212. Situational Power and Dominance

Situational Power and Dominance

Situational power is an important factor enhancing and enabling domination.    The one, who wants to do something, that he can do alone, has more situational power than the one, who wishes to stop him or to be and to do something together.  

In a relationship, one partner has situational power, when

• he loves less.
• he cares less.
• he needs the other less.
• he wishes less to be together.
• he wishes less to share.
• he feels less a bond.
• he is physically stronger.
• he has exclusive access to resources and information.

A person uses situational power in a relationship, when

• he has no basic values, how to treat a partner.
• he has no conscience restraining him.

In nearly all relationships, there is some imbalance in the total situational power, which makes automatically one partner more vulnerable than the other.      
The possession of situational power allows one partner to dominate directly by enforcing the priority of his own needs and indirectly by using the threat of his situational power to extort his selfish needs.   

Examples:
The one, who spends the couple's money, has the situational power to do so.  The other cannot stop him.
The one, who wants to leave, has the situational power to do so, the other has no equal power to hold him back.

A decent man in a bonded committed relationship never uses any situational power, that he has.   Instead he always communicates, in the examples to reach consent about how to spend money and when to be together and when to be apart.

A jerk does, what he wants.  He takes it for granted and he feels entitled to use all situational power, that he has.    He spends the money on himself.    He uses the threat to dump the woman as his method of extortion of his selfish needs.   If that does not work well enough, he does dump her and then offers her to take her back under the condition of her serving his selfish needs thereafter without any hesitation or resistance.  

211. Domination and the Availability of Mates

Domination and the Availability of Mates

Entries 196 and 197 were about the detrimental effect of male dominance upon women. 

Some men have the wish to dominate a woman, some feel entitled to dominate.   Some do not even know, how much they dominate, because they take it for granted, that dominance is the only possible basis of interaction with women.   
Some men dominate, because it is a symptom of a psychological disorder like narcissism.   
Dominance by men could be innate as a part of the hierarchy instinct turned against women, it could be acquired by education and facilitated by their physical ability for coercion or it could be both combined.   

But there cannot be any doubt about this:   Dominance and emotional intelligence are mutually exclusive for the bonding of a devoted monogamous couple.    A man with emotional intelligence does not dominate a woman, but chooses a woman, whom he considers and treats as an equal.    A dominating man lacks emotional intelligence.  

Emotional intelligence is obviously a result of the evolution of the specific human brain, just like rationality.  Both are probably correlated in some way.    Therefore I speculate, that just as breeding or not depends on the relative strength of the procreation instinct compared with the strength of rationality, domination or equality depends on the relative strength of the hierarchy instinct compared with the strength of emotional intelligence.  


In our western society, men are restricted by law in how much they can dominate a woman.    Psychopaths can be emotionally cruel in their domination, because they have no conscience.  Western men, who have the flaw of wanting to dominate, are usually not wishing to tame a shrew, they want the illusion to be good persons.  They do not only want to dominate, but they want their domination also to be accepted. The easiest way for them is finding a woman, who is submissive by being and feeling inferior in some aspect.  

Therefore men with high instinctivity often choose women, with whose body they get infatuated, and who are noticeably inferior by education, status, financial power, and therefore submissive.    Doctors marry nurses, engineers their secretaries, shop manager the cashiers.   They experience it as a very comfortable arrangement.  Such men do not even need to install the women into their inferior role, those women are already used to obedience at work and they continue at home.  

Many western women take their right of equality for granted and refuse to enter relationships of domination.    Also there are lots of men, who cannot offer enough benefits to buy any western woman's acquiescence to be dominated.   Such men get either rejected by western women or the relationships fail, because of their resistance to attempts of domination, which these men are unable to give up.   
This has started the globalization of male dominance.   Just as rich countries as entities dominate poor countries, men from the rich countries dominate women from the poor countries.   
They import women from Asian and eastern European country.  They make a deal with these women, whom they can offer a considerable elevation of their material standard of living.   In return, these men expect docility and submission as gratitude, as paying the price for the deal.   In some of these poor countries, women have been dominated traditionally by the local men, so for them, they just choose between the yoke in poverty and the yoke in affluence.   

As a result, there is a disequilibrium in the availability of mates.   On the low end, all the stupid, uneducated and in some other way undesirable men are left without a mate.  On the high end the educated and intelligent women cannot find a mate, who is adequate, an equal and has emotional intelligence.   
The high-end women are just lonely, but the low end men can become a real nuisance.

210. Non-Breeders Statistically and Historically - 2

Non-Breeders Statistically and Historically - 2

This is the continuation of entry 209, where I mentioned the possibility, that giving birth could trigger the procreation instinct in women, which seems neither to be widespread in general nor as a result of becoming pregnant, as I got from the data on abortion in Wyman's lecture 21.   
In entry 205, I had already mentioned infanticide and abandoning children by choice including the example of Rousseau.   But when I wrote that, I was not yet aware of how widespread this was.   
Again, the lecture 7 of Wyman's course on the topic of Demographic Transition in Europe; Mortality Decline  
http://www.cosmolearning.com/video-lectures/demographic-transition-in-europe-mortality-decline-6751/
gives data, that are surprising.   They show in a very drastic way, how easily people got rid of unwanted progeny even after the birth.   The entire lecture is worth watching or reading. 

Some quotes:

"Infanticide was a very large factor in European demography and the rest of the world, [......] but in Europe it was very important. "

"In Milan, from 1840s to 1860s, one third of all children born to married parents--we're not talking about unmarried situations--were left at foundling homes and in foundling homes the death rate was near 100%. More than half of all the children born to working class parents were left in foundling homes, and almost all the illegitimate children were abandoned and the death rates--it was a form of infanticide, you just gave them to a foundling home, they were taken, basically, no care of, they died. It was out of sight."

I had mentioned Rousseau before and in this lecture, I found an original quote of his: 

"My third child was thus deposited in a foundling home just like the first two, and I did the same with the two following. I had five in all. The arrangement seemed to me so good, so sensible, so appropriate that, if I did not boast of it publicly, it was solely out of regard for their mother."

"Another mechanism was sending out children to nurse with wet nurses and the death rate of wet nurse children was enormously high. So, if parents tried to rear their children, the death rate was about one in six at this time. In eighteenth century France between a half and two-thirds of infants that were sent out to nurse died. Even at a higher death rate were the so called baby farms, in the nineteenth century Europe there were--it's like we call them puppy mills now, they were baby farms, and they took in vast numbers of children presumably to wet nurse, but almost none of them survived."

Those data show clearly, that in those days, there was no majority of dedicated breeders, as society appears to consist of today.    It is obvious, that even giving birth does not elicit automatically the procreation instinct in all women.   
I can think of two explanations, that are not mutually exclusive:   The apparent natural wish of a majority of women in our present time is just a myth and the result of brainwashing, or it is a result of massive natural selection.   If the unwanted progeny of the non-breeders by genetic disposition never reach an age to reproduce due to the high mortality, then their genetic disposition will loose prevalence in the gene pool.  Those breeders, who raise as many children as they can, allow their breeding disposition genes to survive. 

209. Non-Breeders Statistically and Historically - 1

Non-Breeders Statistically and Historically - 1
In entry 205 I was wondering, if being childfree could be a mutation resulting in a recessive gene.    I was simplifying.   
The procreation instinct can be absent or become virulent at three different levels:

• For men and women, before or without ever having been afflicted by an own or the partner's pregnancy
• For women by the hormonal changes at the begin of a pregnancy
• For women by the hormonal effects of giving birth

Childfree means in this entry not to want children and to never have given birth.  Non-breeders include the childfree and people, who get rid of a child after birth, because the do not want to raise children.     

I have just finished watching all 24 lectures of the Yale course: 
Global Problems of Population Growth by Robert Wyman
http://www.cosmolearning.com/courses/global-problems-of-population-growth-287/

Some of the data, that Wyman presents, make me wonder and aware, how much I myself have been brainwashed by the western culture, based upon religion, to believe the myth of a natural urge for maternity in any woman, who would be defined as normal and in the opinion of breeders even as healthy.     

