688. The Self-Abuse Of Foolish Women

688.  The Self-Abuse Of Foolish Women

Reading men's profiles I am noting, how often men are a indicating their wish for 'no strings attached fun', 'intimate encounters', 'casual sex' or similar expressions, which all translate as the wish to find a willing target for the male urge for the one time access to a female body.  

If no woman ever would provide herself for this form of self-abuse, men would cease to try.   If many women would have the same wish, there would not be such a huge market of men paying for abuse, which they cannot get for free.   

Thus there are some but only few women, who do provide their bodies, before they learn the hard way to avoid a repetition. 
 
This frequent expression of men's wish to be allowed the abuse without paying can be explained best by the psychological observation, that behavior persists the longest, when it is infrequently rewarded.  This is called intermittent reinforcement. 

Thus men do not find enough victims for unpaid self-abuse and most abuse is only available for money, yet the few victim suffice to mislead men to continue the attempt.

 

I have been wondering, who are the willing victims of self-abuse, and I can see one possible pattern:

They are probably women, who

• identify as being their bodies
• derive their self-worth and self-esteem from their looks and their effects upon men.
• either are or consider themselves as very attractive.
• believe to be irresistible to all men. 
• are fully aware of the magnitude of men's instinctive urges for female bodies.
• are completely ignorant of the physiological differences between the genders and the disparate needs.  
• project their own need and proneness for attachment upon men.

Therefore these women disbelieve and fail to take for serious, when a man makes it very clear, that he has not the least intention to ever meet again after one night.   Due to the delusion of being irresistible, these women nevertheless believe to be able to get him hooked and to draw him into a committed relationship.   

These women are dangerous fools.  

They are fools, because they suffer a lot, when in spite of their delusion they are dumped and discarded without hesitation or regret by men, who do not feel responsible due to having been clear about their true intentions.  

But these foolish women are also dangerous for other women, because they reinforce men's attitude towards being predators.  Some predators project their own not-attaching urge for the use of female bodies upon women.  They are misled to believe, that women would have the same strong urge for depersonalized and objectified male bodies.  
Every time, when a man erroneously and unaware of her hidden agenda perceives a woman participating in the copulation superficially appearing as if she were as much an alley dog as the man himself, this reinforces his false belief in the projection.   

This reinforced projection also reinforces the generalization of his abusive behaviors, which makes him a nuisance to wiser women.   

634. Equality And The Detrimental Effect Of Money On Men

634.  Equality And The Detrimental Effect Of Money On Men

Men are not only derailed by merely physical infatuation triggered by their instincts from making a wise choice of a companion.  The capitalistic distortion of deriving and attributing the value of people, especially of men, mainly from their financial power has additional detrimental effects on the mating behavior.   These effects are different for those, who are affluent and for those, who are not.   

  

1.  Men with low or moderate income 

  

Either in their profiles or in private correspondence, men with low to moderate income often express the expectation and fear to be automatically rejected due to lacking assets.   This frame of mind is real and thus it does not matter, if they have come to this state of mind from a realistic interpretation of their experiences.  

   

An unfortunate reaction is their loss of the ability to recognize, to trust or to accept, when a woman expresses clearly, that she is not interested in a man's money.    They appear bitter and angry, some seem to have a low self-esteem, not matter their intellectual achievements.    They are lonely and crave a relationship, but they do not dare to strife for it anymore, instead the rant and complain.  The less they expect, the less they are motivated to invest in any attempt and thus they also have no incentive for the challenge of conquering geographic distance.

It is disheartening for me, when I try in vain to encourage someone like this, but he withdraws, poofs or makes the fallacy to reject me first to prevent a wrongly expected rejection due to his financial situation. 

 

Some of them have been rejected, but for very different reasons being their behavior, habits and/or attitudes.  The attributing of rejections wrongly to lacking money has the unfortunate consequence of impeding the needed self-improvement.   Thus the not corrected reasons for rejections lead to repeated and continued rejections.

  
2.   Affluent men
 

A wealthy man is a hazard to a non-wealthy egalitarian woman.    The ability to spend money gives people power, no matter how much or how little they do enjoy having this power and how much they are not even aware of it.    

Spending money often creates a temporary hierarchy.    The English language expresses very clearly, how monetary transactions divide people between masters and servants:  The customer orders food in a restaurant, and to order is synonymous with to command.   The waiter serves the food.    Not asking a fixed full price, but maintaining the deplorable custom of tipping aggravates this undignified distinction.   The haughty master condescends to give some extra cash to a waiter, whose fake friendliness and servility is nothing better than the manipulation to get tipped.  

Buying bread at the bakers for a fixed price is a form of the division of labor.

The more a man experiences being the master with financial power as a daily routine, the more he is prone to loose all awareness of this being a situation of his asymmetrical advantage.  Instead he is desensitized to perceive this as his innate right.   

Thus he is prone to generalize his allegedly entitlement to power also to the privacy of a relationship.   This means, he is a hazard of not only attempting to dominate a woman, but also of not even understanding, that this is not justified but an outrage.  
      
There is a second hazard, which is often visible in the profiles of those men, who brag about their assets.    They attempt to buy women using material benefits.   The hazard here is the possible fallacy of thinking that by spending lots of money upon women they are dispensing themselves of any non-material obligations or responsibilities.   They mistake giving money for a sufficient substitute for any efforts to make a relationship work.
They are also prone to consider their wealth as enough reason to be eligible for considerably younger women, even though these women often do not reciprocate:  


When given all my other criteria including being in the same age group, men in a similar financial situation are elusive and discouraged, affluent men consider me as too old, while I consider men as old as 78, who have contacted me, as not suitable, no matter who and what they are.
 

There are things like no children and no religion, where compromising for me is out of the question.  But when it comes to the financial situation of a potential mate, I am willing to compromise.   

