661. Comparing Disturbed Characters And Chimpanzees

661.  Comparing Disturbed Characters And Chimpanzees

I already mentioned George Simon before (entries 615, 618 and 629).  After having read his book 'In Sheep's Clothing' with unencumbered fascination, I just finished reading another of his books:  George Simon: Disturbed Characters.  

As far as he describes and analyses disturbed characters, it is also an excellent book.   But it seems that between the two books, he has relapsed into the grasp of religion.  He preaches submission under a god as an important ingredient of his suggested alternative to being a disturbed character.  This is annoying.  

I also disagree with his claim, that there is a free will, which gives people an option to either be a disturbed character or not.    

Two other books already mentioned are:
Martha Stout:  The Sociopath Next Door (entry 137)
Robert Hare:  Without Conscience (entry 160).         

All these books implicitly consider socially acceptable, considerate and responsible behavior as the baseline of what can be expected of all sane humans.   They have no answer, why and due to what reasons disturbed characters are deviant from such an baseline.

I doubt, that the qualities constituting this assumed baseline, are sufficiently frequent to justify this assumption.   With a realistic view at the amount of atrocities regularly forced by beings of the species homo sapiens upon suffering human victims, the ability to live by little or not harming others is only found in a minority.   Only they have the privilege of deserving to be called true humans.   Even they are not born like this but get there only after a long process of maturation and socialization. 

My explanation of disturbed characters is derived from looking at the power of instincts and at different levels of the evolution of cognition and rationality.

1. Human evolution as a process.  
 

Phase 1: 
There were early ancestors, who just like animals were automatically and fully driven by instinctive urges, which had evolved for optimizing procreation.  Due to lacking any mental capacities for comprehending the consequences of behavior, instinctive behaviors of animals are not at all impacted by any awareness for harming, hurting and suffering.  

Phase 2: 
The cognition started to evolve.   Rudimentary intelligence became a powerful tool supporting and serving instincts.   But instincts still continued to completely determine the entire behavior, including the overall goal of breeding.  
 

Phase 3:  
The unique human theory of mind evolved.   This capacity of anticipating or evaluating the effects of behavior upon others or upon the own person in the future with the additional help of a memory gives a unique option only to human.    The unique ability to act in defiance of instincts, to override momentary instinctive urges in favor of cognitively preferred alternative behavior is the decisive distinction between humans and animals.    This includes also the unique ability of humans to prefer and decide to not procreate as the result of a cognitive evaluation and perception of the own identity.    Only humans can be childfree by choice.   There are no childfree animals.  


2.  Chimpanzees

Chimpanzees and humans started to evolve separately about 6 million years ago.   Either the common ancestors had at this time already reached the threshold towards phase 2, or chimpanzees continued to evolve at a slower pace in the same direction as humans.   Today's chimpanzees are a good illustration of phase 2.  They show some amazing skills, which nevertheless always serve instinctive goals.  

In entry 648 I presented the chimpanzee Ayumu, who 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
 

While Ayumu's abilities are amazing, they yet are only isolated and not connected to any higher cognitive control.  He only does the task, because he is immediately after every run rewarded with a treat.   He cannot apply his talents for any abstract or generalized goal.  

Solving the elaborated and complex task on the screen is not different from the more simple achievement of other chimpanzees using tools to get food as is shown here. 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Cp7_In7f88
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EaEDeRJKN0s

But chimpanzees also kill and are aggressive.  
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/06/26/baby-chimpanzee-killed-at_n_1629318.html

They are even cannibals
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uU1zUzXkTtw

Other amazing skills and behaviors have also been observed in chimpanzees, but they have never reached any ability as found in humans in phase 3.  Ultimately the chimpanzees are completely determined by instincts, and all their amazing capacities only support these instincts.    No cognition has evolved, which would enable them to act in defiance to instincts by consideration or empathy.


3.  The evolutionary level of disturbed characters

I think that the human evolution is in a state of transition.   The evolution of instincts has been established millions of years ago, while the cognitive evolution is still continuing.   I see the determination of the behavior as distributed along a bell curve between phase 2 animals at one end and phase 3 humans at the other.   The majority of people are somewhere in the middle.  They are acting by the combined impact of both subconscious instinctive urges and some cognitive control. 
 

Whenever persons, mostly men, commit atrocities of any kind like murdering, torturing, raping, cannibalism, slavery, they seem puzzling, when compared with what is required and expected from humans.   But if they were instead compared with animals, they would appear as healthy and sane chimpanzees. 

I consider severely character disturbed persons, including those labeled psychopaths and sociopaths, as beings, whose cognitive evolution has relapsed, failed or is delayed and retarded.    In spite of belonging genetically to the species homo sapiens, they are not less animals than are the chimpanzees.   Their cognition only suffices to serve their instincts and to enhance their being a hazard.  But their cognition is insignificant as a determinant of personal goals.    

Chimpanzees use skills to acquire food.  Disturbed characters have a more advanced cognitive knowledge about other human and their behavior, but they use this knowledge also only as a tool.   They succeed to get more than food, they also abuse woman, gain power or pursue other instinctive and selfish goals.   While chimpanzees just lack rationality, these disturbed characters are instead determined not only by instincts but also by irrational beliefs, which serve to excuse and allegedly justify the consequences of instinctive behavior.  

It is a very sad and unfortunate reality, that the survival of the human species depends on the worst and most devastating forces in people, their instincts.   
While the extreme disturbed characters are a hazardous minority, the same instincts are virulent to a lesser degree also in the subconscious mind of the majority of the non or less disturbed people.   This lesser degree of the impact of the same instincts leads to an unfortunate bias towards too much tolerance for and condoning of harming others.  Many damaging behaviors are thus considered as still in the scope of normality, in spite of the extreme suffering of the victims,   Their suffering is not recognized as an outrage, but as unavoidable collateral damage.   


4. Distinguishing animals from humans

It is an unfortunate fallacy, that the distinction between humans and animals has always been only drawn along the genetic borders between species. 

 
In the christian tradition, humans are believed to be special, because a god allegedly created them to be so, and thus, there is a thinking taboo to reconsider and recognize anyone as an animal, no matter how much he behaves as one. 
In recent times, some people are debating, if there is really any decisive distinction at all. 

But to my knowledge, nobody has ever suggested, that the quality of being human, let alone of being more or less human, is an individual trait of the level of the individual cognitive evolution..
   
I claim:  To be considered as human requires more than the genes of homo sapiens, it also requires sufficient cognitive control over the instincts.  

This has far reaching implications.  

The concept of a general human dignity and basic human rights can rationally only be valid for humans, it is a fallacy to automatically attribute and assign it to all members of the species homo sapiens.   When someone acts like an animal, he should be treated as one.   An animal with the liberty only suitable for humans is too much of a hazard.    

The home of chimpanzees is in the wild, but in the zoo or lab, they are for good reasons kept in cages.  
http://www.ippl.org/gibbon/a-tragedy-in-eden/

If extremely disturbed characters would be recognized as animals lacking the basic human capacity of cognitive control, then this could lead to realistic methods of dealing with them.  Once disturbed characters have done serious harm, they should be recognized as animals and treated the same as dangerous chimpanzees.   The need to be protected against becoming a victim is independent of the species of the animals, which are dangerous predators.

The innate predisposition for instinctive or cognitive determination is not carved in stone, but malleable by education and social influences.    Socialization can enhance the cognitive control over instincts, when there is something to enhance.   When there is no rationality and cognition as a constituent personality trait, then no upbringing can convert an animal into a human, no matter the genetic species.   