The data from the lecture are clear evidence, that neither the beginning of a pregnancy nor giving birth automatically do trigger a breeding instinct in all women.  

The general attitude of either being childfree or having a strong wish to breed can be attributed to culture and social norms, external circumstances and requirements, that could be stronger then the personal instinctive inclinations or absence thereof, as long as there has not been the own experience of being pregnant.  
 
When I was younger, I considered myself as being very different from all those people around me, who declared breeding as the natural wish and need of every woman.   Maybe this was enhanced by my growing up in the aftermath of the German culture still too much influenced by the glorification of fertility by the Nazis.       

My first readings about evolution and psychobiology reinforced my impression, that everybody would want to breed, and that I alone were some kind of a mutation.  That was years ago, before there was the Internet to find out about like minded people.   When I got in contact on the web with other childfree people I started to wonder, if maybe there were a minority of people with a recessive non-breeding gene as I speculated about in entry 205.   

Since Wyman's lecture I now wonder, how many people in the western society are potentially non-breeders, who would get aware of their inclination in the situation of needing to make a conscious decision.    But the availability of contraception and the many good reasons to postpone procreation without a conscious choice for remaining childfree may just cover the absence of the mythological maternity urge in many women.


According to the myth, having an abortion would cause a woman guilt, remorse, even psychological trauma.   I always thought, that those women, who experience and perceive an abortion as an operation comparable to the removal of a parasite or a cancer, were a minority.    

After watching lecture 21 of Wyman's course on Global Demography of Abortion
http://www.cosmolearning.com/video-lectures/global-demography-of-abortion-6765/
I have to reconsider the myth.    Not only about how many or how few women ever do feel guilty, but also about the reason, why.   
They could feel guilty not because of acting in defiance to their breeding instinct, but because they have been brainwashed by the myth of women's natural urge for maternity.   
The absence of guilt could indicate the absence of the procreation instinct being triggered by hormonal changes at the beginning of pregnancy either in them or in all or most women.  

According to the lecture, abortions are very widespread and very often considered as a normal form of contraception by women having several abortions during their lifetime.    This would not be possible, if the majority of them would have to override an instinct to continue the pregnancy and to overcome guilt.  
The prevalence of abortions is too widespread to be consistent with the myth, that women only have an abortion, if they are forced to do so by external circumstances, their husband or their family.    


Some quotes:

"There's one abortion for every 3.2 live births [.....] Each year about 3% of women in childbearing ages have an abortion, and if you consider a 30 year reproductive lifespan with each woman having a 3% chance each year that's 90% [.....] Basically, for every woman in the world, there's one abortion in her reproductive lifetime."

"when there's an unplanned pregnancy about a quarter of them end in abortion."

"The most interesting case might be Cuba which has one of the highest abortion rates in the world, 78 per 1,000 women per year".
"'so when they get pregnant the go to get an abortion. They talk about it like it's nothing; it's like drinking a glass of water. Some people have problems when they get an abortion but most people don't. Almost always the procedure goes fine.' That's a 17 year old girl after her first abortion."

"Abortion makes a huge difference in the global rate of population growth. As I told you, there's ballpark 75 million increase in the world now. If the abortion rate is about somewhere between 40 and 50 million, that means the rate of world population increase goes up by 75% or something. "

The lecture is worth watching or reading.  

This topic will be continued in another entry.   

208. Psychological Androgynity 2

Psychological Androgynity 2

This is a continuation of entry 206, Psychological Androgynity 1. 
Some more information can be found in lecture 13 of Stephen C Stearns' course about Evolution, Ecology and Behavior
http://www.cosmolearning.com/video-lectures/sexual-selection-6696/

In the species homo sapiens, male breeders compete for the access to and control over the womb of female breeders, who choose the one appearing to have the healthiest genes.   Male breeders are therefore aggressive, they fight and struggle to dominate in hierarchies to become the winner in the competition to get access to the women.   Also they fight to acquire as many resources as possible.    They choose a woman by her healthy body and they buy her acquiescence by spending money on her.
  
Female breeders use their body to seduce the man, whose genes appear promising for healthy offspring.   They are inclined to submit to any outrage, as long as this gets them the best provisions for their progeny.   Sometimes they are even willing to share a powerful and affluent man with another woman.   

Both genders of breeders focus on investing resources into their bodies to attract a mate by physical criteria.   Men spend hours in the gym developing muscles, females spend hours in front of a mirror or in a fashion shop.    Both genders modify their bodies in the weirdest ways, from shaving off hair from faces or legs to piercings and tattoos.   


For people with psychological androgynity, for hypoanimalistic non-breeders, nothing of the above behavior is of any value, benefit or advantage, they have no urge to do it nor a need to receive it.
   

• They cooperate and care for each other.
• They feel and act as equal partners in monogamy.
• They are emotionally and physically faithful.  
• They respect and appreciate each other with an egalitarian basic value. 
• They organize their life by agreements reached by constructive communication. 
• They convince each other rationally by giving evidence.
• They are not bothered about their bodies beyond hygiene and cleanliness.  
• They prefer to invest their time and energy into the improvement of the mind by learning.
• They choose each other as a mate by emotional and intellectual compatibility.

207. Comparing Speculations with Science

Comparing Speculations with Science  

I have finished watching all 36 lectures of the already mentioned course by Stearns. 
http://www.cosmolearning.com/courses/principles-of-evolution-ecology-and-behavior-285/

After speculating so much, I am very interested to get valid information to find out if any scientific research contradicts and refutes my speculations.    While the course supplied a lot of valuable information and a lot of food for thought, I found nothing in the entire course, that has any connection to my core speculation.
As far as I can conclude this, procreation is for Stearns the undisputed purpose of the life of every individual of any species.   The possibility, that the evolution of intelligence could ever override the wish to procreate, is never mentioned.   According to the course, If individuals refrain from procreation, they do it to enable the procreation of the kin or genetically related ingroup members. 

People look at the world influenced by their own basic values and needs.    My idea is the result of my own conscious experience of my lack of a wish to breed.   Stearns has mentioned his own children, so he is of course in favor of procreation and sees the effects of evolution on procreation from the participant's perspective, while I look at it from outside.  

I started my wondering about the intelligence overriding the urge to breed, because too many observable human behaviors do not fit into the evolutionary model, that all behaviors of all people aim directly or indirectly at maximizing fertility.   I cannot think of any rational reason, why my genes should live longer than my individual person lives.   Many other childfree people care just as little about the survival of their genes as I do.   According to the evolutionary paradigm, this conscious indifference to the genes could not exist.    

Stearns' observation of such behaviors have led him to suggest, that the species homo sapiens is stuck in the middle of a transition. 
http://www.cosmolearning.com/video-lectures/22-the-impact-of-evolutionary-thought-on-the-social-sciences-6705/

"That we're stuck in a major evolutionary transition. We're feeling the pain. The pain is caused by the fact that there is a conflict between individual interest and group interest, and that conflict has not been resolved, and the selection mechanisms that have been pushing us in that direction are starting to break down. "

"In a major transition, things that were previously independent fuse into a larger whole and lose their independence. Then units in that larger whole specialize on different functions; they achieve a division of labor. That division of labor has to be stabilized, and it then integrates the new unit and improves performance, in competition with like units. And the cohesive integration, that's needed within the group, requires suppression of intra-group conflict, among previously independent units, so that you can be effective at competing with other similar groups. Often during this process a new system of information transmission will emerge. "

This sounds like a plausible hypothesis, and Stearns as a highly learned professor knows so much more about the subject than I do.   But if I understand it correctly, he means a transition inside the paradigm, that all behavior serves fertility.  

There is a development, that can be called a transition, away from the extended families living on a farm in a village, where the provisions for all basic needs are either produced on the farm or traded with the craftsmen in the neighbourhood.     Progeny was required to help in the labor and to care for the old.
When the survival in a modern society means the dependence on a division of labor in a larger unit, then the transition to this situation also creates the independence from the need to have progeny.   The division of labor includes also pension fonds and professional nursing staff in old people's homes.   Individuals do not depend on having own progeny anymore. 