I do prefer someone of low or moderate income and the subsequent equality of sharing resources, expenses and decisions, who feels comfortable living frugally (entry 631), who does not mind nor hesitate to invest temporary discomfort for saving money, and for whom making the best of limited resources by using his brain and acquiring compensatory skills is welcome as a challenge and an achievement.  
But I am willing to accept a man of any financial situation, if he has the qualities of a mindmate.  

631. Frugality

631.  Frugality

I have labeled myself an Epicurean before, because the Epicurean lifestyle suits my own inclinations.    Or more precisely, my own lifestyle is congruent with Epicurus' philosophy.   But while a philosophy as a way of thinking can continue to be valid without modification for more than two millennia, a lifestyle based upon such a philosophy cannot be carved in stone and ever after be followed literally.   A lifestyle has to be an adaption to specific social and technical realities.   While a modern lifestyle needs to be without a contradiction to Epicurus' writings and teachings, if it is to be called Epicurean, it also needs to accommodate factors, which did not exist at his time.   

Frugality was and is a part of the Epicurean life style.   But it is a good example of an aspect, which cannot be applied literally to today's way of life as it was suggested about 2300 years ago. 


According to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frugality,

"Frugality is the quality of being frugal, sparing, thrifty, prudent or economical in the use of consumable resources such as food, time or money, and avoiding waste, lavishness or extravagance.

In behavioral science, frugality has been defined as the tendency to acquire goods and services in a restrained manner, and resourceful use of already owned economic goods and services, to achieve a longer term goal."

Frugality means thus the lack of the motivation to act towards deriving physical pleasures from the consumption of material goods.   In this sense, frugality is the absence of hedonism.   But frugality is not anhedonia, it is not the general absence of feeling any pleasure.   Instead it means deriving a different kind of pleasure, derived from emotional and intellectual causes, which are immaterial.   

Frugality is a core trait of a personality type, whose behavior is determined more by cognition than by instinct, and which is represented consciously by attitudes coinciding with the Epicurean philosophy.  


Modern frugality embraces factors, which did not exist 2300 years ago:

1. Mass production and the price of consumption

In ancient times production was manual labor using simple tools and appliances.  (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancient_Greek_technology).  Clothing as were the Greek chitons are an example.  Produced from wool or any other fiber they needed at least spinning, before even the spinning wheel was invented, and weaving manually on a loom.  Food production also was hard labor of agriculture without machinery.   Even producing containers for food was the hard work of pottery, metallurgy or woodworking. . 
 
Under such circumstances, obtaining and consuming any necessity of life equaled the decision to obtain and/or to destroy the result of many hours of someone's hard labor.   Therefore every single act of the frugality of not consuming something had a drastic effect of saving the investment of a portion of someone's life time.

Today in our modern western society, containers for food are mass produced from plastic and considered as waste, when empty.  Anybody can buy a t-shirt, a loaf of bread or even an electrical saw for the money earned in less than one hour of even a moderately paid job.   The single act of frugality of not buying any one mass produced item brings little or no material or time benefit to anybody.   

Today the benefits of frugality are therefore predominantly immaterial.


2. Technical complexity and the second-hand principle

While there was already in ancient times a division of labor, most production required only a few basic skills, some practice and experience, but mainly it was a lot of routine work.    Many tools and utensils could be self-made or at least easily repaired, when necessary.    Repairing was usually more economical than discarding and replacing.    

Today the technological complexity of even the basic standard of living requires special knowledge, that many people are lacking.    While a mass produced electrical saw can be bought for very cheap, to construct it and to construct the machines to produce it requires long years of studying engineering.   People have thus no choice but to throw out any machine, even though it may only have a slight defect, because any repair is beyond their knowledge or beyond the availability of spare parts.    

But this does not automatically imply the justification for throwing out without hesitation also what is not broken, because in comparison with the own income it did cost so little.   

Many machines do have real value in reducing hard labor.   For example, an electrical saw has real advantages compared with a manual saw.   Therefore frugality today cannot mean to fall back on not using the available machines from mass production.  

Modern frugality includes the principle of second-hand use as a compromise of having the benefits of using helpful machines and tools while avoiding waste.   Instead of throwing out what can still be used, frugality conscious people give away or resell for cheap, what they do not need anymore.  Those, who choose to or are compelled to live frugally, receive or buy those second-hand items.


3. Practical necessities and compensatory skills 

Consuming the results of mass production requires money, which is earned by participating directly or indirectly in this same economy of mass production.    While a single item of mass production often does not cost much, the sum of the goods of mass consumption is nevertheless bought in exchange for long hours of dull, hard routine work.

While few people could build their own electrical saw, there is a lower level, where people have a choice between either paying for services and products or picking up some knowledge and skills towards being creative, self-sufficient and self-reliant.   

The option to acquire compensatory skills is another aspect of frugality.  It is a method to either gain free time or at least to add intellectual quality to the time spent to obtain the necessities of every day life.    

A conscious frugal life style means people having gained the awareness of having the option to acquire beneficial basic skills of some crafts and artisanries.   This enables them to a certain extend to avoid paying for the expensive services of electricians, carpenters, computer technicians or other specialists.      

    

The less they need to pay, the less they need to earn.   Unfortunately in real life this option is often limited, because people are not free to chose their amount of paid work.   Instead they are glad to have a job at all, working the hours required by the employer.
 
Therefore frugality by compensatory skills has material benefits mostly for the poor, but it also brings emotional pleasure to those, who enjoy learning and achieving things.  


4.  Globalized exploitation.

In the mainly regional economic system of manually production in ancient Greece, people obtained, what they needed, by exchanging goods, which where produced by similarly long hours of labor.   Some had the power to exploit slaves, but this was visible and open.   Everybody, who profited from the exploitation of others, was fully aware of this and could not deny it, not matter if having or lacking a bad conscience. 

