quest


I am a woman born 1949 and my quest is to find a mindmate
to grow old together as a mutually devoted couple
in a relationship based upon the
egalitarian rational commitment paradigm
bonded by intrinsic commitment
as each other's safe haven and secure basis.

The purpose of this blog is to enable the right man
to recognize us as reciprocal mindmates and
to encourage him to contact me:
marulaki@hotmail.com


The entries directly concerning,
who could be my mindmate,
are mainly at the beginning.
If this is your predominant interest,
I suggest to read this blog in the same order
as it was written, following the numbers.

I am German, therefore my English is sometimes faulty.

Maybe you have stumbled upon this blog not as a potential match.
Please wait a short moment before zapping.

Do you know anybody, who could be my mindmate?
Your neighbour, brother, uncle, cousin, colleague, friend?
If so, please tell him to look at this blog.
While you have no reason to do this for me,
a stranger, maybe you can make someone happy, for whom you care.

Do you have your own webpage or blog,
which someone like my mindmate to be found probably reads?
If so, please mention my quest and add a link to this blog.


Showing posts with label desensitization. Show all posts
Showing posts with label desensitization. Show all posts

Friday, June 20, 2014

716: Alley Dogs: The Regression To An Earlier Period Of Evolution

716:  Alley Dogs: The Regression To An Earlier Period Of Evolution


Definition: 
I call persons, who copulate without neither getting emotionally attached nor wishing this to happen, as alley dogs.
Copulation like alley dogs is a regression to behaviors prevalent before the specific cognitive qualities of the human brain had evolved.
  

Evolution is not a master plan. As long as a species survives, this only indicates, that in the past the evolutionary net sum of instinctive and in the case of humans also innate cognitive tendencies has resulted in a sufficient amount of procreation.  

Some millions of years ago, when the ancestors of present day humans were still only animals, they copulated by instinct as all animals do.  Some months later it was followed by the birth of the youngster(s).   
At that moment, they had no conscious memory of the copulation and they were not aware, that the agony of birth was caused by the copulation.   
When they copulated, they were also unable to anticipate, that giving birth was the punishment for the female.   
Lacking the comprehension of this causality, they also had no way to avoid the agony of further procreation.

Then the unique evolution of the human cognition began.   One of the aspects thereof is the longterm memory and the ability to anticipate the future consequences of the own and of others' behavior.  This enabled the co-evolution of purely cognitive emotions, which derive from reasoning and not from bodily sensations.   Cognitive emotions are very distinct from sensations like fear in the situation of a real danger or pain after being physically wounded.  

Some of these cognitive emotions are: 
  1. Emotional attachment based upon invisible cognitive traits.  
    It is difficult to define love or to put such feeling into words.  But with certainty, whatever there is, it cannot be called love without cognition derived emotional attachment. Traits leading to emotional attachment can be honesty, reliability, empathy, but also intelligence and education, which make it rewarding to be together.

  2. Rational empathy and a theory of mind.  
    By this someone has knowledge about how another person is going to react,  This is more than the anticipation of visible behavior, but also the anticipation of the invisible cognitive emotions.  This includes also those situations, when the reaction of the other will be very distinct from the own reaction under identical circumstances. 

  3. Responsibility and consideration.   When being in advance aware of the consequences and impact of the own behavior upon others, responsibility is the cognitive ability to prevent hurting others by the avoidance of anticipated own cognitive emotions like guilt, shame, remorse.
     
  4. Awareness for invisible emotional reactions caused by invisible experiences.   
    This includes taking full account of feelings of selfworth and identity of the self and in others and how these are elicited and effected by interactions.   Examples are appreciation, depreciation, adulation, disdain, honor, equality, indignation, injustice, pride, entitlement and much more.
Sometimes such qualities are called emotional intelligence.  

By instinct only, alley dogs are male, while females attempt to exploit a man as a provider for the children, who get her full attachment, while he gets a subscription to the repeated use of her body.

When cognition modifies the raw instincts, emotional attachment to an intimate partner happens usually fast or immediately in women.  For men usually more repetitions are needed, before the subjective experience of the alley dog copulation is converted into the emotional attachment of making love.
 
Had there been a continued linear evolution of only a growing strength of rationality and cognitive emotions like the one in the list above over instincts, this would have enabled and motivated more and more people to avoid harming others.    As a logical side effect, this would have drastically reduced procreation and maybe the human species would already have been extinct.
Until safe family planning was available, a truly considerate and responsible man would have rather refrained from physical intimacy than ever risking to cause suffering for a woman, who was not fully wishing to have children.   

But the human species did not get extinct.  Some alley dogs continue to sire alley dogs and prevail in the gene pool.  I can see several reasons. 
  1. Some people, mostly men are just like animals, because they lack the human emotional restrictions which would prevent them from copulating like alley dogs.  Their behavior is not guided or determined by cognitive emotions.    They contribute more to the gene pool by having more offspring than the considerate men.  Genghis Khan is a good example.  He is reported to have raped thousands of women and his genes are supposed be present in millions of Asians.
    1.1.  They can be generally limited in their ability to feel cognitive emotions, as in the case of Alexithymia.   They are not aware, what pain they cause to people, who want to be loved, because they themselves do not know love and are unable to experience emotional attachment.

    1.2.  They know, what they do, but do not care, because they are not able to feel guilt, shame or remorse.   They are sociopaths.  
  2. The availability of safe birth control has made the consideration for preventing the threat of pregnancy as the most drastic consequence of alley dog copulation obsolete.  
    It needs less cognitive quality to be able to refrain from doing something as drastic as making a woman pregnant. 
    To refrain from abusing a woman as a toilet for body waste because of respect for her brain, to spare the woman the invisible suffering of indignation, devaluation, objectification and humiliation requires a much higher level of cognitive quality in a man.  Less men have it.
    Being free of the fear of pregnancy is great.   But unfortunately it came with the price of the disgust of being (or at my age having been) too frequently approached by alley dogs.
     
  3. The human brain including the ability for empathy has evolved for coping with the life in small groups or communities.   Now people are suddenly (seen in the evolutionary timeline) flooded by the media with very realistic representations of extreme atrocities.  This representations are so realistic, that the subconscious brain cannot distinguish between such pictures or movies and real life. 
    Nobody can react permanently with full empathy to this extreme amount of exposure. 
    Desensitization is an unavoidable consequence.  

    When a man grows up munching chips while indifferently watching a movie, in which a woman is raped, it is not really astonishing that he will consider hurting 'only' a woman's feeling as a trifle in comparison.    

    When a woman grows up sitting in the safety of her home in front of a TV, she also gets a very biased picture.  On TV women are presented as willingly and happily doing and wanting themselves, what really only benefits selfish men.  On TV, these women get rewarded, but never emotionally harmed.  The watching real woman is thus misguided to underestimate, what she gets herself into by making the mistake of complying or imitating behavior, which really is an expression of male instinctivity and male wishes.  When this woman unexpectedly gets very hurt, she learns to understand reality too late and the hard way.
  4. When one person hurts another, no matter if it is the alley dog the loving woman or any other situation, there are two different perspectives.  
    4.1.  The difference between hurting and not hurting behavior is a choice, and therefore people with cognitive emotional quality take themselves the responsibility for what they do to others.
    They never use the behavior of the victim as an excuse, even if the victim could have avoided exposing himself to be vulnerable.

    4.2.  Under the impact of desensitization, people have a more selfish perspective based upon the entitlement to do, what they want.   Whoever gets hurt or harmed is attributed as either defective or too stupid to protect himself.  Therefore they feel justified to take no responsibility.   The victim of an alley dog is blamed for not being also an alley dog.  In the case that the suffering reactions of the victim annoy the alley dog, the victim is even blamed for diminishing the alley dog's benefits.

    This desensitization has contributed to a present social norm in many western societies, which defines alley dog copulation as allegedly healthy behavior.   Those, who get hurt, are supposed to use those remedies, which contribute to the profits of the pharmaceutical industry.
It is sad.  All the amazing progress only leads to the material standard of life getting more and more comfortable.  But when it comes to the avoidance of non-physical suffering, there is no progress, but a regress to times before the evolution of the cognition.   

