709.   Monogamy Exists In Nature

The more men are not only promiscuous by instinct, but also abusive by attitude, the more they also demand women to accept self-abuse as their natural purpose.   

These men excuse this by claiming, that allegedly monogamy were unnatural and would not exist as an innate inclination in any species. 
They misrepresent monogamy as a cultural artifact repressing the freedom of pursuing the fulfillment of needs, which are allegedly not only male, but the same for both genders.   Such men are in denial, that in reality they demand an unrestricted freedom for abusive male selfishness.  

Here is an example of the contrary, even though of course the sample is small:

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/03/140318212248.htm

"A new study shows that Azara's owl monkeys (Aotus azarae) are unusually faithful. The investigation of 35 offspring born to 17 owl monkey pairs turned up no evidence of cheating; the male and female monkeys that cared for the young were the infants' true biological parents."

700. Research Concerning Female Self-Abuse

700.  Research Concerning Female Self-Abuse

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"According to the findings:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

687. Cultural Influences Or Overwhelming Animality?

687.  Cultural Influences Or Overwhelming Animality? 

In entry 686 I presented Camus and Sartre as two sad cases of men with the habit of irresponsibly and inconsiderately copulating like alley dogs, for whom women in spite of a few exceptions were principally as insignificant as toilets for their body waste. 

Interestingly enough, the attitude guiding these two abusers' behavior was the same, even though they grew up under very disparate cultural influences.  

Sartre grew up in France, in a culture, in which monogamy and fidelity were and still are the official social and legal norm for men as much as for women.   
Camus grew up in Algeria, where in spite of French occupation and colonization the culture was derived from the islamic depreciation of women.   Whatever a male muslim does, it is not defined as cheating or as a transgression, because according to the koran, a man is allowed and even encouraged to have up to four wives and an unlimited number of concubines.  But a cheating wife risks to be stoned to death.  

There were two men from two cultures, one of which forbidding the abuse of women, the other encouraging it, but nevertheless both men practiced the same abuse.   

There of course is the possibility of many other contributing factors and it is the example of only two men.  But it may notwithstanding be an indication for the disheartening assumption, that some men's instinctive urges to abuse are much stronger than any restricting cultural influences towards impeding harm to women.  

674. The Omitted Cognition In The Interpretation Of Research Results Concerning Monogamy

674.   The Omitted Cognition In The Interpretation Of Research Results Concerning Monogamy

Research on questions of evolutionary biology and evolutionary psychology are very valuable methods towards explaining, why the subconscious power of instincts interferes so much with the conscious and cognitive goals and needs of humans.    But it is overdoing this, when humans are mistaken for being not more than animals with a specific instrumental intelligence only serving a better success in fulfilling instinctive urges.    The unique human cognition has some special implications, which need to be taken into account.  


Evolution of Monogamy in Humans the Result of Infanticide Risk, New Study Suggests
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/07/130729161558.htm

"Infants are most vulnerable when they are fully dependent on their mother because females delay further conception while nursing slowly developing young. This leads to the threat from unrelated males, who can bring the next conception forward by killing the infant. Sharing the costs of raising young both shortens the period of infant dependency and can allow females to reproduce more quickly."

Monogamy Evolved as a Mating Strategy: New Research Indicates That Social Monogamy Evolved as a Result of Competition
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/07/130729172244.htm

"They found convincing support for the hypothesis that monogamy arose as a mating strategy where males could not defend access to more than one female. Monogamy is associated with low density of females, low levels of home-range overlap, and indirectly, with their diets. The study showed that monogamy evolves in species that rely on high quality but patchily distributed food sources, such as meat and fruit. In contrast, in herbivores, which rely on more abundant resources, social monogamy is rare."

"The analysis did not include humans, and the researchers are sceptical that these results tell us much about the evolution of human breeding systems.

Clutton-Brock added, "It is debatable whether humans should be classified as monogamous. Because all the African apes are polygamous and group living, it is likely that the common ancestor of hominids was also polygamous. One possibility is that the shift to monogamy in humans may be the result in the change of dietary patterns that reduce female density. While another is that slow development of juveniles required extended care by both sexes. However, reliance by humans on cultural adaptations means that it is difficult to extrapolate from ecological relationships in other animals.""

This tunnel view on monogamy is another example, how the special and unique qualities of the human cognition is overlooked or omitted.   

• Humans have emotional and intellectual needs, which can be selectively fulfilled with one specific partner more than with any or with most others.  
• For some humans, these emotional and intellectual needs are stronger or at least as strong as the instinctive needs to breed.
• Humans have the ability to recognize and distinguish other humans as individuals by invisible and exteriorly unnoticeable traits, which can only be discovered and recognized by verbal and cognition based communication.
• Humans have a memory for information gained, which allows them to anticipate the modalities of the fulfillment of emotional and intellectual needs in the future.
• Humans have the ability to comprehend the consequences of their own behavior as a determinant for this future fulfillment.

Therefore monogamy in humans can be more than an evolutionary strategy towards breeding success, instead being an expression of the unique human cognitive evolution towards surpassing the yoke of the full control by animal instincts.    The unique human cognition enables them to decide, that, when and how monogamy is the best choice for a long-term fulfillment of those predominant needs, which are more than just instinctive urges to breed.   

649. Polyandry And Polygyny Are Not Mirror-Inverted

649.  Polyandry And Polygyny Are Not Mirror-Inverted

Superficially seen, polyandry by women and polygyny by men seem to be mirror-inverted but identical constellations.    When omitting the blurring factor of what makes a union a marriage, as this differs widely between countries and cultures, both forms of polygamy can be defined as: 

One person of one gender has at the same time more than one non-temporary intimate relationship with a person of the other gender.

But in spite of the superficial appearance, it is far from mirror-inverted.  The subconscious biological differences between male and female instincts cause decisive distinctions.  

Both varieties are in general biased in favor of male decision, male needs, male consent, male attitudes derived from their instinctive urges, while they are imposed upon women without an alternative and without the power to reject it.  Men do have the advantage of power by greater innate physical strength, and polygamy is not exempted from its effects.  

I am saying in general, as I am of course ignorant of the possible existence of exceptions.   

Polyandry: 

I just read in a newspaper about a society somewhere in Asia, where it is the custom, that several brothers marry one woman and they all live as one family.   This reminded me of once chatting with a man, who was looking for a woman to be shared with his buddy.   I already talked about them in entry 300.

Such behavior can be explained by evolutionary biologically and by the specific male instinctive predispositions.  

 

When men perceive women mainly as toilets for their body waste and not as companions for nonphysical intimacy, then it is not at all surprising, when they are emotionally and intellectually much closer and much more bonded to their brothers and to their buddies known since childhood.   

When they trust each other to share their assets and commodities as is a car, a machine or a home, then they perceive the body of an objectified woman just as one more commodity to be shared the same way.  
When men claim the right to and even fight over the exclusive control over the access to their mates' bodies, this does not automatically imply any emotional attachment.    Some men can be indifferent to the woman's affective preferences, but they just want to be sure, that they are only burdened with raising those children, who do carry their own genes and not those of someone else.  

But when men decide themselves, with whom to share a woman by the exclusion of all others, and they feel close enough, then this includes the willingness to also participate in the burden of raising children, who are genetically the descendants of one of them, but of nobody else.  

Polygyny:

Polygyny is much more widespread than polyandry.   It reflects the biological discrepancy between the frequency of male dishomeostasis and the reluctance of many women to cooperate to restore the homeostasis of those men, who do not fulfill the women's emotional needs in return.   Instead of learning to give women, what they need emotionally and intellectually, these instinct driven animals attempt to solve their biological problem by the concurrent use of more than one female body.  