Everybody choosing frugality by refraining from owning and exploiting slaves could rightfully have a self-concept of being a person acting responsibly and morally.

Today in modern western societies exploitation is anonymous, hidden and ubiquitous.   The life of the exploited producers of the consumer good is most probably not any better than the life of the ancient Greek slaves.  
 
Whatever someone buys here in a shop for cheap, no matter if a t-shirt, an electrical saw or a bunch of bananas, has been completely or partially produced by people in some poor country, whose wages do not allow them the minimum standard of living, which would suffice to be considered as fulfilling basic human rights.   
We all here could not indulge in our material comfort, were it not obtained by exploiting modern slaves in sweatshops far away.   Most people do not even know it and they do not want to know.   But even knowing it does not help much, because there is no real choice.  

 
Whenever I can choose between a t-shirt for 5€ or for 50€ and between an electrical saw for 10€ or for 100€, this is only a choice concerning how much I decide to pay.   There is no way to know or to decide, where the difference goes to.   I would appreciate to be able to pay a fair price for the goods, a price high enough, that those producing them get a decent wage.   But there is no way to know or to influence, how much of the higher price of some goods only fills the pockets of greedy exploitive capitalists.  

Today personal frugality has no impact upon global slavery.   Not only being exploited, but also having a materially good life made possible by others' slavery is forced upon people often against their will and wish by cruel and inconsiderate capitalists installing and maintaining the imbalance of economic power.      


To sum it up:  

A hedonist derives pleasure from consumption.   A capitalist or wanna-be-capitalist derives pleasure form his power to pay for goods and services.    Having economic power adds to his self-esteem and self-worth.   
Both enjoy, what is not a personal merit, but the result of the lottery of life, which has given them the citizenship in a country with economic power or the membership of the privileged class of some country.

A frugal Epicurean enjoys learning and applying skills and knowledge as a cognitive pleasure.   Every success and every instance of saving money or avoiding dull routine work without exploiting another human being adds to his self-esteem and self-worth.   Thus the frugal Epicurean earns doubly, by not only adding quality to his life, but by thus also having a reason to be proud of himself.     

603. Simple Recipes Attract Simpleminded People

603.   Simple Recipes Attract Simpleminded People

Texts presenting apparently easy recipes for about any problem or task are plenty in books, newspapers, the web and other media.    

Practical tasks sometimes do follow simple algorithms, which are not obvious without a step-by-step guide to follow through.   Recipes for cooking are an examples, manuals how to maintain and handle household appliances and machines are another.  

But most of the recipes concerning non-material topics are false promises offering pseudo solutions to very complex, difficult and strenuous tasks.  

1.  The attraction of recipes:  

Recipes are tempting to be believed and applied, whenever people struggle with the experience of failure, because they wish or crave for something, which

• can generally not be achieved
• is beyond someone's ability to achieve it
• could only be achieved by much more efforts than the person is ready and willing to invest

Recipes are expressed as assertive claims.   The apparent false authority of them misleads people to confound their mere wishful thinking as if it were something to come true as a secure success needing only limited efforts.   Recipes are most suggestive, when they are expressed in a way, which precludes doubts of failure and pretends programmed success.   

Recipes are usually either promising the certain way to reach one specific goal, or they offer a precise number of steps or items to work through towards a goal.   

2.  Some examples:

The following examples are chosen only because of the big claim made by the title.  

Examples of titles of books

Get the life you want

The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People

The 48 Laws of Power

Think and Grow Rich

The Feeling Good Handbook

How Successful People Think: Change Your Thinking, Change Your Life

Brain Rules: 12 Principles for Surviving and Thriving at Work, Home, and School

Examples of 'how to' articles found by a google search:  

How to trick people into thinking you're good looking

How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying

How to Win Friends and Influence People

How to be an expert

How to Get a Life

How to Get Out of Debt

How to Lose 20 lbs. of bodyfat in 30 days

How to Read 300% Faster in 20 Minutes

How To Become Wealthy

Examples from a dating advice site:

10 things men should never say

Seven steps to the perfect first email

5 Habits that Hurt Your Relationship

Five dating tips for spotting ‘Mr Right’

3 Key Things to Discuss Before Moving In Together

3. Classification of recipes:

Falling for simple recipes can be caused by several different fallacies. 

• Absurdity.   Recipes advising religious rituals like prayer or a pilgrimage and woo-woo remedies like homeopathy are just absurd and irrational.  
• Pseudo-science.   Pseudo-science is suggestive, because uninformed people confound it with serious science.   NLP is an example.
• Exaggerated and biased truth.   A few good, valid tips can be convincing, even when they are banalities.   These tips can supply a tiny contribution to the problem, that makes them suggestive.   But they are nevertheless very insufficient, when exaggerated into an entire recipe, not applicable for the complex problem and for the wide variety of different people and situations.  

4.  Purpose for using recipes:

The recipes are used as a crutch to reduce insecurity and anxiety in areas of life, where the access to reliable information and better methods is difficult:  

• Self-improvement towards a better ability of understanding, predicting, influencing and controlling other people
• Health improvement

5.  Gullibility to the belief in simple recipes:

Not all recipes are fully worthless, when perceived with the critical mental distance to not succumb to unrealistic expectations.    If read skeptically, knowing that there cannot be simple recipes, there is sometimes some food for thought to be integrated in a larger frame of investigating the best way to cope with an issue. 

• Gullible, uneducated and simple minded people, who are prone to believe any irrational nonsense, are most prone to also fall uncritically for simple recipes.   Pressing problems like strong instinctive urges, which deactivate or blur the reason, often enhance the attraction of simple recipes.
  
