727. How Instincts Reinforce Each Other Thus Aggravating Harm And Suffering

727.   How Instincts Reinforce Each Other Thus Aggravating Harm And Suffering

The biological spoils of war
Study finds those who take part in violent conflict have more wives, children

The study, ......  found that, among members of an East African herding tribe, those who engaged in conflict - in the form of violent raids carried out on neighboring groups - had more wives, and thus more opportunities to increase their reproductive success through having more children

In an analysis of 120 men, Glowacki said, the data was clear - those who participate in more raids had more wives and more children over the course of their lives.

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2014-12/hu-tbs122914.php

In a scientific study, observed and observable data are presented.    From a very different point of view, I am looking at the suffering caused to individuals.   

• Raids cause deprivation and often the subsequent risk of perishing
• Raids often cause deaths, serious injuries and mutilations 
• More children mean women suffering more often the agony of giving birth.   
• There is often the additional suffering of those women, who are forced to share a husband in a polygamous situation in spite of wishing monogamy and/or to procreate more than they wish to. 

This is a clear example, how two instincts reinforce and enable each other leading to aggravated suffering.   

• The raids are an expression of the ingroup-outgroup-instinct.    The more the distinction between the groups is accentuated by this instinct, the less inhibitions there are against the ruthlessness and cruelty, upon which depends the success of raids.   Thus the success of raids both depends upon and rewards the ingroup-outgroup-instinct.   
• Procreation depends upon the combined strength of the procreation instincts and the means and occasion to act upon this instinct.   The more men are driven by the procreation instinct, the more they consider the acquisition of more wives and children as a desirable goal and a reward for embarking on a raid.  Thus a strong procreation instinct serves as a motivation for raids, such men's additional procreational behavior is enabled in the case of the raids being successful.

Would one instinct be absent, individuals would suffer less:

• Without the procreation instinct, there were less or no reasons for raids, depending on the own resources.   
• Without the ingroup-outgroup-instinct, raids were not possible, less procreation were possible due to less resources.

 

One should not shrug this off as if it were merely a remote problem in Africa.   The simple and therefore obvious mechanisms described in the study can be generalized and recognized in the sad every day occurrence, that people force disadvantages upon outgroup members in favor of advantages for their own progeny.    

• The raid can be replaced by the wider concept of exploitation in situations of asymmetrical power.  The same mechanism, that has been shown in the study above, is also at the bottom of all the outrageous injustice and cruelty of the world wide globalized system of exploitation.  
• Having more wives and more children can be replaced by the greedy accumulating of control over resources.    A person, who dies without offspring has no reason to amass more wealth than what he needs for the preferred standard of life during his own lifetime.    But someone leaving behind wealth as an inheritance bestows advantages to further generations of bearers of his own genes.   His offspring have a better chance of healthy survival, in turn they may have more offspring than without the inheritance.  

Whenever someone in the situation of direct or economic power exploits other humans, expecially slaves, illegal immigrant workers or inmates of labor camps, he has first defined them as an outgroup.   Only by this he is able to apply very different standards to them than to those people, whom he considers as his ingroup, while nevertheless not feeling cognitive dissonance with his idea of behaving morally.  

In the complex globalized system of exploitation, there are layers of ingroups and outgroups, as the example of this documentary shows.  
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Gktid0YO9s

• To the privileged social class of plantation owners, the slaves are the outgroup.   These landlords are the most directly and knowingly cruel persons.  
• To those Ivorians, who abduct people from Mali, these are perceived as outgroup by being citizens of another country.   This is a form of raids, which are not a part of remote tribal life.  
• To the companies importing the cocoa beans and to the consumers of chocolate, all Africans are outgroup.  The majority of the uninformed customer are in denial or even truly ignorant of the sufferings caused by chocolate as an apparently inland product.   But those managers, who dictate the prices, are aware of the unavoidably dire situation of workers not being paid sufficiently.  

The worst cause of human suffering are the instincts, which humans share with animals.  There cannot be a better world, until people recognize the damage done by instincts and until the control of the instincts is eliminated and replaced by the rational concept of global equality and global equal rights.         

717. The Difference Between Animals And Humans

717.   The Difference Between Animals And Humans

Some people deny, that there is any decisive difference between animals and humans.   To me such a claim seems to be made by those in need of an excuse for allowing themselves the behavior of animals in disregard for the consequences. 

