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.

713. When One Irrationality Serves To Reinforce Another

713.  When One Irrationality Serves To Reinforce Another

Wars are a manifestation of the ingroup-outgroup instinct.  

The more someone perceives, defines and identifies himself as a bearer of genes and his purpose of existence as to enable his genes to survive and to spread, the more any behavior favoring his own progeny is subjectively logical to him.  Even exploiting and killing outgroup members thus appears permissible and even mandatory to him.   
Rationality ascribing equal rights to any person on this globe makes the ingroup-outgroup obsolete.  But while this instinct it is often consciously, publicly and legally discarded and rejected, it prevails subconsciously.  

When people are torn in cognitive dissonance, when they are oscillating between rational behavior and irrational instinctive urges and tendencies, a variety of irrational beliefs are invented to ease the inner conflict.  
These beliefs allow people to succumb to and to follow their instincts without feeling bad.   For many people, this comes easier than to rationally conquer instincts.  

While denial prevents to recognize and acknowledge the irrationality of the belief itself, being guided by this belief makes the instinctive behavior subjectively appear rational.    Thus the pseudo-rationality of the belief enhances instinctive behavior, even though it is obsolete and harmful.

The following article is an interesting indication of how war is reinforced by religious beliefs. 

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/05/140515153811.htm

"World War I -- the “war to end all wars” -- in fact sowed seeds for future international conflicts in a way that has been largely overlooked: through religion, says a historian and author. Widespread belief in the supernatural was a driving force during the war and helped mold all three of the major religions -- Christianity, Judaism and Islam -- paving the way for modern views of religion and violence, he said."

660. Mavericks, Outsiders, Misfits And Gender Roles

660.  Mavericks, Outsiders, Misfits And Gender Roles


Gender roles are a subset of social norms.   Gender roles accentuate those differences between the genders, which represent instincts.  Gender roles prescribe behaviors caused by these instincts and which enhance the breeding success.   This is not restricted to those instincts leading directly to breeding, it includes also those instincts, which aim at long-term benefits for all future bearers of the own genes.

Gender roles sometimes override people's innate inclinations and cause them to damage their own best interests.  

I consider the dire burden of procreation on women's bodies as biological abuse.   I am aware, that this is a drastic point of view, which can trigger hostility by some people, even though it is a very rational way to look at it.   

Whenever a person has a tumor somewhere in the belly and has it removed by an operation, most people would agree, that this is an ordeal, that nobody in his or her right mind would choose, if there were an option.   
In the case, when it is not a tumor, but a parasite like a worm, the situation is still the same.   This attitude does not even depend on the weight of what is an unwanted growth to be removed.   

But as soon as the parasite is a fetus, which is either removed by a Cesarean session or expulsed by a very painful procedure, then all of a sudden this is not called an ordeal to be avoided, even though a child's birth weight and size is much higher than tumors and parasites usually are.    Instead of recognizing, that this is an atrocity for women, which in contrast to growing tumors can be avoided, many people of both genders have the delusion, that breeding is the purpose of the existence of women.    They are mislead to believe, that having a womb is the same as being meant to use it.  

When comparing the suffering and damage to the afflicted body alone, the distinction between a child at birth and a tumor of the same weight and size makes no sense at all. 



When animals copulate, they follow their instinctive urges without any cognitive ability to anticipate the consequences.    Female (non-human) mammals have no option to avoid the ordeal of giving birth and raising offspring, because they cannot foresee it.  

The instincts leading to human breeding behavior had evolved in the animal ancestors, long before cognition and especially the included ability for anticipation have started to evolve.    As long as the evolution of cognition was evolving as a merely serving tool enhancing the success of the dominant instinctive behaviors, cognition could evolve towards enabling the human brain to amazing progress without causing disruption.   
Only when this evolution reached a ceiling, the conscious experience of individual wellbeing started to bifurcate from the wellbeing experienced as the consequence of maintaining the homeostasis of those instinctive urges, which lead to the survival of the species.  

A slight mutation. a haphazard genetic combination, and the result were and are individuals, whose cognition is not under an instinctive power strong enough to determine the goals and objectives of these persons' behavior.   Either their cognition has advanced one step further or their instinctivity is too low to override their cognition.   
As women, they fully anticipate the unwanted long-term consequences of breeding and they refuse such self-harm.  As men they are considerate and responsible enough to feel morally obliged to refrain from harming women by making them pregnant.   


Those, whose breeding instinct is still stronger than their cognition, but who nevertheless can also anticipate the harm of breeding, experience some cognitive dissonance.   The subconscious urges of the instincts are experienced as strong but vague, on the conscious level they are converted into attitudes, which are congruent with the instincts.   When there are also disparate and incongruent cognitive needs, this causes cognitive dissonance.  This is often solved by the impact of two distinct social influences.   

• Religious belief systems of any content promise rewards for procreation and threaten with punishment for the refusal.    The delusion of a god's power to do so in the afterlife is one example.
  
• Gender roles add artificial and irrational alleged value to instinctive behaviors and those traits favoring such behaviors.   In entry 647 I declared the gender role of masculinity as an obsolete anachronism.   The gender role of femininity is of course just as obsolete.    

Gender roles accentuate all those traits and behaviors, which are based upon physical traits and not on intellectual achievements.     To fulfill and comply with the gender roles does not require any intelligence or education.    Gender roles appeal especially to those, who are deprived of any choice, because they have a suitable body for the gender role, but no brains for anything better.

All those interests, skills and achievements, which require intelligence, creativity, education and sometimes maturity, are gender neutral.    To be a mother by choice requires femininity, to be a warrior by choice requires masculinity.    But the dedication to science, art, literature, languages, technology and other intellectual pursuits is favored by a predisposition, which can be labeled psychological androgynity.  


By unfortunate logic, only breeders continue to contribute their high instinctivity to the gene pool.  The conscious non-breeders do not contribute their more advanced cognition, unless they breed by accident or otherwise against their own wish.   Therefore the evolution towards a more dominant cognition has not completely stopped, but it is very slow.   

Persons, whose psychological androgynity is strong enough to not be overridden by irrational beliefs and non-fitting gender roles, are therefore not only a minority, but they are also under the strong pressure to conform to a majority's expectations.   
In spite of the difficulties of this adversity, it is nevertheless much better to accept being a non-conforming outsider than to suffer from the self-inflicted harm, which follows conforming to what is not suitable for the own innate identity.  


Therefore those who are mavericks, loners and outsiders are this for very good and valid reasons and not at all due to lacking any desirable quality.   They are not the allegedly flawed misfits, as whom they are not only treated, but also pressed towards accepting themselves as such. 
Not all of them have the awareness and self-confidence to understand, that they are lucky to be free from a biological burden.   They are made to feel excluded, while in reality they are spared the breeders' self-destructive and harming inclinations.   Feeling excluded is a fallacy of those, who have themselves very good reasons to avoid to be included.                

