695. Changing Women's Plight Depends Upon The Insights And Good Will Of Men Like Jackson Katz

695.  Changing Women's Plight Depends Upon The Insights And Good Will Of Men Like Jackson Katz

I have been accused of hating men, because I have been writing so much about my loathing and abhorring abuse, degradation, depreciation and objectification of women.   

But I would not invest so much effort in my quest to find a mindmate, were I not fully aware, that there are exceptional men, who do at least abstain from if not actively oppose abuse and who respect women.   They are rare, but they are qualified to be significant male role models for desirable attitudes and behaviors.   

These men need to be heard and they deserve praise and admiration.  One of them is Jackson Katz, all my kudos to him and to this talk of his:

http://www.ted.com/talks/jackson_katz_violence_against_women_it_s_a_men_s_issue.html

He also made a documentary criticizing what I as a woman perceive as scary and repulsive in the worst kind of men.   Being a man himself, he cannot so easily be disqualified as an alleged man hater as women are so often. 

http://topdocumentaryfilms.com/tough-guise/

668. Where Are The Men Like André Gorz?

668.   Where Are The Men Like André Gorz?

I already mentioned Dorine and André Gorz in entry 100.    I have now finally read his entire book 'Letter To D.'.    

It is a very touching book.   It sadly reminds me of the role in a man's life, which I am craving for.   Those men, who are able to concede so much significance to a woman, are very elusive.  I have never met one.  

Andrè Gorz appreciated Dorine as a person, she was very significant to him.   He cared, what she thought, he valued her feedback, he accepted to be influenced by her.   He was intellectually and emotionally bonded with her.  She was even more than just a part of his life, she was the essence of their being a unit transcending the limits of being two persons.   

Dorine got the dignified and appropriate place in his life, which she deserved.   He never tired of her, the longer they were together, the more he felt attached and the more he learned to admit and recognize this. 

When the book 'Letter To D.' was published, the reactions in the media were not about an example of a happy marriage, they sounded more like the review of a fairy tale of a marriage.  

 

Men today are the victims of the subtly devastating collateral damage of the technological and economical progress which began, when my generation grew up and was in the decisive years of being most susceptible to being influenced.  

One generation earlier, the Gorzes grew up in a very different world, which facilitated the development of deep thoughts, while today this is more impeded than facilitated:

1.   Kind of media

When the Gorzes were young, there were movies shown in the cinemas, but the majority of media was printed text, and that was what people had at home to occupy their minds with.

Reading a book is a completely different process compared with watching a movie.   I grew up without TV, but it started in Germany, while I was a child.   In those days, any program on TV was continuous and could not be stopped or rewound.   If some part or some important scene was missed or not understood, it was gone without retrieval.   

This trained people to accept as normal the superficial consumption of what was not available for any deeper reflection.    

Reading a book allows people to process it much more thoroughly than a TV program.  One can put a book aside and think, one can go back and reread some chapters or talk about it.  Therefore books allow people to reach a profounder understanding of the content than do movies, when they cannot be stopped at one's own convenience.  Thus people can learn deeper thinking much better from reading than from TV.   

2.   Effect of media

I have already mentioned Kanazawa and his savanna theory.     
http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-scientific-fundamentalist/201002/the-savanna-principle
His suggestion, that people's minds mistake persons on a TV-screen as friends, has made me aware of a much broader effect.   The human brain has not evolved to subconsciously distinguish between merely technical representations and real life experiences, whenever the quality of the representation is a good enough imitation of real life.   This is true for TV, movies and sound in the quality, which exists now since several decades.  
 

When people read a story in a book, it is easy to be aware, that this is an imaginary story and not a description of reality.    But when people see the drastic imagination of extreme behaviors acted out by real people, these actors as role models on a TV screen can subtly change the standards and the sense of what is morally right.  This effect of role models on a screen is much more devastating than the influence of books.   
Behavior based upon consideration and responsibility does not entertain people.   What entertains people, is drastic and extreme.    Consciously, people know, what is real and what is not.   But the subtle subconscious devastation nevertheless happens. 

