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

712. Online Discussion Forums: Observing The Peculiarities Of Behavior And The Group Dynamics

712.  Online Discussion Forums: Observing The Peculiarities Of Behavior And The Group Dynamics

The following is a fictive scenario as an illustration.

Imagine someone vacationing on a hot tropical island.   While traveling his shoe lace breaks and he needs to replace it as he needs his shoes when going back to his cold home.   Or maybe shoe laces are especially suitable to fix some item of his luggage.  In short, he has good reasons, why he wants to buy shoe laces.   But this does not imply, that he needs to discuss these reasons with any stranger.

So he asks people, where he can buy the shoe laces.   It is a simple question, and most probably people on the street, at the hotel reception or in the tourist office would give him an equally simple answer.  Either they are sorry not to know.  Or those who do know, give simply the directions how to find the shop.   Nobody in direct contact would start a discussion about his reasons to need shoe laces. 

But in the case of his asking the question on a local web forum concerning the life on this island, people probably would react very differently.   Rational behavior would be the same as that of the people when personally asked.   It would be either a suggestion about where shoe laces are sold or else no reply at all.   Instead he is prone to receive reactions like the following.

• He may get more or less serious suggestions like those to wear sandals or to walk barefoot.  
• He may get advice based upon some hearsay or subjective experience, like the one to better wear boots, because of someone having been bitten by a snake.
• He may be asked to publish a picture of the shoes and the broken shoe laces.  
• He may be criticized for being too stupid to carry spare shoe laces when traveling.
• He may be attacked by some locals as being one of those stinking rich foreign tourists, because some other tourists have done mischief. 
• Some people may divert to discuss their preferred color of shoe laces or the high prices on this island.  
• Some people may start a game about the most creative ideas of what to use instead of shoe laces.

Reading forum discussions and also being the recipient of reactions to having myself asked questions, the following are my generalized observations.  

The online behavior on forums is determined by the combined effect of the specifics of written and at least impersonal, if not also anonymous communication, and of some behavioral tendencies, which can be partly explained by evolutionary psychology.   

There is also a discrepancy when important but different uses of the web are confounded:  In my example, this is finding information and needing publicity for pursuing a goal vs. social dynamics.   
My example above illustrates this discrepancy, when someone joins any forum for no other reason except getting answers to one or more specific questions, but he is involuntarily exposed to weird and unwarranted reactions of many kinds.

1.  Specifics of written communication

Suitable written postings in any forum are not too long, so they are read, but they nevertheless contain sufficient information for the intended purpose.  Therefore when someone asks any simple question like in my example concerning the purchase of shoe laces, then it suffices to express the question in an unequivocal and precise way.   He could specify, where on the island he stays to be directed to the nearest shop.   But his reason to buy shoe laces are irrelevant.   

Indirect communication without being exposed to the other's direct reaction, and the anonymity of never going to meet in person disinhibits people from being rational, civilized, polite and considerate. 

2.  Distorted reactions for ego benefits

Being able to help and to give advice makes some people feel good about themselves.   Not knowing something, even if this just means a shop selling shoe laces does not trigger this reaction.  Some people even feel bad, when they have to admit to not know something, even a trifle.  

Some people do not listen long and carefully enough to what others are really telling them, before they blur out what they belief to know.  Pouring out their alleged superior knowledge over others makes them more to feel good than just listening. 
Giving advice without being asked for in written communication is a similar behavior.   It is a form of disregard for the abilities of the other and the unknown preceding efforts.   Giving unwanted advice insinuates, that the person is unable to have himself thought of and considered these options already.    

In a posting asking a simple question it suffices, when the question itself is well expressed.   Information inviting and enabling qualified but unwanted advice is not and needs not to be provided.  Any advice, asked for or unwanted, can never be any better than the information, upon which it is based. 

Some people do not so much feel good about the absolute amount of their own knowledge and skills, instead they get the most personal benefit when they subjectively experience an apparent superiority.  They need not so much to know, but to know better and to be right compared with another person.   In the case of any lack of real superiority, they derive this benefit by instead putting others down towards an apparent inferiority.

3.  Dealing with lacking information

Lacking information and being aware thereof makes wise and rational people cautious.   If possible, they acquire more information.   Else they are aware of not being able to know, which of several possible interpretations should be chosen.   They allow themselves and give to others the benefit of the doubt. 

But there are others.   They misunderstand things, they overlook important information, they jump to conclusions, they interpret statements based upon subjective experience.  They do not doubt their own interpretation of what they hear or read.   They project their own needs, attitudes and behavioral tendencies upon others.   They have no clue, that their projections are as incorrect as the others differ from them.

They are usually biased towards an unfavorable devaluation of and an underestimation of the poster of the question.    

This can mainly be explained by:

3.1.  The Dunning-Kruger effect

When people perceive and believe their own knowledge as the general baseline, they often are unable to comprehend, what others write, say or think.   Instead of doubting themselves, and of acknowledging a lack of information, they consider anything incomprehensible automatically as the others' flaws, ignorance and deficiencies. 

They feel entitled to patronize those asking the question.  They often believe to do a favor to those, to whom they proffer unwanted and uninvited advice.  
Without explanations and background information, uninvited advice is often ridiculous and completely irrelevant.   Such advice usually includes options or apparent options, which had already been considered and discarded.   The Dunning-Kruger effect impedes the comprehension, why advice is not needed, unless it is asked for.

3.2.  Attribution of a place and role

For some people, the web is a source for information.   For some questions, the best place to ask a question is a forum, which also has become a social structure formed by the most active members of the forum group.   The person simply asking a question does not automatically intend or wish to be given a place therein.   But the wish to simply get an answer is often not accepted.   Instead any posting on a forum triggers behavior towards attributing a place to the person, who is perceived as a prospective new member to be dealt with. 

Depending on the circumstances, this attribution process can either elicit competition based upon the hierarchy instinct.  In this case, the person gets forced into status struggles, even when the person does not fight, but is passively beaten towards the role of the underdog without any attempt of self-defence.   Luckily enough, those doing this beating can attribute a low place on the hierarchy, but they cannot know, if the target really feels the beating or is protected by a shell of indifference to competition.  

Else people are so different, that the question asked suffices to perceive and to drive away the person as being outgroup, who is not considered as suitable to be allowed into the ingroup. 

The methods for driving someone towards the role of the underdog or towards exclusion are the same.   Anything real or apparent, that can be interpreted as unfavorable is used as a tool for criticism and bashing.  
Alternatively, neither the question nor further clarifications are taken for serious, instead the poster of the question is the target of jokes.  

4.  Herd behavior

The general reactions to a question depend to a certain extent upon the hazard of who reacts first and how.  When the first reply happens to be useful, then all is well.   But if the first reply starts as one of the distorted reactions mentioned above, the herd often follows this tendency.

5.  How to react

When there is no answer to the question, but instead false interpretations are believed, the question is criticized, unwanted and absurd advice is proffered, then further participation in this forum is unwise and futile.  

When people are attempting to push a person into the role of the fool, the incompetent or the underdog, when misunderstandings and omissions are purposefully used to put someone down and to make him appear stupid or wrong, then all elaborate explanations are a waste of time. 
Writing explanatory postings would be like cutting off any of Hydra's heads.   It only instigates nine more heads to grow.  Any careful attempt to explain something only leads to more willful search for using new misunderstandings and more biased misinterpretations for more attacks. 

Sometimes group members like humble newcomers.   When somebody puts himself down and asks for help, calling himself a loser, then he is usually well received.   Somebody admitting weaknesses and placing himself at the bottom does not elicit any attempts to push him there.   As long as he stays at the bottom of the hierarchy, he is treated with pity and kindness.    