The most significant difference is the human ability of memorize sufficient knowledge and experience, which enables only humans for the long term anticipation of the consequences of their behavior.   Thus they are capable to recognize the harmful effects of instinctive behavior to an extent, which can lead to the conscious decision against such behavior.  

Under natural conditions, at some times animals find plenty of food, at others none.    Their instinct to eat as much as possible to store body fat is an evolutionary advantage for survival.   Until 10 000 years ago, and sometimes even much later, this was also the case for humans.
Today the reasoning ability enables humans to not always give in to the impulse to eat, because they want to avoid the anticipated consequence of obesity.    More precisely, the reasoning supplies the knowledge, but the balance between the power of instinctivity and the counter power of rationality and willpower determine the behavior.   Therefore some people are more than others able to keep their weight between healthy limits.  
Overfed pets just get fatter and fatter. 

It is the same concerning the survival of the species.    Animals do not hesitate to copulate, when they are driven by instincts, because they are unable to know, that at some time later, they will be severely punished with the atrocity of giving birth and the burden of raising the offspring.    

Only humans are capable to recognize early enough, that the survival of the species and procreation is a form of self-harming for the individual person.   The cognitive ability of a considerable number of humans to consciously reject procreation is a very unique trait of humans. 

The critical cognitive distance from instincts and the resulting freedom of decision is therefore what makes humans unique.   This ability to prevent self-harming comes along with the ability to also know, when the own behaviors cause harm and suffering to others.

 

When a cat catches a bird and drops it somewhere seriously wounded, the cat lacks any ability to recognize the suffering of the bird.  The same holds true too, when animals seriously hurt each other during struggles for the alpha position.   Animals cannot know, when the side effect of their instinctive behavior is strong suffering.
Humans can know this. Therefore it cannot be morally justified, that many humans use and consider their cognitive qualities only as a tool serving a more successful application of their instincts.   This aggravates the suffering of others instead of avoiding and preventing it.  People, who consciously follow their instinct, are knowingly cruel.  

This means that the cognitive ability to recognize the consequences of the own behavior brings along the moral obligation to avoid harm and suffering of others as much as of oneself.

 

Unfortunately, many people live by double standards.   When they benefit from using their rational brain, they do it.   But when others are concerned, they allow themselves willingly to be ruthlessly determined by instinctive drives. 

The same hunter, who during the day shoots animals feeling entitled to do so due to being a human, nevertheless claims in the evening his right to follow his animal nature by copulating like an alley dog with a prostitute, not perceiving the woman as an abused and degraded human being but only as an object.   Shooting at humans of another country or ethnic group driven by the ingroup-outgroup instinct, he also has allowed himself to be controlled by an animal instinct, even though his reason could recognize this as absurd, as animal but as certainly not human.

Who feels superior to animals due to being human should also be congruent in not giving in to his own animal urges.    Excusing and condoning animal behavior by misrepresenting it as the human nature is not only absurd, but also the consequences are fatal, usually for all parties involved.

680. Research Should Not Be Misinterpreted To Trivialize Pornography

680.   Research Should Not Be Misinterpreted To Trivialize Pornography

Pornography is a very serious problem.   Men damage themselves by a deliberate decision, yet they themselves do not suffer.   Instead they make women suffer by commodifying and objectifying them.  

Therefore men are not prone to refrain from exposing themselves, but they will gladly jump on any excuse to trivialize the self-exposure.  

The following may be mistaken as supplying such an excuse.  

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/09/130906102536.htm

"asked 200 Danish adults aged 18-30 about their past pornography consumption; assessed a central part of their personality (the trait of agreeableness i.e., individual low in agreeableness typically holder higher levels of antagonism, coldness, hostility, suspiciousness, disagreeability, unfriendliness, and self-interest); and exposed them to hardcore pornography in the laboratory."

"Among men increased past pornography consumption was initially found to be associated with more negative attitudes toward women including more hostility, negative prejudices, and stereotypes."

