737. Abuse Is An Attitude And Not Merely A Behavior

737.  Abuse Is An Attitude And Not Merely A Behavior

When a man abuses a woman as if she were a mere toilet for his body waste, his method to gain access may differ while the abusive attitude is the same.    The following study connects two of the methods, the use financial power to pay self-abusing prostitutes and the use of physical power to rape and to coerce.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/08/150831163847.htm

"Men who buy sex have less empathy for women in prostitution than men who don't buy sex and are more likely to report having committed rape and other acts of sexual aggression, according to a new study. The study ...... indicates that the perspective of sex buyers has similarities to that of sexual aggressors.

The research .......also found that men who buy sex are more likely to report having committed rape and other aggressive sexual acts.

The study of 101 men in the Boston area who buy sex and 101 men who do not indicates that sex buyers' perspectives are similar to those of sexually coercive men.

 "Our findings indicate that men who buy sex share certain key characteristics with men who are at risk for committing sexual aggression," said Malamuth, ....."Both groups tend to have a preference for impersonal sex, a fear of rejection by women, a history of having committed sexually aggressive acts and a hostile masculine self-identification. "

In other studies, a lower level of empathy among men has been associated with sexual aggression toward women.

Whether prostitution is a job or sexual abuse has long been debated. The new findings support the view that prostitution is more like sexual abuse.

Malamuth said the study confirmed the predictive ability of many of the risk factors for sexual aggression he has studied for the past 35 years. His Confluence Model characterizes men who are at higher risk for committing sexual aggression. It emphasizes several key risk factors, including antisocial behavior, a preference for impersonal sex, treating sex more as a sport than as part of an intimate relationship, and "hostile masculinity," which includes traits such as a narcissistic personality, hostility toward women and a desire to have power over women."

736. Apistevist

736.   Apistevist

When attempting to use the precisest label for my complete freedom from any religious belief, I used the word APISTIA.   But when describing myself as apistic this caused confusion because apis is the Latin word for bee.   

Today I found the suitable word to label myself:

I am an apistevist.    

735. Research Concerning Differing Identities

735.  Research Concerning Differing Identities

In several previous entries I had been speculating about the differences between the identity of individuals compared with that of what I called particles.   The motivation for specific behaviors depends upon this identity.

1. Rational persons with an identity as individuals:   Perceiving to have a limited life span ending at the moment of death motivates and restricts the behavior to pursuing a fair and balanced exchange with other individuals.  
2. Persons with an identify as being mere particles of something bigger and higher than their own selves suffer from and are afflicted by the impact of a combination of instincts and belief systems.  This makes them prone to sacrifice the own personal wellbeing in favor of enabling future effects beyond the own death.   

This study has been finding differences between 'brain persons' and 'heart persons'.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/05/150520114307.htm

"Whether people locate their sense of self in the brain or the heart can have a major influence on people's decision-making, according to a new study by management and business experts."

"People with an independent self-construal tend to assert the autonomous nature of the self, realize their internal attributes and influence their environment. In pursuit of these self-relevant goals, these people often engage in thoughts, conversations and behaviors that are conceptually related to the brain. In contrast, people with an interdependent self-construal tend to be part of a group, maintain harmonious relationships and adjust to others. In pursuit of these self-relevant goals, these people often engage in thoughts, conversations and behaviors that are conceptually related not only to the brain, but also to the heart."

""These results suggest that where people locate the self might be a notable characteristic that shapes people's psychological processes and decision-making," said Obodaru. "Consequently, there may be great value in better understanding the antecedents and consequences of being a 'brain person' or a 'heart person.'""

My own speculations were derived from wondering about the distinction between breeders and non-breeders.   I consider breeders to be particles, while individuals have no reason to breed. 
The study does not refer directly to breeding without refuting my speculation:

"In the seventh study, participants' perceived location of the self influenced their judgments of controversial medical issues such as the legal definition of death and abortion legislation."

734. Deserved Consequences Of Polygamy

734.  Deserved Consequences Of Polygamy
 

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/04/150428141954.htm

 "Polygamy increases the risk of heart disease by more than 4-fold, reveals research presented at the Asian Pacific Society of Cardiology Congress 2015 (APSC 2015) by Dr Amin Daoulah, a cardiologist at the King Faisal Specialist Hospital and Research Centre in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia."

"patients referred for coronary angiography at 5 hospitals in Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates."

"The 687 married men in the study had an average age of 59 years and 56% had diabetes, 57% had hypertension and 45% had a past history of CAD. Around two-thirds of the men had one wife (68%) while 19% had 2 wives, 10% had 3 wives and 3% had 4 wives."

While there is no hope that consideration for women would ever suffice to influence such men towards opting for a monogamous life, maybe the own health may for some men be a reason to refrain from polygamy....