Asking rational questions is not an expression of being humble.  Self confidence is perceived as a provocation.    Merely asking questions after already having figured out what to do shows self confidence.   No wish to fight a way up in the hierarchy is also perceived as a provocation.  
Provoking people can be an unavoidable side effect of the pursuit of an important goal.   But when provocation only means reacting to a power struggle, this brings no benefits.

As soon as the search for information is turned into some other people's struggle to gain secondary benefits, the wisest reaction is to withdraw.   There will be no answer and it is better to move on. 

700. Research Concerning Female Self-Abuse

700.  Research Concerning Female Self-Abuse

This is entry 700 and I am still blogging to find a mindmate, who is not predominantly an instinct driven animal, but someone, who values a woman's brain more than her body.  
All I want is to find one such man.  Where is he?  

Sometimes in matchmaking sites they suggest answering among other questions, what one would change, if one were a deity able to create a better world.  
My answer:  I would change the male biology.   I would recreate a different version of men, who would never feel an urge to abuse a woman's body and remain emotionally unattached.   I would create men, who crave for emotional attachment and monogamous bonding and who would only consider, need and experience physical intimacy as a consequence of this.   I would create men, who never touch a woman, unless they also want and intend to share their lives with her.    

A few such men do exist, but if all men were like this, the world would be a much better place for women.  

In entry 688 I listed some of foolish women's reason for participating in self-abuse.  

I omitted one more unfortunate reason for female self-abuse.   Many foolish women compete for whom they perceive as alpha males and reject the others, whom they could have for themselves without competition.  
In long bygone times, women competed for men by their looks, the social status of their parents and their quality of character and personality.   
Due to male power over the media, the present social norm of promiscuity has the side effect of many women having been brainwashed to accept self-abuse as the unavoidable price to be accepted by men.   Today women compete by making themselves available for self-abuse and by presenting themselves in a way to trigger men's wish to abuse them.   These women have the delusion to get a relationship with alpha men by allowing their bodies to be abused before another woman makes her body available.     

But self-abuse is detrimental for women, as two studies indicate:

1.  There is a study showing the distinction between the attitudes of the genders concerning what is the best pursuit of self-interest.   

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/11/131125164745.htm

"In the largest, most in-depth study to date on regret surrounding sexual activity, a team of psychology researchers found a stark contrast in remorse between men and women, potentially shedding light on the evolutionary history of human nature."

"They suggest that men are more likely to regret not taking action on a potential liaison, and women are more remorseful for engaging in one-time liaisons."

""For men throughout evolutionary history, every missed opportunity to have sex with a new partner is potentially a missed reproduce opportunity -- a costly loss from an evolutionary perspective." Haselton says. "But for women, reproduction required much more investment in each offspring, including nine months of pregnancy and potentially two additional years of breastfeeding. The consequences of casual sex were so much higher for women than for men, and this is likely to have shaped emotional reactions to sexual liaisons even today.""

"According to the findings:

    The top three most common regrets for women are: losing virginity to the wrong partner (24 percent), cheating on a present or past partner (23 percent) and moving too fast sexually (20 percent).
    For men, the top three regrets are: being too shy to make a move on a prospective sexual partner (27 percent), not being more sexually adventurous when young (23 percent) and not being more sexually adventurous during their single days (19 percent)."

These asymmetrical regrets reflect the impact of the current social norm of promiscuity, which represents the men with the strongest urge to abuse as if they were average.   Male regrets are about failing to perform as much abuse as prescribed by the norm.    Women regret to have been misled by the norm to act in a self-damaging way, hurting themselves by the denial of their emotional needs.  
Men are encouraged to feel entitled to more abuse, women learn the stupidity of self-abuse often only, when it is too late. 

2.  A study indicates, that self-abuse is unhealthy:

http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00224499.2013.848255#tabModule

"“Hookups” are sexual encounters between partners who are not in a romantic relationship and do not expect commitment. We examined the associations between sexual hookup behavior and depression, sexual victimization (SV), and sexually transmitted infections (STIs) among first-year college women. In this longitudinal study, 483 women completed 13 monthly surveys assessing oral and vaginal sex with hookup and romantic partners, depression, SV, and self-reported STIs. Participants also provided biological specimens that were tested for STIs. During the study, 50% of participants reported hookup sex and 62% reported romantic sex. "

"hookup behavior during college was positively correlated with experiencing clinically significant depression symptoms. Sex in the context of romantic relationships was not correlated with depression."

"Approximately one-quarter of the sample reported at least one instance of SV by way of physical force, threats of harm, or incapacitation during the yearlong study."

"hookup behavior during the study was a significant predictor of incident STIs"

"The potential for negative health and social outcomes suggest the need for proactive educational efforts"

This is a tragic vicious circle.   Women are misled to mistake self-abuse as the only successful method to find a partner for their emotional needs.   This instrumental compliance reinforces the male delusion, that women would benefit when in reality they are abused.   Thus even those men, who would not abuse a woman, were they aware of what they are really doing, do not hesitate to abuse women pretending their compliance to be their true wish.  The male delusion of mistaking purposeful self-abuse for beneficial self-interested behaviors bears the risk, that sometimes men may believe to do something beneficial and pleasing to not consenting victims.       

653. Different Approaches To The Process Towards Knowing Someone Better

653.   Different Approaches To The Process Towards Knowing Someone Better

With whom to spend the rest of the life together is a very significant decision.  Mistakes can have very grave, long lasting, irreversible and extreme painful consequences.   

In entries 174, 176, 178 and 185 I developed a model for the process of getting to know each other.    The decision phase in entry 174 can be further divided.  
The preliminary phase is the phase of corresponding and talking over the phone to find out, if there is enough in common to rationally justify a personal meeting, the main decision phase follows the first meeting and includes further meetings.  

The duration of a phase includes a certain number x of hours of time spent by focusing the attention upon interacting by telephone, correspondence and even pondering over the prospects.   These x hours can be distributed over many months of only a short time daily or even weekly, or they can be spent with priority during a short period of time of intensive and extensive interacting.     
 

The more someone is an individual and not average, the more difficult it is to find someone suitable.  Therefore these phases, especially the preliminary phase, are usually repeated with several or even many different possible matches, before two persons find each other suitable enough for considering and attempting a relationship.   

There are principally two different approaches towards how to proceed:

The reciprocal absolute-cooperative approach: 

Goal:
 

This approach has the goal of finding just the one partner, who is minimally suitable for a relationship, but also sufficiently suitable to impede any further interest in others.   In this case, the most rational approach is to focus on only one intensive and extensive contact with one person at a time and to postpone considering and evaluating other contacts to after the possible failure.

Who:
 

The absolute approach suits and attracts those persons, who know themselves and their own needs well enough.  They are aware of what they are looking for in a partner and what they cannot accept.  

The absolute-cooperative approach only works, when two persons choose it as an option.  

Cooperation and consistency:
 

This approach is a form of cooperation.  Both share the task of discovering common ground and affinity and welcome finding them.   Every consent about any topic benefits both in getting them nearer to their goal, no matter if it is a trait, attitude, interest, habit, attribute.   The situation is transparent and to a certain degree reliable for both of them.   

No matter if the consent is more like tolerance by indifference or more like enthusiasm, as long as it is a consent between two persons, who want the consent, both can reasonably expect the other to be consistent.   Consent will not be easily converted into a reason for rejection out of the blue. 

Trust:
 

Growing reliable consent creates trust along with the growing probability of being compatible.   This reinforces and motivates to open up and to share more personal matters, which are also important for compatibility.   

