653. Different Approaches To The Process Towards Knowing Someone Better

653.   Different Approaches To The Process Towards Knowing Someone Better

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

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

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

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

There are principally two different approaches towards how to proceed:

The reciprocal absolute-cooperative approach: 

Goal:
 

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

Who:
 

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

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

Cooperation and consistency:
 

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

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

Trust:
 

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

Reinforcement:
 

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

Emotional risk:
 

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


The reciprocal relative-competitive approach:

Goal:
 

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

Who:
 

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

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

Competition and no consistency:
 

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

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

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

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

Trust:
 

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

Reinforcement: 
 

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

629. George Simon's Book 'In Sheep's Clothing' - Comment 1

629.   George Simon's Book 'In Sheep's Clothing'  -  Comment 1

This continues entry 628 about the immature theory of mind.

In entries 615 and 618 I already mentioned and commented on George Simon's excellent approach to the problem of disturbed characters.    I just got and read his fascinating book 'In Sheep's Clothing'.

Reading it was an excellent reminder of the utter futility of any attempts to reduce being harmed by disturbed characters.  Someone with a character disturbance cannot be influenced any more than a moving steam roller.   He is determined to get by hook or by crook, whatever he wants.  Nothing can stop him from running over anybody standing in his way.   The only protection is avoiding disturbed characters.  

For me personally, contact with one of them is doomed to lead to an impasse and to unsolvable conflicts.   While I am not prone to be a submissive victim accommodating a disturbed character's objectives, his ruthlessness gives him nevertheless enough power to impose sufferings upon me, to which I react with protest and outrage.  But a disturbed character is out of the reach of any civilized and moderate influencing him by constructive communication.  His mind is surrounded by a wall, any attempts to make him change his behavior bounce off and fail without any effect.

 

According to Simon, all exploitative and hurting behavior can be explained by only one of two cognitive dynamics, either the neurotic avoidance of too much painful emotions or the disturbed characters' conscious method to gain selfish advantages.  
I see another possibility, which I am missing in the book:  It is the incompetence to behave in an appropriate and acceptable way in spite of being motivated and believing to do so.    

Therefore I like to add one more type of a disturbed character to Simon's list: 

The self-righteous aggressive disturbed character.    This type also behaves as a wolf, just as Simon's other types, but he does not put on a sheep skin.   Instead he believes to be a sheep.   Due to his immature theory of mind and to the subsequent lack of getting or comprehending blatant feedback, he is unaware, that he is perceived as a wolf.   (More in entry 628)  

He behaves as a wolf due to immaturity and interpersonal incompetence: 
1.  He is incompetent to know and evaluate the limits of what is rightfully his due.  Thus he is unable to accept as a fair deal to give enough back in return for what he receives.   Others do not consider as justified, what he feels entitled to get.   This can be as bad as an entitlement delusion.  
2.  He lacks the communicative skills to obtain, whatever he wants, by any form of rational convincing, even when it is justified.   When what is not justified is not available, he is too incompetent to apply manipulative tactics.   His competence is so limited, that he resorts to use drastic and primitive methods of power, dominance, aggression.  

This type is very different from both the unbridled aggressive and the channelled aggressive as described in the book.   The self-righteous aggressive usually accepts simple and clearly defined rules and laws, when he understands them in spite of his immature theory of mind. 

The self-righteous aggressive is not malicious, he is just not aware of his incompetence nor of how much his behavior is selfish.   As far as the self-righteous aggressive comprehends another's needs, he is able to care.   For example, he can be a caring master to a dog, if he acquires the knowledge about how to care for a dog.   The success with the dog then reinforces his false belief to be a sheep.   He is unaware of behaving as a wolf, when he forcefully applies the very same form of care and treatment, which is appropriate only for a dog, also upon a human being.       

 

Both the covert-aggressive and the self-righteous aggressive consider themselves as justified to pursue what they want with any means, believing to be entitled to get it.   

But the covert-aggressive has a mature theory of mind enabling him to be realistic about and aware of what obstacles and resistance to expect during his pursuits.   He takes the disagreeing and resisting persons for serious enough to rationally choose the method of aggression, which promises the best success.   In the case of the covert aggressive, this includes hiding his true intentions as a part of using manipulative strategies.   He is realistic about the powers of his opponents, would they discover his aggression and true goals and react by fighting back.  

The self-righteous-aggressive lacks a sufficiently mature theory of mind.   He does not take resisting people into account as individual opponents with real or at least subjectively valid reasons for their disagreement.    He perceives them as merely amorphous obstacles to be best confronted with outright, indiscriminate and open aggression.    The self-righteous aggressive perceives any disagreement with and resistance to his allegedly entitled goals automatically as an indication of others being flawed, wrong, dysfunctional, while nothing makes him doubt his own entitlement.   Who resists is believed to be bringing aggression upon themselves as a legitimate consequence.   

By applying the same generalized standard methods of aggression to all allegedly flawed obstacles, the self-righteous aggressive character is also not able to improve his immature theory of mind.   He notices and reacts to obstacles without understanding, perceiving, evaluating or distinguishing any specific reaction or feedback.   This impedes him from learning successful manipulation strategies.   

Even the self-righteous aggressive may sometimes apply a few of the manipulative tactics described in Simon's book, when he is aware of the probable unpleasant reactions to be avoided.  

The essential difference to the covert aggressive is the self-righteous' lack of any hidden agenda.  Instead he bluntly expresses his claims and demands and what he intends to do to ascertain to get it.   Lacking any comprehension, why others disagree with his entitlement, he does not know nor learn, what to hide and what utterances and behaviors are counterproductive to his goals.   By blurring out his true intentions he provokes resistance, to which he then reacts with enhanced aggression and bullying.   This is a spiral of fast deterioration.  


The covert aggressive misleads others, while the self-righteous aggressive is himself mislead.   A wolf, who believes to be a sheep, causes not less devastation than a wolf, who knows to be a wolf, but hides beneath a sheep's skin.     

In the case of the covert-aggressive, it is the victim's task to find out, that there is a wolf under the sheep's skin.   The wolf knowing to be a wolf has therefore theoretically the choice to change, if the victim refuses to remain in that role.   

