665. Possible Disruptions When Avoiding To Harm

665.   Possible Disruptions When Avoiding To Harm

As mentioned several times already, I consider the Epicurean principle of not harming as the basis of how I want to interact with other people.  I prefer to avoid those, who are determined otherwise like for example religious people, who justify harming by an alleged reward in the afterlife.
 

 
When two persons respect each other as equals and are consciously motivated to avoid harming each other, this does not automatically mean the absence of disruption by involuntary harming.

Harming includes hurting the other's feelings.   This implies the involvement of two sides, one person behaving in a specific way and another person perceiving this behavior as painful.

Some causes of disruption:

1.  Misunderstanding of the situation.    

Both can be guided by disparate and incongruent implicit expectations and unverified imaginary options.   
Well meant behavior based upon one set of such implicit presumptions can be perceived as for example betrayal, disappointment, disregard or depreciation by someone with another set.     This is the case for proactive and reactive behavior. 

2.  Not knowing the other well.    

Not harming by consideration is not possible without knowledge of the other's individual resilience and sensitivities. 
The responsibility of behaving morally according to one's own standards does not suffice to avoid, that the other feels hurt by the subjective perception of for example offense, slight, humiliation or rejection.    

3.  Misinterpretation due to lacking trust.  

Trust or the lack thereof has an impact upon the interpretation of the other's behavior and utterings as either benevolent or as a cause for suspicion.   Someone not trusting and feeling slighted can jump to the conclusion, that there really is a slight.

Some methods to avoid such disruptions

1.   Avoiding ambiguity.   

Clear agreements, explicit consent and outspoken options can lead to congruity and realism of expectations.    It allows a rational choice between pursuing or abandoning an endeavor.

2.   Adding consideration to responsibility.   

Acquiring sufficient knowledge about the other's value system, focus of identity and the impact of past experiences enables people to behave with consideration.   Involuntary hurting can best be avoided by knowing as much as possible of the other's subjective perception of all relevant behaviors.    

While responsibility can be regarded as a general moral obligation, consideration adds deliberate care for the other's wellbeing.

3.  The benefit of the doubt.   

Restricting all evaluation of the other to using the most trustful interpretation of his behavior avoids to mistake distrusting interpretations as indicating and even evidence for the justification of distrust.   Acting as if trusting enables real trust to grow, while this does not preclude to be nevertheless prepared for discovering the justification of the distrustful interpretation.  
Someone feeling slighted can ask back for further explanation in the awareness, that what he feels is only subjective and can be based upon wrong premises.

These methods constitute a learning process accomplished by rational and constructive communication, outspoken, direct, blunt and to the point of the matter.   

It is a learning process for both sides.   Learning how to be considerate is only possible, when the one feeling hurt acknowledges and admits the own vulnerability and refrains from blaming, grudging or accusing.  

I am aware that this does not sound very romantic.   But the special situation of beginning a contact by written messages and thus void of all non-verbal information asks for specific proceedings.  

The first step is a reciprocal consent and awareness concerning the options.    This means reciprocally ascertaining, that what each wants and needs as a goal is principally indeed offered by the other.      
The second step is a phase of constructive communication, which can lead to either the planning of a real life meeting or to the decision to abandon this goal.    
 

A well prepared meeting is then also the moment to start becoming romantic.

634. Equality And The Detrimental Effect Of Money On Men

634.  Equality And The Detrimental Effect Of Money On Men

Men are not only derailed by merely physical infatuation triggered by their instincts from making a wise choice of a companion.  The capitalistic distortion of deriving and attributing the value of people, especially of men, mainly from their financial power has additional detrimental effects on the mating behavior.   These effects are different for those, who are affluent and for those, who are not.   

  

1.  Men with low or moderate income 

  

Either in their profiles or in private correspondence, men with low to moderate income often express the expectation and fear to be automatically rejected due to lacking assets.   This frame of mind is real and thus it does not matter, if they have come to this state of mind from a realistic interpretation of their experiences.  