Stearns' transition from the identity as a member of a small kinship to a larger ingroup unit does not change the identity as a particle in the chain of eternally living genes.  It can explain, why some people repress their instinctive urge to breed as a result of the knowlegde of the ecological and social consequences of the actual excessive population growth on earth.  
But it does not explain the reduction or complete absence of the instinctive urge for the survival of the own genes in childfree people like myself.   This is a transition from the identity of being a particle to the very different identity of being an individual in exchange with other individuals.    It is a recurrent transition limited to the individual level.   As a general transition of the entire species it would the evolutionary dead end of extinction.   

If my speculations in entry 205 were correct, and the wish to breed were a dominant gene, the absence of the wish to breed a recessive gene, then individuals without a wish to breed will continue to exist.   Such a gene could only slowly disappear, when all or most bearer of two such recessive genes would be enabled to remain childfree in accordance with their innate lack of a wish to breed.    As long as some of them breed in spite of their inclinations, the gene will survive.  

Maybe some time in the future, a childfree scientist might start to do research in this direction.  

   

206. Psychological Androgynity 1

Psychological Androgynity 1

Differences between the two genders are mainly a consequence of the differences in the cost of procreation.   In our species, the minimum costs of procreation are a few minutes for a male, 9 months for a female.    This explains not only the differences between the phenotypes, but also between the instinctive urges of female and male breeders.      

Therefore, theoretically, for non-breeders there is no reason to have any difference between males and females.  
Assuming, that the invisible mutation of the urge to breed may have an impact, that is independent of the phenotype of the individual, then theoretically there could be persons with psychological androgynity in male and female bodies.        

I tried in vain to find out by googling, if there is a difference between the words androgynity and androgyny and between androgynous and androgyne.   So I decided to use androgynity and androgynous for a mind, that is determined by all human traits, that are gender neutral, while all traits, that are differential between the genders for the purpose of breeding are absent or underdeveloped.   

I mean psychological androgynity, when I use the word androgynity.  


I took the Bem Sex Role Inventory
http://garote.bdmonkeys.net/bsri.html

My result was: 
41.667 out of 100 masculine points,
57.5 out of 100 feminine points,
54.167 out of 100 androgynous (neutral) points.

I was slightly surprised, because by having an equal lack of interest in children and in competitive sports, I always perceived myself as more psychologically androgynous than this result.    When at a younger age I was annoyed by the disrespect of the predators wanting my female body, I often wished that my body were as androgynous as I felt psychologically.

But the site explains the bias:

"The Bem Sex Role Inventory was developed in 1971 by Dr. Sandra Lipsitz Bem. It characterizes your personality as masculine, feminine, androgynous, or undifferentiated. The BSRI is based on gender stereotypes, so what it's actually measuring is how well you fit into your traditional sex role. Thus, your score may say as much about how our cultural expectations have changed over the last 35 years as it does about your personality."

I cannot know, if androgynity is the absence of gender roles, that are the result of culture or if it is the absence of innate genetic differences serving procreation.   There is also the question, how much cultural gender roles are only acquired and how much they are an expression of instinctive differences in procreation strategies.

So I only speculate, that androgynity and what I define as hypoanimality (entry 67) including a low or absent breeding instinct are somehow correlated.    But I cannot even speculate, if the androgynity could cause the lack of an urge to breed, or if the lack of an urge to breed could cause androgynity, due to gender specific behaviors and traits having become obsolete.  

205. Childfree by Mutation?

Childfree by Mutation?
The instinct triggering sexual activities and the instinct to procreate are not the same.   Animals without an consciousness for consequences are driven by instinctive urges to copulate, and when the offspring appear, this then triggers the instinctive behavior to raise them.  

Humans can be aware of their urges and they can consciously distinguish between the wish to mate for being a couple and the wish to procreate.    Therefore there could be mutations eliminating only the wish to procreate without inhibiting either the sexual instinct nor the physiological ability to breed.  

There is a big difference between the consequences of possible mutations leading to the evolution of a non-breeding phenotype and of a non-breeding disposition in the brain.   
When a mutation impedes a person physically to have offspring, that gene dies with the person and it cannot spread.  

But when a mutation of the disposition in the brain changes the balance of the relative strength of the instinctive urge to breed and the rational comprehension, that life without breeding is preferably for the individual, this does not automatically impede breeding, it only deletes or reduces the wish to breed.   
Men with such a mutation may continue to be promiscuous without any wish to have offspring.  Their instinctive choice of a mate may become different, not guided anymore by the preference of a mate promising healthy offspring but for more personal benefits.    If contraception is not available or fails, they may still breed and spread their mutated genes.   Maybe breeding men are only those, who provide for and raise their offspring, and if they want to spread their genes, they do it in variations of polygynous arrangements.  
All men, who for whatever reason succeed to avoid to care and to provide for their offspring, may not have an urge for procreation in their genes.   
Women with such a mutation may be forced, manipulated or bought to breed without wishing to do so.  

Therefore it is possible, that such a mutation would not get extinct, but would become a recessive gene, that is spreading slowly.   Only when two of those recessive genes are transmitted, the person would become someone, whose conscious choice is the preference to avoid breeding.    But since they are physiologically able to breed, some of them again are handing on their genes by involuntary and accidental breeding for the same reasons as the already mentioned women and men, who first had that mutation.

Maybe that gene already exists and has just never been acknowledged by the mainstream culture, in which breeding is considered as the norm.   

All through known history, there has been infanticide, abandoned children, children delivered to the orphanage, and men knowingly not providing for their progeny.   It seems very plausible, that many of them were non-breeders by the same genetic disposition as the conscious proclaimed non-breeders of today, but their bodies and their ignorance of basic biological facts had got them into a horrible dilemma.    Many of them wanted to be good, responsible people, and yet they faced the choice, whose life was irreversibly destroyed and damaged, that of the progeny or the own life sacrificed for the slavery of raising the unwanted progeny.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau and his Therese had five children and they brought them all to the orphanage.   Rousseau wrote a long book on education, and he is often attacked for what they did.    Today, they would be a couple of childfree intellectuals, because today being childfree is an acceptable and possible lifestyle.      

People with no wish to procreate had no chance to do so without committing crimes, social transgressions or sin in the definition of their religion, until the availability of modern methods of contraception, especially the pill, finally allowed people to refuse breeding and remain decent, responsible people in the eyes of society.    Only when there were socially acceptable methods could it become possible to admit and proclaim the decision to remain childfree and not be punished and marginalised.  

There was also a second effect, the spreading of ideas by the mass media like TV and the Internet.   If only one person feels no wish to breed, and never even hears of any likeminded other, that person may well feel as an defective outsider of society attempting to conform.   But if many people know of each other, then they can much better have the self-confidence to not only accept themselves but also demand to be accepted as different but not defective. 

204. Extreme Winter

Extreme Winter

Stephen C Stearns' course about Evolution, Ecology and Behavior is getting more and more amazing.   I just watched lecture 24 about Climate and the Distribution of Life on Earth.

http://www.cosmolearning.com/video-lectures/climate-and-the-distribution-of-life-on-earth-6708/

This lecture was held in the spring of 2009.    Stearns has made an amazing prediction:

There's a very important spot where water from the Arctic Ocean, coming down from Greenland, is sinking near the Gulf Stream here. And it's one of the real current issues in global warming as to whether or not this point up here or this--actually it's not a point--this whole sheet of sinking water is going to remain stable.

Because if it doesn't remain stable, and this moves south, then the Gulf Stream will get blocked and basically England, France and Spain are going to end up with a climate which is like that of Northern Canada; very quickly. That is something that could happen in a couple of years, if this thing tips.

