715. Love Cannot Be Defined, But A Loving Relationship Can

715.  Love Cannot Be Defined, But A Loving Relationship Can

Love is an emotion, which is felt and cannot be clearly defined.   It is easier to define, what is not love, than what is.  
The mere urge to copulate with a body is certainly not love but only a virulent expression of the procreation instinct.    Whatever form of attraction there may be, nothing can be called love with justification, unless there is the recognition and appreciation of the cognitive qualities and personality of the partner. 

The relationship of a couple can be defined as loving by behaviors, by which the quality of the bond between the partners is directly or indirectly expressed.
  
The criteria of a loving relationship:

1. Emotional attachment and emotional intimacy
2. Physical intimacy
3. Some amount of intellectual intimacy, depending upon the amount of intelligence and education
4. Exclusivity, each being special to the other in a way, which nobody else is
5. No need or inclination to wish or to search for someone else

When all the above criteria for a loving relationship are present, and when the couple has also explicitly agreed to stay together indefinitely, then they have accepted to be a loving couple.  Obviously both experience sufficiently, whatever love means for them personally.

But when two persons share physical intimacy repeatedly with each other during a considerable time, even for years, and they do not consider themselves as a couple in a loving relationship, there can be very different arrangements.  

In the case, that it is really only physical intimacy and nothing else, then this is just a variety of reciprocal abuse and taking advantage of each other, while they prefer the practical advantage of avoiding the recurrent hunt and search for someone different.

But there is also the concept of friends with benefits (FWB), where the word friend really means true friendship, and is not just confounded as synonymous with mere acquaintance.   

A true friend is someone, with whom there are ties of emotional and intellectual intimacy in some form.    This is the essence of friendship.  When physical intimacy is added to the true friendship, then this combination contains all esential ingredients for a loving relationship.   

When the couple nevertheless explicitly puts emphasis upon the distinction of being FWB, but not being a loving couple, this means more often than not, that their are some serious personal problems.

1. It can be a sign of selfishness and greed, when someone wants all the benefits of being in a loving relationship while also wanting all the advantages of being single.   It is an attempt to get all needs met while not having any obligations to also meet the other's needs.  
   
2. There can be fear and apprehension.  
   Someone may fear commitment and obligations.  
   Someone may fear failure and getting the more hurt, the more he allows involvement.   
   Someone may be torn apart between the fear of a repetition of a very hurtful past experience and the wish to have a better relationship. Someone may fear to fail, would accepting love lead to the next step of further closeness by living together. 
   Someone may succeed to maintain the denial of such fears by insisting on the denial of any emotional involvement.  
   
3. There can be unrealistic hopes and expectations.   The real quality of the present relationship is not appreciated as sufficient in comparison with imaginary ideals.  The relationship is considered as a temporary arrangement until either the ideal and perfect partner is found or until someone experiences that overwhelming sudden sensation, as which love is presented in fictional novels or movies. 

This FWB concept seems weird.

It cannot be explained by evolutionary biology.    By instinct, men want to sire as many offspring as possible with as many different sets of genes.   By instinct, women want commitment and attachment as the best way of provision for their offspring.   

While FWB does not cater for the needs of the instinct driven, it nevertheless also does not serve the specific needs of those with a very low instinctivity, the brainiacs, eggheads and intellectuals. Their needs for intellectual and emotional intimacy, for the companionship of shared extensive cultural and cognitive activities are best fulfilled in a close loving relationship.
 
Maybe FWB suits predominantly the needs of the people in the middle of the instinctivity bell curve, who are the most disturbed by their internal struggle between the contradictory forces of instincts versus rationality and self-control.  

As long as both persons implied want either love or FWB, they can get, what they want.   But sadly enough, often there is a disparity, probably when people differ very much in their level of instinctivity.  While one partner experiences all the criteria as given and thus himself as being in a loving relationship, the other is afflicted with some of the problems listed above and keeps on enforcing a distance by insisting to be only FWB.    

679.   The Subtly Detrimental Influence Of Movies - An Example

Recently I watched the movie 'You've Got Mail'.   I had heard of this movie before as if it were simply a nice and friendly romantic story of an internet match.  

I was quite surprised, when I discovered its detrimental subtle message.  