• Intelligent and skeptical people with the ability for abstract and complex thinking are not prone to fall for simple recipes.   They understand the complexity and real magnitude of a task and react appropriately.  They prefer sources, which put the emphasis on the complexity of any issue and avoid any claims of easy solutions.     

6.  The authors of the recipes:

Those who produce simple recipes are

• frauds, who know, that they take advantage of other people's gullibility and simplicity to make money.  
• gullible and mislead themselves.    The feel a mission to propagate their delusional insights and wisdom.  
  
  • They want to earn a reward in the afterlife
  • They expect narcissistic supply as gurus.
  • They want to feel good about themselves by being altruistically helping others.

7.  The dangers of simple recipes for the applicants:

By relying exclusively on a simple recipe, people often enhance and prolong the problem, which they attempt to solve.  The focus on vain attempts to reach a goal with an oversimplified recipe impedes them to find a real solution.

When the wrong expectations for an easy achievement fail, a wrong attribution of this failure can damage a person's self-esteem and confidence.   This can lead to wrong decisions with long term fatal consequences in the realm of important life choices.

8.  The dangers of the impact of imposed simple recipes:

When people rely more on recipes than on direct information from the target of the applied recipe, then they can be a serious hazard to others,    The lack of any modification of the applied recipe by the target's direct influence can be caused by any combination of lacking trust, of lacking information and of failing recognition for the target being a source of information.

• Misjudgment by categorization:  
  Using astrology as a recipe of sorting people into 12 arbitrary categories and ascribing traits to them can cause harm.   A person is not treated according to how s/he really is but by ascribed traits.   A person chosen by wrongly ascribed traits as a mate or employee cannot fulfill erroneous expectations and may suffer from pressure.
  
• Misjudgment by unsuitable methods: 
  NLP includes pseudo-scientific recipes.  One such recipe claims, that specific eye movements were indicators for the difference between honesty and lying.    When trust is denied by this fallacy, this can prevent or destroy relationships and friendships.
  
• Unjustified blame: 
  When recipes promising benefits in the interaction with others fail, no matter if the goal is to be accepted or to gain control, this is a logical consequence of not perceiving the other as a partner, but as reduced to a mere target.   But due to believing in the power and correctness of the recipe, the failure is attributed to faults, flaws of defects of the target. 
  
• Enhancement of the detriments of power:  
  The more the person applying a recipe also has power, the worse the situation gets for the target.   People applying for a job or training can be rejected by invalid recipes like graphology.   Bosses, teachers, parents, wardens and caretakers in institutions can do a lot of harm by applying recipes derived from a religion, ideology or simply from an unqualified application or misinterpretation of recipes from any source.

I am personally scared of people, who believe so much in simple recipes of any kind, no matter if it is religion, woo-woo or pseudoscience, that this impedes and prevents me from influencing by proactive rationality, how I am judged and treated.    

My mindmate to be found is not simple minded, he does not use recipes upon me.  He is someone, who not only is able to think abstractly, but who also feels comfortable with cognitive complexity.  

586. Jerks With Halos

586.  Jerks With Halos

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

585. Masculinity And Femininity As Identity Crutches

585.   Masculinity And Femininity As Identity Crutches

Masculinity and femininity are both identities based upon specific dispositions for needs and behaviors determined by virulent instincts.  The stronger the instincts, the more masculinity and femininity are pronounced.   The stronger masculinity and femininity, the more they bring out the worst in men and in women.  

Masculinity and femininity are consciously expressed as favorable attitudes towards specific instincts.

 

Masculinity is based upon a positive attitude towards more or less excessive instinctive urges for sexual homeostation leading to the objectification of women, and towards the hierarchy and ingroup-outgroup instincts, leading to competition, fighting, domination, aggression.   All this often causes extreme suffering for the victims.
 

Femininity is based upon a positive attitude towards the more or less instinctive breeding urge.   This leads not only to their sacrificing their own wellbeing for the priority of breeding, but they burden the disadvantages of breeding also upon other people.    

Masculinity and femininity are complementary identities.    Masculine men abuse women's bodies as objects, feminine women displace their bonding needs to their offspring and do not offer bonding to a partner.   

Masculinity and femininity are the social norm.   

1. When their high instinctivity predisposes people to innately conform with the social norm, they are at ease with themselves and with their social surroundings.   For people with more cognition than instincts, they are a hazard.
   
2. There are also those other men and women, who are either equally instinct driven and controlled by cognition, or their cognition is even stronger than their instinctivity.    In this situation, their confidence makes a big difference.

• Strong, secure and independent thinkers with high self-esteem are not impressed by the pressure from a social norm, which does not fit their needs.   They reject masculinity and femininity in favor of a gender neutral rationality, they are only concerned about their genuine emotions and needs.    They too live in the congruence of their attitudes with their innate inclinations.
  
• But those also lacking confidence, who are insecure and have low self-esteem, are in a especially difficult situation.   They need an identity.  Theoretically they have two options, a cognitive or an instinctive identity, depending what influences their ideal self.
  
  • The more appropriate cognitive identity is hard to obtain, it requires learning, working on oneself, mental and intellectual efforts and resisting social pressure.  
    The false instinctive identity is much easier to obtain.  It just needs to refrain from any self-control or reasoning and to allow existing instincts to rule.  The rest is imitation of all the other instinct driven people and to fulfill the expectations of the social norm.   It is the choice of the least resistance.
    
  • Some people may even not feel any of the instincts, and nevertheless strife to fulfill the social norm, because it supplies them with a fake identity.  They may even relapse at the same time into some apparent cognitive behaviors and appear contradictory and inconsistent.
  
  Whatever the exact dynamics, masculinity and femininity are for these people no real identities, but identity crutches. 

