free will as a substitute for the lacking full explanations.  

  
Discarding a tempting fallacy is not enough without some rudimentary alternative.   By extreme simplification, all behavior can ultimately and theoretically be explained as serving to either reduce subjectively experienced dishomeostasis or to stimulate the pleasure center of the brain by what is subjectively believed to be appropriate methods. 

The limitations of this simplification are due to the complexity of many variables and influences.   

The following are some, but certainly not all:

1.  Physical Or Cognitive.

Dishomeostasis and stimulated pleasure can either be triggered physically and materially or caused and enabled by faculties of the human cognition.  

 
Examples:

• Physical dishomeostasis. 
  Hunger
• Physical pleasure. 
  Bubble bath
  
• Intellectual dishomeostasis: 
  Boredom; the curiosity to know something.  
• Intellectual pleasure: 
  Flow experienced during a creative activity; enjoying an art exhibition.  
• Emotional dishomeostasis. 
  Feeling lonely in need of a mate; feeling betrayed in need of justice. 
• Emotional pleasure. 
  Feeling happy with a partner or by an achievement.   

2.  Intrinsic Or Extrinsic

Dishomeostasis and stimulated pleasure can be either intrinsically triggered by innate needs originating in the person's brain or extrinsically by influences and impact from the environment.  

Examples:

• Intrinsic dishomeostasis: 
  Hunger.
• Extrinsic dishomeostasis: 
  Fear as a reaction to a situation of real danger.
• Intrinsic source of pleasure stimulation:  
  The joy of finding the solution to a problem or puzzle.
• Extrinsic sources of pleasure stimulation:  
  The fragrance of a flower; listening to music.
  

3.  Innate Or Acquired

Dishomeostasis and stimulated pleasure can be either experienced by basic human faculties or only experienced by applying learned skills or previously gathered information. 

Examples:

• Spontaneous dishomeostasis: 
  Hunger
• Learned dishomeostasis:  
  Worries about a predicted real hazard, like a flood or a storm.
• Spontaneous pleasure:  
  Listening to the birds; enjoying the warmth of the sun.
• Learned pleasure:   
  Reading, swimming.

4.  Immediate, Anticipated Or Delayed

Behavior can be either an immediate homeostation or an immediate reaction to noticing a source of pleasure, or there can be a delay, anticipation and preparation.  This is enabled by the human memory for past experiences and by the cognitive ability to anticipate future experiences.   

Examples:

• Immediate homeostation: 
  Eating as soon as hunger is felt.
• Delayed homeostation:  
  Distributing the consumption of limited supplies over a long time in an emergency situation.
• Anticipated homeostation:  
  Carrying provision on a hike.
• Immediate pleasure:  
  Entering a cinema at the moment, when the announced movie stimulates the wish to see it.
• Delayed pleasure:  
  Rewarding oneself only after having finished a task.
• Anticipated pleasure:  
  Buying a ticket for a theater play in advance.

5.   Reality Or Delusion

Dishomeostasis, anticipation of dishomeostasis, pleasure and anticipation of pleasure are subjective experiences.  The perception and expectation of its magnitude is independent of objective evidence of the existence of its cause or the probability of its occurrence.
The subjective belief is enough to determine people's behavior, even when there is no real source or cause at all.  

The religious delusion of the existence of deities supplies good examples:

• Delusional dishomeostasis:  
  Feeling guilt of breaking a religious rule, even though nobody is harmed, like a catholic eating meat on Friday.  
• Delusional anticipation of dishomeostasis: 
  The belief in the purgatory and in hell.
• Delusional pleasure: 
  Religious experiences.
• Delusional anticipation of pleasure: 
  The belief in a heaven, where all suffering is allegedly rewarded with pleasure.   

6.   Reality Or Manipulation

Anticipation of improbable dishomeostasis and of slight pleasure can be enhanced and magnified by manipulation to appear significant.  Dishomeostasis of fear, anxiety and worries can be artificially induced to create markets for profit.

Examples: 

• Artificial dishomeostasis:
  Selling safety equipment.
• Artificial anticipation of dishomeostasis:
  Selling insurances
• Artificial anticipation of pleasure:
  Selling products for consumption.

7.   Simultaneous And Competing Triggers

Dishomeostasis from more than one deficit can simultaneously exist and several stimuli can compete to have the strongest impact upon the pleasure center.    

7.1.  When there is full conscious perception of all options, the human cognition allows to choose on a long term basis between possible behaviors as the reaction to the competing urges and the available stimuli.

Examples.  

• The self-control during a diet, when the phyisical dishomoestasis of being hungry is competing with the mental dishomeostasis of being discontent with being obese.  
• The self-control of decisions to spend money or to save it for a purpose.  The marshmallow test is a good example.  