All children start as instinct driven beings, they need socialization to develop the capacity to use cognitive control, when this talent is innate.    
When a chimpanzee is raised like a child, as in the tragic case of Moe, this does not stop him from biting off someone's finger.  
(http://www.theflamingvegan.com/view-post/Chimpanzees-as-Pets-When-Something-Goes-Wrong).  
I doubt, that a completely instinct determined disturbed character could ever become more human than Moe, no matter the quality of education.   Such a child may not bite off fingers, but bully other kids instead, before committing worse atrocities as an adult.    

Any person is entitled to be given the benefit of the doubt to be human, until he behaves like an animal and thus demonstrates, that he is an animal.   Committing atrocities as an animal forfeits the privileges reserved to humans.  Treating and considering an animal nevertheless as if he were human is an unjustifiable slap into the face to his victim(s).  


4.  The brain

Brains scans have shown differences between the brains of psychopaths and those of non-psychopaths.  

"So, once again there’s some convincing evidence that the brains of psychopaths not only work very differently from those of non-psychopathic individuals, but also may even be ‘wired’ differently than most human brains."
http://counsellingresource.com/features/2013/05/06/abnormal-brain-psychopaths/

I wonder, what would be discovered, if the brains of psychopaths were compared with the brains of chimpanzees.

565. And What About The Next Victim?

565.  And What About The Next Victim?

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

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

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

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

  

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

390. The Emotional Anhedonia Of Jerks

The Emotional Anhedonia Of Jerks

This continues entry 389, where I defined hedonists as persons, whose pleasure center is more or less insensitive and imperceptive to emotional and non-physical stimulation.   
One of the emotions, that hedonists are deprived of, is feeling affection.  Affection is the stimulation of the pleasure center by the mere inactive presence of a significant and valued other person, even while this person does nothing beneficial and is at this moment not physically stimulating to the pleasure center.  
Affection between a couple logically leads to the wish to be together, because this causes good feelings.    Affection is an important part of caring love, affection causes a couple to feel bonded and to enhance this feeling reciprocally.   

Commitment means to be bound by certain obligations like sharing decisions and being reliably and predictable there for the other.   Affection causes a partner to be bound by intrinsic commitment.   When feeling intrinsic commitment like affection as a positive stimulation for the pleasure center, then what otherwise would be defined as even burdensome obligations, is instead experienced as a natural own wish to express love, care and affection.  


As long as I made the mistake of projecting on men my own innate reaction, that getting physically involved automatically creates affection, bonding and commitment, I have been puzzled, why and how it is possible, that so many men are jerks, who ruthlessly use a woman as a commodity without feeling guilty.   

By now I have come to the conclusion, that the core problem is their inability to feel affection for a partner.   What I called bonding disability before, it is the lack of feeling connected by affection, in spite of getting sporadic or recurrent benefits in the form of physical pleasure from her.    While affection motivates a couple to care reciprocally for their emotional and physical wellbeing, without affection there is onesided exploitation and abuse.    

Unfortunately for the woman, in the beginning of a relationship, before both partners know each other well enough, the behavior of a man driven by strong sexual dishomeostasis to gain access to the woman's body shows behaviors, that are easily confounded with affection.     Once he has succeeded and is in a state of temporary homeostasis, the truth becomes obvious.    The bonded man continues to express affection, the man in control over a source of benefits seizes the behaviors, that had appeared as affection, because he has reached his goal.  

Anhedonia is described as a symptom of several clinical disorders, when there is a general insensitivity to feeling pleasure in spite of the presence of stimuli.   But I did not find any information about any form of innate anhedonia as a personality trait, which is only partial and limited to non-physical stimulation.    So this is my speculation:  There exists an innate emotional anhedonia, which includes an inability to feed affection, and which as a consequence makes instinct driven men use women's bodies without commitment.   

Emotional anhedonia deprives hedonists of the ability to experience affection both as a motivation for the own behavior and also when expressed by the partner.    This does not only cause the hedonist to perceive a woman as a commodity, it also deprives the hedonist from the major information input about what to expect concerning the partner's motivation to remain with him.   The hedonist cannot calculate the probability of her staying with him by the information from her expression of love and affection, because he is mindblind to perceive them as such.    

Therefore unfortunately for the woman, the hedonist, who gets benefits from her as from a commodity, knows only one method to ascertain her future availability.   This method is  domination by power and control over her. 


Hedonists are not automatically jerks.   As long as hedonists are aware of their limitations, they can choose fellow hedonists as partners.    Hedonists can be realistic and rational and accept the principle of earning and of a fair balance of giving and receiving.    A hedonist can agree upon extrinsic commitment.   He can get from a woman all the physical pleasure that his infatuation enables him to perceive, and he can decide to give her in return, whatever she asks as a fair deal.  

But when a hedonist gains domination and control over an epicurean victim, who does not get, what she needs and wants, then he becomes a jerk and a hazard for her.   Therefore jerks are hedonists with a victim.   

There are variations of the dynamics, why a woman perceives a hedonist as a jerk due to his treatment of her. 

1. The emotional moron is simply oblivious that she suffers from the restricted and humiliating role in his life, because he projects and believes to give her the same as he wants and gets.    In the latency times between the homeostations of his needs, the woman is of no interest to him.   He calls it his personal space and is willing to allow her the same.    He is not aware that her affection for him causes her the wish to share more than he wants.
2. The psychopath knows, that she suffers from the restricted and humiliating role in his life, but he has not conscience and is as unable to feel guilty as he is to feel affection.
3. The narcissist also feels no affection for her and considers her as a commodity for his physical needs.    But he also feels a primitive non-physical dishomeostasis in his need of narcissistic supply.   When he does notice her behaviors meant to express love, care and affection, he misinterprets it as her agreement with his entitlement and grandiosity delusion.   But when her expressions of appreciation and her caring acts for his wellbeing are not received with responsiveness and reciprocity, but mistaken as fulfilling her purpose, duty and due to him, this causes her also to be a suffering victim.    When this destroys her affection and her motivation to express it, he considers her as flawed.     The narcissist wants more benefits from the woman than the psychopath and emotional moron, but it is also humiliating her by only using her as a commodity.        

In previous entries I had already speculated, that maybe those men, who in our times appear immature, selfish, cruel and irresponsible are just genetic relapses to earlier stages of evolution.   This can also include the relapse back to when affection and monogamy had not yet evolved, when men procreated purely by physical infatuation with the body of a woman.    Epicureans have a brain evolved for abstract cognitions, abstract emotions, non-physical pleasures and the joy of being bonded by affection and are therefore the farthest advanced in the evolution towards the ability to strive for individual subjective wellbeing.    Hedonists were and are still so much driven by instincts and dishomeostasis, that while they were very successful in multiplying the human species, the price for this was paid by the suffering of the women, who were used predominantly as breeding bodies.     

308. Control Freak or Dominator

Control Freak or Dominator

Domination is abomination.  I have already written several blog entries about how devastating it is for a woman to be dominated.   Domination over a woman can have many reasons.  

1. It can be an expression of the hierarchy instinct, a man is sometimes misguided to establish a hierarchy in his private life, when he had to struggle in competition to earn his living.    
2. Over centuries in western societies and in many societies it is still like this today, that women on average had and have less access to get an education appropriate to their intelligence.   Men dominated and dominate over women, who having been deprived of developing their real intellectual potential. 
3. Domination over a woman can also be the misguided consequence of having grown up under feudalism as a member of the ruling class being so used to be served on command.  A man takes his entitlement to dominate over everybody including a woman for granted.  

Dominators, who are no Control Freaks, can be quite content with their own life.  They dominate by a distortion of their thinking and judgement only.  Petruccio in 'The Taming Of The Shrew' (entries 301 and 302) is an example of a jerk, who just takes his entitlement for granted.    In spite of the ludicrous ending of the play, it could have ended very differently, if he would have matured to learn, that Kathrina is an intelligent and educated partner, who could enhance his life much more as an equal partner than under domination.   
Mark Twain's 'The Prince And The Pauper' is an example from literature, how someone can discover, that there are alternatives to dominate.    

