652. The Tit-For-Tat Meta Addition To The Golden Rule

652.  The Tit-For-Tat Meta Addition To The Golden Rule

"The Golden Rule or ethic of reciprocity is a maxim,[1] ethical code or morality[2] that essentially states either of the following:

(Positive form of Golden Rule): One should treat others as one would like others to treat oneself.[1]

(Negative form of Golden Rule): One should not treat others in ways that one would not like to be treated (also known as the Silver Rule)."

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

Like expressed above, the golden rule is quoted often.   But for people using the tit-for-tat strategy as a basis of interacting, the following is an important logical consequence of the golden rule:

Do not blame others for treating you the same way, as you have treated them before.  

The tit-for-tat strategy does not suit morals, which are openly or even subtly influenced by a christian background of society.   Even rational non-religious people are often under this impact without being aware of this. 

Christianity promises the reward in the afterlife as a compensation for the acceptance of suffering, for unconditional forgiving, for turning the other cheek.    This is inconsistent with the tit-for-tat strategy, which chooses reactions to behavior as mirroring this behavior. 

Some people misunderstand the tit-for-tat strategy as a way of being vindictive.    This is not the case.  

• Non-criminal vengeance is an emotional behavior.   Under limited circumstances it can be a way of finding relief from suffering helpless outrage as the victim of a transgression.  
• The tit-for-tat strategy is a rational way of maintaining a balance of giving and receiving and of preventing disruptive imbalances.  

Vengeance can even be an apparently paradoxical reaction to following the christian demands under social pressure and misguidance while not being intrinsically agreeing.  Following these christian demands can lead to an extremely unbalanced situation of one person taking advantage and one suffering until a breaking point is reached.   

The tit-for-tat strategy can prevent this, because it leads to both persons involved reaching a point of ending a futile situation much earlier,   This does not escalate until one suffers enough to feel vindictive, when both do not gain any advantage.  

But tit-for-tat only works, when both agree on and are aware of its justification.   When one persons uses tit-for-tat, but the other expects christian submission to and compliance with bad treatment, then this leads to disruptive and unstable interactions.   

586. Jerks With Halos

586.  Jerks With Halos

In entry 381 I described Diego Rivera as a jerk with a halo.   He is just one specimen of many, and it is a pattern of very detrimental and unfavorable dynamics.

I consider people (usually men) as jerks with a halo, when they are accomplished or outstanding in some area, as artists, writers, scientists, actors, politicians or even as benefactors for many people, while they also inflict a lot of suffering upon persons close to them.   

Jerks are jerks, and the suffering of their victims is real and no halo seen by any third party does reduce this suffering, it only hides it in an unjustifiable way.
  
Accomplishments need to be evaluated by themselves, without any impact upon the subjective recognition of the magnitude of personal transgressions.   The harm done to the unfortunate victims is an unacceptable moral failure, this is independent of any coexisting achievements.   

Accomplishments do not exempt people from being responsible for what they do to others.  

But this is unfortunately not reality.   Instead, there is a general tendency to condone unacceptable, immoral and cruel behaviors in proportional accordance with the transgressor's fame due to his accomplishments.  By this fallacy of accepted compensation, someone can buy by his accomplishments the right to harm without consequences.

This fallacy is enhanced and perpetuated by any combination of several factors, which all lead to the underestimation of the harm done to the victims: 

1.   Women's apparent and alleged compliance when continuing to expose themselves to their plight.   
1.1.  Women are dependent upon the material support by the man, especially by raising children.   They would leave the jerk, if the could.  
1.2.  Women in asymmetrical relationships have got onesidedly emotionally attached to the jerk, who in return has an entitlement delusion.  His fallacy is his belief, that women exist for his convenience, his accomplishments justifying their commodification.  I described this in entry 268 (The Jerk Attachment Syndrome).

2.  The generalization of suggestive influences of religion, especially christianity, upon both the jerks and the victims.  The jerks with halos subjectively consider their accomplishment as their currency to buy the right to harm women. 

In religion, sin is believed to be compensatable by penitence, so that after having paid for the previous sin, there is no cognitive obstacle to prevent the next sin.  Replacing penitence by accomplishments is a fallacy, which is not very far fetched, considering the weirdness of the religious beliefs in themselves.
Thus jerks are not only haloed by others, but they also halo themselves by believing, that their accomplishments entitle them to privileges, even when the privileges harm others.  

Women allow men to harm them for the purpose of buying the reward after death with the currency of their forgiving the unforgivable and by their prolonged suffering .  