  

514. Morals And Ethics Without The Myth Of The Free Will - 2

514.  Morals And Ethics Without The Myth Of The Free Will - 2

The myth of the free will (discarded in entry (512) is perpetuated as a result of the subjective experience of other people's behavior as moral.   This experience is often independent of the person's real motives.   Whenever another's personal benefits from choosing a specific behavior are not obvious, people are prone to ascribe the behavior to the expression of an apparent free will. 
   
Morals and ethics can instead be explained by the intrinsic and extrinsic cost and benefit calculation for deciding to choose a behavior. 
This calculation is not only using the perception of immediate and present dishomeostasis and the immediate attraction of present stimuli for expected pleasure.  Both can at least partially be visible and recognizable to others including to the target of the behavior.  
This calculation also includes the evaluation, consideration and expectation of emotional, social and legal direct and long-term consequences derived from experiences stored in the memory.   This cognitive part is invisible and mostly unknown to those exposed to the behavior, which is thus not or not fully explicable and comprehensible.  

Not harming others unless there is a morally justified reason to make an exception can be seen as a basic principle of all morals.    As outlined in entry 513, persons with the particles' identity value the species higher than the individuals.  They accept the justification of harm, when it is collateral damage in favor of the survival of the human species.  
For the individualistic identity, there is no justification for harming others.   

Therefore refraining from harming behaviors is at least an important ingredient in what is subjectively experienced as an expression of morals, if it is not the core of it.

Evaluating the morality of behavior implies the interaction between two or more persons.  There are two perspectives.  One focuses upon the target of possible behaviors, the other one upon the acting person's motivation and reasons.
 
The target can judge from direct subjective experience and according to the own concept of morality, if a specific behavior is either moral or not.  The motivation for the behavior is hidden, and can only be assessed as a guess.    The behaving person can either act morally by ethical principles or as the haphazard reaction to a singular situation.   

A monster is not less a monster, when once in a while a possible victim is lucky enough to remain unharmed in spite of being exposed to the hazard.   The non-victim in an ephemeral exposure can remain unaware of having been exposed to a monster and is unable to know, if the apparently moral behavior was only exceptionally and accidentally identical with what the target considers moral.     

There are four varieties of interactions, which are experienced as moral by the target.  None needs the free will as an explanation:  

1. Moral behavior in the absence of conflicting needs.
   
   1.1.   The acting person lacks any opportunity, occasion, method, means, tools or weapons to indulge in harmful behavior.
   
   1.2.   The acting person happens either temporarily or principally not to experience any need, urge or reason to do anything, that would be experienced by the target as harming.
   
2. Moral behavior by self-control as a result of expected consequences.
   
   The acting person anticipates external consequences following the choice of behavior, there is awareness of the pending punishment for harming and/or pending reward for not harming.   This includes acquiring correct knowledge of what is harmful to every individual target as a part of choosing, how to behave.
   Consequences can for example be legal punishment, harmful reactions of the victim or social damage as is the loss of a position of power and influence.   It also includes delusional rewards and punishments by an imaginary deity.  
   
3. Consistent moral behavior of apparently ethical persons.
   
   The acting person anticipates internal consequences following the choice of behavior.   This can be emotional dishomeostasis and/or emotional joy of the pleasure center.
   In a generalized anticipation of these internal consequences, some people follow rules and thus behave consistently in a way, that is experienced by the targets as not only moral but as the apparent expression of an ethical personality.  
   
   3.1.    Dishomeostasis can be triggered by 
   
   • suffering as a result of spontaneous empathy with the target
   • experiencing harming others as damaging the self-esteem and self worth.  This is the result of being influenced by social norms and/or a religion, when specific harming behaviors have been associated with despised traits like being weak, foolish, coward, guilty, ashamed.   
   
   3.2.   Stimulation of the pleasure center can be caused by an innate predisposition of the cognition.
   This innate predisposition is the prevalence of rationality over instinctivity.   Rationality determines a specific choice of an ethical principle.    When focusing decisions not only on self-interest, the interaction with individuals nor on the preference for any ingroup, but on looking at the big picture of the overall balance between giving and taking, then justice, fairness and equal chances are the most logical principle.  
   On this level, the generalized benefits of the golden rule and of tit-for-tat strategies are ethical, because they are logical.    Unjust, unfair and asymmetrical behavior and inequality are unethical, because they are irrational.  
   Rationality causes the pleasure of self-esteem, self-worth and self-confidence, while irrationality causes dishomeostasis.
   People with this predisposition are ethical, because they are rational.  

493. The Social Norm Of The Drooling Men

493.  The Social Norm Of The Drooling Men
Social norms have a lot of power over susceptible and gullible people, because they influence behavior away from innate inclinations.   Others are compared with social norms.  Correct behavior is defined by social norms.  The own self-esteem and self-worth depends on the comparison with social norms.   Social norms define the perception of deviance.  

Social norms are beneficial, when they guide behavior towards a morality, that has the goal of avoiding and minimizing suffering, hurting and harming.  

Some social norms also do a lot of damage, especially when they are no longer appropriate to changed circumstances or when they serve the benefits of a powerful and influential minority but harm the majority.  

One example is the social norm of high libido for men.   This social norm is incongruent with the real human cognitively influenced sexuality, which is based upon the strength of the libido distributed along a bell curve.  

The social norm of high libido corresponds in a very biased way only with one extreme end of the bell curve.   This social norm declares the most extreme inclinations to be the best and to be most suitable for everybody.   The definition of masculinity and virility includes high libido as a major ingredient.  Low libido is strongly despised as a defect.  

High libido itself is a biological predisposition.  The social norm of expressed high libido is implicitly defined by men as experiencing themselves drooling over every female body, whenever this body is perceived as attractive in the implicit agreement of those, who drool the most.