Such dominators dominate, as long as they get rewarded by benefits from domination, but they are able to give it up, should equality become more beneficial.

Control Freaks as already described in entry 307 are a subform of dominators, who are driven to alleviate their pathological fears and anxieties by control over people, including the women in their life.   Control Freaks are very unhappy people, who have succeeded in using domination as a method to reduce their own suffering by making others suffer as their proxy and scape goats.    Control Freaks dominate as a consequence of emotional problems, that are often enhanced by the delusion of being entitled to do so.    Control Freaks are driven to dominate by an urge to reduce their own suffering and they do not experience having any choice to give up control.

This is a good description of Control Freaks:
http://home.comcast.net/~pobrien48/Control_freaks.htm

There are several scenarios of control freaks, depending on the severity of the morbidity or co-morbidity.

1. The basic factors are a combination of pathological fears, anxiety, paranoia and worries, in combination with an inability to trust.  The Control Freak has never trusted anybody in his life.   Therefore even forcing himself to try behaving as if trusting is not an option for him.    He has as little imagination of trusting as has a person born blind of colors. 
   If someone with anxiety issues were able to trust, a loving and caring partner could support him to live with his troubles without harming her. 
   But when there is no trust, then the control freak is caught in the trap of his morbidity.   Without trust, he can never let go of his control and attempts to control, so he can never make the experience of what would happen without control.   He is deprived of ever making the experience, that without control, he would get just as much of a fair deal by consideration and compassion, as he gets by coercion.   He makes the woman's life miserable and gains nothing by this except a reduction of his fears. 
   
   In this scenario, he keeps the woman at bay as a friend with benefits, with whom he limits his interaction to his own convenience.
   
2. If the Control Freak is additionally afflicted with selfishness and the delusion of being entitled to get more than he gives, then controlling serves a dual purpose.   Not only does it reduce his fears, but it is also a cruel but logical method to usurp his selfish wants and needs, that he would not get otherwise.   In this case, he uses rage, intimidation and other means of extortion to get advantages and benefits.   The relationship is a power struggle between his selfish greed and her attempts to get a fair deal and to protect herself.    She is exploited, but as someone taken for serious, a respected enemy in the war for resources. 
   
   In this scenario, he expects the woman to have the role of a mother with benefits.  The mother gives all her unconditional love to a child, but the child does not give anything back to her.  
   
3. Another scenarios is the control freak, who is also a narcissist.   He adds a grandiosity delusion to anxiety, distrust and entitlement to selfish advantages.    That means, he adds disrespect and depreciation to the pain of being dominated.   He considers her as faulty and inferior, as someone, who should be grateful to be allowed to be under his control.    He believes himself to be a good person by doing what he does, because in his delusion, his behavior is what he perceives as correct by his birthright, while her inferior role is her purpose in life.   Being aware, that she has some needs, he cares for her only by giving her, what he believes that she needs.    This believe is a combination of projections of his own needs and of what he has gathered from hearsay as how women should allegedly be treated.   It does not even occur to him to consider direct information to be obtained from her concerning her real needs.  
   
   In this scenario, the woman is like a well cared for pet with benefits.   Just like a pet owner, he may consult with other women owners about how to care for the women, but he does not ask the woman herself.    Had he no physical needs, he would choose a pet, where control is easier and socially more acceptible.    Instead he gets the benefits in bed, but controls her just like the pet, that he would prefer.
   
4. In a variety of scenario 3, the woman is not a pet with benefits, that is taken and treated as a being with innate limits.    He takes on the role of a father, whose task is to improve his daughter with benefits and to fix her.   He believes that he is doing this as a favor to her.     The power to modify her to better serve his convenience is an even more rewarding form of control than just forcing her to do, what he wants.   So his believe to be able to fix her is especially effective in reducing his fears.      
    
5. In a more extreme variety of scenario 3, he is a not only a narcissistic control freak, but also an emotional moron.   He confounds caring for her with the maintenance of a commodity and utility, as if her body needs to be maintained to function similarly to the maintenance of a robot. 
   
   In this scenario, the woman is a painstakingly maintained robot with benefits. 
   
6. The worst scenario is the narcissistic control freak, who is psychopathic.   He has no conscience, and he knows exactly, that all the atrocities done by him to the woman are hurting her, and are not, what other people consider correct and moral behavior.    He commits transgression knowingly, but he is just not bothered or concerned.   
   
   In this scenario, a woman is a utility with benefits, used and then thrown away, not considered worth neither care nor maintenance.     

Control Freaks of all subtypes are the most devastating dominators.    I am willing to be a supportive partner to anybody, who has problems and entrusts himself to my support.   But without trust, a relationship is doomed to become toxic.  

304. Emotional Morons and the Evolution of Cognition

Emotional Morons and the Evolution of Cognition
I think that humans are like cars, where the accelerator and the brake are both pressed and the speed depends on the relative force used on both.   The accelerator are the instincts for individual survival and for the survival of the species by breeding, the brake is the power of cognition counteracting and controlling the innate urges.   The steering wheel is handled by culture and social influences.

Depending on individual differences, some people are more driven by instincts, like the breeders and hedonists, who become unpleasant any time for no more reason than that they are hungry and do not get food immediately.   There are the childfree and the epicureans, who can get absorbed with intellectual and social joys and do not even notice, when they are hungry.
 

Survival on the instinctive level does not require cognition, as long as a species survives in any habitat, where there are sufficient resources for the instinctive survival behaviors.   That means, that by instinct, humans at any time during evolution could survive in appropriate surroundings independent of how far cognition had already developed.   

This leads me to the idea, that maybe the intellectual, emotional and social development  during childhood is a representation of human development during evolution.   Due to the shorter life expectancy I will compare the level of maturity and intellectual achievements at the age of 25 and not the wisdom some people acquire at old age. 

Studies of chimpanzees, bonobos, gorillas comparing their social behavior, tool use etc sometimes compare them to have as adults roughly the mental age of a very young human child.   The evolutionary split between the apes and homo sapiens has taken place several million years back.   So maybe one million years ago, 25 year old adults of our ancestors could have reached the mental age of a child today of any age below ten.   Maybe 500.000 years ago 25 year olds reached a mental age of an adolescent of today.   Today in our complex society, a child of that age is helpless and unable to survive by itself.   But in an adult body in those past times, the instincts guarantied survival, and the mental development was enhancing survival but not a necessity.   

To speculate even more, I am wondering, if persons, who in our epoch remain immature or retarded in adulthood are maybe genetic relapses to an earlier phase of evolution.    Maybe someone, who today appears as an emotional moron would have been a very average and fully adapted and successful caveman 100.000 years ago.   Maybe in those days all humans were selfcentered, considered others as commodities, had not yet developed full empathy, abstract morals and emotions or a conscience and were guided by punishment and reward.    Maybe even psychopaths are just cavemen living in the wrong time.   

301. Literature: The Prototype of the Jerk - 1

Literature: The Prototype of the Jerk - 1
Often, while things are bad enough in real life, literature tops it with even worse examples.    I lately watched Shakespeare's play 'The Taming Of The Shrew'.    Years ago I have seen in a theater, and all I remember is the anger, that I felt.
Now I happened to find two versions of it, both obviously using the original text, but the adaptation and acting was quite different, so was the selection of the text used.   