"However, when the researchers actually exposed participants to pornography, personality (agreeableness) was found to influence the relationship between pornography and sexist attitudes so that it was only among participants low in agreeableness that pornography was found to increase sexist attitudes. Among this group it was found that laboratory exposure to pornography modestly increased hostile sexist attitudes. Further this increase was found to be brought about by increases in sexual arousal to the pornographic exposure material. For all other participants, pornography exposure was found not to influence sexist attitudes."

Pornography desensitizes men by destroying their ability to perceive women as persons, who suffer when being abused.  It replaces the appreciative perception by the sexist attitude of mistaking women as objects and commodities existing to be abused.

Desensitization is a time dependent effect.  The longer a man is exposed to pornography, the worse he gets and the more harm he does to women.  

The duration of the exposure to pornography in a laboratory study is limited, while the most damaged men are impacted by the cumulative effects of repeated and regular extensive exposures.   The short exposure in the laboratory does not simulate the magnitude of the real life desensitization.

Therefore the absence in this one study of an effect after only a short exposure does not justify any trivializing misinterpretation.    

I doubt, that high agreeableness suffices as a general protection against desensitization, it may only slow down the speed thereof.   The short exposure in laboratory may suffice to bring out the worst only in those men with low agreeableness, while those with high agreeableness would need longer exposure before they succumb.

658. Who Is Really Responsible For Killing The Workers In Bangladesh?

658.  Who Is Really Responsible For Killing The Workers In Bangladesh?

The tragedy in Bangladesh is once more revealing the cruel truth about capitalism.   

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-22296645

How many more victims are going to die, before people learn to attribute deaths elsewhere to the western habits of careless and unreflected consumption?  

It is easy to blame the collapse of a building upon those responsible for the illegal construction and neglect of safety.   

The real culprits are here, between us, in all the rich countries.   
 

The wholesale merchants and the managers of the big chains of markets and stores are the real murderers, they are murderer by proxy.    They use their economic power to dictate the low prices paid for the production in Bangladesh and other poor countries.   Those who there attempt to cope by disregarding building regulations and the basic human rights and needs of the workers act themselves under pressure, they are the hired killers.  They kill others to avoid perishing themselves, even when they add own greed to aggravate the workers plight.

 
When workers are not directly killed as has happened now, those dictating the prices are at least armed robbers.   They use the weapon of giving the choice of fast starvation by not having any job at all, unless they submit to be slowly destroyed by harsh and unhealthy underpaid work.

If I buy a t-shirt for 5 €, I know that it has been produced by someone suffering in misery.   But if I would pay 50 € instead for a luxury t-shirt in a fashion shop, this t-shirt would have been produced by the same exploited people in the same misery.   The additional price would add to  the profit of the shop owners or of the shareholders, it would not reach the workers.   

There are some organizations attempting to bring fair trade products upon the market.   But these products are difficult to find.    Shop managers and retailers also have power.  While those, who dictate the prices to the producers, are the primary culprits, those who decide to sell products from exploitations instead of fair trade products, are accomplices to murder and robbery.  


These culprits do not allow a choice to the consumers.   What happened in Bangladesh recently, is only an extreme example, much of what else is consumed, is also produced by killing, damaging and harming people.  Only exceptionally extreme events make it into the media.  Often it is impossible to know the truth about how much suffering was caused by the production of other goods.    

If I wanted to live without harming and exploiting anybody anywhere, I would starve and freeze to death, because there would be nothing to buy.   The entire global capitalistic system functions because of the differences between the economic power of rich and of poor countries.   


Most of these culprits do not even have a bad conscience, and they do not feel responsible.   First they offer consumers no alternative and thus they can correctly point out, that the consumers profit from their success in enforcing low prices.  Instead of feeling guilty as murderers and robbers, they feel as the consumers' benefactors.   

Therefore I have no hope, that they ever renounce the ruthless exploitation, as long as they can remain in denial and let others do the dirty work for them.  


The best remedy could be some kind of legislation, making the import of goods illegal, if they have been produced by the violation of basic human rights.    But to press politicians towards any such initiative would first need a shift in the focus and targets of pressure groups.  
Right now, those groups fighting for nature, for animals, for ecology, are much stronger and much more active than groups fighting for an improvement of the situation of exploited humans.    

Whenever the plight of suffering people in poor countries is noticed and recognized, it is wrongly considered as a need for charity by those, who are underdeveloped and incompetent and have brought the plight upon themselves.
   