The self-righteous aggressive openly behaves like a wolf and nevertheless believes his bullying and coercing as the legitimate behavior of the sheep, which he wrongly believes himself to be.   Any change is not probable, because someone believing to be already a sheep does not comprehend, why he should change to become one.   A wolf cannot decide or attempt to change into a sheep, unless he first becomes aware, that he is a wolf.  
In this situation, the victim is powerless.   A self-righteous aggressive wolf does not experience his victim as significant enough to influence him.   This impedes him from ever discovering the reality of his being a wolf, instead he continues to consider the victim as being so flawed as to warrant being bullied. 

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.   

597. Commodification And Wanting

597.   Commodification And Wanting

When a sane, mature and rational person declares to want something, this is an expression of a mere wish and of nothing more.   Wishing does not imply any assumption concerning the availability or feasibility nor does it imply any claim to get it.

Attempts towards gratification are an independent next step.   Such attempts are limited by the full recognition of and awareness for the rights of others and by the moral obligation to refrain from harming others and from usurping and seizing.     

The rational method to get gratification is earning it.  When it comes as a gift, it is received with gratitude and not taken for granted.
 

Immature and selfish jerks have a blatant delusional fallacy in their thinking.  When they say 'I want x', they really mean to say 'I demand x, because I believe myself to be entitled to get x immediately'.  They confound wanting something with the entitlement to automatically get it.  They believe, that everybody and the society owe to given to them, whatever they want and when they want it.  

Relationships are entered for the purpose of meeting specific needs.   The difference between mere wishes and claims of alleged entitlement contributes to the difference between egalitarian bonded couples and asymmetrical commodification.   

A bonded, caring, considerate couple feels reciprocally responsible for the careful use of their pooled resources.   Those expenses have priority, of which the benefits are shared by both partners   Any expenses only benefiting one partner are secondary.  Shared decision are based upon agreement as being fair.  Reciprocal gratification of wishes is perceived with gratitude as a gift or as a favor.     

The commodification of women is one special case of the fallacy of mistaking wanting as an automatic justification for claims, demands, coercion and usurpation.  A jerk informing a commodified woman of what he wants feel automatically also entitled to get it immediately. 

• Commodifying men experience and consider it as their baseline of normality, if they always get everything immediately whenever they demand it.   
  They take all received benefits for granted.  They are blind to recognize, when someone does something for them by choice and by a voluntary decision.   They do not know, what favors are.  They do not know gratitude.  
  Any expression of love, care and affection by voluntarily doing something for such a man is lost and not recognized as such.  Whatever gratification he receives, he always confounds it as if it were his due and as if she were only doing her duty. 
  
• When the reaction to commodifying men's demands is refusal,
  
  • they seize their alleged due by hook or by crook, by domination, coercion, bullying, if they have the power to do so.
  • they get extremely angry, aggressive, frustrated and unpleasant, when they lack the power to enforce gratification.

567. The Pulvinar And The Commodification-Objectification Disorder

567.  The Pulvinar And The Commodification-Objectification Of Women Disorder

When a man commodifies a woman, he perceives her as if she were not different from an inanimate utility, which only exists for the purpose to be used by him.  Insufficient information about her person and her needs as the basis of his decisions causes, enables and aggravates the commodification.    He acquires such information only by proactively fetching them.  He studies her like a new appliance or a lab rat by observation, probing, trial-and-error.    

His reception for verbal input from her is limited to receiving the answers to his own questions. Any initiative from her to influence and improve his treatment by proffering additional information input about herself fails, because this information is not received.    It bounces off his mind with no impact.   
He communicates with the woman as if using a walkie-talkie, where only his device has the buttons to switch between transmitting and receiving.

His being thus deprived of ever getting sufficient information precludes any improvement of his behavior and perpetuates the commodification. 


There are two possible dynamics leading to this problem.    

 
Small children are self-centered and commodify their caregivers.   At some stage of maturation they get aware of and become considerate about another person's needs, and they learn to perceive and receive the necessary information. 

 
1.   The distorted misconception of women as utilities is established first and never corrected.   A boy remaining immature and having been exposed early to strong commodifying role models is never prompted by any occasion to awaken his dormant potential to receive input from others.   

2.   The reception of information input from others does not work properly.   Maturation is delayed due to lacking and never acquiring sufficient information about other people.

The following text has made me wonder, if maybe the pulvinar could be the dysfunctional part of commodifying men:     

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/08/120817151519.htm

"A mysterious region deep in the human brain could be where we sort through the onslaught of stimuli from the outside world and focus on the information most important to our behavior and survival,"

"The researchers report in the journal Science that an area of our brain called the pulvinar regulates communication between clusters of brain cells as our brain focuses on the people and objects that need our attention. Like a switchboard operator, the pulvinar makes sure that separate areas of the visual cortex -- which processes visual information -- are communicating about the same external information "

"The brain instead selectively focuses on, or attends to, the people and objects most relevant to our behavior at the time and filters out the rest. "

"Saalmann said these findings on how the brain transmits information could lead to new ways of understanding and treating attention-related disorders,"

The commodifying man may only be puzzled, irritated and frustrated, why the commodified woman does not function as he expects.    The woman experiences such a man's behavior nevertheless as disordered.   

I would be very curious about the results, if any scientist would ever make a brain scan of a man, while he stares with a blank face and no reaction at a woman, who explains to him, why she feels hurt by his behavior.    

Maybe some men have a Commodification-Objectification of Women Disorder (COWD)?

Unfortunately I can only suggest men's COWD as food for thought, because of the ubiquitous desensitization and bias towards acceptance of and tolerance for harm, abuse, deprivation, exploitation and domination of women, which has become part of the culture and is derived from religion (more in entries 552, 553, 554).    Men, who do this to women are generally not considered as having a disorder, but as normal men doing, what they are born to do, what they are meant and entitled to do.  

507. The Cassandra Dynamics

507.  The Cassandra Dynamics

When a catastrophe comes out of the blue, it is a challenge allowing oneself to use the own resources and abilities to deal with it.   When one faces a problem and does not know, what to do, it is also a challenge to find a solution by using one's own resources.  

