620. Strangers And Risk Avoidance

620.   Strangers And Risk Avoidance

It can be very difficult to find the right middle between avoiding risks and avoiding to hurt others by unfounded prejudices and racism.

Generally speaking, every first contact with a complete stranger is a risk.    It is often difficult or not possible to correctly predict a stranger's behavior.  
 

Herman Melville's novel 'Typee' is an excellent illustration of the problem.   In this story, two sailors are running away from the mistreatment by the captain of their ship.   The place is an island in the Pacific, where cannibalism was at that time some tribes' known practice. 
When starving, the heroes of the story had to decide, which path to take towards finding those natives, who would most probably help without having them for dinner.   The had only hearsay to rely upon concerning the location of those tribes considered to be the least ferocious.   
When the two sailors finally did meet some natives, there was no common language.   They were guided to the natives' village wondering what to expect, whether there they would eat or be eaten.  
Later they found out to have indeed met the one tribe, which they had been fearing the most, cannibals in the habit of sometimes eating the captives of tribal wars.   But the two sailors survived without being feasted upon.  
While the narrator of the story was puzzled, for what reasons they were spared, I could think of one possible explanation being the tribe's own definition of who belongs to the ingroup and who is outgroup.   Maybe only bellicose tribes were defined as outgroups, while their guests were enclosed into the ingroup set of behavior.  


Belonging to an ingroup is often a choice, being treated as outgroup is not a choice.

The real risk of being harmed by a stranger requires to be able to protect oneself by appropriate preventive behavior, which in turn requires to estimate the magnitude and kind of the risk.   
 

Much of today's inappropriate racism and prejudices have their origin in the times, when people living in small tribes and groups in areas of low population density were born into their ingroups.  Every person not belonging to the same community was automatically outgroup.   People mutually having no doubt about who else is ingroup were not prone to make mistakes in judging risks.   

Today in the complexity and globalization of modern societies, people often cannot know, if at all and how strongly they are considered as outgroup by strangers.    They cannot even know, if they are recognized correctly as members of any group or only confounded with members of any especially hated or loathed outgroup.    

Eating outgroup members is certainly an extreme, but when outgroup members are beaten, exploited, stolen from, insulted, socially excluded, ridiculed, abused as prey (entry 619) it is nevertheless caused by the same instinct.   

On that Pacific island, the probability of someone being a cannibal was certainly high only in those, who were visibly natives, while it could be assumed that the Europeans were no cannibals.   But considering them as cannibals because they were racially natives is a fallacy.   It just happened to be a correlation between the foe eating culture having developed, where only the natives were living, while the culture of not eating humans had been brought there by the Europeans.  This fallacy of mistaking a correlation with a genetic predisposition has contributed to deriving absurd assumptions from external traits like the color of the skin.   Such anachronistic fallacy has lead to the irrational, stupid and sick racism disturbing even modern civilized countries with mixed populations like the USA. 

There are two possible mistakes with very different consequences.   

Someone underestimating the risk from strangers just perishes and cannot hand on the knowledge.  Nor would his absence of gullibility to prejudice become prevalent in the gene pool.   Had the sailors in the story been eaten, nobody would ever have heard of to take it as a warning.    

Someone overestimating probabilities or only imagining non-existing ones, perpetuates irrational and unrealistic prejudices and racism.  
The guy, who kills or avoids the strangers, can never find out, if he did this for good reasons or not.    Had the sailors in the story had weapons and had they killed the natives and survived by eating their food, they may have well told later without any doubt to have killed cannibals to prevent being eaten.   They would never have felt to have murdered and robbed people. 

Lacking any knowledge about a stranger as an individual, estimates of these probabilities are based upon pre-concepts, previous experiences and knowledge or hearsay about the group, tribe and society, to which the stranger belongs.   These pre-concepts can be more or less valid or completely invalid.   All pre-concepts, which are not suitable to predict real risks based upon real attitudes and evident behaviors, are a fallacy.  

Both of the above mentioned mistakes impede the correction of the pre-concepts and perpetuate the fallacies.  

To predict a stranger's behavior requires a lot of estimating and guessing.