When only looking at the dynamics of the story, it could be a very exemplary story of the slippery slope of how the allegedly and mistakenly innocent initial behavior of chatting first escalates into emotional cheating and ultimately leads to the breakup of two couples.  

Unfortunately, the movie is not at all a warning for considerate and responsible people to beware of this slippery slope.    To the contrary, it reinforces and encourages people to pursue their own selfish goals without any consideration for their partners, without feeling any commitment and obligation.   The movie is a story about how ruthless and irresponsible transgressions are rewarded.   

Already the secrecy in the first scenes shows, that both protagonists are fully aware of doing something, which they know as not being accepted by their respective partner.  It is clearly emotional cheating. 
Additionally, both couples are shown as being principally in harmony, the respective partners are not presented as having done anything to deserve being dumped.   When the two protagonists decided to cheat, they had not the least excuse in their partners' behavior.

 
Movies are fictional stories, but movies like 'You've Got Mail' are realistic enough to influence people's behavior and their moral compass.    This movie contributes to the desensitization of people towards denial or unawareness for the hurting consequences of how they treat others.  

The fiction of this movie is very unrealistic by presenting the dumped partners as not suffering but both ready to get involved with each other.  
In real life, a dumped partner rarely ever goes through such an ordeal without being wounded and scarred.  

The two protagonists could not foresee this exceptionally benign outcome of their transgression.   When they made the first step upon the slippery slope towards emotional cheating, they decided to do this in spite of the then very real risk of deeply hurting their partners.  


Such movies propagate the fallacy as if it were morally acceptable to look for someone new and dump the previous partner, even though he did nothing whatsoever to deserve this.

Of course this is just one movie, but those people seeing such movies frequently often end up desensitized.   When they hurt others and the others are damaged and show this by their demeanor, the transgressors are unable to comprehend, what they themselves have done.   Instead of taking responsibility, they define the damage done to the hurt person as a weakness, a flaw, a defect.   Even those not directly involved are under the fallacy of blaming the victims for lacking resilience and not seeing the transgressor's full responsibility. 


Sometimes people do worry about the effects of violence in movies and computer games upon people.   But hardly ever anybody worries about the subtle desensitization of superficially harmless movies, which are teaching people to be ruthlessly selfish, irresponsible and inconsiderate.

635. A Male Misrepresentation Of Epicurus' Philosophy

635.   A Male Misrepresentation Of Epicurus' Philosophy

I have been watching a video containing a male interpretation of Epicurus' philosophy.   (I am not giving the link, as I do not want to propagate any expression of sexism.)

The author is talking about the wisdom of considering before acting, what price in pain has to be paid as the consequence of indulging in pleasure.  Unfortunately he presents (or rather misrepresents) it as an entirely selfish and self-centered balancing with the limited consideration for only the own person, without any reference to avoiding the pain done to others.   

Basically this guy claims, that if someone expects to get more pleasure than pain for himself, then there is no reason to refrain from any indulgence, even when this includes the abuse of women's bodies.

He talks about a man's decision to have sex or not the same way as if he were talking about his decision to use a car or not.   He implicitly considers women as utilities, not as human beings deserving consideration, respect and to be spared pain.
By his interpretation, even Genghis Khan would have behaved in accordance with Epicurus.   Genghis Khan had the power to get away with raping thousands of women without himself suffering bad consequences.

As a woman, I am appalled by the author's very selfish, irresponsible and inconsiderate attitude, which he shows implicitly by some of his examples.   He misleads people to think that the objectification of women were in accordance with Epicurus.

One of the core statements of the Epicurean philosophy is "neither to harm nor be harmed".    This responsible perspective towards others is even mentioned first.

Based upon this, the correct application of the balancing of pain and pleasure includes the consideration and responsibility to avoid hurting and harming others and to restrict indulgence in any pleasure to when there are no suffering victims.

529. Contact With Ex-Partners, Reliability And Trust

529.   Contact With Ex-Partners, Reliability And Trust

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

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

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

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

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

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

Intrinsic commitment includes the obligation to end a relationship only 

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

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

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


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

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

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

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


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

507. The Cassandra Dynamics

507.  The Cassandra Dynamics

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

1. Cassandra dynamics are defined by:

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

2. Cassandra's circumstances

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

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

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

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

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

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

3.1.  Asymmetrical relationship. 

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

3.2.  Imposing gender roles.

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

3.3.  The Dunning-Kruger effect. 

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

3.4.  Immaturity

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

3.5.  Selfishness

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

3.6.  Need for power

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

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

477. Non-Religious False Beliefs Concerning Happiness

Non-Religious False Beliefs Concerning Happiness

Gullibility causes people to restrict their own lives by false beliefs.   But those false beliefs are not only religious, there are also false beliefs about happiness.  