619. Objectification And The Ingroup-Outgroup Instinct

619.  Objectification And The Ingroup-Outgroup Instinct

The ingroup-outgroup instinct has evolved in many species living in groups.   It provided two sets of behaviors, automatic in animals and as a social norm in humans, which are sometimes very contradictory.   
Examples: 
Outgroup members are prey to be eaten by cannibals, while ingroup members are companions to share the food with. 
Outgroup women are prey to be raped during wars, even by men, who are no brutes to their wives or any ingroup women.

 

When a previously unknown man in real life initiates contact with a woman, for her this always bears the risk of at least the indignation of being considered as prey to be objectified and commodified, if not the worse victimization by violence.   

But there are two distinctive instinctive urges, which unfortunately add to the number of men behaving as disgusting alley dogs towards women.   

There are not only the general jerks, who driven by their instincts promiscuously objectify all women.    There are also the those jerks sufficiently determined by their ingroup-outgroup instinct, who behave differently towards ingroup women while treating outgroup women as mere prey.     

When younger and traveling alone through some Mediterranean countries, I have experienced the following pattern so often, that it started to cause me nausea.   
Sitting somewhere like on a bench in a park and being approached by a man I hoped for some interesting conversation about the country and its society and way of life.    But I was not treated as a human being with a brain.  Instead I was the target of a predator, flirting and attempting to seduce me, perceiving me as prey, as a body to be used.   

I doubt very much, that all of these predators would have caused the same indignation to local ingroup women as they allowed themselves to do to a tourist.  

Being a foreigner made me unequivocally an outgroup person by nationality.    But on a subtle and diffuse level, any subjective distinction by sorting them into either ingroup or outgroup facilitates some men's selective objectification of women.   

When driven by instinct towards abusing indiscriminately any female body for homeostation, while moral imperatives of their religion and culture forbid them promiscuity, uncoupled men suffer discomfort by either dishomeostasis or cognitive dissonance.   Defining an outgroup of women as such, upon whom moral rules do not need to be applied, is their mental trick to acquire homeostasis and avoid cognitive dissonance.   It is the mental trick of the selfish jerks attempting to acquire homeostasis without accepting commitment as not only bringing a subscription to recurrent homeostation but also meaning monogamy and emotional obligations.  

This mental trick enables jerks to have the sincere delusion to be decent and correct men, as long as they refrain from promiscuous behavior with women of their ingroup, while feeling free and justified to behave like alley dogs with women from any outgroup.   
The social history of an ingroup defined as an upper class, where so called gentlemen abused the servants and other poor and lower class women, is one example.           

618. What Comes First: Attitude Or Behavior?

618.   What Comes First:  Attitude Or Behavior?

In entry 615 I already mentioned the fascinating web page http://www.manipulative-people.com and work of George Simon.   I spent some hours reading his description of persons who in his words are disturbed characters.  

My writing on this blog is focusing upon my subjective and female preference of what attitudes and behaviors make a man either attractive or repulsive.    While reading Simon's texts, it has become clear to me, that those men, whom I describe as jerks, are a subgroup of Simon's disturbed character.   Jerks are male disturbed characters, whose victims of their disturbed behavior are women.    What I call commodification, objectification, domination, entitlement delusion and more, I found it all mentioned by Simon, in different words and explained in better English.  

Only he has come to a different conclusion concerning what causes, maintains, enables and reinforces the character disturbances.  

"One of the central tenets of cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT) is that there is an inextricable relationship between a person’s core beliefs, the attitudes those beliefs have engendered, and the ways the person’s attitudes prompt him or her to to behave in various situations."

http://counsellingresource.com/features/2008/12/08/disturbed-characters-thinking/

I fully agree with this, because any discrepancy between core values (as I dislike the word belief), attitudes and behaviors causes unpleasant cognitive dissonance.   Getting aware of such a discrepancy motivates towards either changing the attitude or the behavior.   

If I have understood correctly, in Simon's view the attitudes and core beliefs come first and the behavior is the consequence thereof.  
Simon accepts the notion of the free will.   I have not found any explicit statement about this, but implicitly he seems to explain attitudes and core values as mainly or entirely acquired by education, socialization and external influences.  

From my point of view, which is derived from evolutionary biology and evolutionary psychology, the free will is a myth.   Behaviors are determined by the combination of the force of instinctivity, the avoidance of punishment and of dishomeostasis and the appetency of rewards and stimulation of the brain's pleasure center.   This is facilitated by the knowledge stored in the memory and anticipatory thinking.   

Subconscious instinctive urges are consciously experienced as the inclination towards specific behaviors.   Instinctive urges are mainly the animal instincts for procreation, sexuality, hierarchy, ingroup-outgroup, gregariousness.   

The cognitive and conscious attitudes follow as a justification when giving in to being driven by the urges, attitudes are formed to avoid cognitive dissonance.    These attitudes are influenced and modified by education and social norms either encouraging or repressing instinctive behavior.    

Attitudes and subsequent behaviors differ between individuals in the same society according to differing strength of their instinctivity and also between individuals with the same strength of instinctivity but living in different societies.  
The worst jerks and worst cases of Simon's male disturbed character are men with a high instinctivity, whose abuse of women is additionally enabled and reinforced in a permissive society.   

Accordingly I also disagree about how, if at all, disturbed characters can be changed:

"Changing some aspect of our behavior is always the first step toward having a change of heart. Just as our way of thinking influences our behavior, so our actions and the consequences that stem from them influence how we think about things, the attitudes we harbor, and the beliefs we hold about how to get along in life. Making meaningful changes in the way we typically do things is a prerequisite for changing the kind of person we are."

http://counsellingresource.com/features/2012/04/02/disturbed-characters-can-they-change/

I doubt, that attitudes can be changed, as long as these attitudes are an expression of an implicit identity defined by the acceptance of animal instincts.     A change of attitudes would require the conscious choice of an identity derived from the preference for cognition as superior over instincts.    But before someone is able to consider instincts as obsolete and disturbing evolutionary ballast to be overridden in favor of not harming others, he has first to get aware and recognize, how much he is driven by instincts.  
As long as someone accepts himself as an instinct driven animal and thus allows himself his instinctive urges without experiencing cognitive dissonance, he will continue to behave as a disturbed character. 

613. Commodification And Objectification Of Women Are A Teleological Fallacy

613.   Commodification And Objectification Of Women Are A Teleological Fallacy
 

Men commodifying, obectifying and abusing women are an example and specific case of the general teleological fallacy.   

As outlined in entry 612, nothing has an independent purpose.   Any purpose is always and only in a person's mind, while an object is produced, used or considered for use.   

Using something merely because of its apparent and alleged purpose sometimes seems superficially as correct behavior and thus justifiable but it is a fallacy.    No properties of any object, which make it appear as if it were perfect for application in a person's pursuit of a purpose, suffice to automatically justify or excuse the use of this object.  There is even less such justification for the use of a human being wrongly mistaken to not differ from an object.  
 

To the contrary, the use is not justified unless there are sufficient legal and moral rights.  Moral obligations require to refrain from harming people and damaging their property without consent in exceptional cases.  