Reading Casanova's written stories about his abuse is much less a lecture instigating men to abuse women in real life, than are movies presenting the hero-jerk's abuse of women as a positive role model.
 

The quantity of the exposure to the readily available mass of movies presenting the most extreme and outrageous behaviors has a strong impact upon the subconscious mind. This deforms and distorts, what is considered as normal and acceptable.    

Not only does this change social norms, it also leads to the desensitization towards the suffering of the victims of those imitating the role models.  Since people's standards have been damaged, hurting, cruelty, abuse, inconsideration have become so ubiquitous, that people have lost the awareness for the monstrosities done or at least tolerated.   

3.   Effect of distraction

A couple in the times of the youth of the Gorzes had not much alternatives to spend their time together except by communicating.  At least at home, there was not much entertainment available, and events outside the home were expensive compared with people's income.  

Communicating leads people to knowing and appreciating each other and to growing deeper in their connections.    Becoming deeper as persons makes communication more attractive and enjoyable.    

Today people can entirely avoid communicating by the permanent distraction of easily and affordably available superficial entertainment and activities.    A couple can thus never even discover the benefits and joy of a deep level of communication as was the life style of the Gorzes.  

4.   Effects upon men's attitude towards women

The above listed factors have damaged men's behavior and attitudes towards women.   

Men's instinctive tendency to perceive women as bodies are enhanced, while they are impeded to recognize and to notice, let alone to appreciate the benefits of women's intellectual abilities.

Relationships are considered as mainly between two bodies.  

Female bodies are presented as easily available and easily replaceable.  

Conflicts and troubles do not lead people to work on their relationship and develop depth and bonding.   By discarding and replacing their mates too easily, people never experience depth and are unable to recognize and value it in others.   

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.   

586. Jerks With Halos

586.  Jerks With Halos

In entry 381 I described Diego Rivera as a jerk with a halo.   He is just one specimen of many, and it is a pattern of very detrimental and unfavorable dynamics.

I consider people (usually men) as jerks with a halo, when they are accomplished or outstanding in some area, as artists, writers, scientists, actors, politicians or even as benefactors for many people, while they also inflict a lot of suffering upon persons close to them.   

Jerks are jerks, and the suffering of their victims is real and no halo seen by any third party does reduce this suffering, it only hides it in an unjustifiable way.
  
Accomplishments need to be evaluated by themselves, without any impact upon the subjective recognition of the magnitude of personal transgressions.   The harm done to the unfortunate victims is an unacceptable moral failure, this is independent of any coexisting achievements.   

Accomplishments do not exempt people from being responsible for what they do to others.  

But this is unfortunately not reality.   Instead, there is a general tendency to condone unacceptable, immoral and cruel behaviors in proportional accordance with the transgressor's fame due to his accomplishments.  By this fallacy of accepted compensation, someone can buy by his accomplishments the right to harm without consequences.

This fallacy is enhanced and perpetuated by any combination of several factors, which all lead to the underestimation of the harm done to the victims: 

1.   Women's apparent and alleged compliance when continuing to expose themselves to their plight.   
1.1.  Women are dependent upon the material support by the man, especially by raising children.   They would leave the jerk, if the could.  
1.2.  Women in asymmetrical relationships have got onesidedly emotionally attached to the jerk, who in return has an entitlement delusion.  His fallacy is his belief, that women exist for his convenience, his accomplishments justifying their commodification.  I described this in entry 268 (The Jerk Attachment Syndrome).

2.  The generalization of suggestive influences of religion, especially christianity, upon both the jerks and the victims.  The jerks with halos subjectively consider their accomplishment as their currency to buy the right to harm women. 

In religion, sin is believed to be compensatable by penitence, so that after having paid for the previous sin, there is no cognitive obstacle to prevent the next sin.  Replacing penitence by accomplishments is a fallacy, which is not very far fetched, considering the weirdness of the religious beliefs in themselves.
Thus jerks are not only haloed by others, but they also halo themselves by believing, that their accomplishments entitle them to privileges, even when the privileges harm others.  