The distance between Mönchengladbach, where I live, and the North Sea with the Gulf Stream, is less than 200 miles of flat country.   As a consequence, the climate here is usually fairly mild, I remember winters without any snow.   
Now all of a sudden, we had an entire month of snow (pictures in entry 188) and the temperature was around and most of the time below freezing. 
It had not been like this as long as I am living here.  

203. China's Social Progress

China's Social Progress

China has become the world leader in social progress.   As far as I know, so far no other country has done this:
http://www.ctv.ca/CTVNews/World/20110105/china-marriage-database-110105/

The information, who is married, should be published in every country, not only in China.   Such a database cannot protect the wives from being cheated on by jerkish husbands with women, who are aware of the truth.   But it would at least protect all decent people against being tricked by lies into getting involved with a cheater, who pretends to be single or separated.   

Such a database would be especially useful for decent people looking on the web for a partner.  People living in the same community have some chance to know, who is married and who is not.  But in the anonymity of the web, pretending to be single is just too easy.  Such a database would allow decent people to check, if the person is really single, before ever meeting someone.   

China has a bad image in the West for things like the censoring of the Internet.    But who suffers more:

• The Chinese woman, who can find out on the censored Internet, that the man, who wanted to lure her into bed, is married, before she falls into this fatal trap?
• The Western woman, who has the uncensored Internet, but has no way to avoid the emotional trauma to discover that she has started to feel commitment for another woman's husband, while he just used her body?   

202. Women, Men and Money

Women, Men and Money
I read someone's painful ranting and venting about his experience with a gold digging woman.   His infatuation had been strong enough to spend huge amounts of money on her while he hoped for marriage.    But she dumped him after some month.   

According to his subjective account, that woman was certainly selfish and shallow, and by my own interpretation, even possibly a psychopath.   

But I started to wonder, why on earth would a man consciously choose such a woman and why would he so willingly buy her attentions?

Subconsciously and unknowingly, it is obviously his genetic program determining by instinct his behavior like it does with all potential breeders.    His infatuation with her body indicates to him, that his genes approve of her genes, that she appears fit to have healthy offspring as the bearers of his genes.   By spending money on her, he attempts to give evidence, that he can provide for her and her offspring.  

There remains the interesting question, what psychological reasons could motivate such a man to submit so readily and so much to his genetic program, without consciously getting into a painful state of cognitive dissonance between his instinctive urges and his rational judgement of what is wise or foolish.  

Here are my speculation for some possible reasons.  They are not mutually exclusive, it could also be a combination of them:

1.   He could be naive, immature and brainwashed and believe, that all women are only available for those men, who buy their attention with money.   He perceives the market for any woman as an auction:  Who offers the most, gets her.  
2.   He could use his money to compensate for really or assumingly not having to offer anything else or not enough else of immaterial value.
2.1. She could be in some aspect superior, and he knows, that he is no match for her.  But he values his money so much, that he believes it to suffice as a compensation.
2.2. His judgement could be blurred by the halo effect:   Being infatuated with her looks, he overestimates her invisible qualities so much, that he perceives himself as inferior, but believes that he can compensate for it with money.       
2.3.   He could have low self esteem and underestimate his own qualities and believe, that he has only his money to compensate for his assumed own inferiority.
3.   He could be selfish himself, wanting to get as much as he can for as little a price as possible.   For him, paying money subjectively costs him less than making any immaterial sacrifices of any kind, like communicating profoundly, learning how to treat her, changing his own behavior to please her.  
3.1.  He could have enough easily acquired money, so that he subjectively parts easier from his money than he sacrifices his psychological comfort in favor of her immaterial wellbeing.
3.2.  He could not value and appreciate women, not considering them as deserving anything more valuable than his money as would be for personal sacrifices.  


Being aware of all those scenarios, I would be suspicious of any man, if he were too eager to spend money on me.    

If a man asks himself and me the question, what he can do to enhance my emotional and immaterial wellbeing and how he can avoid hurting me, then this question is the most valuable gift, that a man can make me.  It has more value than any material gifts, even if they would cost thousands.   
But If this question does not even occur to a man, then he can keep all his gifts and himself away from me.        

201. Instinctivity, Rationality and Overpopulation

Instinctivity, Rationality and Overpopulation

I have started to watch the videos of the Yale lectures by Stephen C Stearns about Evolution, Ecology and Behavior and I hope to be able to reconsider some of my speculations on the background of those lectures.  
Lecture 11 about Life History Evolution was interesting for the question of the overpopulation of this globe.
Source for video and transcript of the lecture:
http://www.cosmolearning.com/video-lectures/life-history-evolution-6694/

In lecture 11, Stearns explains, how the reproduction rate depends on both genetic predisposition as a result of natural selection and of the conditions of the environment.   He gives the example of the clutch size in a study of kestrels.   He describes, how the number of eggs is genetically the optimum seen over the life span of the parent kestrels, by which they can feed all the young and still stay fit enough to restart breeding the next year.  


The following are my additional thoughts and speculations, only the kestrels are a reference to the lecture.   

This is my short version of world history.

The optimum behavior for breeding depends on two important factors in addition to what Stearns explicitly explained in the lecture:  

• The environment is principally predictable, even though catastrophes can temporarily upset it.
• There is control over and access to the resources available in the environment.  

Kestrels are driven by instinct to optimize their clutch, and the prehistoric ancestors of homo sapiens were also determined by their genetic program to have the optimal number of offspring as an adaptation to the environment.     They had the evolving rationality as an additional survival tool, which allowed them to successfully increase the number of offspring with future fitness.   
During the times of their awakening and evolving intelligence, humans still believed beyond doubt, that their purpose was to procreate, maybe it was justified by some religion, while intelligence served as a powerful tool to enhance procreation.   That tool enabled them to invent farming, animal husbandry, technology, medicine and so on.   The population grew, but the numbers of offspring were still the optimum for the species, as long as humans lived in a more or less predictable environment, and there was still enough space to spread.   

The full strength of the instinctive imperative to breed had already been there, when the evolution of rationality started, else the species would have gone extinct.     But the strength of rationality and intelligence evolved much faster and the gap between the forces of instinct and of rationality over the behavior got smaller.   While rationality was evolving, but continued to be weaker than the instinctive forces, which still determines the imperative to breed for the majority of people, all habitable areas of this globe got populated to the point, where the density started to become a problem, because there were more people than survival resources.  

This had two consequences: 
1.  Under the living condition of dense populations, the evolution continued by enhancing rationality to a new optimum for breeding, which is having less offspring.   Only recently and still only for a fraction of the population, rationality even has reached the breaking point of being strong enough to limit or override the force of the procreation instinct completely.   Childfree people have no urge to breed.   People in rich countries have the confidence, that a few quality offspring suffice for the survival of their genes.  

2.  The strongest and fittest started to ruthlessly compete, fight and kill and to deprive the less fit from their means to survive.    This happens on several levels, inside groups and societies, by war and raids with the neighbours and by colonisation of other continents, and the result is often either genocide, slavery or other exploitation.     
The earth's population grows the fastest in the poor countries of the third world.   There the environment and the people's situation are beyond their control and not predictable.  Therefore they cannot adapt and optimize their procreation rate.   
This is a consequence of the globalisation and of the fatal division of the earth in rich countries having and using capitalistic economic power, and the poor, exploited countries.   The product of the labor in these poor countries is usurped for a fraction of its value in the economy of the consumers.  The majority of the people in these countries cannot survive, no matter how hard and how long they work. 
In acts of pretended altruism, they are saved from starvation by charities and by developmental aid.    They are kept just alive by those christians, who claim that life is a gift from their god, but they exist in a state of such misery, that only christians can justify this by their belief, that all those creatures in agony will get their reward in heaven.  

These poor people too use their intelligence as a tool to survive by any means, but they struggle without having sufficient control over their lives and their circumstances.   Having as many children as they can is logical to them.  They cannot decide to limit the number of their offspring in favor of better fitness of fewer of them, because in their precarious situation, there is nothing for them to reliably expect in future.  Would they restrict the number of their offspring, they would risk, that all of them die young and their genes are lost.  Charity is not a reliable source of survival, as is a decently paid job or owned fertile land, charity is more like a lottery.   The only chance to spread their genes seems to have as many offspring as they can, hoping that some survive by haphazard chance.  