But the situation of the Cassandra dynamics, when knowing exactly, what needs to be done, while being prevented from doing it, is a situation of the extreme emotional stress of being made helpless and powerless.  

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cassandra_%28metaphor%29

"The Cassandra metaphor is applied by some psychologists to individuals who experience physical and emotional suffering as a result of distressing personal perceptions, and who are disbelieved when they attempt to share the cause of their suffering with others."


http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Cassandra%20Syndrome

"Cassandra Syndrome
   
1) The condition of speaking the truth and having no one believe you.

2) The condition of being able to predict the future, be it the outcome of a particular event, or the reactions of others to the same event, and having no one believe your prophecy until it transpires.

3) Being able to see or understand things long before others, often resulting in them coming to the same conclusions long after your own initial analysis. "

The expression 'syndrome' is misleading, because it focuses too much on Cassandra herself as being the person having some psychological troubles.   I prefer to call it Cassandra dynamics, because it concerns the disrupted interaction of two or more persons.   Cassandra herself has not the problem, she is implicated by the problems of others. 

Cassandra is usually a woman, but sensitive men can also be trapped in the situation of being aware of some development leading towards a breaking-point, the pending catastrophe. 

1. Cassandra dynamics are defined by:

• The catastrophe is pending either for Cassandra herself or for someone else or for both.  
• Cassandra alone is aware of the pending catastrophe.
• Cassandra needs the other person's cooperation to avoid the catastrophe.  
• The involved person's cooperation is not obtainable.   
• Cassandra suffers feeling powerless.

2. Cassandra's circumstances

2.1.  Cassandra dynamics as a partner in a relationship.   Cassandra suffers emotionally beyond her resilience:

• Her emotional needs are not met by the partner.
• She is blamed for not meeting the partner's needs.
• She is blamed for her reactions to how she is treated.

2.2.  Cassandra dynamics by altruism and caring.  Cassandra feels empathy and wants to support others with insights, which only she has.    

3.  The partner's unobtainable cooperation to avoid the catastrophe.

• Cassandra cannot convey to him, that there is something wrong.
• Cassandra cannot convey to him her suggestions, what to do.  
• He is unable to recognize Cassandra's competence.
• He perceives Cassandra not as an equal partner. 

Examples of men's fallacies, flaws and mistakes causing the unobtainability of their cooperation:

3.1.  Asymmetrical relationship. 

The man gets all his relationship needs met, because he experiences and considers a woman merely as a body chosen for physical homeostasis while not expecting anything more from the relationship.   He fulfills his social and intellectual needs elsewhere.   He projects his own contentment onto the woman.    In this situation, nothing is wrong for him subjectively.  

3.2.  Imposing gender roles.

The social roles of male superiority causes the man's false belief, that he is the one to define the rules, structure, framework and conditions of the relationship.  What he considers as correct treatment of a woman according to gender roles has to be automatically sufficient and suitable for any woman.   If she suffers, the man considers it as her flaw, for which he does not need to take any responsibility.

3.3.  The Dunning-Kruger effect. 

The man overestimates himself and underestimates the woman.  The man considers only himself as being competent to decide, how to manage a relationship.   Even if he recognizes, that something needs to be improved, his attempts to do so are only decided upon in accordance with his own judgment.   If he changes his behavior, he does so by trial and error.   This aggravates the situation, speeding up the arriving of the catastrophe.   He only throws the woman from the frying-pan into the fire.  

3.4.  Immaturity

Immaturity, lacking empathy, a low EQ or NLD (Non-Verbal Learning Disability) can cause men to be unable to understand other persons' including a partner's needs or to communicate successfully.   Sometimes such men rely on simplified recipes from self-help books, how to handle or even manipulate women.   The man's belief of behaving correctly according to his faulty concept of how to treat a woman makes him mindblind to perceive and understand any verbal or non-verbal information indicating her suffering.   Such a man is prone to believe the recipes written by male relationship gurus more than a real woman's feedback.   

3.5.  Selfishness

Psychological problems cause some men to have a selfish attitude and entitlement delusion.   They experience and consider others including the partner as utilities existing to serve their needs.   They handle, use and maintain them at their convenience, instead of caring for others' individual needs, of which they are oblivious.    As long as a person functions according to the purpose for the selfish man, there is nothing wrong and no reason to bother.

3.6.  Need for power

Psychological problems cause some men to feel a need for power and control, which causes them to struggle for domination.   Narcissists or men with a strong need to reduce anxiety and insecurity, are examples.   When they want to believe in their own morality, then they can avoid cognitive dissonance only by the full denial, how much domination causes suffering to the repressed woman.

My mindmate to be found is someone, with whom I will not experience the Cassandra dynamics. 

500. Statistics Of My Quest

500.  Statistics Of My Quest  

This is the 500th entry in this blog.   When I started blogging, I did not expect to write so many entries.   But by looking at the endeavor statistically, it is no surprise.   Nothing in life comes without efforts.   Happiness like everything else has to be earned, and not only by investing efforts in making relationships work, but also by investing efforts to find a suitable and compatible partner as a match.   

In entry 69 I already estimated by rough statistical assumptions, that maybe 1 in every 10,000 men in my age group is a suitable match according to my search criteria.   

By the algorithm of sequential searching, a ratio of 1 in 10,000 requires on average to look at 5,000 until success.  

The result of having written 500 entries about a variety of topics is a growing number of google search hits and of daily page views.    The overall number of page views since I started this blog in July 2010 is close to 14,000.   But some persons read multiple pages (every entry has its own page URL), and the visitors are persons of any age and of both genders.    Probably even 14,000 page views do not indicate, that there had been more than 1000 men in my age group being unique visitors.

Statistics and estimating probabilities supply nothing more than numbers.  But this is nevertheless a rational way to be aware of reality and to continue my efforts without losing hope.    My task to earn happiness includes the task to get notoriety for my blog.   Every person reading the blog for the first time could either be my mindmate or at least know him and get us into contact.    