3.  Sometimes people feel a vague, fuzzy and unspecified need to improve themselves, but are uncertain, how to proceed.  When they discover persons, whom they do not know personally, but only by the presentation in their work and in the media, such persons are chosen as role models.   The nearer the role models appear to be perfect, the stronger the appeal to imitate them.  The successful imitation boosts the self-esteem and causes good feelings.  This motivates to maintain the idealization of the role model, even when it is not at all justified in the case of haloed jerks.   As a consequence, the idealization of such a role model is protected by the denial of unpleasant and dark sides.    The focus is restricted to the perception of the halo, while the jerk underneath is willfully overlooked.   

Seen from this perspective, many admired and famous men are in reality only jerks with halos.  

565. And What About The Next Victim?

565.  And What About The Next Victim?

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/08/120816121825.htm

"A University of Utah survey of judges in 19 states found that if a convicted criminal is a psychopath, judges consider it an aggravating factor in sentencing, but if judges also hear biological explanations for the disorder, they reduce the sentence by about a year on average."

"Judges who were given a biological explanation for the convict's psychopathy imposed sentences averaging 12.83 years, or about a year less than the 13.93-year average sentence imposed by judges who were told only that the defendant was a psychopath, but didn't receive a biological explanation for the condition. In both cases, however, sentencing for the psychopath was longer than the judges' normal nine-year average sentence for aggravated battery."

This is another example of the outrageous lack of concern about harming people and about how to prevent it.   The judges are only bothered about responsibility and punishment of the transgressors.   Protecting the next victim from being harmed by someone, who is considered or suspected of being innately unable to refrain from harming is not in any of these judges' agenda.  

  

The probability of harm to a future victim does not depend upon how much a judge understands transgressor's brain, but on the time, that the transgressor remains behind bars.   

Every moment of a dangerous person being locked away reduces the risk for innocent people to be harmed.   But nobody cares about this.    

Without being able to know it, I assume that in the political climate of the USA, the majority of the judges in the study quoted above are christians.   They do their job to apply laws, which have been made also mainly by christians.    

Neither the judges nor the law makers are bothered about the victims, who are considered as their god's business and job to deal with by compensating the victims after they are dead.   They consider it as their god's will to decide, who is to be harmed and to use the transgressors as his tools.   Protecting innocents from becoming victims is implicitly considered as unwarranted interference and defiance.   
 

Christian judges and law makers apply what they interpret from the commands in the bible as their god's will concerning transgression.   They attempt to reconcile, what seems contradictory.    Some parts the bible prescribe and allow revenge after having become a victim, other parts demand passive and humble forgiving of any atrocity.    

Only the option of preventing harm by protecting the innocents, before they become victims seems too alien to be even mentioned anywhere in the bible.  

Christianity based legal systems have found a specific work around for the contradiction.  

The victims are expected to accept being harmed, to forgive and to wait for the reward in the afterlife.   The legal and penal systems take over the revenge as the proxy of the victim.   The amount of punishment as depending upon the magnitude of the transgression is an estimation of the appropriate revenge in the judgment of the god, could he be consulted. 

The god in the christian bible does not care about the victims, so the legal and penal systems also do not care.  

528. Commodification Logically Precludes Apologies

528.   Commodification Logically Precludes Apologies
 
The following article emphasizes the importance of apologies after transgressions:

http://www.canada.com/life/Love+means+occasionally+having+sorry+study/6837283/story.html

"One hundred and four of 120 participants reported one or more wrongdoings by their partner over seven days, for a total of 278 offences spanning everything from hurt feelings to failed obligations. Apologies were given for just 30.94 per cent of reported transgressions."

"When apologies were offered, they predicted forgiveness only for men and women who were highly satisfied with their relationships. Those individuals were more likely to judge contrition as being sincere, and perceived sincerity predicted forgiveness."

"Notably, when an apology was absent in the current study, people in highly satisfied relationships were no more forgiving of an offence than those in less satisfied pairings. Wrongdoers only benefitted from having a healthy relationship when they expressed remorse for their missteps."

The implicit and indirect message of all apologies is the appreciation and respect for the partner.   By an apology, the transgressor recognizes, that the victim deserves to be treated better than s/he really was.   This essence of being considered as worthy of better treatment makes apologies so vital for the improvement of relationships after conflicts and transgressions.   The logical basis for apologies is the awareness of interacting with another human individual having an independent subjective perception.   

Commodification makes apologies illogical.  Nobody ever apologizes to a machine for damaging it by faulty use or neglecting required maintenance.   When a person is mistaken for a utility or commodity, the attitude is the same.  There may be regret concerning the own stupidity or carelessness of forfeiting the use of the machine, and the same reaction is also caused, when a commodified person gets dysfunctional.    