733. Motivation For Behavior: The Difference Between Deficits And Benefits

733.  Motivation For Behavior:  The Difference Between Deficits And Benefits

I value rationality as one distinctive and superior quality, by which human individuals differ from instinct driven animals.  This is a premise, which many people do not share with me.   I am fully aware that those, who value being guided and determined by unconscious instincts and inclinations more than by rationality, cannot and will not agree with the following application of rationality on how to live.      

As I myself am both a non-breeder and non-religious, both are for me expression of the same rationality.   As a member of a non-breeders' group, I asked some puzzled question to religious non-breeders.    
In the entries 656. The Placebo Church  and 441. An Ingenious Self-Deception I have already expressed my wondering about the weird Unitarian Universalist placebo church.   My question to a member thereof concerning what needs and deficits were met, ended as an impasse.  

I did not get an answer, I did not even succeed to convey my question.   The exchange has inspired the following thoughts.

 

A rational person has an awareness for the importance of evaluating behaviors and actions by the consequences and by comparing them with alternative options for its causes and reasons.

1.  One important factor is the baseline.   Behavior improving the subjective wellbeing can have one or both of these effects:  It either restores the baseline to the neutral state of neither pleasure nor displeasure, or it adds pleasure above this baseline.  
This is an important distinction, because I consider only this baseline of not suffering as a human right, while seeking pleasure can only be justified when nobody else is harmed or taken advantage of.  

2.   People, whose behavior is caused by a deficit, often get additional benefits above the baseline.   Sometimes they consciously only recognize the benefits as if gaining these were the original purpose of the behavior.   They are unaware or in denial that the initial purpose was restoring the baseline.   

3.   Another factor is the experience of cognitive dissonance, when people want to be more rational than they really are.  They want to consider themselves as rationally seeking benefits and not as if they were helpless robots succumbing to urges.   The denial of urges and deficits is a method to avoid experiencing cognitive dissonance.

4.   There are different kind of subjectively perceived deficits.   Deficits can be innate or acquired, they can be physical or cognitive.   Rational behavior requires thinking about all relevant factors and about the long-term consequences before coping with the perceived deficit.   Just following the urge is often irrational.   

 

A rational way of life requires people to scrutinize carefully all their inclinations to behave.   For this purpose they ask themselves several questions.   The ones in the not comprehensive following list are important

• Which is my baseline? 
• Do I only get benefits or are there needs, deficits, urges, wishes, discontentment, dishomeostasis hidden behind the experienced benefits?
• What would happen, if I resist the inclination to this behavior?
• What alternative behaviors are there?   

When interactive behavior includes reciprocal impacts by and upon others, rational persons apply these questions to others as much as upon themselves.   Not only the choice between respect and disrespect depends upon this, but also the choice between supporting and refusing to become a victim, between continuing the interaction and avoiding the person.

A few examples:

1.  Food
 

When a hungry, not obese person eats, this is rational.
When a not hungry but also not-obese eats something for the pleasure of the taste, it is unnecessary but not irrational.  
But when an obese person eats because of boredom, stress or a similar reason, then this is irrational.

2.  Alcoholism as an addiction
 

2.1.  There is no physical or real need for drinking any alcohol at all.   Not drinking is completely rational behavior. 
2.2.  When someone drinks restricted quantities of alcoholic beverages with sufficient intervals in between, this can be be considered as rationally enjoying the taste.  
2.3.  But in the case of someone feeling an urge for alcohol intake to reach the baseline, then this is an addiction.  
In the case of denial, the addict claims to drink for pleasure and does not recognize and acknowledge the urge.   He is not aware of the irrationality of his drinking.    
2.4.  An alcoholic having asked and answered the questions can admit, that his urge to drink alcohol needs an approach, which is anything between self-control and therapy, but not drinking. 


When irrational behaviors are reinforced or even instilled by a social norm, they become an even more devastating problem.   This is unfortunate for the many people, whose life would be better without acquired, harmful urges.   

There are special dynamics at work.  People are trapped, because they are allowed to consciously experience some benefits.  These benefits do not suffice to rationally justify the amount of sacrifices, which are required.   But unconsciously these people also experience the additional relief of some urge, of which they are consciously in complete denial.   This denial impedes them from considering and attempting other, more rational methods to deal with the urges.  
The urges instilled by the social norm lead to behaviors, which override any healthy individualistic approach towards living in a balance of giving and receiving in the exchange with the social environment.   By these social norms, people are deformed towards willingly allowing to be exploited and taken advantage of while being mistaken as being important and useful.   

These victims are not aware that the social norm serves only the interest of those, who use their power, influence and greed to usurp more such advantages. 

Two of these instilled behaviors are breeding and religious behaviors.  Breeding and religion have one aspect in common with alcoholism.   There are enough non-drinkers, non-breeders and non-religious people as evidence of the existence of alternatives.