1.  There is a very well made animated version made by the BBC, it is a cartoon appearing as if played by puppets.   
It is the sad story of a woman, Kathrina, who gets so much under a psychopath's ruthless power, that she not only is helpless under his domination, but her entire personality gets so much crippled, that she not only submits externally to her inferior role, but finally accepts it as appropriate for her.    
This is even worse than the Stockholm Syndrome and the Jerk Attachment Syndrome in entry 268.    In both syndromes, the victims gets in a paradox way attached to a jerk or a captor, but their sanity is at least as far preserved, that they are still aware, that they are the victims of an outrage.    Poor Kathrina in the play is in the end so brainwashed and mentally deformed, that she believes herself, that what had been done to her was to her own best.   She has not only been broken, but made believe to have been improved.    She is not herself any more.

The play was written more than 400 years ago, and set in a social situation, where the unlucky Kathrina had no chance to have any independent existence.    Not only her happiness and her subjective wellbeing, but her survival depended first on her father and then on the mercy of a husband.    Her father is a cruel brute, who merciless marries her off without even considering her consent.   His cruel decision to forbid the marriage of his younger daughter before Kathrina having been married has also divided and estranged the sisters.   Her sister wants her sacrifice for selfish reasons.    Kathrina is alone and has nobody to trust and to support her.   

The father marries her to a psychopath, who only wants the father's money and is not interested in Kathrina as a person.   She is a body for Petruccio, a commodity, an object to be used and abused at his convenience.  He values her not more than he values a dog or a horse, whose will he considers needs to broken.    Kathrina is not more than a piece of degraded and devalued merchandise traded between her father and Petruccio.   

Insensitive people think that this play is a comedy.   But even though it is superficially funny, in reality it is the tragedy of a broken destroyed life of a woman, who looses her dignity and ends as a  paradoxically happy doormat.    Maybe that was her only way of surviving the trauma of being married against her will to a psychopath.   She was married for life, in catholic Italy in those days, there was no way out for a woman from her plight, except maybe to escape to a convent.   

2.   Then I saw the movie from 1967 with Elizabeth Taylor.   That movie is unfortunately rather inconsistent.   In the beginning, Kathrina is presented as a weird and uncontrolled fury, who would even today be brought into therapy for anger management or even some more severe diagnosis.  
From the moment of the marriage on, she has become the unhappy intelligent woman with an independent spirit under the brutal domination of a jerk, similar to the other version.   Petruccio is presented a bit less cruel but still a dire fate for Kathrina, who seems to try to play the role of the pseudo-docile wife, as she is at the mercy of this psychopath and avoids anything, that would provoke more atrocities upon her.  
But the end does not fit, because the brainwashing into a deliberate doormat comes too abrupt and too sudden, and it is not clear, what caused it.   


No matter the divergent interpretations of the two versions, the play is psychologically dangerous, because emotional morons, jerks and other immature men are encouraged to become abusive.    The gist of the play is the message, that abuse succeeds.
The play feeds their dangerous delusion, that it is not only possible and acceptable to cruelly abuse a woman until she is broken and does not resist anymore to the life of a commodity, but even worse, that the woman in the end would be happy as a doormat.    If they get wrong ideas, that abuse is justified by the final acceptance of the victims, this encourages them to become abusers to real women.

Also interestingly enough, Kathrina is presented as if nobody would want to marry her.   The question, if maybe her father had caused an early death to his wife by his cruel treatment, and that Kathrina was justified in preferring not to marry to avoid the sad fate of her mother.   The play implicitly insinuates, that it is always beneficial for a woman to be married, even to a psychopath or a cruel jerk.   

After having written this far, I googled and found out, that there are quite a lot of other people also calling Petruccio a psychopath and an abuser and also explaining Kathrina's incomprehensible downfall as the Stockholm Syndrome.  As far as I have understood, these interpretations were based upon the text by Shakespeare, not upon any enacted interpretations.   Once again, I had my own ideas about the play, but they were too obvious to be original, others had them before me.      

294. The Effect of Bullying upon Love

The Effect of Bullying upon Love

When a man wants a woman to do something for him, no matter what it is, he has the choice between two principally different strategies.

1. He bullies her to do it using pressure, threat, anger, extortion or intimidation.
2. He treats her so well, that she cares and loves him enough to do it by her own good will.

The starting point for both strategies is the relationship deal, in which they have agreed to fulfill each other's needs.   

When the man's focus is selfish, then he chooses the first strategy.  His priority is to ascertain, that he gets his needs met by applying whatever power he has, be it physical strength, situational or financial advantage.   As far as he does give something back to the woman, he restricts it to just as little as he believes is enough to make her function.  

When the man's focus is based upon trust and appreciation, then he chooses the second strategy.   He makes efforts to earn the woman's love and care, he gives first, because he trusts her, that the more he gives, the more he will get in return.    With this strategy, love, attachment, bonding grows stronger over time.


Of course, no woman would consciously decide to become a selfish man's commodity, if she would notice, that this is his goal, before it is too late.   But there are reasons, why a woman can temporarily be in a relationship, where she is bullied.   

1. The man fulfills the woman's needs in one aspect, like sharing activities of traveling and attending cultural events.  His bullying does not drive her away immediately, because she attempts to put up with it, as long as her resilience lasts.
2. The man starts like a nice man as described in entry 285 about the abuse-hoovering cycle.   He only converts into the bullying guy after she had already fallen in love with the apparently kind and caring man.
3. She has become afflicted with the jerk attachment syndrome as describe in entry 268.

So there is the situation, that a woman by mistake loves an unworthy man, who bullies her.   She can rationally come to the conclusion, that he is unworthy, she could even take the decision to end the relationship in spite of her fatal love.  But she cannot just decide to stop loving him as a consequence of her insight, that he does not deserve her love.   

Fortunately for her, he himself helps her to get out of the trap, and he is often oblivious of this.   Every time, when he hurts her, and it is not accidentally but by his choice of selfish behavior, the pain she feels decreases her love.    Being bullied to be a commodity is a powerful love killer and when she is cured of her misplaced love, she is free to end the relationship and feel relief.   

A woman can go through this experience either with a jerk and psychopath or with an emotional moron.    But there is one huge difference.  
The jerk knows, that he can bully a woman to serve as a commodity only for a limited time.    After that time, he has to move on and find another victim and he has no conscience to stop him.   The jerk is not bothered, what the woman thinks or feels, as long as he gets, what he wants.   
The emotional moron has no clue, what is going on.   As long as the woman does, what he wants, everything seems ok for him.    He is oblivious of the difference between a woman acting by her own benevolent choice or by intimidation, and he has no clue, that his bullying is a love killer.      His own behavior could even shock him, were he able to get aware of the woman's real agony.  
The emotional moron is misguided by a logical error.   He believes that when the woman yields to his bullying and does or allows without resistance, what he wants, she has automatically changed her mind to agree with his entitlement delusion. He believes, that he is able to coerce her to think, what he wants her to think.   He does not consider his behavior as bullying, but as doing her a favor against her resistance.  He believes to improve her cognition and to teach her her appropriate role in his life.   He has not perception, that she feels hurt by being bullied and dominated.    

292. Poofing and Dumping

Poofing and Dumping

Once I was contacted on a dating site by a German, who had emigrated to some far away country as a young man and was considering returning to Germany.    I exchanged a few emails with him.   I got suspicious that he may be a new 'reincarnation' of someone else under a different name, whom I had been in contact with.  Therefore I googled my new contact, I will call him C.    I found a touching appeal of a distressed woman, asking if anybody has any information about a man with the name of C.   

I talked with the woman on the phone.  She told me the story.   C. had been staying with her for a few weeks.   When he left to return to his home, he disappeared into thin air at the place of a stopover.    She never heard from him again.   She wrote him emails, tried to call his land line and his cell phone, wrote him SMS, but he never replied.    She was so worried, that some accident could have happened, that she even contacted the embassies.   
We compared notes and she had no doubt, that my new contact was her C.    At that time I shared her impression, that he was an extreme but rare case of a jerk.  By now I have got aware, that such jerks are unfortunately by far not as rare. The behavior has even a name, it is called poofing and others have told their stories on dating forums.
  