Reinforcement:
 

Trust, consistency and discovering affinity and common ground reinforce the reasons for focusing upon exclusively this one possible match.  This then again reinforces the creation of trust and further affinity.

Emotional risk:
 

Every contact is of course emotionally risky.   But the risk of the absolute-cooperative approach is not so much the risk of an incomprehensible rejection.   It is mainly the risk of ending a contact by agreement because of discovering clearly defined lacking or intolerable traits and attributes.  By accepting someone's having rationally comprehensible criteria, an agreement of not meeting the criteria is not even really a rejection but the consent to be not compatible.  


The reciprocal relative-competitive approach:

Goal:
 

This approach has the goal of finding the best of all possible matches, not just one good match.   Nobody can really know, who is the best unless after having scrutinized every one of them.   As this cannot be done, every good match is considered with the doubt, that there could be a better match yet to be found.    The rational procedure for this goal is to prolong any phase and to explore and to compare many possible matches simultaneously.

Who:
 

The relative approach is often an expression of immaturity, ignorance, lacking self-awareness and having a limited theory of mind.   Some people enter the contact with haphazard persons without a clue about how little there is in common nor what they really want.  Some are attracted by looks, but beyond this they are not able to find out, what they do or do not want, unless and until they are confronted with it.  They only experience incompatibility by noticing the contrast in comparison with someone else.   They need to compare to find out, whom they want.  
Being vaguely discontented but not knowing why leads to a process of recurrently and endlessly probing, discarding and moving on attempting to find someone better.  They continue like this, as long as they are unable to decide, what and who is good enough for them.  

Whenever one person chooses the relative-competitive approach, the other has no choice to get anything else if preferred.

Competition and no consistency:
 

In the relative-competitive approach, there is not consistency.   Consent about a topic is not a reliable step forward towards a wider common ground, consent is only temporary and easily annihilated onesidedly, as soon as someone else appears to be better.   Being accepted or rejected does not depend primarily upon one's own traits and attributes, instead it depends at least as much upon those of competitors.   

These competitors are unknown powers in the background.   Ignoring both their number as well as their traits and attributes makes losing the other's consent by being compared with a successful competitor an unpredictable event coming out of the blue.    

When people are competing to get a job, they do know, that they are competing and they have some idea, what is required.  They have a clue about the qualities for being the best   This gives them a chance to attempt appearing as the best.

The person in the situation of competing against unknown competitors for an appealing partner is in a much less advantageous situation.   Due to not knowing anything about a potential match, there is no way to influence the comparison with others nor to attempt to appear being the best.  Who is perceived as better is determined by the lottery of who happens to be there to be compared.  

Trust:
 

When the rejection can come at any moment out of the blue and cannot be predicted, there is no reliable consistency.   This impedes trust.  The relative-competitive approach keeps contacts superficial and less personal.   The possibility of a rejection out of the blue does not motivate anybody to open up and get more personal.   

Reinforcement: 
 

The fragility of a contact adds to the maintenance of some mental distance.    Being prepared for a pending rejection at any time makes the own relative-competitive approach the most reasonable behavior.   If the rejection by the preference for someone else can happen at any time, then it is beneficial to also have other contacts to fall back upon.   The fragility and superficiality of the relative-competitive approach also reinforce it by preventing trust and closeness.   
 
Emotional risk. 
 

The main emotional risk is the unpredictability of a onesided incomprehensible rejection at any moment and for unknown reasons.   Having such a rejection imposed upon oneself without having any part in causing it is much more painful than an end by agreement.


When the situation is asymmetrical, then the person following or preferring the absolute-cooperative approach is the one having all the disadvantages.   

Jerks play games and pretend to follow also the absolute-cooperative approach, until they find the someone to prefer and then they reject the flabbergasted other out of the blue.  

When the situation is clear, the person with a preference for the absolute-cooperative approach has two options, either to recoil directly or to go along while also continuing to search, but not to find someone better but someone, who shares the preference for this approach.     

The relative-competitive approach is probably enhanced or rather aggravated by the social norm of the lifestyle in capitalistic countries, where people are encouraged and brainwashed towards consuming and discarding, towards the greed of wanting always more and always something better.    

When people are made to buy a better car, a better computer and a better cell phone every few months or years instead of using things until they break, then it is not really astonishing, that they generalize this consumers' attitude also to human relations. 

647. Masculinity Is Obsolete And An Anachronism

647.  Masculinity Is Obsolete And An Anachronism

Ruthless capitalistic people do not hesitate to enhance their profit, and propagating masculinity is just one example:

"Where male attitudes are concerned, a new study implicates magazine advertisements specifically aimed at men as helping to reinforce a certain set of views on masculinity termed "hyper-masculinity.""

"Hyper-masculinity is an extreme form of masculine gender ideology comprising four main components: toughness, violence, dangerousness and calloused attitudes toward women and sex."

"Vokey's results are consistent with considerable prior research showing a positive association between hyper-masculine beliefs and a host of social and health problems, such as dangerous driving, drug use and violence towards women. "

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/02/130228113359.htm

Masculinity is not only a hazard to women and sometimes also to other men, it is also obsolete and an anachronism when considering the circumstances of modern life.


What is usually defined and understood by the word masculinity, are either physical traits or traits and behaviors derived thereof. 

• Strength, endurance, stamina, high libido
• Muscles, speed and fitness acquired by physical exercise
• Skills acquired by sports and exercises like catching and throwing objects, fighting, riding, climbing
• Aggression, violence, competition, risk taking, fearlessness, domination.

Masculinity does not include any intelligence and cognitive skills, which depend exclusively upon the quality of the brain.   Masculinity is understood as what distinguishes men from women.   The cognitive qualities, which women can have as much as men, are not used to define masculinity.    This reduces masculinity to physical traits.
Men can easily demonstrate their innate physical advantage by beating up, abusing and raping defenseless women, while any male claim of higher intelligence contradicts reality.   Only fools deny the evidence of women's cognitive equality.       

A positive attitude to their masculinity is men's pathetic attempt to interpret their biological advantage of merely physical strength as an alleged superiority.    It really is both sad and ludicrous to consider it a sign of superiority, when someone is physically able to force his will upon a helpless victim.


In prehistoric times the survival of hunter and gatherer societies depended upon men's attributes of masculinity.  

• Hunting for food and fighting for the protection against wild animals and marauders required physically strong and fit men, who cultivated masculinity.   
• Leaders had to proof their abilities by fighting and competing over other men.    
• When resources were extremely scarce, fighting over access to the resources was fighting over who would live and who would perish.  
• High male libido deprived women of a choice and caused many unwanted pregnancies.  This may have contributed to the survival of the human species by compensating for the high mortality.

Today, masculinity is obsolete.  

• Any intelligent, trained and educated person of both genders even with physical disabilities can do research and construct or invent machines, tools, appliances, chemicals, which are stronger and faster and more efficient than any prototype of an extreme masculine man could ever be.   
• Politicians, leaders, rulers, bosses need to be elected for their wisdom, responsibility, justice, intelligence, education and the ability to cooperate and to communicate.   Those who get to the top by successful fighting are the wrong ones to be there.   I suspect that masculinity contributes to the Peter principle.   
• Today, the global resources suffice for a modest, frugal life for all living humans, a fair distribution requires cooperation.   Fighting over resources today is fighting for unjust greed, not for basic survival.
• Today, male high libido causes women's suffering and global overpopulation.   Today, those who invent the best and safest birth control methods compensate for the damage, that male libido does.  

Today, many of those people of both genders, whose qualities enable them to contribute to the technological, medical, chemical and social progress, would have been failures and losers as cave men.  The females would have been wasted as breeders.    Femininity is as obsolete as is masculinity.   