The fallacy of commodifying, objectifying and abusing women is unfortunately enhanced by several factors: 

1.  Religion  
 

According to christian fairy tales, a god has allegedly created the first woman from the first man's rib only as a favor fulfilling his wish.   

This can be translated and generalized easily into the typical male fallacy of believing that 

~in the god's initial plan, men sufficed and women were superfluous.   

~the god consciously created men as beings with the property of recurrent sexual dishomeostasis.  

~a god is perfect by definition and makes not mistake, therefore the recurrent need for homeostasis is something valuable and not a fault in the design.     

~the god created women especially suitable to be used to restore male homeostasis.  He created them for the purpose to supply men with such bodies.  

=>  Therefore these men believe it to be the god's will and plan, that men use women and that all harm to women is justified by being the god's responsibility.   

2.  Natural selection
 

As sad as it is, procreation and the survival of the human species depends on the physical abuse of women's body by the harm, pain and discomfort of pregnancy and birth.     But the property of having wombs and thus being suitable to reproduce does not automatically imply, that women exist for the innate purpose of breeding.    

The more women are willing to self-abuse and the more men are inconsiderate and ruthless to abuse, the more offspring they have thus contributing to the gene-pool.  

3.  Evolution of the telos drive
 

Pararajasingham's suggests (http://www.reasonism.org/main-content/articles-by-other-authors/item/285-the-telos-drive-a-neurobiological-basis-for-religious-belief) the telos drive as an explanation for religious beliefs.    I would rather explain both religion and the teleological fallacy by the biological fact, that breeding is inherently harmful for women and would not be chosen by women, who are fully intellectually and rationally free.     

The telos drive could alternatively be explained as a co-evolutionary coping strategy due to the emerging cognitive dissonance between men's instinctive urges to use haphazard female bodies for homeostasis and the evolving cognition and ability to have empathy, which enable men theoretically to appreciate women's brains along with learning to solve survival problems by reasoning and to use self-control motivated by consideration.
Would they only solve this dissonance by having an isolated belief of women existing for their use and convenience, this would easily be recognized as irrational.   But a more general dysfunction of the brain towards teleological thinking and a telos drive make the belief of women existing for men's purposes consistent with the more ubiquitous fallacy of imputing a purpose to life, to the universe and to the will of some creator.  
  

Promiscuity and the teleological fallacy of believing that women only exist for the purpose of maintaining male sexual homeostasis are two sides of the same coin.   Promiscuity is the logical behavioral expression of this false belief.   
The teleological fallacy of ascribing to women the purpose of being used enables, enhances and reinforces promiscuity.    

Unfortunately it is very difficult for some men to gain insight and awareness, that acting based upon a fallacy of an alleged purpose can be morally wrong due to harming the victims.   The denial of the victims' suffering is a part to the fallacy of ascribing a purpose.    In reality, the fallacy of women's purpose to be used by promiscuous men does not diminish the harm to the women, it only disables men from comprehending, what harm they do. 

610. The Telos Drive And The Fallacy Of Teleology

610.   The Telos Drive And The Fallacy Of Teleology

Teleology is not a part of my rational thinking or of my identity.   

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

"A teleology is any philosophical account that holds that final causes exist in nature, meaning that design and purpose analogous to that found in human actions are inherent also in the rest of nature."

I have been born, I am living until I die, and I do not exist for any purpose.   My own life has no general meaning or value except for myself and for those persons who choose to appreciate me.   The reasonable way of living without teleological tendencies is to avoid harming and being harmed and to make the best of a lifetime without any nonsensical sacrifices for anything happening after the own death.  
 

Being myself void of teleology, considering it as an innate human tendency did not occur to me until I read about the postulation of the telos drive:

http://www.reasonism.org/main-content/articles-by-other-authors/item/285-the-telos-drive-a-neurobiological-basis-for-religious-belief

"The telos drive is a hypothetical neuropsychological construct that I propose exists as a primitive instinct which, like all biological drives, may be modulated by higher cognitive function or environmental influences, and often forms the core of religious faith."

"This intrinsic drive is a need to find meaning and purpose for which religion (given its immense popularity) is perhaps the most powerful construction."

"I would argue that the telos drive is no different; it has been boosted so we assume everything is suffused with intention or purpose so that we may predict the behaviour of the world around us, thus staying ahead of the game we call survival. This exaggeration or boost causes us to see purpose within (human purpose) and without (cosmic purpose)."

Today I read this:

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/10/121017102451.htm

"despite years of scientific training, even professional chemists, geologists, and physicists from major universities ..... cannot escape a deep-seated belief that natural phenomena exist for a purpose."

"Although purpose-based "teleological" explanations are often found in religion, ..... they are generally discredited in science. When physical scientists have time to ruminate about the reasons why natural objects and events occur, they explicitly reject teleological accounts, instead favoring causal, more mechanical explanations. ...... when scientists are required to think under time pressure, an underlying tendency to find purpose in nature is revealed. The results provide the strongest evidence yet that the human mind has a robust default preference for purpose-based explanation that persists from early in development."

""It seems that our minds may be naturally more geared to religion than science.""

So it seems that the telos drive is more ubiquitous than it had appeared to me.   But I doubt that it suffices as a direct explanation of religion.   I think that the telos drive and religion together are mainly enabling procreation.   

Drives and instincts have evolved as advantageous for the survival of the species.    I consider the search for a purpose and the delusion of the existence of deities are interdependently enabling, reinforcing or enhancing one direct advantage for the survival of the human species, which is the submission to and acceptance of suffering harm caused by being determined by the procreation instinct.  
Procreation requires two persons' contribution to a combination of harming and self-harming.  Women are harmed by the biological abuse of their body in pregnancy and birth and by the slavery of raising the brood.   Men are harmed by the obligation to provide at least materially for the offspring.  People are harmed by being deprived of resources, which competing alpha men usurp for their own offspring.   

Self-harming as a sacrifice for procreation needs a justification for accepting the harm.  When there is no rational justification, then imagining and inventing a pseudo-meaning and an alleged purpose can help to avoid cognitive dissonance.    The less people accept harm, the less they are prone to accept any purpose as a justification.  
Deities were invented with the attribute of having the power to reward in the afterlife for the suffering by procreation and to punish in the afterlife for refusing procreation.   They were also attributed to be omniscient and thus competent to demand procreation as a purpose not to be questioned.    

Harming others in spite of empathy, responsibility and consideration and avoiding cognitive dissonance also needs the strong justification of considering the harm as an unavoidable price for fulfilling a purpose.   
Deities were invented to transfer the responsibility for harming to the deity.  Thus the biological harm of procreation could be misinterpreted as if it were a purpose installed by an omniscient and powerful deity. 


The belief in having a purpose and the belief in the existence of a deity are interdependent.   Having a purpose implies to accept being used as a tool or utility and this leads to the question concerning who is doing the using.   A deity or higher power is a simple answer.     
Having the delusion of the existence of a deity leads to the question, why anything had been created by the deity, and what he meant to do with it.   Having a purpose only understood and known by the deity is also a simple answer.   

And simple minds prefer simple answers.   