Wednesday, February 12, 2014

703. Differing Effects Of Varieties Of The Visual Objectification Of Women

703.  Differing Effects Of Varieties Of The Visual Objectification Of Women

The objectification and commodification of women by visual representations is nothing new.  
"The female nudes in Roman mosaics exalt beauty, the carnality and eroticism, while male bodies reflect determination, strength and power. This is one of the conclusions of research that analyzed the cultural construction and ideological implications of these artistic representations in which female predominate as compared to those of males."

"The deeply asymmetric treatment of male and female bodies is evident and, therefore, constitutes a reflection of relationships based on power, according to the researchers. "

"the main male figures tend to be gods, heroes and mythological beings, or else wrestlers and athletes."

"One very revealing example is a representation of Ariadne or the Nereid that shows a nude female figure lying on a marine animal, with one arm behind her head in a position and with a gesture that has been interpreted as "availability to the other.""

The text of this video is in Spanish, but it shows some good examples of the mosaics:  
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UKVwl4leLkU

 
These mosaics are expressions of the misperception, that women were objects existing to be used by men. This misperception had been women's plight through history.  
But there is a fundamental difference between the effects upon men's brains by ancient mosaics, frescos, statues or pottery decorations and the contemporary effects by the overexposure to more or less pornographic life like representations of female bodies.

No matter how provocative and explicit the ancient representations, they were nevertheless clearly and unequivocally artifacts.   Looking at a mosaic with whatever fantasy cannot have the same desensitizing effect upon a man's subconscious instincts as that which follows the abuse of a real woman.   (I consider any use of a female body without emotional attachment and without commitment as a form of abuse.)

Today the situation is much worse.   Visual representations, especially by high quality colorful moving pictures, are so much like real life people, that the male subconscious mind cannot distinguish between seeing a real woman and seeing a filmed representation of her.  (Thanks to Kanazawa for this insight).   The fantasy of abusing a filmed woman therefore contributes to the desensitization of men as if they had abused a real woman.  
This makes pornography so devastating.  Frequent abuse causes desensitization.   Desensitization lowers the threshold for attempting and intending more abuse.   It also blurs the male awareness, that approaching a woman for abuse is often perceived by the target as an insult and offense.          

Would any model or actress enact the exact scenes of the Roman mosaics, as far as there is an effect, that by the mosaic and that by the photo of the inaction on a man's brain would be very different. 
The mosaic would reinforce a man's conscious attitude, that women are there to serve him and to be used.   The photo would trigger his instincts, and subconsciously he would perceive the picture as an available real woman. 
 
I personally cannot see any additional artistic value of nudity compared with dress in any work of art and I also see no harm in nudity, when the represented naked body is obviously and unequivocally an artifact and not a real naked body presented for abuse and commerce.    But the contemporary pictures are too much resembling real life women and thus they are confounding men's instincts.  Such pictures have a very detrimental effect upon male brains, which those Roman mosaics could never have.  

Sunday, February 9, 2014

702. The Male NoFap Movement Brings No Benefit For Women

702.   The Male NoFap Movement Brings No Benefit For Women

I just happened to read for the first time about the NoFap movement.   My first superficial reaction was to welcome the rejection of pornography.   But then I found out, that this is not the objective, but an unintended side-effect.   The real objective is men's very selfish intention of some weird form of self-improvement.   Reducing the plight of women is not the goal.   Women are insignificant in this concept.

The man watching pornography indirectly damages some women.   His victims are the women, who are abused by the production of pornography.   By his demand for pornography he contributes to producing more and thus abusing more women.  
He also desensitizes himself towards perceiving women as objects and not as persons, which harms women, who by mistake get involved with him with wrong expectations.  
But even though the pornography temporarily enhances his dishomeostasis, his subsequent solitary manual restoring of homeostasis has no direct victims.  
In the case of a not partnered man, there can even be a collateral benefit, when thus restoring temporary homeostasis, this can reduce his being a nuisance to all women, who do not want to be involved with him.    

The man on a NoFap project refrains from pornography but only as a collateral side-effect.   This is not his goal, the pornography has only lost its utility.  On a small scale this abstaining does unfortunately not suffice to reduce the market and the abuse of producing more.   
The not partnered man's goal is the self-improvement of learning to live with his urges.   During his NoFap periods, he lives in the state of permanent and growing physiological dishomeostasis.  Would he not get innately into such states, he would never have developed those habits, which he now wants to discontinue by NoFap.   This makes him anything between a nuisance and a hazard to all women around him.    
Even if he does not transgress boundaries by harassment, assault or rape, any interaction with him can be very unpleasant and unsuitable for a woman.   Though a woman wants a rational, decent and serious conversation, this is not available from a man, who is disabled and deranged by his instincts craving for her body.   So while in a state of homeostasis, he could be an interesting person, his NoFap inner battles deprive her of a rational interaction with him.

NoFap is not an appropriate solution for the male physiological affliction.   Instead it is necessary that men take full responsibility to cope with their biological predisposition in a way, which eliminates all abuse of women.  

There cannot be any doubt, that men in a state of homeostasis are much better not only for women, but for everybody around them and even for themselves.   The recurrent male dishomeostasis needs to be remedied.   
Men need to learn, that the best, if not the only non-abusive way of coping with their biology is forming stable, bonded, monogamous relationships, in which intellectual and emotional attachment with a woman as a person prevents abuse.   
Otherwise men's manual remedy needs at least to be mentally separated from any imagination or observation of the abuse of any living woman.   Men need to learn and to comprehend, that while their biological urges are real, this does not mean, that women exist to be abused for this purpose.   

Women are there to connect with emotionally and intellectually, or else they are not to be touched.   NoFap does not help men to learn this.    

Additional thoughts (2015-3-31).

It seems that the above text can be misunderstood.   I have therefore written an additional entry elaborating this topic:

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

Wednesday, January 1, 2014

699. Is The Own Body A Merchandise?

699.   Is The Own Body A Merchandise?
"French MPs have approved a bill that will penalise anyone paying for sex.

The bill, which was adopted by a vote of 268 to 138, with 79 abstentions, establishes a fine of at least 1,500 euros ($2,030) for buying sexual acts."

"The 1,500-euro fine is for first offenders - subsequent offences could be more than double that."
http://www.theatlanticcities.com/technology/2013/12/across-europe-growing-sense-legalized-prostitution-isnt-working/7777/

Opposition to the new law comes not only from men, but also from misguided feminists, who are probably too desensitized to be aware of the fallacy of their thinking.  

Prostitution fills the asymmetrical gap between the magnitude of most men's biological urges and the lack of the same amount and urgency in the majority of women.   If women would enjoy copulation without emotional attachment and without commitment as much as men, enough women would want this and no men would have a reason to pay for it.
  
Prostitution is enabled by the combination of the asymmetrical male urges and men's onesided advantages of physical and/or economical power.


There are two fallacies in the demand for legalized prostitution:

Fallacy 1.

Prostitution is called sex work.   Whenever there is no direct coercion, it is alleged and claimed to be a more or less fair deal.  
It would only be a fair deal and a free choice in the case, when a woman has a real, not only a legal right and chance to get all the schooling and training she wants and a well paid agreeable job, and when in spite of this she nevertheless prefers to sell the self-abuse of her body.     
Defining a woman's last straw in a dire need for survival as a free choice and as a fair deal is a fallacy of desensitized people. 

Fallacy 2.

There is a claim, that women should be completely free to do with their own bodies, whatever they want, including selling it.  

If this is to be accepted, then this has to be applied fully and with no other restrictions.   Women then should be given the full freedom of choice, how to use their bodies as a source of an income and what kind of harm they are most willing to suffer.
  
Right now, except selling blood, in most countries other methods are not legally available.   If there are illegal practices, the owner of the bodies get themselves very little, while criminal agencies make profit.   


Comparing the non-financial costs and benefits, prostitution is undoubtedly the worst option for the abused women themselves:

1.  Prostitution 

When a prostitute sells her self-abuse, she serves as a toilet for a selfish man's body waste. 