For both animals and humans, avoiding dishomeostasis and stimulation of the pleasure center are motivated by urges to enhance the subjective wellbeing.    Sexual homeostasis and material provision of food, shelter and health are causes of contentment and satisfaction for both humans and animals.    But this is not happiness.

Only for humans, happiness is the extreme of what is experienced as wellbeing.   Happiness as an abstract emotion is much more than the sensation and perception of being contented and satisfied.    Happiness is a consequence of the specific and unique human cognition for non-physical homeostasis and pleasures.  

There are two major false beliefs, which gullible people are misguided by:

• A materially luxury life is believed to be the best life possible.
• Sexual homeostasis, either with one person in a relationship or by promiscuity is the only purpose of and the best to be derived from the interaction with the opposite gender.  

Both false beliefs are caused by predominant animal instincts in the absence or repression of the full emotional and intellectual cognitive capacities.    Strong dishomeostasis of animal instincts enhances these false beliefs, the further the unique human cognition is evolved in an individual, the less the individual is prone to be mislead by these beliefs. Unfortunately those false beliefs impede people from achieving the happiness and fulfillment in accordance with their cognition. 

• Luxury is not sufficient to cause happiness.    In the case of material survival, happiness is a bit too strong a word, so I will use joy and fulfillment instead.   
• With personal relationship, the situation is similar.   Sexual homeostation is not sufficient to cause happiness.  

People often claim, that a relationship is not a job, and expectations should be different.    But both can be compared in many ways.   A job is a method to earn physical wellbeing, a committed relationship is a method to earn emotional wellbeing.  

The following analogy has limitations.   

Happiness requires a symmetrical relationship, that only works, when the happiness is reciprocally available, while the impact of material circumstances is asymmetrical.  
My analogy concerning material wellbeing is even valid for selfish and self-centered persons, while the relationship derived emotional wellbeing depends additionally upon egalitarian and responsible maturity. 
But if someone with both false beliefs is oblivious of the difference between satisfaction due to the homeostasis of instinctive urges and the human ability to experience fulfillment, joy and happiness, then he is deprived of true human quality of life.   

1. Being deprived of basic material necessities causes suffering.
   Being lonely causes suffering.
   
2. Earning good money but disliking the job causes dishomeostasis and dissatisfaction, even though it allows a high standard of living.
   Having a relationship with a person based upon initial physical infatuation causes emotional dishomeostasis and dissatisfaction, when the partner is not respected and appreciated as a person, but only perceived as a source of advantages.
   
3. Professional fulfillment means both in combination:  Enjoyment with what one does for a living and to get appropriate payment.   The activity would be enjoyed by itself even without being paid.  
   Happiness means to enjoy to be with a person and to get sexual homeostasis.   Intellectual intimacy with and attachment to this person would be rewarding by itself even if there were no sexual homeostasis.  
   
4. Being paid is not the motivation to prefer a specific activity, it is important only to avoid suffering from deprivation.
   Sexuality is not the reason to be committed to a chosen mate, it serves only to avoid dishomeostasis.   
   
5. People with advanced human cognition are motivated to the self-realization of intellectual and creative activities even when they are from a rich family and have no necessity to earn money.
   People with advanced human cognition are motivated to the self-realization of intellectual intimacy with a bonded close partner, even when they are in the situation, that sexual homeostasis with haphazard bodies is also available.
   
6. People, who do not need to work but are not able to occupy themselves intellectually, get bored and dissatisfied, no matter if they are poor or rich.   
   People, who only get sexual homeostation and nothing else from the other gender, get bored and dissatisfied, no matter if they experience this as promiscuous predators or as cheaters on mismatched partners.
   
7. Self-realization is a process of earning self-improvement by effort.   The more one invests in learning, the better it gets.   It is an enjoyable process, not a static final state.     
   Bonded commitment is a process of making efforts to earn attachment by improved emotional, intellectual and physical intimacy.    Happiness is the process of growing closer, it is not a final state. 
   