582. Attitudes, Drives And Instincts

582.  Attitudes, Drives And Instincts

I have suggested before to consider the subjective identity of people as determined by a positive attitude towards individual traits, which are conscious representations of people's strongest instinctive urges.  These urges are experienced subconsciously and people are usually ignorant of any connection with their conscious attitudes.   This synchronization of the attitudes with the urges serves as a method to avoid cognitive dissonance. 
So far, I had only focused upon procreation, sexuality, hierarchy and ingroup-outgroup as being those basic instincts shared with animals and having an impact upon others.  

The following table adds a new aspect and wider scope. 

Source:

http://www.reasonism.org/main-content/articles-by-other-authors/item/285-the-telos-drive-a-neurobiological-basis-for-religious-belief

It connects conscious human traits with biological drives, but in a different way than I did.  This list focuses upon one individual's drives and traits independent of considering triggering targets.   It contains human innate predispositions, which are the result of the phase of the evolution, when the adaptation included the unique human cognition.

Human Trait	Biological Drive	Physiological Controls	Short-term Aim	[..]* Absence
Appetite	Hunger	Serotonin	Sustenance	Anorexia
Fear	Anxiety	Adrenaline	Avoiding threats	Recklessness
Greed	Reward/Risk	Dopamine	Resource accumulation	Over-generosity
Lust	Sex	Testosterone/ Oestrogen	Mating	Loss of libido
Love	Attraction	Dopamine/ Serotonin	Reproduction	Promiscuity
Bonding	Attachment	Oxytocin/ Vasopressin	Parenting	Polyamory
Morality	Empathy	Mirror neurons	Social cohesion	Selfishness
Purpose	Telos	Serotonin 2A	Prediction	Nihilism

* Column Long-term Aim snipped for containing 'survival' in every row.

496. Demisexuality And Cognition

Demisexuality And Cognition

I claim:  Demisexuality (defined as "sexual attraction to people they know personally, usually based on some kind of emotional connection, whether platonic or romantic. They can’t feel sexually attracted to strangers, celebrities, or people they don’t very well." by http://outlawroad.tumblr.com/post/10265976595/gray-asexuality) is not a deviance, it is the appropriate evolutionary adaptation of sexuality as a part of the evolution of human cognition.  

Demisexuality as a concept causes a lot of confusion, as long as it is not explained as a part of a general model of human sexuality.   

The following model includes two main factors, sexual dishomeostasis and sexual behavior.    Because of biological differences, I am simplifying my model to only exploring the male side, which is determined by physiologically obvious indications.    In females, the procreation instinct interferes too much.  

The reasons for my simplification are shown in this research:
http://www.elainehatfield.com/79.pdf 
Cark/Hatfield: Gender differences in receptivity to sexual offers
In two studies, when a stranger was approached by a woman saying "I have been noticing you around campus.  I find you to be very attractive." and "Would you go to bed with me tonight?", the majority of men agreed.   In 1978, 75% did, in 1982, 69%.   In the reverse situation, all woman approached by a man refused.

The study was done on college students.  Such women have above average education and intelligence and no pressing need to marry a provider.   The men are at an age of high biological libido and before being restricted with obligations to a wife and children.  
Therefore the proportion of how many men agreed in this study is not representative for other social and cultural groups.  
But the different reaction of men compared with women in this study allows to conclude, that the reason for self-labeling as demisexual by considering it as a deviance is also different for men and for women.  
It is predominantly a male problem to experience deviance from the social norm of oversexation as a physiological deficit.  Females are under social pressure to act against their natural inclination and perceive their own demisexuality as a social deviance.   I explained this already in entry 493. (The Social Norm Of The Drooling Men)

My model of male sexuality is based upon two factors:

• Perceived sexual dishomeostasis
• Sexual behavior as a reaction to the presence and availability of a target body

As I mentioned before, I consider the strength of the libido in every age group of men as a continuum with a distribution along a bell curve.   The perceived strength and urge of sexual dishomeostasis represent the innate strength of the libido. As this is a model, I omit the effects of health issues.

Simplified, at both extreme ends of the scale, the libido determines the sexual behavior.   In the middle of the bell curve, sexuality is controlled and modified by human cognition.

1.  At one extreme end of the curve are the dangerous promiscuous jerks, who are so oversexed with high libido, that they are not only drooling over every woman's body but who are ruthless emotional psychopaths, who use and discard women without any conscience or consideration, even by force and coercion.  

2.  At the other extreme of the bell curve are the truly nonsexuals, who have no or very little libido and no need for sexual homeostation.

3.  In the middle of the bell curve, there is a moderate perception of dishomeostasis, but the experience and practice of sexuality is modified and controlled by cognition.   The cognitive control over sexual reactiveness to the perception of stimuli is a byproduct of the evolution of cognition.   

Without cognition, a man would not be different from any non-human animal.  A man without cognition and in the state of the recurrent dishomeostasis after the latency time since his last copulation, would drool over every woman's body, who is genetically suitable to trigger his instincts.   In the animal world, whenever a male feels dishomeostasis and perceives a target body, sexual behavior is the automatic reaction of a robot determined by instincts only.  

In this middle part of the bell curve of libido, there are several possible reasons, why at a given moment an available target body does not lead to sexual behavior.   A target body is the body of a woman, who is a stranger and whose physical attributes are such, that they trigger the automatic sexual behavior of every high libido jerk.  

3.1.  A man in a relationship, which maintains his homeostasis, never gets into the situation of being driven by so much dishomeostasis, that he is tempted to make use of the target body.   This situation shows the benefits of bonded and committed monogamy.  

3.2.  Other needs, urges and sensations are temporarily stronger than the stimulation by the target body, examples are hunger, fatigue, danger, sickness.   This effect limits the behavior of all men, no matter the strength of the libido.  

3.3.  A man has enough cognitive control to resist the instinctive responsiveness to the target body.   In contrast to animals, humans do not react automatically to stimuli.   Human cognition allows to base decisions upon the memory of past experiences, the knowledge of consequences and the knowledge of not directly visible additional factors.    The refusal to react to a target body with sexual behavior can be based upon the anticipation of better alternatives or of the unwanted consequences.   This rational evaluation can avoid the plight of some women, but it does not avoid those men's behavior, who have come to the conclusion, that they can get away with the abuse of a woman.   

3.4. A man's cognition interferes with the responsiveness to the target body.   This is, what is usually defined as demisexuality.   But this is more complex, because the human cognition can override instincts on several different levels of demisexuality.

Level 1.   Stimuli are filtered from perception, before they reach the brain.

• Some people with autism and Asperger's are known to be oblivious to incoming non-verbal signals.   An example are persons, who bore others with endless monologues, because they are mindblind to the non-verbal expression of others' boredom, annoyance, disapproval.
  It is possible, that the sexual stimuli from the target body can be filtered the same way.   I have been speculating before, that there is a personality type, that is a part of Asperger's, but which can also be found in people, who are far from having any clinically relevant symptoms.   Maybe demisexuality is a part of this personality.    

Level 2.  Cognitive needs are stronger than physical needs. 