Experiencing frequent drooling serves as the self-reassurance of meeting the requirement of the social norm of high libido. 

The consequences of this social norm are very detrimental:

1.  The technical advancement of life-imitating photos and movies and the distribution by printed media, television and the Internet has caused the oversexation of society and a general desensitization to this even for those, who do not benefit or even suffer from this norm.  

2.  According to this social norm, the promiscuity of the drooling men is considered as their entitlement, while the suffering emotionally attached victims of being dumped or cheated upon are considered as flawed and deviant.
  
3.  Instead of rejecting this social norm as being detrimental to themselves, most women accept attempts to trigger men to drool more by modification of their exterior as the best solution of coping with the social norm.    The compete to trigger the strongest drooling.   

4. Those men with less libido, whose behavior would best fulfill women's emotional needs, are impeded from accepting themselves as they are.  Instead they measure themselves in comparison with the harmful social norm.   As a consequence, they either attempt to correct their alleged problem medically or they attempt to imitate the promiscuous jerks as role models.   They deteriorate in the false belief of improving.  

5. The widespread definitions of asexuality and demisexuality as a label for self-labeling are also a reaction to the fully accepted social norm of high libido.   

"An asexual is someone who does not experience sexual attraction. "
http://www.asexuality.org/wiki/index.php?title=Asexuality

"Demisexuals are asexuals who only experience secondary sexual attraction to people they know personally, usually based on some kind of emotional connection, whether platonic or romantic. They can’t feel sexually attracted to strangers, celebrities, or people they don’t very well. So demisexuality is all about sexual attraction, just like asexuality is all about the lack of sexual attraction."
http://outlawroad.tumblr.com/post/10265976595/gray-asexuality

Theoretically, the evolution of the human cognition enables people to derive their identity, self-esteem, self-worth from their intelligence, creativity, talents, knowledge, skills and also from behaving morally by avoiding to hurt and to harm others.   The evolution of the human cognition has advanced far enough to free humans from the need to base self-esteem upon attributes of their bodies.  
Any man with low or lacking libido has this option.    But in spite of this, nearly all men seem to feel deficient, if they do not drool often enough over women's bodies.    I cannot remember to have ever read or heard of any man, who prefers himself as someone with a low libido.   Even men, whose religion forbids any behavioral expression of libido do not feel good when just having none but they take pride in conquering it.  

It appears as if low libido in men automatically leads at least to low self-esteem, if not to more severe psychological problems.   They seem just unable to consider and accept low libido as either not important or even as an indication of being the quality men, who do not hurt women.   They cannot even change their opinion about themselves, when women tell them explicitly, that they prefer the monogamous non-drooling men with the moderate libido.

There are self-help and discussion forums for people self-labeling themselves as asexual, demisexuals, and similar labels.   These forums seem to be populated by persons struggling with low self-esteem, lacking self-worth, subjective feelings of being deviant.  They seem to be in the need of a niche, where they find others similarly afflicted.   They share, what they experience subjectively as their common flaw of failing under the social norms of an oversexed society.   
They have accepted this social norm without ever doubting its value or justification.   It does not even occur to them to criticize or reject the social norm of high libido and drooling.    

They repeat again and again their strong emphasis of the paramount importance of the difference between the absence of sexual attraction and the absence of or low libido.   This very artificial distinction is a remarkable mental trick to resolve a strong cognitive dissonance.  
They are unable to deny to themselves to recognize the reality of not drooling over women's bodies, while they are aware that this is considered a deficit according to the social norm.   They want to be able to accept themselves as different without feeling deficient.

The social norm of high libido is an attribute of one person.   The focus on lacking sexual attraction is a mental trick to shift the focus away from being someone with a personal deficit.  Sexual attraction requires by definition the interaction of more than one person, it requires a target to be attracted to.   Lacking sexual attraction as an explanation allows to externalize the alleged cause to the nonexistence of suitable targets.  This can be accepted as a difference, which is independent of failing the social norm.

Humanity needs to adapt culturally to the human cognition by a radical shift of the social norms concerning sexuality.    In another entry, I will make some suggestions.

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.  

274. Men's Worst Urban Legend - 1

Men's Worst Urban Legend - 1

There is an urban legend between men:   When a woman says no, she means yes.   

 
I as a woman consider a man, who consciously believes this, as a moron.  If his behavior is determined by this belief, while he consciously believes to respect a woman, he is an emotional moron.   He is too immature and stupid to understand, what this belief really means and implies.   

If a man does not take a woman's statements for serious, he does not take her for serious, he does not respect her at all, he does not perceive or consider her as an equal.   

It is not only an outrage of disrespect, but it also impedes any solution of conflicts and any healthy development, if a woman makes a statement, and the man cannot be influenced by her statement and continues to behave, as if she had never even opened her mouth or as if she has said something very different or even the contrary.   Constructive communication requires both partners to react verbally and in their behavior as precisely as possible to what the other really says and does.   

When a woman says 'no', a mature and decent man, who respects her as an equal person, accepts it as a 'no'.    He has the choice to leave it as this and not insist any further, or to ask her, what he can do to gain her 'yes'.   After she has told him her conditions, he either accepts to comply or he acknowledges her 'no' as valid and final.  

Emotional morons, who never take a woman's statements for serious, are usually clueless about the emotional consequences of this.    A woman with self-respect and self-esteem expects to be respected and taken for serious as an equal partner.    Asking a man, if he respects her as an equal is not enough to find out the truth.   An emotional moron my sincerely believe to respect her, even if he does not.    His true amount of respect or lack of respect can only be experienced by his behavior in reaction to her statements.    When a man takes her statements for serious, this indicates that he takes her for serious.  
When being respected as an equal is a woman's crucial need in a relationship, every experience of the man's disrespect hurts her very much.    But the emotional moron has no clue, that his disregard of her statements hurts her at all.   