Women allow men to harm them for the purpose of buying the reward after death with the currency of their forgiving the unforgivable and by their prolonged suffering .  

3.  Sometimes people feel a vague, fuzzy and unspecified need to improve themselves, but are uncertain, how to proceed.  When they discover persons, whom they do not know personally, but only by the presentation in their work and in the media, such persons are chosen as role models.   The nearer the role models appear to be perfect, the stronger the appeal to imitate them.  The successful imitation boosts the self-esteem and causes good feelings.  This motivates to maintain the idealization of the role model, even when it is not at all justified in the case of haloed jerks.   As a consequence, the idealization of such a role model is protected by the denial of unpleasant and dark sides.    The focus is restricted to the perception of the halo, while the jerk underneath is willfully overlooked.   

Seen from this perspective, many admired and famous men are in reality only jerks with halos.  

570. Politicians And Morals

570.   Politicians And Morals

As mentioned before, there is a biologically caused asymmetry of many men harming women by excessive instinctive urges for sexual homeostasis and of many women not only getting harmed but participating in their own self-harming due to their instinctive urges for breeding.    As a result, the co-evolved gullibility to religion has established a general desensitization to women's plight of being harmed.   Women's bodies being used by men is not perceived as an outrage and a transgression, but as morally acceptable and as their innate doom. 

But this attitude of accepting the desensitization has consequences far beyond merely harming individual women in private situations.    When someone considers and accepts it as correct behavior and his entitlement to harm women by abuse, commodification, objectification, exploitation and taking advantage, this indicates, that he is a hazard to others, not only to women.  

Not only are politicians elected to work for the benefits of their voters, who have entrusted their interests to them.    Politicians are also paid a salary out of tax payer's money, which is so high, that many of the voters can only dream of such an income.    The trust and the salary oblige politicians to balance their self-interest with the benefits owed to their voters.       

But this is not reality.   As can be easily derived from reading daily in the newspapers about the frequent scandals and misdemeanors of politicians, many of them seem to be more or less corrupt, drastically taking selfish advantages of their positions.   Some are limited by what they can do legally, many get even away with criminal transgressions.   

What a politician does to women is an excellent and valid indication of his attitude to his voters.   If the voters were fully aware of this, they would base their political choice not only on the promises of a politician, but also on his moral integrity.  

A man without hesitation nor inhibitions to cheat on his wife can be expected to also cheat on his voters.    A man not hesitating in abusing a prostitute's body for his selfish instinctive urges can be expected to abuse the power of his position for his own greedy selfish interests.    A man using his position as immunity to rape and harass women can be expected to be criminally corrupt.   

The frequent scandals reported in the press and news indicate clearly, how many of the male politicians are not only commodifying and objectifying women as if this were their entitlement and privilege, but that their position also supplies them with more occasions to harm women than has the average jerk.    

Unfortunately too many voters are themselves desensitized to abuse women and even the female voters are manipulated to overlook, that politicians forfeit their trustworthiness by abusing women.   These voters tolerate the immorality, which harms women, and then they are disappointed and angry, when the corrupt politicians fail to do, what the voters expect.   

But the impact of abusive politicians being reelected is even worse than their mere failing to fulfill their obligations.   The fact of having been voted for by many people creates their reputation as role models worthy to be copied, no matter how morally rotten they are.    

Every time, when a politician is reelected in spite of the public knowledge of his cheating and frequenting brothels, this emits a very wrong signal.   It reinforces the fatal social norm of oversexation, promiscuity and harming women by objectification. 

In an ideal world, politicians would only be elected, if they have sufficient moral integrity of not taking advantage of occasions to harm and exploit others, neither women nor voters. 

563. Where Are The Apistics?

563.   Where Are The Apistics?

In entry 432 (APISTIA Is More Than Atheism Plus Skepticism) I explained, why the correct label for my complete absence of any belief is apistia, which is more than atheism plus skepticism, as compared in entry 365.  

There are many web pages, forums and groups of and for either atheists or skeptics.   But when I googled apistia and forum, I found nothing.    There are lots of Greek language pages containing this word, there is even a beautiful Greek song called apistia.   