When persons of both genders are wearing comfortable clothes like jeans and t-shirts, the most prominent visual distinction between natural and unmodified men and women would be a man's beard.   A beard is in fact the only distinctive sign a man's maleness, which neither does harm women nor can be used to do so by a man's choice.  
It is weird and absurd, that men shave off this sign of being men and then they compensate for the lost distinction by enhancing and accentuating what they consider as masculinity and what makes them hazardous.    A man with a beard presents himself so unmistakably as a man, that neither muscles nor aggression can add anything to this.     


What is needed is a model of humanity, which is contrasted with animality and which replaces the gender distinction.  Those cognitive qualities, which are the enabler of progress are gender-neutral.
Only primitive fools derive their identity from their masculinity and as being different from women.   Wise intellectual men derive their identity from the cognitive qualities of their brains.  They recognize this as shared with women but as a decisive distinction from animals.

Nothing of what I and many other educated and intelligent women wish to share with a man requires masculinity.   

645. The Implications Of Men Fighting Over Women

645.    The Implications Of Men Fighting Over Women 

I recently read an article, which while mainly about another topic mentions men fighting over women.  

"NC: I reported in my 1988 article, “Life Histories, Blood Revenge, and Warfare in a Tribal Population” (Science 239: 985-992) that unokais (men who had killed others) had 3 times the average number of children than same-age non-unokais and 2.5 times the average number of wives."

"I found the Yanomamö quite violent, without any outside provocation making them so, and that their violence revolved around competition for women. Specifically, there was chronic and sometimes violent competition to obtain nubile, young females."

"Now if a scientist studying yaks, bullfrogs, bats, deer, salamanders, or any non-human animal stated that they competed for opportunities to mate, no one in biology would have taken that to be anything other than an accurate observation. But if you say that about human beings, it becomes “lurid speculation.”"

Source: 

Savage Science: Excerpt of an Interview of Napoleon A. Chagnon
by Frank Miele, Senior Editor, Skeptic Magazine
http://www.skeptic.com/eskeptic/13-03-06/


Being a woman, I perceive men, who fight over access to and control over women, as a hazard. 

A not partnered man experiencing sexual dishomeostasis often encounters obstacles between his instinctive urges and the access to a woman's body.    Depending upon circumstances, these obstacles are varieties of who controls this access.  Men's methods how to react to these obstacles depend not only upon the factual control, but also upon an individual man's attitude towards women.

1.   When women are controlled and owned by men.   

Under different social and historical circumstances, there are and have been many situations, where women are and were under the control of men, enforced by structural power and physical strength.   This control can be legal or illegal, the controlling men can be family members, religious gurus, autocratic leaders, owners of slaves, captors, abductors, kidnappers, who restrict the access to the women under their power.  
Access can only be obtained by fighting, payment or clever means of outwitting and overriding this control.    Any transfer of who controls a woman is between men, while the woman herself has no influence.

Depending on his general attitude towards women, a man's congruent behavior respects or denies the woman's own wishes to have control over herself. 

1.1.  A man freeing a respected women attempts to win her consent by creating emotional attachment and commitment and he disagrees with any man's usurped alleged right to control a woman.   History, fairy tales, fables and novels are full of such stories.  

1.2.  A man with the attitude of subjectively justified objectification and commodification acquires control over a woman as over the possession of a utility.    Having the delusion that acquiring control creates unlimited rights, he abuses women in disregard of their own wishes.   The victory of one man over the other determines, who will be the one imposing the abuse upon women, who themselves have no chance to avoid this..    

2.   When women have themselves the legal and/or factual control over their own body.  

In this situation, a rational man respecting and appreciating a woman as an equal partner with her own capacity to decide does not fight or compete with other men over her.    He recognizes that only the woman herself is entitled to deny or allow access to her body.   He knows that unless she needs to be freed from another man's illegal and unjustified control as in 1.1., every agreement for any interaction is strictly between him and her.   

As long as their behavior is correct and not breaking any preexisting freely chosen obligations, nobody else matters or has a right to interfere.   Even in the case of a cheating woman, she is herself responsible for the transgression.  The betrayed partner has a right to direct his consequences to her, but this does not justify to fight over her as if she were a stolen possession.

Fighting over women can have many forms.   While animals and some men fight by using physical violence, in modern societies men often compete by more subtle means.   But this still implies blatant disregard for women's ability to decide for themselves.
The story of the wager in entry 119 is a good example.    Even though in this event the woman apparently made her own choice, the circumstances were created by two men.  She was manipulated by them for the purpose of winning a wager.  

There is a very serious and dangerous fallacy in a man's thinking, if he competes and fights over a woman with another man, who has no factual legal or illegal control over her.   Such fighting implies a man's lack of respect and regard for the woman as a person.    

2.1.   Fighting over women implies a general justification of male control and dominance over women.    Instead of principally rejecting such control, men fight over who of them can have it.   

2.2.  Men fighting over a woman deprive her of the choice between all of them.   The loser usually is no more available to her.   Either the winner impedes the loser(s) to get near her, or they withdraw discouraged.   Even a winner, who has enough consideration to not attempt to control her, thus limits who other than he himself gets a chance to attempt winning her consent.  

2.3.  Men competing misrepresent themselves in their attempts to appear each better than the other.  This deprives her of a more realistic assessment of any of them, which would enable her rationally evaluate each of them compared with her needs.    Competing has the best result for those men with the most advanced skills as manipulators, bluffers and liars.  

2.4.  A man fighting over a woman often respects his rival more than he respects the woman.   In this case he fights mainly for the psychological benefits of winning against a valued opponent.  Winning is the main objective, the woman herself is not important.  

2.5.  Fighting means taking risks of being harmed and it means strain and effort.    Therefore the winner is inclined to feel entitled to his prize.   But winning the fight only removes another man as an obstacle, it does not automatically make the woman want him.
Some men are afflicted with the fallacy of wrongly assuming, that as the winners they are automatically attractive and wanted by the women.   

Thus they are prone to become a nuisance when not accepting the woman's rejection.
If such a man would realistically consider the probabilities of a woman's choice between consent and rejection, this would make fighting less attractive.  It would motivate him to attempt to win her directly instead and respect her choice.   

585. Masculinity And Femininity As Identity Crutches

585.   Masculinity And Femininity As Identity Crutches

Masculinity and femininity are both identities based upon specific dispositions for needs and behaviors determined by virulent instincts.  The stronger the instincts, the more masculinity and femininity are pronounced.   The stronger masculinity and femininity, the more they bring out the worst in men and in women.  

Masculinity and femininity are consciously expressed as favorable attitudes towards specific instincts.

 

Masculinity is based upon a positive attitude towards more or less excessive instinctive urges for sexual homeostation leading to the objectification of women, and towards the hierarchy and ingroup-outgroup instincts, leading to competition, fighting, domination, aggression.   All this often causes extreme suffering for the victims.
 

Femininity is based upon a positive attitude towards the more or less instinctive breeding urge.   This leads not only to their sacrificing their own wellbeing for the priority of breeding, but they burden the disadvantages of breeding also upon other people.    

Masculinity and femininity are complementary identities.    Masculine men abuse women's bodies as objects, feminine women displace their bonding needs to their offspring and do not offer bonding to a partner.   

Masculinity and femininity are the social norm.   

1. When their high instinctivity predisposes people to innately conform with the social norm, they are at ease with themselves and with their social surroundings.   For people with more cognition than instincts, they are a hazard.
   
2. There are also those other men and women, who are either equally instinct driven and controlled by cognition, or their cognition is even stronger than their instinctivity.    In this situation, their confidence makes a big difference.