There are several kinds of how an emotional moron hurts a woman by his disrespect

1. She says no, and he behaves, as if she had said yes.   She says something, and he behaves, as if she had said something different or the contrary.    She says something, and he does not react, as if he were deaf.
2. She tells him her condition, when he wants something from her.   He continues to pursue his demand as if she had never told him her condition.
3. He accepts a condition or agrees to fulfill a need of her.   He does not comply, but he feels not as if he is breaking a promise or breaking his word, because he just did not take her statement for serious, that the condition or the need were really something of vital importance to her.   He believes his breaking a promise as omitting an insignificant trivial.    He had mistaken her condition for a suggestion.
4. She asks a man not to do or not to repeat some painful, disturbing or annoying behavior.   He continues the same behavior as if she had not said anything.    He even continues the behavior after she has asked him dozens of times to stop.
5. He does not believe her statement of feeling pain, when she attributes the pain to his behavior.
6. When he accepts her statement of feeling pain, he refuses to accept her attribution, that his behavior was the cause.   He denies her to have a sound judgement to perceive, consider or define his behavior as inappropriate in her subjective reality.  
7. He does not react, when she attempts to convince him of something with rationality and logic.   He does not attempt to convince her.   Her agreement and consent are irrelevant and insignificant for him, he does, what he wants, no matter what she thinks about it.   If he is able to interact rationally and logically, he reserves this to those persons, whom he respects, while he dominates the woman.    Respect impedes domination.    Domination is an expression of disrespect.
8. When he dislikes her behavior, he begrudges her without any reaction to, consideration of or interest in her explanations of her reasons, her perceptions, her needs, her subjective reality.   He considers only his own subjective reality as valid, but he does not concede any value to her subjective reality.
9. His disrespectful opinion and attitude translates whatever she says automatically into something, that confirms his prejudice of her.   While his ear hears the sound of a 'no', his mind receives 'yes' as the expected message.   
10. He himself does not honor others by expressing his true meaning in his own statements.   He makes statements verbally or by his actions, but he does not really mean, what he expresses and he projects his own game on others.    He sometimes says 'no' but wants the other to take it for a 'yes' and assumes the same from a woman.    He sometimes expresses things for the purpose of extorting and manipulating.    He projects this on the woman.

I am a woman, who says, what she means and means, what she says.   If a man is not able to take my statements as true at face value and myself for serious, then he cannot be my mindmate. 

223. Dominance and Transgression

Dominance and Transgression

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

 Domination is Abomination! 

85. Identity, Ideal Self and Self-Esteem

Identity, Ideal Self and Self-Esteem

The ideal self, or one major aspect of it, is the acknowledgment of what behavior is morally right and what is not, and that depends on the values and basic attitudes. As I outlined in entry 43, I consider the basic values as the conscious representation of the relative strength of the amount of hard-wired instinctivity and gullibility or rationality and cerebrality in the brain.

The perceived self is the way, that someone experiences subjectively his own behavior, no matter, how it is perceived by others. The more someone perceives both selves as congruent, the better he feels about himself.

The ought self is the knowledge about rules and norms, about what mainstream society expects from people.

Therefore the formation and development and the rules for behavior of the ideal self depend very much on the kind of identity, someone has hardwired into his brain.

Hypoanimalistic individuals, who are guided by rationality, have an ideal self much based upon rationality and a fair exchange of giving and receiving, on tit-for-tat and on treating others as individuals too. The ought self cannot influence them, whenever it is irrational for the individual. They choose carefully, who is worthy to mix with, and then they accept to allow mutual influencing only with those chosen.

Breeders with the particle identity are very different. Their ideal self represents the urges of all the instincts, that are hard-wired into their brain and form their identity. Their ideal self tells them to procreate, to fight for power and resources in a hierarchy, to favor their progeny, and as particles to have a purpose in life pleasing that something higher, their deity. As particles connected with other particles, they incorporate a lot of the ought self into the ideal self. That ought self can add belief-based elements to the ideal self like earning advantages in an afterlife. They need other particles and are therefore prone to be influenced by those, whose influence is detrimental.

For hypoanimalistic individuals, self-esteem is derived mainly from achievements, if behaving in a way, that the perceived self closely resembles the ideal self, also is considered as an achievement. For particles, the esteem of others can modify their self-esteem substantially.

One ingredient to live in harmony is the situation of the esteem of significant people being in sync with the own self-esteem.

Hypoanimalistic individuals need to be rationally convinced by either own experience or given evidence of failure to adjust their self-esteem.

Particles are very prone to adjust their own self-esteem to the opinions of others due to how they are treated. They depend on others, on competition, on comparing themselves for their self-esteem.

The representation of the self-esteem is expressed in what someone feels entitled to deserve in all aspects of what is important to him. Material and immaterial entitlements are very different, I am only referring to immaterial entitlement.

This brings me back to entry 82 (Identity and Forgiving). A transgression is a behavior, which at least in the perception of the transgressee is below of what he is entitled to be impacted with. In the moment of the transgression, the esteem of the transgressor for the transgressee is considerably lower than his self-esteem.

This causes a disruptive imbalance. Forgiving corrects this by reestablishing the congruence between the self-esteem and the perceived esteem of the other.

Earning forgiveness means, that the transgressor adjusts his esteem to the self-esteem of the transgressee and adjusts therefore also, what he considers as appropriate behavior with him. For a hypoanimalistic individual, this is the only solution, else the transgressor is unworthy for further contact.