Commodification of the partner, especially the objectification of women's bodies by men, is the contrary of appreciation and respect for a partner's person.    Commodification means the subjective alleged entitlement to use the other at the own convenience.    When the man experiences the disagreeing women's unintended reaction to using her as a dysfunction, he does not perceive this as a transgression of his due to mistreating her.  Instead he perceives this as a mistake damaging himself by not achieving the desired use from his commodity.
  
After having caused damage by hitting a fence with his car, a man may get angry at himself for carelessly causing damage to his property.   He would not apologize to his car or to the fence.  

After having hurt a woman's feelings, a man considering her as a commodity would not apologize or even consider her subjective experience at all.   Instead he only notices, what to him is a faulty reaction to his treatment, whenever she refuses or is unable to serve him as he expects.  
He only sees her correct or faulty functioning for himself, he is oblivious of any consideration of her needs and her worthiness.  In his mind, everything he does is right, when he succeeds to fulfill his own needs while not getting his needs fulfilled, is doing something wrong to himself.    Logically for him, there is never a reason to apologize. 

As the full owner of an inanimate item, a man is entitled to use and modify the item or to throw it into the garbage at his convenience, because this does not cause any suffering.   
The fallacy of the commodification of another human being is the role ascribed to a commodity as if owing the acquiescence with everything done, no matter the harm.  Thus considering any behavior towards a commodity as a transgression appears subjectively illogical.  When a man commodifies a woman, he is oblivious of the difference between throwing an inanimate item into the garbage and the unacceptable harm done by abusing, mistreating, hurting and dumping a woman.     

For a man, who commodifies a woman, nothing he ever does can make him feel guilty of a transgression.   The only reason ever to change his behavior is the recognition of having caused the dysfunction of the commodity by stupid handling and the attempt to be improve the benefits.  


Attitudes are not visible.  To assess a man's genuine attitude towards her, a woman needs to infer it from his behavior, and apologies are a significant indicator.   
Sincere apologies followed by unmistakable efforts to change the behavior show a man's probable suitability as an egalitarian, responsible and considerate partner. 
The absence of apologies and of sufficient reactions to a woman's feedback of being hurt is a big red flag indicating commodification.

448. The Impact Of Christianity On Western Culture

The Impact Of Christianity On Western Culture

My wish is to live in a society, where apistia, egalitarianism and Epicurus' principle of not harming and not to be harmed were the basis of a life in cooperation, justice, security, consideration and responsibility.    Only there is no such society.  
Unfortunately people can free themselves from the childhood christian indoctrination and brainwashing, while they continue to be implicitly influenced by the secondary religious thinking.

1.  The acceptance of and tolerance for suffering
Christianity claims that people get rewarded and compensated in the afterlife for the sufferings before their death.   As a consequence, christians are motivated and feel justified to irrational behaviors:
1.1.  They are prone to endure suffering without feeling outrage, protest or rebellion.
1.2.  They Inflict suffering upon others without feeling guilty.  
1.3.  Sometimes they consider inflicting suffering as beneficial for the vicitms due to creating their alleged entitlement to be rewarded after death.    

2.  The value of life
Life is considered as a gift from the god, belonging to him and being at his disposition only.   The individual is not considered as having an own right to subjectively evaluate if life is worth living or not. 
2.1.  Abortion is not socially accepted and/or forbidden by law.
2.2.  People are not considered to have the unrestricted right over their own life including the evaluation of the quality of life.  They are not allowed the option to decide, if it is worth living or not.  Terminally ill persons are not given the right and help to end their sufferings.  
2.3.  But taking lives in favor of any cause serving higher goals than the individual is accepted, as is in forcing men to be soldiers and women to risk their lives in child birth.

3.  Injustice combined with the acceptance of suffering
3.1.  Forgiving is considered a positive behavior, even without the transgressor's remorse, insight or amends.  Transgressors feel entitled to be forgiven.   Victims are morally coerced to forgive.  They are brainwashed to believe that forgiving benefits themselves.  This kind of forgiving is dangerous, because the transgressor is indirectly condoned for his evil and is prone to repeat damaging others as a consequence of getting off the hook too easily.   
3.2.  The legal system does not focus on protecting the innocent from becoming victims of transgressions.   According to christianity, only the god is entitled to do justice.   This god is presented as someone more in favor of the repentant sinner than of the innocent, who never hurts another person.   

Evil is an imbalance between the transgressor and the god.   Gaining benefits by doing evil is considered as a deal between the god and the transgressor.  The evil is a debt to the god, until the price is paid, the account balanced, and god and transgressor are even again.   The christian sins, pay for his sin by rituals, prayers, sacrifices.  As soon as he feels forgiven by the god, he can be oblivious of the victim.   The victim is insignificant.  

