Judgement, Tolerance, Projection, Indifference in Reaction to the Force of Instincts
I suspect that the relative strength of instinctivity and rationality determines or influences, in combination with other factors, how people cope with differences between their own attitudes and those of others, if their reaction is judgement, tolerance, projection or indifference.
As an example, the instinct to eat as much high calorie food as was available and possible was an advantage to be fit in an environment, where food was plenty at some times of the year, and scarce at others. Today, that same instinct causes obesity and lack of fitness. Rationality causes the awareness for the necessity to reduce eating to a healthy level.
People perceive and notice the urge to overeat in themselves and in others, and react with an conscious attitude to this urge.
People with high instinctivity and low rationality get fat, and most probably, they might avoid thinking about it at all, accept it as a fate and are not bothered to have any critical thoughts about their eating habits or those of others.
Someone with low instinctivity and low rationality get not fat, but they also are just not bothered. They are probably just indifferent and not interested.
Someone with low instinctivity and high rationality, who is fully aware, that obesity is not only a health risk but costs a lot of money to society, can be rightly judgemental of the costly obese. They do not overeat, they do not cause the costs, but they are obliged to pay for the obese as a member of the health insurance.
But those, whose instinctivity and rationality are about equal, both at least of medium strength, are permanently struggling between the rational knowledge of the necessity to resist eating, and the urge to eat, whatever is near their mouth. If they would judge their own strong instincts as bad and stupid, they would feel bad about themselves, and that would cause them cognitive dissonance.
Instead they have two options, tolerance or projection. If they catch themselves too often in the weakness of eating too much, as do those, who alternate between overeating and dieting, then they have to acknowledge their tendencies. They solve this by just generally evaluating overeating with tolerance. This kind of tolerance can even be an expression of condescension. While the person struggling successfully to keep the weight in healthy limits, expresses tolerance for those, who are obese, this is a way of expressing pity with inferior others, who lack the same amount of self-control.
Those, who are maybe just that bit more rational, so they can control their weight to their own satisfaction by an endless struggle, might project their weakness upon others. They might criticize harshly every person, whom they see enjoying a savory meal, as an overeater, while ignorant, whether the person is really hungry from hard labor or not. That projection is part of the denial, how much they are driven themselves by the overeating instinct, that they do not like in themselves.
So both, tolerance and projection, are strategies to feel better by noticing really or allegedly their own unpleasant instinctive urges in others. The tolerant one feels in victory over his urges, the projecting one is in denial of having them.
In entry 6, I made the point, that I am looking for someone similar to me, not someone attempting to cover incompatibility with tolerance. Now I add, that I am suspicious of tolerance, as much as of projection and indifference, even when someone proclaims to share my values and attitudes. Only when someone explicitly judges something as not acceptable, not for himself and not for others, beyond tolerance, as a general statement about his attitudes, then I can at least assume, that he is not hiding his own instinctivity.
If someone is tolerant about values, attitudes, opinions, that are incompatible with his own, instead of declaring his mental distance, this to me is a big red flag. I do not trust anybody, who has double standards. When someone does no consider something as correct for himself, then it is suspicious, if he tolerates it as correct in others.
I illustrated this with eating as an example. But it is the same with promiscuity. I have more trust in a man, who explicitly declares, that his own human dignity is based upon his rationality and low instinctivity, and who would never copulate like a stray dog. If he would declare, that he tolerates promiscuity in others as normal and natural, but it is not his own habit, because of personal reasons like lack of time, opportunity, fear of illness etc, that is not the mindmate for me, because his attitude of tolerance is an expression of his instinctivity. His lack of indulging in promiscuity in spite of an positive attitude towards it makes him incompatible.
Somebody's behavior is more or less determined by his attitudes, and some behavior allows quite correct conclusions of the underlying attitude. But the absence of the indicating behavior does not automatically mean, that the attitude is not there and will cause the unwanted behavior at another time.