But I found no forum of people, who are so free from any belief, that they consider apistia as their shared common ground of similarity.    

The clearer someone including myself gets aware of who one really is, the less often one finds likeminded people.   Knowing oneself well can be an ingredient of intellectual loneliness.  

 

When skepticism is used to evaluate the belief in a specific deity or set of deities, it leads a rational person to atheism.   But there are atheists, who are no skeptics, and there are skeptics, who are no atheists.  

An atheist is literally just someone without a god, without the belief in any deity, which is defined as an entity with clearly described attributes of traits and powers.    This does not include any information, why someone is nor how he has become an atheist. 

Atheism can be the result of someone's maturing rationality overrides the child's belief in an elusive deity.    But it can also coexist with irrationality:

• Someone may have grown up in a culture, where irrational beliefs do not include deities.  
• Someone may have experienced a personal disappointment of how the deity has treated him.   Discarding this specific deity as unfit to rely upon is not a general rejection of the possibility of a replacement deity.
• Someone may imitate an admired role model's atheism without any real comprehension of this concept.  

Such varieties of atheism do not preclude irrational beliefs like those in homeopathy, dowsing, astrology, reincarnation and chi.  

 

Some skeptics restrict the application of their skepticism as a method to the prospective scrutiny of whatever claim they encounter.    But they do not automatically apply it also retrospectively upon those beliefs, which they had been brought up into, before their maturing brain was rational enough to learn scientific thinking.   

Therefore there are skeptics doing excellent work debunking fraud and woo-woo while they have never given up their religious beliefs.    There are even those fervent religious people, who claim to be skeptics, by applying pseudo-skeptical methods on atheism.   

I am wondering, why there are so many non-skeptical atheists and non-atheistic skeptics, while real apistics are so rare.     

I can think of one possible explanation:   

Non-skeptical atheists and non-atheistic skeptics seem to me as if they are people attempting to get the best of two worlds, even though the worlds are incongruent.

They want to continue to benefit from the emotional and mental crutches supplied by irrational beliefs acquired by their residual gullibility.    But they also want to feel good about themselves based upon a self concept as being rational and of acting in accordance with it.   By discarding and fighting some especially weird beliefs they can have the illusion of being sufficiently rational, while they are in denial of their never overcome gullibility.  

539. Movies Are Contributing To The Harm Done By Promiscuous Jerks

539.   Movies Are Contributing To The Harm Done By Promiscuous Jerks

I have been mentioning before, that promiscuous jerks are predisposed by instinctive animal urges, but that the harm done to the victims is magnified by the sad influence of the media propagating, enhancing and reinforcing the social norm of oversexation.  

A recent study gives some evidence, that the influence of movies is contributing to women's plight by supplying the wrong role models.    

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/07/120717162743.htm

"Adolescents who are exposed to more sexual content in movies start having sex at younger ages, have more sexual partners, and are less likely to use condoms with casual sexual partners,"

"Many adolescents turn to movies to acquire "sexual scripts" that offer examples of how to behave when confronted with complicated emotional situations. For 57 percent of American adolescents between the ages of 14 and 16, the media is their greatest source of sexual information. They often don't differentiate between what they see on the screen and what they must confront in daily life ."

What this study indicates as the fatal influence of sexual scenes in general movies, can logically be expected to be even worse in pornographic movies. 


There are other sources providing some further contextual explanations.    

1.  Kanazawa has pointed out, that people are misled to confound the mere moving pictures of people on TV with personal friends, because the evolution of the human cognition had no yet enough time to adapt to the realistic technical representations of people.   The spontaneous and subconscious human perception does not distinguish sufficiently.    

http://personal.lse.ac.uk/kanazawa/pdfs/ehb2002.pdf

This has fatal consequences.   

Commercial movies are made to entertain people, not to educate them towards responsibility and consideration.   The stories of movies are not realistic.  They are in some way extreme and often dangerously pseudo-realistic.   Women are often abused in a drastic way, which in real life would be legally punished, but the severe harm experienced by them is omitted in the movies, because it is not entertaining.    They are damaged as objects, not harmed as humans.

