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.  

628. Theory Of Mind, Empathy, Society And The Media

628.   Theory Of Mind, Empathy, Society And The Media
 

As told before, I consider not to harm others as the core principle of any acceptable moral and not to be harmed as the core principle of basic human rights.  

To be successful in avoiding to harm others requires more than the acceptance of a moral principle.   It requires also sufficient knowledge of what others experience as harm.   While recognizing visible immediate harm is easy, this is not the case with invisible and delayed harm.

The reliance upon empathy and the working of the mirror neurons is limited to situations, when someone can spontaneously feel with the unlucky person, for example someone, on whose foot a brick has just fallen.   

But when the harm is invisible and caused by complex and abstract cognitive experiences, then empathy is not enough to prevent hurting another person emotionally.   Avoiding emotional and future harm by broken trust, by injustice, by depreciation, by commodification and such requires a mature theory of mind.    

"Theory of mind is the ability to attribute mental states—beliefs, intents, desires, pretending, knowledge, etc.—to oneself and others and to understand that others have beliefs, desires, and intentions that are different from one's own."

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

While children usually develop a basic theory of mind by innate maturation, the more complex and abstract theory of mind is a learning process enabled and enhanced by experiences of interactions.   

Nobody can know for certain, what behavior causes invisible harm to another person, unless this is based upon acquired information.    This can be achieved by either learning from the reaction and feedback by the harmed person and/or by any observing third party, or by asking the target person's advice before acting and by listening to such advice when proffered.  

It is the fallacy of immature people to deny the existence of anything, that they are ignorant of and to think that it is enough not to do to others, what they would themselves feel hurt by.   
It is also a fallacy to overlook the biological differences between women and men in evaluating the impact of behavior.   

 

An example.    Some men in the state of sexual dishomeostasis feel an urge to copulate like dogs in the gutter with any haphazard female body without getting attached.   

Those being immature believe women to be like them.  Whenever they mislead women to consent by unjustified expectations of attachment, immature men abuse women's bodies with a clean conscience.  They do not understand attachment and believe women to be stray dogs the same like themselves.  

Men with a mature theory of mind are aware, that women do get attached much more easily and rapidly and how important attachment is for women.   Jerks have no conscience and manipulate women to be used and dumped, they are not deterred by not reciprocating attachment.   Jerks consider women's getting attached as an annoying flaw.

Mature men with morals are able to acknowledge, that not getting attached is their own deficiency.    They are responsible to not make others the victims of their own deficiencies and to accept the obligation of using self-control to abstain from hurting women.  


The development of a mature theory of mind depends upon the society and culture.  

Unfortunately the modern western societies impede and thwart the moral maturation of people.   The influence of the ubiquitous media is the main factor in this.  

Desensitization:   The media are full with realistic representations of the most horrible agonies and atrocities.   But as the human brain had evolved without realistic pictures, it cannot really distinguish between TV and real life.  Watching TV is not very different from people partaking in the spectacle of public hanging and beheading.  

The consumption of the media leads to a desensitization towards suffering.   As a result, a 'mere' emotional betrayal appears as if it were only a trifle compared with the magnitude of the frequently watched atrocities both reported from real life and in the imaginary world of movies.  

Misunderstood tolerance.   Tolerance is important to protect minorities and people with special needs from any avoidable disadvantages.    But if alleged tolerance embraces also the protection of behaviors, which cause harm, it is not tolerance, but irresponsibility and a failure to protect the victims.    

Misrepresentation.   There are many perversities and deviant behaviors, which seem obviously harmful to most people, who would immediately refuse to expose themselves to be thus harmed.    Yet in the uncensored web, nearly every perversity and deviance has its adherent proponents, who propagate it publicly from their subjective distorted view as a minority right and behavior while omitting, denying and trifling the harm to the victims.   

Desensitization, misunderstood tolerance and misrepresentation have an impact not only upon the person behaving unknowingly as a transgressor, but also on the victim and on any other possible source of corrective feedback.  