8. Finding an opportunity to earn money depends on circumstances beyond individual control. Making oneself qualified to be suitable for the opportunity is the choice to make the effort.  
   Finding a compatible partner depends upon circumstances beyond individual control.   Learning to communicate and to be suitable as a considerate and responsible partner is the conscious choice to make the effort to learn. 
   
9. If someone takes the money and does not earn it, he will not be allowed to stay in the job for long.
   If someone enters a relationship and only takes the advantages without caring equally for the other's needs, then the relationship cannot last.
   
10. Fulfillment in a job means to know the requirements, to be qualified and to be motivated.
    Reciprocal happiness means to know the other's needs, to be able and motivated to fulfill them.  

470. Men's Innate Inclinations

470.   Men's Innate Inclinations

When two persons hardly knowing each other start to communicate by written correspondence, they are prone to sooner or later encounter situations of misunderstanding and misinterpretations, leading to wrong conclusions.   Most people tend to react immediately by perceiving the other's incomprehensible statement as weird.   

Only on second thought, people reevaluate their spontaneous reaction more rationally.   This rational handling is a good indication of a man's general attitude towards women.   This attitude represents the priority of his genuine needs for either privileges or equality.   The sooner I find this out, the better for me.  

I am realistic.   I cannot make a man overcome gender roles, as long as he profits from them, while they are only to my disadvantage.   I can only help a man to overcome gender roles, of which he is oblivious, if he is in favor of equality by his own inclination, by his own wish.   I can only support someone towards equality, if he appreciates equality intrinsically as beneficial for himself.


1.  Men proceed in handling apparent weirdness of a woman in accordance with their needs.  

1.1.  The jerk

The jerk is selfish and he feels entitled to be so.  The privileges given to men by the traditional gender roles are in his favor.    Whatever flaw, defect and shortcomings he can ascribe to a woman helps him to justify to others, why his considering her as inferior suffices for him to establish a hierarchy of domination.  

The jerk wants to believe the woman to be flawed, this allowing him not to worry about others interfering with his domination.

1.2.  The emotional moron

The emotional moron is not as selfish as the jerk, he does not feel automatically entitled to have privileges.  But he enjoys the privileges, if he can have them without a bad conscience.   He welcomes anything, that offers itself to be used to reinforce his belief in his own superiority as the justification for his privileges. 

The emotional moron wants to believe the woman to be flawed, this allowing him to justify his domination to himself.

1.3.  The unconcerned

The unconcerned is ignorant and unaware of the paramount importance of equality for an egalitarian woman.   He is misled and maybe brainwashed by the christian demand for tolerance.   He is oblivious of the meaning of ascribing flaws. He is oblivious, that tolerance for alleged flaws is detrimental to developing intellectual intimacy.    He is ignorant of the importance of eliminating wrong impressions and of avoiding devaluation.   He is unaware of what attracts him mainly to a woman, her brain and personality or her body. 

The unconcerned is neutral, apparent flaws do not consciously influence his attitude towards a woman.  

1.4.  The egalitarian

The innately egalitarian and monogamous man with a genuine wish for a companion values intellectual intimacy more than having privileges, especially if having privileges are justified by nothing more than by being a man.   

The egalitarian man is intrinsically motivated to eliminate all apparent flaws, because the less he perceives a woman's brain as flawed, the more he is attracted to her.

  
2.  A man's reaction to a situation of temporary lacking comprehension for a woman is a very good indication of what to expect from him.  

2.1.  If a man wants a woman to be flawed, then this is a big red flag, he is either a jerk or an emotional moron.

2.2.  If a man is willing to tolerate a woman by allowing her to be flawed and is not concerned about this, then this is an important topic for some profound discussion about a woman's role in his life.    His real needs are hidden beyond his ignorance and unawareness,    

Most probably he would not be a jerk.  But a woman needs to know, if he is more an emotional moron or more an egalitarian.    He first needs to be made aware, that this distinction is very important for an egalitarian woman like me.   His attitude can only be discovered with his cooperation of careful introspection.     Since this is predominantly important for the woman, misunderstandings will not be cleared, unless the woman takes the initiative to do so and is not stalled by the man's obstruction. 

     
2.3.  If a man rejects intellectually flawed women, then he experiences any instance of incomprehension as disruptive and as a task to deal with.   He is not only motivated to clear all misunderstandings, but he takes the initiative to do so.  
 