3.  Breeding
 

3.1.  In modern western societies and even in some others too, there is no individual need for breeding.   Not breeding is a completely rational behavior. 
3.2.  Under some limited circumstances in the past and in some remote places, the survival of old people depended and depends on raising children.   These people have no need to belief in alleged benefits of breeding, they are succumbing to a necessity.  
3.3.  But someone feeling an urge to breed only for reaching the baseline has a serious problem, like an addict.    
As children cannot be undone, once the mistake was made, breeders are usually in denial of any remorse.  They insist that breeding has brought them benefits.   They do not recognize and acknowledge to have succumbed to an instinctive or instilled urge.   They remain unaware of the irrationality of breeding.     
3.4.  While breeders are consciously in denial, they implicitly often show a glimpse of belated rationality, when they stop further breeding after the first child.   But this is not a conscious change to rationality concerning breeding. 

4.  Religion

4.1.  A rational way of life is not deranged by any religious behavior.   A rational, responsible and considerate treatment of others requires rationality and the absence of any religious behaviors.   No rational person is religious.   No religious person is rational.
Religion manifests itself by observable religious behaviors, which not only include personal sacrifices of money, time and comfort, but even worse it also determines how others are treated.   

Weird ritualistic body movements only impact one person.   But often religion can cause as much damage as an alcohol addiction.     When someone wastes the family money on church donations and his time at the church service instead of with his partner, he inflicts damage on others for irrational reasons. 
Worse are those, who transgress, acquire religious forgiveness and feel free to continue transgressing.   A man, who by following his polygamous religion copulates with other women, deeply hurts his monogamous partner who experiences this as cheating. 
4.2.  Religious behavior is an expression of a belief, which can never rationally be justified.   What is based upon science and evidence, is not a belief.    Only pretending by outwardly imitated religious behavior can sometimes be rational self-defense, when needed for self-preservation.   
4.3.  Religious people's denial is extreme.   I have repeatedly asked religious people, which urges, deficits and experienced dishomeostasis causes them to be religious.   Asking this questions seems futile.  They just seem not to understand.  They enthuse about all their emotional benefits and even feel offended, when I keep on asking about the deficits.  These deficits are the core of what makes them religious and distinguishes them from rational people.     
4.4.  Some religious people overcome their denial.   When they finally get rational, the only possible reaction is to free themselves of all the religious beliefs.   But while remaining a believer, no religious person will ever admit, that they feel urges towards merely reaching a baseline of basic wellbeing, which rational non-religious people already have without any religion.      

Therefore, breeding and religion are as irrational as alcohol addiction, the only real difference is the social norm, which encourages breeding and religion, while alcoholism is considered deviant.

732. How Men Could Cope With Their Physiological Urges Without Disrespecting Women

732.   How Men Could Cope With Their Physiological Urges Without Disrespecting Women

This continues entry 702. The Male NoFap Movement Brings No Benefit For Women, which seems to have been misunderstood.    So I add some clarification:

An unpartnered man, who respects women as humans with a brain and a personality, behaves following these guidelines: 

He recognizes the risk of making himself a nuisance to women and the necessity to avoid this.   He accepts to prevent causing any harm to women and to his own ability to respect woman.   He never copulates like an alley dog, not by payed abuse nor by taking advantage of the consent of women without self-respect.   His need to cope with his recurrent physiological tensions requires a non-abusive method to maintain his homeostasis.

This method is the unrestricted use of his hand but with the clear cognitive attitude and goal of this being a merely mechanical way of cleansing.  
He is motivated to not jeopardize his respectful attitude towards women.   Therefore he avoids anything, which would desensitize him and which would trick his subconscious mind to automatically confound female bodies as toilets for his body waste.   
He distinguishes cognitively between mechanical cleansing and physical intimacy as a facet of a longterm monogamous bonded attachment.  

Therefore he never looks at pornography.  
 

Pornography has been made by abusing real women.  The customer of pornography is mislead towards the cognitive pseudo-justification and trivialization of watching women apparently enjoying copulation.  He avoids cognitive dissonance by the complete denial, that abused and disgusted women have only feigned and pretended in front of a camera, what appeals to the animal in him.  

The realistic quality of photos and movies tricks the male mind to confuse the combination of his manipulations while merely watching as if he himself had also experienced the performance of what he does not recognize as abuse.   The result of habitual exposure is a fatal desensitization and subconsciously learning and enhancing the automatic and spontaneous degradation of women as objects.   

Exaggerated male urges for female bodies have evolved over millions of years.   Photography only exists since 200 years.  Therefore a man needing mechanical relief can perform this without pornography.  

He never fantasizes about any really existing woman.  