Writing more entries contributes to increased notoriety.    But sometimes help comes from unexpected sources too.   A few days ago, someone involuntarily did me a great favor.   The guy meant to present me on his own blog as some kind of an oddity.  
As a side effect, I got an amazing boost of publicity.   This guy sent lots of visitors to my blog.   Suddenly, on one single day there were more page views than there had been in some entire months.   
Not all people are gullible and immature and automatically share that guy's attempted mockery.  Some of these visitors are certainly able to appreciate my blog as independent thinkers.   

He labeled me as the 'finalized product of feminism'.    Calling me a mere product of feminism is an underestimation.   I did not need other feminists to gain my insights about what is obvious to any woman with dignity and intelligence.  I had my ideas, attitudes and values concerning egalitarian interactions between the genders and the logical baseline of equal rights and obligations long before I ever had even heard the word 'feminism'.  

But I appreciate being called a 'finalized feminist'.   Finalized means considered as perfect due to being finished without any need for possible further improvement.  
It is encouraging to be presented as the prototype of a feminist.  This involuntary and accidental compliment is a reliable, valuable and genuine feedback.  According to an old proverb, children and fools speak the truth.   In this instance, immature men can be included either with the children or with the fools.   But this is also an example, that while immaturity does damage to those close enough to be victims, immature people can also do unintended favors.  

I do hope to get more publicity of any kind.   When my mindmate will have found me, it does not matter, if his finding me was enabled by praise or by mockery.

481. A Test Question For Morons And Jerks

A Test Question For Morons And Jerks

On a dating site people are asked matching questions, including the following: 

"Would you need to sleep with someone before you considered marrying them?"

As far as I remember, I have not yet found even one man's profile, who has replied with NO.  

When a man answers YES, he is either a psychopath and a jerk or immature and a moron, who does not understand the real meaning of this question.   
But I estimate, that about 5% to 10% of men are innately monogamous and able to respect and appreciate women as persons and equals.   If one of them indicates YES, he is probably unaware of the implications.     

Here is the translation of the YES:

A man's YES means:
Physical intimacy is not the begin of commitment for this man.   Entering physical intimacy is not sufficient for such a man to create a bond that equals marriage.   He does not feel bound and bonded unless there is a third party and an external ritual called legal marriage installing obligations and responsibility.  He may even be unable to ever accept obligations and responsibility towards a woman.  He cannot be trusted, because he does not commit at the same moment, when entering physical intimacy creates a deep bond for a woman.   
It is not possible for a woman to earn the security of commitment with such a man in a reliable way by her own correct, decent and caring behavior.   Such a man's commitment is only available by the lottery of risking to be hurt and discarded instead.   The price for the lottery ticket is the asymmetry of getting emotionally bonded by the agreement to physical intimacy, even though this is not reciprocal.  

A man's YES means:
The man perceives and considers a woman as an object and a commodity, whose purpose is to serve his instinctive urges to his full satisfaction.   If she does not serve this purpose, she is not suitable.    He feels entitled to test her usability and to lure her into bed for the purpose of testing her.   If he is not satisfied by the service, he justifies dumping her as her own flaw and deficiency.   A woman is to him like a merchandise, that he returns to the shop.

A man's YES means:
The man is driven so much by his animal instincts, that his perception of her as a mere body makes him oblivious of the woman's other qualities as a person with a brain.   He is unable to perceive her as significant and as predominantly a companion.   He is unable to evaluate sexual homeostasis as only a secondary additional benefit of the companionship.   
Any reasonable woman knows, that providing sexual homeostasis is one of her contributions to the maintenance of the relationship.  Considering the biology of men, testing any specific woman is obsolete, because men can get homeostasis with any woman.   
When a man considers needing to test a specific woman for obtainable satisfaction, this clearly indicates, that he wants much more than mere homeostasis.   He is unable to know the more truly human joys in life, he is too much driven by the pursuit of strong sexual stimulation of the pleasure center of his brain.    

This onesided emphasis on the service of the body limits also the duration of the relationship.   Infatuation with a body fades after a while.   A man, who has not inhibition or conscience to discard a woman after testing, also does not hesitate to discard her, when his infatuation has ended.   

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.  

396. What If Romeo And Juliet Had Lived?

What If Romeo And Juliet Had Lived?
 
Scenario: A priest marries a girl of not yet 14 years of age with a boy only slightly older, without the knowledge of the parents.    Both have known each other for about a day.
Seen from today's perspective, it would be preposterous, except the consequences being too serious, so it is more an irresponsible madness. 
The priest should be adult and mature enough to know better than to marry two children, who are too immature to know the difference between loving a person and being infatuated by a body.    Probably the priest was stupid and immature himself.   Otherwise he would have chosen a more rational career than that of spreading a public delusion.

Yet this story is supposed to be the most romantic love story in literature, and countless people consider Romeo and Juliet as the prototype of a loving couple.   But it is only the tragic end, that did set their union and story apart as special.  

Had they survived, they would have ended like so many other couples with a similar social background of belonging to the nobility in the Italy of the 16th century.     There and also in the England of 1593 to 1596, when Skakespeare wrote the play, maturity seemed to be considered as the physical and educational fitness to fulfill very disparate gender roles.  

A boy's like Romeo's education focused primarily upon sportive fitness in every discipline serving his role as a fighting man, especially sword fencing, riding and being knowledgeable about horses, and secondary upon his role as a member of the ruling class.   
A girl's like Juliet's education focused upon preparing her for her role as an attractive possession of a man, a breeding womb and a refined organizer of a household.  
The only thing both genders of their class were taught was instruction to follow their religion, to dance, to sing, to play music and to write or recite poetry.   All of this was not enough to keep a couple interested in each other for a long time, if they were brought together merely by infatuation.  

Romeo was exiled to Mantova, where he could have received enough money from his parents to enable Juliet and himself the same luxury life as they had been used to in Verona.  But had Romeo taken Juliet to Mantova, the romance would not have lasted, their infatuation would have faded like it always does, if there is nothing deeper.   They would have drifted apart for having nothing to talk about, getting bored with each other's company.   When Julia got the first of a dozen children, she would have turned her affection and attention to the children, probably she would had grown obese too.  Romeo would have gone back to a world of leisure with his buddies and sooner or later would have cheated on Juliet with the servant girls.   