The costs for the women are the disgust and agony during the recurrent abuse and the long-term psychological and physical damage, for example often substance abuse and the inability to ever emotionally bond with a man.
 
The only benefits are what the abusers perceive as pleasure.  

2.  Selling body parts

Would the women be allowed the choice to sell a kidney (or any other body part, which can be sold without disabling oneself) instead, this would not merely enable a man to acquire selfish abuse, but it would help someone to survive and it would also safe resources needed for the general health care.   Recurrent dialysis is extremely expensive and inconvenient.   A woman (or any person) could be paid the amount of money saved by preventing some years of dialysis.   

The costs for the women are the risk of an operation and the loss of one kidney.  
 
The benefits are for all persons getting off dialysis and having a normal life with a working kidney.

3.  Selling unwanted babies.

Even the uterus and its contents are a part of a woman's body.  If unwillingly pregnant women are allowed any choice at all, it is between abortion and donating the child for adoption.  While it is considered as suitable to impose the paid more general abuse upon women's reproductive area for the mere satisfaction of men's instincts, there is no logical reason, why they should not be allowed to sell the use of the filled uterus instead.    
Women should have the right to the alternative of selling unwanted children or of producing babies for other people as surrogate mothers.  This should be a fair option for the avoidance of the agony of prostitution.  

The costs for the women are the inconvenience, suffering and expenses of pregnancy and giving birth.   For those women, who do not want to breed, there are no emotional costs. 

The benefits are the fulfilling of the breeding urges of those people, who are unhappy without children.  They would be spared futile fertility treatment and more babies would be available to be adopted.  The benefits are also for the babies, who grow up as wanted.

 
Selling body parts and babies has to be restricted as a direct deal between the giver and the health insurance or the receiver, without any greedy third party making profit from it.


Of course I cannot know it, but I am convinced, that many prostitutes would prefer to sell a body part or a baby, if only they were allowed to do this to prevent the agony of being abused. 

Either the own body is a merchandise to be freely used by its owner, then all forms of use have to be legal.   If it is not a merchandise, then prostitution cannot be defined as an exception, only because those powerful men with the influence over legislation are too often themselves the abusers wishing to perpetuate their privileges.   
 
It is an outrage that even in rich countries, some women are deprived of any other means of survival except the use of their bodies.   But it is even more an outrage, that these women are not even allowed a fair choice, how to use their bodies to acquire survival with the least harm for themselves.   

As long as it is considered as morally wrong to sell body parts or a baby, prostitution cannot, neither logically nor ethically, be justified by the right of women to do with their body, what they want.  
As long as it is legally impossible to sell a body part or a baby, men taking advantage of women selling self-abuse as this being their only legal option are abusers, who deserve to be punished.  

Sunday, December 22, 2013

697. Desensitization: Abuse As A Christmas Gift

697.  Desensitization:  Abuse As A Christmas Gift

I just came across another scary example of how far the desensitization to the objectification of women has gone, not only by those men, who profit themselves from the abuse.  

One dating-site has sent me the link to a short video.   
First scene:  A man, obviously lonely on Christmas.

Second scene:   The door bell rings and from a delivered box emerges a woman, provocatively dressed in not much more than a reduced Santa costume.   The woman immediately makes physical advances to the man.

Third scene:  The door bell rings again, and a second women is delivered, the man is now handled by one woman on each side.

Forth scene:  The door bell rings again....
At that moment I was too disgusted to watch the rest.   

 
Sending a bunch of prostitutes to be abused is suggested as a Christmas gift.  

As an atheist, Christmas means nothing to me, I have no reason to celebrate the birthday of someone, who either never existed or if he existed was an insignificant person.   To me personally, abuse of women as mere toilets for men's body waste is not any more objectionable on Christmas than it is at any other time.  

But for the Christians, for whom Christmas does have a meaning, people are supposed to form emotionally attached monogamous couple and abuse in any form is considered a sin.  
According to the Christian myth, a child was born by an alleged virgin.   The video suggests to celebrate this event by abusing a bunch of prostitutes.


The message of the video is the culmination of how far abuse has become socially accepted by some part of the population.   The sender of the link has an unequivocally female name.  
This is really disheartening.   Not only men are desensitized to what abuse does to women.  Even many women are desensitized to the long-term detrimental effects of the self-abuse of women. 

The video is meant to be humorous.  Humor trivializes its topics.  Therefore most decent people limit jokes to topics, which do not trivialize outrageous and shocking events like the holocaust or shooting at schools.   Yet people are so desensitized, that the abuse of women is not perceived as a serious outrage, but as something suitable to be trivialized by jokes.  This trivialization reinforces the desensitization.

Sunday, December 15, 2013

696. Detrimental Longterm Effects Of Childhood TV Exposure

696.  Detrimental Longterm Effects Of Childhood TV Exposure

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/11/131122084541.htm
"preschoolers who have a TV in their bedroom and are exposed to more background TV have a weaker understanding of other people's beliefs and desires."

"This study shows that TV exposure may impair children's theory of mind development, and this impairment may be partly responsible for disruptive social behaviors."

""When children achieve a theory of mind, they have reached a very important milestone in their social and cognitive development," said lead researcher Nathanson. "Children with more developed theories of mind are better able to participate in social relationships. These children can engage in more sensitive, cooperative interactions with other children and are less likely to resort to aggression as a means of achieving goals.""

People with empathy and a good theory of mind consider the consequences of their behavior upon others.   When men ruthlessly abuse female bodies as toilets for their body waste without any own need for emotional attachment and without any awareness for the degraded women's such needs, this indicates a deficient theory of mind and a state of serious desensitization.  

There have always been such abusers, but they harmed women in defiance to a generally accepted social norm of monogamous attachment.  Sartre and Camus are examples (entry 686).   This then happened inside some subcultures, but before the impact of media upon all young people's minds, abuse did not become a part of the social norm.  

The so called sexual revolution changed the social norm towards the nearly ubiquitous acceptance of abuse as men's alleged natural right and towards the tragic myth of the alleged benefits of self-abuse for the victimized women.

Reading the study quoted above, I can see, why this change of the social norm first happened in the sixties in the USA and only with a delay in other countries.   The first generation of people, who had grown up with TV from an early age on, were also the first generation of people, who were seriously desensitized and distorted in their theory of mind.   In other countries, as in Germany, the same effect came with a delay, which was the delay until the local ubiquity of TV.
An entire generation had lost the ability to fully comprehend the tragedy of the abuse for the victims.   When an entire generation of men had been desensitized to copulate like alley dogs, this sufficed to change the social norm.  Since then the impact of TV has even grown stronger, because as a compensation for the desensitization, the material has become even more drastic and more explicit and more available to choose from.   Therefore it has only been getting worse.    

I grew up as a child without TV, I grew up in the tranquility of not being prematurely disturbed by any detrimental exposure to what has its appropriate place only in the privacy of adults' bedrooms.  I was lucky not to be desensitized concerning my dignity as a female human being, having never lost the full awareness for the monstrosity of the socially accepted abuse.  
Instead I got allergic, The more men are desensitized, the more often women are exposed to the obnoxious impertinence of intended and proposed abuse.   Too frequent exposure to what is noxious can cause allergies, not only by physically noxious substances, but also by emotionally noxious proposals.   

Friday, November 29, 2013

694. Germany - A Country Especially Prone To Subtle Desensitization?

694.  Germany - A Country Especially Prone To Subtle Desensitization? 

Growing up in the aftermath of the Nazi Terror over Germany, I was bewildered and appalled about the ubiquity of how the majority of the generation before me had at least approved, condoned or tolerated if not actively taken part in atrocious crimes and misdemeanors.   I felt not comfortable living in such a country.  The majority were very desensitized people, who easily reintegrated and welcomed back even those with a lot of blood on their hands.  
 
Since then, other generations have grown into adulthood, who no more were themselves directly implicated in the destruction and exploitation of those considered as outgroup inside the country.   But the desensitization towards the suffering and plight of those abused and exploited, because they are in a weak, defenseless and vulnerable position, has not ceased.   