The law focuses on the breach of rules and evil is something paid for by the penalty, by which it then is legally undone.   The victim of physical violence like rape, assault, robbery is often traumatized and damaged irreversibly.  The culprit goes to jail for a few years, is only limited in his freedom, gets maybe even the benefits of training for a job.    After the release, he is considered as having paid his debt to society.   For him, it is over, while the victim still suffers.    The suffering of the victims is often much worse than the legal penalty for the culprit. 

The culprit is enabled to damage another victim.    This is considered the next victim's bad luck and unavoidable fate.   Nobody really sees the outrage of the lack of protection for the innocent.   

4.  Inequality
Inequality is a part of the teaching of the bible.   Atrocities to outgroup members are not only accepted but commanded as service to the god.  Women are not accepted as equals, but as wombs serving to supply more lives to the god as due to him.   Slavery is accepted too.  
4.1.  As a consequence, while discrimination by explicit behavior is often outlawed, subtle and implicit discrimination is prevalent, condoned and tolerated. 
4.2.  A god being the top being and the clerical hierarchies serving him are the model for the general acceptance of hierarchies of power and access to resources.   Forming such hierarchies is done by ruthless, cruel and devastating competition, which has general social acceptance.

5.  Restricting rules
When the rules of specific religious behavior are fixed as laws, they also restrict the life of non-religious persons.   An example is the law in Germany forbiding shops to open on Sundays as being holy.   Laws against blasphemy are another example.  

412. Where's A Need There's A Fraud

412.   Where's A Need There's A Fraud

In entry 411 I described the fraud of the PUA (pick up animal) trainers, who defraud nice guys by training them to become jerks, in spite of the nice guys' goal of wanting to find monogamous commitment, which they cannot get with jerk behavior. 

Searching google, I have come across a similar fraud based upon the Ex-Back-Craze.   As a reaction to people discussing their break-up trouble and their pain in getting over it, some crooks have made it a business to sell false hopes to people hoping to get their ex back by buying books and training programs full of allegedly magic tricks.     Some of their customers may even be themselves jerks or narcissists, who want to find out, how to hoover their victims back, who had succeeded to free themselves from their abuser.    Of course I cannot know, who the customers really are.   

When people get involved with someone, who is incompatible and not suitable, the relationship or marriage is doomed to fail.  It does not matter, if they got mismatched being driven by instinct, infatuation, superficial benefits, or if they were the victim of deceit and manipulation, or if there were whatever other reasons.  

If they are capable to learn from mistakes, then they get more mature and more wise as a result of the experience, and their next partner is a better choice.   

But being unhappy and missing someone can cover the unresolved conflicts and incompatibilities with temporary oblivion.  That makes people susceptible to fraudulent remedies.    But would they really get reconciled, the disaster would be resumed the same as it had been, when they split.  
Even when both would really want to restore the relationship, the problems are the same as before.   But when one is not even interested, and the other feels compelled to pay money to be get enabled to use tricks and manipulations as taught by the fraudulent trainings, then it is even less a viable option.    Reconciliation with an ex is rarely a good idea.  


Wise and mature people are as careful and responsible in ending a relationship as they are in choosing a partner.    But once they do end it, this is final, because there was no alternative.   

For wise and mature people, there are only three reasons to end a relationship. 

1. Both partners have worked hard to communicate and cooperate to solve their conflicts, until they both agree to end the relationship by consent.
2. The partner has committed an unforgivable transgression.  
3. One partner considers his behavior as morally correct, as his right and entitlement, while the other experiences and evaluates the same behavior as unbearably hurting and as a serious transgression.   

All three reasons are final, because an improvement in the future is inherently impossible.   For a wise and mature person, this is obvious, unfortunately not for the other partner, if he is an immature fool or jerk.

1. The first reason can only be an agreement between two wise and mature partners.
2. A wise and mature person knows the meaning of unforgivable and that some damage is unrepairable and he knows, that only the victim's judgement is valid concerning what is unforgivable for her.    Only an immature fool expects to be forgiven for the unforgivable or disputes that it should be forgiven.    
3. A wise and mature person refuses to expose herself to hurtful treatment and transgressions, when it is obvious, that this is the unchangeable ingredient of the relationship.  Logically, for her this reason is final. 
   Only an immature fool expects a woman to deliberately decide to suffer from being the target of permanently recurrent hurtful transgressions.  

223. Dominance and Transgression

Dominance and Transgression

In the entries 19 and 82 I mentioned, that forgiving needs to be earned, in entry 152 I explained, how grudges because of unearned forgiving are disruptive, and entry 128 was about the importance of taking responsibility for transgressions.  