1.  The probability of specific attitudes leading to, enabling or facilitating specific behaviors.
2.  The probability of the stranger's having such specific attitudes.  
2.1.  The direct probability of specific attitudes being expressed and indicated by attires and body modification.  
2.2.  The two combined probabilities of the membership in a specific ingroup indicating the presence of specific attitudes and of specific attires and body modification indicating the membership in a specific ingroup.
3.  The probability to be considered as outgroup in contrast with an ingroup, to which the stranger is so much affiliated, that outgroup members are prone to be harmed.

Estimating and guessing the invisible is difficult in complex societies.

1. Subjectively felt affiliations with specific ingroups are often by choice.   Shared attitudes and other invisible attributes can cause strong subjective affiliations, which are hidden from and not noticeable for ignorant strangers.    The members of ingroups sometimes know how to recognize each other, while the indicators for this recognition are unknown to the outgroup members.   
Religions, political parties, social associations or sports teams are examples.    Easily defined traditional ingroups as are ethnicities, villages or neighborhoods are not always automatically experienced as ingroups.

2. The stronger someone identifies with an ingroup, the stronger he is prone to feel hostility towards outgroups.    To every ingroup, there can be more than one outgroup, who for a variety of reasons do not all elicit the same amount of hostility.    



The line between either a drastic misjudgment of probabilities towards being merely too cautious or the irrational, stupid and gullible belief in claims with zero probability is delicate and often blurred.   
 

Being aware, that every interaction with strangers is bearing a risk is by itself not a prejudice. 
The real problem is the correct estimation of the particular risk and what harm to prevent.     Not every caution is a fallacy, only because it is denounced as prejudice or racism by those being themselves the hazard.   Both previous behavior and expressed attitudes in favor of specific behaviors are indicators of real risks.   

Examples of alleged prejudices justified by the probability of a real risk:

1.  Most prisoners are in jail as a consequence of having harmed individual persons, therefore it is statistically probable, that someone just released from jail is not trustworthy.   Not wanting him as an employee or tenant is not a prejudice but a rational avoidance of a risk.    Those few, who are reformed and will not repeat criminal harm, have brought it upon themselves.   

2. Religious people are morally guided by rules established by their religion.    The more someone feels compelled to consider the guide book of his religion as absolutely imperative to his conduct, the more he feels a good person by following the book, no matter what the victims of his behavior experience or say.   

There are many muslim men on French dating sites and chats.   Rejecting them for being muslims frequently leads to the accusation of being either a racist or prejudiced.   Letting aside my general rejection of men with any religious belief, muslim men are especially hazardous to women, who want a monogamous man without sharing him with other women.  

The islam does of not only allow but prescribe unlimited promiscuity to men.   The koran explicitly allows a man four wives and an unlimited number of concubines.    What a non-islamic woman considers and defines as cheating and as a transgression, is therefore normal and morally correct behavior for a male muslim guided by the koran.   

In the possible case, that a muslim restricts himself to only one woman, this is in contradiction to his religion.  It can be due to a lack of either a wish or an opportunity, or it is only temporary, but it is not a moral attitude of feeling any obligation towards a woman to be monogamous.   

The egalitarian attitude, that a woman is equal to a man, and being a muslim, are mutually exclusive.  Any muslim's claim to treat a woman as an equal cannot be trusted, unless he leaves the entire abusive religion behind and becomes an atheist.    Therefore a woman rejecting muslim men is not prejudiced, but acting wisely based upon the awareness of a real risk.    By accepting to be muslims, men bring the rejection by monogamous women upon themselves.     

384. Predictability And Pseudo-Compatibility

Predictability And Pseudo-Compatibility

A relationship as a safe haven needs to be reliable and predictable based upon the justifiable trust, that the other will not commit transgressions and will not do harm or hurtful things.   

Predictability means to be able to make a realistic prognosis of future behaviors by the estimation of probability.   In entry 95, I already mentioned the importance of calculating probabilities of the occurrence of behavior in the future.  In entry 173 I elaborated this by including the importance of considering the attitudes, which are causing or modifying behaviors.   

But the matter is even more complicated.  