It is an outrage and it is preposterous at the same time.   People exploit workers in Bangladesh by stealing the result of their hard labor from them and by thus driving them into dire undeserved misery,  Then the same exploiters condescend to relief a fraction of this misery by deeds of charity to allegedly inferior and unable savages.    

What they call charity is in reality nothing better than the restitution of a tiny fraction of what has been stolen.

656. The Placebo Church

656.   The Placebo Church

In entry 441 I was expressing how a weird institution called Unitarian Universalist Church (UU) puzzled me, because it makes no rational sense.    They claim not to be a religion but they behave like one.  

In entry 589 I defined religion by also showing behaviors based upon irrational beliefs other than only the one in the existence of a deity.    These behaviors can be seen as rational methods of coping with irrational beliefs, while without such beliefs, the behaviors themselves are irrational.


In this sense the UU is a placebo religion.   

A person, who has by own experience or by reliable observation learned, that taking a painkiller brings relief from pain, can often experience the relief from pain by unknowingly taking a placebo, which is a pill without any chemical content.    It is a placebo by still looking like a pill, only the active ingredient is omitted.    

The christian religion has some psychological benefits for some people.  Their imaginary god's attributes help them to cope with human suffering.   The christian religion is especially attractive to victims finding an alleged sense in their sufferings and to perpetrators and evil doers finding alleged justification for harming others.   

• The belief in being rewarded by the alleged god in the alleged afterlife misrepresents senseless suffering as if it were a valid method to earn such a reward.
• The belief in an alleged god's alleged wisdom being beyond human comprehension attributes hidden reasons to suffering.
• The belief in an alleged god's alleged wisdom and rewarding in the alleged afterlife allows the perpetrators to harm others without a bad conscience.   They perceive the alleged god as the proxy, who is considered the one responsible for the harm. 
• The belief in an alleged god's alleged reward for forgiving is misused as the unjustified demand for being forgiven for unforgivable harm.  

The only active ingredient of any christian church is the god's impact upon the endurance of suffering and the inflicting of harm.   By being interwoven with the entire culture the christian religion has over its long history incorporated the additional supplying of many secular benefits.  As a result, many people completely lost all awareness for the differences between those benefits, which were due to the core of the religious beliefs, and those collateral and independent benefits, which were only added but not religious. 

This vague and indiscriminate notion of a church as being beneficial in a generalized and very special manner is the reason, why so many people experience it is possible to delete the god and create a placebo church, which still appears to be a church.    Just like the placebo pill looks like a pill.  

The placebo effect of a sugar pill is impossible for any person ignorant of the existence of painkillers, like some ingenious people in a remote area.   (Any similar effect would need other explanations like a general gullibility to suggestions and claims.) 

It is the same with the church.   Those, who have never experienced the christian religion as beneficial, are not prone to experience a placebo church as offering any benefits, which cannot be obtained elsewhere.   

But there is one decisive difference between taking a placebo pill and joining a placebo church:  

The placebo pill works, when the person does not know, that the pharmaceutical ingredient is lacking.   The placebo church is chosen for being the placebo, for having the god as the active ingredient eliminated.   

A person without pain needs neither a pharmaceutical nor a placebo painkiller.   The sugar in the pill can be obtained anywhere and in any form, the person without pain eats sugar when he wants to.   He does not make it look like a painkiller first.
I have never heard of anybody eating placebos, knowing that there is no medicine in them, only because of the sweet taste.   They rather eat real sweets. 

A person without religious needs does not need a church, neither one with a god nor a placebo church.  Such a person finds and enjoys the collateral benefits found in christian churches directly in secular alternative institutions.   He does not combine them to appear like a church.    

Self-labeled atheists in the UU are like people, who knowingly eat placebos for the taste instead of getting the real thing elsewhere.   

When a church already exists for those, who benefit from the delusion of the existence of a deity, then the additional use of such an institution for other benefits and also by non-religious persons can be rational.    

All the benefits offered by the UU are benefits available elsewhere, where each by itself can be experienced and enjoyed as secular.   Combining them as a placebo church is a deliberate bias.    Creating a placebo church for only non-religious benefits is irrational.   