So far, I have not yet heard of any two women doing the same as the men in the cases of polyandry, which means to decide to share one man.  Nor have I heard of any man entering such a constellation by passive compliance with two women's decision.   

Polygyny is a man's decision for his benefits only, and it is rarely welcome by the women.  Where it is a legal option, the second marriage is usually imposed upon the first wife, no matter what she really wishes.   The second and further wives are usually pressed into such a marriage by the family.   

Whenever an additional wife is indeed welcomed as someone to share the burden of household chores with, this is no evidence of the acceptance of polygyny as sharing a man, it really is an expression of the extreme plight and despair of women in dire poverty, who are deprived of the relief of machines or paid help.

But a form of polygyny exists even in modern western societies, but it is usually not considered nor recognized as such.   Whenever a man starts a non-ephemeral extramarital affair with a woman, he creates for himself the benefits of a polygynous constellation.   But the two women involved do not agree.   The first one is either kept ignorant or she is tied by circumstances as having children.  She wants her husband to fulfill his promise of being monogamous, she does not consent to share him.   The second woman is foolish enough to compete with the first wife attempting to take her place and then have him to herself.   Both women suffer, only the polygynous man is motivated to prolong this situations, as long as he gets enough benefits for a low price.

Thus, in the case of the polyandry by the men's decision, the men can often be content and satisfied.   in the case of polygyny, which is installed by a men over more or less disagreeing women, it is also the man, who benefits, while the women suffer.  

Only the balanced monogamy gives women a fair chance of getting as much advantages and benefits as do men.         

648. Ayumu - The Distinction Between Animals And Humans

648.  Ayumu - The Distinction Between Animals And Humans

The evolution of humans and chimpanzees bifurcated about 6 million years ago.    But this does not mean, that only humans have continued to evolve.   Also chimpanzees have not remained the same species as 6 million years ago.   The two species have evolved differently, some qualities and traits have evolved more rapidly in humans.   The possibility cannot be excluded, that after many more millions of years the descendants of today's chimpanzees may also reach the intelligence of today's humans.  

Therefore seeing the amazing accomplishments of a chimpanzee called Ayumu is amazing but comprehensible.  

Ayumu does better than humans on a task requiring fast perception and short term memory, as can be seen in this video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cPiDHXtM0VA

This and other cases of amazing problem solving skills by animals as for example ravens has caused some people to doubt, that there were no real and decisive distinction between humans and animals.    
But there is one clear distinction.  This distinction is the complete determination of all behavior by instincts only in animals, while humans have cognitive control over their behavior.  It is the distinction between all needs and urges being instinctive in animals, while humans have intellectual and emotional needs, which can be stronger than instincts. 

Animals are those beings, who are determined by instincts and whose intelligence and skills are restricted to only serve and enable the pursuit of satisfying the instinctive urges.   

Humans have a conscious identity derived from predominantly cognitive needs, memory and anticipation allows them to be fully aware of the detrimental long-term consequences of whatever instinctive urges they do experience.    Their intelligence enables them to use cognitive control over the instincts and to avoid damaging themselves by succumbing to temporary instinctive urges.

Human evolution is actually in a phase of transition.   Some members of the species homo sapiens are still animals, who are determined by their instincts but have invented very elaborated tools and methods to serve these anachronistic and obsolete urges, causing extreme damage and suffering.   Some have already evolved farther and are no more animals but cognitive beings in full control over their instincts.  

Ayumu demonstrates his amazing abilities as a tool to get treats as a reward.  It serves his instinct to eat.    Only humans do pursue intellectual challenges of any kind for the emotional and intellectual joy of doing so, of feeling good by achievement.  

Weapons are a good example.  

As long as someone driven by the ingroup-outgroup instinct had nothing but a club as a weapon, he at least had to get close to the person considered as an enemy, before he could attack one at a time.  
At the era of the club, there was a balance between the possible damage caused by the ingroup-outgroup instinct and the limited intelligence restricting the magnitude of the maximum damage.  When the intelligence evolved, this augmented the damage done by instinct.  
It needs high intelligence to produce mass destruction weapons as are the nuclear bombs.   One person can press a button and kill millions.   But doing so is still an act of succumbing to the ingroup-outgroup instinct of killing enemies and defending the own kind.
No matter if the club or the button, those who use weapons are animals determined by the instinct, which is served by the intelligence to create the weapons.
 

True humans are no longer determined by the obsolete ingroup-outgroup instinct.  Instead they see all humans as individuals with equal rights, the only valid distinction being the one between decent people, who harm nobody, and the bad ones, who do and who need to be impeded to do so.
True humans are politicians, leaders and organizers, who use their intelligence to install and create fair treaties, agreements and compromises between countries or groups.  They contribute to peace, justice and cooperation. 


The second example is men's reaction to their experience of sexual dishomeostasis.  

As animals, men are driven without hesitation to procure for themselves the access to the ruthless abuse of a female body.   When the legal consequences make outright rape too risky, some men apply amazing amounts of intelligence to get access to female bodies without any awareness of being primitive animals.    For those men, whose attempts of simple seduction by manipulation, trickery and lies are not successful, other men have used a lot of professional qualification to develop and sell instruments and methods for attempting abuse.   Some have invented chemicals like artificial pheromones or knockout drops.  Others have written elaborate manuals for aspiring PUAs (Pick Up ANIMALS).   But no matter how clever the methods, everything serves male instincts to abuse women.   
     

Truly human men are very different.   They consider and experience sexual homeostasis as a mere collateral benefit of having a relationship for reasons based upon the appreciation of women as persons.  By those men, who are predominantly cognitive beings, restoring sexual homeostasis is by itself not considered or justified as a sufficient reason to get involved. 
The behavior of human men is determined by their cognitive need for a companion in a long-term bonded and monogamous relationship.   

614. Changing Role Models

614.   Changing Role Models

For the purpose of reducing the boredom of doing household chores, I am sometimes listening to simple and superficial stuff like old radio shows.  Thus I also listened to a serial about a private detective called Richard Diamond, consisting of several dozen episodes broadcasted around 1950.  
As it is a Hollywood production, the hero was created as what at that period of time was the fictional prototype of masculinity.    Being a prototype, Diamond was certainly the role model for many contemporary young men.   Just as was and is James Bond for the generation of their sons and grandsons. 

Diamond and Bond have a lot in common (, as much as I can know from only having ever seen one unpleasant Bond film without any wish for more).  
Both role models are aggressive and tough, never have any fear, being very apt with weapons, fists and also with verbal flippancy.   Both are not destroyable, no matter how much they get beaten up or injured.  Both are never impacted by any guilt or emotional effects after having killed anybody as an everyday event of no consequence.

But there is one very decisive distinction between both role models. 

James Bond is a disgusting promiscuous women abusing jerk.  Were he real, he would be every decent woman's nightmare.  
 
Richard Diamond appears to be principally a decent guy.  Throughout the entire series, he has the same girlfriend, Helen, treating her correctly.    Being the prototype of a stud, he is portrayed as catching every woman's interest and as flirting with all of them, but this is the limit.   He is not only a role model of being true to Helen, but he is shown as being true by choice, not by lack of opportunity.   
Diamond is also presented as not merely infatuated with Helen's body but also attached to her as a person, whom he appreciates enough to spend a lot of his spare time with her, including shared non-physical activities.   
Monogamy is an implicitly and indirectly expressed part of this role model.  Whenever Helen expresses jealousy of one of his female clients, he does not reproach her, but defends or clears himself as being true to her.  An such jealousy is a part of Helen's being also a role model, it is not at all shown as inappropriate. 