Estimating the partner's future behavior implies:

1. It is important to listening to what he declares himself as his attitudes.  
2. His behavior needs to be compared with his expressed attitudes, if it is congruent or if there are contradictions.   Sometimes people are not aware of subconscious attitudes, that are nevertheless strong determinants of their behavior.   Subconscious attitudes can be incongruent with expressed attitudes, when the latter are superficially learned or imitated and not connected to innate tendencies.  Then behavior is congruent with the true hidden attitudes but contradictory to the expressed attitudes.       
3. Observable specific behaviors are indicators of attitudes, but attitudes determine usually a wider variety of correlated behaviors, that can be predicted only when knowing the attitude.
4. Observable proactive behavior allows to estimate probable future behavior.    The absence of proactive behavior is not as much a reliable source of information, because it is not the same as a decision to refrain from a behavior.  

I will use lying as an example.
 
If a woman catches her partner lying to her, she can predict, that he will lie again.   The more frequent his past lies, the more frequently he will lie in the future.  
His lying is a clear indication, that his attitude towards her is not suitable for treating her as a close and bonded partner deserving sincerity and honesty.   This faulty attitudes makes it probable to expect also other sly, manipulative, deceptive behaviors.   

But if the woman never catches her partner telling her a lie, this does not allow equally good predictions, because this by itself is not an indication of his general attitude towards her.   

Her lack of experiencing a lie from him can be due to

1. She did not catch him lying because of her unjustified trust.
2. He had so far no reason or occasion to lie but would otherwise not hesitate
3. He has a reason or attitude to actively refrain from lying. 
   
   These reasons are

• in his person  
  
  • He is someone, who always blurs out what he thinks, no matter to whom, even with unrelated persons, when it has detrimental consequences for him.
  • His self-esteem requires moral behavior and this includes special rules how to treat closely related persons, like not lying to them and not hurting them. 
• his attitude concerning her significance for him.   He values and appreciates her enough to enclose her in the ingroup of people, whom he honors with sincerity and honesty.   
• consideration of the consequences.  
  
  • He fears to be punished for lying by losing her
  • He wants to avoid the disapproval or other punishment by other significant persons like his family 
  • He fears being punished or wants to be rewarded by a deity due to some religious delusion.

Therefore not catching someone lying can either indicate true compatibility with someone, who is sincere and honest and who values her person in a relationship, or it can indicate pseudo-compatibility, when not having experienced someone's lying yet just does not allow predictions for the future.        

358. Interacting With Gullible People Is A Hazard For Rational People

Interacting With Gullible People Is A Hazard For Rational People

Whenever I am in contact with someone expressing the belief in irrational claims, my spontaneous emotional reaction is a strong feeling of repugnance and aversion.    For a long time I had been wondering, why I could not just shrug my shoulders in scorn and condescension for their ludicrous need of believing.    

Finally I understood:  I am very scared of gullible people, and for very good reasons.   More precisely I am scared of the harm, that they are driven to do to whoever gets in their way.   Their harmful behavior is programmed by their belief and there is no way of protecting myself except by avoiding them.  

Every personal contact with a gullible person creates the hazard of experiencing powerlessness and helplessness and of being harmed at any moment. 

In any situation, relationship or friendship, with someone significant enough to elicit emotions, I need reliable and logically predictable influence on how I am treated.    I need the influence to be able to stop someone from making me the target of hurting, unpleasant and discomforting behavior.   I need the influence to get my needs fulfilled in return, when reciprocity of fulfilling needs is in the nature of the relationship.   
My only available method to have such influence is rational communication, when the other is able to be convinced by good reasons, and when he is able to convince me in the case of a refusal by his comprehensibly better reasons.    

I am confident to protect myself successfully from harm in the interaction with rational people, who are guided by consequencity.   With gullible people, I have no influence, because they are controlled by the power of their belief, which deactivates their accessibility by reason.    

Gullible people do not feel guilty for any harm done as a result of their believes and they do not take responsibility for it.

• They know, that their behavior is experienced as harm, but they feel justified by the belief.
• They themselves do not consider as harm, what is experienced as such by the victim.
• They consider suffering harm as an obligation of the victim.