Dumping is principally similar to poofing, but at least the jerk spares the woman to worry about him, as he declares to her in some short but unambiguous way, that he has no intention to continue the relationship.   He prefers email, SMS or maybe the phone, but usually does not bother to have a personal talk about his reasons.  He decides to dump, and the dumped woman has no influence upon his decision. 
As long as the contact is platonic, I do not call it dumping.  While two persons are still attempting to find out, if they are compatible enough, each has still the moral right to decide not to enter a relationship.   But as soon as they are intimately involved, ending a relationship, that both had agreed to enter, by dumping is cruel, brutal, and a very serious moral transgression.   

I consider poofing and dumping as the logical consequence of the spreading of the emotional plague of promiscuity as a socially accepted behavior and a social norm in modern western cultures.    (More about this in entry 104, Promiscuity is Emotional Psychopathy and entry 101, Promiscuity is a Scourge of Humanity.)  
Men have always been afflicted by an instinctive urge to promiscuously use women's bodies.   But as long as monogamy was considered the social norm and the only morally acceptable way to maintain sexual homeostasis, men usually had at least the theoretical knowledge, that using a woman's body without commitment is doing emotional harm to her.  
Since the fatal so called sexual liberation, unfortunately that knowledge has been widely lost.    Today even men, who want to be good, caring and responsible men, have the fatal delusion, that if they use a woman's body for a night without being personally affected and forgetting her the next day, the woman experiences it the same way.  They are oblivious of the harm done.  This delusion causes serious damage to women, poofing and dumping is part of it.  

Poofing and dumping men are either ignorant or unconcerned by a lack of any conscience, that when a decent and sensitive woman allows them the intimacy of her body, she entrusts her dignity to him, she trusts him, that she is valued as a bonded partner and not degraded to be used only as a body and a commodity.   She trusts, that by taking possession of her body, he accepts his obligations and responsibility.   

1.  As long as they are not physically involved, he is responsible to be guided by the usual rules of correct behavior between true friends.   But by getting intimately involved, he is responsible for not hurting her dignity and her feelings.   He is responsible for every pain she suffers as a result of being with him, if he uses, devalues, degrades her to be a commodity at his convenience and not an equal partner in intrinsic commitment.    He is responsible not only for what he does deliberately, but also for what he does accidently.    He is responsible for everything experienced by her as a result of becoming intimate.    A decent and mature man, who does not want this responsibility, has the moral obligation to abstain from getting involved. 

2.  His obligations from physical intimacy are to do anything possible to make the relationship work.    If he feels an impulse to end the relationship, his duty is self-control over his impulse, his duty is to communicate with the woman about his impulse and to give her a fair chance to influence the reasons for his impulse.   

• There can be a misunderstanding, that can be cleared. 
• There can be a conflict, that can be solved by a compromise. 
• He can have a personal or psychological problem, for which he needs to ask and accept her support.

In short, he owes the woman a chance for a shared decision based upon an agreement.  The agreement can either be the decision to continue the relationship as a result of his making efforts to change his reasons for his impulse, so that he wants himself to continue the relationship.    Else he owes her to communicate until she is convinced herself, that it is also better for her to end the relationship.   

Physical intimacy creates both partner's duty to stay together, until they both agree to end the relationship.    Of course, the intention or agreement to end the relationship can be expressed peacefully and decently by direct communication, or it can be expressed indirectly by committing a very grave moral transgression.    A man, who cheats, implicitly agrees to end the relationship, even though it is not his conscious intention.    Not cheating was an implicit or explicit part of the relationship deal.   Breaking the deal is an implicit intention to end the relationship.     That means, that when  the victim of  a serious transgression decides to end the relationship, this is not dumping but agreeing to the end a relationship already destroyed by the transgression. 

The man, who dumps the woman, only superficially and technically ends the relationship by leaving her.   In her experience, the end of the relationship is really caused by his serious moral transgression of forcing his disrespectful solitary decision upon her instead of communicating for an agreement.  This destroys her trust and therefore the foundation of the relationship.  

The jerk, who dumps a woman in search of a better commodity, but who believes in the back of his mind, that she will be available to be hoovered back at his convenience (entry 285), is not aware, that his behavior is a serious moral transgression.    The woman, who allows to be hoovered back, has been desensitized to feel appropriate outrage.   

It is not only sad and unfortunate, that so many jerks, psychopaths and emotional morons consider promiscutiy, dumping and poofing as acceptable behavior, it is even more sad, that many women have lost the perspective of what is acceptable behavior, they have been desensitized to consider being dumped as bad luck and not as an outrage.   They believe that entering a relationship is accepting the risk of being dumped like being out in a thunderstorm and risking to be hit and hurt by a flash.   Therefore too many women allow to be hoovered back by worthless psychopaths.

285. The Abuse-Hoovering-Cycle

The Abuse-Hoovering-Cycle

There are many web pages full with heartbreaking stories of women, who have been devastated by going several times through the Abuse-Hoovering Cycle.   The men may be narcissistic psychopaths or narcissistic emotional morons or any other kind of jerks.   
But there is a general pattern.   These men appear all to have two distinct personalities like Stevenson's Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.   In the experience of the victims, they switch unexpectedly from one mode into another.   

The woman meets nice Dr. Jekyll, gets involved with him and after a while, he converts into the abusive Mr. Hyde.   When the victim's tether is reached, she is either able to end her agony herself, or the abuser dumps her in search of other prey.   Some time later, the abuser comes back as nice Dr. Jekyll and hoovers her in to restart the relationship.    Then comes another round of abuse, another end, another hoovering and this goes on much too long for the victim.

The victims are usually very puzzled, how the same man can be so different.    The explanation suggested most often considers the abuser as the genuine person, and the nice Dr. Jekyll as a perfect act of role playing to manipulate the victim.   

I think, there is another possible explanation.   For a narcissistic person, anybody else, including a partner, is a commodity serving to supply him with adding value to himself in his own experience and perception.   
This can be reached by two methods.   He can either devalue others to feel superior, or he can feel lifted up by the contact with someone, whom he idealized, glorifies and admires.    When an abuser oscillates between being Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, he oscillates between applying one or the other of the two methods, always choosing the one, which gives him the most narcissistic supply out of the woman at any moment.  
 

The tragedy starts, when nice Dr. Jekyll meets a woman, whom he secretly considers as out of his league, as too good to be true, as a trophy, whom to show off and feel uplifted in his self-esteem.    He courts her, idealizes her, cherishes her, worships the ground she walks on.   But after they get involved and he gets to know her better, things change drastically.   He discovers, that she is a person with her own needs and not there to serve his only, and in his eyes, that is a huge flaw and ends his idealization of her.   Even worse, she gives him feedback about things, that others would accept as a part of the normal process of adapting to each other.   In his perception, her criticizing devalues her.    He pushes her from the throne. 

She is not above him anymore, no more good enough as the trophy to be proud of.   At that point, he converts into nasty Mr. Hyde.    He starts to abuse her and treat her as his doormat, until she breaks down and becomes dysfunctional.   Once he perceives her as dysfunctional, he is able to regard her as inferior and subjectively gain value for himself by comparison with her.   But being abused, he women stops to give him any more narcissistic supply, she does not admire or adulate her abuser.   It she stays with him, it is because she is afflicted with the Jerk-Attachment-Syndrome (entry 268).   In this case, he leaves in pursuit of a source for better narcissistic supply.    Else she leaves, when she has enough.   
But after some time, if both are lonely, the cycle restarts.    He has attempted to get narcissistic supply from other women, but did not succeed, and in his memory, he reidealizes and reglorifies her.   Thus he reconverts himself back into the nice Dr. Jekyll and starts to hoover her.   If her Jerk-Attachment-Syndrome is bad enough, she gets sucked in for another round of the Abuse-Hoovering-Cycle.        