Richard Diamond is certainly not my ideal of a man, because I prefer non-aggressive intellectuals.   But at least he is not someone abusing women as does his thoroughly repulsive successor James Bond.    

As far as role models have an influence, someone like Diamond can bring out the relatively best in men, but Bond certainly reinforces their worst.   

558. Harming, Commodification And Abstract Thinking

558.   Harming, Commodification And Abstract Thinking

In entry 399 I quoted

"Dr Satoshi Kanazawa, an evolutionary psychologist from the London School of Economics and Political Science, said the smarter a man is, the less likely he is to cheat on his partner."

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1254420/Men-cheat-wives-intelligent-faithful-husbands.html

The following research puts Kanazawa's quote into a wider context. 

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/08/120809151351.htm

"Research from psychological science suggests that categorizing things abstractly into broad categories (called high-level construal) allows us to psychologically distance ourselves from the pushes and pulls of the immediate moment. This, in turn, makes us more sensitive to the broad implications of our behavior and leads us to show greater consistency between our values and our behavior."

"The researchers draw together many strands of research to provide evidence for the role of these different kinds of construal in decisions involving self-control."

Abstract thinking is one facet of intelligence.  
Cheating is one variety of harming by commodification and objectification.

Therefore I rephrase the quotes above for the generalized application to my search of a partner:

There is a negative correlation between a man's ability for abstract thinking and his proneness to harm and hurt a woman.    

These are some effects:

1. A man's ability for abstract thinking leads to his interest in abstract thinking, the appreciation of a woman's abstract thinking and the wish to share it with her.    While physical needs are asymmetrical, the needs for and the joy of intellectual intimacy are symmetrical and enhance an egalitarian attitude. 
   Less abstractly intelligent men are more prone to confound women with being only bodies to be used.   Not only do they hurt women by objectification and commodification, some are unable to understand, why being used hurts women.
   
2. Some man's ability for abstract thinking creates strong cognitive needs, which are stronger than his instinctive urges.  This man's behavior is determined predominantly by his cognitive needs and not by his instinctive urges.   The total of his needs causes him to be most attracted to monogamous bonded commitment.
   A less abstractly intelligent man with instinctive urges of identical strength, but who lacks the cognitive needs, is determined by his not outweighed instincts.   He copulates like a dog from the gutter, no matter the harm experienced by the betrayed women getting attached without reciprocation.     
3. Abstract thinking allows to see the benefits of a relationship by a long term calculation.   Momentary dissatisfaction and conflicts are experienced as temporary and the investment to improve the relationship is based upon long term thinking. 
   Less abstractly intelligent men are prone to value a relationship by the requirement of it always being subjectively beneficial to their needs.   They are prone to consider dumping and replacing women as the best method to deal with a momentary dissatisfaction, lacking any consideration for the women's sufferings.  
   
4. Abstract thinking allows a deeper and more complex understanding of the dynamics of a relationship.    This facilitates constructive communication to solve conflicts. 
   Less abstractly intelligent men, who do not understand, why a woman feels hurt, are unable to do their share to improve the relationship.   They are more prone to run away when experiencing their own incompetence.  They hurt the woman by dumping her without giving her a chance. 

The above research is one more reinforcement of the importance of my mindmate to be found being able to think rationally and abstractly.    Whenever a men feels deterred by the abstraction and complexity of this blog, this is intended.    A man, who does not comprehend, what I write, is not compatible.  He is welcome to refrain from contacting me.  

Some reactions to this blog, both as comments and in emails, indicate that there are men lacking the ability to comprehend my abstract thinking.  These men are trapped in the double fallacy of overestimating their own importance and to misunderstand the purpose of this blog.

Every time a man spends his time on such reactions, no matter how much, he wastes his time.  No matter what he says, it just translates into one simple statement.   He considers me as not suitable for him as long as I remain as I am.   This thinking makes him unsuitable for me.  
Informing me by the proactive writing of an email of reciprocal unsuitability serves nothing.  (This of course has nothing to do with the politeness of someone replying to my initiative of having contacted him first).  

Some reactions are hostile diatribes. Others proffer patronizing advice what to do differently and how to change. Some are projections by suggesting I should get fixed by seeing a therapist. 
Some reactions are completely off, not replies to what I have written, but to what they have misunderstood and misinterpreted.   Some are not bothered to read entire posts, instead one sentence taken out of its context suffices as a trigger to contradict me for the purpose of making themselves feel good by reinforcing their belief to be right.   
All such reactions are varieties of men's belief to know better than I do, their belief that they are right and I am flawed, sometimes it is as bad as a grandiosity delusion.  

But I am not impressed.  I see these reactions as what they are: indicators of the Dunning-Kruger effect as already mentioned in entry 360 :  

 "The Dunning-Kruger effect occurs when incompetent people not only fail to realize 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    

This blog is meant to be a positive filter.   I want to encourage a man to contact me, if he experiences my writings as if written by a (near)clone of his own brain.   I welcome neutral and not hostile comments asking questions or pointing out, what could be elaborated.  
But there are billions of unsuitable men out there, and the best they can do is not bother me.   To be informed of his existence by any unsuitable Joe Doe is of no interest to me.   They are most welcome to not contact me.

551. Neuroscience - The Cognitive Reaction To Touch

551.   Neuroscience - The Cognitive Reaction To Touch

The following study has a very important result.   It shows the impact of cognition as a filter upon the emotional interpretation of sensory input.  

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/06/120604155709.htm

"A nuzzle of the neck, a stroke of the wrist, a brush of the knee -- these caresses often signal a loving touch, but can also feel highly aversive, depending on who is delivering the touch, and to whom."

"The team measured brain activation while self-identified heterosexual male subjects lay in a functional MRI scanner and were each caressed on the leg under two different conditions. In the first condition, they saw a video of an attractive female bending down to caress them; in the second, they saw a video of a masculine man doing the same thing. The men reported the experience as pleasurable when they thought the touch came from the woman, and aversive when they thought it came from the man. And their brains backed them up: this difference in experience was reflected in the activity measured in each man's primary somatosensory cortex."

"Unbeknownst to the subjects, the actual touches on their leg were always exactly the same -- and always from a woman"
""We see responses in a part of the brain thought to process only basic touch that were elicited entirely by the emotional significance of social touch prior to the touch itself, simply in anticipation of the caress that our participants would receive.""

The method of this study is a starting point for further research to settle the question, how far monogamy has evolved as a predominant cognitive need and if therefore men's claim of women's alleged promiscuity is an excuse for abuse and objectification.  

I would like to see the results of the following variations of the research design:

1.  Monogamy or adultery:

1.1.  Men
Subjects:  Heterosexual men in a committed relationship 
Compared stimuli:   Touch by
- the intimate partner
- a single woman
- a woman in a relationship

1.2.  Women
Subjects:  Heterosexual women in a committed relationship 
Compared stimuli:   Touch by
- the intimate partner
- a single man
- a man in a relationship

 2.  Commitment or promiscuity

2.1. Men
Subjects:  Single heterosexual men looking for a mate
Compared stimuli:   Touch by
- a single woman presented as only available for commitment
- a single woman presented as available easy prey
- a woman in a relationship

2.2. Women
Subjects:  Single heterosexual men looking for a mate
Compared stimuli:   Touch by
- a single man presented as only interested in commitment
- a single man presented as a habitual predator
- a man in a relationship

3.  Desensitization

The number of previous intimate partners is a possible intervening variable causing desensitization and habituation to touching strangers and if this effect is different between men and women.  

Stimulus: Touch by a stranger of the opposite gender
Comparing: 
- heterosexual men with few previous intimate partners 
- heterosexual men with many previous intimate partners
- heterosexual women with few previous intimate partners 
- heterosexual women with many previous intimate partners

Such a study could answer, which of the following hypothesis is the most probable.  