A gullible man's treatment of a woman can be determined by irrational and immune believes

• about himself and his entitlement
• about what is right or wrong
• about what methods are acceptable and valid to control the environment and other people
• about the person of the victim
• about the authority or charisma of a deity or third party guiding him

A few examples of harmful believes:

• A narcissist believes in his entitlement to get onesided benefits from a woman perceiving her as being a commodity for him.
• A muslim believes the koran to be an absolute moral authority.  He can never be faithful in a monogamous relationship, because his religion allows him 4 wives and an unlimited number of concubines.
• A man applies the pseudoscience NLP to manipulate a woman, believing that this gives him the control over her for as long as he wants her.   
• A man does not take a woman's word for serious, because he believes the urban legend, that women do not mean, what they say.
• A man forces a onesided decision upon a woman, which can be as bad as dumping her, because of a dream or of the advice of an astrologer, clairvoyant or any other quack.  
• A man in a relationship spends a lot of the couple's shared resources on expensive quackeries.
• An man does not understand a woman's behavior and reasoning and misinterprets this as her being stupid and flawed and believes in her inferiority without ever listening to her.  
• A man believes in the superiority of men and in his right to dominate and control women by methods like intimidation and coercion.
• A man feels protected by his deity and causes an accident by reckless behavior.  
• A man chooses a woman on a dating site by her zodiac.  The false belief in alleged compatibility causes a lot of  pain.   

All these examples are experiences of what a woman does better not expose herself to.  The only way to avoid such a risk is to reject all gullible man, that means, any man, who is guided, influence or determined by any belief.    The more often a man is caught with a lie, the more probable is the next lie.     If a man is gullible to harmless believes, then the harmfull believes are also probable.    

Gullible people are not reliable and not predictable for those, who do not share their believes.   

His own behavior makes perfect sense only to a gullible man himself, due to being in accordance with his belief.   For any person not only not sharing his belief, but considering it as irrational and absurd, his behavior makes no sense at all.   What makes no sense, cannot be predicted but is haphazard and random.  
A rational non-believing person can never know, what the gullible man will do the next moment out of the blue.  She can never be prepared for the next harm.  Therefore she can neither avoid the harm nor employ any preventive methods to mitigate the impact.    Being with a gullible man means the stress of walking on eggshells, of being on alert all the time.    

A gullible man is not reliable.   He can even have the intention to comply with agreements, covenants and promises, but as soon as the power of the belief overwhelms him, nothing is binding anymore. 

     
Only a man, whose behavior is guided by consequencity, can offer me a relationship as a safe haven, because his behavior is predictable and reliable.    I can entrust myself to such a man, when agreements are binding and not at peril by overpowering believes.

337. There Is No Safe Haven Without Reliability and Predictability

There Is No Safe Haven Without Reliability and Predictability

In entry 335, I explained the importance of avoiding the risk of being dumped by a wise choice of a compatible mindmate, who is able and motivated to commit to being bonded.  

Precluding dumping is one important step towards making a relationship predictable and reliable as a safe haven.

Fear, threat, insecurity, apprehension of being dumped are poison for a relationship.   To prevent this, it is of vital importance, that both partners explicitly accept the mutual obligation to first make efforts to solve their conflicts, no matter, how much stamina and strain is required, before they consider to end the relationship by consent.  The binding obligation to not dump under any circumstances has to be carved in stone for both partners.  Else there cannot be trust. 

If someone is either unable or unwilling to accept the no-dumping obligation, this is enough reason to abstain from getting involved.  
  
But this obligation is not to be misunderstood as a protection for a transgressor from the consequences.   Precluding proactive dumping does not prohibit an adequate reaction to a serious transgression.  Ending a relationship as a reaction to a dealbreaking transgression like cheating is not dumping.    Therefore the agreement being the precondition of getting involved has to include consensual definitions of what behaviors are transgressions.  I consider dumping as a transgression.  

The no-dumping obligation is also not a license for hurting and harmful behavior without taking responsibility as explained in entry 336.    If a partner causes harm irresponsibly, he is entitled to be given a fair chance, cooperation and support to change his behavior, but if he refuses, then ending a toxic relationship is also not dumping.    

Realistically seen, jerks cannot be impeded by any agreement from selfish, cruel and ruthless behavior.  
A jerk, who lures and tricks a woman to allow him the use of the body under the false pretense of committing, will also not hesitate to selfishly break any agreement by dumping a woman at his convenience. (entry 292)    
A jerk, who uses the explicit or obviously implicit threat of dumping as a method of extortion to secure himself a position of dominance and power does this, no matter what he had pretended to agree upon.  