Victims getting hurt are irritated and confused as to how much their felt outrage is justified.  They are often misguided to attribute their own healthy reaction instead to an own weakness.    They submit and endure instead of protesting, because they are manipulated into.self-doubt as if they were failures lacking to adapt the socially prescribed pseudo-progress.

Acquaintances are not involved enough to suffer as victims, but they often notice behavior as potentially harming to closer relations.   Would they react sincerely and show their true disapproval, this would serve as helpful feedback towards a better theory of mind.    But instead they shrug their shoulders and avoid any conflict.   

Constructive feedback can only be given by people with a mature theory of mind, who are aware of the importance of not hurting others.   People who are immature themselves are less prone to give any feedback and they are even less able to give feedback of supportive value.    What makes role models in the media attractive to the masses is often an expression of immaturity, which is then imitated. .  

Therefore some of those people, who hurt others, never had a chance to reach sufficient maturity to get aware of what they are really doing.   

423. Mate Search And The Emotional Dynamics Of Consent And Dissent

Mate Search And The Emotional Dynamics Of Consent And Dissent

This continues entry 420.   There I declared: 

Consent and agreement make me feel good, dissent and disagreement make me feel bad.  

I am fully aware, that this is my personal tendency, which I share only with the minority of those people, whose brain is predominantly Epicurean.   That includes the innate trait, that their pleasure center is more sensitive, perceptive and responsive to emotional and intellectual stimulation, and less to physical stimulation.   As a consequence, they are attracted to a mate, with whom they can develop emotional and intellectual intimacy, before they want physical intimacy.  
 

All those people, who get infatuated with a body as a consequence of being driven by the mate selection of their subconsciously acting instincts, seem determined by this and consent or dissent have no emotional impact upon them.  

Sometimes people in profiles on dating sites or on dating advice pages claim, that if two partners were too much alike, this would make the relationship dull.  There are also many people, who are willing to mutually tolerate very contradictory attitudes in a mate, like christians and atheists or the politically left and right wing oriented.  The only explanation for this is the force of infatuation completely overriding anything else.  

For people emotionally reactive to consent and dissent, being alike and sharing interests is important.   If for example two partners both enjoy visiting museums, there are more museums on earth then any couple can ever visit together during a lifetime.   Sharing impressions, pointing things out to each other and agreeing on the opinion is joy.   Why would people need to argue about a different or controversial opinion?   It is the same about movies, books, lectures, theater plays to be shared, which then leads to the joy of consent.    Doing sightseeing in a church or temple and sharing the mockery about that preposterous faith is so much more enjoyable than visiting the same church but being obliged to bite my tongue to avoid hurting the feelings of a believer. 

Logically for all those, for whom consent causes pleasant emotions, the expectation and probability of consent is an important criterion in the choice of a mate,    Experiencing consent requires knowledge about what the potential partner thinks.    Whenever I am in contact with someone, who could maybe be a mate, I am avidly reading, whatever expressions of his attitudes, values and opinions I can find.   I am very motivated to find consent and to discover the red flags of dissent.  
But this is only reciprocal, when a man has the same wish to find his own consent with my expression of my personality too.    That means, a man, who is more attracted to feel consent than to get infatuated, would be as much motivated to read this blog as he is interested in getting to know my person.   

But this is not, what usually happens.   Often when I get in contact with someone and I suggest to him to visit this blog and find out, if we are compatible of not, there is no or little interest.   Instead they demand a picture, or they want just small talk in the chat.   With the same frame of mind, many men are not bothered to fill in their own profiles, or they contact me in spite of clear statements in my profile, that they do not fulfill my criteria.   

Sometimes I am getting reproached for not being sweet.     If a man wants me to be sweet, nice, kind and friendly, the best method is to make me feel good by enabling me to experience consent.    But someone, who instead of cooperating to discover consent, leaves me ignorant and thinks that his attention alone of contacting me or chatting should make me feel good, is not the kind of man, who is compatible with me.   