Today Germany pretends to be a modern, democratic and humane country.  Therefore nobody could ever outrightly justify atrocities, abuse and degradation of humans, and recognize such treatment as what it really is.   But the desensitized Germans found a different method:  They deny the atrocious character of their treatment and declare it to be normal behavior.    The legal approach to prostitution is an excellent example:

http://www.economist.com/news/europe/21589922-has-liberalisation-oldest-profession-gone-too-far-giant-teutonic-brothel

This article explains how the paid abuse of self-abusing women is misrepresented as a normal job, and this not only in the eyes of the self-interest of the abusive customers.  Even worse, since more than ten years it is a law which was favored and implemented also by many female politicians.   
Lately a wise and responsible suggestion was made to change this outrageous law.   As in Sweden, prostitution should be made illegal, but only the abusers should be punished.   This would imply the needed legal recognition of the dignity of women.    

I am shocked and outraged by the general tendency of the ongoing debate concerning this suggestion.   A lot of the German population, including too many women, oppose it.   They have been so completely desensitized, that they consider paid abuse as normal and acceptable behavior.   This attitude makes Germany an uncomfortable place for women.    

Tuesday, November 5, 2013

692. The Difference Between Abusers And Nice Guys Explained By The Dual-Process-Theory

692.  The Difference Between Abusers And Nice Guys Explained By The Dual-Process-Theory

In entry 691 I presented the dual process theory:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dual_process_theory

Speculating that the predominance of one of the two systems is distributed along a bell curve can help to explain the difference between abusers and nice guys. 


By the criteria of their behavior, men can be roughly classified into three groups:   The abusers, the nice guys and those oscillating between abuse and attachment depending on circumstances.  

These three groups represent the two extremes and the middle area of the bell curve between the predominance of either system 1 or system 2.   The two extremes are clearly defined by an innate strong tendency, while the cut off between the groups and the behavior in the middle is fuzzy and depends upon external influences. 


System 1 can explain how instinctive physical urges towards a female body lead to the attitude of objectification.  

A predominant system 1 determines men to be abusers.  They do not comprehend the meaning of commitment and/or they are unable to get emotionally attached to a woman and/or they are disabled from recognizing the value of women's brains.   They commodify women as toilets for their body waste without even considering any alternative.  
Men with a strong predominance of system 1 are most probably men with a high libido, which causes them to perceive dishomeostasis as an overwhelming discomfort and to be strongly triggered by the perception of female bodies.   They also probably have a hedonistic pleasure center getting mainly stimulated by physical stimuli.

System 1 thinking causes men to confound every coincidence of their experienced dishomeostasis and the availability of female bodies as an automatic justification and entitlement to abuse women, perceiving them as existing for the purpose of being abused.  
Men, whose thinking is determined by system 1, are not any better than animals, they are unable to anticipate or to have empathy for the consequences of ruthless copulation. 


System 2 can explain the emotional and intellectual need for companionship leading to the attitude, that women are cognitively attractive and suitable for monogamous long-term attachment.  

A predominant system 2 determines men to be nice guys.   They automatically get emotionally attached to a woman, whenever they get physically involved.   They have an own genuine emotional need for commitment and bonding.  They have rational and intellectual needs for companionship with a woman.   Whatever the strength of their libido may be, their rationality enables them to have sufficient self-control to keep away from women's body unless they choose a companion.    They are Epicureans, who are mainly attracted to, motivated and stimulated by emotional and intellectual pleasures and joys.

System 2 enables men to act with responsibility and consideration and to appreciate attachment also for themselves.  They comprehend the impact of their behavior upon women.   
Men, whose thinking is determined by system 2 are able to recognize women as their human equals with a brain.  Only these men deserve to be called human.


According to the dual-process-theory, system 1 and system 2 coexist in each human's mind. 

I am not implying all abusers to be completely void of the system 2 nor all attachment formers to be completely free from the system 1.   Many men have both tendencies in any combination of strength in themselves.   Which one defines their attitude and their behavior depends upon circumstances and external influences.    Some abusers do feel doubt, guilt or remorse or they recognize abuse as a transgression, at least when the own sister is the victim.  Attachment formers can also be tempted by triggered instincts due to the exposure to drastic stimuli.  

Men in the middle of the bell curve are thus under contradictory internal tendencies towards a choice, which is dichotomous between either abuse or attachment.  Abuse and attachment are mutually exclusive by definition.   While at any moment, only one can be chosen, some men choose abusive behavior only under some specific circumstances and refrain from it at other occasions.    They are the men, whose choice is prone to be determined or impacted by external influences.
 
While many more traditional societies force violent abuse and injustice upon women, the modern western societies are very much biased towards subtle and non-violent forms of abuse.   Such abuse is the social norm of the majority, who considers pornography as an everyday media intake and prostitution as a job like any other, and who is seriously desensitized by the drastic oversexation of every day life and the media.    Only a very strong innate tendency towards system 2 enables a minority of the most precious men to be the nice guys void of the inclination towards abuse.

The effect of this detrimental social norm can sometimes be observed as a discrepancy of the predominances in the same man.   There are men, who appear to be predominantly system 2 persons in their professional life, in the pursuit of their hobbies and even with their families and friends.   Whenever it gets known, that such a man has cheated on his wife or has been to a brothel, it seems very incongruent with his other demeanor.   Due to external influences, the control of system 1 over such men is restricted to only when women are the victims.   So far I have never heard of any reversed case, of a man behaving generally by system 1 but applying system 2 to women. 

Thus, at the extreme end of the bell curve, the abusers are persistent and permanent abusers, while the social norm reinforces the men in the middle of the bell curve to also be abusers, but they are intermittent abusers.  They cause less harm but they are nevertheless a hazard to those women who happen to become victims.     

Therefore, unfortunately, there are many more abusers than nice guys.   

Saturday, September 7, 2013

680. Research Should Not Be Misinterpreted To Trivialize Pornography

680.   Research Should Not Be Misinterpreted To Trivialize Pornography

Pornography is a very serious problem.   Men damage themselves by a deliberate decision, yet they themselves do not suffer.   Instead they make women suffer by commodifying and objectifying them.  
Therefore men are not prone to refrain from exposing themselves, but they will gladly jump on any excuse to trivialize the self-exposure.  
The following may be mistaken as supplying such an excuse.  

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/09/130906102536.htm
"asked 200 Danish adults aged 18-30 about their past pornography consumption; assessed a central part of their personality (the trait of agreeableness i.e., individual low in agreeableness typically holder higher levels of antagonism, coldness, hostility, suspiciousness, disagreeability, unfriendliness, and self-interest); and exposed them to hardcore pornography in the laboratory."

"Among men increased past pornography consumption was initially found to be associated with more negative attitudes toward women including more hostility, negative prejudices, and stereotypes."

"However, when the researchers actually exposed participants to pornography, personality (agreeableness) was found to influence the relationship between pornography and sexist attitudes so that it was only among participants low in agreeableness that pornography was found to increase sexist attitudes. Among this group it was found that laboratory exposure to pornography modestly increased hostile sexist attitudes. Further this increase was found to be brought about by increases in sexual arousal to the pornographic exposure material. For all other participants, pornography exposure was found not to influence sexist attitudes."


Pornography desensitizes men by destroying their ability to perceive women as persons, who suffer when being abused.  It replaces the appreciative perception by the sexist attitude of mistaking women as objects and commodities existing to be abused.

Desensitization is a time dependent effect.  The longer a man is exposed to pornography, the worse he gets and the more harm he does to women.  

The duration of the exposure to pornography in a laboratory study is limited, while the most damaged men are impacted by the cumulative effects of repeated and regular extensive exposures.   The short exposure in the laboratory does not simulate the magnitude of the real life desensitization.

Therefore the absence in this one study of an effect after only a short exposure does not justify any trivializing misinterpretation.    
I doubt, that high agreeableness suffices as a general protection against desensitization, it may only slow down the speed thereof.   The short exposure in laboratory may suffice to bring out the worst only in those men with low agreeableness, while those with high agreeableness would need longer exposure before they succumb.

