542. The Fallacy Of Utilitarian Compensation Without Agreement

542.   The Fallacy Of Utilitarian Compensation Without Agreement

This continues entry 541.  

Two persons, of whom one calculates the total costs and benefits by one calculation, while the other considers pain and pleasure as independent, are a mismatch with tragic consequences.   Their basic attitudes concerning harming and hurting are incompatible.

Whenever a person is principally willing to control and restrict the own behavior for the purpose of not risking to destroy the relationship by impeding the partner's happiness, there are two options.   These option differ fundamentally in the very disparate attitude towards what constitutes happiness or unhappiness.  

• Option 1:  Happiness is defined as the difference between being hurt and being pampered, it is calculated as pleasure provided minus pain inflicted.   The more a man feels entitled to hurt a woman for the benefit of his own pleasures, the more he compensates for this by providing real or ascribed pleasures to the woman. 
  This is demonstrated in the plot of the classical Hollywood couple, where the man feels entitled to cheat, as long as he buys enough diamonds and fur coats to the wife, whose acquiescence to his transgressions can be thus bought. 
   
• Option 2:  Happiness is defined as the absence of unhappiness caused by harming and hurting behavior.   A man intending to keep a woman needs to focus all his efforts on not making her unhappy, and this requires for him to know or to learn, how to avoid hurting her.   Not being hurt is the most important ingredient of being happy.  
  As long as he does not hurt her, the man does not need to do anything else to please her.   
  In this option, transgressions can never be compensated for.   Not forgiven transgressions destroy the relationship.   Acquiescence with transgressions is not available, only forgiveness earned by the transgressor's genuine and sincere guilt, contrition, amends and full recognition of his obligation to never repeat the transgression.  

When both partners are a match concerning the preferred option, each of the options can work for them.

But conflicts are unavoidable, whenever one person - usually the man - applies option 1 upon a woman needing option 2.  

In this case, a spiral of deterioration is automatically initiated, when the woman feels hurt by the man's specific behaviors.   She defines and experiences as transgressions, what he feels entitled to do.    Without even any agreement as to what are transgressions, they are a mismatch, and the spiral of deterioration is the logical consequence.  
It starts, when he usurps, coerces or enforces his own advantages and privileges from and upon the disagreeing woman, feeling entitled to them.    She experiences being hurt for his selfish benefits as abuse, but he disagrees.   

Getting aware of her disagreement and resistance are for him no sufficient reasons to stop his transgressions.   Nevertheless he does not want to risk driving her away, so while he refuses to renounce the benefits gained by the transgression, he instead attempts to eliminate her unwelcome reactions to his behavior by any form of compensation, which is easier for him than changing his behavior.   
Believing that pleasing her enough would suffice to be able to continue his transgressions, he bends backwards in doing and overdoing things for her, which he believes to be sufficient to please her.       
But this does not work as he expects and as he feels it to be his due.   She continues to feel hurt, because he continues his hurting behavior and his commodifying attitude of feeling entitled to hurt her.   Nothing he does and tries has any effect, as long as he does not give up the commodification and the hurting.   
The next step of deterioration is his getting angry and frustrated for not getting the expected appreciation of and gratitude for what he does for her.   In his subjective experience, he is paying for her acquiescence to how he treats her, but she does not deliver the goods.    She does not feel any gratitude, because she clearly distinguishes between what someone does for the real and sole purpose of pleasing her and what someone merely does for the purpose of buying her submission to being hurt.    This purpose devalues anything of what he does for her, no matter how much she would enjoy it otherwise.          
Yet he believes to have paid and thus he feels justified to continue transgressing.   This is another turn of the spiral of deterioration.   Wanting nothing except the termination of being hurt and abused, every new or repeated transgressions makes her more unhappy, completely unimpressed by his unasked for compensations.  All the man's intensified efforts to compensate are in vain, making him more and more angry and even feeling hurt himself. 


A deal is only a deal between (at least) two persons agreeing.    When someone wants an items owned by his neighbor, throwing any amount of money at his neighbor does not make it a deal to buy the item, as long as the neighbor refuses to sell.    

It is the same with the compensation:  It would only be a deal with the partner's agreement.   But what one person wishes and wants does not suffice to make it a deal.    A woman's acquiescence with being hurt cannot be bought from her with not matter what pampering and unasked for compensatory pleasures, if her acquiescence is not available for sale.    

541. The Distinction Between Utilitarianism And Commodification

541.  The Distinction Between Utilitarianism And Commodification

I am not very learned about the standard philosophical theories.   My paradigm of a rationally based commitment of two egalitarians as presented in this blog is the result of extensive pondering over my own relationship needs.   
I just discovered, that my own commitment paradigm coincides a lot with the philosophical theory called Utilitarianism.        

http://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utilitarianism

"Utilitarianism is a theory in philosophy about right and wrong actions. It says that the morally best action is the one that makes the most overall happiness or "utility" (usefulness). This is not limited to the happiness caused by a single action but also includes the happiness of all people involved and all future consequences."

"Bentham wrote about this idea with the words "The greatest good for the greatest number", but did not use the word utilitarianism. It was Mill, a follower of Bentham's ideas, who named the idea."

There are two ways of calculating the total costs and benefits.