The people in the rich countries need to give up their wasteful affluence, which is only possible by the exploitation of the people in the third world.  The poor people work and produce, and the rich people consume.  Anybody who wants to preserve the globe and stop the overpopulation has to accept the necessity to pay a considerably higher price for coffee, bananas, or t-shirts produced in the poor countries.    

There needs to be a radical change.   People need to accept, that it cannot be justified to consume more than what they produce,  based on a globally fair distribution of labor and the acceptance of the right to the same standard of living for every person on earth.  

I see no other way to solve the problem.   

200. Naturality or Humanity

Naturality or Humanity

I am talking here of naturality and humanity as two life philosophies, as two basic value systems determining different attitudes and behaviors.   

For some people, nature is a kind of a holy cow.   What is natural, is automatically considered as good, as benign, as healthy, just because it is natural.   Some people venerate their Mother Nature as a deity.    The contrary of natural in this understanding is artificial.   Everything artificial is in this thinking automatically bad.

This is irrational.   The rational questions are: 
Which artificial things are beneficial and which are detrimental?   
What ethical paradigm defines humanity as being different from naturality being the blind submission to nature?
 

In my following thoughts, naturality as a philosophy means the acceptance, that whatever happens naturally, as a consequence of natural dynamics, is accepted as good.   Naturality as a reverence to nature means implicitly the acceptance of individual suffering not only as an unavoidable aspect of life, but as a kind of duty in the service of the deity called nature.

• Nature means the priority of the survival of the species over the wellbeing of the individuals. From the subjective perspective of the experienced suffering of the individual, nature is cruel.
• Nature means suffering and pain to all beings, especially in the food chain of carnivores.   
• Nature means the survival of the fittest, not only of humans, but also of the fittest viruses, bacteria, insects, vermins, pests of any kind.   
• Nature is permanent battle between the fittest of all species, and the less fit of all species suffer automatically.
• Nature means that instinct driven urges cause suffering to others.  

Humanity means a different priority:   

• Under the paradigm of true humanity as an ethical imperative, avoidance of individual sufferings has the highest priority, much higher than the survival of any species.    Already living individuals have higher priority than those who will live in the future.   
• Humanity means therefore to conquer nature, where this spares pain, by fighting against all instincts, that lead to the pain of others, and by making wise choices between allowing nature to rule and overriding nature by artificial means of chemical, biological and technological inventions.  
• Humanity means the clear basic value, that non-existence is better than a suffering and painful existence.   This includes for example, that an abortion is more human than forcing a miserable life upon an unwanted child or a child, for whom there is not enough provision.   It also includes the acceptance of the right to end their lives to people, whose life has become too painful for example in the case of an incurable illness.  
• Humanity allows even to contemplate such provocative questions:   What is more cruel, to let a baby die from starvation and disease, or to give just enough charity to the mother, so that the child does not die, but has a life of agony from the lack of all the basics of life, being forced into child labor?    What is more cruel, to give insufficient help to 100 people, who live in agony and misery, or to give sufficient help to 10 and allow the others to die instead of suffering without remedy?   
  These questions concern the basic attitude and are of course independent of the outrage, that the misery in the third world has been caused by the exploitation by the rich nations, who then pretend to do charity, where they have in reality a huge material and moral debt to pay.    See entries 52 and 53 for more about this.    Entries 189, 21 and 57 are also related topics.

Most religions claim, that life has been given by the deity and therefore it has a value in itself, no matter, how much the individual suffers.    This is not human, it is a very cruel approach.   It is especially cruel, when it is applied to justify inflicting sufferings upon others.  

Naturality as the reverence to nature as benign is making it a deity.  By the irrational glorification of nature, naturality has become a kind of religion.  Being truly human requires a rational approach and the absence of religious commands blurring rationality.    
Therefore naturality and humanity are in some important basic values mutually exclusive.

199. Autonomy or Allonomy

Autonomy or Allonomy

In entry 185 I explained the importance of sharing the same commitment governance.   When the two partners of a committed, devoted and bonded couple agree on the same governance, this is an expression of a compatible personality.    That means, that while they are a unit as a couple, they have mental and emotional autonomy from the surrounding society.    They define their relationship by their own needs and attitudes and do not let it be defined by others as would be in allonomy.   

Marriage and divorce are two good examples.  

The allonomous definition of marriage means, that it is installed by the two partners and an institution of society, either religious or administrative.     
The allonomous definition of divorce means, that an institution of society allows the couple to be legally free again.  
Marriage lasts from the ceremony until the declaration of divorce.

By the autonomous definition, marriage starts with the symbolic act of beginning physical intimacy and it lasts until the partners end all contact, which is the autonomous divorce.  
In this definition, there cannot be the question of having physical intimacy before marriage, because physical intimacy automatically is marriage.    This physical marriage is irreversible and cannot be undone, even if it has only be practiced once.   Platonic friendship and having entered physical marriage at any time in the past are mutually exclusive, because platonic friendship by its correct definition means the absence of physical intimacy and not the deactivation of it.    Alleged platonic friendship with alleged exes is polygyny.    By this definition, someone can logically only be in one of two situations:  Either the person is married or he is chaste by not having any physical contact with any woman.   

Of course, this autonomous definition is my personal definition.   The vast majority is guided by the allonomous definition.  
I have been called a prude because of my personal autonomous definition.    Being called a prude by those instinct driven promiscuous animals, whom I despise, were for me a title of honor, would I even value their opinion.   

But I am looking for my mindmate, who shares my autonomous definition of marriage and divorce, for whom this definition is part of his personal commitment governance.  

198. Half a Year of Blogging

Half a Year of Blogging

Where is that lonely man, who has been searching in vain for a woman like me?  
He still has not stumbled upon this blog.   I hope that he has taken the new year resolution to invest more energy in searching.   Santa has not delivered me to his doorstep nor him to mine.   Finding requires searching.    I will not give up.  

197. Infatuation, Dominance, Cruelty

Infatuation, Dominance, Cruelty
This continues entry 195 about cruelty and entry 196 about dominance.  

In entry 195 I described a man's cruelty as continued hurtful treatment for a woman in spite of knowing, that she feels hurt.   

In entry 196 I described domination as a man's usurping onesided privileges and advantages from a non consenting woman by using his innate physical strength or the threat thereof.   Would she consent rationally to let him have, what he wishes, it would not be domination.   Being coerced and intimidated hurts.  

That means, domination is a form of cruelty.    A man with caring love for a woman, for whom cruelty to the beloved woman is a taboo, logically does not dominate her.   He perceives, treats and considers her as an equal.   
Therefore the absence of caring love is the precondition enabling or determining a man's domination.  

A rational woman can avoid to be treated with cruel domination by avoiding to get under the power of a cruel jerk, she attempts to find a man with caring love.  
But if all women were as rational as that and no woman would ever get herself into the ordeal of being dominated, then by natural selection the greater physical strength of men and their ability to dominate would disappear.     Instead they seem to have evolved serving a purpose in the survival of the species, which unfortunately is paid for by the cost of the suffering of the individual. 

While a hypoanimalistic woman can use her brain to avoid dominating men, evolution has blurred the more instinct driven women's judgement by the combination of the procreation instinct and the trap of infatuation.  

Infatuation means a strong attraction of two bodies, while there is no or little other attraction.   If there were an attraction of the mind, the intellect, the personality, then dominating a woman and using her as a utility would be a contradiction to this attraction.    A man's attraction to a woman's intellectual capacities and personality leads to the logical requirement for a man to consider and treat her as an equal.    Only the absence of such an attraction and a considerable infatuation with her body allow a man to logically justify to himself to dominate her.     

A man gets infatuated with a woman's body for his physical needs without feeling caring love for her.   A woman with a breeding urge also gets infatuated, but mainly with some signals from a specific man's body by the instinctive choice of him having the best genes for the prospect of healthy offspring.   