Stimuli from the target body are discarded or deactivated subconsciously, when emotional needs are stronger.  Such cognitive and emotional needs can be:

• The needs to feel self-confidence, self-esteem and self-worth in accordance with an identity as a person with morals, education and intelligence.   In this identity, the body is only the container and supply system for the brain.  
• A value system, in which human cognition is valued highly, while animal instincts are despised.   There is a strong need to avoid cognitive dissonance by living up to the own standards.
• An Epicurean personality, to which emotional and intellectual stimulation causes generally stronger pleasure and joy than physical stimulation.   This includes the subjective experience of intellectual intimacy as very beneficial.
• Sensitivity and empathy blocking the perception of sexual stimuli, unless the partner shows unequivocal signs of happiness and attachment

Level 3.  Competing conscious stimuli

The stranger inside the target body not only sends out sexual stimuli, but also other stimuli, that are competing and by being stronger, override any sexual attraction on a conscious level.   

• Disgust sensitivity to a stranger's body impedes promiscuity.  Only a slow process of creating emotional closeness can be strong enough to override the disgust.   More in entry 108.   (Promiscuity and Disgust Sensitivity)
• Repulsion or fear based upon nonverbal signals or knowledge about the person as for example can be a contagious sickness or a criminal record.   

4.  The social norm has a strong impact upon what sexual behavior men consider as appropriate, no matter how much or how little it corresponds with their real needs determined by their place on the bell curve of libido.  In entry 493  (The Social Norm Of The Drooling Men), I pointed out the detrimental effects of the social norm of extremely and unrealistically high libido for all men.   But the social norm of celibacy, that prevents the catholic priests from marrying the housekeeper, with whom they have developed a monogamous attachment, is equally unrealistic.   
  
There is a need for a new social norm, which focuses upon both, the realistic recognition and acceptance of every man's individual level of libido and upon consideration and recognition of the real needs of women.  
The drooling promiscuous jerks, who are not controlled by cognition, are deviant and sick.   It is absurd to consider them as the role models for men in the current social norm.    A social norm is most suitable, when it fits best the needs of the majority, while it controls the hazard of the deviant and protects the weak and vulnerable.  

Monogamy is the most suitable concept for the men in the middle part of the bell curve, whose libido is at a healthy medium level.    Monogamy provides the best protection for women against being hurt and harmed.  
A new social norm of moderate libido and monogamy is the most appropriate to suit the actual evolutionary level of the human cognition. The oversexation of societies, which value the high libido of the men, who drool over every woman's body, is outdated and anachronistic.  

493. The Social Norm Of The Drooling Men

493.  The Social Norm Of The Drooling Men
Social norms have a lot of power over susceptible and gullible people, because they influence behavior away from innate inclinations.   Others are compared with social norms.  Correct behavior is defined by social norms.  The own self-esteem and self-worth depends on the comparison with social norms.   Social norms define the perception of deviance.  

Social norms are beneficial, when they guide behavior towards a morality, that has the goal of avoiding and minimizing suffering, hurting and harming.  

Some social norms also do a lot of damage, especially when they are no longer appropriate to changed circumstances or when they serve the benefits of a powerful and influential minority but harm the majority.  

One example is the social norm of high libido for men.   This social norm is incongruent with the real human cognitively influenced sexuality, which is based upon the strength of the libido distributed along a bell curve.  

The social norm of high libido corresponds in a very biased way only with one extreme end of the bell curve.   This social norm declares the most extreme inclinations to be the best and to be most suitable for everybody.   The definition of masculinity and virility includes high libido as a major ingredient.  Low libido is strongly despised as a defect.  

High libido itself is a biological predisposition.  The social norm of expressed high libido is implicitly defined by men as experiencing themselves drooling over every female body, whenever this body is perceived as attractive in the implicit agreement of those, who drool the most.

Experiencing frequent drooling serves as the self-reassurance of meeting the requirement of the social norm of high libido. 

The consequences of this social norm are very detrimental:

1.  The technical advancement of life-imitating photos and movies and the distribution by printed media, television and the Internet has caused the oversexation of society and a general desensitization to this even for those, who do not benefit or even suffer from this norm.  

2.  According to this social norm, the promiscuity of the drooling men is considered as their entitlement, while the suffering emotionally attached victims of being dumped or cheated upon are considered as flawed and deviant.
  
3.  Instead of rejecting this social norm as being detrimental to themselves, most women accept attempts to trigger men to drool more by modification of their exterior as the best solution of coping with the social norm.    The compete to trigger the strongest drooling.   

4. Those men with less libido, whose behavior would best fulfill women's emotional needs, are impeded from accepting themselves as they are.  Instead they measure themselves in comparison with the harmful social norm.   As a consequence, they either attempt to correct their alleged problem medically or they attempt to imitate the promiscuous jerks as role models.   They deteriorate in the false belief of improving.  

5. The widespread definitions of asexuality and demisexuality as a label for self-labeling are also a reaction to the fully accepted social norm of high libido.   

"An asexual is someone who does not experience sexual attraction. "
http://www.asexuality.org/wiki/index.php?title=Asexuality

"Demisexuals are asexuals who only experience secondary sexual attraction to people they know personally, usually based on some kind of emotional connection, whether platonic or romantic. They can’t feel sexually attracted to strangers, celebrities, or people they don’t very well. So demisexuality is all about sexual attraction, just like asexuality is all about the lack of sexual attraction."
http://outlawroad.tumblr.com/post/10265976595/gray-asexuality

Theoretically, the evolution of the human cognition enables people to derive their identity, self-esteem, self-worth from their intelligence, creativity, talents, knowledge, skills and also from behaving morally by avoiding to hurt and to harm others.   The evolution of the human cognition has advanced far enough to free humans from the need to base self-esteem upon attributes of their bodies.  
Any man with low or lacking libido has this option.    But in spite of this, nearly all men seem to feel deficient, if they do not drool often enough over women's bodies.    I cannot remember to have ever read or heard of any man, who prefers himself as someone with a low libido.   Even men, whose religion forbids any behavioral expression of libido do not feel good when just having none but they take pride in conquering it.  

It appears as if low libido in men automatically leads at least to low self-esteem, if not to more severe psychological problems.   They seem just unable to consider and accept low libido as either not important or even as an indication of being the quality men, who do not hurt women.   They cannot even change their opinion about themselves, when women tell them explicitly, that they prefer the monogamous non-drooling men with the moderate libido.

There are self-help and discussion forums for people self-labeling themselves as asexual, demisexuals, and similar labels.   These forums seem to be populated by persons struggling with low self-esteem, lacking self-worth, subjective feelings of being deviant.  They seem to be in the need of a niche, where they find others similarly afflicted.   They share, what they experience subjectively as their common flaw of failing under the social norms of an oversexed society.   
They have accepted this social norm without ever doubting its value or justification.   It does not even occur to them to criticize or reject the social norm of high libido and drooling.    