When one person causes material, physical or emotional harm to another, they need to restore harmony, which requires some or all of these steps:

• restitution and amends of the damage
• justice by an agreement on the evaluation of the harm and why it has happened
• prevention of a repetition

1.   Disasters and accidents
When both parties involved agree on having the same basic values, then a harmful event often can be considered as a mishap or a disaster.   

• When the harm is done by accident, inadvertence, oversight, blunder, carelessness, then restitution is enough.  
• When the harming person is ignorant or unaware of his actions being harming, but being a caring and responsible person, then in addition to the restitution, prevention is required.  He needs to learn, what behaviors are harming, so he can avoid them in the future.

2.  One-level-transgressions
When both agree on having the same values and they agree on the judgement of what is right or wrong, and the transgressor knows, that he is doing something harmful, which he rather would or should not do, then it is a one-level-transgression.  He can be under stress, in a situation of conflicting requirements, he can be too weak to have self-control or be intoxicated 
He already has his independent own insight, that he has done harm, he feels guilt, contrition, remorse. His initiative to make amends and and his need to earn to be forgiven creates justice for the transgressee.  As he already is motivated not to repeat the transgression, there is no further need of prevention.

3. Two-level-transgressions
When the transgressee is harmed by a behavior, that she perceives as not correct, unethical, outrageous and defective according to her own value system, then from her perspective it is a transgression, but in the perspective of the transgressor it is not.   At the moment of committing the transgression, the transgressor believes to have reasons justifying or sufficiently excusing his behavior at least in his own eyes, if not in those of others except the transgressee herself.   He either disagrees with her value system or he feels not obliged to adhere to it.    The transgressor either knows or has the opportunity to know, that the transgressee experiences his behavior as harm.

This is a two-level-transgression.   One level is the actual harmful act, which has a direct impact upon the transgressee.  The other level is the attitude triggering, enabling, justifying this act.   The disrespect, disregard and devaluation expressed by this attitude is the indirect harm.   The harmful act can be observed, the indirect emotional harm is hidden from all, who do not share the transgressee's value system and evaluation.

The transgressor can be motivated by different psychological mechanism and attitudes:

• He is selfish or feels entitled to his harmful action as collateral damage to fulfilling his needs.
• He knows, what the transgressee considers as morally correct behavior, what obligations other consider him to have or what harms the transgressee.    Behaving in accordance with this knowledge would be a sacrifice for him, that costs effort, self-control and consideration.  He disrespects the transgressee, he attributes her as having little value, not worth any sacrifice.   He believes, that the transgressee does not deserve any better treatment than his defective harmful behavior.     
• He avoids by wilful ignorance and denial to gain awareness of the impact of his actions upon the transgressee.
• He acts in defiance and malice.  

An example of a one-level-transgression is someone yelling an angry 'shut up' to another person.   If he is under stress trying to concentrate on something important, but respects the other as an equal, this can be regulated with a simple apology.   Because they both agree, that this act was impolite and should be avoided.
But if a man disrespects a woman, whom he does not bother to ever listen to, then this outburst as a repettion of a frequent event is a two-level-transgression and not a case for a simple apology.   The outburst itself is a trifle, but his general disrespect and disregard of not taking her for serious is causing serious harm.   Justice and prevention would require, that he changes his attitude and learns to listen to her, to respect her and to take her for serious.  


Wikipedia gives a very good overview over the definition of relational transgressions:

"Relational transgressions occur when people violate implicit or explicit relational rules. These transgressions include a wide variety of behaviors. Scholars tend to delineate relational transgressions into three categories or approaches. The first approach focuses on the aspect of certain behaviors as a violation of relational norms and rules. The second approach focuses on the interpretive consequences of certain behaviors, particularly the degree to which they hurt the victim, imply disregard for the victim, and imply disregard for the relationship. The third and final approach focuses more specifically on behaviors that constitute infidelity (a common form of relational transgression) "

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

When a man dominates an egalitarian woman, in her experience all behavior expressing domination is a two-level-transgression, therefore domination itself is a transgression.

Example 1 in entry 215 demonstrates this, when the man changes the scheduled departure for a trip in favor of a visiting friend without first consulting the woman.   

Seen by itself, postponing the departure by two days is a trifle, it can hardly be called harm.   The man, who feels entitled to do what he wants, has no clue, that this is an act representing a very fundamental transgression in his attitude to the woman.    

