52. Fake Altruism

Fake Altruism
Some American billionaires have announced to part with half of their money.   Superficially and to many people, they appear as altruistic people deserving admiration.    But this warrants a more critical evaluation. 
If they were genuinely unselfish and altruistic people, how did they ever get that much money?  
Besides rare cases of getting suddenly rich by winning the lottery or finding a gold mine, in the most cases, money is either inherited or the result of some successful business endeavor.   I suggest to read entry 16 on Competition or Cooperation about the ruthless way of business success.  

As an example, there is Mr. G., who has become rich by selling software.    There is nothing wrong with his selling his product to gain a comfortable life for himself and his family and to create employment, so that others can also earn a comfortable life.  
But there is a limit, beyond which the further amassing of riches cannot be ethically justified.   After Mr. G. had acquired a comfortable life without any need to work himself any more, then how can he justify to continue selling his products for prices, for which some less lucky people have to work 10 or even 20 hours?    Were he sincerely altruistic, he would reduce the price, so that everybody could afford the product by investing maybe half an hour of their own life time.

If Mr. G. now gives his money away, subjectively as a donation, he does not give it back to them, from whom he took it.   He gives away, what should never have been his, and he does this for some personal benefits, not by true altruism.    According to google, Mr. G. is portrayed as not religious, but Mrs. G. is, and she might be the one, who wants to buy herself a place in heaven and avoid the purgatory.   But Mr. G. may have enjoyed the power to get that much money, and may now enjoy the power to decide, what to do with it, and he might especially enjoy the influence and impact, that the power of choice the target of his donation gives him upon society and upon other peoples' lives.   

Mrs. and Mr. G. are breeders.    They have a daughter, who will inherit all their money.    For all breeders' instinct, there is an immanent logic, that the more resources they bestow upon the bearers of their genes, the greater the chance, that they in turn will be fit and capable to spread their genes in the future.   A rich daughter has a better chance to procreate with a fit and healthy alpha male than a poor daughter.   
Breeders greedily amass, what they can get.    Were there a radical limit of the maximum amount of wealth, that can be inherited by any person, and anything above that limit goes to the community, then even breeders would have much less instigation to be selfishly greedy.   Even Mr. G. would probably think twice about the rational reason to greedily grub, whatever he can by selling their products for too high prices, if most of it would go to the government at his death instead of to his daughter.   

True altruism would mean to make sacrifices of what someone has rightfully earned.    Fairness means not to take from others, what is beyond a fair balance of giving and receiving.  
Becoming rich beyond having an income in a decent proportion of the income compared with life time invested it neither altruistic nor fair.  

51. The Clone of a Cave Man - a Case Study

The Clone of a Cave Man - a Case Study

My scenario of ancient cave people in entry 50 is entirely my imagination, because I am ignorant of how intelligence and maturity evolved in Neanderthals and Cro-Magnons.   It may appear farfetched, but I had a model for it.    If some daring scientist would have cloned the ancient cave man and the clone would live in our times, outwardly looking unsuspicious, he would be just like someone, whom I have known, and whom I will call ACCM for Apparently a Cloned Cave Man.   

ACCM's behavior puzzled me for a long time.   First he appeared to me as someone, who had been stuck in his emotional maturation as a child, but had grown to superficially appear as an adult, studying successfully.

Some of his behavior seemed to be ADD, some was very typical for NPD (Narcissistic Personality Disorder), some was even typical for sociopathy.   But in contrast to the typical sociopath and malignant narcissist, he did not seem to be a really cruel jerk, his jerkish behavior seemed to be caused more be ignorance, oblivion and lack of empathy than by malice.  

But if he had a cave man's brain at the stage of evolution of my scenario in entry 50, that would solve the puzzle and explain his behavior.  