They repeat again and again their strong emphasis of the paramount importance of the difference between the absence of sexual attraction and the absence of or low libido.   This very artificial distinction is a remarkable mental trick to resolve a strong cognitive dissonance.  
They are unable to deny to themselves to recognize the reality of not drooling over women's bodies, while they are aware that this is considered a deficit according to the social norm.   They want to be able to accept themselves as different without feeling deficient.

The social norm of high libido is an attribute of one person.   The focus on lacking sexual attraction is a mental trick to shift the focus away from being someone with a personal deficit.  Sexual attraction requires by definition the interaction of more than one person, it requires a target to be attracted to.   Lacking sexual attraction as an explanation allows to externalize the alleged cause to the nonexistence of suitable targets.  This can be accepted as a difference, which is independent of failing the social norm.

Humanity needs to adapt culturally to the human cognition by a radical shift of the social norms concerning sexuality.    In another entry, I will make some suggestions.

480. The Skeptically Prone Personality

480.   The Skeptically Prone Personality

Once more I finally found other people's concept expressing something, which I have been pondering over myself since a long time.  

In entries 17 and 372 I already mentioned my speculation of a special personality type, which I got aware of by reading information about autism and Asperger's syndrome, both being a clinical diagnosis.    But I had come to the conclusion, that both diagnoses have two components, a non-clinical personality type, and additional symptoms, which are severe enough to be a disability or an impairment.   

I also got aware of the existence of people with this personality type while free of any detrimental symptoms causing any impairment.  This kind of a personality distinguishes a minority of people from the majority, without making them in any way dysfunctional.    I see this personality in myself.   

 

One core trait is rationality and being guided by logic and the absence of the gullibility preventing beliefs in anything without being convinced by evidence and reasoning.    This kind of innate rationality allows people to gain the insight, that believing in a god or any irrational claim is preposterous.  While such beliefs are a step in the development of the immature brain of children, people with this personality outgrow irrational beliefs when becoming adults.   People with such a personality are determined by their brains to become atheists and skeptics like caterpillars are determined to become butterflies.   So far my own thinking concerning this personality. 

Today I discovered this personality described under the name of The Skeptically Prone Personality. 

http://www.skepdic.com/skeptimedia/skeptimedia129.html

 

While I usually do not copy large quotes, this warrants to make an exception.   According to the author, Robert T. Carroll,

"A skeptically-prone personality (SPP) has at least 17 of the [following] characteristics.

1. They are nearly impossible to hypnotize;
2. As children they questioned the existence of Santa Claus and God;
3. As adults they continued to doubt the existence of Santa Claus and all forms of supernatural creatures;
4. As children they played make-believe games, but they recognized the difference between make-believe and reality;
5. As adults they do not spend more than 50% of their time fantasizing;
6. They rarely experience hypnagogic or hypnopompic hallucinations (waking dreams), including those involving monsters from outer space or figures from religious traditions);
7. They rarely pretend to be somebody they're not;
8. They are mistrustful of memory and consider vividness to be irrelevant to the accuracy of a memory
9. They are mistrustful of interpretations of sense experiences;
10. They have little faith in eyewitness testimony;
11. They can rarely have an orgasm just by using their imagination;
12. They are mistrustful of tradition and tend to think that the older some idea or practice is the less likely it is to be true or worth engaging in;
13. They think there is a naturalistic explanation for everything, even if we don't know what it is;
14. They think people who think they've had a paranormal experience are deluding themselves;
15. They rarely have out-of-body experiences;
16. They believe that once you're dead you're dead and can't talk anymore;
17. They don't engage in automatic writing, Ouija board games, or séances;
18. They don't believe in magical healing powers, but follow the advice of those promoting science-based medicine;
19. They trust the results of well-designed controlled studies over beliefs based solely on personal experience;
20. They haven't experienced spirits or ghosts (see 13);
21. They tend to dislike intensely those who lie, defraud others, or promote self-serving nonsense as if it were infallible truth;
22. They don't feel handicapped by their skepticism; on the contrary, they feel empowered by their devotion to reason, logic, critical thinking, empirical evidence, and science;
23. They don't like lists, unless backed by scientific studies and footnotes, and they're fond of concepts like the fantasy-prone personality and cognitive dissonance."

This is a very good description of myself.   My mindmate to be found shares this personality with me.  

474. Intuition And Logic

474.   Intuition And Logic

People usually contrast gut feelings or intuition as something very distinct from conscious logical reasoning.   This never really convinced me.   

Instead it seemed more plausible to me, that conscious and subconscious cognition were both using logic, but applying it to different informations as premises.   Conscious thinking seems limited, because it is restricted by what information is available to the consciousness.  The subconscious reasoning probably uses more information, even though it is not the consciously available.   
The quality of both, conscious reasoning and what appears to be intuition, depend equally upon the general ability to use logic.  Cognitive dissonance can be experienced as an intuitive feeling, even though the person does not consciously understand the reasons.   

There is some interesting scientific research: 

People Don't Just Think With Their Guts: Logic Plays a Role, Too
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/12/111229131356.htm

"For decades, science has suggested that when people make decisions, they tend to ignore logic and go with the gut. But Wim De Neys, a psychological scientist at the University of Toulouse in France, has a new suggestion: Maybe thinking about logic is also intuitive."

"De Neys thinks this sense, that something isn't quite right with the decision you're making, comes from an intuitive sense of logic."

464. Religion And Charity

Religion And Charity

I am convinced that the innate gullibility to accept unproven claims by faith has evolved to serve as a mental trick to cope with the incongruity between human cognition and both the readiness to suffer and to inflict sufferings in the service of the survival of the species.  

In entry 462 I focused upon the invention of a god, who can be made responsible for the suffering caused by the ingroup-outgroup instinct and the male promiscuity instinct using women to procreate more than they really want.

But religion has many more subtle influences on society.   Charity is indirectly connected with the hierarchical instinct.  

In both animals and humans, the hierarchical instinct triggers the males to fight for a high rank in a hierarchy.   A high rank enables the holder to acquire the control over resources, which supply advantages for the survival of the own genes.   Those resources include the access to those mates with the fittest genes and to all material resources for the most healthy survival.

Competition and fighting for a privileged and powerful high rank is always a win-lose situation.   The one, who wins, knowingly hurts or damages those other human beings, whom he forces to lose.  This again can cause an evolutionary incongruity between the cognitive ability for consideration and the cruelty to nevertheless compete ruthlessly.

Acquiring the control over resources is even more beneficial for humans in monetary and assets oriented societies than it is for animals.    Human greed is not restricted to give advantage to the direct offspring.   The control over assets is an theoretically unlimited advantage for all further descendants, because the spoil can be handed on by inheritance.  

People therefore live mostly in societies with wide discrepancies between the good life of the privileged and the misery of the underprivileged.   In entry 402 about Justice By Coincidence, I give an example.

For those cruel and greedy, who made it to the top, their experiencing cognitive dissonance has been prevented by the invention of the imaginary god as a method for justifying the injustice of exploitation.   They perceive their privileges not as an unwarranted usurpation, but as an entitlement alloted to them by their god.  By being believed to be almighty, his decision cannot be criticized, therefore being privileged cannot be wrong. 
The underprivileged are made to believe, that god will reward them in the afterlife. if they submit in docility.   But some, the less ruthless of the privileged need themselves a justification.   They buy their own peace of mind by charity.   They exploit the underprivileged, but then they give back a part of the spoil as alms as their religion commands them.   This way they think to be able to buy the reward in the afterlife also for themselves and enjoy their privileges.