When there is some disruptive misunderstanding, jerks and emotional morons can be easily recognized, because they show their appreciation of a woman's apparent flaws.  
Egalitarians can also be easily recognized, because they are themselves motivated to initiate efforts to remove wrong impression and to restore and create reciprocal respect.

The unconcerned are the real problem.  Not only is the woman the one with the onesided need to clear the misunderstandings, while the man is not bothered, but such misunderstandings happen most to persons knowing each other very little.    The woman initiating attempts to clarify a misunderstanding risks to deteriorate the situation by adding worse misunderstandings.

The next entry will give an example of how this can happen.    

428. Selfishness And Identity

Selfishness And Identity

Selfishness as a trait means considering oneself entitled to selfish behavior including the justification for such behavior in the past and the planning or willingness for such behavior in the future.

Selfish behavior is

1. subjectively beneficial for the one acting selfishly.
2. subjectively or objectively harmful to the target, either physically, emotionally or materially.
3. done without the consent of the target and not based upon previous consent as part of a deal.

Most people can agree with part 1 and 3 of the definition.   

But the apparently paradoxical mutual accusation of being selfish between breeders and non-breeders (entry 426) made me aware, that there is a wide discrepancy concerning the target of the behavior in part 2 of the definition. 

Personally I can take two views on breeding.    By projecting from myself to others, I consider breeders as self-harming fools, who waste their life away by their choice of changing dirty diapers, when they could instead read a good book.    Taking a more objective view I consider those breeders, who do raise children in an appropriate way as the heroes, who do the dirty and unpleasant work for the survival of society, so that childfree people like me can enjoy the privilege to avoid the dreary and annoying interaction with children.    Before I was in contact with other childfree people, it never even occurred to me to consider those child raising heroes as selfish.   
 

Of course the following is no claim of any truth or facts, it is a model of speculations.   (It is so much easier to express myself by using simple statements.   Therefore whenever I write 'is', this needs to be read as 'it seems probable to me'.)

I already attempted in entry 426 to explain the childfree accusing breeders as selfish by the discrepancy between their innate attraction to children and their self-restriction and denial to have their own due to some external reason.  

The difference in defining the target of selfishness can be explained by a difference in the perceived own identity.   I am using another pseudo-dichotomous explanation model.   It is a scale of a distribution along a bell curve.   At one extreme end there are the persons with an individual identity, at the other end are the persons with the particle identity.   The majority of people are somewhere in between.

The individual identity means, that a person experiences himself only as an individual person, living his life until death, when the entire existence ends.    A person with such an identity perceives and experiences himself interacting with other individuals.  Morality means the limitation of responsibility and consideration to individuals as the targets of behavior.   

Only individuals consciously suffer pain when harmed.  Not harming according to Epicurus' principle is the reason for limiting the definition of who is the target of selfish behavior to individuals. 

When it concerns resources owned by more abstract entities like society or the ecosystem, the principle is the self-calculated balance of not causing damage without compensating and for not taking more than giving back.    No instance of behavior without any individual as a target can be defined as selfish.  There can only be the trait of selfishness leading to a long term lacking balance of taking more than giving.   Taking long-term responsibility for this balance makes the difference between legitimate self-interest and selfishness.  

The particle identity is different.   Whatever there is innate in the brain as a part of animal instincts, it creates on the conscious level a vague feeling of interconnectedness with something higher, more significant and more valuable than the individual self.  Most probably it is the instinctive identification as being one's eternal genes more than one's individual person in a one time body.  

Feeling interconnected leads on the conscious level to create an image, attitude or idea, of what it is that people feel interconnected with.    This can be anything from the eternal soul of religion and reincarnation, the creation, a system of cosmic powers, mother earth or the ecosystem.   No matter which higher entity they ascribe their being a particle of, being only a particle makes people accept to be externally guided by morals given by and obligations towards that higher entity.

Considering their own individuality as insignificant, they apply this same insignificance also to their fellow particles.   For them, the entire or any part of the higher entitiy is considered as a target in need to be protected from selfish behavior, and everybody else is supposed and sometimes forced to submit to this obligation.

 
When people, who had been brought up religiously and who had so far to their own satisfaction explained all their feeling interconnectedness to their immoral soul, become atheists by rationally discarding the existence of a soul, this does not eliminate their particle identity and their feeling interconnected.   