An infatuated man hides his true intentions, he postpones domination and cruelty, until he has his prey trapped under his power.   The woman misinterprets his initial fake caring behavior as if he had true caring love for her, and her own infatuation leads her into the trap.    As soon as the man has control over her, the mask of care falls and the cruel domination starts.     If the woman is a breeder and a man has gained power over a woman, he can use this power to keep her vulnerable and depending by the coercion to procreate.  

There can be the less drastic case, when a woman loves a man, who is only infatuated with her body.   But she is not a breeder or she has not yet been made vulnerable by breeding.    If she only gets aware of his domination after having got involved by mistake, having had the delusion to be loved with care, at least she can end her being exposed to cruelty by ending the relationship. 

Infatuation is a trap for both genders.   A man's infatuation can get him into a lifelong obligation to provide financially for offspring that he never wanted.    But his trap is limited to the legal requirements.    His innate power to choose to dominate allows him to burden all the painful consequences of the fatal initial infatuation upon the woman.    

An infatuated man is a huge risk of suffering for a woman.    A man, who chooses a woman by her personal qualities without being infatuated, is much less of a risk.   

196. Equality or Dominance

Equality or Dominance

The laws of all modern societies proclaim equality for women, because women are mentally and intellectually equal to men.    In many African countries, polygamy is still legal.   But even while equality is prescribed by law, men's greater physical strength gives them one big advantage over women.   I already described it in entry 14. about threat and fear.   

Nearly all men are physically capable to strangle, beat up, rape or mutilate any woman with nothing but their bare hands.    Most women would need a weapon to have even a slight chance to defend themselves or to do any damage to a man.   
But a man does not even need to actually do physical harm to a woman.    Whenever he gets aggressive, angry, raging, just verbally and in his body language, this threatens, intimidates and scares her.    She can never know, how long his self-restraint will last, and when he will turn into a ferocious beast.   

Therefore a man has a choice, that a woman is lacking.    He can decide, if he wants to dominate or to behave as an equal partner.    Once he has a woman under his control, he has the power to force his domination upon her.  

The woman has one choice only, she can stay away from a man, if she knows early enough, that his choice is domination, and if the circumstances allow it, she can leave the dominating man.  But she has no means, no chance, no influence to get equality from a man, who decides to dominate.   Once she is under his control, she is at his mercy.  
If the woman is a breeder, she is even more vulnerable.   Except in modern welfare systems and countries with a very good labor market, a mother of small children depends on the man as a provider, while he does not depend on her.  

This has dire consequences:

1.   A woman, who is trapped by the power of a dominating man, is forced to practice external submission to avoid the risk of serious harm.    Of course, her enforced external submission is not a proof of her inferiority.   
The dominating man has two gigantic flaws in his thinking:
1.1.   He believes that being physically stronger means, that he is also intellectually superior.
1.2.   He believes that her submission is the proof of her inferiority, and in a vicious circle this belief enhances his belief in his justification to dominate.    

He grows into these believes from the role models he sees as a child.
It is tragic for the woman, that the man dominates her by physical strength, but believes to dominate by intellectual superiority.

2.   When someone accepts a compromise as fair, it generally is by meeting half-way between what both would want.    When a man is willing to compromise between his wish to profit from his innate privilege to enforce dominance, and a woman wants equality, then such a compromise would not be equality, but it would still be dominance, only less and in a milder version.    True equality means a man's renunciation of all privileges, that his superior physical strength gives him over the woman.    Many men are not willing to do so, because they are too much driven by instincts, while they do no value the intellectual and emotional benefits of equality.  

3.    Accepting full equality is subjectively in the man's experience the renouncing of the privileges of dominance without getting anything in return.   The woman has no privileges to renounce as her part of the bargain.   He feels like giving alms to the woman, when he gives up some of his innate privileges.    Often he expects to get something in return and the relationship becomes asymmetrical.   While he appears to have accepted equality, in reality he perceives to have bought from her the gratitude, that obliges her to put his needs above hers, and again, there is submission.   It is a subtle and different form of dominance under the disguise of equality.    

4.   The man has been born with the innate power to impose his conditions on a woman for the purpose to get privileges in a relationship.    Therefore his baseline of what is normal, correct and appropriate is not the same as the woman's baseline.    A man is often completely unable to even know, what true equality means for a woman.  
Even in the best of all situations, when a man does agree to be equals, without his having any privileges, many times men and women define and perceive equality as very different.    What a man sincerely defines as equality is in the woman's perception and experience just reduced domination.    What a woman defines as equality, a man perceives it as the woman's attempt to dominate him.    This leads to a lot of disruption.


To sum it up:   I assume, that the more a man is proud of his body and the more he identifies with his physical strength, the higher the risk for a woman to be dominated.    While a man, who identifies with his intellectuality, where he can experience women as equals, is more able to treat a woman as an equal.
Therefore, everything else the same, if there were two men, one a stud and a package of muscles due to spending 10 hours per week at the gym, the other has never seen a gym from inside and spends his 10 hours reading good books, being physically weak but intellectually strong, I would not hesitate one second to choose the intellectual.    I would be prone to trust the intellectual and to be scared of the stud.

195. Cruelty

Cruelty

Men are often driven by their instincts and physical needs to get infatuated with a woman's body.   Then they either are jerks, who consciously manipulate the woman to let them use their body.     Or they are immature or emotional morons (entry 156), who seriously believe themselves to love her.
They tell the woman dozens of times every day, how much they love her, they even do little things for her and buy her gifts.   Only from this behavior, there is no way to find out, if such a man's proclaimed love is caring love or selfish infatuation.

But there is a way to find conclusive evidence for the absence of caring love:   It is cruelty.   

 

Caring love and cruelty are mutually exclusive.
 

A man with caring love is never cruel to his partner.    A cruel man does not feel caring love, but uses a woman as a utility for his selfish needs.

The only realistic method to judge a man is judging him by the worst things that he does. 

The difference between cruelty and painful moments in a relationship is the attitude to and the perception of his partner's pain. 
For the cruel jerk, the pain of his partner is either of no significance, meaningless, indifferent, of no importance to him, or he even enjoys his power to be able to inflict pain on her.   He has no conscience about hurting his partner.
For the caring loving man, it is of paramount importance not to cause pain to his partner, he is very motivated to avoid everything, that would hurt his partner.    Having caused pain to his partner makes him feel unhappy, therefore he is eager to learn, what would cause her pain, before it ever happens. 


Cruelty implies three factors:

• A man's behavior causes a woman to get physically or feel emotionally hurt.
• He can know it.   That means, that he either knows already, what hurts her, or that she gives him feedback about it or that she asks him to stop an action, while he does it.     
• He continues or repeats his behavior.

Cruelty is,

• when a man feels entitled to do something, in spite or defiance of knowing that she feels hurt by his behavior.   
• when a woman gives a man feedback, that his behavior hurts her, and he continues his behavior as if she has never said anything.   
• when a woman gives a man feedback, that his behavior hurts her, and he tells her that it is her flaw and defect, that she feels hurt, and he continues or repeats the same behavior.
• when a man disregards her feedback and denies to take it for serious or to believe her, that she feels hurt, and continues or repeats his behavior.
• when a man commits a transgression, but does not feel guilty and does not earn her forgiving, because he considers the transgression as appropriate according to his depreciation, devaluation and disrespect for her.   
• when a man uses aggression and rage to intimidate the woman to give up her resistance to being the target of his hurtful behavior, and to coerce her to do what causes her pain when doing it.    
• when a man does not react, when the woman asks him to postpone some action and communicate about it.
• when a man refuses the woman's wish to communicate how to prevent hurting her in the future.

An example for cruelty is the public scene in the bus, as given in entry 190.   The man can see the growing pain of embarrassment in the woman's face, when she implores him with growing urgency to stop drawing attention from the spectators nearby.   To continue the scene with the intention to enhance her embarrassment is an act of so much cruelty, that I have no doubt, that this man does not love that unhappy wretch.  