Sunday, September 1, 2013

679.   The Subtly Detrimental Influence Of Movies - An Example

Recently I watched the movie 'You've Got Mail'.   I had heard of this movie before as if it were simply a nice and friendly romantic story of an internet match.  

I was quite surprised, when I discovered its detrimental subtle message.  


When only looking at the dynamics of the story, it could be a very exemplary story of the slippery slope of how the allegedly and mistakenly innocent initial behavior of chatting first escalates into emotional cheating and ultimately leads to the breakup of two couples.  

Unfortunately, the movie is not at all a warning for considerate and responsible people to beware of this slippery slope.    To the contrary, it reinforces and encourages people to pursue their own selfish goals without any consideration for their partners, without feeling any commitment and obligation.   The movie is a story about how ruthless and irresponsible transgressions are rewarded.   

Already the secrecy in the first scenes shows, that both protagonists are fully aware of doing something, which they know as not being accepted by their respective partner.  It is clearly emotional cheating. 
Additionally, both couples are shown as being principally in harmony, the respective partners are not presented as having done anything to deserve being dumped.   When the two protagonists decided to cheat, they had not the least excuse in their partners' behavior.

 
Movies are fictional stories, but movies like 'You've Got Mail' are realistic enough to influence people's behavior and their moral compass.    This movie contributes to the desensitization of people towards denial or unawareness for the hurting consequences of how they treat others.  

The fiction of this movie is very unrealistic by presenting the dumped partners as not suffering but both ready to get involved with each other.  
In real life, a dumped partner rarely ever goes through such an ordeal without being wounded and scarred.  

The two protagonists could not foresee this exceptionally benign outcome of their transgression.   When they made the first step upon the slippery slope towards emotional cheating, they decided to do this in spite of the then very real risk of deeply hurting their partners.  


Such movies propagate the fallacy as if it were morally acceptable to look for someone new and dump the previous partner, even though he did nothing whatsoever to deserve this.

Of course this is just one movie, but those people seeing such movies frequently often end up desensitized.   When they hurt others and the others are damaged and show this by their demeanor, the transgressors are unable to comprehend, what they themselves have done.   Instead of taking responsibility, they define the damage done to the hurt person as a weakness, a flaw, a defect.   Even those not directly involved are under the fallacy of blaming the victims for lacking resilience and not seeing the transgressor's full responsibility. 


Sometimes people do worry about the effects of violence in movies and computer games upon people.   But hardly ever anybody worries about the subtle desensitization of superficially harmless movies, which are teaching people to be ruthlessly selfish, irresponsible and inconsiderate.

Tuesday, July 2, 2013

668. Where Are The Men Like André Gorz?

668.   Where Are The Men Like André Gorz?

I already mentioned Dorine and André Gorz in entry 100.    I have now finally read his entire book 'Letter To D.'.    
It is a very touching book.   It sadly reminds me of the role in a man's life, which I am craving for.   Those men, who are able to concede so much significance to a woman, are very elusive.  I have never met one.  

Andrè Gorz appreciated Dorine as a person, she was very significant to him.   He cared, what she thought, he valued her feedback, he accepted to be influenced by her.   He was intellectually and emotionally bonded with her.  She was even more than just a part of his life, she was the essence of their being a unit transcending the limits of being two persons.   
Dorine got the dignified and appropriate place in his life, which she deserved.   He never tired of her, the longer they were together, the more he felt attached and the more he learned to admit and recognize this. 

When the book 'Letter To D.' was published, the reactions in the media were not about an example of a happy marriage, they sounded more like the review of a fairy tale of a marriage.  

 
Men today are the victims of the subtly devastating collateral damage of the technological and economical progress which began, when my generation grew up and was in the decisive years of being most susceptible to being influenced.  

One generation earlier, the Gorzes grew up in a very different world, which facilitated the development of deep thoughts, while today this is more impeded than facilitated:

1.   Kind of media

When the Gorzes were young, there were movies shown in the cinemas, but the majority of media was printed text, and that was what people had at home to occupy their minds with.

Reading a book is a completely different process compared with watching a movie.   I grew up without TV, but it started in Germany, while I was a child.   In those days, any program on TV was continuous and could not be stopped or rewound.   If some part or some important scene was missed or not understood, it was gone without retrieval.   
This trained people to accept as normal the superficial consumption of what was not available for any deeper reflection.    

Reading a book allows people to process it much more thoroughly than a TV program.  One can put a book aside and think, one can go back and reread some chapters or talk about it.  Therefore books allow people to reach a profounder understanding of the content than do movies, when they cannot be stopped at one's own convenience.  Thus people can learn deeper thinking much better from reading than from TV.   

2.   Effect of media

I have already mentioned Kanazawa and his savanna theory.     
http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-scientific-fundamentalist/201002/the-savanna-principle
His suggestion, that people's minds mistake persons on a TV-screen as friends, has made me aware of a much broader effect.   The human brain has not evolved to subconsciously distinguish between merely technical representations and real life experiences, whenever the quality of the representation is a good enough imitation of real life.   This is true for TV, movies and sound in the quality, which exists now since several decades.  
 
When people read a story in a book, it is easy to be aware, that this is an imaginary story and not a description of reality.    But when people see the drastic imagination of extreme behaviors acted out by real people, these actors as role models on a TV screen can subtly change the standards and the sense of what is morally right.  This effect of role models on a screen is much more devastating than the influence of books.   
Behavior based upon consideration and responsibility does not entertain people.   What entertains people, is drastic and extreme.    Consciously, people know, what is real and what is not.   But the subtle subconscious devastation nevertheless happens. 

Reading Casanova's written stories about his abuse is much less a lecture instigating men to abuse women in real life, than are movies presenting the hero-jerk's abuse of women as a positive role model.
 
The quantity of the exposure to the readily available mass of movies presenting the most extreme and outrageous behaviors has a strong impact upon the subconscious mind. This deforms and distorts, what is considered as normal and acceptable.    
Not only does this change social norms, it also leads to the desensitization towards the suffering of the victims of those imitating the role models.  Since people's standards have been damaged, hurting, cruelty, abuse, inconsideration have become so ubiquitous, that people have lost the awareness for the monstrosities done or at least tolerated.   

3.   Effect of distraction

A couple in the times of the youth of the Gorzes had not much alternatives to spend their time together except by communicating.  At least at home, there was not much entertainment available, and events outside the home were expensive compared with people's income.  

Communicating leads people to knowing and appreciating each other and to growing deeper in their connections.    Becoming deeper as persons makes communication more attractive and enjoyable.    

Today people can entirely avoid communicating by the permanent distraction of easily and affordably available superficial entertainment and activities.    A couple can thus never even discover the benefits and joy of a deep level of communication as was the life style of the Gorzes.  

4.   Effects upon men's attitude towards women

The above listed factors have damaged men's behavior and attitudes towards women.   

Men's instinctive tendency to perceive women as bodies are enhanced, while they are impeded to recognize and to notice, let alone to appreciate the benefits of women's intellectual abilities.

Relationships are considered as mainly between two bodies.  

Female bodies are presented as easily available and easily replaceable.  

Conflicts and troubles do not lead people to work on their relationship and develop depth and bonding.   By discarding and replacing their mates too easily, people never experience depth and are unable to recognize and value it in others.   




Tuesday, May 14, 2013

662. Oliver, The Alleged Humanzee

662.  Oliver, The Alleged Humanzee

I have been watching this documentary:
http://documentaryheaven.com/oliver-the-chimp/

At first I suspected it to be a hoax, but after some googling, Oliver's peculiarities as shown seem to have been genuine.   But my curiosity to find out more was disappointed.   
His having the same number of chromosome as chimpanzees has been accepted as sufficient evidence to declare him as a genetic chimpanzee in spite of considerable genetic differences.   

After Oliver's death in 2012, the owners of his carcass cremated him and refused any scientific research on his body.  
The people in the sanctuary do a good job protecting animals, while they are alive, but this does not justify to boycott scientific progress by impeding research on dead animals' bodies.  

I found some more sources, but I cannot know, how much is based upon evidence, and how much is legend, rumor and hearsay.  