Alley dog copulation without longterm emotional attachment and respect for a woman's brain and personality are mutually exclusive.  
When a man's animal instincts make him feel the urge to copulate like an alley dog, his choice of subsequent behavior makes a big difference only for the targeted woman.   If a man approaches her suggesting the physical abuse of her body, this informs her of his disrespect.   If he only abuses her in his fantasy while finding solitary relief, she usually does not even know it.  
But for the man's subconscious mind in both cases the experience is similar.  It is the successful and pleasurably rewarded degradation of a woman's body as a toilet.   Thus his respect for her person is damaged in both cases, no matter if she has agreed to real abuse or if her agreement was only a part of his fantasy.   

Only the woman, who is approached, can show her indignation and adjust her behavior towards him.   In the case of fantasized abuse, the targeted woman is impeded from appropriate reactions by the ignorance of his unnoticed disrespect.   While due to her unawareness of his hidden degradation and insult she continues to be friendly to an unworthy man, his subconscious mind is prone to misinterpret her lack of any indignation as consent or even encouragement.   

The side effect hereof is the deformation of his expectations and his accompanying loss of respect for women.  Instead of acknowledging all degradation and objectification of women as an outrage, he gets mislead to consider the indignation of women with self-respect as a defect in comparison with too many women appearing to him as if not bothered. As the result of this desensitization he considers only those women, who seem to comply with their own objectification, as healthy and appealing.    

Preserving the ability to respect women requires to avoid this effect.   

Any man, who disagrees with these guidelines, does not respect women.  

731. Could Alley Dogs Be Lured To Use Oxytocin?

731.   Could Alley Dogs Be Lured To Use Oxytocin?

I am a realist.  I have no hope that those men, who are inclined to copulate like alley dogs, would ever be sufficiently motivated to fight against this devastating urge by nothing other than consideration for their wives' or partners' emotional needs.    Such men perceive monogamous attachment not as a precondition for happiness, but as a rejected restriction on behaving as ruthless animals.  

But maybe there is a trick towards improving such men:   As is known, alcohol brings out the worst in men, including lowering the threshold towards cheating.   But after drinking too much, men also risk consequences for themselves like getting caught and heavily punished when driving.     Even those men not bothered in the least by the risk of cheating may well be inclined to do anything to avoid the unwanted consequences of noticeable drunk behavior.
   

As an attempt to fight the signs of alcohol intoxication, men may even be sufficiently desperate to resort to taking oxytocin.   

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/02/150223164442.htm

"Oxytocin, sometimes referred to as the 'love' or 'cuddle' hormone, has a legendary status in popular culture due to its vital role in social and sexual behaviour and long-term bonding."

"Now researchers from the University of Sydney and the University of Regensburg have discovered it also has a remarkable influence on the intoxicating effect of alcohol,"

"When the researchers infused oxytocin into the brains of rats which were then given alcohol it prevented the drunken lack of coordination caused by the alcohol."

"The researchers demonstrated that oxytocin prevents alcohol from accessing specific sites in the brain that cause alcohol's intoxicating effects, sites known as delta-subunit GABA-A receptors."

"This 'sobering-up' effect of oxytocin has yet to be shown in humans but the researchers plan to conduct these studies in the near future."

"It's worth noting that oxytocin can't save you from being arrested while driving home from the pub."

"Some people might worry a drug which decreases your level of intoxication could encourage you to drink more. As it turns out, separate experiments conducted by the researchers and other groups have shown that taking oxytocin actually reduces alcohol consumption and craving in both rats and humans."

"Their findings could see the development of new oxytocin-based treatments for alcohol-use disorders that target this mechanism."

It is highly improbable that ever any promiscuous man would take oxytocin for nothing else except for the explicit purpose of enhancing his underdeveloped emotional attachment to his partner.  

Yet taking it to reduce the noticeable effects of alcohol may have an unplanned side effect to the advantage of women:  When coming home while still under the effect of oxytocin, a man's emotional attachment to his partner may be enhanced and even his inclination to cheat may be reduced.  

This could result as the first time in history, that a man's consumption of alcohol would be beneficial for women.  

730. Research Concerning The Distinction Between Alley Dogs And Nice Guys

730.  Research Concerning The Distinction Between Alley Dogs And Nice Guys

In previous entries I have been speculating about the observed strong distinction between annoying predators and nice considerate guys. 

Long ago, while still being ignorant of evolutionary effects, I naively thought most men to be nice guys, and the predators to be sick exceptions.   I attributed being approached by too many disgusting men as an envisaged target for abuse as bad luck.   

Then I learned the sad reality from evolutionary biology and evolutionary psychology.   Predators were and are those most successful in forcing procreation upon women.   Because there also were some decent nice guys, I started to speculate about what then seemed the most plausible, which is a continuous scale of instinctivity between two extremes.     Yet following also my admittedly biased inclinations derived from my personal experiences, I compared the two extremes mostly as if there were a dichotomy.   Alley dogs, whom I loathe, at one extreme, and those nice guys, who are suitable as a partner, at the other extreme, seemed to be the most recognizable.  