7.2.  Strong dishomeostasis can sometimes hide weaker dishomeostasis temporarily from being noticed. 

   
Example:

• A hungry person with limited money buys food and not a book.   The dishomeostasis of being bored only reaches the awareness after having eaten. 

8.   Attribution Of Causes
 

People often do not understand the real cause of dishomeostasis.  Therefore they fail in their attempt to cope with it. 

8.1.   Own dishomeostasis
Diffuse feelings of dishomeostasis are not understood or attributed to false causes.   Sometimes the attempts to cope replace one dishomeostasis with another.  

Examples:

• Overeating, physical addiction to drugs and emotional addiction to gambling are two examples of mislead attempts to cope with some other dishomeostasis like stress or unrecognized relationship problems.

8.2.  Other's dishomeostasis
People are often not aware of innate differences.   They project, that what is good for them is also good for others.   They are oblivious, that what stimulates their own pleasure center sometimes causes others' dishomeostasis.

Examples:  

• People getting pleasure from eating garlic or fish are unaware, that even the smell can cause nausea to others.    
• People playing their favorite music are unaware, that it can be annoying noise to others.  

8.3.  General expectation of dishomeostasis
External influences like social norms and desensitization modify or destroy the general perception, awareness for and recognition of the real and genuine innate dishomeostasis.   This distorts the expectations about how others are impacted by the own behavior and of how to best deal with the own dishomeostasis.   
 

Examples: 

• The desensitization by being exposed to too much sex and violence in the media has destroyed the dishomeostasis of feeling empathy and guilt as a deterrent to hurt and abuse others.
• The dishomeostasis of lonely nice guys in need of finding a companion is modified by the social norm of promiscuity.  They are manipulated to feel instead the artificial dishomeostasis of wanting to be oversexed studs.

As a consequence of discarding the free will, I do not expect anything from anybody, unless I get it either in return or as a side effect of an interaction, during which my behavior contributes to either the other's homeostation or to the stimulation of his pleasure center.  With strangers, this is trial and error based upon the tit-for-tat strategy.   

In a relationship, communication revealing the partner's most urgent dishomeostasis and special susceptibility of his pleasure center is very important.   Know this reciprocally is an important part of knowing the partner and of making a relationship last. 

510. The Remedy For Grumpiness

510.   The Remedy For Grumpiness

In entry 507 I described the Cassandra effect.   It is the experience of mostly women, who are aware of something going wrong in their relationship, and who suffer, because they are not taken for serious and they are powerless to prevent the catastrophe.

Grumpy old people are the counterpart of Cassandra in their concern about the development of society.  The grumpy old men are more visible, because of their more aggressive and angry way of expressing their grumpiness.  There are also grumpy old women, but they tend to be more silent about it. 

The grumpiness of sane people is different from dementia. Being a nuisance or not is a question of mental health and of self-control, it is not a question of age.   

This entry is about sane grumpy old people with comprehensible reasons to be grumpy.

Grumpy old people are much more alive and healthy than are docile old people.    Feeling grumpy is an indication of the awareness, that something is not as it should be.   Grumpiness is the logical, reasonable and comprehensible reaction to perceived real grievances.  

Grumpy old people are those, who

• have lived a long time and have observed and experienced the changes of society with open eyes.  
  They have grown mature.   They have gained the wisdom to evaluate, what has improved and what has deteriorated.   
• have self-confidence and independence in their thinking.  
  They recognize grievances.  They are critical and outspoken.  They reject detrimental social norms.    They are not easily gullible to manipulations.
   

Blaming people as if being grumpy were a defect is a misconception, which does not lead to a solution.  Those who do the blaming are usually immature youngsters.  Old people cannot change a society dominated by those, who are younger and less mature.   They need a way to live in this situation without suffering.

Being lonely, especially being intellectually lonely is a sufficient and logical reason to become grumpy.   I have mentioned intellectual loneliness before.    An apistic and skeptic can feel intellectually very lonely between religious people.   

But a person, who sees the world with over six decades of life experience can feel intellectually lonely too in a society, where the influential power of the media and the political power over life are all dominated by people, who are much younger.

Only the removal of the reasons for being grumpy is a rational remedy.  It is a huge emotional relief to be able to share the own world view and the agreement about what is going wrong with likeminded people.   

The best remedy is the emotional safe haven of a bonded relationship with someone in the same age group sharing the same attitudes and the same world view.  

A happy person has no reasons to be grumpy, and a grumpy person lacks happiness.

Therefore I am willing to accept a grumpy old man as a potential partner.   If he is my mindmate, he will not remain grumpy.   Knowing me will end his grumpiness.