Other bipedal chimpanzees are mentioned:
http://www.bigfootencounters.com/creatures/oliverabilene.htm

According to this source, there are several unrecognized and unexplored species of apes in Africa:
http://www.mid-americabigfoot.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=27&t=3838

So my comments and speculations are only based upon the video showing Oliver.   By both his looks and his bipedalism, he is remarkably different from regular chimpanzees.   But he does not appear to me as a half-breed as would be a first generation hybrid, but more like 3/4 or even 7/8 ape.     With mules, this is at least not impossible:
"A mule is the offspring of a male donkey and a female horse.[1] Horses and donkeys are different species, with different numbers of chromosomes."
"A few female mules have produced offspring when mated with a purebred horse or donkey."

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

"the genetic difference between humans and chimps is less than 2%"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_evolutionary_genetics
Therefore if a man had raped or otherwise abused a female pet chimpanzee, the result could have been a hybrid daughter, who mated with a chimpanzee and become the mother or even the grandmother of Oliver.       

If Oliver really had a human ancestor, if indeed human-ape hybrids are feasible, then this is one more indication, that defining what is human cannot be merely based upon genes, but a distinction by other criteria is required.    
 

The unique human cognition justifies specific privileges, because humans can discriminate between appropriate and inappropriate targets of their behavior.    
 
A hungry lion hunts anything, he does not distinguish between antelopes and humans.   He has not sufficient cognition to know, that if he would only hunt antelopes and never humans, he could be tolerated and left in peace.  A lion is not fit for the privilege to be allowed unlimited liberty.    
But a human hunter can know by his cognition, that he can hunt deer in a limited area without consequences, while sheep on a meadow or the deer in another tribe's territory are no suitable targets for a hunt.   

Therefore the question, who is human, is also the question, who gets the privileges only reserved for humans.   

There is an unfortunate fallacy.   While privileges reserved for humans are derived from the principal and theoretical ability to choose appropriate targets for behavior, this does not mean, that all members of the species homo sapiens do choose the appropriate targets.    They can instead know, what is inappropriate, and they can nevertheless be driven by instinct to do it.  
Cognitive humans are able to keep out, where they have no right to be.  Groups driven by the ingroup-outgroup instinct raid another tribe's territory.   In this case, they behave like animals, but they nevertheless continue to feel entitled to privileges as if they were acting by cognition.     

The genetic distinction serves the selfish needs of those, who want to behave as ruthlessly as animals but also to feel justified to profit from all the privileges reserved to humans.   


Oliver had been captured in the Congo, and the video completely omits questioning his origins.   This omission indicates one of the last taboos, zoophilia and sodomy. 

In all societies of superficially civilized but desensitized men, who consider objectifying and commodifying women as normal expressions of masculinity, restricting abuse to females of the human species serves the justification of being specially privileged while also allowing instinctive behaviors not different from other animals.   Would such a man admit, that zoophilic abuse suffices for him to restore his sexual homeostasis, he would also admit, that he really is not any better or any different from a beast and he would have to face this unpleasant truth.  

But when desensitization has gone even farther, then privileges are not ascribed to human genes, they are considered as the right of the strongest after applying any methods of fighting.   Considering the extreme cruelty of many African armed conflicts, rebellions and wars, including atrocious rapes, there the step from abusing women to abusing chimpanzees is only a small and logical further step.   Human-ape hybrids are extremely rare, if any exist at all, but this is only due to biological reasons and not because dehumanized men keep away from female apes.


A human-ape hybrid would cause serious logical problems, if privileges were to be accorded automatically to beings having the genes of homo sapiens.  This is one more reason, why these genes are not a sufficient justification to give human privileges to any person.     The best criterion is the talent of sufficient cognitive control over those instincts, which cause harm to others.   Only those, who do not harm and abuse others, deserve to be called human.  
At the actual level of evolution, this talent can only be found in a fraction of the species homo sapiens. 

Monday, December 24, 2012

628. Theory Of Mind, Empathy, Society And The Media

628.   Theory Of Mind, Empathy, Society And The Media
 
As told before, I consider not to harm others as the core principle of any acceptable moral and not to be harmed as the core principle of basic human rights.  

To be successful in avoiding to harm others requires more than the acceptance of a moral principle.   It requires also sufficient knowledge of what others experience as harm.   While recognizing visible immediate harm is easy, this is not the case with invisible and delayed harm.

The reliance upon empathy and the working of the mirror neurons is limited to situations, when someone can spontaneously feel with the unlucky person, for example someone, on whose foot a brick has just fallen.   

But when the harm is invisible and caused by complex and abstract cognitive experiences, then empathy is not enough to prevent hurting another person emotionally.   Avoiding emotional and future harm by broken trust, by injustice, by depreciation, by commodification and such requires a mature theory of mind.    
"Theory of mind is the ability to attribute mental states—beliefs, intents, desires, pretending, knowledge, etc.—to oneself and others and to understand that others have beliefs, desires, and intentions that are different from one's own."

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

While children usually develop a basic theory of mind by innate maturation, the more complex and abstract theory of mind is a learning process enabled and enhanced by experiences of interactions.   

Nobody can know for certain, what behavior causes invisible harm to another person, unless this is based upon acquired information.    This can be achieved by either learning from the reaction and feedback by the harmed person and/or by any observing third party, or by asking the target person's advice before acting and by listening to such advice when proffered.  

It is the fallacy of immature people to deny the existence of anything, that they are ignorant of and to think that it is enough not to do to others, what they would themselves feel hurt by.   
It is also a fallacy to overlook the biological differences between women and men in evaluating the impact of behavior.   

 
An example.    Some men in the state of sexual dishomeostasis feel an urge to copulate like dogs in the gutter with any haphazard female body without getting attached.   

Those being immature believe women to be like them.  Whenever they mislead women to consent by unjustified expectations of attachment, immature men abuse women's bodies with a clean conscience.  They do not understand attachment and believe women to be stray dogs the same like themselves.  

Men with a mature theory of mind are aware, that women do get attached much more easily and rapidly and how important attachment is for women.   Jerks have no conscience and manipulate women to be used and dumped, they are not deterred by not reciprocating attachment.   Jerks consider women's getting attached as an annoying flaw.
Mature men with morals are able to acknowledge, that not getting attached is their own deficiency.    They are responsible to not make others the victims of their own deficiencies and to accept the obligation of using self-control to abstain from hurting women.  


The development of a mature theory of mind depends upon the society and culture.  

Unfortunately the modern western societies impede and thwart the moral maturation of people.   The influence of the ubiquitous media is the main factor in this.  

Desensitization:   The media are full with realistic representations of the most horrible agonies and atrocities.   But as the human brain had evolved without realistic pictures, it cannot really distinguish between TV and real life.  Watching TV is not very different from people partaking in the spectacle of public hanging and beheading.  
The consumption of the media leads to a desensitization towards suffering.   As a result, a 'mere' emotional betrayal appears as if it were only a trifle compared with the magnitude of the frequently watched atrocities both reported from real life and in the imaginary world of movies.  

Misunderstood tolerance.   Tolerance is important to protect minorities and people with special needs from any avoidable disadvantages.    But if alleged tolerance embraces also the protection of behaviors, which cause harm, it is not tolerance, but irresponsibility and a failure to protect the victims.    

Misrepresentation.   There are many perversities and deviant behaviors, which seem obviously harmful to most people, who would immediately refuse to expose themselves to be thus harmed.    Yet in the uncensored web, nearly every perversity and deviance has its adherent proponents, who propagate it publicly from their subjective distorted view as a minority right and behavior while omitting, denying and trifling the harm to the victims.   


Desensitization, misunderstood tolerance and misrepresentation have an impact not only upon the person behaving unknowingly as a transgressor, but also on the victim and on any other possible source of corrective feedback.  

Victims getting hurt are irritated and confused as to how much their felt outrage is justified.  They are often misguided to attribute their own healthy reaction instead to an own weakness.    They submit and endure instead of protesting, because they are manipulated into.self-doubt as if they were failures lacking to adapt the socially prescribed pseudo-progress.
Acquaintances are not involved enough to suffer as victims, but they often notice behavior as potentially harming to closer relations.   Would they react sincerely and show their true disapproval, this would serve as helpful feedback towards a better theory of mind.    But instead they shrug their shoulders and avoid any conflict.   