It is such a tragedy for the women, and it happens so often, and the question is, why.   But that will be the topic of another entry.  

284. Trust

Trust

A bonded relationship with intrinsic commitment is based upon mutual trust and trustworthiness.    This requires two partners, who both are able and motivated to make the fair balance of giving and receiving the basis of the relationship.   
Trust implies, that one partner can tell his true innermost feelings to the other and the other will never use this knowledge for selfish purposes.   
Trust implies, that one partner can influence the other in constructive communication to treat him the way he needs to be treated. 


1.  There is no trust, when two persons do not know each other well enough and are not interested or bothered to do so, because they both limit the relationship to be superficial and physical, like being friends with benefits and other arrangements for convenience based upon physical infatuation.    But the lack of trust is not a problem, if it is by consent.  

2.  There is no trust, when there is a power struggle or domination, and it is a tragic problem.  
In a power struggle, both are fighting to get, what they subjectively believe, that they are entitled to get.   
In domination, one had the better weapons and has established a hierarchy of power.

A power struggle can happen:
2.1.  When someone like a narcissist has the delusion to be entitled to special privileges and is not aware, that this impedes the other from getting a fair balance of giving and receiving.  
2.2.  When two persons have contradictory needs and are not aware of it.   They both believe to rightfully struggle to get a fair deal from someone appearing to claim onesided privileges.

The power struggle ends either with ending the relationship or:
1.  When the narcissist has established his domination and is able to apply his power to press his all his needs out of the subdued victim.    
2.  They gain mutual awareness of each other's needs and find a compromise to fulfill them and establish a trusting relationship.

Dynamics: 
A jerk or psychopath establishes domination, because he knows, that he is not trustworthy and that no woman in her right mind would trust him and accept her role in his life as to be used and abused.   For him, domination is the only way to have a relationship to fulfill all his needs and privileges, that he feels entitled to.   He knows, that with trust, he cannot get this.

A sane and mature man knows, that he cannot have a committed relationship without trust, and he attempts to build trust.   If he cannot trust a woman, he does not get involved with her.

An emotional moron does not know, what trust means.   He also does not know, where and when his selfish needs curtail the equally justified and valid needs of others. 

As a consequence, he believes, that every relationship is a power struggle, and that he can only get his needs fulfilled, if he is able to become the dominating male in a relationship and to limit the subdued woman's allegedly selfish taking advantage of him.  
An emotional moron is someone, who believes in his privileges as he believes, that the woman's purpose and even own wish is to serve his needs at his convenience.   He enforces domination in full oblivion of the woman's perception of it being abuse, he enforces domination as establishing, what he believes as correct.    An emotional moron believes in sincerity, that a woman exists for his convenience, as I have explained in entry 282.   He sincerely believes, that there is something wrong with a woman, if she resists to serve his convenience.   Logically, every woman, who insists to be a partner and to get a fair balance of giving and receiving, is considered as warranting to be forced into her right place by domination.  

An emotional moron is pathetic figure stuck in a dead end.    He is caught in his false belief of an entitlement to so many selfish onesided privileges in a relationship, that no mature woman in her right mind will ever concede them to him as justified.   He projects his own selfish entitlement of privileges onto her and believes, that if he does not struggle, he will get nothing.    

==> Every attempt he makes to have a relationship leads automatically in a struggle, when the woman defends herself against his unjustified claims of entitlements.   
==> Due to his belief, that without struggling he gets nothing, he never yields, when a woman struggles in self-defense.   Thus he can never experience, how much he would get without struggling for more, if instead he would take, what the woman gives him deliberately.  
==> Being deprived of the experience of how much of value he can get without struggling, he is unable to correct his unrealistic and unjustified expectation.   He cannot learn, what expectations are fair enough to get them from a woman without struggling and domination.  

He has no chance to learn, what is a fair deal, and he cannot learn to trust a woman to get a fair deal from her.  

283. Urges, Cognition and Psychopathy

Urges, Cognition and Psychopathy

The following are speculations after pondering over the jerk's claim for his convenience in entry 282. 

As mentioned in earlier entries, I think that the human behavior is the result of the relative strength of cognition and instincts.    When the cognition is stronger than the instincts, then the person is able to act rationally, when the instincts are stronger, the person uses the cognition as a powerful tool serving the instincts.   

So far, I had been using this concept on the major instinct of breeding and the auxiliary instincts of sexuality, ingroup-outgroup and hierarchy to acquire resources.   
But I think I can broaden this concept to include the relative strength of hedonistic urges for food, drink, sexual homeostasis and general comfort compared with the strength of cognition.    People, whose cognition is stronger than their hedonistic needs can live in a fair exchange with other people, acknowledging their needs as valid and accepting fair deals.   They can evaluate, that sometimes other things are more important than physical needs and self-control can be very beneficial.   
But those hedonists, whose urges are stronger than their cognition, use whatever intelligence they have as a powerful tool to fulfill as many of their urges for the least price and with the least delay.  

This can also explain the behavior of psychopaths, because it seems obvious to assume that psychopaths are driven by hedonistic urges.  I cannot imagine an ascetic psychopath.  Urges strong enough to override all control and cognition like in an animal are usually physical.  

While their predominant cognition enables people to see themselves as interacting with others for the equal benefit of all, while they can understand justice and the rights of others, the psychopath only has the intelligence to know these things by rote, as methods, but not concerning himself as guidelines for the own behavior.  His urges are so strong, that his knowledge of the rules of social interactions is derailed to only serve his selfish purposes.    

The psychopaths can have the complete knowledge how to make a woman believe in his sincere commitment, he can be able to lure and manipulate a woman to accept a relationship with him.    But his urges are stronger than his cognition, and once he has her under his control, he does not continue to use his knowledge for the benefit of a happy couple.   Instead he now uses, abuses and takes advantage of her by allowing himself every selfish impulse that he has.    

I also had already previously stated my assumption, that the predominant urges and instincts determine the identity and the value system of a person.    Those with a high breeding instinct develop an identity as dedicated parents, a value system based on the glorification of children and an attitude that their purpose in live is procreation.  They take this for granted and some of them are oblivious about how some people do not want to breed.

It seems that this is also the case with a psychopath, whose whole identity is determined by his need for physical pleasures and comforts, and whose value system is based upon taking it for granted to be entitled to the limitless supply of all the pleasures he wants.  The phrase 'at my convenience' of the jerk in entry 282 illustrates this.  For him, a relationship with a woman has to be at his convenience only.   The psychopath is just oblivious, that other people are not commodities, and he has no conscience, no matter, what he does.    He is oblivious, that it is practically impossible to have a relationship, that is equally at the unmodified convenience of both partners.   To be at the convenience of both as a couple, they need to find agreements and compromises.    But when the psychopath insists to get the woman entirely at his convenience, she is a commodity, serving his convenience paying the price of her own disadvantaged position.     

Maybe psychopaths are a kind of relapse to earlier phases of evolution, where even food was so scarce, that only those, who ruthlessly and without a conscience took, what they could get, had a chance to survive and to breed.   But when with agriculture and complexer societies the requirement for survival changed to the ability for mutually beneficial social interactions, cognition evolved to be stronger than the urge to eat all the food and let others starve, and psychopath became obsolete for the survival of the species.   Unfortunately for their victims, too many reappear once in a while as an anomaly.    

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.   