• He does not value her as a partner, whom he respects enough to consult and share decisions with.   His friend is more important than the woman.   He has more consideration for the needs and wishes of his friend than for the woman.   
• He is selfish, because he chooses the benefits, which he expects for himself from complying immediately and without hesitation with his friend's wishes.  He values these benefits as more important than any consideration for the woman.   
• He commits a breach of trust and obligations.   The woman has entered physical intimacy under the condition of creating a bond of commitment including the obligation of sharing decisions, of being equal partners and of being reciprocally the most important person.  

The result is a very difficult situation.   The man believes to have done a trifle of little importance, while the woman feels excruciating emotional pain because of being humiliated, devalued, disrespected, betrayed in her trust.  
She wants to be able to forgive him and to repair the damage to the relationship.   She needs justice and prevention as a condition to forgive him, but he has no insight in the necessity to earn forgiveness for what he perceives as a trifle.  
The real conflict here is not the postponed trip.   The real conflict is that he feels as entitled to dominate as she feels entitled to be valued, appreciated and treated as an equal partner. 
He takes his entitlement to dominate so much for granted, that his changing of the plans was an automatic, spontaneous reaction without hesitation.   Consulting her just did not occur to him. 
She wants justice and prevention, and to her this means to hear from him the expression of a radical change in his attitude.   She needs his sincere statement, that she is more important than his friend, that he owes her to share decisions with her and to consult her about everything, that concerns her.   
But he is unable to do this, as it is the contrary of what he feels and believes to be right. There is no justice or prevention for her, unless he would give up his entire dominance.  

Here he is caught in a vicious circle.   Only by valuing her very much would he be motivated to make any sacrifice for her including the one of giving up his dominance.   But this dominance includes precise this lack of valuing her.   So he would have to give up the dominance first to value her enough to be motivated to make a sacrifice for her.  

This example has a continuation.    In the man's value system, the dominated woman's duty is obedience, reverence and absolute loyalty to whatever he does.    No matter, how outrageously he had treated her, in his expectation, she was to make the friend welcome.   But in need of a valve for her outrage, the woman tells the friend the truth, making him feel uncomfortable as the trigger of a conflict and as not really welcome.    In the man's perception, this is a serious transgression.    In his perception of justice, she would have to earn his forgiving by her acknowledging his right to dominate and to impose his decisions upon her.   Prevention in his understanding means, that in the future she would not resist his dominance anymore.  

Thus, they both have a grudge, and they both can neither forgive nor earn the other's forgiving, because their different perceptions and definitions of justice are mutually exclusive.   There is no common justice between a man feeling entitled to dominate and a woman feeling entitled to be treated as an equal.    
Justice for her means, that he needs to adjust his esteem of her by raising it up to the level of her self-esteem.   Justice for him means, that she should lower her self-esteem down to the level of his low esteem for her. 

 

 Domination is Abomination! 

161. Emotional Moron, Jerk, Conscience

Emotional Moron, Jerk, Conscience

A decent and mature woman's nightmare starts, when she gets involved by mistake with a jerk or an emotional moron.     When he breaks an agreement or fails an obligation for the first time, she perceives it as a strong indication, that he does not value her enough to pay the price, for which he has got the relationship from her.   This is, when the conscience gets important.   

To illustrate this, here is example:

The woman has got physically involved based upon the assumption of both having a committed relationship.    For her, commitment means automatically the obligation to base everything on joint and shared decisions, that has an impact upon both of them.   

The man acts as if he were still a single man, he breaks the very agreement, which for her was a reason to accept getting involved.   
She considers and perceives this as a very serious transgression, as a betrayal and a breach of her trust.   She feels very hurt and she tells him so. 

Scenario 1:   The man is a jerk, he has no conscience.    He considers his behavior as correct, as his right and entitlement.    He explains his reasons to her, reasons that are only valid to his own selfish needs.   He considers his reasons as also valid for her.    He refuses to talk about it, because after having given her his reasons, he considers the entire issue as settled and finished.   Her pain, her disappointment, her lost trust are of no concern to him.   
Such a man is a nightmare for a woman, until she gets rid of him.  A jerk without a conscience is like a robot, who runs on a program.   When he has a desire, he fulfills it.  Once the program is started, it cannot be stopped.   She has no influence to stop him, nor has he a conscience to stop himself.  She has no influence to change his program.  There is no limit to what he is capable to do to her, she has to be prepared for any kind of abuse or damage.   What he has done once, he will repeat, whenever the same situation triggers the same behavior.  

Scenario 2:  The man is an emotional moron.   When he commits the transgression, he has no clue, that it is not correct.   When the woman explains to him, how much she feels hurt and disappointed, he is shocked and aghast about himself.   He would never want to hurt her.  He feels pain, because he knows, that she feels pain.   He cares for her emotional wellbeing and he has a conscience.  He feels guilty, ashamed, contrition, remorse.   He is really humble and meek, because he needs her to forgive him.   