The world is full with two legged male animals, but mindmates with an epicurean brain are very rare.    

312. An Online Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

An Online Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

I stumbled upon a web page, where people discussed a video and its author, who had published it on YouTube.  

In this video, he claims evolution to be flawed and attributes his own unfortunate life situation to this.   Evolution has by natural selection favored the hierarchy instinct, which makes people fight for a high position in a hierarchy, and as a consequence thereof some people at the top have lots of privileges, while others at the bottom suffer deprivation.   While evolution itself cannot be described as flawed, because it is not concerned about people's pain, but only about he survival of the species, the consequences of natural selection on the wellbeing of individuals can be described as flawed from the subjective perspective of the underprivileged.   

He talks about his own deprived life situation, having little formal education, a minimum wage job, no friends, no relationship.  
He speaks with agitation, and I watched the video with a lot of sympathy and compassion.   I was touched, and I admit that I thought for a moment, how someone like him, but in my age group and with a university education could just be the clingy, needy guy for me.

So I got curious and went to YouTube, where he has published about 150 more videos.  I started to watch another one.   For about one minute, I was at a loss to even understand, what it was all about.  He was calling a hearing-aid company for information.  Being still under the impression of the guy being an unfortunate sensitive person, it took me a while, until I got aware, that it was a prank.   He was misunderstanding the man from the hearing-aid company on purpose.  That man most probably is an employee, who would have lost his job, had he lost his temper.   That employee was probably fully aware of being the victim of a cruel prank, but had no choice except to go along.    

At that moment, all my temporary sympathy for the prankster dwindled.   It was the victim of the prank, who deserved my compassion.  After watching 5 minutes I skipped most of the video.   When I watched the end, that employee had kept his countenance for 15 minutes.   I admire his patience.    As much as I have empathy with the victims of circumstances, I have more empathy with the victims of malice.  

The alleged and pretending victim of social injustice was in reality a self-centered guy, completely absorbed in self-pity, cruelly letting out his own frustration by playing heartless pranks on others, who have never done anything wrong to him.  (I am assuming, that he talked to a complete stranger at the hearing-aid-company, which of course I cannot know.)   He complains about the lack of compassion of those people, who had been favored by evolution to have a better life than himself.    But he has himself not the least compassion for the victim of his prank.    It makes me shudder, how by a short video people including myself can get taken in so easily to have sympathy and compassion for someone, who does not deserve it.     

But what saddened me the most was the complete insensitivity and lack of compassion, let alone outrage, elicited by his prank.   On YouTube, there were dozens of comments congratulating him on his hilarious performance.   On the other site, there are several hundred postings discussing his life situation.    Some people just call him a loser who should do something instead of ranting, but some others melted in compassion.   

His pranks were mentioned less than 5 times and the most critical comment was calling him a hypocrite.    It really puzzles me, how the same people, who pity him as a victim of a harsh and ruthless capitalistic society, are not at all taken aback by his own cruelty with his victim.    Is only the prankster a hypocrite or are they also hypocrites?

I am not sure about what is the cause, but it seems that people have become very insensitive to cruelty and moral failures, as long as they are emotional, subtle and without visible damage.    That prank alone may not affect a resilient employee, but if he were already mobbed, maybe it would be adding to the burn-out of the man.    The prankster just cannot know, what damage he is doing.

Maybe the desensitization of being exposed by the media to the worst atrocities and agonies on a daily basis, not only of crime, but also of accidents and natural catastrophes, makes appear emotional cruelties as if they were only trifles.  

I think that many people need to be resensitized to take responsibility for the pain, that they cause others. But they need not only take more responsibility for themselves.  They should also reestablish higher standards in their expectations of others by being much more judgmental in holding others responsible.   Tolerance for unacceptable cruelties is being an indirect accomplice in the cruelty to the victims.    