253. Jerks, Bonding-Disability and the One-Person-Ingroup

Jerks, Bonding-Disability and the One-Person-Ingroup
In entry 53  (Profiting from Modern Slavery), I described the coldblooded indifference of people in rich countries having a good life not only of consumption, but of wasteful consumption, while those, who produce the goods, are doomed to a life in excruciating misery.    In entry 21 I compared, how the consumers care more about their pets than about  people in poor countries.

I found this, which expresses my thoughts in an even better way and goes one step further:   
http://dangerousintersection.org/2010/10/25/that-psychopath-in-the-mirror/

"When someone in need is within our in-group, we often respond in admirable ways. When we characterize someone as outside of our in-group (when he or she is in the  “out-group”), we act as psychopaths toward that person. I’m not suggesting that we are capable of really caring for each of the more than six billion other people. We are not biologically capable of caring for that many people. We are tuned to most easily care for people we actually know, or friends."

History is full of cruelty of killing, torturing, raping, enslaving and exploiting outgroup members.   The ingroup-outgroup instinct as part of the animal urges of homo sapiens serves as a subjective justification, predominantly to men, to commit atrocities without any hesitation, restrictions or conscience, whenever they can define the victims as being distinct enough from whom they perceive as their ingroup.
  
Psychopathy is defined by the DSM as a mental disorder.  From the perspective of equality and rationality as the basis of morals, it is.  From the perspective of those people, who perceive themselves as distinct from being animals, it is.   
But what is the disorder when looking at the innate instinctive tendencies?   Is the abuse and atrocity of a psychopath really a defect in the brain, or is it a displaced expression of the outgroup instinct and a lack of selective self-control? 

• Maybe psychopaths are just unable to have an ingroup except themselves and treat everybody as outgroup.    
• Maybe by instinct, the human animals are principally psychopaths, that are considered as mentally sane, as long as they are capable to make exceptions of being caring and non-psychopathic towards a limited number of selected ingroup members.   
• Maybe by instinct, everybody is outgroup, who does not serve directly or indirectly for the purpose of the survival of the own genes.

For cannibals, the world is divided into the outgroup members, whom they eat, and the ingroup members, with whom the eat.    In modern societies, things are more subtle and more complex.   The distinction between ingroups and outgroups still is a part of the survival strategies.  
For primitive hordes under dire environmental conditions, killing, eating or enslaving outgroup members enhanced their chances to survive.    While not denying others basic human rights and decency, members of complex societies need to protect themselves from damage by being aware of differences in emotional and social closeness or distance.  
The principle is the same.   People experience a feeling of belonging to the ingroup, while they feel something separating and distinguishing them from the outgroup.   The level of trust is different, as is the behavior, that is considered as appropriate and moral.  
People belong to many ingroups, the family can be an ingroup, the village, the game-team, the department at work, the gang of criminals.    The differences between ingroup and outgroup behavior can be subtle, when the ingroup of the family denies the access to the house to strangers, or more drastic, when gang members attack the members of other gangs.   

The simple ingroup-outgroup instinct has evolved to a more complex system of belonging to several ingroups, where the behavior towards the outgroups is limited and restricted by rules and laws.  But for some and under specific circumstances like wars, there are still outgroups, where the behavior is no more restricted by law.   A soldier and a diagnosed psychopath may well do the same thing, just the circumstances are different.  



The smallest, closest and most important ingroup is the devoted, committed couple sharing trust and resources, supporting each other against the outgroup, that is the rest of the world. 

That brings me back to my thoughts about the bonding disability of men, who exploit and abuse women.  I called them jerks in several of my previous entries.    It makes no difference, if they have no conscience, because they have become narcissists by experience, if they are jerks by some innate problem of their brain, or if they are emotional morons having the delusion to be behaving morally.    (More in the entries 113 about the bonding disability and 156.)

There seems to be one general pathology with all of them:   They experience themselves as the only member of their only ingroup.   Everybody else is outgroup, also the woman, with whom they get involved, even when they marry her.   
I called it bonding disability, but I may as well call it the disability to experience the feeling of belonging to any ingroup together with another human being.  

Such a man gets involved with a woman, but she continues to be perceived and treated a part of his outgroup.    Many variations are conceivable, when he alone is his ingroup. 
1.  The emotional moron.   The man's distinction between social roles could be reduced, so that everybody but himself is just outgroup.  He has only one set of behavior with all people, with little trust and attempting to avoid detrimental consequences.   
2.  The jerk, narcissist, psychopath.   The man does distinguish between different social roles as belonging to different outgroups and he could have several sets of limited trust and differing behaviors for them.  Such a man may even be clever enough to be able to manipulate different groups to get advantages.   The woman is placed in any of these outgroups, between being a friend with benefits, an acquaintance or even a pet.
    
For a woman, who considers, perceives and treats him as her closest ingroup, this is painful, and the amount of distrust, domination, abuse and denial of commitment depends upon what outgroup she is put into.    No matter, if he only behaves as if he were still a single, or if he lies, cheats and beats her, she is not a part of his ingroup, she is treated as his instincts allows him to treat any person in the outgroup.

There is a real tragedy with these jerks.   They are too disabled to develop the feeling of belonging to the ingroup of a devoted couple.   When they mate, they make others suffer for their own troubles, while they succeed to suffer less themselves.    They have no real understanding of what they are lacking.   By applying domination and hedonism, the jerks' basic needs are met, while their victims suffer.   

137. A Book and Movie Recommendation for Women

A Book and Movie Recommendation for Women

I am writing this blog to find my mindmate.   But I know from her comment on entry 113, that there is at least one woman reading this blog, whose aversion to jerks seems to match mine.

For her and other likeminded women, I recommend two very good books:   

Kathy Krajco:  What Makes Narcissists Tick?

Martha Stout:  The Sociopath Next Door

Sandy Hotchkiss:  Why Is It Always About You?

These three books are a very good training program in recognizing jerks before getting involved with them.   

And as a special treat, I recommend also the movie SWITCH. 

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0103016/
In that movie a jerk gets, what he has deserved.

109. Atheistic Moral Concerning Promiscuity

Atheistic Moral Concerning Promiscuity

In entry 108 I explained my assumption, that those people become promiscuous, whose saks (misspelled to avoid appearing in filthy men's searches) drive is stronger than their disgust sensitivity. 
This is much more the case with men than with women.   The real percentage is of no importance, but there are many more promiscuous men than women. 

In an oversimplified example, 100 men and 100 women get newly involved intimately.   Of those 30 couples were both monogamous and would get bonded, 40 men and women would both have a promiscuous fling and forget about it unaffected, that leaves a mismatch of 30 promiscuous men and 30 non-promiscuous women, who are not suitable for each other.   The women get emotionally bonded automatically and will be very hurt, when they are dumped, abused or cheated upon by the men, who lack the ability to bond. 

Promiscuity hurts the non-promiscuous victim.  It causes serious emotional damage.  Therefore, this is a very serious moral issue.   Hurting others is morally wrong.    Moral requires consideration and responsibility. 
But this is not just a moral issue limited to not following specific rules of some societies or religions.   It is worse, it is a breach of basic humanity. 

Basic humanity means to me as an atheist to follow some kind of the golden rule.   This includes as a very important part, maybe as the core of it, to avoid hurting, damaging, exploiting others.   Avoiding to hurt others is more than empathy or projection.  It is requires active efforts to find out, what would hurt them and then refrain from doing it. 
Therefore any promiscuous person has the moral obligation to make sure, that a partner is also promiscuous, before starting a fling.   Making a non-suspecting monogamous woman the victim of promiscuity is an atrocity and deeply immoral. 
 
There are three main varieties of promiscuous men:

1.  Those, who are aware of the consequences of their behavior, they restrict their demeanor to promiscuous women.   They have their emotional disability of being unable to bond, but as long as they stay with their own kind in the gutter, they do no harm to decent women. 