• Strong, secure and independent thinkers with high self-esteem are not impressed by the pressure from a social norm, which does not fit their needs.   They reject masculinity and femininity in favor of a gender neutral rationality, they are only concerned about their genuine emotions and needs.    They too live in the congruence of their attitudes with their innate inclinations.
  
• But those also lacking confidence, who are insecure and have low self-esteem, are in a especially difficult situation.   They need an identity.  Theoretically they have two options, a cognitive or an instinctive identity, depending what influences their ideal self.
  
  • The more appropriate cognitive identity is hard to obtain, it requires learning, working on oneself, mental and intellectual efforts and resisting social pressure.  
    The false instinctive identity is much easier to obtain.  It just needs to refrain from any self-control or reasoning and to allow existing instincts to rule.  The rest is imitation of all the other instinct driven people and to fulfill the expectations of the social norm.   It is the choice of the least resistance.
    
  • Some people may even not feel any of the instincts, and nevertheless strife to fulfill the social norm, because it supplies them with a fake identity.  They may even relapse at the same time into some apparent cognitive behaviors and appear contradictory and inconsistent.
  
  Whatever the exact dynamics, masculinity and femininity are for these people no real identities, but identity crutches. 

  

561. A Fallacy When Applying The Bell Curve

561.   A Fallacy When Applying The Bell Curve

The bell curve is a very useful statistical representation of the distribution of given facts.   But it is dangerous to use it without careful consideration for making decisions. 

In entry 39 I wrote:
'Regulations require a hierarchy of achievement, and the teachers are expected to have results distributed along a bell curve, as many As as Fs.   If all the pupils have As and Bs, this is not appreciated as an indication of a good teacher with clever students.   If all have Es and Fs, it is not accepted as an indication of pupils with special problems or a bad teacher.   
There has to be a bell curve to put the achievements relative in a hierarchy.   Rationally, this makes no sense.    The same pupil with the same achievement, could by haphazard be in a class, where he gets an A for it, or in another class, where he gets an F, his achievements are distorted by others, whom he might not have even chosen.

Rationally, marking should be independent of the other pupils, measured instead on how much he has learned of what has been taught.     Everybody, who has learned 100% or little less, should get an A, independent of how many others have achieved the same.   That would be just.'  

A recent comment to this entry contains the expression "defiance of the logic of the bell-shaped curve."

This phrase caught my attention to the problems of the fallacy of confounding segments of a bell curve with an entire one.    

The marking of pupils' achievements is a good example:
As long as all children attend elementary school together, it can be assumed that their intelligence is roughly distributed along the bell curve and thus also the achievements, as long as the teacher optimizes the teaching for the pupils of average intelligence.

In Germany, children are sorted into different schools usually after four years of elementary school.  While I have not information about the actual fractions, when and where I went to school, one third went to the school with the lowest level, one third to the one with a medium level and one third entered the school leading to university after having passed a test.      
Thus each type of school catered for a different segment of the bell curve of intelligence.  

Looking at the distribution of only the segment containing the highest third of the bell curve, it is a downward curve.   The higher the intelligence, the fewer the cases.   
The fallacy of assuming the distribution of the ability of the pupils in this segment as an entire bell curve misleads teachers to confound the median of intelligence with the average.   The average intelligence in this segment of the bell curve is much closer to the lowest than to the highest.   

By lessons optimized for the median, a predominance of bad marks can be expected by the majority below.    Teaching needs to be optimized for the average pupils in this segment. 

Distributing marks along an alleged bell curve for the purpose of obtaining more As and Bs in a class of this segment is not a solution but a distortion.  A bell curve of marks with C as the average implies to have roughly as many Fs as As, but this cannot be the case in the upper segment of the bell curve of intelligence.  It cannot be justified to make the worst student fail, if he is only slightly less intelligent than the average, while the really bright students cannot be deprived of their As.  

495. Men's Fallacy When Interpreting Their Incomprehension Of Women

Men's Fallacy When Interpreting Their Incomprehension Of Women

The same fallacy as explained generally in entry 494 happens very often between men and women.  Men are usually not only oblivious of it, but also out of the reach of any attempt to help them gain an insight concerning this fallacy.    This fallacy is self-protecting.   

Anybody, who bothers to read a part of this blog, can easily get aware, that I am learned and knowledgeable about some topics.  There are many men, who are learned specialists in their own field, but who know less about what I am writing about, often because they have not been pondering with the same interest over the same topics.    When they talk about their interests, of which I am not well informed, I ask questions, I read further information, but I do not dispute or debate, what they know better than I do.   I do this not, because they are men.  I attempt to learn from the better informed, no matter if they are female or male.   

But men too often do not behave like this.   When I share my thoughts with them, not matter if talking over the phone, by email or in real life, often their first superficial reaction of not immediately understanding my statements is enough to trigger the fallacy.   They do not hesitate but jump to the conclusion of misinterpreting their own incomprehension as if I were wrong.  

While writing this blog, I have put a lot of emphasis on my wish to find a mindmate, defining a mindmate as someone with a high priority on getting bonded by intellectual intimacy derived from sharing the joy of consent.    The method to create the joy of consent is communication to find and enhance agreement.  

Therefore a man's style of communicating by email or on the phone is a good indication to find out, what to expect from him in a relationship.  The way, how he reacts. when he does not comprehend a statement of mine, is a part of his style of communication.    He shows his own preference for either consent or a hierarchy of intellectual superiority.        

If a man values consent and intellectual intimacy, then incomprehension for him is the task to gain comprehension by giving me the benefit of the doubt, that I know, what I am talking about, that my statements are the result of sound reasoning.   He therefore is motivated to find out more about my thinking.   He asks questions for the purpose to getting explanations and elaborations from me.   He cooperates as an equal, because it is his wish and interest to gain better understanding as a way of intellectual convergence.     This makes me feel good.  It shows an appreciation of my person.  It is a way of reciprocal emotional enhanced shared benefits as the result of shared consent.  But it rarely ever happens.

The sad reality is very different.   Most of the time, as soon as a man disagrees with any statement of mine, there is a rut in his brain that automatically starts the fallacy of considering my statement as wrong.  It does not even occur to him to wonder about his own comprehension or lack thereof.   By believing in his own male superiority while lacking the least need or wish for consent or intellectual intimacy, such a man starts an intellectual power struggle with the purpose of establishing a hierarchy, where of course he dominates.   

He starts verbal fencing to reach his goal of believing himself the winner of a fair fight.    He competes to win by believing to be right, and that make him feel good.  

But what makes him feel good makes me feel bad.   As soon as I am told explicitly, that someone believes me to be wrong, or if his reaction tells me this implicitly, I perceive this as antagonism and as his creating an emotional crevice.   When I feel, that he wants and feels entitled to win by making my lose, I recoil.  This attitude towards me is repulsive and it scares me.  

Such competition for intellectual superiority is usually already noticeable by email or on the phone.   It is a big red flag, that he feels entitled to dominate, even if he declares in the most explicit way the contrary, that he wants equality.   But his competing to be right tells me the truth of what to expect.    Claiming to offer equality does not always indicate, that a man even knows the true meaning of equality.

    

Some of the men are unaware, that this fallacy is a contradiction to what they present sincerely as their attitude towards women, and there is an explanation.   But an explanation is not a justification, it is a challenge for men to gain more awareness.  

It is known by statistics, that men tend to mate intellectually and socially downward.   The medical doctor marrying the nurse, the engineer marrying the secretary are examples.    This is aggravated by the unfortunate fact, that in my generation, the average level of education of men is higher than that of women.

Men are unfortunately so much blinded by their physiological need for homeostasis, that their intellectual needs are often temporarily deactivated when they choose a mate by infatuation.   They are oblivious of the woman's inadequacy for intellectual intimacy, until the infatuation wears of.  