Constructive feedback can only be given by people with a mature theory of mind, who are aware of the importance of not hurting others.   People who are immature themselves are less prone to give any feedback and they are even less able to give feedback of supportive value.    What makes role models in the media attractive to the masses is often an expression of immaturity, which is then imitated. .  

Therefore some of those people, who hurt others, never had a chance to reach sufficient maturity to get aware of what they are really doing.   

Tuesday, December 4, 2012

623. Defining A Disorder Without Consideration For The Victims

623.  Defining A Disorder Without Consideration For The Victims
"Now a UCLA-led team of experts has tested a proposed set of criteria to define "hypersexual disorder," also known as sexual addiction, as a new mental health condition."

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/10/121019102802.htm
This article is just another example of the implicit general desensitization to the plight of victims.   The paramount importance of treating sexual addiction for the purpose of protecting others from becoming victims is not even mentioned in this article.
Oversexation is not considered a problem, as long as the promiscuous jerks are satisfied, while all the harm is burdened upon their objectified, dumped and cheated upon victims.  But when the jerks suffer themselves, it is all of a sudden recognized as a problem:
"Of the 207 patients they examined, 17 percent had lost a job at least once, 39 percent had a relationship end, 28 percent contracted a sexually transmitted infection and 78 percent had interference with healthy sex."

"Our study showed increased hypersexual behavior was related to greater emotional disturbance, impulsivity and an inability to manage stress."

Sunday, October 7, 2012

608. Commercials: The Paradoxical Effects Of A Nuisance

608.  Commercials:  The Paradoxical Effects Of A Nuisance

Usually I avoid to expose myself to commercials.   While visual commercials can be avoided after a short glance, acoustic commercials are less easy to avoid.    There is no earlid to shut the ears and avoid hearing.

While doing dull routine chores, I often listen to easy stuff like audio books or radio shows, whatever can be found for legal downloading.  Thus I got a series of very old detective radio shows made in Hollywood.    
The entire series is loaded with commercials from just one company, at a rate of about four commercials per every half hour episode.  Listening to the repetition of the same few commercials in a dozen of these episodes is already sufficient to make me dislike this company so much, that I would never ever consider to buy any of their products.  

As far as I know, such an bombardment by commercials is quite normal on radio and TV in the USA and on private stations in other countries too.   
I am really puzzled, how it is possible, that people are influenced favorably by such a nuisance and why they buy, what the commercials lure them to.   Why are people so foolish as to reinforce, what they are pestered by and what they rarely like or enjoy but usually dislike?
I am wondering if growing up bombarded by commercials is another example of desensitization by the media and if people can get selectively desensitized only towards stopping to feel disturbed and annoyed, but not towards being influenced in favor of buying?


On myself, the effect of commercials is very different.   Perceiving commercials as an annoyance and nuisance being exposed to them causes me to develop an aversion against the brand of the advertised product.   As long as there is any no-name product, I buy it as an alternative.  

Besides being a nuisance, commercials also cost a lot of money, which is paid by the customer.   Whenever someone buys the expensive advertised brand instead of buying a cheaper no-name product, he contributes to the persistence of the nuisance.   

If everybody would react like me and refuse to buy, what is advertised, commercials would seize to exist due to not being profitable.  But too many people are fools, who are too easily taken in.    

Saturday, September 29, 2012

604. Commodification Under The Influence Of Culture

604.   Commodification Under The Influence Of Culture

Biologically seen, there are factors determining the watershed between the intrinsic commitment of nice guys and the promiscuity of abusive jerks.   
These factors are the innate strength of men's instinctive urges causing the discomfort of sexual dishomeostasis and the innate quality and strength of the cognition upon the behavior.  

Demisexual intellectuals with a strong need for bonding are able to appreciate women's personality, promiscuous jerks are programmed to always degrade women as objects for use.   But there are also the fence sitters having behavioral predispositions in a delicate balance between instinctive urges and cognitive strength.   Upon them, culture and social norms are a third and decisive influence.     
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/09/120905135340.htm

"To be a 'success' in evolutionary terms, women need to have access to resources for raising offspring, and men need to have access to fertile females. Researchers have argued that women tend to prefer partners who have an ability to invest resources in their children (i.e., wealthy men), and men tend to prefer partners who appear fertile (i.e., young women) because evolutionary adaptations have programmed these preferences in our brains."

"They found that the gender difference in mate preferences predicted by evolutionary psychology models "is highest in gender-unequal societies, and smallest in the most gender-equal societies," according to Zentner."

"Because increasing gender equality reduces gender differences in mate selection, these studies indicate that the strategies men and women use to choose mates may not be as hardwired as scientists originally thought."

"But he also adds evolutionary roots shouldn't be ruled out entirely.

"Indeed, the capacity to change behaviors and attitudes relatively quickly in response to societal changes may itself be driven by an evolutionary program that rewards flexibility over rigidity.""


When a promiscuous jerk copulates with a female body like a dog in the gutter, this is determined by four factors.   
  • The experience of the intrinsic urges of dishomeostasis, 
  • The enhancement and magnification of the impact of dishomeostasis by external triggers upon the perception.
  • The availability of bodies for easy abuse.    
  • The basic attitude of accepting promiscuity as appropriate behavior without any damage to his self-esteem or confidence.   

While only the innate magnitude of dishomeostasis is biological, the availability and ubiquity of external triggers, the availability of bodies for ready use, and the choice between promiscuity and monogamy as part of the ideal-self depend also upon the social environment.   


I was a child in Germany in the 50s, before the fatal sexual revolution freed the worst in men.    The 50s were certainly not a golden age for women, while there was still no reliable birth control, no legal abortion and husbands had unjustifiable legal rights like the one to forbid their wives to have a job.   
But as far as women were commodified, it was as wombs, not as objects and utilities serving men's animal instincts.  There was no public objectification of women.   Sexuality was restricted to its appropriate place inside the privacy of the bedroom of committed couples.  
There were no pictures of naked or lascivious women in any public place, not in commercials, magazines or newspapers, nor in movies.  Most women were aware, that being nice but decently dressed was in their own best interest, just as was also the conscious rejection of any involvement except long-term commitment.    
It was a golden age of beneficial wise prudery.    

Public life was free from detrimental triggers for male instincts.   
There were too many jerks then too, but they were jerks by their own innate animality, they were jerks in spite of a social norm of commitment and monogamy.  Abusing women was not facilitated for them.  These jerks had to consciously decide first, that they really wanted to abuse a woman, because finding the hidden prostitution and pornography required a proactive search. 
The nice guys and the fence sitters were spared the involuntary exposure to triggers, which were incongruent with their real wishes and inclinations for intrinsic commitment based upon their cognitive personality.    
When they experienced the discomfort of dishomeostasis, the circumstances due to the social norm and the culture smoothed their path much more towards commitment and monogamy than towards promiscuity.   
In the 50s, it was much easier for intrinsic nice guys to remain decent, nothing perturbed and distracted them from living in congruency with their cognitive ability to appreciate women.     


Today, the public objectification of women does not only cause a lot of harm to women, but it also causes self-harming to those nice guys, who would be most happy in bonded monogamous commitment.   They are exposed without having a choice to the ubiquitous triggers to their worst animal instincts by the combination of the excellent quality of the realism of the media, the oversexation of every day life and the social norm of male promiscuity and female acquiescence.
The potentially responsible and considerate nice guys and the fence sitters are in the unfortunate situation of being triggered by instincts and encouraged by social norm to use those too many women, who acquiesce too easily.  Such women are also manipulated by the same social norm into believing, that promiscuity were modern, monogamy were prudish and old fashioned and that the only chance to successfully compete with other women is to allow themselves to be available first for use lest another would be chosen for being easier to get.  The sad result are many women suffering from unilateral and not-reciprocated attachment.  The men get desensitized by using too many women.    This is, how fence sitters convert themselves more and more to jerks.   