2.   They are the emotional variety of psychopaths as explained in entry 104. These psychopaths do know, that they hurt and damage others, in this case the monogamous women, whom they lure and manipulate into allowing the psychopath to abuse them.

3.   But there seem also to be some promiscuous men, who are either so incredibly stupid or driven by a delusion, that they just have no clue, what they do to their victims.   From looking at some men's site, I start to suspect, what goes on in those abominable creatures' mind:
- They project, that women are as much driven by instinct to want flings as they are themselves.  They belief that by 'offering' a fling, they are doing the woman a favor and the woman should be pleased and flattered. 
- They are too stupid to even imagine, that a woman could get emotional bonded, while they forget them the next day. 
- They are completely ignorant and oblivious of the fact, that women are not mere bodies, but persons with dignity and self-esteem.
- They believe, that all women are promiscuous and all run after the alpha-males to be allowed into their bed.   If their own approach is rejected by a woman, they are too stupid to even imagine, that the woman is just decent and monogamous, they attribute it to the alpha males getting them all.   These idiots then pay a lot of money to be trained as pick-up-artists.   Psychopaths teach other men to become more successful as abusers.  It would be pathetic, were there no victims at risk.  Nobody seems to bother.   I wonder, what would happen, if a full psychopath would start training others in how to forge and steal.    There is no real difference, those pick-up-artists can do as much damage to a woman's emotions as does a thief to a person's possession. 
 
For the case, that one of those abominable creatures reads this, here is a chance to reconsider his delusion: 
= When I was approached by a man, and it was clear, that he wished to use my body, I considered this as an insult and I spat in front of his feet.   This was the strongest expression of disdain and scorn, that I could think of.
= If I were forced to choose between two man, one is a non-promiscuous, hyponanimalistic man able to bond, but he is impotent, the other is a stud, but promiscuous and not able to bond, I would choose the impotent one without a moment's hesitation. 


To sum this up.   Promiscuity 1 is pathetic, they may deserve compassion for their lost bonding ability.   Promiscuity 2 and 3 are immoral, because the used victims suffer. 

Unfortunately, the emotional suffering of women is usually not recognized by their society, not only when it is directly caused by emotional psychopaths, but in general.    Men dominate society, not only by political power, but mainly by the power over the media, so they manipulate men in their delusion of what they are entitled to do to women, and women in their willingness to suffer, what should cause their outrage.   Religion adds to this by promising the reward in the afterlife, if they willingly suffer on earth, whatever is done to them. 

104. Promiscuity is Emotional Psychopathy

Promiscuity is Emotional Psychopathy

This continues entry 101- Promiscuity is a Scourge of Humanity.

I prefer using the expression Psychopathy, even though in the DSM IV, it is now defined as Antisocial Personality Disorder

These are some of the symptoms: 
# consistent irresponsibility, as indicated by repeated failure to sustain consistent work behavior or honor financial obligations;
# lack of remorse, as indicated by being indifferent to or rationalizing having hurt, mistreated, or stolen from another;
# promiscuity;
# having shallow or seemingly nonexistent feelings

Source:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antisocial_Personality_Disorder#DSM

The first of the above symptoms should not only mention financial obligations, but also emotional and ethical obligations.

The expression of 'promiscuous psychopath' is really a tautology, when used on humans, because I consider promiscuity in the species of homo sapiens by my definition as a form of psychopathy.   But since I cannot find a noun for a promiscuous person, I am distinguishing between full and promiscuous psychopaths. 

Full psychopaths exploit, hurt, damage, abuse other people without a conscience, without empathy, without responsibility, as if they were entitled to this.

Promiscuous psychopaths exploit, hurt, damage, abuse monogamous people without a conscience, without empathy, without responsibility, as if they were entitled to do this.   

There is only one difference.   The damage by a full psychopath can be anything visible from killing, mutilating, material  and not only psychological damage.   The damage by the promiscuous psychopath is limited to the mostly invisible emotional and psychological damage, except when spreading a disease.

Therefore everybody acknowledges the existence and unacceptability of the obvious damage done by the full psychopath, while the damage by the promiscuous psychopath is hidden and socially not recognized.  

Of course, the definition of mental illness or mental health are relative to the evolution of the human part of the brain.   Promiscuity could not be defined as emotional psychopathy for those prehistoric times, where the brain had not yet evolved the promiscuity inhibition.   When animals behave as animals, they cannot be called psychopathic.  
But in modern civilizations at least a part of the population has evolved to such a progressed state of true humanity, that they are capable to be monogamously bonded and their bond is protected by the promiscuity inhibition.   In this situation, promiscuity is a regression to a less evolved state of mind, that is pathological compared with the benefits of monogamy for the individual.         

Assuming a woman, whose emotional sensitivity of having a promiscuity inhibition is still intact.    That woman gets involved with a man based on her trust, that this is the begin of a relationship for the rest of her life, and automatically she feels committed and bonded with him.  
There are some varieties of this scenario.  
1.   If she is lucky, his promiscuity inhibition is as intact as hers, and they are deeply bonded ever after like Dorine and André Gorz.
2.   If she is unlucky, a full psychopath cheats and tricks her out of a lot of money and then dumps her.   She gets empathy and sincere outrage for the loss of money, because that damage is obvious, but her agony of the broken bond is mostly overlooked.
3.   If she is unlucky, a promiscuous man, who is an emotional psychopath, just allows himself to be driven by his instincts, without even considering a future with this woman.   If he has not sunk too low yet, he might even be vaguely willing to get seriously involved with a woman some day, but postpones the decision.   After having got involved, he decides against her and dumps her.   He having already been so much emotionally crippled, is not affected at all by a broken bond, that he never was capable to feel.  But the woman is devastated, because her deep bond is broken.  
His behavior is psychopathic.   He has no conscience, no responsibility, no consideration, no empathy for the bond, that he had created in her.   She gets not much empathy and no outrage for her sufferings, because in a society, where this kind of emotional psychopathy is widespread, even those, who are no afflicted themselves, are often accepting it as fate and as the normal risk of life.  

Whenever a psychopath makes a non-psychopath his victim, this causes a tragedy.   When two psychopaths deal with each other, they both get, what they deserve, and if they kill or damage each other, they were equal adversaries and do not deserve compassion.   But full psychopaths are only a minority of society, and they usually only get at each other in institutions like prisons.   Most of the time, their victims are innocent decent people.

Two emotional psychopaths having both been emotionally crippled in the same way, cannot hurt each other and they can believe that there is nothing wrong with promiscuity in general and hurt others as if this was normal and their right.   Two people already having both a contagious disease are not dangerous to each other, but they are dangerous to those, who are still free of the disease.   As a metaphor, promiscuity is like a disease, that destroys the ability for deep bonding.  
Unfortunately, there are so many promiscuous, emotional psychopaths, that they are considered as normal and not as pathological.   If they are growing into promiscuity too young, they will never even know, what they are lacking.  

It is the same as with the delusion of the existence of a god and a life after death.   Too many people share this delusion, that it is considered as normal and not as a mental dysfunction.  


There was this famous couple, Simone de Beauvoir and Jean Paul Sartre.   So many people admire them.   They have written valuable books and they were certainly very intellectual.  
But as persons, they are both the prototypes of promiscuous, emotional psychopaths.   They agreed on how to treat each other the way they wanted to be treated.  
They both have gone through life leaving behind a trail of deeply wounded others, who got involved with each of them for a monogamous bond, but where just used and dumped without conscience, consideration and responsibility.    Beauvoir and Sartre not only committed emotional atrocities to those, who loved them more than they deserved, but they were also misunderstood role models, who have indirectly caused lots of emotional atrocities committed by those, who imitated them.