The following research confirms, that I was not completely wrong in my bias towards the dichotomy.   

Stay or stray? Evidence for alternative mating strategy phenotypes in both men and women
Rafael Wlodarski , John Manning , R. I. M. Dunbar
http://rsbl.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/11/2/20140977

"In all comparative analyses, humans always fall on the borderline between obligate monogamy and polygamy. Here, we use behavioural indices (sociosexuality) and anatomical indices (prenatal testosterone exposure indexed by 2D : 4D digit ratio) from three human populations to show that this may be because there are two distinct phenotypes in both sexes. While males are more promiscuous and display higher prenatal testosterone exposure than females overall, our analyses also suggest that the within-sex variation of these variables is best described by two underlying mixture models, suggesting the presence of two phenotypes with a monogamous/promiscuous ratio that slightly favours monogamy in females and promiscuity in males."

"The extent to which any one individual pursues a short-term mating strategy (‘unrestricted’ strategy involving promiscuous mating with multiple partners) or a long-term mating strategy (‘restricted’ strategy favouring the formation of exclusive and extended pair-bonds) has been referred to as their ‘sociosexual orientation’"

"Although these two strategies could well just be opposite ends of the same continuum, it has sometimes been assumed (albeit without any real evidence) that these represent two distinct male phenotypes: those that pursue a more promiscuous, unrestricted mating strategy (‘stray’) and those that focus on investing more heavily in their offspring in long-term relationships (‘stay’) ......  Although individual differences in female mating strategies have sometimes been noted in the literature ....., the possibility that women might also exhibit contrasting mating strategies has received considerably less attention."

"The SOI-R indexes an individual's psychological degree of sexual promiscuity on a continuum running from restricted (monogamous) to unrestricted (promiscuous). The 2D : 4D ratio is an anatomical marker for fetal testosterone exposure and testosterone receptor-site density ....., and reflects the level of prenatal testosterone effects in the adult phenotype ..... Across primates, 2D : 4D ratio correlates with mating system ..... and provides a biological marker for mating strategy."

"Modelling confirmed the existence of two phenotypes within each sex, one of low (restricted) sociosexuality and the other of high (unrestricted) sociosexuality. High-sociosexuality males make up a slightly larger proportion of the male distribution in each case, and low-sociosexuality females make up a slightly larger proportion of the female distributions."

The 2D:4D ratio is calculated by dividing the length of the index finger of the right hand by the length of the ring finger of the right hand. A longer index finger will result in a ratio higher than 1, while a longer ring finger will result in a ratio of less than 1
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digit_ratio

729. Research Concerning Women's Evolutionary Plight

729.  Research Concerning Women's Evolutionary Plight

"Imagine the following scenario: a woman and a man are having a conversation. She is interested in the conversation, and is friendly, smiling and warm. He interprets her behaviour as sexual interest.

Or maybe: a man is sexually attracted to a woman he has just met, and signals this in various ways. She thinks that he is just being friendly."

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/01/150129094120.htm

When I was young, I again and again experienced a slightly different variety of the above scenario.  

I wanted conversation, either only or at least extensively for a long time before even considering anything more.   Being still naive I projected upon men the same needs, wishes and interests as are my own.  

But my mistake was limited to being theoretical.  Soon after the initiation of interaction, men's behavior became so clearly a nuisance, that it could not be mistaken for being merely friendly.

My own behavior showed very clearly, that I wanted to be taken for serious, to talk about cultural, intellectual topics the same way as men do between themselves.  I was not flirtatious, I was purposefully dressed in an anti-sexy way, which should have discouraged any misinterpretation.  

But I had no chance against the obnoxious male behavior. It did not appear like a misperception.  I experienced it more like behavior triggered automatically by nothing more than merely being in the presence of a woman.  This was enough to bring out the worst in men, to make them superficial, flirtatious, seductive and to deactivate any ability for serious conversation and communication.  

I suffered doubly.   I suffered from the degradation and objectification by being mistaken as prey, and I suffered from being deprived of fulfilling my own great need for intellectual exchange. 

The more women are superficial, uneducated and stupid, the more they feel flattered when being approached as prey.  Such women may not experience the nuisance the same way as I did.   But for educated and intelligent women, it is a serious plight. 

In those days, I had no clue, why I was treated as if I were nothing better than a brainless body.   Today, science and the availability of information on the web allow women and men to gain awareness of such misperceptions and misunderstandings.   

"In most areas of psychology, there is little to no difference between genders: mental capacity, intellectual achievements, food preferences -- men and women are all more or less the same. But when it comes to reproduction and challenges related to finding a sexual partner, there are suddenly differences to be found.