The guy described in entry 601 is a good example.    In the 50s, the easiest way to homeostation would have been to continue his efforts towards finding commitment, which he initially seemed to really want.   But now, the social norm and the triggers lured and lure him to desensitize himself, until he will be unfit for commitment by his own doing.     
 

I have a very high regard and appreciation for those nice guys, who are determined by their cognition and no trigger of any strength has the impact to cause them to stray from decency towards abusing women as bodies.   
The true quality of a man reveals itself, when no trigger and no influence can ever make him sink so low as to become promiscuous.    Such men are rare, but they do exist.    I am looking for one of them as my mindmate.  

Monday, September 24, 2012

601. Anecdotal Evidence: How Instinctive Urges Blur, Distort And Deactivate A Man's Reason

601.   Anecdotal Evidence:  How Instinctive Urges Blur, Distort And Deactivate A Man's Reason

A few days ago, a man's profile gave me the impression of his being a nice, decent, and considerate guy.    He used words like honesty, sharing, loving, kind and compassionate in his profile.   He told me, he were fitting my own profile, where I have explicitly mentioned, that I do not want any contact with promiscuous men.   
He seemed interested in further contact with me.   We exchanged a few emails and he agreed also with the importance of communication and of intellectual compatibility.   

But when I had another look at his profile, I was really puzzled.    He had changed his declared intention from actively seeking a relationship to dating but nothing serious.   When I asked him about this unexpected and seemingly incongruous change, his answer was so different from what he had appeared before, that he appeared like a different person.  
.   
He wrote,
1.  that he was "totally discouraged with online dating"
2.  that he now intended to have "a hookup, nothing serious. Dinner, movie, and sex."

For a moment I was speechless.  When he wrote this, it was morning in his time zone.  Had he written this in the evening, I would have suspected him to be drunk.  
  
1. Even by not being his dream woman, according to his initial interest, the contact with me could more logically have encouraged him.
  
2. Something is strange, when someone with this man's profile decides on such a project.  It is not something to achieve with honesty.   Most women, to whom a man would unequivocally suggest "a hookup, nothing serious. Dinner, movie, and sex" would feel insulted by this objectification and disrespect.  They would consider him a ridiculous fool for having such expectations.   
Most men, who succeed in getting "a hookup, nothing serious. Dinner, movie, and sex", do this by lies, manipulation and other methods of misleading a woman to consent based upon the false hope of beginning a relationship.    This is abuse. 

It seemed incongruous and inconsistent, that a man, who had declared himself as valuing compassion and kindness, suddenly plans coldblooded abuse.   It is incomprehensible, how someone suddenly decides to abuse a female body as a toilet for his body waste in spite of his claim of wanting intellectual compatibility.


The following are of course only speculations, as there is no way to find out the truth. 

Desensitization to full comprehension for how much a woman gets hurt, when she is used and discarded is not enough to explain this contradiction.  Desensitization to harming others works best in the absence of compassion.    
The most plausible explanation is this man's overreacting to a state of strong physiological dishomeostasis.    The guy seems to have been reduced from a thinking and feeling human being to a mere animal, being completely under the power of overwhelming instinctive forces.   In this state as an animal, all his human reason appears blurred, distorted or deactivated.    
Any option for behavior guided by human compassion and kindness seems to be concealed behind the predominant urge to copulate like a dog in the gutter, and behind the drive to be a predator and to ruthlessly hunt for prey.   This state as an animal lasts until homeostation restores humanity.


I replied, that a man, who objectifies women, is not worthy of me.    His reaction was "F**k you, you crazy broad. Go back to the asylum."    I was merely blunt, but the animal in him became vulgar.


While I am scared of men's dangerous instincts, I also feel sorry for them.   They are afflicted with instincts, which destroy for them the chance to get, what is most beneficial to their human cognition, especially in the case of men, who are intelligent and educated, and only deranged when they experience dishomeostasis.   
This guy is just one example.   Without being deranged temporarily by his instincts, he could have a happy symmetrical committed and bonded relationship with a woman like me.   But his instincts reduce him to a disgusting beast, who temporarily sinks so low as to intend to abuse women as a toilet for his body waste.   No decent woman with dignity and self-respect wants anything to do with such a man.   

It is very difficult for me to imagine, how men's specific physiological sexual dishomeostasis of needing to get rid of body waste feels.   Biologically, women's bodies do not provide this same experience of dishomeostasis.   
My best attempt to comprehend the magnitude of men's problem is to compare it to the urge of an addiction like alcoholism or even an extreme deprivation as is starvation.   Sometimes an extremely strong craving deactivates and overrides all higher cognitive and moral consideration.  The craving person ruthlessly applies any atrocity, which allows him to restore homeostasis, even killing, stealing and robbing. In the case of men, it can be abuse and rape of women.       

Those jerks, who always copulate like dogs in the gutter, oblivious of the damage done to the abused women, are just animals, who have never really become fully human.  
But assuming, that the guy in this incident knows the full meaning of the words used by him in his profile, like kindness and compassion, makes me wonder, what happens after he had his night in the gutter.   How will he feel, when he is back temporarily in a state of homeostasis, becoming fully aware of what he had done to the woman by luring her into his gutter?    Will he feel the same shame and regret as the addict, who in the state of homeostasis wishes to be free from the addiction?

Wednesday, August 22, 2012

570. Politicians And Morals

570.   Politicians And Morals

As mentioned before, there is a biologically caused asymmetry of many men harming women by excessive instinctive urges for sexual homeostasis and of many women not only getting harmed but participating in their own self-harming due to their instinctive urges for breeding.    As a result, the co-evolved gullibility to religion has established a general desensitization to women's plight of being harmed.   Women's bodies being used by men is not perceived as an outrage and a transgression, but as morally acceptable and as their innate doom. 

But this attitude of accepting the desensitization has consequences far beyond merely harming individual women in private situations.    When someone considers and accepts it as correct behavior and his entitlement to harm women by abuse, commodification, objectification, exploitation and taking advantage, this indicates, that he is a hazard to others, not only to women.  

Not only are politicians elected to work for the benefits of their voters, who have entrusted their interests to them.    Politicians are also paid a salary out of tax payer's money, which is so high, that many of the voters can only dream of such an income.    The trust and the salary oblige politicians to balance their self-interest with the benefits owed to their voters.       

But this is not reality.   As can be easily derived from reading daily in the newspapers about the frequent scandals and misdemeanors of politicians, many of them seem to be more or less corrupt, drastically taking selfish advantages of their positions.   Some are limited by what they can do legally, many get even away with criminal transgressions.   

What a politician does to women is an excellent and valid indication of his attitude to his voters.   If the voters were fully aware of this, they would base their political choice not only on the promises of a politician, but also on his moral integrity.  

A man without hesitation nor inhibitions to cheat on his wife can be expected to also cheat on his voters.    A man not hesitating in abusing a prostitute's body for his selfish instinctive urges can be expected to abuse the power of his position for his own greedy selfish interests.    A man using his position as immunity to rape and harass women can be expected to be criminally corrupt.   

The frequent scandals reported in the press and news indicate clearly, how many of the male politicians are not only commodifying and objectifying women as if this were their entitlement and privilege, but that their position also supplies them with more occasions to harm women than has the average jerk.    

Unfortunately too many voters are themselves desensitized to abuse women and even the female voters are manipulated to overlook, that politicians forfeit their trustworthiness by abusing women.   These voters tolerate the immorality, which harms women, and then they are disappointed and angry, when the corrupt politicians fail to do, what the voters expect.   

But the impact of abusive politicians being reelected is even worse than their mere failing to fulfill their obligations.   The fact of having been voted for by many people creates their reputation as role models worthy to be copied, no matter how morally rotten they are.    
Every time, when a politician is reelected in spite of the public knowledge of his cheating and frequenting brothels, this emits a very wrong signal.   It reinforces the fatal social norm of oversexation, promiscuity and harming women by objectification. 

In an ideal world, politicians would only be elected, if they have sufficient moral integrity of not taking advantage of occasions to harm and exploit others, neither women nor voters.