He is very interested to learn, how she experienced his behavior, why it was unacceptable.  After a lot of communicating about it, he gains the insight, why what he has done is wrong and why it is so serious a transgression.     He is very motivated to learn, how he can avoid not only to repeat the same mistake, but also not to do similar things to her in the future.  

Therefore she finally can forgive him, and if he from then on feels bound by all agreements, the lost trust can slowly be repaired.   It is hard work and a lot of pain and effort, but they can finally find a way to have a happy relationship.

135. How Jerks Buy Licenses For Transgressions

How Jerks Buy Licenses For Transgressions

In Sevilla and some places nearby in southern Spain, every year in the spring, the Semana Santa is celebrated.   There are fraternities affiliated with every church.  During that week, every fraternity performs a procession, that can last up to 14 hours.   On a heavy float, the main figure from the church is carried by men underneath.   Other men march, with a costume and a hood covering their faces, barefoot, carrying one or several heavy wooden crosses over their shoulders and very expensive huge candles.

They pretend to do penance for their sins.    In reality, they buy the license for more transgressions in the future.   During the previous year, they may have cheated on their wives or beaten them, they may have gambled or spent money on alcohol, while the family was lacking the funds for a decent life, they may have indulged in other serious moral transgressions.   
They experience their 14 hours of marching through the city as an act of undoing all the harm and hurting, they have done during an entire year.   Afterwards they feel free with a clean slate to restart doing the same or other transgressions again.   They feel free to do so, because they know, that a year later, they will annihilate their transgressions again.  
They also consider it a duty of the victims of the transgressions to forgive them as if they had never been illtreated and wronged, and many of the victims themselves are brainwashed by their religion to comply.  

It is a weird thinking.   Nobody of them would expect to be released by marching in a procession from financial debts when owing money to the bank.   But they take it for granted, that the victims release them from all moral debts. 

This is an extreme version of this kind of thinking.   But it is not very different from the jerk, who cheats on his wife, and then buys her a diamond ring or a fur coat and believes, that this way he has compensated for the transgression, as if he had bought the right to be forgiven.

In my opinion, these men are jerks and wimps.   They buy themselves the easy way out.   Learning better self-control, learning how to resist temptations to hurt others would cost them much more effort, strain and unpleasant time than a procession once a year or an expensive gift.  

82. Identity and Forgiving

Identity and Forgiving

In entry 19  (Myth of Unconditional Love) I already mentioned the fundamental difference between forgiving as a process between two partners in a dyad and people, for whom forgiving includes a deity between, so that a triad is involved.

There are also two different principles of forgiving, earned forgiving and self-abasing forgiving, and it is related to the two identities.  

People with the identity of individuals choose, with whom to be and whom to avoid.    They judge, who deserves to be with, and who not.   People with the particle identity, especially breeders, get themselves often entangled with people without a choice to end the entanglement.  

1.   Two hypoanimalistic individuals can decide to become committed and to create together an emotional home, supplying mutually safety and security, based upon being trustworthy, reliable and predictable.    Transgressions would destroy this.  

To avoid transgressions, both need to share enough basic values and attitudes to have consent, what they would consider as transgressions.  

Once a transgression has happened, an ethical disequilibrium has been created.   The one, who has done wrong, has a moral debt to the other.   The one, who has been wronged, feels injustice, outrage, anger.    The one, who has done the wrong, may either feel guilt and remorse or not be aware of the transgression.  
In both cases, repairing the emotional home requires that the transgressor earns forgiving in a way, that the transgressee can overcome the bad feelings and can rely on the probability, that the same transgression will not be repeated in the future.    Earning forgiveness needs to heal the hurt pride and dignity of the transgressee, whatever it takes from the transgressor.  
This implies the rational insight of the transgressor of what exactly he had done wrong, acknowledging it, feeling and expressing remorse, making amends and a pledge not to repeat it.   Those steps lead to a rational justification for the transgressee to forgive by having been given justice.    The emotional home is repaired.

But if the transgressor refuses to earn forgiveness, then the relationship is fundamentally destroyed.    The transgressor has put himself above the transgressee, he has degraded him as someone deserving unacceptable treatment.   This is a humiliation, that the transgressee with pride and dignity cannot allow himself to submit to.    In this situation, the transgressee has only one option to preserve his self-esteem and dignity, that is to remove the unworthy transgressor radically out of his life.   If a transgressor does not earn forgiveness, then he has forfeited to be good enough to be in contact with.   