307. Alleged and Real Control Freaks

Alleged and Real Control Freaks
I have been accused of being a control freak a few times in my life.    Maybe what I am writing in this blog may also give a wrong impression.    I am a rationality freak, but not a control freak.    

A control freak is a person, whose high level of anxiety, fear, paranoia, insecurity drives him to get alleviation and reduction of these feelings by establishing control over his environment and all people in it.   
A control freak can appear to be a nice person, when he either really is in control or believes to be in control, because people of goodwill do him favors or just happen to accidentially do, what he wants.   A control freak becomes a nasty jerk, as soon as he feels out of control and attempts to reestablish it, ruthlessly oblivious or unconcerned of what harm he does to his victims.  

I fear wild animals like bears, I fear male animals using physical force to abuse of my body.   I feel fear, when I stand inside a house during an earthquake, and I would certainly feel fear of any real threat to my life.    Nothing of this gives me any reason to want to control people.    I am lacking the kind of anxiety to be a control freak. 

Rationality is in the core of my identity.  I want to live in an environment controlled by rationality.  But I do not want to fight for rationality, I wish it to just be there without me making any efforts.   

I can be nice and tolerant to anybody, whose brain is wired differently, who is religious, gullible and who believes in any nonsense, no matter if god or homeopathy.    I am polite and I hide my true opinion, but I have compassion for their bad luck of having this dysfunction and delusion wired in their brains.  But they have to be kept at a distance.  These kind of people just do not qualify to be my intellectual equals in a relationship.   It is not possible that I can respect someone like this enough to get involved with.  

It is obvious, that a relationship is doomed, when one partner considers the other as stupid and with a dysfunctional brain.    Therefore a rational person like me can only have a relationship with a truly rational partner.  

As a consequence, I may feel very strong about some topics, not to control someone's thinking, but to find an agreement based upon shared rationality.    I do not like the word control, so I want a relationship guided and determined by rationality and logic.

Also I am very eager to comprehend people's good rational reason for what they do.    If someone's behavior is incomprehensible, I feel uncomfortable, because this gives me the suspicion that he could be a believer and a gullible person, whom I cannot respect, and I feel an urge to restore respect by comprehending his rational reasons.    Therefore I have no wish to be right, I am just as content to be convinced, that I am wrong, as long as I can respect the reasons of the other as rational

To illustrate the difference between my importance of rationality and a control freak, the following is a hypothetical scenario.   It is immediately comprehensible to everybody, whose rational brain enables him to know, that NLP is  pseudoscience and a cult.   

In this scenario, I get in contact with someone, who claims to be an atheist and a skeptic.   Before I really know him well, he tells me, that he just has read his first book about NLP and that he has booked a course to learn more.    When I hear something like this, a flash of disappointment goes immediately through me, and my respect for that man is temporarily damaged, while I wonder, what is wrong with his brain.   

There are four different possible continuations.

1.  I explain, that NLP is pseudoscience, I give him the link to some skeptical articles and I let his rationality do the rest.  He will find out the obvious for himself, which he would find out sooner or later anyhow.   I do not control his thinking, I just give him a hint to avoid a detour to the obvious.

2.  All my explanations about NLP being pseudoscience bounce off him with no effect, as if he were deaf.   He really is a control freak, who grasps at NLP with some urgency, because NLP promises simple tricks how to manipulate people to gain power.    He believes to have found a method of control, that he perceives as too important for his survival in a hostile fear invoking world to allow himself to be deprived of by allowing reasonable doubts.    

Depending on my level of interest in him, I may continue my futile compulsive efforts to point out the facts to him much longer than it would make sense.    Reasoning with him is futile, because as little as NLP does, what it promises, for an anxiety driven control freak already the believe to have found a method to gain control helps him to reduce his anxiety.    So from then on, my respect is damaged and thus is my interest for this man.   
For him, I appear as If I were a control freak attempting to control his thoughts.    For him, agreement or not is of no importance, he wants to gain power by his learning NLP tricks.   He would allow me to disagree with NLP as much as I do, he concedes me tolerance, because what I think it not important, only gaining control over me is.     