I can think of only one explanation for this is a fallacy: 

It seems that there are two distinct types of self-labeled atheists.  

• Those who are independent thinkers, to whom the insight of the irrationality of religious beliefs has come as an unavoidable conclusion and consequence of thinking.   Atheism and feeling free from needing any religion is emotionally beneficisal for them, because it makes them feel good about themselves.  
• Those who have a strong need for the benefits of the delusion of the existence of a god, but who were so much disappointed by some event in their life, that they were unable to continue to believe.   They suffer from their persistent craving for their lost paradise of the delusion. A placebo church gives them the best relief for that craving.   
  As members of the UU they remain fence sitters, who look in the direction of atheism, but their behind is still entangled in christian religious needs.   
  The choice of an institution with the style of buildings and terminology as a placebo church accommodates the fence sitters' needs to remain in surroundings resembling their lost paradise.   
  

An example:  Somebody with sufficient knowledge in philosophy can either be the speaker giving a lecture in an auditorium or he can be the minister giving a sermon in a church with or without a god.   

They may even talk about the same topic, but there is a huge difference:
 

Independently thinking atheists attend the lecture.   They listen to information, which they afterwards reflect upon and which maybe influences their attitudes and their behavior.   But they actively process the information and choose what to make of it.

People, who prefer to attend services and to listen to sermons, do this in a more passive and submissive way.   Naming an event a service indicates, that there is a target, who is served by humble servants, who expect guidance and who are emotionally ready to be told what to do.   They do not choose or process, they attempt to follow, and rarely doubt the wisdom of someone with the halo of being called a minister.  

Becoming an atheist is only the first, but not sufficient step for rational people.   The logical next step is a rational reevaluation of all attitudes, values, opinions.   Whatever makes no sense without the christian belief, of which it had been derived, has to be reconsidered.

  
But the choice of a placebo church indicates the clinging to the values and world view of christianity and the wish to change nothing except having lost or deleted the god.

    

The following is a list of benefits as experienced and perceived by a member of the UU.   With his permission, I am quoting him literally. 

 
All these benefits do not need a church but can be obtained as good or better elsewhere.    My comments point to alternatives.  

1. fabulous live music of all kinds

No church is needed for life music.   There are many secular places offering concerts.    Anybody who wants to play in public, has a wide choice of places.  

2. liberal religious education, fellowship and musical training for children, making them aware of the great variety of religions and non-religious views

The place for education is the school.  Community colleges offer music lessons beyond the level of schools.  Pupils need to be taught scientific and skeptical thinking.   The place for information concerning religion are in history and social science lessons with sufficient mental distance.   They need to be taught, that religion is obsolete and enhances harming behavior.

Pupils also need to be taught interactive skills like communication, theory of mind, and a value system based upon rationality.   

3. fellowship and fun with people of liberal, non-religious and liberal religious views

People need fellowship with likeminded people.     Non-religious and liberal religious are contradictions.   Someone can either belief in a god or not.  This impedes fellowship.   There is a mental abyss between those, who belief in any god and those, who do not.   Something is weird when they join a placebo church instead of associating with their own kind.  

Liberal is a political term and has its place in a political party.  

4. promotion of enlightened values, including earth-friendly values among others, and tolerance for people of differing views.  

Tolerance for differing views (not different needs or tastes, unfortunate life situations or disabilities) is an indication of ignorance, stupidity and/or irrationality.   The careful evaluation of all views leads to the conclusion, which of them is rationally superior or is the only rational one.  From then on, differing views do not deserve tolerance.    Tolerance is the admittance of insufficient thinking.  
Rational non-religious people need secular non-religious and atheist groups, where religious people are excluded as a nuisance and annoyance.    Only fence-sitting atheists have tolerance for delusional believers.  
Enlightenment is the contrary of tolerated stupidity.   

5. social justice activities

This is the realm and task of political parties and task oriented pressure groups..

6. places where people can evolve their views as they are exposed to new or different ideas, not to mention help and healing in recovering from past indoctrination from dogmatic theology

This is the realm of secular psychological self-help, self-improvement and self-awareness groups and courses at community colleges.     The worst indoctrination is the delusion, that there are deities, afterlife, an immortal soul and such.   Any alleged help, which includes tolerating such insane beliefs would not be a real help, only a slight reduction of the damage. 