Adolescents need the valid and beneficial role model of the happy serenity of a bonded monogamous couple.   But what should be encouraged most for imitation lacks any entertaining thrill.  Such a couple's happiness is as beneficial for the two partners themselves as it is dull and boring to the curiosity of gossiping and scandal enjoying bystanders, not matter if in real life or on a screen.    

Therefore the perception of the adolescents watching movies is mislead by confounding the images of the role models on the screen with real people appearing as an extension of their social environment.   Thus the influence of such role models to be imitated is dangerously strong.   

The adolescents are misled to consider the unreal, fantastic and extreme events and activities of the observed stories as if this were a valid representation of real life.

For the consumers of the movies and even more of pornography, abuse seems to end without any consequences, when the movie ends.  But in real life, abuse not only concerns a transgressor, but also a victim.   The abuser's onesided perception of having terminated the abusive event does not really end it.   Real life jerks cannot fully avoid to witness the visible reactions of the victims.  Even those jerks, who are not bothered or insensitive to whatever they do themselves often do notice the suffering, when the victims are their family members harmed by other jerks.

In short, real life harm has more or less observable consequences, which serve as a deterrent.   This deterrent is lacking in the movies.  The harm done by the promiscuity shown in the movies is hidden and omitted as if it did not exist.  Thus the movies mislead adolescents towards oblivion and denial of what they do to their victims by imitating the abuse.

2.   Milgram's experiment have been lately reinterpreted:

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/07/120718164947.htm

"The researchers hypothesized that, rather than obedience to authority, the participants' behavior might be better explained by their patterns of social identification. They surmised that conditions that encouraged identification with the experimenter (and, by extension, the scientific community) led participants to follow the experimenters' orders, while conditions that encouraged identification with the learner (and the general community) led participants to defy the experimenters' orders."

Explaining the physically barbaric act of applying electro shocks by identification can be generalized to explain the emotionally barbaric act of men's promiscuous objectifying of women's bodies also by the identification with the imitated actors in the movies.

498. Capitalism, Media, Social Norm And Monogamy

498.  Capitalism, Media, Social Norm And Monogamy

I claim: 

Some of today's decisive social norms are an artificial invention serving capitalists' profits by disregarding human cognitive and emotional needs.    

Monogamous life arrangements are the best adaptation of the human emotional needs and of the advanced evolution of the human cognition to the animal instincts also present in the human brain.
  

1.  The enabling factors of capitalistically distorted social norms.

1.1.  I call someone a capitalist, who uses financial power to ruthlessly invest money, wherever and whenever he can get the most profit, without responsibility and consideration for social and psychological consequences.   

1.2.  Until about 100 years ago, the reinforcement, persistence and influence of social norms depended on real life role models.   Role models lived successfully according to the social norm, social norms were reinforced by the example of real persons' achievements.  
While religions and philosophies also had influences, the real life experience of personally known role models restricted social norms to the correction by realistic physical and cognitive capacities of human beings.  

1.3.  According to the theory of being determined by the adaptation to the environment during evolution, the human cognition has not yet adapted to the technological environment, in which we are living now.  
It was first Kanazawa, who pointed out, that people are led to confound people on TV with personal friends.    http://personal.lse.ac.uk/kanazawa/pdfs/ehb2002.pdf 

But this effect can be seen even more generalized as being effective, whenever recorded voices, movies, live size color pictures trick the subconscious brain to confound the preserved representations of persons with real present role models.

1.4.  The more often something is heard and repeated, the more people believe it.   Real life role models are not willing to repeat the demonstration of their endeavors for the purpose of influencing others.    Movies and audio tapes can be replayed endlessly and they have therefore more impact.    

1.5.  The technical progress created the influence of virtual role models confounded as if they were real people.  
The realistic voices from the radio started this.   The Nazi ideology would probably have not been so widely accepted by the German population, had not the radio repeated this ideology in a way, that people were misled subconsciously to be listening to personal role models.
When the color TV enabled capitalists to send role models as commercials into every home and repeating their messages endlessly, they established several new social norms, which do not correspond to people's real needs as cognitive humans.   