1.  Animal instincts are still the predominant force in both genders, making men promiscuous predators to women selecting men by the quality of their genes.  Cognitive restrictions of behavior are merely superposed by culture, social norm and education.  

2.  The evolution of cognition has led to the predisposition in both genders to experience the emotional and mental need for monogamous bonding, but the instincts are still so strong, that they can become the dominant force.    The animal urges compete in both genders with the advanced cognitive evolution of equally strong bonding needs.   

Men's animal instinctive urges towards using women's bodies are unilateral, only men are prone to succumb to instinctive behaviors overriding their cognition in a way, that hurts women.   Women's instincts merely drive them to breed and not to hurt men.   

Behaviors are modified by culture, social norm and education, but the modification does not override the emotional reactions determined by the real innate needs.    Social norms cause suffering for both genders.

3.  The evolution of the predominance of cognitive needs for monogamous bonding has been stronger in females than in men.   Women have already evolved to have cognitive bonding needs stronger than the mere animal procreation needs, while for men, animal promiscuity urges are still stronger than there slowly developing cognitive needs for bonding.   

Women are ahead in their cognitive evolution, while men are lagging behind.   

Behaviors are modified by culture, social norm and education, but the modification does not override the emotional reactions determined by the real innate needs.    Social norms are accommodating men and cause women to suffer.  

Such studies are important because of their potential to help reduce human suffering

Even without hard data, one observation cannot be denied by anybody, who has read enough suffering people's personal accounts on the web:   

Emotional pain caused by not reciprocated exclusive emotional attachment in a dyadic relationship is at least one of the most frequent causes of human non-physical suffering.

Any social change to end this kind of suffering needs to be based upon knowing the cause, which is a task for neuroscientific research.  

Women, who do not want to be hurt anymore, do certainly not want to wait, until men have improved and evolved beyond being animals.   Women need a method to prevent being hurt.  
In entry 525 I already mentioned the benefits for women, if men could be sent to a brain scan before risking the tragic mistake of getting involved with and hurt by a commodifying jerk.   

The study quoted above is another indication, that the technical possibilities already exist for brain scanning as a part of a wise choice of a mate. 

 
As soon as brain scanning becomes affordable for common use, people could be tested by a brain scan for a score on a scale between monogamy and promiscuity.   Research as what I am wishing for would be the basis of such a score.   Prospective partners could then be evaluated for how much hazard they are to a partner needing exclusive committed bonding.        

529. Contact With Ex-Partners, Reliability And Trust

529.   Contact With Ex-Partners, Reliability And Trust

Whenever I read in a man's profile, that he continues contact with his ex(es), I recoil.    When I explained my reasons in entry 76, I only mentioned the impertinence of a man's feeling entitled to have a harem of more than one intimate partner and of not valuing a woman enough to give her a genuinely exclusive place in his life.   
Ex(es) can never be converted to be the same as platonic friends, they will remain forever deactivated intimate partners.   Because the special ties created by physical intimacy can never be undone.   The friendship of two persons, who have never been physically intimate, and the alleged mere friendship of two persons, who have deactivated their previous physical intimacy, are fundamentally distinct and can never be the same.  

But in entry 76, I omitted, that the friendship with ex(es) is also a significant indirect indication of how much harm and hurting is to be expected from such men.  
A man, who is friends with his ex(es), can never be trusted to be a reliable partner in a relationship being a safe haven.   His friendship with his ex(es) tells me, that he either starts or ends relationships for insufficient reasons.   Therefore he is a hazard to do the same to me.    

A man's personality, instinctivity and his subsequent attitude towards women, is expressed and represented in the specific reasons, which for him are sufficient to enter and to end a physically intimate relationship.   These reasons indicate, if he either commodifies and objectifies women or if he appreciates them as persons to commit to, to bond and to share his life with.

The history of a man's past relationships can thus be helpful to assess a man's individual choice of reasons and thus to evaluate the risk of being hurt by him.    His maintained friendship with ex(es) or the absence thereof is a valuable information allowing some conclusions.     

A man, who is determined more by his human cognition than by is animal instincts, is able to base both decisions, to enter and to end a relationship, on careful considerations and on consent.    Therefore a man's careful decisions are an indication of his being more human than an animal.    Intrinsic commitment is human.    Animals just copulate.  

Intrinsic commitment means to accept obligations towards the partner, to be considerate, responsible and therefore reliable.   The decision to enter physical intimacy is inseparably also the decision to be committed.   Otherwise it is the abuse of an objectified body and a violation of human dignity.     
Therefore a decent, valuable, humane man asks himself, if he is ready and willing to begin a committed long-term relationship, before he gets physically involved with a woman.   He asks himself, it he appreciates the person enough for commitment.   If he gets aware, that he is only triggered by instincts, he refrains from touching her.   He does not want to be an unworthy animal. 

Intrinsic commitment includes the obligation to end a relationship only 

• by a onesided decision, if the partner has become unworthy having first created this reason by committing an unforgivable transgression.
• by consent, after working hard and persistently together on solving all problems and conflicts.   But this should be a very rare case, as such an blatant incompatibility should have precluded the couple to enter the relationship.   As long as a couple has not forfeited the reciprocal justification for true friendship by unforgivable transgressions, they should be able to solve their conflicts and stay together.

Friendship in the true sense of the word means to see qualities of character in a person, friendship requires trust, honesty, integrity and more.  Intrinsic commitment between a couple has the same requirements of character as has friendship, only the benefits of bonding, of monogamy and of sharing the life and home with exclusively one partner are added.  
Without the qualities to be friends, two persons are not suitable to each other for intrinsic commitment.  When people at one moment in time are really suitable as true friends to get physically involved and share their life in a monogamous arrangement, then their commitment is for better or for worse and ending it can only be justified by very good reasons.   Therefore whenever someone and his ex are still true friends, their commitment has never really ended.   Intrinsic commitment only ends, when reasons impede friendship

A man's intrinsic commitment makes him reliable and predictable, because he allows the woman enough influence on how the relationship impacts her life.    She is not the victim of decisions imposed upon her out of the blue as she is by objectifying jerks, instead she is involved in all shared decisions. 


A man's friendship with his ex(es) is a big red flag.  

When a man perceives and experiences no difference between a friendship, which has always been platonic, and the friendship with a woman, with whom there had been physical intimacy in the past, this is a clear indication of his animal instincts being so strong, that he is innately determined for the objectification of women's bodies.   It means that physical intimacy does not automatically create intrinsic commitment.   
1.  It can mean, that he has exes from any kind of promiscuous non-committed arrangements, no matter if it was an affair or friends with benefits or whatever.    He has commodified and objectified a woman based upon reciprocity.   Had he dumped her, she would probably refuse to remain friends with a jerk.   But mutual abuse is nevertheless abuse, and entering a physical relationship without commitment is a dangerous attitude indicating the predominance of the man's instincts.  
I can never trust a man to be committed with me by physical intimacy, if he has a history of using others without commitment.
2.  He still wants his ex, in spite of her having committed a transgression.    He maintains a friendship for her, even though she is unworthy.   He still craves for her body, in spite of her unworthy personality.   This means, that her personality is not significant.   Either he is not free to commit or the non-physical qualities of a woman are generally of no significance to him.  
3.  He has dumped her for insufficient and selfish reasons, but she wants him back and has forgiven him in spite of his being unworthy and a jerk.  He probably wants more than he is willing to give.  He is probably unable to need and appreciate a partner as much as is necessary to motivate him to invest enough time and effort into a relationship.  Instead he has developed the habit of discarding and replacing as the easy way out.    