For particles, who need the entanglement with other particles more than their own self-esteem, the situation is different. In obedience to their deity, they forgive a transgression, even though the transgressor continues to consider is adequate to the transgressee. But in this case forgiving means to lower the own self-esteem to match the low esteem of the transgressor.  Both have implicitly accepted future repetitions of the transgression, because the transgressee has indirectly acknowledged by forgiving, that it was really not a transgression at all, but a behavior, that he is willing to be exposed to again.

Thus, particles lower their own self-esteem in the aspects of the transgression, but there is the deity as the third party of the triad in the background. For them, obedience, submission, sacrifice for the deity is also perceived as an achievement. What self-esteem they loose to the low esteem of the transgressor, they gain again from the achievement of being docile to the deity.

47. Feminism, Identity and Self-Worth of Women

Feminism, Identity and Self-Worth of Women

So far in this blog, I looked at the huge difference between the identity of instinct driven procreators and rationally determined childfree people more in general than by considering the differences between the genders.  
Because I am convinced, that high rationality and low instinctivity women and men have more of a common identity than have high instinctivity and low rationality persons of each gender with their low instinctivity and high rationality counterparts.  
High rationality and low instinctivity women and men share the same identity as predominantly individuals.   The instinctive urges for procreation causes high instinctivity low rationality women and men to very different adaptive behaviors, with very different identities and values as a consequence.   

Feminism is a good example.   This word has been used diffusely for a long time.     But in reality, there are two completely different varieties of feminism.   One is based on the rational individuals, it it based on the egalitarian principles, that the haphazard of having been born as one of two genders does not justify any of those inequalities, that at any time in history and at any place on this globe has been forced upon women.    This individualistic feminism declares, that women are entitled to equal rights, equal votes, equal pay, equal political influence, equal access to all professions.  

There is also the procreative feminism, that is based on the diversity of roles as the best way of enabling the survival of their genes.   This feminism demands that all chores, activities and occupations, that are a necessary consequence of child raising, should be valued more and as much as the economically oriented occupation of the men in the traditional role of bread winner.  
As much as one hour in the lifetime of a scientist and a housewife has the same value and is the same sacrifice if given to an unpleasant chore, nobody can rationally compare the rewarding quality of changing stinking napkins and washing dishes with the satisfaction of for example doing research work.   It is absurd to demand to give value to unpleasant chores so that they are more easily ascribed as a valuable domain of women.   

The individualistic feminism only makes sense on the background of a deficit in equal rights to the disadvantage of women, else it should be considered as an incomplete expression of egalitarianism, that means equal rights for all individuals.

Both kind of feminism are based on a perceived injustice and imbalance of chances, influence, resources in disadvantage for women.    But this perception is mostly a development of the last few centuries.   The amount of acquiescence, that women seem to have shown to situations, that I would define as outrageous, like polygyny, this is beyond my personal imagination.   

There is only one explanation, and that is that even the awareness for the question, the thought, the feeling of outrage and injustice of having or lacking self-esteem, self-worth, self-respect as a woman are abstract concepts, that are based on a minimum of intelligence and rationality that has evolved much later than the instincts.   

I described the polygynous situation in entry 23. Interdependence of Instincts as a reason, why men evolved to ruthlessly fight for dominance over other men and also over women.  

Then I found another very interesting article by Kanazawa: 
http://personal.lse.ac.uk/Kanazawa/pdfs/JOP2009.pdf  
Until reading it, I considered tribal war against outgroups as a valve for aggression and as a method to acquire food and other resources for survival.  

Kanazawa plausibly has a much more drastic theory:   Women were more urged to procreate than to have the exclusivity of a man's love to themselves, they even choose sharing a rich man over the exclusivity of a poor man, and the poor men then went on raids to rob women from outgroups.  

The force of the genes to survive is ruthless towards the individuals.    As long as human evolution had not lead to a minimum level of rationality, high instinctivity made men brutal predators perceiving themselves as doing nothing wrong, while it made women to perceive and experience themselves just as wombs with not own rights as individual persons.  Therefore they did not only allow themselves to be considered and treated as baby-pots with the same functionality as flower-pots, they even complied with it.   

Therefore while I agree 100% with the concept of Kanazawa and others in evolutionary psychology, that the innate instincts are still the adaptation to the environment of 10.000 or 100.000 years ago, I differ by thinking, that the evolution of rationality and intelligence has continued and even accelerated under the changed environment.   During most of this evolution, it continued to serve procreation, by changing the methods of acquiring the goal.    The man with high instinctivity and low rationality might as a caveman have robbed a woman from her husband in another tribe, killed her children, forced her to raise his instead.   The man with high instinctivity and medium rationality 1000 years ago might instead have bought her from her father after using his rationality to acquire the wealth.   

But to become aware of the outrage of this, to become a feminist, rationality had to evolve even further, until it was at least nearly as strong as the instinctivity.    To become childfree and to be aware of the damage of procreation upon the individual, rationality had to evolve so far, that it got stronger than instinctivity in the most evolved individuals.     

Women, who were sold, robbed, abducted and raped with brute force had no chance to resist physically.   But if they in those times would have perceived the coercion as an outrage, they could have resisted in many other ways.   The could have killed their abductors, they could have run away, they could have killed the unwanted children.    But they did not, because they had not yet evolved enough rationality to develop any self-esteem first.        

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And by the way I have read several articles of Kanazawa in scientific journals and perceived them all as serious science.   
When I found this attack on feminism:
http://www.psychologytoday.com/node/31586
it seemed just too absurd to have been written by the same person.    I am not even bothered to comment on it.   Others have done that.   
But it seems to me, that he also is prone to fall back into caveman's behavior.    I suspect that he had a date with a feminist woman, who rejected him, he got drunk and wrote the article.    The caveman would have attacked the woman by beating her up.   He attacked all feminists by beating them with words instead.