It is not cruelty:

• when a man hurts a woman once by ignorance and is keen and eager to learn, how to never do it again.
• when a man commits a forgivable transgression (cheating is not forgivable) and feels as guilty as she feels hurt and makes all amends and restitutions, until she can forgive him, and he learns how to never repeat this transgression.

Example: A man commits a social blunder due to his lack of knowledge of cultural differences and it is embarrassing for the woman.   But he is eager to communicate about the topic until he has learned how not to repeat the blunder. 


It is obvious, that I do not want ever get near a cruel jerk, but I am aware, that learning how not to hurt each other is a process, that needs a lot of communication.  

194. Valued Partner or Lab Rat?

Valued Partner or Lab Rat?

1.  Knowing each other

To grow together in closeness and become a bonded, devoted and committed couple requires, that both know each other very well.    Based upon mutual appreciation and respect, they learn to know each other by asking questions, by listening to the answers and to all introspection, that is given without hesitation.    When their mutual understanding and evaluation over time is consistent with the experienced behavior, then trust, trustworthiness, reliability and predictability can grow and the relationship will become a safe haven.    Their method to know each other is communication.

A jerk is too bonding-disabled to participate in such a process.   For him, a woman is an inferior being with a limited mind and brain, whom he studies as Skinner studied his lab rats.   Skinner studied lab rats, the jerk studies a dog with benefits, as I have already described in entry 30.   
Knowing the woman to him means to observe her reactions, that he triggers for that purpose.   He probes her, he provokes her, he does anything to her, that he expects to lead to a reaction.    He does not listen to her feedback or her introspection, because he does not value them.   
He misses vital parts of her personality, all her values, attitudes, emotions and how she perceives and experiences him and his way of treating her.   He misses everything, that goes on in her mind, that cannot be observed.
With selective perception, he does not observe all, that is important, only what he likes to get aware to enhance his preconception and prejudices. 
Observed behavior allows many interpretations, and his are biased to what he wants to observe and to believe.
His bias is his wish to justify using her as a utility for his own benefits without any consideration and without having to bother about her needs.  
By not verifying his believes and delusions about her in direct communication, the longer he builds up his subjective impressions, the more distorted they get.  

This way, he will never know, who and how the woman really is.   He will never be able to treat her the way she needs to be treated to be happy with him.


2.  Treating each other

In entry 190 I gave the example of an embarrassing public scene.    The caring bonded guy does not want to hurt his partner by embarrassing her.    He would not only stop talking, when his partner whispers a reminder in his ear, he would also be motivated to learn, what causes her to feel embarrassed, and he would then attempt to avoid doing it, before she even says anything.   He cares for her feelings.  

The jerk is different.   He feels entitled to do and to get, what he wants, without consideration for others.   If his behavior is embarrassing her, he experiences her feedback as a nuisance, and he perceives himself as justified to do some dog training to remodel her.   Instead of stopping the embarrassing behavior as an act of consideration, he repeats it as often and as drastically as he can, for the purpose and expecting that by doing this he could habituate and desensitize her, until she would stop annoying him with her protest against his behavior.  He considers himself to be the one to set the standard of behavior.    When he does not feel embarrassed, then he automatically believes, that there is no reason for her to feel embarrassed.    The purpose of his drastic dog training is making her feel flawed because of feeling embarrassed.  
Instead of changing his behavior as an expression of caring for her, he attempts to change her with no consideration for her sufferings.
 

The caring couple communicates to adapt to each other, taking the other's emotional wellbeing into consideration.
The jerk considers a woman as some kind of raw material, that he can form, mold and emotionally mutilate by any means, no matter how cruel and malicious, until she is the utility fitting his needs perfectly.  
I do not want such a jerk, he is a nightmare for a woman like me.

193. Independence and Interdependence

Independence and Interdependence

Personal independence can be looked at as an innate personality trait of how much or how little independence a person needs to feel comfortable.    It can also be looked at as a description of the amount of entanglement with the social and material surroundings.

There are different areas of life where to be more or less independent:   Independent thinking, independent coping with practical every day life matters, and emotional independence.  

Independence is good, as long as someone can really supply himself with all that he needs without suffering deprivation.    But when interdependence adds quality to life by exchange, then it is preferable.   

Concerning a relationship, it is important that both partners have about the same need for emotional closeness.    I assume, that there is a bell curve.   At one extreme there are those, who are bonding-disabled, near the middle are those, who need a lot of independence, at the other side of the middle are those with the need for interdependence, and at the other extreme are those with the wish for a total fusion, that is not realistic.  

A couple of very independent persons may live peacefully as roommates with benefits, while people with a need for interdependence are those to form bonded, devoted, committed couples perceiving themselves as a unit.    But when one person with the need for independence gets involved with another person with the need for interdependence, this is bound for doom.

As this blog shows, I am an independent thinker.    Also I am very independent in practical matters, because I have accumulated enough survival skills.   Never in my life was I tempted to play the helpless female to instigate a man to do repairs for me.   Whenever necessary, I can be my own electrician, carpenter, computer technician or whatever else.   
But in contrast, emotionally I have a strong need for interdependence with a leaning towards as much fusion as is realistic.   When I am alone, I do not feel independent, but just lonely.  

Unfortunately, men who know me only superficially or who misinterpret and misunderstand my ad, often get a very wrong impression of me.    They jump to the conclusion, that a woman, who is an independent thinker and independent enough to be capable at DIY is also emotionally independent.  
As a consequence, the wrong men are getting interested in me, those who want a roommate with benefits and who assume, that I want the same.    But I do not want that kind, they are a nightmare.  

As I already explained in entry 105, it seems that I am intimidating and scaring off exactly the kind of men, whom I want most, those clingy, needy nice guys, who only feel alive as part of a bonded couple and who would be the perfect match for my own need for emotional interdependence.   

To reject the roommates with benefits is just a nuisance, but intimidating those, whom I am looking for is really tragic.  

Being a needy, clingy nice guy is unfortunately something, that does not correspond to the role model of successful masculinity in mainstream society.   They have very good reasons to be proud of not being jerks and to feel morally superior over those repulsive jerks.   Instead the most valuable men have the lowest self-esteem and that adds to their feeling intimidated by any woman, who appears to be strong and independent.  

Therefore they look for women, who are or who appear helpless enough, so that they can attempt to make themselves needed by doing the DIY jobs for the women.    They believe to only have value to a woman by buying her with services.   They are ignorant, that their emotional neediness and clinginess by itself can be of high value to a woman like me.  

I am using the words clingy and needy, even though they may be a bit stronger than what I mean.   I know, that they can in the extreme mean pathological behavior, when there is no balance between the needs of both partners.   Clinginess and neediness are only good, as long as the partner feels appreciated and loved.   When he feels annoyed and suffocating, then it is pathological, and of course I do not wish for it neither on the giving nor on the receiving side.    The limit of acceptable neediness is the reciprocal comfort for both, and this is a question of compatibility and of agreement.

The jerk's lack of needing a woman gives him the freedom to degrade and use her and discard her without hesitation.   The nice guy's neediness is the best guaranty, that he will treat her with care, consideration and responsibility.    So in the worst case, a too clingy nice guy is less detrimental than a jerk.   I just attempt to choose the risk, and suffocating under too much love is better than feeling pain by a jerk lacking caring love.   

While google mostly shows pages devaluing clinging altogether, I found one a bit more positive:

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/06/health/06depe.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1

"At least in the short run, dependent traits seemed to buffer the relationships in times of crisis, the authors suggest. Afraid of losing the relationship, “individuals high on dependency may actually behave in a more positive way to their partner, like being more complying, being more loving,” said Bénédicte Lowyck, "

"“But it is this love dependency that is the most adaptive,” Dr. Pincus said. “These are people that form very strong attachments,"

192. Protocol and Paradigm

Protocol and Paradigm

When someone sends information in the form of electrical impulses through a wire, and someone else at the other end wants to receive it in a understandable form, they both need to use the same protocol of converting the information, like TCP/IP, HTTP or SMTP.