In entry 301, I commented on Shakespeare's other play: 'The Taming Of The Shrew'.    It is set in the same culture and time as Romeo and Juliet.   The jerk mistreating Kathrina had the typical attitude towards woman as had most men of his times, he was in addition also extremely cruel and inconsiderate.   But even a considerate and caring Romeo was certainly not able to consider Juliet as an equal partner.    On a more subtle level, Juliet and Romeo would have encountered similar conflicts as there were between Kathrina and Petruccio.  

360. Domination and the Dunning-Kruger Effect

Domination and the Dunning-Kruger Effect

In entry 354 I mentioned, how sometimes an intelligent woman deliberately dumbs down for the purpose of having a relationship to thus make an intellectually inferior man believe in being her equal.  She appears less intelligent than she is, while he can be realistic about himself.

Domination is a defect and fallacy of men, who are or feel too incompetent to solve conflicts rationally or to gain a woman's benevolence otherwise.  They use either situational power or the fact of their superior physical strength to compensate for their incompetence.   Their purpose is obtaining the benefits from being with a woman, while they are oblivious of any other method except gaining control.     

Narcissists dominate women, because their grandiosity delusion has completely deactivated any perception of the real intellectual ability of a woman, even in contradiction to blatantly obvious evidence.  

But there are also many men, who feel entitled to dominate women by the error of feeling sincerely justified to do so, because of really believing to know better and of doing something good to the dominated women.   This can be explained by the Dunning-Kruger effect, which explains how men overestimate themselves.  Their research was done on subjects in the scope of average mental health, but I assume that it would be especially harmful to women, when the men are emotional morons or sufferer from NLD (entry 356) or something similar.   

"The Dunning-Kruger effect occurs when incompetent people not only fail to realise their incompetence, but consider themselves much more competent than everyone else. Basically - they're too stupid to know that they're stupid. "

http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Dunning-Kruger_effect

357. The Social Environment Defining Deviance

The Social Environment Defining Deviance

In recent years, more and more syndromes and disorders have been defined and used to label people with behavior deviant from the expectations in their social environment.   The recent addition of NLD is an example and in entry 356 I have been wondering, if NLD is just another label for intellectual immaturity hidden behind verbal proficiency.    Therefore, when I use the word immaturity in the remainder of this entry, it will include NLD together with psychosocial and intellectual immaturity.  

There are two possible hypotheses concerning the potential for maturity as defined in entry 356.  

1. Every person is born with the potential for developing full psychosocial and intellectual maturity indicated by full consequencity and freedom from gullibility, according to the present day evolution of the brain.  
   Only a fraction of all people does ever realise this full potential.   Not reaching it is a result of external circumstances like lacking access to resources, psychological and social influences, challenges and limitations, physical harm and health problems.
2. The innate potential of the possible maximal maturity to be reached under optimal circumstances is distributed along a bell curve as are other traits like body size and talents.    

Most plausible is a combination of both, but the second hypothesis probably has a limited scope of variability, while the first one can have more drastic impacts.


There are different social environments in regard to the importance of maturity: 

1. Maturity is neither required, enabled nor empowered for the majority of the population.   Their potential maturity remains hidden.    Circumstances allowing and enabling full maturity are a privilege of a minority.  
2. Reaching maturity is expected from everybody and required from the majority.    The lacking or loss of the potential is considered as a deficit and called immaturity.  

Environment 1: 
During millenia of human history, life was organized mainly in villages and small towns, tribes, guilds, nomadic hordes, hoods.  Under their circumstances, maturity was obsolete and not reached.   
Psychosocial maturity is only needed to make wise choices, when there are options and the freedom to select one.    In those heavily structured communities, people's behavior was and is determined by strict rules, enforced by anything between exclusion, expulsion, deprivation from help and drastic punishments.   
Intellectual maturity is not needed in situations, where most of the activities for survival are manual labor and simple routines.  Tiresome toiling in the fields or simple crafts of making pots, baskets or building huts does not lead to someone ever reaching the limits of his abstract abilities, no matter how high or low they are.

Environment 2:
Since the industrial revolution and the advancement of technology, and since the widespread availability of tv and the web, the situation has been reversed.  
Psychosocial maturity: Children are already so overflowed and desensitized with oversexation and violence during the most susceptible phase of gullibility.  By the time, when their brain is ready for developing maturity, they are already too emotionally crippled and dwarfed and their potential to ever reach maturity is severely damaged.  
Intellectual maturity:   Everyday life has lately reached a complexity of ubiquitous technology.  Those with a lower potential for intellectual maturity are noticed and considered as deviant.  They are given labels like NLD.   In a rural society in historical times, they would have been shepherds or farm hands, and nobody would have seen them as having a disorder.  

356. Gullibility, Immaturity and NLD

Gullibility, Immaturity and NLD

In previous entries, I have already expressed the following speculations, hypotheses and assumptions:

1. The development of a child is a repetition of the evolution of the human mind.   
2. Gullibility is the method to acquire information for survival at an early age until the better method of abstract thinking has developed and gullibility becomes obsolete.
3. Gullibility is the passively accepting response to claims without doubting and verifying them.   Proactive gullibility is the diffuse psychological need to reduce unpleasant emotions by adopting a belief and the subsequent active search for the most convenient and fulfilling belief.
4. Maturity is the state of having reached the full evolutionary potential. 
   Intellectual maturity means to outgrow all gullibility and be only guided by consequencity.
   Psychosocial maturity means full self-awareness of the true personal identity based upon introspection and the ability to apply consequencity to interact with others on the principle of a fair balance of giving and taking.   
5. People can be stuck at any age and remain selfishly immature and gullible and never reach maturity.  
   
   There needs to be added:  
6. Children reach language proficiency long before their brains are ready for abstract and complex thinking.   The names for objects in a child's native language are to be learned by imitation and accepted as they are proffered as a requirement of communication.   Therefore it makes sense that the language acquisition goes along with gullibility.     

In entries 271 and 272 I described the impaired abstract thinking of emotional morons.   Based upon all the above premises, my description was the prototype of someone stuck at around the age of ten, still selfish and not yet able to employ advanced rational reasoning, but already verbally proficient.   Therefore he appears much less immature than he really is, especially when a very good memory helps to compensate.   My prototype is not only gullible, but proactively gullible as a way to cope in world, that is not really comprehensible to him without the crutch of believes.  