Instead these social norms were established to create profitable markets.    

  

2.  Distorted social norms optimize capitalistic profits

The general principle of the capitalistic social norm claims enhanced wellbeing as something to be bought by consumption.    The even more powerful and more devastating principle are those artificial, unrealistic and distorted social norms, which make people feel deviant and willing to spend money on remedies to reduce the alleged deviance, while there is nothing wrong with them.  

Capitalists, predominantly male, have created distorted social norms for both genders:

• Men have extremely high libido, they are promiscuous and successful in discarding the monogamous commitment to be successful predators consuming women.   
• Woman want to be prey as much as men enjoy to be the predators.   Due to the fundamental biological difference, only men have a physiological need for sexual homeostasis, while women have no biological reason to need sex unless there are also emotional benefits.   Therefore by this social norm consumption and material benefits are the substitutes for the not available emotional benefits as women's reward for their acquiescence to be compliant prey. 

As shown in entry 497, the safe haven of living as a dyad is the best adaptation of the human need to combine cognition and physiological needs.   People using their cognition to earn and create happiness, who work hard on their relationship by communicating, by solving conflicts, by sharing time and activities, by learning to trust and to cooperate, bring no profit to capitalists.  
People, who spend most of their time working for money, guided by the belief, that happiness could be bought, are doubly profitable to the capitalists:  They produce and they consume.    Someone, who is too busy to invest time and effort into cognitive improvements of a monogamous happiness, is lured by the social norms to instead invest money in acquiring the prey's compliance by buying consumption goods for her.       

• The role model for men invests money to offer general consumption to women.
• The role model for women invests money in her body to attract men to spend money on them.  

3.    The markets of deviance.

This social norm creates two levels of feeling insufficient and deviant, and the capitalists sell alleged remedies: 

Market 1:  The sex market, which is primarily a market for male customers.   

The social norm makes men believe that they are deviant and deficient, unless they have a very high libido.  This is unrealistic when compared with the biological bell curve of libido, where in reality the extreme libido is deviant.  (More in entry 496 on Demisexuality And Cognition)

The sex market sells

• remedies to physically enhance the libido of the predators:
  
  • medical treatment, pills, hormones

• remedies to subconsciously enhance the stimulation of the predators' libido: 
  • pornography tricking the subconscious brain to confound being stimulated by mere pictures with being in the presence of a real woman

• remedies to physically enhance the success of triggering another's instinctive physiological reaction:
  • pheromones, fashion, cosmetics, body modifications

• remedies to enhance the predator's manipulation skills: 
  
  • The market of PUA (pick-up-animals) training.

• remedies to avoid failing as a predator by being a customer instead: 
  
  • prostitution.

Market 2:  The Psychotropic Drug Market

The capitalists established the social norm, that any person, who cannot be happy and striving as an unattached predator or prey, but who is sensitive, vulnerable and suffers as a result of the deprivation of commitment, is deviant and needs to be treated by taking psychopharmaceuticals.  
They have created the psychotropic drug market, which is extremely profitable and still growing.  This is an excellent documentary:   
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UDlH9sV0lHU

Psychological and social problems like depression, outbreak of psychiatric disturbances in vulnerable people under emotional stress, trauma, aggression, burn-out, alcoholism, illegal drugs abuse, crime, juvenile delinquencies are a few examples of what happens to people and their dependents, when basic emotional needs are not met.  Such sufferings are symptoms indicating the needed change of the toxic or noxious circumstances of their life situation.  If people's emotional needs were fully recognized, many psychological and psychosomatic health issues could be prevented by appropriate interventions.    But in this case, there would be no profit for the capitalists.  

The artificial social norms of defining as deviance, what really are healthy reactions to serious life challenges, have therefore two detrimental effects:

• Effect 1.  Those taking the psychopharmaceuticals deliberately, accept themselves as deviant in comparison with the artificial social norm.  People deprived of the social, emotional and psychological benefits of the safe haven of a reliable dyad as outlined in entry 497, react with maladaptive coping behavior.   Instead of attempting to get the needed benefits of a monogamous relationship, they take pills.    They are manipulated to believe this as the easy and only way out.
    