ACCM is completely selfish and self-centered, he feels entitled to get all his needs and wishes fulfilled without any or with little own effort and with no reason to feel gratitude.   He perceives himself as superior and everything and everybody exists only for the purpose to serve his needs.    He considers himself as born to dominate, equality is a meaningless word to him. 
ACCM is like a narcissist addicted to an unlimited supply of other people's attention.   If he does not get adulation and adoration, then he prefers the power to annoy, disturb and hurt others as a way of getting attention rather than no attention at all.  He seems oblivious to feel embarrassed or to even notice, when he makes a fool of himself or gets shunned and rejected in any subtle, not blunt way.   
ACCM perceives all other people as more or less suitable to serve his needs.   He does not perceive different social roles as requiring different behavior beyond maybe some basic differences according to age and gender.   He distinguishes persons by how much he can benefit from them.   Being addicted to attention, he has no constraint or reticence to initiate contact by starting to talk to every person crossing his path.   It makes not difference, if he meets a friend, acquaintance or a complete stranger, he greats them all as if everybody is a long known friend.    He does this everywhere, no matter, how appropriate or inappropriate it is in some social environment.
ACCM talks endlessly.  He does not listen and interrupts others.   If he does listen, he seems only to comprehend topics concerning practical problems of everyday life, while any topic concerning human interaction and abstract emotions seems never to enter his brain.    
ACCM seems to have a very dim notion of abstract and complex feelings.   He is self-centered in his pursuit of predominantly his physical and material need.   When he gets, what he wants, he is content, no matter what impact his method of acquisition would have on the pride, dignity and self-respect of mature people.    He just seems to be void of abstract and complex emotional needs like dignity.  His emotional needs do not go beyond control and power.
ACCM has not empathy for any invisible emotional experiences, even when told, what others feel.   His empathy is limited to simple needs like others being tired, hungry or sick.  

ACCM believes himself to love a woman.   But he loves her as an object and a utility, just like he loves his bicycle.    Her emotional wellbeing is something beyond his comprehension or consideration.  He is oblivious, that her emotional wellbeing even exists and he could have any impact upon it.   When the woman tells him, that she feels hurt, there is no reaction.    But he maintains her functionality as carefully as he does that of his bicycle, he cares for her physical needs like food and health nearly as much as for his own.
ACCM acts entirely according to his own needs and to his projection of his own needs upon the woman.   He does not ask nor listen to her declaration of her needs that are different from his, it seems that this does not even occur to him as a possibility, that she could have needs, that he is ignorant of and would need to ask her about.
ACCM considers the woman as his possession.   He has acquired her once, that means lured her somehow into a relationship, and from then on she is at his disposition and it does not occur to him, that she could have her own mind about continuing to want to be with him or not.   It does not occur to him, that her decision to stay with him or not depends upon how he treats her.   She has once become his possession, and from then on, she has to be available at his convenience, when he wants her for his needs, else she has to patiently wait in storage, until he retrieves her.  
ACCM perceives the woman as an object.   He is void of any ethical restraint or guidance in his behavior.   He does not feel any obligation, responsibility, accountability towards her.    She is perceived as an object, so his behavior is guided by general rules but not by an agreement or contract with her as an individual.   Those rules to him are the same as a maintenance manual for a bicycle.   He looks in the manual, what to do, he does not ask the bicycle.  
He does not cheat by the general rule, but he seems unable to comprehend the requirements of commitment, that include obligations to act on agreement and by consent.   He acts according his own interpretation of the general rules, so he cannot be wrong.  Therefore, no matter, how he treats her, he feels no remorse, guilt or conscience.    When she protests against his behavior, then his own excuses are enough valid reasons for himself, she is not significant enough to earn her forgiving, which he does not even consider as a necessity.

ACCM has a very good memory.  He seems to memorize abstract concepts from books or advice pages on the web, like being equal partners so well, that he appears to agree with them. But in reality he has just learned by root to say something, which he does not understand.    Sometimes even his ability to logical reasoning seems limited.  
ACCM practically never lies.   He has no need to lie, because he is oblivious of the invisible opinions of others, as he lacks the abstract capacity to conclude from behavior to the attitudes behind.    He lacks the capacity to reason with sufficient abstraction about human behavior to fully understand, what benefits he can get by lying and how to do this.   He is also too distracted, too impulsive and too busy to get attention, thus he could not lie consistently to avoid getting caught in contradictions. 
People mistake him for an honest person by a conscious decision to ethical behavior.   When they give him advantages, he takes them as his entitlement without ever noticing, that they decided to give something, which he was not entitled to receive.


I wonder, what a scientist would find, would he compare the genes of ACCM with those of a Cro-Magnon, a Neanderthal and a contemporary man......