Jerks need to be avoided by a wise choice of a compatible partner.    But a preventive no-dumping agreement can be very beneficial, when the fear of being dumped is caused by

• ignorance, unawareness, not knowing each other well enough
• misunderstandings, misinterpretations and an ambiguous situation
• lacking or deficient communication
• lack of any explicit clarification and consent concerning the status and kind of the relationship     
• desensitization as a result of mistakenly considering dumping as socially acceptable, because it happens too often
• bad experience of having been dumped before

The fear of being dumped has emotional and behavioral consequences, and their experience and expression are disruptive and destructive to both the individual wellbeing and the relationship.  

• stress, tension, helplessness
• being alert all the time without the ability to relax, walking on eggshells
• feeling compelled to censor and control verbal expressions and behavior
• denial and recoiling from solving conflicts
• grudging external submission to the will of the other
• serving the needs of the other but repressing the own needs 
• play a fake role
• dishonesty and insincerity
• hiding the own true feelings and true opinions

Such a situation cannot last.   Unsolved conflicts get worse.   Self-denial of all own needs leads to a breaking point, when the person cannot take more.   Nobody can hide the true personality forever, the final discovery of the fakery is much worse than if someone has been genuine from the beginning.  The person risks to get dumped and rejected as the fake person, while the hidden genuine person would have been accepted. 
Sometimes not only one, but both partners fear to be dumped and each is oblivious of the other having the same fear.

The consequences of the fear of being dumped can be experienced, even while there is no awareness for the reason or while they are attributed to other causes.  
The fear of being dumped can become so unbearable, that sometimes the afflicted find alleviation by dumping the other first to prevent being dumped.   This is especially tragic, if the other in reality had never even considered dumping.      

282. A Specimen of A Jerk

A Specimen of A Jerk

In entry 257, I wrote that I can offer to my mindmate a place to live, where the risk of natural catastrophes are very low.   I did not mention, that I am looking for someone, who either likes the idea to come and live here with me or someone to move together between two countries.    It means following my steps of carefully building commitment as described in entry 252.    But once the bond of commitment is physically sealed, it means to be and to stay together, no matter where.    Intrinsic commitment means a wish to share each other's life, and that means sharing time and activities.  

I was corresponding with someone, who is retired and free to go, where he wants to.   He wrote me this, and the capital letters are his own emphasis.       

"i would never go to any foreign country to live forever before i had spent at least a year going back and forth AT MY CONVENIENCE before i could make a committment to stay with you for the rest of my life."

I was speechless for a moment, when I read this.   First I thought: what a jerk!   But on second thought he seems more like an emotional moron, who is unaware, that a woman like me rejects such an impertinence and impudence.    A psychopath would intend such a scheme, but would attempt to manipulate the woman into bed by false promises of commitment.  

The man feels entitled to come and go at his convenience.    That means, that he does not want a woman to be together all the time, and it means, that he alone decides, when to be together and when not, excluding the woman from a decision, which has a heavy impact upon her.

This one statement tells the entire attitude of this jerk concerning the role of a woman in his life.   Even though he had pretended before to want a woman as an equal partner, his concept very clearly tells the contrary.    

1.  A woman is a commodity
This man considers a woman as a commodity, whose sole purpose in life is being there for him, when he wants her.   Like a commodity, an object, he wants to find her waiting for him in the locker, where he had stored her, whenever he wants to make use of her.    In the meantime, he may well chase other women or forget her over whatever else is more important than she.    But she has to remain available for him on demand.

2.  He does not value a woman as deserving a fair balance of giving and receiving
Once he has gained control over a woman as a commodity, he perceives and considers her as his property, that he can use without giving anything in return.    

3.  A woman has only an unimportant function in his life 
He chooses a woman for her body and maybe for getting supply, if he is a narcissist.   He does not choose her to have a companion, who is intellectually and emotionally attractive enough to share his every day life with her, to share activities and intellectual pursuits.    He does not honor a woman's brain as something beneficial for himself.

4.  He dominates the woman
He reserves the decision, when to be together, for himself alone, and he can enforce it by just leaving.   He does not accept to share decisions with a woman, he feels entitled to force his decisions upon her.  This is domination.    

5.  He degrades a woman
He wants a woman to allow him to use her body, but he does not consider it as correct to give her anything of value for her in return, he does not accept any obligations towards her.  He degrades her to be a friend with benefits.    He does not respect her dignity. 

6.  He is oblivious of a woman's own needs and emotions
A woman's own subjective perception and resulting emotions just do not exist for him.   He considers her availability for him as the purpose of her existence.   He is oblivious of her needs.   He is void of any consideration of how she experiences his attitude and treatment.   