Whatever he has done to his ex(es), he is prone also to do to me.   

In all three scenarios, such men are a hazard, there is a very high risk of being hurt by them.  Men, who have dumped women for insufficient reasons or who have committed other transgression, get fatally wrong signals from those women, who still accept and treat them as friends.   Instead of being punished by the appropriate rejection as unworthy jerks, they learn to misinterpret the inappropriate friendship as if there were nothing wrong with their behavior.   
Every ex, who reacts with continued friendship to a jerk's transgressions, implicitly reinforces readiness to repeat such transgressions on the next woman.   While ending all contact with a jerk does not stop him from behaving as a jerk, at least this does not encourage him.


On dating advice sites, sometimes people are warned about new contacts talking bad about their ex-partners.   I disagree.  I have more trust, when a man feels hurt by specific behaviors of his ex and when he can convincingly explain, what efforts he did to repair the relationship and why it failed.   While I of course cannot know, what really has happened, a man's feeling hurt and treated badly by his ex indicates, that he at least subjectively was not the transgressor and whatever behavior he feels hurt from is something, that he hopefully has learned not to do upon others.  When a man talks too well about an ex, this makes me suspicious, because people learn more from their own suffering than from getting away with making others suffer.     

505. Science Indicating The Harm Of Pornography

505.   Science Indicating The Harm Of Pornography

For emotionally unharmed people, monogamy, commitment and exclusive pair-bonding are basic cognitive and emotional human needs. 
Promiscuity, polygyny, cheating, dumping, degrading and abusing others as mere bodies cause serious emotional harm to people.   

While the emotional benefits for individual human beings derived from the exclusivity of monogamy are the topic of romance in novels and movies, scientific research instead focuses mainly on general social, economic and evolutionary benefits of monogamy.  

Whenever I am reading men's profiles and the ubiquitous promiscuous and perverse wishes and goals, in addition to some feedback to this blog and to my own profiles, I sometimes feel as if I were an alien from another planet thrown into a filthy gutter.     

But luckily, I am not entirely alone with my evaluation of the damage done by the artificial social norm of an oversexed society.   There are learned and knowledgeable scientists studying the serious harm done by pornography.  

When already repeatedly expressing my disgust about the ubiquity of jerks openly pursuing promiscuity on the Internet and about the general oversexation of society, I had omitted to put special emphasis on pornography as the core of the problem.  Promiscuity is more an abstract concept, while pornography is its real life representation.  
The entire detrimental effects of the general oversexation including the subtle and indirect damage are like an iceberg, of which only one seventh is visible above the water.   This visible part is pornography, of which the harm can be shown most easily.     I already have called promiscuity a scourge of humanity, and so is pornography as its most visible expression.
 
While I was fully aware of the kind of damage done to users' brains by the exposure to pornography, I had not been aware to which extreme extensity and pervasiveness pornography had grown along with the ubiquity of the Internet.    While I cannot avoid being exposed to the general oversexation of daily life against my will, the access to pornography on the web requires proactive behavior.    By being able to avoid it, I was not fully aware the real magnitude of the problem.    

I attributed promiscuity directly to men's being physiologically driven by their strong animal instincts, this being aggravated by their having lost first the sensitivity to appreciate an emotional safe haven and subsequently also lacking the motivation to use self-control.  
Those promiscuous jerks and emotional psychopaths, whom I described throughout this blog as prototypes from my worst nightmares, have probably not become obnoxious and disgusting merely by an innate disposition.   Instead it is more probable, that the additional exposure to huge amounts of pornography has magnified their innate predisposition, until all their human qualities had been destroyed.  

It seems that pornography converts potential jerks into irreversible jerks.  

There has been done a lot of research on the different aspects of the harm done by pornography, and learned people have expressed and explained it much better, than I could do.   The following is a list of a some very good sources for further information.

Patrick F. Fagan: 
A Poison In The Home
http://www.diolaf.org/documents/Marriage%20and%20Family%20Life/Pornography%20Resources/a%20poison%20in%20the%20home.pdf
 

Patrick F. Fagan, Ph.D.
The Effects of Pornography on Individuals, Marriage, Family and Community
http://www.wifamilyaction.org/files/trya.campaigntoolbox.org/downloads/FRC_PornStudy_0.pdf
 

Mary Eberstadt  Mary Anne Layden 
THE SOCIAL COSTS OF PORNOGRAPHY
http://www.internetsafety101.org/upload/file/Social%20Costs%20of%20Pornography%20Report.pdf

Dr. Victor B. Cline:  
Pornography’s Effects On Adults and Children
http://www.stop.org.za/Victor%20Cline%27s%20Study.pdf

Ana J. Bridges 
Pornography's Effects on Interpersonal Relationships
http://www.socialcostsofpornography.com//Bridges_Pornographys_Effect_on_Interpersonal_Relationships.pdf
 

Jackson Katz: 
Pornography And Men's Consciousness
http://academic.evergreen.edu/curricular/genderandmedia/assignments/katz001.pdf

Rebecca Whisnant: 
Confronting pornography:  Some conceptual basics.
http://stoppornculture.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/Whisnant-Confronting-Pornography.pdf

504. Science On The Benefits Of Monogamy

504.  Science On The Benefits Of Monogamy

Joseph Henrich, Robert Boyd and Peter J. Richerson
The puzzle of monogamous marriage

http://www.sscnet.ucla.edu/anthro/faculty/boyd/HenrichBoydRichersonPhilTransB12Monogamy.pdf

"norms and institutions that compose themodern package of monogamous marriage have been favoured by cultural evolution because of their group-beneficial effects-promoting success in inter-group competition. In suppressing intrasexual competition and reducing the size of the pool of unmarried men, normative monogamy reduces crime rates, including rape, murder, assault, robbery and fraud, aswell as decreasing personal abuses. By assuaging the competition for younger brides, normative monogamy decreases (i) the spousal age gap, (ii) fertility, and (iii) gender inequality. By shifting male efforts from seeking wives to paternal investment, normative monogamy increases savings, child investment and economic productivity. By increasing the relatedness within households, normative monogamy reduces intra-household conflict, leading to lower rates of child neglect, abuse, accidental death and homicide."

503. Evolution And Monogamy

503.  Evolution And Monogamy

In entry 502, I pointed out, that human instinctive behavior has not yet evolved to adapt to the novelty situation of being free from survival needs, in spite of the cognitive reality, that emotional and intellectual needs have become strong influences upon human behavior.   
Under the pressure of survival needs people are coerced to make choices, which they would not make, were they free to choose by taking full account of their emotional needs.  

In this study, women's choice between polygyny and monogamy is explained by the survival benefits of the choice.   It is a very good example of the force of circumstantial restrictions upon options.   

Sathoshi Kanazawa / Mary C. Still:
Why monogamy?

http://personal.lse.ac.uk/Kanazawa/pdfs/SF1999.pdf

"If resource inequality among men is great, women choose to marry polygynously and the polygynous institution of marriage emerges. If resource inequality among men is small, women choose to marry monogamously and the monogamous institution of marriage emerges. The theory explains the historical shift from polygyny to monogamy as a result of the gradual decline of inequality among men."

The explanation makes perfect logical sense, as long as the options of the choice between monogamy and polygamy are restricted to those for physical survival.    When the choice of a man is a choice between starving and eating, the wish for an exclusive attachment is an unobtainable luxury.   There is no free cognitive choice considering also emotional needs.