Therefore two partners in the ERCP either end every transgression with earning forgiveness to restore the equilibrium, or they end the relationship.    Unearned forgiving would destroy equality as a consequence of the devaluation of the partner, who had been wronged without amends.

2.  People with the particles identity, who are entangled with people, whom they are either legally or genetically connected to as parents and children, siblings and even self-chosen and dependent on, are getting into a difficult situation, when they get seriously wronged by someone, who refuses to earn any forgiving.   For various reasons, they cannot just severe all ties to the unworthy transgressor, and the transgression hurts deeply.    This is, where the deity comes in again.  They cannot forgive without a justification, but they need to heal.   Forgiving without amends it self-abasement and they do not want to feel this.   So they forgive as a perceived duty to the deity, with the delusion, that the deity at some time in the future, either in this or in the next life, with create justice and make the transgressor pay his debts.  

Unfortunately, while unearned forgiving in hope for deity justice helps the transgressees to avoid feeling the self-degradation and self-abasement of it, they have the concept, that it would be good for everybody.   Worse, if they think that as they forgive unearned, they can expect to also be forgiven by others without earning forgiveness.    This might even lower their own threshold for allowing themselves to transgress.    

Therefore, like for many other reasons, for persons with an individualistic identity, close contact with persons with the particles identity can be emotionally a big hazard.  

Personally, I will never ever forgive anything, except my forgiveness is earned, and my mindmate with be the same and he will never expect to be forgiven without having it earned.   

19. Myth of Unconditional Love

The Myth of Unconditional Love

A relationship based upon the ERCP is based upon the principle, that the relationship should be made as beneficial as possible for both partners, and that any imbalance, where one suffers because of the other, should be avoided.

This is not unconditional love.   It is love on the one fundamental condition of being treated with decency, consideration, care.  

Love cannot be bought or earned by money and services, it has to grow out of the combination of intellectual, emotional and physical intimacy.   It grows the best, when it is kindled.

But love can be forfeited and destroyed by hurtful treatment.   Then it either dies or it converts into an addiction.    If a woman falls or grows into loving someone, who first appears to be a nice man, but later on reveals himself as a sadistic jerk, then her continued attachment is an addiction to a toxic relationship, and should not be called love anymore.  

In the case of one doing wrong to the other, any forgiveness of suffering without consequences upsets the balance.   Instead, there needs to be a restitution of the emotional state before the wrong has happened, by the combination of amends of the damage to the partner and the connected damage to the relationship.    The later requires a full insight of the transgressor, what he had done, that he should not have done, and why it had been detrimental.    That insight in cooperation of both partners can then be used to agree, how to avoid the recurrence of the same incident.    After that process, it can be forgiven and forgotten.   

The two partners in a relationship based upon the ERCP are a dyad, that has the task to kindle the love by keeping a balance of making the relationship beneficial for both.  

For people with the deity delusion, there is no dyad, but there is always a triad, the two partners and their deity.   Both believe, that if they personally suffer on this earth, they will be rewarded in the afterlife.  Both also believe, that whatever pain they cause the other, will be compensated for the other in the afterlife and is therefore somehow excusable.    Both believe that they are accountable for their behavior to the deity more than to the partner.   

When the guidebook of their specific religion commands men to dominate, then men feel justified to dominate, even if the woman suffers.    If the man does wrong to the woman, he feels compelled to gain the forgiveness of the deity, not of the woman, and when he has done all the rituals and maybe made some financial sacrifices, he feels to have earned the deity's forgiveness.   But thus, he has not made amends to the woman as the target of his wrongs, and in the case of financial sacrifices, he even deprives her of spending the money with her.

The woman believes, that it is the deity to decide to forgive or not and on what condition, while she as the victim is obliged to forgive without expecting any amends, else she risks the loss of rewards in the afterlife.    Therefore the transgressor reliefs himself of any guilt, while the victim suffers powerlessly.  

With a deity as a third party, there is no balance, there is no kindling of love, there are no amends or avoiding future transgressions.   Would decent treatment be the condition for love and for staying together, women would recoil from entering triads with a deity.   The myth of unconditional love is the manipulation of the deity to lure people to accept such a triad.      

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Someone has posted a comment, that is completely enigmatic and has nothing to do with the topic of this entry.
A little reminder to the author of the comment and to everybody else:   

 

This is the blog of an atheistic and skeptical woman in search of a mindmate, who is also a skeptical atheist.    
If you are not an atheist and a skeptic, you are welcome to read as much as you want.  But I am not wasting my time with any person, who believes in anything irrational.   Anybody, who wants to discuss magic or any doubts in the validity of science can do this elsewhere.