I did not know until yesterday, that I had given a fairly correct description of someone with NLD, Non-Verbal Learning Disorder or Non-Verbal Learning Disability.   I prefer the latter, because a disorder is a clinical label, while a disability only means to be less than fully able but not automatically being completely void of it.    Most sources about NLD cited in Wikipedia date back less than ten years.   It is a recent concept, and it seems, that this is a result of the growing complexity of modern life.    This will be elaborated in a future entry.

"Concept-formation, problem-solving, strategy-generation, and hypothesis-testing/appreciation of informational feedback: Marked deficits in all of these areas are apparent in persons with NLD, especially when the concept to be formed, the problem to be solved, and/or the problem-solving milieu(x) is/are novel or complex ......  Also evident are significant difficulties in dealing with cause-and-effect relationships and marked deficiencies in the appreciation of incongruities ...... relative deficits in these areas tend to increase markedly with advancing years, as is evident in the often widening gap between performance on rote (overlearned) and novel tasks.
....  failure to appreciate the consequences of one's own behaviour "

"Limitations in formal reasoning, problem-solving, and the like, would be expected to render the person with NLD quite gullible. This means that the person with NLD may be led into all sorts of risky situations, and thrown into the presence of all sorts of people who are prepared to exploit the person in an unethical manner and place the person in harm's way."

http://www.nld-bprourke.ca/BPRA45.html

"Their failure to anticipate consequences and their gullibility would be expected to pose a persistent threat to their physical (and psychological) well-being." 

"The gullibility of children with NLD is a consequence of their failure to draw veridical conclusions about events that are transpiring in their social and physical environments. Although they can learn specific stimulus-response contingencies through repeated practice ......   they tend not to generalize such learning to other, similar situations. An equally probable occurrence is that they will over-generalize many such stimulus-response contingencies because they fail to see that a new situation does, in fact, contain elements that would negate completely the usefulness or appropriateness of a particular response."

http://www.nld-bprourke.ca/BPRA29.html

Reading the quotes and much more on Rourke's very informative web site, I perceive his description of NLD as the description of the normal behavior of small children.  
Somehow NLD seems to me only a new label for an hitherto overlooked aspect of immaturity.   Emotional and psychosocial immaturity has long since been observed and acknowledged, but intellectual immaturity has not, when it is hidden behind impressive verbal skills.   
Rourke considers gullibility as consequence of NLD, while I think that NLD is the only possible expression of a brain, that still only has gullibility to cope, because it has not yet matured enough to apply consequencity.  

354. Dumbing Down

Dumbing Down

This blog is a good representation of my way of thinking, of what interests me and of what I not only feel comfortable to talk about but enjoy doing so.    In my imagination of a meaningful life with a mindmate, deep communication about matters as mentioned in this blog and whatever intellectual interests he brings along would make an enjoyable lingering over hours at the breakfast table or at a picnic at a nice place.       

But the more often I experience the failure and lack of reciprocity of my attempts to engage in some profound meaningful and rational communication and correspondence, the more I am puzzled, why so few men seem to have similar inclinations and wishes.    Entry 353 gives an example. 

There are several possible hypotheses:  

1.   Men are unable to comprehend or to enjoy my way of communicating, either by immaturity or by lack of intellectuality.   

Until I started to search for a match on the Internet, I was convinced, that any person intelligent enough to get a BA would be able to understand my reasoning either in personal conversation or in writing.    I am certainly not a genius and I am lacking the hubris to really claim, that men having the same level of formal education as my German equivalent of an MA could be so much dumber than myself as being unable to comprehend my thoughts.    

Yet on the other hand I may be overestimating the level of abstract thinking required to get a degree.   With a very good memory people can compensate to a certain extent for lacking reasoning skills.   The narcissistic bluffer as described in entry 287 is an example.   

2.   Men are lacking the ability to appreciate women's intelligence as a consequence of their affliction of being driven by the recurrent need for homeostation.

This impedes men from ever or often enough consciously experiencing women's true abilities.   Most of the time, which men spend together with women, their state of dishomeostasis derails their entire focus upon the woman's body.    In this state, their brains are too blurred and dysfunctional (more in entry 330), they are not able to appreciate a woman's intelligence until their homeostasis is restored.   
2.1.  Both single men and single women with a full time job have only a few hours of spare time in the evening and free weekends.    In this situation of limited free time, the women have a big advantage.     They have a clear head and fully functional brain to chose, how to use all their time for whatever is beneficial for their entire person, reading, culture, meaningful socializing or whatever interests them.   
But the single men are again and again driven by their affliction to go hunting for prey, the story in entry 318 is a typical example.   Such predators' close contact with women is limited to those times, when they are the most disabled from recognizing women's intelligence.   Instead they are completely reduced to the intellectual level of an animal.  As soon and while these men have temporarily restored homeostasis, they attempt to make the best use of their short periods of clear thinking.   If during these times of clarity they ever do engage in meaningful communication with women, it is an exception from all other important occupations pressed into too little time.  
2.2.  If a man is in a committed relationship, especially living together, he has a subscription to regular homeostation.  The hours of the day, when his brain is still the clearest, are spent at his job and not with his partner.   Many of his waking hours are filled with other requirements of everyday life and a vast portion of the together time with his partner is also spent in rehomeostation activities.   The time for counterbalancing intellectual sharing in the state of homeostasis is scarce.  
2.3.   When a man in the state of dishomeostasis interacts with a woman, whose intelligence and formal education matches his, but her mind is clear, while his is blurred by his state, then he perceives himself temporarily as less smart and less intelligent than the woman and this is unpleasant, frustrating and intimidating.   He wants to avoid experiencing this by either looking for less intelligent women or by focusing so entirely upon her body and homeostation, that he can remain oblivious of her intelligence.

All this together causes men to associate a woman predominantly with the use of her body, while they are mindblind to all her other, especially the intellectual qualities.