This gets some men into the repeated and long term experience, that when they do not comprehend a woman, or when a woman does not comprehend them, this is indeed caused by the woman's inferior knowledge, intelligence and education.    After a while, a man takes this bias so much for granted, that he loses the perception for any woman's intellectual adequacy and corresponding needs.   When he then gets into contact with a woman, who offers him intellectual intimacy, he is already so blind and biased, that he has lost the ability to even notice.   Before he has a chance to get aware of the woman's real intellectual qualities, the rut in his brain has already mislead him into the fallacy.   

It seems that nearly every man, with whom I get into online contact, has been biased towards the fallacy of underestimating me.     It is very frustrating to be misjudged, because he life experience has been with too much stupidity and superficiality in all those women, whose bodies attracted his instincts.  It is frustrated to be confounded with such women and to be treated as if I were one of them.  

465. The Implications Of Temptation

465.   The Implications Of Temptation

Somewhere I read a man's opinion about temptations and at first I was a bit astonished.  

It was in connection with remarks about the weird focus of the christian religion upon the repentant sinner.   In christianity, the repentant sinner is valued more than the innocent person, who has never done harm.    The repentant sinner seems to be the preferred role model of displayed obedience to the deity, whose restored power is considered as more important than sparing the victims from being harmed.  

Deities seem to be more often than not imagined as somewhat narcissistic.  This is not really astonishing considering how their representatives on earth consider themselves as mirroring the deity having allegedly been created to resemble him. Those representatives do not experience enough submission to both the deity and themselves from those, who never do anything bad enough to be forgiven by the deity.    

This man stated as a generalized opinion, that he is more impressed, gives more credit and has more respect for those, who resist and conquer temptations than for those, who are free from these temptations.    This view focuses on evaluation and judging the real or potential perpetrator only and it not concerned about the potential victims.  

While the religions' repentant sinner has conquered his previous weakness of succumbing to temptation, there is a related concept of struggling with temptations, to which also outspoken atheists adhere. 


This can only be explained by looking at it from the point of what some men value themselves as their ideal of masculinity, which unfortunately includes competing, fighting and winning.   If the winning cannot be over another man, then at least it has to be a hard victory over oneself.  
Therefore in a man's perception of treating women, masculinity can be either expressed by luring them into bed or by having a strong temptation to do so, but overcoming this temptation.    The reasons to choose between the two options are both reasons according to male judgment, in both varieties the women are objects and targets, whose own wishes do not count.    The reasons to resist temptations are often religiously or philosophically motivated or else they are utilitarian for gaining some compensation or not losing further access to a specific woman's body.    It is clearly only based upon how men are judging each other, not concern or consideration for women.   Sparing the potential victims is not a part of such masculinity.

Here again is a case, where men use religion to value and justify the expression of their own subconscious instinctivity, which is consciously experienced as masculinity.   As long as they are respected by other men, their lack of concern about the impact upon women is perceived as excused. 

Seen from the point of view of someone, who does not want to be a victim, the evaluation is very different.   Because the person, who does not want to be hurt, wishes to feel more safe and less at risk and is not bothered about masculinity.

As an analogy, someone living at the bank of a river tends to feel the more safe and relaxed, the longer there had not been any flood.   But as low as the probability of a flood may seem due to the past experience of its absence, the possibility cannot be excluded.   The person is still aware of living at an unsafe place, while the person living on a hill above the river can really feel safe, because there is no probability of ever being flooded.  

The man, who is susceptible to be tempted to cheat, but who resists temptation, can be experienced as dwindling risk by estimated probability, the longer and the more often he does successfully resist temptation.   But the risk remains, because nobody can predict, if in the future he will nevertheless cheat under changed circumstances.
Only the man, who is not tempted to cheat, because he is predominantly attracted to a woman's brain and personality, offers the relaxed safe haven, which the man, who merely controls his temptations, can never offer.  

More drastically expressed:  A man fighting temptations needs will-power as a crutch for a moral disability.   The man without temptations can walk freely.  

In entries 206 and 208 I expressed my attraction to psychological androgynity.   Masculinity and femininity in thinking, attitude and subconsciously determined behaviors are a result of instinctive difference leading to distinctive gender roles.   Taking away the impact of all those detrimental instincts, there can be psychologically androgynous humans, who have no need to fight, compete, exploit or seduce.   Instead they are able to be just egalitarian monogamous humans with a brain for shared joys and companionship.   

454. Narcissism Explained By The Hierarchical-Gregarious Brain

Narcissism Explained By The Hierarchical-Gregarious Brain

I suggest to first read entries 452 and 453, where I defined the differences between an egalitarian and a hierarchical-gregarious brain.   The psychological differences between the two brain dispositions are different causes for dishomeostasis and differences in what stimulates the pleasure center of the brain, and how strong is this stimulation.

People with an egalitarian brain have a strong need for respect, appreciation, dignity.   Disrespect, depreciation, humiliation, indignity cause them a strong dishomeostasis of emotional pain.    

People with a hierarchical-gregarious brain and the aspiration for a high position have a strong dishomeostasis for power, praise, prestige, veneration.    They are attracted to find as many inferior people as possible to give this to them.   They are void of any empathy or awareness, that what they want is a source of dishomeostasis for egalitarian people.   

People with a hierarchical-gregarious brain but with the acceptance of gaining benefits by having a low position experience this position as being in homeostasis.  They are also unaware, that egalitarian people suffer dishomeostasis, when forced into the same position.     

People with an egalitarian brain gain self-esteem and confidence by comparing their own achievements only with their own goals.   Therefore they have no reason to become narcissists.

People with an hierarchical-gregarious brain, who feel a strong dishomeostasis for the emotional benefits of a high position without being able to earn such a position by appropriate achievements are prone to become pathological narcissists.   Their bluff fails sooner or later and they lose their temporary source of narcissistic supply.   Then they fall back to enforce domination on the women in their lives, who are the most vulnerable and the least able to end the ordeal. 

In entry 453, I mentioned already the situation, when legal and external circumstances like slavery force people with an egalitarian brain in an unwarranted low position.   Chosen alliances are a different situation.  

1.  Memberships in ingroups, which are chosen without any external necessity, are chosen only for the attraction and benefit of the group itself.    Such groups are for example sport clubs, sects, cults, political initiatives, charities, self-help groups. 

1.1.   In hierarchical groups, leaders with a hierarchical-gregarious brain have earned the position by hard work and talent, but they acquire special benefits as an incentive.   

1.1.1.  Power reduces the dishomeostasis of fear and anxiety.   

1.1.2. Adulation, admiration, veneration fulfill narcissistic needs, that can either cause dishomeostasis or at least have a strong impact upon the pleasure center.   

As long as these benefits are earned by real achievements, rejoicing and indulging in them is different from pathological narcissism.  
Followers with a hierarchical-gregarious brain in such a group have a realistic view, that they either cannot become leaders or that the effort to strife to become leaders is too much.    They accept their lower position as a consequence of accepting hierarchy as the unavoidable structure of any group.  

But being a part of the group also reduces their dishomeostasis by giving protection against fear or by catering for some special need.   

In addition, they generalize the achievements of the leaders as if they were achievements of the group, which justify the prestige of the group.   Then they identify themselves with the prestige of the group.   They enhance their own self-esteem by experiencing themselves as partaking in the achievement of those, whom they follow.  
The fans of a football team are proud of the victories, as if they had played themselves.  The members of a cult, who have in reality paid a lot of money to be allowed in, feel as if they were the elected and privileged few.  