Today the environment in the rich modern societies offers for the first time in history the true freedom of choice.    Relieved from the pressure of physical survival struggles, people are now able to sense and perceive their emotional and intellectual needs.   In this situation, monogamy is the best cognitive choice (entry 497)

10,000 and even 1,000 years ago, the situation was very different.   Physical survival depended upon access to scarce resources of food, clothing, firewood, shelter.   The total availability of these resources to a community, village or group was limited.   Even under the best favorable circumstances, people could not produce much surplus above their own needs.

• Everyday chores were time consuming.   Water had to be carried from the well, cooking required a fire and fire wood.      
• Without machinery, the production of all goods were slow and limited.  
• Food production depended on the climate.    Food had to be produced locally.
• Skills and knowledge were limited. 

As long as the access to fertile land, forest and water was unrestricted to all people, the sum of the resources allowed the survival of everybody on an equal low level.   But any inequality of power over such resources meant, that only the powerful men had the means to survive, while there was not enough left for everybody else.  Medieval systems of rich landowners exploiting their tenants are examples.      


Under such circumstances, a woman's theoretical choice between being the exclusive wife of a poor monogamous man and sharing a rich powerful man's wealth with other wives was not a free choice.   Her emotional needs were an unobtainable luxury beyond her reach, when the price for one poor man's emotional exclusive attachment was perishing and starvation for her and her offspring. 

This situation was aggravated by the lack of safe methods of family planning.   The woman was not even able to choose the monogamous poor man by restricting the number of offspring to match his resources. 

The woman's choice was further determined by her parents' power over her.  Under the pressure of lacking sufficient resources to keep all their children alive, parents coerced their daughters by dire necessity into the choice of the man, who could maintain them, even if she had to share him in a polygynous arrangement.    


Evolutionary biology and evolutionary psychology are very valuable methods to explain hidden instinctive tendencies toward certain behaviors.   But it is a fallacy to confound explanations with justification, connivance or acquiescence.  

It is historical reality, that the superior physical strength of men allowed them to first exclude women from independent access to the survival resources and that the physically strongest men usurped greedily a disproportionally high share of the totally available resources.  This enabled a minority of men to gain control over the majority of women. 

Today the cognitive perception of non-material needs are just as much a reality, including the ability to act morally, to distinguish between justice and injustice and to suffer excruciating emotional pain as the victim of injustice.   Today we have reached a situation, where the instinctive reactions, that were helpful in a different environment, have become obsolete and detrimental.   

The most rational and least instinctive people are guided by their cognition to new adaptive behaviors to the changed environment, while the majority are still driven too much by dysfunctional and anachronistic instincts.


Therefore no scientific explanation of the choice of polygyny in the past by reasons of necessity can be morally used to deny people in the present society their emotional needs for the safe haven of a monogamous exclusive commitment.    No allegedly free choice for polygamy in the past is a valid excuse today for the promiscuous cheating and dumping by desensitized jerks.
When scientific research uncovers instinctive tendencies, which hurt others emotionally, then this is a reason to teach people enhanced awareness to fight their subconscious harmful tendencies, it is not justifiable to use scientific discoveries as an excuse for cruelty.     

499. Demisexuality And Monogamy

Demisexuality And Monogamy

Demisexuality and monogamy are both beneficial for the emotional and attachment needs of those people, who are sensitive and intellectual and not just instinct driven robots. 

Demisexuality and monogamy are connected, but they are not the same.

In entry 498 I described, how capitalists have created absurd social norms to acquire high profits from those, whom they had successfully manipulated to experience themselves as allegedly deviant.   In entry 493 I pointed out, how the definition of demisexuality by those self-labeling themselves as such is based upon the agreement of being deviant according to the accepted social norm of oversexation, while refusing to buy the capitalists' remedies.   

As explained in entry 496, when discarding the capitalists' absurd social norm by seeing demisexuality as the cognitive adaptation to the middle of the bell curve of libido and sexual instincts, it is not at all a deviance.  According to the evolution of the human cognition, demisexuality and monogamy are appropriate, realistic and suitable as social norms, because they are beneficial for the human emotional needs for attachment.   Such social norms bring no profit to capitalists, but they are superior for the purpose of avoiding individuals being harmed and suffering and social troubles and disruptions.  

Monogamy and demisexuality are closely connected without being the same: 

Sexual attraction in demisexuality and the wish to be part of a monogamous dyad are caused by the same personal attraction.  This personal attraction enabling sexual attraction in demisexuality consists of the same traits and attributes, which also attract couples to choose each other for the benefits of being committed companions sharing quality time and living arrangement.   Monogamous sexuality and sharing a home require both the same kind of trust to share exclusivity, intimacy and resources and the wish to be together and to enjoy each other's company and activities, which also causes the sexual attraction of demisexuals. 

• Demisexuality does not automatically lead to monogamous life arrangements.
  
  When taking the predominant definition literally and orthodoxically, demisexuality does not imply monogamy.   It is theoretically true, that someone can get into an emotionally close relationship with more than one person leading to sexual attraction and activities.   It is theoretically possible to imagine a mormon or muslim demisexual man having a polygynous family arrangement, that fully satisfies his personal needs.  
  But this does not imply, that he can reciprocally fulfill dyadic needs of more than one partner.  Any kind of arrangement may suit the needs of someone demisexual, while asymmetrical arrangements do not offer the same safe haven as does a dyad.
  
  Demisexuality is a cognitive predisposition, a trait, a predefined reaction or lack thereof to specific stimuli, demisexuality is wired into the brain, even in the absence of consciously experiencing the lack of stimulation.   Demisexuality does not require someone being aware of having such a predisposition. 
  
  
• Demisexuality is not the only possible cause for monogamy.
  
  Monogamy is a life style based upon the choice of the exclusivity of sharing the safe haven of the dyad with one specific person.  Monogamy is the exclusivity of the special combined intellectual, emotional and physical intimacy shared with only one significant other. 
  
  Monogamy can be either maintained by a successful use of willpower as the consequence of the cognitive insight of the superior long-term benefits of exclusivity or it can be facilitated and enabled by demisexuality.
  
  Choosing the life arrangement of a dyad (entry 497) is the choice for an emotionally healthy life style, when two partners support each other as a caring monogamous exclusive couple against the inclemencies of life.
  
  G.K. Chesterton only needed two sentences to express it beautifully in his novel 'The Man Who Was Thursday': 

  "there are no words to express the abyss between isolation and having one ally. It may be conceded to the mathematicians that four is twice two. But two is not twice one; two is two thousand times one. That is why, in spite of a hundred disadvantages, the world will always return to monogamy."

 

Demisexuality does therefore not lead automatically to monogamy, but monogamy without demisexuality is fragile, while demisexuality stabilizes monogamy.    Demisexual monogamy is a better safe haven than any form of monogamy, where exclusivity is only maintained by self-control in fear of consequences.   Demisexuality is the absence of those instinctive inclinations and predispositions, that are the biggest hazards to monogamy.   

Demisexuality is the best precondition for a lasting, stable, reliable and monogamous commitment.  
Monogamy is the best option for demisexuals.

498. Capitalism, Media, Social Norm And Monogamy

498.  Capitalism, Media, Social Norm And Monogamy

I claim: 

Some of today's decisive social norms are an artificial invention serving capitalists' profits by disregarding human cognitive and emotional needs.    

Monogamous life arrangements are the best adaptation of the human emotional needs and of the advanced evolution of the human cognition to the animal instincts also present in the human brain.
  

1.  The enabling factors of capitalistically distorted social norms.

1.1.  I call someone a capitalist, who uses financial power to ruthlessly invest money, wherever and whenever he can get the most profit, without responsibility and consideration for social and psychological consequences.   