7.  He supplies no safe haven for a woman
The man is not reliable and not predictable, coming and going at any time, which a woman can neither influence nor even know in advance.    She cannot trust him.  

Such a man is a nightmare.   The only good thing about this particular jerk is his honesty.   He has warned me with this huge red flag to keep away.    I prefer to be alone rather than to be with such a jerk, even though I am lonely and it is important for me to find my mindmate.   

173. Attitudes and Actions

Attitudes and Actions

Someone suggested to me, that I should judge a man only by his actions.   I strongly disagree.   It is very important to also consider the reasons for his previous actions or abstinence from certain actions to predict the probability of his future behavior.  

I need a relationship to be a safe haven.   The better I can calculate the probability of how a partner will behave in the future, the more I can trust a man, the more I feel safe, because he is reliable.   A man's past behavior alone is insufficient to predict his future behavior.  

In a simplified view, any behavior or abstinence of a behavior can be determined by four factors, that together form the motivation.

1.  Innate motivation:  A reason, that triggers or causes an impulse to do something
2.  Intrinsic motivation:  A filter of values and attitudes, that modify the impulse by either moral justification or lack thereof
3.  Extrinsic circumstantial motivation:  The lack of the possibility or occasion
4.  Extrinsic motivation:  The consideration of unwanted consequences

Example:   Alcohol
1.  By innate motivation, a man can either feel an urge to get drunk or not.
2.  By intrinsic motivation, someone feels an obligation either to others (2.2) or to his own self-esteem (2.1), not to get drunk and make a nuisance of himself.
3.  By extrinsic circumstantial motivation, he can be impeded by being somewhere, where alcohol is not available or by the lack of money to buy it.
4.  By extrinsic motivation, he may be in a situation like at work, where he would be punished for drinking.

Therefore, to predict, if someone will get drunk in the future or not, it is not enough to judge from having only known him sober in the past, but it needs also to consider the reasons for this.   


The same is also the case in predicting, if a man can be trusted to not commit transgressions.    Based upon the value of equality and of the appreciation of all humans as persons, pornography is a transgression, because it is an expression of the degradation of women to bodies as objects only serving a man's lowest animalistic instincts.  

Example:  Pornography
1.  By innate motivation, a real hypoanimalistic man is only attracted to a woman's body, when he also has emotional and intellectual intimacy with her personality.   He has no need, no wish, not desire, not urge to consume pornography.   He is interested in his partner and not in pictures of some unknown woman from the gutter.   Even when he is single, he wants a quality woman and not pictures of some female body from the gutter.
By innate motivation, a man with high instinctivity is driven to ruthlessly and automatically use any female body for his animalistic urges, it nothing else would stop him.  For such a man, consciously there is nothing wrong with pornography, he has most probably consumed it himself in the past, there can only be extrinsic motivation for abstinence from it during a relationship.  
2.1.  By intrinsic motivation:  A man, who respects women as equal humans by his basic attitude, consciously considers pornography as a very inhuman degradation of women to objects.   Having this attitude, as a single man, he would not sink as low as degrade women by looking at filthy and disgusting pictures, and as as man in a relationship, he would not cheat by looking at such pictures.     He does this for himself, for preserving his own self-esteem as a decent man, not just to temporarily please a woman.
2.2.  By externally caused intrinsic motivation, he has enough morals to feel bound by a promise, even though his has no intrinsic motivation to stay away from pornography.   As long as he feels obliged to the woman, his need to maintain his self-esteem by keeping a promise obliges him to stay away from pornography.    But as soon as there is any reason, that is good enough for him to not feel bound by the promise anymore, nothing holds him back from relapsing.
3.   By extrinsic circumstantial motivation, if a man in a village 100 years ago never consumed pornography, it may well have been just the lack of access or even his ignorance, that it existed.     Nobody can know, what he would have done with a computer connected to the web.  
4.   By extrinsic motivation, his reasons are purely instrumental and superficial.   He is scared to loose the woman or to get into conflicts.   That is a very weak motivation, as he has not restraint to consume it, when he is sure, that she will not find out. 