A man's ability to reproduce is all about seizing every opportunity. He has to spend both money and time on courtship, which still may not lead to sex. But it costs even more to not try, because then he won't be able to reproduce.

A woman can have sex with multiple men over a short period of time without producing any more children. So for men, it is a low-risk, potentially high-reward situation for men to have sex with women whenever the opportunity presents itself.

On the other hand, the cost is potentially great for a woman if she thinks that a man is more sexually interested than she is. A woman risks pregnancy, birth, nursing and raising the child, as well as lost oppotunities to reproduce with others. Across thousands of generations, women's psychology has evolved to set the bar higher, which means they need much clearer signals than men before they consider sex."

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/01/150129094120.htm

Awareness for those differences is needed as a first step, but it does no suffice to change women's plight.   Needed is the recognition, that only a fair balance between giving and receiving can improve the situation of women.   

Men need to learn, that instead of demanding and pursuing sexual homeostasis as if it were an entitlement, they have to offer in return the full meeting of women's non-physical, cognitive and emotional needs.    

Women have no chance to get this without men's insight and cooperation.

728. Disadvantaged Religious People

728.   Disadvantaged Religious People

Something is wrong with people, who believe in the existence of a deity, whose existence can neither be proven nor disproved and who nevertheless allow this belief govern their life.   Depending on the point of view, these believers are either extremely stupid or have a partially dysfunctional brain.

The following study indicates, that taking the bible literally is a hindrance to successful higher education:

Social Context and College Completion in the United States:
The Role of Congregational Biblical Literalism

http://spx.sagepub.com/content/early/2015/01/01/0731121414559522.full.pdf?ijkey=kziE9jf5LEBody7&keytype=finite

"The proportion college graduates for individual biblical literalists (0.24) is about half that of their non-literalist counterparts (0.48)"

This difference compares religious people, who only differ in how much the take the bible literally.  I wonder about the difference between religious and nonreligious people.  

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Would one instinct be absent, individuals would suffer less:

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

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

726. Recent Harvest

726.  Recent Harvest

725. Objectification Of Women Gets Scientific Attention

725.   Objectification Of Women Gets Scientific Attention

I appreciate that the problem of the objectification of women gets into the focus of research.  There cannot be any improvement of this women's plight, unless men recognize objectification not only as a serious problem.  Any change also requires men to accept it as a task not possible without men's collaboration:

"According to the popular feminist Objectification Theory, women of most cultures are seen as sexual objects that are there for the pleasure of men's sexual desires. Examples of such conduct include men's visibly scrutinizing a woman's figure or making comments about her body parts, giving whistles or cat calls, sexual harassment, unwanted sexual advances or sexual assault. The media also play a role in these practices when they depict women as mere sexual objects. These experiences contribute to some women's developing mental health problems, such as eating disorders, depressive symptoms and substance abuse problems.

To study how women cope with such sexually oppressive experiences, Szymanski and Feltman studied the responses to an online questionnaire of 270 young adult heterosexual undergraduate women from a university in the Southeastern region of the US.
Their findings show that young women experience increased psychological distress when they are being sexually objectified. Women with low resilience are especially vulnerable, and tend to internalize such behavior. Some women feel confused and shameful, and reason that their own inferiority is the cause of such bad experiences. They therefore blame themselves, rather than the perpetrators, and this causes psychological distress.

Szymanski and Feltman surmise that resilient women are more successful at managing adverse experiences because they are able to cope and adapt. They can manage stress and rise above disadvantage. Resilience is both a style of personal functioning and a way in which people ably adapt to stressful situations. "Resilient women may see gender-related oppressive experiences as challenges -- rather than barriers -- that can be overcome," says Szymanski."

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/08/140806094838.htm

"To sexually objectify a woman is to focus on her body in terms of how it can provide sexual pleasure rather than viewing her as a complete human being with thoughts and feelings. While objectification has long been considered a problem in the media, how does it affect individual romantic relationships? New research finds that more objectification of a female partner's body is related to higher incidents of sexual pressure and coercion."

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/08/140821141612.htm

724. The Hierarchy Instinct: Research On Competitiveness

724.  The Hierarchy Instinct: Research On Competitiveness

I have been speculating before, that instinctivity is a significant trait distinguishing individuals.  By Instinctivity I am referring to animal instincts, which also influence human behavior.    The hierarchy instinct is one aspect thereof.   Competitiveness is a trait, competition an behavior, both are the noticeable expressions of the invisible hierarchy instinct.

There are some research results showing and explaining by evolutionary mechanisms the variability of the level of competitiveness:

"Virtually all organisms in the living world compete with members of their own species. However, individuals differ strongly in how much they invest into their competitive ability. Some individuals are highly competitive and eager to get access to high-quality resources, while others seem to avoid competition, instead making prudent use of the lower-quality resources that are left over for them. Moreover, the degree of competitiveness in animal and human societies seems to fluctuate considerably over time. A new study sheds some new light on these findings."