1.2.  Until about 100 years ago, the reinforcement, persistence and influence of social norms depended on real life role models.   Role models lived successfully according to the social norm, social norms were reinforced by the example of real persons' achievements.  
While religions and philosophies also had influences, the real life experience of personally known role models restricted social norms to the correction by realistic physical and cognitive capacities of human beings.  

1.3.  According to the theory of being determined by the adaptation to the environment during evolution, the human cognition has not yet adapted to the technological environment, in which we are living now.  
It was first Kanazawa, who pointed out, that people are led to confound people on TV with personal friends.    http://personal.lse.ac.uk/kanazawa/pdfs/ehb2002.pdf 

But this effect can be seen even more generalized as being effective, whenever recorded voices, movies, live size color pictures trick the subconscious brain to confound the preserved representations of persons with real present role models.

1.4.  The more often something is heard and repeated, the more people believe it.   Real life role models are not willing to repeat the demonstration of their endeavors for the purpose of influencing others.    Movies and audio tapes can be replayed endlessly and they have therefore more impact.    

1.5.  The technical progress created the influence of virtual role models confounded as if they were real people.  
The realistic voices from the radio started this.   The Nazi ideology would probably have not been so widely accepted by the German population, had not the radio repeated this ideology in a way, that people were misled subconsciously to be listening to personal role models.
When the color TV enabled capitalists to send role models as commercials into every home and repeating their messages endlessly, they established several new social norms, which do not correspond to people's real needs as cognitive humans.   

Instead these social norms were established to create profitable markets.    

  

2.  Distorted social norms optimize capitalistic profits

The general principle of the capitalistic social norm claims enhanced wellbeing as something to be bought by consumption.    The even more powerful and more devastating principle are those artificial, unrealistic and distorted social norms, which make people feel deviant and willing to spend money on remedies to reduce the alleged deviance, while there is nothing wrong with them.  

Capitalists, predominantly male, have created distorted social norms for both genders:

• Men have extremely high libido, they are promiscuous and successful in discarding the monogamous commitment to be successful predators consuming women.   
• Woman want to be prey as much as men enjoy to be the predators.   Due to the fundamental biological difference, only men have a physiological need for sexual homeostasis, while women have no biological reason to need sex unless there are also emotional benefits.   Therefore by this social norm consumption and material benefits are the substitutes for the not available emotional benefits as women's reward for their acquiescence to be compliant prey. 

As shown in entry 497, the safe haven of living as a dyad is the best adaptation of the human need to combine cognition and physiological needs.   People using their cognition to earn and create happiness, who work hard on their relationship by communicating, by solving conflicts, by sharing time and activities, by learning to trust and to cooperate, bring no profit to capitalists.  
People, who spend most of their time working for money, guided by the belief, that happiness could be bought, are doubly profitable to the capitalists:  They produce and they consume.    Someone, who is too busy to invest time and effort into cognitive improvements of a monogamous happiness, is lured by the social norms to instead invest money in acquiring the prey's compliance by buying consumption goods for her.       

• The role model for men invests money to offer general consumption to women.
• The role model for women invests money in her body to attract men to spend money on them.  

3.    The markets of deviance.

This social norm creates two levels of feeling insufficient and deviant, and the capitalists sell alleged remedies: 

Market 1:  The sex market, which is primarily a market for male customers.   

The social norm makes men believe that they are deviant and deficient, unless they have a very high libido.  This is unrealistic when compared with the biological bell curve of libido, where in reality the extreme libido is deviant.  (More in entry 496 on Demisexuality And Cognition)

The sex market sells

• remedies to physically enhance the libido of the predators:
  
  • medical treatment, pills, hormones

• remedies to subconsciously enhance the stimulation of the predators' libido: 
  • pornography tricking the subconscious brain to confound being stimulated by mere pictures with being in the presence of a real woman

• remedies to physically enhance the success of triggering another's instinctive physiological reaction:
  • pheromones, fashion, cosmetics, body modifications

• remedies to enhance the predator's manipulation skills: 
  
  • The market of PUA (pick-up-animals) training.

• remedies to avoid failing as a predator by being a customer instead: 
  
  • prostitution.

Market 2:  The Psychotropic Drug Market

The capitalists established the social norm, that any person, who cannot be happy and striving as an unattached predator or prey, but who is sensitive, vulnerable and suffers as a result of the deprivation of commitment, is deviant and needs to be treated by taking psychopharmaceuticals.  
They have created the psychotropic drug market, which is extremely profitable and still growing.  This is an excellent documentary:   
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UDlH9sV0lHU

Psychological and social problems like depression, outbreak of psychiatric disturbances in vulnerable people under emotional stress, trauma, aggression, burn-out, alcoholism, illegal drugs abuse, crime, juvenile delinquencies are a few examples of what happens to people and their dependents, when basic emotional needs are not met.  Such sufferings are symptoms indicating the needed change of the toxic or noxious circumstances of their life situation.  If people's emotional needs were fully recognized, many psychological and psychosomatic health issues could be prevented by appropriate interventions.    But in this case, there would be no profit for the capitalists.  

The artificial social norms of defining as deviance, what really are healthy reactions to serious life challenges, have therefore two detrimental effects:

• Effect 1.  Those taking the psychopharmaceuticals deliberately, accept themselves as deviant in comparison with the artificial social norm.  People deprived of the social, emotional and psychological benefits of the safe haven of a reliable dyad as outlined in entry 497, react with maladaptive coping behavior.   Instead of attempting to get the needed benefits of a monogamous relationship, they take pills.    They are manipulated to believe this as the easy and only way out.
    
• Effect 2.  Those, who involuntarily hurt and harm others in spite of believing to act morally, consider their victims as deviant.  They influence or even coerce them to take pharmaceuticals as the apparently only remedy to restore them to cope better under the artificial social norm.  
  As already elaborated in entry 489 (Demisexuality And Morals), one of the collateral devastations of the artificial capitalistic social norm is the effect upon the behavior of those people, who are willing and wishing to be moral. They believe to act as good people according to the social norm, but they are oblivious of the damage done by them.    They harm others, but instead of changing their own behavior, they feed them with pills to repair the alleged flaw.   People doing damage with a clean conscience cause sometimes the worst harm.

An example:   

The proverbial broken heart can physiologically be expressed by symptoms of a real health issue, according to this study: 

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/02/120207121928.htm
"Broken heart syndrome occurs during highly stressful or emotional times, such as a painful breakup,
Broken heart syndrome also is called stress cardiomyopathy. Symptoms are similar to those of a heart attack, including chest pain and difficulty breathing.
During an extremely stressful event, the heart can be overwhelmed with a surge of adrenalin and other stress hormones."

Without the distorted capitalistic social norm, a sensitive caring person would feel responsible and avoid breaking another person's heart.   But the social norm of the oversexation and of promiscuity has destroyed the realistic recognition of the human need for attachment, consideration and responsibility.  

• The person suffering the broken heart fights the allegedly deviant reaction with psychopharmaceuticals. 
• The person, who had broken the heart, feels entitled to do so and considers the other as in need of pharmaceuticals.     

To sum it up, capitalists have used the media to artificially create the social norm of the oversexation of society and of men's high libido in addition to the general market of selling alleged consumable happiness and wellbeing.   
The discrepancy between biological reality and the distorted social norm has created two markets, one of remedies for those men attempting to comply with the sexual norm, and the other of pharmaceutical remedies for both men and women, who are psychologically damaged by this norm.

497. The Human Preference For The Dyad

The Human Preference For The Dyad

The web is full of claims, that monogamy were not part of human nature and that polyamory and other forms of promiscuity were the better expression of human nature and needs.   If this were as true as it is often repeated, then this would be visible by the choice of the preferred living arrangements of involved groups of three or more persons.  
Reality indicates the contrary.  Dyads are so much preferred, that even gay people fight to be allowed to be married as dyads.  Most people indicate their preference by living as dyads or by a clear wish find a partner to become a couple, when they are singles using dating sites.    