Therefore more generally, I can trust those, who have not innate reason for the transgressive behavior, and those who are restricted by their own intrinsic motivation.   I cannot really trust the others.    I can only trust someone, who shares my basic attitudes, therefore his intrinsic motivations impedes him to commit, what he and I agree as being a transgression.
It is obvious, that the man, who has his own personal intrinsic reasons to reject and avoid transgressions, can be trusted with less risk.    His reasons are a part of his personality, of his identity, those reasons are independent of the presence or absence of a relationship.   

Judging a man only by his actions would be a dangerous logical flaw.   What he has not done yet, or what she has not discovered yet, can still happen any day with some probability.  
While people can sometimes be judged by their good and moral actions, they can rarely be reliably judged by their abstinence of an action, as this may just be due to the lack of an occasion or opportunity.  
There are millions of actions, that millions of people have never done, not by a conscious decision, but just for the lack of an occasion.   There are probably millions of men, who never have cheated, only because fortunately for their wives, they just did not meet a woman willing to participate in the cheating.   Are they faithful or are they just impeded would-be-cheaters?  



All attempts to predict people's behavior in the future has not only to take into account their previous behavior, but also the real and true reasons for that behavior.    That is not an easy task.   I use a man's true attitudes and motivations as the basis of my predictions of his behavior in the future, as much as I am able to find out, what his true attitudes and motivations are compared with what he pretends or believes himself.  
Therefore I do judge a man mainly by the consistency of his actions with his expressed attitudes.   As an example, if a man is a member of the green party but wastes as much precious water on his lawn as do his redneck neighbors, then I ask myself, why he really has joined that party in spite of all absence of ecological concerns.    He is not consistent, so if I were to predict his behavior, I would need to first find out the real reasons for both behaviors, for joining the party and for wasting the water.  

To trust a man, I need to experience the consistency of his actions with his expressed attitudes and values.  
To trust, that a man really has the basic value, that a woman is equal and not just a body to use, it is not enough to experience his superficially correct equal behavior with me.   I also need to experience his consistency, that he really never accepts or even tolerates any behavior, that does degrade a woman, no matter, if it is promiscuity, pornography, polygyny in any form.   I can only trust the claim of equality from a man, who is consistent and intrinsically repulsed by any form of degradation of women
If a man claims to consider women as equals and yet considers nothing wrong with pornography and other forms of degradation, there is a logical inconsistency in it.    He may treat me temporarily as an equal being only by extrinsic motivation of the 2.2., 3. or 4. variety.   He certainly does not share my basic values.  

170. The Jerk's Pseudo-Compromising

The Jerk's Pseudo-Compromising

The main hazard for the victim of a jerk are his solitary decisions, that nobody can influence, that are favoring his selfish advantages and that he coerces upon others.    As absurd as it is, this includes even his lame attempts at compromising.   

Nobody is able to compromise without knowing the full facts about the other's position.   

Compromising can only be a fair middle between the needs and wishes of both, when both reciprocally know, what the other really wants.    This requires a lot of communicating, until both know it exactly, included all important information connected with the issue.    Compromising not only means a fair deal of needs, wishes, tastes, but also an agreement, that is rational, on how to best proceed in fulfilling the deal.    A compromise may be fair, but not viable, when for examples there are not enough resources or other practical obstacles.  

But a jerk does no communicate, he enforces his solitary decisions by his favorite method of intimidation by anger and rage.   Therefore even when a jerk attempts to compromise, it is bound to fail and to make things only worse for his partner.   His compromise is only a pseudo-compromise.    Because he does not compromise between what he wants and what she really wants, but between what he wants and his presumption of what he believes to be her wish or need.   He believes so much in the correctness of his presumption, that it does not even occur to him to verify it.   He enforces his solitary decision of what he believes to be a compromise between his wish and her alleged wish.  
Instead of discussing the issue, but being already angry for not getting his own will always and easily, this anger now serves to intimidate her to submit to the alleged compromise, which is as far from her real wish as is his own entitlement without his pseudo-compromise.  

That has detrimental consequences.  

1.  In her subjective experience, she is just once more coerced to something, that she does neither want nor agree with.    But he has not clue, that she does not agree with what he believes to be her wish.    He thinks, that her needs are met, while they are not. 

2.  When his decision of how to proceed to realize her alleged wish does not lead to the result, that he wants, then he now blames all unwanted consequences on her.   What allegedly was her idea conceded to her by his condescension, is perceived and defined by him as bad and stupid.   Therefore after the failure he has the delusion of having got evidence of her inferiority and her incompetence.  He feels reinforced in his entitlement to dominate.  