• Effect 2.  Those, who involuntarily hurt and harm others in spite of believing to act morally, consider their victims as deviant.  They influence or even coerce them to take pharmaceuticals as the apparently only remedy to restore them to cope better under the artificial social norm.  
  As already elaborated in entry 489 (Demisexuality And Morals), one of the collateral devastations of the artificial capitalistic social norm is the effect upon the behavior of those people, who are willing and wishing to be moral. They believe to act as good people according to the social norm, but they are oblivious of the damage done by them.    They harm others, but instead of changing their own behavior, they feed them with pills to repair the alleged flaw.   People doing damage with a clean conscience cause sometimes the worst harm.

An example:   

The proverbial broken heart can physiologically be expressed by symptoms of a real health issue, according to this study: 

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/02/120207121928.htm
"Broken heart syndrome occurs during highly stressful or emotional times, such as a painful breakup,
Broken heart syndrome also is called stress cardiomyopathy. Symptoms are similar to those of a heart attack, including chest pain and difficulty breathing.
During an extremely stressful event, the heart can be overwhelmed with a surge of adrenalin and other stress hormones."

Without the distorted capitalistic social norm, a sensitive caring person would feel responsible and avoid breaking another person's heart.   But the social norm of the oversexation and of promiscuity has destroyed the realistic recognition of the human need for attachment, consideration and responsibility.  

• The person suffering the broken heart fights the allegedly deviant reaction with psychopharmaceuticals. 
• The person, who had broken the heart, feels entitled to do so and considers the other as in need of pharmaceuticals.     

To sum it up, capitalists have used the media to artificially create the social norm of the oversexation of society and of men's high libido in addition to the general market of selling alleged consumable happiness and wellbeing.   
The discrepancy between biological reality and the distorted social norm has created two markets, one of remedies for those men attempting to comply with the sexual norm, and the other of pharmaceutical remedies for both men and women, who are psychologically damaged by this norm.

478. The Absurdity Of Spending Tax Payers' Money On Inappropriate Role Models

478.   The Absurdity Of Spending Tax Payers' Money On Inappropriate Role Models

I have been writing about how attitudes are taken for granted, which are an expression of subconscious instincts and are used to justify directly harming others.   But there are also some such attitudes, which are indirectly harmful.  

Several European countries are monarchies.  In these countries, the tax payers' money is used to finance the luxury life of a bunch of persons, but there is no rational justification to do so.   These persons are not required to work for a living, they life in castles and have servants.   

They are publicly financed parasites not based upon any individual merits.  They are already privileged before they can earn the privileges and before they can be chosen by any individual quality.   They are privileged for nothing more than having a close genetic link with persons, who already have been privileged for equally irrational reasons.  

As can be easily noticed by the publicity of the life style of these royals, they do not justify their privileges as positive role models for morally unfailing behavior.    Many of them are not only no role models for decency.  They are the very contrary, they are role models of selfishness, cruelty and harming others and for getting away with it.    They have the tax payers' money to pay for damages without taking personal responsibility.   

 
The harm done by an average promiscuous man, who cheats and uses women for affairs, is at least limited to his direct victims.   But someone royal, whose promiscuity is made public by the media, serves as a role model for other men.   One royal jerk can indirectly encourage many men to allow themselves to behave also as jerks.   

These royals cannot really be blamed themselves for accepting privileges, which are legally bestowed upon them.    But what puzzles me is the widespread acceptance of unwarranted and unearned hereditary privileges by the citizens of countries, which call themselves democratic in spite of being monarchies.   

As absurd as it is, the kings and princes as role models encouraging men to be jerks are financed by the taxes of the women, who are the victims of the jerks.     

There is only one explanation:  The public maintenance of monarchy is an expression of a misguided hierarchy instinct.   Animals accept their rank below the alpha animals, humans accept their rank below the royals who are mistaken as qualified to be alpha humans.