3.  There is the possibility of a spiral of reciprocal dumbing down.

I read about women dumbing down to appear less smart to men, in the awareness of how some men just cannot deal with a woman being as smart as they are, let alone being smarter in any way.  

"But, what’s a girl with a brain to do? One of my friends who went to a very prestigious university often finds herself in situations with men who feel intimidated by her worldliness, by her ability to speak multiple languages, by her wit and intelligence.

However, rather than using this as a gauge to find men that are appreciative of her intellectual capabilities, she has become obsessed with hiding her true nature. Instead, she focuses on topics such as the weather, her hair and pop culture when in social settings with men.

I asked her why she does this and she claims that she would rather have a boyfriend than be alone. And, in order to get a boyfriend, she believes that she can’t let them know that she is smarter than they are. So, she plays dumb."

http://twodaymag.com/love/view/dumbing-down-to-get-a-date

This can have very detrimental consequences, if too many women dumb down.   Because then men start to seriously mistake that artificial understatement as true deficiency of women.   As a reaction, men then also start to dumb down to accommodate the women, who all are either dumb or pretend to be dumb.    This could lead to the absurd situation, that a woman, who is interested in literature, talks about fashion and gossip to dump down for a man, who talks about the same shallow topics, while he is interested in science and also considers the woman as too dumb for this topic. 

Once both the men and the women have developed habitual dumbing down as common behavior, stupidity becomes the mutual expectation.   A really dumb person has difficulties to distinguish between the really dumb and the dumbed down people.   This is why the dumbing down spiral starts turning, when the already dumb women dumb down even further to accommodate the really or apparently equally dumb men.    Considering what is happening in mainstream society, that spiral has already started turning and continues to do so.

As soon as all women either are or appear dumb by pretending, then an intelligent may never have met a recognizably intelligent woman.  He has never had a chance to learn how to recognize one, if he gets in contact with her.   When stupidity is the norm, then even the intelligent man's expectations are derailed and distorted.    He is unable to recognize the exception, who refuses to dumb down herself, he treats her according to the expectation of general stupidity.  


It has never occurred to me to dumb down.  There is nothing attracting me to dumb men.  It is the contrary, I always want to present myself as who I am.   If truly dumb men feel intimidated and threatened, then it is better not to be bothered any further with them and it is good riddance.   
But my refusal to dumb down does not help against the inability of men, who are already too much mislead by their prejudices about all women being dumb.   When they cannot recognize me for what and who I really am, then their prejudice determines their behavior so much, that their perception is blocked.   When their own behavior is too dumb, they are not able to elicit a reaction to correct the prejudice.  Even when they are not really dumb, they have never learned, how to embark in a non-dumb interaction with a woman.      
It is as if men would not only believe all blondes to be dumb, but they would also believe that all women with different hair color are just dyed blondes.      


Most probably, all three hypotheses are an explanation for some of those men, who are not responding to correspondence, profiles or this blog with the deep, rational, thoughtful communication, which I am craving for so much.    In this world, so much dominated by irrationality, gullibility, shallowness, animality, oversexation, stupidity, preposterosity, I feel like an alien.    I do not wish to be different from who I am, but I wished that there were more people like me and I would know, where they are.  Especially I wish I would find that one mindmate for me.      

310. Women's Insignificance

Women's Insignificance

Some days ago I read a young guy's complaints about how disappointed he was by his girl friend.  He had so much appreciated her independence, but after getting involved, now she wants togetherness, sharing, commitment.   I have read similar complaints before, from both sides, also from women disappointed because they did not get enough commitment.  

It is an unfortunate pattern for women.    Simplified, when a man wants an independent woman, he wants her not to find out, how insignificant she is for him outside the bed.  

Most women want a relationship providing closeness, affection, sharing and commitment.   There are many men, who in theory agree to want this too.  But in their behavior, they are the victims of their own innate animal affliction.    Their need for sexual homeostasis blurs their reason and their ability for sound judgement.   Their instincts determine, that they make the wrong choices.

Such a man gets infatuated with a body, but as soon as he reaches temporary homeostasis, he gets aware, that he is not attracted to spend any time with the woman.   He perceives the woman's body as a commodity with an insignificant personality added as an unwanted extra in the package.    If the man could, he would deposit her in a storage room and only retrieve her, whenever his need for homeostasis reawakens.   When the woman wants more than what he offers her, the relationship fails, and he attributes the failure to the women wanting more than her due, not to his own wrong choice determined by his instincts.
If this happens a few times to a man, he could gain the maturity and learn how to make a better choice.    An immature man concludes instead, that a woman is just not someone worth to spend time with.   He reduces a woman's place in his life to only serving his needs in bed.   From then on he consciously chooses a woman for being or appearing independent.   He assumes that an independent woman would not be interested in spending much time with him, thus she would never find out, that she is too insignificant for him to spend time with her.   With this woman, he is not only unable to get bonded and not expecting to get bonded himself, but also that she herself would not wish to bond.   Instead he intends to keep her as a convenience as long as possible.  

I am not even claiming, that wanting an insignificant independent woman is a conscious deceit.   It is more that the instinctive infatuation with a body disables most men's awareness for what they really want or what would really be the best for their own long term happiness.  They may even be disappointed themselves by their lack of interest in the woman, when homeostasis restores their reasoning ability.   The man's instincts lead him and the woman into a trap of incompatible needs.  
Many men are so convinced of being always rationally in self-control, that they are usually in denial of being misguided by their instincts to get involved with women, whom they then do not respect and appreciate.    Due to this denial, due to their full acceptance and even pride of being studs, they never learn to think very carefully, if they want a woman as a body or as a personality.   

It is pattern with detrimental consequences also for the men themselves.   It seems to be a bad trick of evolution.   The man makes the mistake to get involved with the wrong woman, and ends up with a subscription for homeostasis, while he does not give the woman closeness and sharing.   That subscription means, he may even marry her.   So if the woman is a breeder, she reacts to being treated as insignificant by having children.   She get bonded with the children, and the man is excluded.   Now he is insignificant but he is obliged to work hard to provide for them all.    Had he been wise and careful in his choice, he could be a bonded partner and live happily as a childfree couple.    In the end, he is also punished for using the body of a woman, who is insignificant as a person.   