50. The Evolution of the Human Mind

The Evolution of the Human Mind

Simplified, I use 'human mind' in this entry for all capacities and functions of the brain, that are unique to humans, that define the fundamental difference between humans and animals.  

I define 'maturity' as the genetically built in potential of the brain of an individual to develop a human mind with all capacities according to its stage of evolution.  

At the present stage of evolution, maturity includes emotional intelligence as indicated by empathy, abstract thinking also concerning emotions, communication skills, long term planning, learning from experience, balancing giving and receiving, being guided by values and ethics, evaluating others by their personality, love as a reciprocal mental bond, consciousness of self, self-control,  introspection and more.    

Some people reach such maturity in their early twenties, some much later, and some never.   But it is the general level of the evolution of the human mind at present.  

This evolution of the human mind has started many millions years ago inside the adult body of some ancestral animal in the savanna, that already was capable of all basic functions of survival and procreation by a fully evolved instinct.   During the time of that evolution, there were functioning adult bodies with the mind of a human child inside that was getting older as evolution progressed.  

I assume, that the cavepeople, who began painting on the walls of caves 35.000 years ago, could have been at the beginning of evolving towards more advanced maturity.   I call them cavepeople as a very fuzzy description for Neanderthals and Cro-Magnons, living in any dwelling, not only in the caves.   

Making tools from stone, throwing meet into a fire, using furs as protection against the cold are very practical skills.   The evolution of abstract thinking seems to me a quality step.   It seems plausible, that when they learned to paint abstracted animals to cave walls and to melt metals, that this was the trigger to later also evolve more complex and abstract feelings as are caring love and happiness.     


At some time in prehistory, there were cavepeople with the maturity as what is the development of today's children between 8 and 12 years.   I make no guess about the time of the following scenario.  

A person with a fully grown adult body with all the strength and dexterity, but the maturity of an 8 year old, could well learn to keep a fire going, to prepare meals, to built huts or tents, to use hides for clothes and to coordinate their behavior to hunt as a group, to paint animals to cave walls, to count small numbers, to do simple reasoning about natural phenomena, to make tools from stones.    In short, all accomplishments of the cavepeople, of which archaeologists have found evidence of, did not require more of a mind than what has an 8 year old today.  
But in their interaction, they were still more adult animals driven by instinctive behavior than humans.
 
I imagine this mentally 8 year old cave man, who has successfully fought for or otherwise gained possession of one or more women, who has gained a dominating role in the group's hierarchy by his physical fitness, as someone, who is completely selfish and selfcentered.   His identity is narcissistic, he perceives himself as a strong body, who has power.  Knowing of or considering any invisible personality traits are beyond his consciousness, either in himself or in others.   
A woman under his control is a body, an object, a possession, to whose availability at any moment of his convenience he is entitled.    To love her as a person is beyond his capacities.   If he feels anything like love, he loves the advantages and benefits of owning her.   He does not need to care, if she wants to be with him, nor to bother to make her want him, as he owns her and therefore takes her for granted.    Her father had handed her over into his property, it never occurred to him to ask himself or her, what she wanted.   Nor did he have any clue, how to win a woman's wish to be with him, as this was not a necessity in acquiring her.

The survival of a small group in a hostile environment needs every member to function reliably.   So the role and behavior of every member is prescribed and defined by clear rules, that are enforced by sanctions.   By the rules of the group, and by empathy, his care for the woman and her offspring is limited to physical needs, he provides food, shelter and protection.    He does this by his own judgment and interpretation of the rules, not by asking her, what she subjectively needs, because for him, his own needs come first, and then he bothers about hers.  

He may deposit a hunted deer at her feet, and then disappear into the wilderness without telling her, where he goes and when he will back.   With her equally self-centered 8 year old mind, she is content to have the deer, and as soon as he leaves the cave, he is out of her mind.   It does not even occur to her to worry about his safety, and equally it does not occur to him to think, that she would be worried and need to be better informed.

They are both utilities to each other, important for the instincts and not as persons.   All communication is restricted to practical matters.    He might give her instructions, what he wants to be done with the deer, or she might later tell him, what she in fact did with it.   Nothing of this requires them to listen to each other about abstract matters or about each other's feeling.    There are no abstract matters in their life.  