1.2.  When someone with a strong hierarchical-gregarious need for a high position lacks either the abilities or the motivation to invest efforts and cannot achieve such a position, he sometimes becomes a pathological narcissist.   Where he fails to achieve, he develops a grandiosity delusion, where he does not earn adulation and veneration, he develops an entitlement delusion.  When he does not get the admiration he feels entitled to, he blames this as the fault of those refusing to give him enough narcissistic supply.  A pathological narcissist is able to bluff people for a while, but he usually gets soon unmasked.      

1.3.  Egalitarians in egalitarian groups are joining for the benefits of the shared purpose, and by giving special functions to members, they do not give them power nor do they put them upon a pedestal.  

1.4.  When egalitarians do join hierarchical groups for a special purpose, they do this without accepting the hierarchy as justified.   They follow their own purpose, as long as they can do this without being required to show adulation or veneration, that they do not feel.   

1.5.  Sometimes a pathological narcissist chooses an egalitarian group as a stage to bluff competence in the hope to establish a hierarchy.   He considers it as an easy endeavor, because there are no competitors for a high position in an egalitarian group.   The pathological narcissist is unaware of the egalitarian group's rejection of a hierarchy, because he mistakes hierarchies as something ubiquitous.   But the entitlement delusion and the treating of egalitarian people as inferior causes the egalitarian group members to feel insulted and they soon end his attempts.   

2.  Couples are a special form of a group, they are the smallest and closest ingroup consisting of only two members. 
 
2.1.  Traditionally, while men were given education and earning possibilities, of which women were deprived, there were couples of two hierarchical-gregarious brains, in which real differences caused a woman accept an inferior role under a patronizing man.   The engineer marrying his secretary is an example.

2.2.  Two egalitarians choose each other for shared traits based upon reciprocal respect and appreciation.

2.3.  A man with a hierarchical-gregarious brain, who feels entitled to dominate and patronize a woman with an egalitarian brain, causes her serious suffering.    Sometimes the man feels entitled to the top position by the mere fact of being male, sometimes he is a pathological narcissist and has the delusion of superiority, that he does not have.  

But there is a big difference between being a member of a group and being half of a couple.  
 

The person, who has a strong need to gain the benefits of a high position in a group, but who is earning it does not automatically assume the same role in a relationship.   When he succeeds to get his needs met in a high position in his job or in a chosen group, he is not driven to establish a hierarchy also in a relationship with a woman, who prefers to be an equal partner.   

The pathological narcissist is the real problem.   He has such an urge for adulation and veneration, while he is unable to earn it, therefore he is eternally driven to manipulate, bluff and coerce people to comply with his delusion of giving him his narcissistic supply, but it never lasts.   When his narcissism becomes disruptive in a group, he can either be removed or the person feeling disturbed can leave the group unharmed.   Only the egalitarian woman, who had the bad luck to have become emotionally or legally tied to him is suffering a pain, that does not end, until the relationship has failed. 

281. Contradictors

Contradictors
Contradictors are persons, who contradict everything, that is said to them.  They do the contrary of what others ask them to do.   The do on purpose, what others ask them to refrain from doing.  

There are at least two types of contradictors, those with a purpose and those, who automatically contradict, as if they would not know any other option. 

1.  Automatic Contradictors

There is a psychiatric diagnosis in the DSM, called ODD, Oppositional Defiant Disorder.   It is considered as only an affliction of children.   The description is here.  

http://www.minddisorders.com/Ob-Ps/Oppositional-defiant-disorder.html
I have read people wondering, what becomes of children with ODD, when they grow up.   Some then develop to be psychopaths, sociopaths or cases of antisocial disorder.   But maybe the milder cases of childhood ODD just become automatic contradictors.

2.  Hierarchy Instinct

Some people experience others automatically as competitors in a hierarchy.   If they are not below, then they are above.   All interactions serve the purpose to get above those, who can  be pushed down, and to challenge those, who are still in a higher position.    Equality is something unknown to them.
In entry 39, I already described verbal fencing as a replacement for the duel with a sword.    Verbal fencing is a duel of wits, but contradicting is a much cruder behavior, when it serves as a weapon to gain a higher position in a hierarchy, which implies also to gain power over resources.   
Contradicting is part of forming a hierarchy based upon the main assumption of being superior by knowing better or by believing to know better.   A contradictor attempts to proof to know better as his way of proofing his entitlement to the higher position.   The contradictor believes, that he knows everything better, so he has no reason to listen to the other or to be interested in what he has to say.   
The contradictor waits all the time for an occasion to give evidence of his superiority, so he scrutinizes, what others say, without listening to his real message, but luring for a handle for a contradiction.   He just checks the other's utterances for anything, that he can react to fast enough with a contradiction.    As soon as he has succeeded in jumping in with his contradiction, he stops to listen and never really hears or learns anything of what others say.    He often does not understand or is clueless, what the other is really talking about.  
The contradictor considers agreement and consent never as an expression of closeness, but as the submission of those below him on the hierarchy.    He would never agree to anything, because he wants to move up the ladder by challenging those above him, and he expects them also to contradict him to keep him below.    He lives in a world without consent.  

Contradicting is for the contradictor a power tool, not a means of communication.    His life is emotionally isolated, while he outwardly is busy struggling with others over the hierarchy.   He fights to keep those below from challenging him, he fights to challenge those above, and those on the same level are his competitors, who also are fighting for the level above.   Therefore the contradictor is isolated behind an invisible wall, contradicting is a method to pushing people away and keep them at a safe distance.   As he knows nothing but the hierarchy struggle, he expects only challenges and contradictions from others.

For a contradictor, a relationship with a woman is just another hierarchy, where he of course usurps the position as the dominator.   The contradictor contradicts, whatever the woman attempts to say, as a method to keep her in the inferior position, that he has assigned to her.   He can never find out, who she really is or what she thinks and feels.   The contradictors baseline is emotional isolation, even in a relationship.  

Contradicting or agreeing as a goal represent two distinct attitudes towards a partner in a relationship.   Contradicting is not the same as disagreeing.    Egalitarian partners get bonded and close by agreement, consent and thinking alike.   There baseline is agreement and when they discover disagreement, then they both experience it as a task for communication.   They acquire, supply and exchange all information and all evidence, until they can find an agreement, that is convincing to both.   Disagreement makes them uncomfortable, they both are motivated to restore the harmony of agreement.

When an egalitarian woman gets accidentally involved with a contradictor, they get into an impasse.   Figuratively, when he sits on a step of a flight of stairs, and she sits down at his side to be close and communicate, he either moves one step up, or he pushes her one step down.   If she attempts to get back to his side, he pushes her away and forced her to remain on the lower step.  

187. Right or Wrong in Cooperation and Competition

Right or Wrong in Cooperation and Competition


This entry is not about moral transgressions, it is about being right or wrong concerning knowledge and decisions for actions based upon that knowledge.  

There is a fundamental difference between the meaning of being right or wrong for couples having a relationship based upon the ERCP and couples based upon the hierarchy enforced by a dominating man.

1.  The cooperation of the egalitarian couple

For an egalitarian couple, the temporary disagreement, who is right and who is wrong, is an emotionally neutral situation.    The difference between being wrong and right or between being less and more right is merely the difference between the available amount and quality of relevant information about an issue.     Being wrong is the situation of ignorance before embarking in a process of learning and collecting information.  
When the partners in an egalitarian relationship disagree, who is right or wrong about an issue, this requires cooperative learning by verbal communication. 
The first step is comparing notes, sharing and pooling the disparate knowledge about that topic and maybe researching additional information from external sources.  
The second step is evaluating together the new aspects and draw new conclusions, until the new knowledge is convincing to both.   They both learn something and enjoy it, and nobody is wrong anymore, instead they are both right by consent.   The final conclusion may well be different from what each had thought before.   The focus is on finding and enlarging the common ground.    This way, people can grow closer by communicating. 