   

An unfortunate reaction is their loss of the ability to recognize, to trust or to accept, when a woman expresses clearly, that she is not interested in a man's money.    They appear bitter and angry, some seem to have a low self-esteem, not matter their intellectual achievements.    They are lonely and crave a relationship, but they do not dare to strife for it anymore, instead the rant and complain.  The less they expect, the less they are motivated to invest in any attempt and thus they also have no incentive for the challenge of conquering geographic distance.

It is disheartening for me, when I try in vain to encourage someone like this, but he withdraws, poofs or makes the fallacy to reject me first to prevent a wrongly expected rejection due to his financial situation. 

 

Some of them have been rejected, but for very different reasons being their behavior, habits and/or attitudes.  The attributing of rejections wrongly to lacking money has the unfortunate consequence of impeding the needed self-improvement.   Thus the not corrected reasons for rejections lead to repeated and continued rejections.

  
2.   Affluent men
 

A wealthy man is a hazard to a non-wealthy egalitarian woman.    The ability to spend money gives people power, no matter how much or how little they do enjoy having this power and how much they are not even aware of it.    

Spending money often creates a temporary hierarchy.    The English language expresses very clearly, how monetary transactions divide people between masters and servants:  The customer orders food in a restaurant, and to order is synonymous with to command.   The waiter serves the food.    Not asking a fixed full price, but maintaining the deplorable custom of tipping aggravates this undignified distinction.   The haughty master condescends to give some extra cash to a waiter, whose fake friendliness and servility is nothing better than the manipulation to get tipped.  

Buying bread at the bakers for a fixed price is a form of the division of labor.

The more a man experiences being the master with financial power as a daily routine, the more he is prone to loose all awareness of this being a situation of his asymmetrical advantage.  Instead he is desensitized to perceive this as his innate right.   

Thus he is prone to generalize his allegedly entitlement to power also to the privacy of a relationship.   This means, he is a hazard of not only attempting to dominate a woman, but also of not even understanding, that this is not justified but an outrage.  
      
There is a second hazard, which is often visible in the profiles of those men, who brag about their assets.    They attempt to buy women using material benefits.   The hazard here is the possible fallacy of thinking that by spending lots of money upon women they are dispensing themselves of any non-material obligations or responsibilities.   They mistake giving money for a sufficient substitute for any efforts to make a relationship work.
They are also prone to consider their wealth as enough reason to be eligible for considerably younger women, even though these women often do not reciprocate:  


When given all my other criteria including being in the same age group, men in a similar financial situation are elusive and discouraged, affluent men consider me as too old, while I consider men as old as 78, who have contacted me, as not suitable, no matter who and what they are.
 

There are things like no children and no religion, where compromising for me is out of the question.  But when it comes to the financial situation of a potential mate, I am willing to compromise.   

I do prefer someone of low or moderate income and the subsequent equality of sharing resources, expenses and decisions, who feels comfortable living frugally (entry 631), who does not mind nor hesitate to invest temporary discomfort for saving money, and for whom making the best of limited resources by using his brain and acquiring compensatory skills is welcome as a challenge and an achievement.  
But I am willing to accept a man of any financial situation, if he has the qualities of a mindmate.  

535. Commodification, Inappropriate Behavior And The Dynamics Of Escalation

535.   Commodification, Inappropriate Behavior And The Dynamics Of Escalation

I am using burping in the following thoughts as a prototypical inappropriate behavior.    It is a placeholder for many other similar behaviors, this is not specially about burping in particular. 

• Burping is generally considered as inappropriate behavior in most western societies, especially at the dinner table.
• Everybody with a minimum of culture, education and intelligence is aware of burping being considered as inappropriate.  Most people agree.
• People feel embarrassed, when they burp accidentally.  They are anxious to avoid it. 
• The magnitude of the embarrassment depends upon the subjective importance of the witnesses' good opinion.

Therefore the common reaction to be expected after any accidental burp is a more or less embarrassed apology.  How much someone feels embarrassed depends upon the subjective significance of the witness.   Burping is experienced as less embarrassing, when the other at the dinner table is a sibling than when it is the boss to be during the interview for an attractive job. 