"If not too much is at stake, that is, if high-competitive individuals acquire only slightly better resources than low-competitive individuals, evolution leads to the stable coexistence of two types of individuals: one type does not invest into competition at all and is content with lower-quality resources, and a second type that invest an appreciable (but not maximal) part of their energy into being competitive. If much is at stake, such coexistence does not occur. Instead, the model predicts cyclical changes in competitive ability over time. "

"However, also in humans there is huge diversity in competitiveness, and individuals with highest competitive ability often seem least prudent in the exploitation of their resources. It is therefore tempting to speculate that the external stimulation of competitiveness by societal pressure, which is analogous to the stimulation of competitiveness by the female preferences in our model, can lead to such a wastage of resources that our future survival is threatened."

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/10/141029084021.htm

723. Political Preferences And Innate Tendencies

723.   Political Preferences And Innate Tendencies

In some earlier entry I speculated that the strength of the hierarchy instinct could determine, if people would lean towards politics in favor of either social differences and stratification or of equality.  

Lately I found two studies, which point towards the general assumption, that political preference are indeed connected with innate tendencies and not merely acquired.

"A growing body of evidence shows that physiological responses and deep-seated psychology are at the core of political differences, the researchers say in the latest issue of the journal Behavioral and Brain Sciences

"Politics might not be in our souls, but it probably is in our DNA," says the article written by political scientists John Hibbing and Kevin Smith of UNL and John Alford of Rice University."

"Using eye-tracking equipment and skin conductance detectors, the three researchers have observed that conservatives tend to have more intense reactions to negative stimuli, such as photos of people eating worms, burning houses or maggot-infested wounds."

"Combining their own results with similar findings from other researchers around the world, the team proposes that this so-called "negativity bias" may be a common factor that helps define the difference between conservatives, with their emphasis on stability and order, and liberals, with their emphasis on progress and innovation."

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/07/140731145935.htm

"A new study reveals that people find the smell of others with similar political opinions to be attractive, suggesting that one of the reasons why so many spouses share similar political views is because they were initially and subconsciously attracted to each other's body odor.

During the study, 146 participants rated the attractiveness of the body odor of unknown strong liberals and strong conservatives, without ever seeing the individuals whose smells they were evaluating."

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/09/140915120805.htm

722. Until Death Do Us Part

722.  Until Death Do Us Part

"Archaeologists have uncovered a trove of relics and remains at Chapel of St Morrell in Leicestershire. Some relationships last a lifetime -- and archaeologists have discovered that they can last even longer after unearthing two skeletons at a lost chapel in Leicestershire that have been holding hands for 700 years."

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/09/140918091224.htm

More info:

http://ulasnews.wordpress.com/2014/09/16/hallatons-lost-chapel/

Here is another picture of a couple buried together:

http://www.dograt.com/2007/02/09/eternal-embrace/

I found no information concerning the ages of the dead couples.  Without a need to be converted into trees like the mythological Baucis and Philemon, I want to find a mindmate to grow old together, and it were an ideal to also die at the same time.  

721. Research: The Personality Of Alley Dogs

721.   Research:  The Personality Of Alley Dogs

I have been speculating several times in previous entries that the general individual level and strength of instinctivity and the magnitude of the male urge to behave as copulating alley dogs objectifying and abusing women could be a personality trait distributed along a bell curve and also that the observable net power of the instinctive behavior were the absolute power of the instincts modified by the rationally derived amount of self-control.  

I just read about some research results which seem to point in this direction: 

"Can aspects of personality help explain a predilection towards risky sexual behaviors in developing adolescents? Researchers approached this question by surveying middle adolescents of various personality types. The three most common personality types found across cultures and age groups are undercontrollers (extroverted, disagreeable, unconscientiousness, open to new experiences), overcontrollers (agreeable, conscientious, introverted, emotionally unstable), and resilients (agreeable, conscientious, open to experiences, extraverted, emotionally stable)."

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/09/140905113909.htm

720. The Evolutionary Purchasability Of Women By Alpha Males

720.  The Evolutionary Purchasability Of Women By Alpha Males

I have profiles on many matchmaking sites.    One such profile I made on a site apparently according to its name just another site for finding a serious relationship.   
When I found out, that this was just a secondary name for a site catering for extremely rich men, my first impulse was to delete the profile.  On second thought I decided that I do not want to exclude any chance to find an intelligent and educated man, only because of him having too much money.  
I am not a gold digger, I am the contrary.  My best match would be someone in modest circumstances.  I feel most comfortable and at ease with a frugal lifestyle.   I prefer hostels over luxury hotels, I prefer a picnic with purchases from a supermarket over a luxury restaurant.   
I am aware of the conflicts to expect with a rich man.   I would not want to feel a beggar when accommodating his needs by partaking in his luxury standard of living.    But I also would have no right to demand him to sacrifice the comforts of his accustomed luxury.   