3.  I know that it is never good to jump to conclusions.   As soon as I mention, that NLP is pseudoscience, he agrees immediately and explains, that he does not believe in it at all, but that he wants to have some first hand experience about the kind of gullible people, who attend such a course.   He may be writing an article about why quackery attracts people.    So something only appears weird, until I get a rationally convincing explanation.  


To sum it up:  My mindmate is someone, who really is rational, an atheist and a skeptic down to the bone.    Only in this case mutual respect, appreciation and valuation can be maintained.  

6. Tolerance

In the ERCP, Tolerance Cannot be a Substitute for Lacking Compatibility

Many people put a lot of emphasis on tolerance as a method to cope with persons, who differ in some attribute, that they would not accept or want for themselves. It is a way to cope with the world around, with whom I have to deal as a way of surviving between predominantly irrational and selfish people.

In a relationship, tolerance is required, whenever there is not enough compatibility to value each other as persons by respecting and valuing mutually all attributes. When incompatible people get infatuated with each other's body, they attempt the shared denial of incompatibility by tolerance. They same is the case, if people are more driven by an urge to procreate than by any wish to be mentally close to each other. If a man chooses a woman for her health to bear fit offspring and the woman chooses the man as a provider, then their mutual very different roles are already a ditch, that keeps them so far apart, that differences are insignificant enough to be covered with tolerance.

This is the tolerance paradigm for people, who are mutually utilities for the joint urge to procreate. Tolerance enables incompatible partners to use each other, even though they have nothing in common.

The ERCP is a paradigm of compatibility. If people want intellectual intimacy, they need to be compatible. It is irrational to want the closeness of compatibility but choose someone with unacceptable attributes. An ERCP relationship can only be created, when there is so much compatibility, that tolerance is obsolete. As long as tolerance is needed, it would not be the ERCP.

Not all differences cause incompatibilities. Simple differences in tastes or needs as for example, one partner prefers to eat cheese and the other apples is an information to be shared and taken into account in the organisation of life, it is nothing to be tolerated.

Tolerance as an insufficient substitute for compatibility is about everything, where the attribute is an evaluation, a judgement, a conscious choice, especially when the attribute is part of the own identity and the self-esteem.

It is my identity to be a childfree atheist, because enough rationality is hard-wired into my brain.

I have to consider myself with this identity in contact with others from two different perspectives.

From the intersubjective perspective, my brain is one variety, those, whose brain is driven by instinctivity and gullibility have a different variety. I have the right to avoid such people, but not to interfere, discriminate, insult them. This is the tolerance of distance and indifference.

From the subjective perspective, I have the right to my own evaluation and judgement, that it is better to be rational and childfree than to be an irrational religious breeder. I have the right to guide my own personal life by my own judgment.

When a religious breeder contacts me, then the tolerance of distance requires to be polite. It is rational to keep away from such a man. But it is irrational to apply the socially required tolerance and consider his evaluation of religion and breeding as equally valid as mine.

If it is my identity to be proudly rational and therefore considering believing and breeding as irrational, then I might feel compassion or condescension for religious breeders, but never respect.

There cannot rationally be any tolerance of accepting a religious breeder as an equal.

I have the right to disrespect and depreciate a religious breeder, as long as I do not show it to him.

Tolerance leads to a contradiction, when my own evaluation tells me, that one attitude is better than another, while tolerance requires to declare both as equally valid. In my own life, I follow my own judgement. I cannot consider the same person with contempt as a religious believer and with respect as a partner.

I am looking for a compatible partner, where there would be no need for tolerance. I am looking for a partner, who shares the same values and the same evaluations.

Of course, outside the closeness of a relationship, I am not against other forms of tolerance, that are based on egalitarianism as a general guideline. Everybody is entitled to the same right to a decent life, it is the tolerance of mercy, compassion and benevolence instead of discrimination for those, who have had bad luck, like for example disabled people.