For them, the ecosystem as something scientifically real and not requiring any faith, is a good replacement to feel interconnected with.   Many of them are somewhere on the middle of the bell curve of the strength of the procreation and nurturing instinct.    

This moderate magnitude of these instincts would motivate them to breed, when encouraged by their religion, even though they are sometimes unhappy with their burden.    Then they call the non-breeders selfish.   

The same magnitude combined wtih the knowledge, that the ecosystem is under hazard of the overpopulation, causes them to refrain from breeding, but they feel deprived of what attracts them to breeding.   So they call the breeders selfish with the ecosystem as the target.   

In both cases, selfish is defined by either god's creation or the ecosystem as the target, but not by the wellbeing of living individuals, who suffer.  

426. Breeders, Non-Breeders And The Reciprocal Accusation Of Selfishness

Breeders, Non-Breeders And The Reciprocal Accusation Of Selfishness

Breeders and non-breeders often accuse each other of being selfish.   This is remarkable, as being selfish means attempting to get benefits for oneself disregarding conflicting interests.    Accusing someone else of being selfish implies the agreement, that the allegedly selfish behavior is indeed beneficial for the accused. Evaluating another person's behavior as self-damaging would lead to call him a fool, insane, irrational, pathetic, anything except selfish.  
Therefore a breeder accusing a non-breeder as selfish implies the admission, that not breeding is more beneficial than breeding, and vice versa.   This paradox needs to be explained.    

So far, I had attributed the decision to breed or not to breed only to the need for homeostasis due to differences in the strength of the procreation instinct serving directly the survival of the genes.   I consider this as distributed along a bell curve, where at one extreme end people feel a strong procreation instinct, while at the other end, this instinct is absent.  

But there is a second scale, which I have up to now omitted, the innate nurturing instinct.  It is also distributed as a bell curve.  The innate difference is between being attracted to spend time with and to care for helpless beings or not.   At one end are those people, who feel very emotionally attracted to babies, children, pets, not only their own but in general.   At the other extreme are those people, who are just not attracted to any beings, who are lacking the cognitive abilities of a sane adult.   

These two scales are not or at least not fully correlated.   To illustrate the problem, I compare the four combinations of the extremes, but the same problem will also be to a lesser degree the case with the majority of people anywhere in the middle of the bell curves.   And of course, people are often influenced and brainwashed, so they are not aware of their true inclinations.  

1.  High procreation and high nurturing instincts:  
Such people experience raising children predominantly as restoring homeostasis and therefore subjectively as their self-interest.   They are those, who rather feel indiscriminate pity for the childless and the childfree and rarely call them selfish.

2.  High procreation and low nurturing instincts. 
Such people discover, that they experience raising children as a burden and a sacrifice only after they have them, when they are unable to undo the irreversible mistake.  They experience cognitive dissonance, they are envious of the childfree and they call them selfish.    

3.  Low procreation and high nurturing instincts.  
Such people are attracted to children, they choose to be dedicated uncles and aunts, to adopt, to be school teachers.  They perceive pets as children.   While they are rationally aware of the overpopulation and other external good reasons for not breeding, they are secretly dissatisfied of not being able to spend as much time with children as would give them homeostasis for their nurturing instinct.   As a result, they secretly envy the people, who have own children in defiance of any rational considerations, and they accuse them of being selfish. 

4.  Low procreation and low nurturing instincts.   
Such people are attracted only to beings, with whom intellectual communication is possible.   They are emotionally attracted to those people, with whom they can share the joy of consent by having something in common, by the intellectual intimacy with a mindmate.  
They can find it interesting to watch other people's kids for a few hours and to enjoy a visit to the zoo, but such beings just bore them after a while and caring for them is not an attraction, but an unpleasant burden to be avoided.  This lack of the instinct to asymmetrically care for the young has of course nothing to do with the symmetrical willingness to care for a sick partner in a committed relationship.    Such people are not driven to find someone as a target for an asymmetrical nurturing instinct, they choose someone to get attracted to by a wise intellectual choice, and caring is a symmetrical part of commitment.  
Such people are aware, that society as a whole needs some procreation to survive.  For them, being free from raising children is a privilege, they are content, that others do the unpleasant chore.  They are grateful to have been spared.   They have no reason to call breeders selfish.