As far as there are polyamory living arrangements, they are usually a consequence of a religion.   I cannot be sure, if without a religious belief any mormon or muslim women would really choose to share one man.    I have never heard so far of any gay or lesbian triad wishing to be a married group.  

People still prefer dyads as the basic unit of living arrangements as the result of a cost and benefit calculation.

An adult, who is neither dependent nor has dependents be family ties, is free to choose the preferred living arrangement of living alone, living with one other adult or living with more than one adult as a group.   

The following omits any special situation, when people live with parents, children, siblings etc.   The incest taboo excludes the physical needs, which are a part of the deal in the free choice by cost and benefit calculation.   

By living arrangements I mean complete personal involvement, not living as separate and independent households under one roof.   When the preferred living arrangement is a free choice, the decision to prefer and enter a specific arrangement is based upon a cost and benefit calculation, that includes not only material, but also emotional and psychological factors, which are at least equally important, if not predominant.   

Sharing a home as a safe haven means sharing material resources, security against inclemencies of life events, mutual support and advice and mentally stimulating shared time and activities.  All this is very beneficial and for many people a basic need in life.  
Sharing a home means compromising, self-control and the acceptance of restrictions of the freedom to follow every whim due to acting only by agreement with another person.   The own needs are only equally important compared with those of another person.  Additional costs are the risks by making oneself vulnerable.   Sharing very private information and unrestricted access to personal belongings bears a huge risk of being exploited, harmed, hurt and betrayed by someone trusted too much.

Seen as a cost and benefit calculation, dyads have logically the highest potential of life satisfaction for both partners compared with polyamorous groups of any kind.   

Comparing dyads with triads as living arrangements.

To illustrate this, I will compare the living arrangements of a dyad with that of three persons, no matter their gender or orientation.    A dyad by choice is independent of their sexual inclinations as either of two heterosexual or two homosexual persons, as long as they consider themselves as an involved couple.  

1. Material and practical. 
   Sharing the home and household with one person reduces all fixed costs like rent, heating etc, by one half.   Would one more person be added, the additional reduction of costs would only be one sixth more.  
   But the cost of sharing resources is doubled.   Two persons block the bathroom twice as often as one.  
2. Safe haven concerning life events.
   A person living alone is at the risk of becoming helpless, when sick or financially in trouble in the case of loosing a job.    This can cause anxiety and worries.   But one person is enough to alleviate the worries by supplying the feeling of security and being protected.   One partner in a dyad is enough to be able to care for someone sick or to share resources.  
   A third person is of no or little additional benefit.   
3. Supportive emotional safe haven
   When a person is in emotional need of another person's empathy, support or advice, usually one supportive partner is the best situation.  It requires a lot of trust, which is difficult to build with any one person.    Revealing the innermost feelings implies making oneself vulnerable to being taken advantage of, hurt or being damaged by indiscretions.  Overcoming inhibitions due to shame and embarrassment to ask for support is difficult with every person.  Getting support from one partner is of high benefits compared with the cost of the vulnerability risk and strain of overcoming inhibitions.   
   Sharing the troubles with a second person doubles the vulnerability, but does not add many benefits from support.    Having more than one person listening with empathy does not add much to the relief of being listened to by one.
4. Intellectual companionship.
   Being alone in a museum or other enjoyable cultural situation is often dreary, communicating about one's thoughts, impressions and experiences is joyful and rewarding.   But one person is enough to talk about the picture in a museum.  
   A second person may add a few more different ideas, but does not add much additional benefits to the communication of a dyad.
   
5. Man's physiological need for homeostasis
   When the experience of sexuality is controlled and modified by cognition as explained in entry 496, men's physiological need of homeostasis are as real as are the collateral emotional needs.  Most women and also those high quality men, whose sensitivity and bonding ability has not been destroyed, get emotionally attached and their attachment reinforced by physical intimacy. 
   Biologically, there are two genders, and maintaining homeostasis does not require a group or a third person, two partners are enough.  I doubt that even those in favor of polyamory and such would really choose to share a treble bed with two others snoring and tossing.     

The emotional importance of the exclusivity of the dyad.   

The viability and benefits of a dyad as a living arrangement depends upon the realistic expectation and trust, that the partner is reliable, predictable, responsible and bound by accepted obligations.   This depends upon the exclusivity of reciprocally fulfilling each other's relationship needs. 
Exclusivity does not automatically make a partner reliable and predictable, but the refusal of exclusivity prevents the possibility of being able to rely on someone in the case of need.  

Exclusivity is an emotional state of feeling bonded with and committed to one specific partner by a one time decision, which is the result of a careful cost and benefit analysis.    
Exclusivity is more than the repeated self-control as the result of a new cost and benefit calculation every time, whenever some external temptation triggers it.   
  

1. Material and practical. 
   Sharing the home requires the reliable expectation of a lasting commitment.   Financial entanglement of shared mortgages, shared rental agreements and no place to go lead to a person's dire situation, when the other's behavior destroys and betrays the trust.   Reliable agreements concerning the exclusivity of the relationship reduce the risks of such entanglements.
2. and 
3. The safe haven concerning life events and being emotionally supportive.
   All the benefits of feeling safe and secure and protected depend on the partner's reliability and predictability.    This means to be able to trust, that the partner is always available, when needed.   
   When a partner needs support in any emotional crisis or care in the case of sickness, an exclusive partner is available as a result of his exclusivity.  He has no need, reason or obligations to be somewhere else.  Nobody else is competing for his attention and care.   
   But when a polyamorous partner is part of several dyads, nobody can ever trust, that he is there when needed.   There is always the competition with someone else, who may have a stronger hold or influence over the partner.   A partner refusing exclusivity to the dyad cannot be relied upon, he is not predictable, he is not trustworthy.   He cannot be, even would he wish to, because he cannot clone himself and be present in two dyads at the same time.
    
4. Intellectual companionship.
   Only the intellectual companionship can be substituted by sharing activities with just friends having similar interests, so this does not require exclusivity.  But it requires at least the priority of sharing activities with the partner rather than with others, whenever this is the partner's wish and need.
     
5. Man's physiological need for homeostasis
   A dyad fulfilling the emotional needs of two persons does not automatically imply sexuality, if for whatever biological or medical reasons both partners have no such needs.  But since for most people except oversexed promiscuous jerks, sexuality is not completely void of emotional attachments, exclusivity of all sexuality to the dyad strengthens and protects the emotional bonding, while sexual entanglements with persons outside the dyad destroys or damages the trust and the reliability of having the dyad as a safe haven. 

I do not imply, that the preferred living arrangement of dyads by a cost and benefit analysis is conscious.   But this preference is an expression of the fact, that dyads are the best representation of the biological dichotomy and its cognitive and emotional perception.  

Monogamy in the traditional sense means the exclusivities of the heterosexual dyad.  Even the people, who are in full denial of the benefits of monogamy as the complete package of exclusivity of sexuality, emotional significance and living arrangements in the full commitment with only one person, are usually not preferring triads or group involvement.   Instead they want to be in more than one dyad.   They want the benefits of more than one dyad without the costs.  They are in denial, that they cannot be present and available all the time in more than one dyad and therefore not equal partners.  

Therefore, while monogamy may not be a part of the animal instincts of humans, especially not of promiscuous males, monogamy is the best way of fulfilling the emotional needs of humans as being determined by their cognition on a long term basis, when monogamy is redefined as the exclusivity of fulfilling all of a partner's relationship needs in a dyad of two committed persons of any gender.   .