3.  In addition to this, he now also has the delusion to have done her the favor of compromising, for which he feels entitled to get repaid by her obligation for more compromising from her side. This adds to his entitlement delusion.

4.  Since a jerk does not communicate, when he forces a decision upon his partner, she can never know, if that decision is in his subjective perception his own needs by entitlement, a pseudo-compromise or even an attempt to please her.    That adds to her insecurity and her experiencing him as unpredictable.

160. Conscience as an Emotional Safety Net

Conscience as an Emotional Safety Net

Entry 158 was about the price to pay for a relationship.   There is more to it.

The price, someone is willing to pay to be in a relationship depends on how much value the relationship has in the subjective perception of that person.   This depends on the quality of the partner, how much personal needs and desires are fulfilled, and the scarcity or availability of a suitable partner.   

This has a short-term and a long-term variety.  

The short-term variety is just a deal between two persons in direct exchange of benefits, as already described for the hedonist.   He is willing to pay as little as possible and only for the purpose to get immediate satisfaction for his physical needs.  

While getting also short term benefits from a relationship is not altogether unimportant, the reason to pay a price for being part of a committed bonded couple is mainly calculated and evaluated long term.

In short, a hedonist decides the price of a relationship by the value of the immediate physical benefits and by the availability of a replacement.
A mature, bonding Epicurean decides the price of a relationship by the value of the person for his long-term goals and immaterial needs.  

Entering commitment implies for mature and decent people to accept, that some behaviors, that are perfectly correct for a single person, are hurting transgressions for partners in a relationships, and that they have mutual obligations, that single people are free from.   They agree, either implicitly or explicitly, what these behaviors are.   They consider the restrictions as the unavoidable price to pay for the benefits of being in a relationship.    If the price is too high, they do not get involved.   When they get involved, they have accepted getting good value for the price they accepted to pay.

When the couple gets involved based upon an agreement of the framework of their future relationship and on what behavior to expect and what behavior not to have to fear, they are not yet paying the price.    Entering commitment is like buying something on credit.   Each partner trusts that the other will pay when the occasion arrives.    Paying the price comes, when acting as bound by the agreement and fulfilling obligations is a sacrifice compared with what the partner would do, were he still single.  

There are two main factors determining, if someone will act as bound by agreements and obligations or not, they are intrinsic and extrinsic.  Both factors are ultimately rewarding good and punishing bad behavior.  
The extrinsic factors are the appreciation and evaluation of the partner on a long-term basis, considering all the previous experience together and extrapolating it into the future.   The reward for correct behavior is long-term happiness, the punishment for transgressions is loosing the relationship.
The intrinsic factor is the conscience, that requires moral, self-control, empathy, consideration, responsibility.  Correct behavior is rewarded by maintaining the own positive self-esteem as being a good person, while the punishment for transgressions are feelings of guilt, shame, contrition, remorse.   

Therefore, for a bonded, devoted couple, the extrinsic motivation of valuing each other usually is enough to fulfill obligations and agreements of commitment without hesitation, but the conscience is an additional safety net.   If ever there is a crisis bad enough to make one or both stop valuing the other, then the conscience requires to act decently, correctly and rationally.   But in the early phase of a relationship, when there is not yet a reliable bond, the conscience also has a very important function.    It helps avoid rush actions based upon misunderstandings and misinterpretations.   

That all means, that as long as a man acts bound by agreements and obligations without hesitation or complaint, the woman can usually interpret this, that all is well and that he values and appreciates her.    Were it different, would he only act by conscience, then the same conscience would also require from him to be sincere, tell her his reasons and initiate communication to solve the issues.   
As long as he honors agreements and obligations, she can feel safe, she can rely on what to expect and on what would never happen to her.    She can trust, that he will behave correctly not only based on the fear of loosing her, but also on his own urge to be a correct and decent person, who feels obliged to himself and to his moral self-esteem to honor all agreements.   

In entry 36, I already mentioned the importance of being guided by a conscience.    I just read the book by Robert Hare:  Without Conscience.    It is a lot of food for thoughts.
When entering commitment, it needs a careful assessment, if the other will pay the price, will honor all agreements without hesitation and without failing.