Men choosing apparently independent women have a very wrong concept of the meaning of independence for a woman.    Independence does not mean bonding-disability or low interest in him or in any man.   Independence does not mean the consent to be friends with benefits instead of commitment.  

Independence is both, it is a survival skill and it is an attitude to acquire survival skills.   Being able to be independent can be an accomplishment, that can contribute to a woman's self-esteem.    There is no joy in being independent, nor is it emotionally rewarding.    It is an acquired skill and it often is compensatory, when someone develops this skill by having no other choice.  

Independence is the best way to cope with life while being alone.   But the interdependence of a couple is a much better form of coping together with the troubles and inclemencies of life.  
An independent woman can find ways to transport things at the edge of her physical strengths instead of moaning about being helpless, an independent man can learn to sew buttons even though he is clumsy, instead of throwing the garment without a button in the garbage.   Two interdependent people can pool their skills and make life easier for each other.  
An independent woman and an independent man can each go alone to a lecture and ponder about it.  But as a couple communicating they may supply a lot of additional food for thought to each other.
Independence is only a bad substitute for the benefits of interdependence.  
Interdependence means: A problem shared is a problem halved, but a joy shared is a joy doubled.  

I am capable to be independent. But I do not want to be independent, I want to find a mindmate and live in interdependence.   
Any man, who wants my body as that of an independent and insignificant person, should just move on and find his victim elsewhere.      

288. The Distorted Memory of the Emotional Moron

The Distorted Memory of the Emotional Moron

Some emotional morons seem to have a very specific distortion of their memory.     They store every blame, grudge and devaluation of a woman in their memory as carved in stone for eternity.   But they store the explanation and information in favor and defense of the woman as if written with chalk on a slate, that gets washed off by the next rain.    She has no chance to ever counterbalance his wrong perception and opinion of her, which gets from bad to worse as a consequence of the distorted memory.   

When a woman experiences something distressing, some disappointment, something hurting, no matter if caused by the emotional moron himself or by someone else, and he does not understand, what is going on, he automatically jumps to the conclusion, that she is a drama queen, hysterical, flawed.  
As an emotional moron, he is oblivious, that someone can experience anything, which he does not know of or which he would not be affected by at all.  In his simple mind, what does not exist for him, cannot exist for her.   An emotional moron not only lacks empathy, but he lacks any knowledge of the fact, that other people have very real and valid feelings and experiences, even though he himself has never even heard of them and they are beyond his imagination.    He is completely oblivious, that he cannot evaluate other people's behavior without sufficient information about their invisible emotional reality, and this information can only be obtained by asking for and listening to their introspection.   
Instead, he believes in his wrong assumptions based entirely on observations.  As a result, he observes the woman's incomprehensible distress without the shade of a doubt as an indication of her flaws and he stores this observation and interpretation in his permanent unmodifiable memory.    It just does not even occur to him to wonder, what really is the matter with her, let alone ask her a respectful question about her subjective experience.  

The woman wants a relationship to be a bonded intrinsic commitment based upon sharing the innermost feelings and understanding each other.    When she gets aware of his unfavorable evaluation of her distress, she makes efforts to explain to him everything she has experienced, felt and thought, in the hope to gain his understanding and his appreciation, that her distress was an appropriate reaction to her experience.  
Being an emotional moron void of any understanding about intrinsic commitment and such abstract needs of her, he has no clue, why she is so anxious and driven to explain herself to him, why it is important to her at all. 
If he finds no way to avoid it, he sometimes does listen with reluctance, he even tells her that he has understood her explanation and her introspection.  
But the next time, when he finds a new blame to put on her, when he starts another rant about his new and all his already accumulated grudges and blames, he is back at repeating his original claim of her being a hysterical drama queen, just as if she had never attempted to make him understand her feelings and her reality.    His grudges and blames accumulate, her explanations disappear without any effect.  

She might even write her explanations down, print them and hand them over to him to read.   This way she wants to give him a chance to make an attempt at his own speed, ease and convenience to understand her better.   It is all futile.  There is no way to influence him.   Her distress in previous episodes will forever be in his mind as an indication of her being flawed, and he will again and again repeat this to her.   

The question remains, why then did he claim at one moment to have understood?    There are several possibilities, and they are probably all of them sometimes valid.
1.   He temporarily understands but does not store this in his memory but forgets it immediately or very soon as if she has never said anything.
2.   He pretends to have understood, because he is not at all interested in her explanations, he is bored and wants to end the discussion.
3.   As a narcissist, he appreciates every indication allowing him to believe in her being flawed, but her explanation is not welcome, so he only pretends to listen and to have understood. 
4.   His ability of abstract thinking and of understanding mature emotions is so impaired, that he is unable to understand her explanations, but does not admit it.    He only pretends to have understood.
5.   He does not take her for serious or does not trust her to tell the truth.    He believes his own interpretation of his observations more than he believes her introspection and explanation.   He pretends to have understood, because he did not value her enough to listen.

This accumulation of unfavorable interpretation of more and more instances of her behavior has a very detrimental long term effect upon the relationship.    Events, that are incomprehensible only to an emotional moron and make the woman appear in an unfavorable light, happen in every relationship and cannot be avoided.    The longer this goes on, the more he devalues her, and she has no chance of stop this process.

She has no influence on what the emotional moron thinks of her and as a consequence, she also has no influence, how he treats her.   Since his opinion of her determines how he treats her, devaluing her serves to him as his justification for domination and bullying.   Along with the accumulation of grudges and devaluation, his treatment of her deteriorates.      

Every once in a while, when something pushes his hostility and anger button, he starts to declaim his whole database of blames and grudges like pouring a flood of mental diarrhea over the woman.    It is a known psychological fact used in commercials, that the more often something is repeated, the more people start to accept it as true.  The emotional moron obviously believes, that by repeating his claim of her alleged flaws often enough, she will finally agree to be flawed.    But as long as the woman's self-esteem remains undamaged, his repetition of his same old grudges and blames is just a painful nuisance for her and the harm done by it is indirect.   His ranting about her deficiency has the effect of convincing himself, and with every of his repetitions, he believes more in her flaws.