7. promotion of an open-minded approach to life in general

This is the realm and task of secular psychological self-help, self-improvement and self-awareness groups and of schools and all educational institutions.

8. non-religious weddings, child dedications, coming of age celebrations, and funeral services

All these celebrations are rituals based upon some interaction with a god.   A wedding means vows to a god, they are obsolete without a god.   People can best organize their celebrations according to their own individual needs.  

9. counseling and support for people going through difficult times

This is the task of qualified secular and rational psychologists.   A minister's kitchen psychology can do more damage than good.

10. community outreach supporting other organizations serving the most needy people in our communities and beyond

This is the realm and task of political parties and task oriented pressure groups.  They have to influence any country's government to fulfill its obligation to care and provide for the needy by getting sufficient tax from the rich.

11. a forum for the free expression of views which sometimes may run counter to those of the populous in general, e.g. opposition to war, oppression, etc.

This is the realm and task of political parties and of task oriented pressure groups.. 

12. an insitution where people can come together on a regular basis to meditate quietly and calmly on their lives and so on

This is the realm of secular psychological self-help, self-improvement and self-awareness groups and courses at community colleges and other educational institutions.    

13. a welcoming congregations accepting of people of different genders, sexual orientations, races, ethnicities, etc.

This is the common ground and every day situation of every functional group of people, who have joined it to pursue a hobby, sport, interest of any kind.  

14. all of these things and more available from one organization existing often like an island of liberality in the midst of a land of conservative religious people and their churches

It is pathetic to imitate, what one rejects.   Independent thinking atheists need a real alternative, not a placebo church.    

15. a denomination demonstrating a democratic way of functioning in the midst of many non-democratic, paternalistic institutions

A democratic way of functioning is the common ground of every functional group of people, who have joined it to pursue a hobby, sport, interest of any kind.  

There is no objective need for a placebo church to provide anything from this list.   A placebo church caters only for the need of people with a specific precondition.  

652. The Tit-For-Tat Meta Addition To The Golden Rule

652.  The Tit-For-Tat Meta Addition To The Golden Rule

"The Golden Rule or ethic of reciprocity is a maxim,[1] ethical code or morality[2] that essentially states either of the following:

(Positive form of Golden Rule): One should treat others as one would like others to treat oneself.[1]

(Negative form of Golden Rule): One should not treat others in ways that one would not like to be treated (also known as the Silver Rule)."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_Rule

Like expressed above, the golden rule is quoted often.   But for people using the tit-for-tat strategy as a basis of interacting, the following is an important logical consequence of the golden rule:

Do not blame others for treating you the same way, as you have treated them before.  

The tit-for-tat strategy does not suit morals, which are openly or even subtly influenced by a christian background of society.   Even rational non-religious people are often under this impact without being aware of this. 

Christianity promises the reward in the afterlife as a compensation for the acceptance of suffering, for unconditional forgiving, for turning the other cheek.    This is inconsistent with the tit-for-tat strategy, which chooses reactions to behavior as mirroring this behavior. 

Some people misunderstand the tit-for-tat strategy as a way of being vindictive.    This is not the case.  

• Non-criminal vengeance is an emotional behavior.   Under limited circumstances it can be a way of finding relief from suffering helpless outrage as the victim of a transgression.  
• The tit-for-tat strategy is a rational way of maintaining a balance of giving and receiving and of preventing disruptive imbalances.  

Vengeance can even be an apparently paradoxical reaction to following the christian demands under social pressure and misguidance while not being intrinsically agreeing.  Following these christian demands can lead to an extremely unbalanced situation of one person taking advantage and one suffering until a breaking point is reached.   

The tit-for-tat strategy can prevent this, because it leads to both persons involved reaching a point of ending a futile situation much earlier,   This does not escalate until one suffers enough to feel vindictive, when both do not gain any advantage.  

But tit-for-tat only works, when both agree on and are aware of its justification.   When one persons uses tit-for-tat, but the other expects christian submission to and compliance with bad treatment, then this leads to disruptive and unstable interactions.   

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.  

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.        