So while I would not initiate contact with men, who present themselves as rich, I had the curiosity to have a look at the profiles.   I also have a profile on another site from the same company using the same software, but aiming at seniors of indifferent affluence.   When running a search I noticed a considerable difference between the men's accepted age for a match between the two sites.  On the general site, my age is often accepted, on the rich men's site, I am more often than not too old.

This vague observation made me curious to take a more exact look at this difference.  I made a search for men of 65 on both sites.   While I did not limit the search geographically, most of the profiles were from the USA.   

Then I entered the age requirements of the first 50 profiles from each of the two sites into a spreadsheet.   

The result:  

The rich men want on average a woman between 22.98 years and 5.14 years younger than themselves.   The men with any income want on average a woman between 15.3 years younger and 2.98 years older.  

Of course there can be factors other than wealth contributing to the cause of this difference.    But as the differences appear nevertheless really drastic, this made me wonder about how to interpret it.  

Does this difference merely represent wishes and a subjectively felt entitlement of rich men considering themselves as alpha males?   Or are these men's aspirations and claims derived from previous experiences of success with very much younger women?  

I googled and found this:

"When analyzing first marriages, men on the Forbes list married women who were on average younger than the average difference for similar weddings across the US population (7.01 years younger versus 4.1 years younger"
"When analyzing remarriages of the very wealth men, they tied the knot with women who were on average an astonishing 22.32 years younger than them."
http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/homo-consumericus/201306/very-wealthy-men-marry-much-younger-women

Of course I cannot know, how many of these men will find a woman as young as what they would prefer, but generally seen it is once more at least a sad indication, how much evolution has a grip upon people's subconscious choices.   

Instead of being rationally able to appreciate the value of an egalitarian companionship with a woman of a similar age, men strive to be or to appear as alpha males and foolish purchasable women choose them.

719. Could Evolution Lead Towards Softening The Plight Of Women?

719.   Could Evolution Lead Towards Softening The Plight Of Women?

Seen from a woman's perspective, testosterone brings out the worst in men.    But there could be hope for a better world for women in the future, even though it may take a long time.     

According to this study:
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/08/140801171114.htm
it seems that during more recent phases of evolution the male level of testosterone has been slightly dwindling.   

If this evolutionary trend continues, at some time in the distant future, the testosterone level may be so far reduced, that there no longer will be any of those horrible instinct driven, women abusing alley dogs.    When testosterone will have lost its destructive power, the kind of men, who presently are only a pleasant, nice and kind minority, will then be the majority.  

But with the speed suggested in the study, it will probably take many hundreds of thousands of years, until men will no longer abuse women.    .   

"Scientists have shown that human skulls changed in ways that indicate a lowering of testosterone levels at around the same time that culture was blossoming. Heavy brows were out, rounder heads were in. Technological innovation, making art and rapid cultural exchange probably came at the same time that we developed a more cooperative temperament by dialing back aggression with lower testosterone levels."
"Modern humans appear in the fossil record about 200,000 years ago, but it was only about 50,000 years ago that making art and advanced tools became widespread.
A new study appearing Aug. 1 in the journal Current Anthropology finds that human skulls changed in ways that indicate a lowering of testosterone levels at around the same time that culture was blossoming."
"The study, which is based on measurements of more than 1,400 ancient and modern skulls, makes the argument that human society advanced when people started being nicer to each other, which entails having a little less testosterone in action."
The Duke study argues that living together and cooperating put a premium on agreeableness and lowered aggression and that, in turn, led to changed faces and more cultural exchange.
"If prehistoric people began living closer together and passing down new technologies, they'd have to be tolerant of each other," Cieri said. "The key to our success is the ability to cooperate and get along and learn from one another."

718. A Fascinating Novel - Jack London: Before Adam

718.   A Fascinating Novel -  Jack London:  Before Adam

I just finished listening to the audio version of this novel, available on Librivox.    And even though they may never know, a big thanks to all those volunteers, who give me the chance to listen to good books.   

In other entries, I have explained how the ability for emotional attachment is a part of the unique human evolution, which could only co-evolve along with the general cognitive and rational abilities.  My source of such ideas is reading a lot about recent evolutionary biology and psychology.  

Jack London wrote his novel in 1906/7, at times, when evolution was still a widely disputed concept.   While this novel contains certainly a lot of imagination based upon limited scientific reality, his achievement is nevertheless very remarkable.   He was able to brilliantly illustrate the evolutionary state of people, whose limited empathy and emotional attachment were in sync with their limited intelligence and their limited theory of mind.  

I doubt that anybody with current knowledge of evolutionary biology, anthropology and archaeology could write a much better novel.