Unfortunately the general idea of accepting unjustified hierarchies of privileges and the positive general evaluation of charity as a substitute of justice has been subtly made part of social norms.   Now it is perpetuated even by those people, who are not religious and who do not expect anything in the afterlife.

Cooperation is a win-win situation.   It is the rationally best way to have a fair chance for all humans to have access to enough resources for a moderately good life without misery.    In a just, egalitarian society, all important work would be paid for, and everybody's needs would met at a minimum level, so that there would be not need for any charity.  

  

But even if charity could be justified as a rational compensation from all those, who happen to be the winners in the lottery of life, this would still restrict it to be only expected from those, who indeed are the winners.  Charity would not be considered as everybody's due indiscriminately.   In social reality, charity is considered as an expression of morality instead of as an act of repairing a social deficiency, that should be eliminated.

Voluntary work is a good example.    Voluntary work means to donate life time.   The privileged with well paid full time jobs usually have no life time to spare for voluntary work.   Those, who have the time for voluntary work are more often than not the underprivileged, who are unemployed with only little income.   I consider it as unwarranted to expect voluntary work from them.   Instead only the privileged, who do have a good income, should do any charity.  While those, who have time, do the work, those with a good income should donate the money, with which the poor then are paid to work for an income.

Nobody should ever work for others without being paid.   Not by slavery, not by forced labor, and not manipulated by religion or other brainwashing by those, who profit.   

441. An Ingenious Self-Deception

An Ingenious Self-Deception

When the attraction of succumbing to religion and the displeasure of feeling stupid are equally strong, this leads to cognitive dissonance.      

Some people have found a ingenious mental trick to solve this cognitive dissonance.  

They created the unitarian universalist church.  

They claim it to be an atheist church.  That is as convincing as a non-money bank or a non-rail railway.   A church is a place of religion and faith instead of skepticism, even when avoiding the word 'god'.   The unitarian universalist church has all the characteristics of a church, ministers, sermons, church buildings.   

It certainly is not atheistic in the sense of apistia, of the absence of a need to believe and of living as if the option of a deity has never been considered.    It is not an atheist church, it is a wanna-be-atheist church, a kind of mental halfway house for those, who are already playing and learning how to be rational atheists.  But they still lean heavily on the mental crutch of the religion, that they have not yet really left behind.

The unitarian universalist church is not a church without a god, it is the church of the hidden and unmentioned god.  An empty placeholder fills the space reserved for this elusive god.   There is an empty frame for to the members to fill with their own imagination of the god.  The existence of the god is a taboo subject.  

The members of such a congregation avoid deliberately to deal with the question of the existence of a god.  This taboo of avoiding any clear statement concerning the existence of a god allows the wanna-be-atheists to perceive it as an atheist church, while believers are never challenged in their beliefs.  The believers take the existence of a god for granted, and the wanna-be-atheists consciously the non-existence,  Both can thus avoid to ever face the fundamental differences between their respective assumptions.  

 

They are encouraged to think and believe, whatever suits their needs.  This enables the wanna-be-atheists to attend a church and not feel stupid, they can thus avoid to feel any conscious conflict with their rationality and intelligence.    

They continue to enjoy all the emotional benefits of the christian delusion, while they label themselves as atheists.  Their consciously discarded god has been moved to the subconscious level.   Attending a church continues to have the same soothing effects as if they were still practicing their previous religion with an openly revered god.

It is one of the most ingenious self-deception I have ever come across.   It is an amazing mental construction for having the cake and eat it.   They enjoy the good feeling of having conquered the stupidity of religion.  But they also enjoy the good feeling derived from the delusion of a god, which is triggered by being in a church so much resembling an explicitly christian church.   They still enjoy the emotional benefits of the delusion, which at the same time they believe to have given up. 

 
But as ingenious as this self-deception is for those, who need it, it has no appeal to real atheists and apistics.   For them it is just pathetic and ludicrous.  

427. The Philistene's Sour Grapes Of Knowledge

The Philistine's Sour Grapes Of Knowledge

http://stevenpaulleivasthisnthat.blogspot.com/2011/09/new-clothes-for-shakespeare-and.html

In this article the author recounts his conversation with someone, whom he describes as anti-intellectual and whom I would also call a philistine.   This guy is proudly declaring, that what he does not like, is not worth being bothered about, he feels not in the least embarrassed about his willful ignorance.  The author of the article quotes his specimen as calling Shakespeare's plays crap.   The author calls it the arrogance of ignorance.  
Such philistines devalue and discard other people's cognitive production not by learned judgment, they devalue, what they themselves are either too dumb to understand, or what they are too lazy to invest effort in to first understand, before they judge.  

But devaluing, what is out of easy reach, is part of a more general pattern.   Aesop's fable illustrates the same pattern:   

"Driven by hunger, a fox tried to reach some grapes hanging high on the vine but was unable to, although he leaped with all his strength. As he went away, the fox remarked, 'Oh, you aren't even ripe yet! I don't need any sour grapes.' People who speak disparagingly of things that they cannot attain would do well to apply this story to themselves."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Fox_and_the_Grapes

This is the pattern:   Someone wants something, but it is either out of his reach or the efforts to obtain it are subjectively out of proportion of his need, wish or interest to get it.    The resulting cognitive dissonance is resolved by devaluing the object to become less or undesirable.  
In the case of the grapes, the object is material.  In the case of the philistine, cognitive achievements and knowledge as a source of self-esteem and self-worth are emotional and immaterial.   
The fox refocuses his attention towards easily available food.   The philistine refocuses his attempts to boost his self-esteem towards less intellectually challenging sources like wealth or physical fitness.  

There is a special constellation, where the arrogance of ignorance is especially detrimental.    It is the behavior and attitude of many men towards intelligent and educated women.
Such a woman expects a man to be a mindmate, a companion sharing with her intellectual intimacy and the reciprocal joy of consent.   For any man, the task of understanding the woman, of making himself understood, of sharing his thoughts and listening to her, of communicating can be difficult or beyond his abilities.   But if a male animal is in addition driven by an urge to get homeostasis, this task is tiresome and a strain on his patience.
When he experiences giving her, what her brain needs, as out of his reach as are the grapes for the fox, he does not even try.   Instead he becomes a commitment philistine.   
With the same ignorance as described in the article, the male animal denies, that the woman even has a brain.   With the same arrogance, he devalues all women to be nothing more than bodies existing as commodities to be used.    They are perceived and hunted as prey.   As a predator and stud, he derives the self-esteem, that he does not expect to get by intellectual attempts.      

 
The pattern of devaluing, what cannot be reached, is known since millennia.   But I see a trend, that the willingness to earn anything with a lot of effort, is dwindling.   Choosing only, what is easy to get and devaluing everything else seems to be a growing general tendency. 
The social development away from the goal of monogamous long-term commitment and towards a male promiscuous throwaway mentality towards women is one example.  