502. Evolution, Survival And Emotional Needs

502.  Evolution, Survival And Emotional Needs

Bertold Brecht said it quite drastically "Erst kommt das Fressen, und dann die Moral".   There are different ways to translate this, because morals can be understood differently.   The translation as 'a hungry man has no conscience' may be the closest to Brecht's meaning. 
But it can also be translated like this: 'There are no morals, unless there is grub.'   In this sense, morals are more generally any cognitive influence on the behavior.  Usually (there are exceptions), as long as someone is driven by urgent and strong physical deprivations, non-physical cognitive needs are not strong enough to determine or even influence the behavior and all emotional needs are a luxury beyond imagination.   

I have already mentioned the theory of the environment of the evolutionary adaptation.   Today we life in an environment, that has drastically changed from what the human brain has adapted to by evolution, which according to this theory is the savanna as it was about 10,000 years ago.   But this environment had only insignificantly changed until a few centuries ago.   The most drastic changes for the majority of the population in the rich western countries came only during the last century.    

Only today's physical comfort and security of unlimited food supply, bright electrical light, warm water from the tap, central heating in sturdy buildings, health care, laws and law enforcement, safe birth control and nearly unlimited access to information provide people with an environment, in which they now are free to be fully aware of their emotional needs.    

This freedom to have full access to cognitive awareness is so new, that there has not been enough time to adapt the innate automatic responses for appropriate coping with emotional needs.      People have not yet learned to use their cognition as a tool to adapt to their emotional reality.   Today people are still driven by strong instincts, impulses and tendencies, that are dysfunctional in our highly technical environment:  

1.  The human brain has had not time yet to evolve sufficiently to the difference between real people and technically reproduced life-imitating representation of voices, still and moving pictures, because these only exist since about a century.   

2.  The human cognition has evolved as an evolutionary adaptation to survive successfully.   The sensitivity to have emotional, intellectual needs and to suffer pain, when such needs are not met, are only a byproduct of the evolution of cognition.  But these non-material and non-physical needs were hidden from the awareness by the much stronger dire necessity of a daily struggle for physical survival needs.   Someone at the point of starvation and perishing due to lack of shelter or serious disease has no awareness for feelings like dignity and appreciation.  Being hidden from awareness, the by-product did not influence evolution.     

Not being aware of emotional needs like for attachment and trust and of intellectual needs like for knowledge and comprehension while being under the pressure of hunger and life threatening perils is like being unable to hear the birds sing underneath the much louder noise of an electrical drill.  The evolutionary adaptation of human instincts is like being adapted to permanent loud noise.   When the electric drill is turned off, someone hearing the birds for the first time does not know, that what he hears as an irritating sound are birds.   Since in the recently changed environment the permanent threat of perishing has been removed, this has left people without sufficient innate understanding for the own and even more for the expressed emotional needs of others.     Whatever innate empathy and mirror neurons there are, they do not suffice to enable people to avoid hurting and harming others without a cognitive decision to do so.          

The tragedy of today's situation in modern rich countries is the discrepancy of people still treating others as the same ruthless instinctive driven animals in the savanna, while the comfort and security of the standard of life has freed the cognition and enhanced the perception for pain and suffering.     

Would people only ignore their own emotional needs, they would only harm themselves.   But the worst tragedy is the harm done to others due to the general oblivion and denial of emotional needs.   While people suffer emotional pain as targets of behavior, they continue to be unaware of inflicting the exact same pain on others, when they act driven by their own instincts.

The choice of how to interact with the other gender is a good example.    Today's environment allows everybody to attempt happiness in a monogamous committed relationship with one partner.    Instead men continue to promiscuously abuse women's body, and women are driven by greed to exploit men.   These causes suffering and makes them gullible customers for psychopharmaceuticals as already explained in entry 498.   

456. The Harm Of Asymmetrical Relationships

The Harm Of Asymmetrical Relationships

A symmetrical committed bonded relationship between egalitarian partners is based upon the combination of physical, emotional and intellectual intimacy in balanced reciprocity.  

In asymmetrical relationships one partner has privileges and the other has disadvantages.   

There are three kinds of asymmetry due to an imbalance, that is often very painful for a woman:

1.  Physical asymmetry.  
A man has a polygamous harem.    
A man cheats on his wife.

2.  Emotional asymmetry. 
One partner offers and needs emotional exclusivity of reciprocally being the most important and most significant person on earth for the other.   The partner refuses to concede such exclusivity.   He is only available on the condition of sharing his emotional ties with outsiders, often his children and/or his ex-partners.