Successful human direct interaction also needs to be guided by both using the same protocol.    In this case, the protocol is derived from their shared relationship paradigm.    

The relationship paradigm is the definition of the specific relationship based upon basic values, identity, needs, morals, attitudes, goals.    The relationship protocol are all behavioral rules derived from the paradigm, all obligations, requirements and entitlements.    The protocol rules the own behavior and also the expectations of how the partner will behave.    The protocol creates trust and predictability.   The protocol takes the individuality of both partners into account.  
Example:   The paradigm defines, what is a transgression and what is not.   The protocol defines the restrictions of specific behaviors to avoid transgression and how to earn forgiveness, if a transgression has occurred.   

While there are many possible relationship paradigms, when considering external circumstances, there is a preference for the paradigm, that fulfills most needs at the least emotional cost.    Therefore people cannot know the preferred relationship paradigm of another person, as long as they do not know that person very well. 
Each partner can have his own paradigm, even if it is implicit.   A protocol is an agreement and therefore a couple can only have an explicit protocol.    Behavior derived from the own implicit paradigm as an assumption of how to best treat the partner is not a protocol.  

People make a fundamental mistake, when they assume, that by entering a relationship, there is automatically an implicit consent about the paradigm of their relationship.    Beyond maybe the traditional marriage paradigm, that is prescribed by social norms and religion, most of the times a couple enters a relationship by both having implicit incompatible paradigms without being aware of it.   Instead having a protocol, they make wrong assumptions about how to treat each other.   This is usually the doom of the relationship.  

When a woman enters a relationship assuming it to be based upon the commitment paradigm, while for the man it is something like for example the male dominance paradigm, friends with benefits paradigm, polygyny paradigm, power struggle paradigm, then the woman is bound to experience a lot of pain.   

Therefore it is of paramount importance, that both partners agree explicitly on both the paradigm and the protocol of their future relationship, before getting involved.  


I am defining my own relationship paradigm as the egalitarian rational commitment, because it consists of three subparadigms for the identity, mutual valuation and communication method:

The commitment paradigm defines the identity of the partners as both perceiving themselves as a part of a bonded, devoted and sharing unit and not as to singles under the same roof. 
The egalitarian paradigm defines the evaluation of the other's equal rights as an appreciated partner in cooperation.
The rational paradigm defines the importance of constructive communication to solve all problems until an agreement is rationally convincing to both.   

I have already explained all this in detail in previous entries.  

191. Weird Internet Contacts - 1

Weird Internet Contacts - 1

I had been in contact with someone in France.   He even had a picture in his profile.   He looked like an average guy.   When I asked him about his profession, he was quite evasive.   It had something to do with people.   In the next mail, he was helping people.   But as I insisted to know more, he finally admitted the truth.   He was a catholic priest..........   I am still wondering, what exactly were his intentions to contact an atheistic woman several hundred kilometers away.   

190. Helplessness or Influence

Helplessness or Influence

I need a relationship to be a safe haven, and a safe haven to me is an emotional shelter, where I am never made to feel as helpless as a leaf in an autumn storm.    Situations, where others force unpleasant events upon people, are a part of life and often they cannot be avoided.   Therefore it is of paramount importance to keep the helplessness of being coerced out of a relationship.    I need influence on everything, that happens to me as part of a relationship.   

Influence is not domination nor is it control over the other, influence is not onesided but reciprocal, it means being allowed to participate in shared decisions on how to handle issues. 
Influence means, that what a partner does to me is inside the limits of a fair balance of giving and receiving, it means, that inside these limits all I have to do is tell, what I need and what hurts and disturbs me, and the other acts in consideration.   Influence means, that I do not have to defend myself against outrageous domination, that I am not pulled into a power struggle nor that I need to fend off coercions.

Influence means, that there is a considerate reaction, whenever I ask someone to do something or to stop or to refrain from doing something. 
The considerate reaction can be to just comply or to find an agreement for the issue by constructive communication.    Compliance means the motivation to comply, even if forgetting it sometimes.    Not reacting is denying influence.

There are two major ways, how a man can make a woman feel helpless by denying her any influence on his behavior: 
1.  By disrespect and not taking her for serious, by disregarding and ignoring her wish, not reacting just as if she had not said anything.  
2.  By behaving like a child with ODD (Oppositional Defiance Disorder), that means by doing deliberately the exact contrary of what she asked for. 

Examples:
1.  In entry 133 I already gave the example of the correspondent, who sent me a dozen emails full of gibberish from a translator in spite of my protest.    With a bit of the benefit of doubt, this can be defined as a non-malignant case of the man being so pleased with the translator as a toy, that he disregarded my advice and my annoyance with the gibberish, and it was only an act of disrespect and of taking me not serious enough.  
Influence would have meant, that telling him just once not to send me gibberish from the translator would have sufficed to make him stop doing it. 

2.  This example is more drastic.   A couple sits in a bus, where several people are sitting near enough to overhear their entire conversation.   At some moment, the woman gets aware, that the conversation is getting a bit too private for others to be allowed to listen. 
She therefore whispers a warning in his ear and she expects the man to postpone further discussion of private matters, until they are alone.    A decent and mature man would comply immediately.    This is the kind of influence, that I wish to have in a relationship.  
But the jerk with the adult version of ODD reacts to her discreet whispering by protesting, that nobody listens, loud enough to draw attention.   When she repeats her whispered suggestion to be quiet with some more urgency, his reply, that they were not talking about anything private, is again loud enough to be heard by everyone. 
After a few more repetitions of such sequences everybody stares at a very embarrassed woman and it has become a public scene.    Such a guy is not just a jerk, he is a cruel and malignant jerk with some psychopathic tendencies.    He uses the power of the circumstances to get her into the helpless situation of either being driven into a public scene or having her private matters discussed on front of strangers.  

A relationship with such a jerk would be a nightmare.   My mindmate will be someone, who concedes me influence on how he treats me, who protects our privacy and who avoids embarrassment and public scenes.    
I described in entry 178 the importance to spend an engagement phase together before getting involved.    During that time I want to find out, if the man allows me to influence him to change his behavior, whenever I feel hurt.    If I cannot influence him, then there will be no relationship. 

189. Rice

189.   Rice
I really like this web page:  http://www.freerice.com
It is a site, where people can improve their knowledge of several subjects, and thus they bring traffic to the page.   The sponsors donate rice to hungry people, 10 grains for every correct answer, at 48 grains per gram.    It helped me to learn some English vocabulary, my actual favorite topic there are famous paintings.   
More info in this video:   http://www.wfp.org/videos/freerice-reaches-bangladesh

The people, who live and starve now, need food, there is no doubt, and I am far from being a cynic about it.   But fact is also, that people are lacking food partly because the population of this planet is growing faster than both the production of food and any political development towards more justice and more fairness in the distribution.   
In poor countries, people often have a dozen starving children in ill health, doing child labor instead of attending school.    If there were only 2 children in a family, their parents may be able to feed them and send them to school.  
But this disadvantageous fertility is not only due to cultural traditions, the couples also lack the means and often the knowledge how to avoid pregnancies.

Donating rice alleviates the immediate needs.   But seen on a long term basis, donating any means for family planning would be at least as important as food.   It is nice to answer 4800 questions correctly and to know, that some people get a kilo of rice.    Maybe there should be an alternative of also being able to contribute to the donation of means for family planning.   Instead of 10 grains of rice per correct answer, it could be 10 minutes of any method of contraception, 4320 correct answers would make it a month.   

Bangladesh as is mentioned in the video is a good example of the urgency of the problem.   The country is very low.   If the level of the ocean would rise because of the melting of ice on the poles, then considerable parts of the country will disappear under water.   Where will the growing population move too?
If giving rice to people encourages them to produce more children, then what is humanitarian in the moment is adding to the catastrophe in the future.    Rice should be given with priority to those people, who in return are willing to limit their fertility.