 

Someone (unless this person is seriously retarded or disordered) burping freely and without any sign of the least embarrassment is thus sending a significant message concerning the attitude towards the witness.   This message tells, that the witness's opinion is insignificant, that the witness's perception and experience do not matter.   
 

For a woman in the context of searching for a mate, being thus burped at is a big red flag indicating the man's attitude of commodifying women.  
Nobody sane feels embarrassed, when the witness present during burping is only a utility like a vacuum cleaner.  When a man burps freely in the presence of a woman without feeling embarrassment, this is a very strong indication, that he does not really distinguish between a vacuum cleaner and a woman.   Both are commodities perceived as only existing to serve him without any significance as persons.   


When traditionally two persons have a date while knowing very little about each other and thus having few misguided expectations, a woman would probably notice the uninhibited burping as a sufficient reason to refrain from meeting again.   She may not consciously recognize the commodification due to not even be bothered about the reasons for his inappropriate behavior, which suffices by itself to recoil. 

But the situation is different with online contacts, when two persons meet personally only after a long phase of correspondence.   Nobody can burp by email.   When in this situation the woman experiences the man's uninhibited burping during dinner for the first time, this is to her not an unambiguous red flag.  Instead it conveys a message, which is very contradictory to her expectations.   

While the correspondence has triggered her to expect being appreciated and respected, the burping makes her experience the emotional effects of being commodified.   She feels disrespected by what appears to her as a lack of either manners, consideration or politeness.    
Her goal is being shown by his behavior as much of the alleged appreciation, as what she had deducted from his emails.   As long as her focus is upon his burping as if it were a mere bad habit and not on the more serious and significant message of not valuing her enough to feel embarrassed, she attempts to influence him by showing feedback.   

As long as she is oblivious of his underlying attitude of commodification as the true problem, she is mistaken to think that she can influence him to correct his behaviors.   She is mistaken to attempt to be supportive to a shared wish to improve the relationship, while the absence of sharing is a part of his attitude of commodification.   Her feedback is meant as support to enable him to directly improve his behavior as his contribution to his alleged shared goal to improve the relationship.  

Her feedback starts gently and subtly, but gets more and more drastic, whenever it elicits no reaction.   The lacking reaction magnifies her discomfort and suffering from experiencing her insignificance.   
The first hint may be just a frown, followed by a disgusted expression, the next step being a polite remark to please stop burping, repeated in less polite tones and words.   If this escalation continues without any improvement, it ends with her calling him a pig and a plebeian or whatever is the worst word she has in her vocabulary.  

 

But these dynamics are much more than the escalation of her becoming impolite and offensive in her language, it is also a shift of her attitude towards him.   She starts with the attempt to influence him towards solving the contradiction, as long as she still is considering him able to express as much appreciation by his behavior as she had expected as a result of interpreting his emails.  Her goal is the reciprocity of the expression of as much respect and appreciation as she has for him.   

When the escalation reaches the point of her calling him a pig and a plebeian, the contradiction has been resolved the opposite way.   Experiencing the persistent lack of respect in his behavior has caused her to also lose all her previous respect for him.   Her emotional counterpart to being commodified is loathing and detesting him as unworthy.   

Behavior based upon the attitude of commodification forfeits the victim's respect in many ways.  I used burping as an illustrative example.   There are similar escalations, when a man forces harm due to irrational behavior upon a woman and does not react to any rational discussion until she calls him an idiot, and when she cannot stop him from hurting her by transgressions until she calls him an a**e.    The kind of harm due to his behavior differs, when he drives her to consider him either a pig, or an idiot or an a**e.   The dynamics follow the same pattern.


Escalations due to not reacting to the feedback from someone mistaken for and mistreated as a commodity, whose opinion, experience and perception does not matter, destroy a relationship.   The one, who feels offended and blames the other for name calling, instead of asking himself, what he has done to provoke the escalation, is the one, who dooms the relationship.