3.  Intellectual asymmetry. 
Physical and emotional asymmetry are easily recognizable, because other persons are involved as intruders and obstacles. Intellectual asymmetry is more subtle, less easily recognizable.  It can be very damaging, even though the man may be convinced to be a considerate and moral person.  
Intellectual asymmetry is the consequence of attitudes concerning the perception of the role, qualities and place for the partner in life.  The disadvantaged partner offers and expects more, than what the other is interested and motivated to give and to share.  

Men are generally prone to cause asymmetry in relationships because of their subconscious animal instincts.  Too often a man feels justified to initiate physical involvement with a woman by nothing better than the mere infatuation with her body.   He even is ignorant, that this is not, what the woman wants.   

For a woman with self-respect, this is not a sufficient reason to agree and comply.   She allows him access to her body, only when she not only considers him as suitable to be her companion, with whom she wants to share everything for the rest of her life, but when she also is convinced, that this is reciprocal.  
Unfortunately, women are often mislead and mistaken.  Instead of becoming appreciated egalitarian companions, they get themselves into the situation of onesided and very painful disadvantages.

Even if a man commits to be monogamous, and even if he forces no intruders upon her as a source of physical and emotional asymmetry, this does not automatically ascertain intellectual intimacy and symmetry.   The woman wants a companion based upon equality, she wants to share everything with him.   But If he is satisfied with her nightly availability in bed, while she is of not other significance for his life and he has not wish to share anything except her body, he is the one, who gets, what he wants, but this is far from what she wants and needs.   

The one, who wants less is always the one, who has the power to dominate and to enforce his conditions.   When he only wants her body, this is a form of asymmetry, that makes her helpless and defenseless.  
The woman in an asymmetrical relationship is powerless to make it symmetrical.   When a man only perceives her body and is oblivious and in denial of all her invisible qualities, then there is nothing, that she can do.   No matter, how much she deserves being appreciated and valued as an equal, significant, trusted companion, she has no power to get, what she needs and wants, if the man is not able to perceive, notice and value her qualities.  

When the woman wants to share decisions, but the man does instead, what he wants and forces his decisions upon her, he has the power to do so, but she has no power to stop him.   She suffers.
When the woman wants to share all innermost feelings with a mindmate, he has the power to refuse to communicate.   She has no power to make him listen nor to make him tell her, what he feels and thinks.   She suffers.  
When the woman wants to share time and activities with the man, but he prefers to spend his time without her, he has the power to go and leave her behind, whenever he wants.   She has no power to hold him back and make him stay with her.   She suffers.
When the woman wants to be mutually significant and to be the most important person, but the man treats her as a commodity and as insignificant, he has the power to do so, but she is powerless to defend herself.  She suffers.

An egalitarian woman with self-respect suffers humiliation, indignity, degradation, disrespect, devaluation, depreciation, when she is powerless in an asymmetrical relationship.   When the circumstances make her powerless, she cannot fight for what is out of her reach and not obtainable.     
But suffering without fighting does not imply mental acquiescence, even though it may superficially appear as if she would accept her disadvantages.  The man, satisfied in an asymmetrical relationship, is often oblivious and in denial.   Her silent experiencing of outrage and indignation cause devastation, but the suffering is hidden behind resignation and apparent submission.   The relationship is toxic and the woman has no other way out except leaving the relationship.

So men have the power to choose wisely, if they are aware of this, before it is too late:  

They can make a relationship symmetrical by giving a woman, what she really needs and wants: The respect and appreciation for a person in a balance of giving and sharing physical, emotional and intellectual intimacy.

They can enforce an asymmetrical relationship upon a woman, profit from this, as long as possible, until they have devastated one woman and move on to the next.
Women have only the choice of prevention, they can refuse to enter a relationship, when the risk of asymmetry is recognizable.   Once they have made the mistake of entering an asymmetrical relationship, they are doomed.   They cannot make it symmetrical against the will of a man, who prefers the benefits of the asymmetry.   

448. The Impact Of Christianity On Western Culture

The Impact Of Christianity On Western Culture

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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