426. Breeders, Non-Breeders And The Reciprocal Accusation Of Selfishness

Breeders, Non-Breeders And The Reciprocal Accusation Of Selfishness

Breeders and non-breeders often accuse each other of being selfish.   This is remarkable, as being selfish means attempting to get benefits for oneself disregarding conflicting interests.    Accusing someone else of being selfish implies the agreement, that the allegedly selfish behavior is indeed beneficial for the accused. Evaluating another person's behavior as self-damaging would lead to call him a fool, insane, irrational, pathetic, anything except selfish.  
Therefore a breeder accusing a non-breeder as selfish implies the admission, that not breeding is more beneficial than breeding, and vice versa.   This paradox needs to be explained.    

So far, I had attributed the decision to breed or not to breed only to the need for homeostasis due to differences in the strength of the procreation instinct serving directly the survival of the genes.   I consider this as distributed along a bell curve, where at one extreme end people feel a strong procreation instinct, while at the other end, this instinct is absent.  

But there is a second scale, which I have up to now omitted, the innate nurturing instinct.  It is also distributed as a bell curve.  The innate difference is between being attracted to spend time with and to care for helpless beings or not.   At one end are those people, who feel very emotionally attracted to babies, children, pets, not only their own but in general.   At the other extreme are those people, who are just not attracted to any beings, who are lacking the cognitive abilities of a sane adult.   

These two scales are not or at least not fully correlated.   To illustrate the problem, I compare the four combinations of the extremes, but the same problem will also be to a lesser degree the case with the majority of people anywhere in the middle of the bell curves.   And of course, people are often influenced and brainwashed, so they are not aware of their true inclinations.  

1.  High procreation and high nurturing instincts:  
Such people experience raising children predominantly as restoring homeostasis and therefore subjectively as their self-interest.   They are those, who rather feel indiscriminate pity for the childless and the childfree and rarely call them selfish.

2.  High procreation and low nurturing instincts. 
Such people discover, that they experience raising children as a burden and a sacrifice only after they have them, when they are unable to undo the irreversible mistake.  They experience cognitive dissonance, they are envious of the childfree and they call them selfish.    

3.  Low procreation and high nurturing instincts.  
Such people are attracted to children, they choose to be dedicated uncles and aunts, to adopt, to be school teachers.  They perceive pets as children.   While they are rationally aware of the overpopulation and other external good reasons for not breeding, they are secretly dissatisfied of not being able to spend as much time with children as would give them homeostasis for their nurturing instinct.   As a result, they secretly envy the people, who have own children in defiance of any rational considerations, and they accuse them of being selfish. 

4.  Low procreation and low nurturing instincts.   
Such people are attracted only to beings, with whom intellectual communication is possible.   They are emotionally attracted to those people, with whom they can share the joy of consent by having something in common, by the intellectual intimacy with a mindmate.  
They can find it interesting to watch other people's kids for a few hours and to enjoy a visit to the zoo, but such beings just bore them after a while and caring for them is not an attraction, but an unpleasant burden to be avoided.  This lack of the instinct to asymmetrically care for the young has of course nothing to do with the symmetrical willingness to care for a sick partner in a committed relationship.    Such people are not driven to find someone as a target for an asymmetrical nurturing instinct, they choose someone to get attracted to by a wise intellectual choice, and caring is a symmetrical part of commitment.  
Such people are aware, that society as a whole needs some procreation to survive.  For them, being free from raising children is a privilege, they are content, that others do the unpleasant chore.  They are grateful to have been spared.   They have no reason to call breeders selfish.   

422. Epicureanism, Objectivism And The Predisposition Of The Brain

Epicureanism, Objectivism And The Predisposition Of The Brain

It is often assumed, that people either develop or adopt a philosophy and then consciously decide to live in accordance.   

I am convinced, that it is the other way around.   People first feel comfortable with a specific way of life, which is innate in their brain, and then they develop or adopt the philosophy most suitable as a conscious representation.   People following their own inclinations are prone or at risk to experience cognitive dissonance, as long as they consider themselves as deviant from what they are supposed to conform to.   The change of the philosophy allows them to be in harmony and congruence with themselves.

I speculate, that there is a bell curve of what drives human behavior.   At one end, there is the hedonist brain, which has a high urge to restore homeostasis as a consequence of instinctive needs, and which also gets the strongest stimulation to its pleasure center from physical stimuli.    At the other end is the Epicurean brain, which is guided predominantly by rationality and less by instinctive need for homeostasis, and which is most sensitive and responsive to emotional and intellectual stimulation of the pleasure center.    The brains of the majority of people are more balanced in the middle between the two extremes.  

Since the hedonistic and balanced brain is sufficiently in accordance with the Darwinian fitness for procreation and the survival of the species, people with such brains often do not need a philosophy except they just consider themselves as normal.    Only people with the predominantly Epicurean brain feel often compelled to define themselves by a philosophy, because the get marginalized due to their apparent defiance against the animal nature. 

Epicurus has done a very good job in formulating a philosophy fitting this kind of a brain.   He had the wisdom to limit his advice to telling individuals, what they can do to live a happy life for themselves and in interaction with others.    As far as I know, he does not claim, that his philosophy is equally suitable for everybody, he only offered it to those, who choose to share his garden community or who were interested.  
 
Someone suggested to me the objectivism of Ayn Rand.   It seems to me, that she created this philosophy to accommodate her Epicurean brain.   But in contrast to Epicurus, she projects her subjective experience of her own brain upon others and believes that her philosophy is equally suitable for all human beings.  

This text is her own summery: 
http://www.aynrand.org/site/PageServer?pagename=objectivism_intro.    

 "Man—every man—is an end in himself, not the means to the ends of others. He must exist for his own sake, neither sacrificing himself to others nor sacrificing others to himself."  

This quote makes a statement clearly against procreation.  Ayn Rand omits to acknowledge, that hedonistic and average brains are not suitable for her philosophy, because these brains are driven by the urge to procreate, which reaches homeostasis by the sacrifice of raising children.   Raising children is a sacrifice.    Not only the childfree, but most parents agree with this, but they consider themselves as doing a duty and earning society's gratitude.  

There is more information about her omitting evolution:
http://rebirthofreason.com/Articles/Parille/Ayn_Rand_and_Evolution.shtml

Her projecting of her own inclination to all people has lead her to propagate capitalism.   

But capitalism is a direct consequence of the urge to procreate and to favor the bearer of the own genes over other genetically unrelated people.  Capitalism is the greedy expression of acquiring control over as many resources as possible by ruthlessly competing and exploiting others for the sole purpose of supplying the own genetic offspring for as many generations as possible with the advantage of accumulated wealth.    Without procreation, capitalism would be obsolete.   Someone, for whom his own life and his genes die at the same moment, can die poor and he has no need to be greedy.

Therefore I identify as an atheistic Epicurean, but I cannot identify myself as an objectivist.