• Pleasures and pains are all put together in one overall calculation. 
  This principle is accepted and lived by those people, who consider exposing oneself deliberately to serious hardships for the purpose of earning pleasures as an option.   Extreme sports are an example.
   
• Based upon the reasons, why the impact of suffering is comparatively much stronger than that of missed and renounced pleasures, both are considered separately and independently. 
  This calculation accommodates my own inclinations, which I consider as important to be shared with a mindmate.

1.  Limitations of the application of the utilitarian principle

Applying the utilitarian principle to maximize the happiness of a couple has limitations.   If these limitations are ignored, the possible benefits of the utilitarian principle are reversed into a situation even worse than that of two persons basing their interactions upon bartering and bargaining.  

1.1.  Every utilitarian decision how to behave requires the correct knowledge of the other's subjective perception and experience of this behavior depending upon individual differences of sensitivity, endurance, resilience and needs.   

The utilitarian principle only works for both partners, when

• shared decisions are based upon a correct assessment of the impact of every decision upon both.
• each partner's independent decisions are as valid as if shared, because the assumptions about the impact upon the partner are correct.  
• people are a match concerning their evaluation of the meaning and magnitude of the impact of specific behaviors.  

1.2. Haphazard people with very different individual needs and situations applying the utilitarian principle upon their shared decisions cannot expect this to lead to a fair balance of giving and receiving.
But the subjective experience of justice due to a fair balance is one important factor in what makes a relationship stable and durable.   

Therefore only two persons being a match in their needs, priorities and sensitivities are prone and able to have the combination of both, the benefits added by the utilitarian method of shared decisions and the overall long-term balance of giving and receiving.

This requires to focus upon the careful choice of a suitable and compatible partner as a matching criterion of paramount importance.    The attempt to enhance happiness by utilitarian behavior fails with a mismatch. 

To sum it up:  
The more two partners are compatible and a good match, the more the utilitarian principle can enhance happiness for both of them.   Otherwise the relationship is doomed as either a never ending battle over unresolvable conflicts or as an asymmetrical situation, where one has the power to benefit and the other has the disadvantages.   
The more there is for example a discrepancy between a man's instinctive urge to use a female body and the woman's emotional needs for a committed safe haven, the more the utilitarian principle is a onesided hazard for the woman.  


2.   The baseline of wellbeing

The neutral feeling of the absence of both pan and pleasure is the logical baseline, the state of homeostasis, of being at ease.    People can experience this baseline as sufficient wellbeing without missing anything, as long as they are not aware of its existence.   

The difference between suffering pain or displeasure and the baseline is much more drastic and significant than the difference between the baseline of homeostasis and pleasure.  

Example 1:   When air does not contain any olfactory stimulating content, this is neutral.  People would feel perfectly fine, if there were never anything to smell.    

Being exposed to stink is worse than to be deprived of fragrance.   Someone exposed to an equal mixture of stink and fragrance would most probably prefer to have none rather than both.
Without knowledge and previous experience of the fragrance of any specific flower like a rose, nobody would be attracted to walk over to a bush of roses for the pleasure of smelling them.

Example 2:   Silence is the neutral base line, suffering from noise is worse than only lacking the pleasure of hearing the favorite music.  
Someone exposed simultaneously to the same loudness of an electrical drill and of his favorite music would most probably prefer both to end.  

Someone can only actively choose a specific music for the pleasure of listening, if one has discovered the pleasure by having heard it at least once before.   

Habituation effects the prolonged exposure to pleasure and to pain or discomfort, but with different long-term consequences.  While habituation just reduces the perceived stimulation by what initially was a strong pleasure, the habituation to lasting or repeated pain, displeasure and discomfort often results in harmed health.  

 

I personally include the neutral experience of neither suffering nor enjoying as the baseline in my definition of human rights.  

• It cannot be justified to impose harm, displeasure or discomfort upon others.   If there is a purpose considered worth to be earned by suffering, it is only justifiable as a personal choice.      
  
• Nobody is entitled to have pleasures, if the price is paid by another's sufferings.  

3.   My understanding of utilitarian commitment

For me, utilitarian commitment includes the Epicurean principle of the priority of not harming and not to be harmed.  I perceive suffering by being harmed and hurt, both physically and emotionally, as much more drastic than pleasures missed, renounced or deprived of.

Based upon the reciprocity with a mindmate being a match, I am willing to be guided by the following utilitarian behavior:

• Renouncing and abstaining from a small pleasure, whenever this results in the partner's much bigger benefits.
• Suffering small pain or displeasure, whenever this results is sparing the partner a much bigger harm, pain or displeasure.  

When a man is guided by these two principles, this is an indication of his being an egalitarian partner.


4.  The distinction between utilitarianism and commodification

But I refuse to accept the sacrifice of suffering any pain, displeasure or discomfort, as long as this only serves to give or enhance the partner's mere pleasure.   This is out of proportion.   Maintaining the baseline of neither pain nor pleasure is more justified.   

When a man expects and demands a disagreeing woman to suffer for his pleasures, this indicates his attitude to commodify women.

When a man uses any power and advantage to coerce and force a resisting woman to suffer for his pleasures, this is active commodification and abuse.