2.  The dominating competitive man in a power struggle with a woman

For a jerk, who perceives a relationship as a power struggle for dominance and superiority, being right is connected with strong emotions.   For him, being right as often as possible is an important source of justification of his entitlement to dominate, because he is giving evidence of his superiority and of having been successful in his dominating behavior.    He has an urge to believe to be right, and when he does, he feels good, even triumphant, while not being able to feel right causes him anger and frustration.  
Believing himself to be right means automatically also his believing her to be wrong.   Since his main need is the justification of his dominance, a disagreement about some topic is not the beginning of a learning process.    He wants to maintain his believe of being right, in oblivion of reality.

If he really has the better information, he is not motivated to give up, what he perceives as his superiority.   Therefore he has subjectively no reason to share his advanced information in a convincing way by giving evidence, so that the woman could rationally agree with him.   If she would come by her own thinking to the same conclusion as he, based upon the same information, he could not consider himself as right anymore in contrast of her being wrong.   To be able to rejoice in his superiority, he needs to be able to claim that she is wrong by his contradiction and defiance of her opinion.  

If his belief to be right is a delusion, then he is even more motivated to maintain it.    Her information, her reasons would jeopardize his justified superiority and domination, so he is strongly inclined not to allow her to convince him. 
No matter, how right or wrong he really is, as long as he believes himself to be right, communicating about the conflict has not the least advantage for him, it would only be a risk to his allegedly established superiority.   From his perspective, his obstruction to communicate or to solve the problem rationally, is very logical.     He already firmly believes to be right, so he has no reason to listen.   All he considers as needing to do is utter his claims and enforce by coercion, what he considers as right.   

The woman feels bad, because she feels depreciated and disrespected by being considered and treated as inferior without any chance to ever improve her position. 
If she is wrong, he deprives her of the evidence allowing her to learn, and if she is right, she has no chance to ever convince him.  
They are stuck in an impasse, they cannot grow together, their mental distance is maintained by the distance created by the hierarchy.  

39. Verbal Fencing

Verbal Fencing

I suggest to first read 16. Competition or Cooperation.

Male animals, who live in groups, like deer, wolves, lions, are driven by instinct to fight for a high position in the hierarchy.    Most humans are driven by the same instinct, the society is organized by countless hierarchies, at work, in political institutions, in the administration, in the military.    Animals fight with physical force.  In the past centuries, when those organizations were developed, physical fighting outside sports and the military became a valve for aggressive lower class men.    Hierarchies were formed instead upon a competition of real skills, financial and social power, and skills for intrigue and manipulation.  

Behind all this is a conscious representation of the hierarchy instinct, that makes people always compare themselves with others.    They do not want to have something, because the need it, they want to have something better than what has another.    They do not want to be good at something, they want to be better than someone else.  

How marks are given at school, is a good example.    Regulations require a hierarchy of achievement, and the teachers are expected to have results distributed along a bell curve, as many As as Fs.   If all the pupils have As and Bs, this is not appreciated as an indication of a good teacher with clever students.   If all have Es and Fs, it is not accepted as an indication of pupils with special problems or a bad teacher.   
There has to be a bell curve to put the achievements relative in a hierarchy.   Rationally, this makes no sense.    The same pupil with the same achievement, could by haphazard be in a class, where he gets an A for it, or in another class, where he gets an F, his achievements are distorted by others, whom he might not have even chosen.
Rationally, marking should be independent of the other pupils, measured instead on how much he has learned of what has been taught.     Everybody, who has learned 100% or little less, should get an A, independent of how many others have achieved the same.   That would be just.  
By the bell curve marking, school reinforces and enhances the hierarchy and competition thinking.

I have read somewhere, that competing and fighting for a position in a hierarchy is mainly a male trait.   As far as it means using physical and financial power, this appears plausible.   But in any other form of competition, I see women as not any better than men.   

For example, I could never understand, how any woman in her right mind would get involved with a married men and then compete to get him divorce his wife, when there are enough men free and available.   
This example again shows, how irrational competition is for the individual, as I already outlined in the business example in 'Competition or Cooperation'.    But from the point of evolution, it makes sense, that all females want to have offspring with the fittest of all males, which obviously is the alpha-male.   Thus, by instinct, many women compete for males, while for their individual happiness they would better look for the one, who is for them alone.    

If the hierarchy instinct has become pathologically determining the entire relationship with the social environment, then the result are people, who have NPD, the narcissistic personality disorder.    They do not just compare themselves with others all the time, they are addicted to be better all the time, even if being better is only their delusion.  

Empathy for other's pain is such an important trait in social relationships of any kind.   But it seems, that empathy gets deactivated in favor of competition.    Competing with success means winning, and every time, one person wins, another person looses.    Those who fight and compete to win, never seem to have empathy for the ones, whom they logically make to loose.   
It seems that the strife for a high position in the hierarchy for the best survival of the genes, by the choice of a fit mate and by acquiring the power over resources, had already evolved in the animals, while empathy is more recent result of human evolution and therefore a weaker impulse.

As a rational person, I can decide to keep away from competition as much as possible, and find my peaceful corner in the ivory tower of the egalitarian search of wisdom.    Unfortunately, this is difficult too.   
When duels became illegal in England, the skill of fencing with a sword became obsolete for young 'gentlemen'.   (I have never understood, what is gentle in those blokes...)    So they developed a replacement art of fencing with words, the duel being named a debate.    The topic was of little importance, the objective was to win by showing the better wit.   By playing the devil's advocate, some even tried to win against their own true sincere convictions, when the opponent shared them.    Winning over the own convictions in someone else was still a victory, more important than being true to oneself.  

This fencing by words seems to have spread through the entire English-speaking world.   I have read countless discussions in forums about anything between atheism and computer problems, and again and again, I had the impression, that it was more about being right and proving another wrong than about the topic in question.   
This, unfortunately, leaves women not much choice.   They can refrain from participating, or they can attempt to learn how to fence with words too and adapt to the male world.   

16. Competition or Cooperation

Competition or Cooperation

I assume a village, that is isolated enough to be self-sufficient in based products. I assume also, that there is one potter or one baker or one blacksmith, who can have a decent life without extravagances by working 30 hours a week. When there is demand for the production of 60 hours a week, there are different scenarios, as soon as a second person with equal skills and some money appears.

In a cooperative village of egalitarians, the second person becomes a partner, buys his share of the business, and from then on they both work 30 hours each, do not change the price of the product, and earn equal money.

Of course, the cooperation of egalitarians also implies, that the potter, baker, blacksmith calculates his prices to the costumer on a fair basis of an income per hour, that corresponds with the average income of all the people in the village, that he does not use his monopoly to demand unfair prices.

In a village of competing, instinct and delusion driven people, the second person starts another business and competes for costumers. They have the expenses of twice the workshop and tools, that in the case of cooperation they only need once.

For the purpose to get costumers, the second business has to sell his products cheaper than the first business. Then he gets all the costumers, so the first is forced to also lower his prices. It will not take long, until both work 60 hours per week to earn the same money, that the only supplier had earned in 30 hours. Depending how much they are driven by instinct, they might not even stop at this point but sell the products at the end so cheap, that one has to give up. Then the other has the monopoly to raise the prices to any exorbitant level. If he was ruthless enough to ruin the competitor, he is also ruthless enough to exploit the costumers.

Cooperation with cooperative people is much more beneficial for the individual than competition. I recoil from any competition.