In a small group, everybody knows each other well and they are only in contact with the same people all the time.   There are no quality differences in social roles except the position of power in the hierarchy.  A dominant male has a position, entitling him to address any group member at any moment without the least hesitation or restraint.   
Lying is obsolete, as people know too much about each other, and just blurting out the truth is the easiest way of simple communication. 

Wild animals like bears, lions and wolves are a permanent danger, especially when they are not only attracted by humans as prey, but also by the smell of food around them.   
Focusing too much on a task or on the interaction with one another can be dangerous, the cavepeople have to be alert all the time for any suspicious events in their surroundings.   

Since writing is unknown, the cavepeople need a good memory for survival information.   But they need little abstract reasoning.  

The cave people have little identity as individuals but rather perceive themselves as group members with specific functions, that they have to fulfill without hesitation or questioning.   Privileges and disadvantages are both taken as fate and not questioned.    

In such a situation, advanced abstract emotions have not yet evolved, as there was no occasion for them to be in demand.    Who experiences himself not an individual but as a function, does not have any reason to feel self-esteem or lack thereof.    Instead of bothering about the estimated esteem of others by observation of indications from their choice of behavior, a high position in a hierarchy was connected with the entitlement to gestures of submission by rules.   As long as such gestures were outwardly shown, it was perceived as enough.     

Rules defined behavior, there was no room for any individual decision of feeling obligations as a mere option.   To be trustworthy or to trust or not, was not a choice.   There was no freedom of behavior, that caused someone to feel responsible and accountable for his own actions.  
   
In short, they followed the rules, where they were required to do so, and else they considered themselves as entitled to whatever they could get for their self-interest without consideration for others by choice. 

As a consequence, these cavepeople did not feel hurt by betrayal, humiliation, degradation, inequality, insult, inconsideration, because they did not even know, what all these means.    They probably were much less aware of any of their feelings, except the one of being tired all the time from the hard physical requirements of survival.    They probably also lacked any feeling for bliss and joy beyond simple physical pleasures.   

In short, nothing of what we call emotional intelligence today, was present in such a group.   

49. The Different Speed of the Two Evolutions

The Different Speed of the Two Evolutions

I just came across another very interesting source by a Canadian scientist, Joseph Henrich, who defends the superiority of the benefits of monogamy on society in a court case defending against an appeal to legalize polygamy.  

http://www.vancouversun.com/pdf/affidavit.pdf

He explains the benefits of enforced monogamy on society and why monogamous societies have an advantage.    I restrict my comments to one main aspect: One important reason is that monogamy spares society the bad effects of those young men, who become nasty and aggressive, because they cannot have mates, when polygynous men have usurped most of the women for themselves.   

As natural selection works on both levels, the fitness of the individual and the fitness of groups, then the puzzling question is, why polygyny did ever evolve in individuals at all?

According to the plausible theory of Kazanawa, males in the tribes in the Pleistocene fought for dominance and the fittest ones usurped all the women.  Therefore there were surplus men raiding for women outside their own tribe.  They either succeeded to acquire a mate or they got killed and the equilibrium of procreative possibilities was restored.  

But there could be another explanation too.   In those days, life for men was very dangerous.   Hunting huge animals like mammoth with simple weapons was a hazard, but there were bears, wolves, lions, that the group needed to be defended against.  Maybe the weakest and unfittest of young men got killed when hunting and defending against dangers.  Maybe outgroup raids were attempted for resources like good hunting grounds, and the captured men from the other tribes were mutually just eaten.   There are archaeological findings indicating prehistoric cannibalism.   
So polygyny could with equal plausibility explained as the cause or as the consequence of the men reacting to the scarcity of women.    That means that in those days polygyny solved a procreative problem of male scarcity, and therefore became a part of the genetic heritage as adaptive, while under different circumstances it now in fact leads to disruption by the surplus nasty young men.   

But this is more of an explanation of the disadvantages of polygyny than why monogamy could become an option for personal choice.
 
According to Henrich, monogamy was first made compulsory in Greece about 2500 years ago.   This means, the first historical evidence is available for this time.   It does not mean, that there could not previously have been a slow development leading towards monogamy during a considerable time span. 

It seems interesting to see this turning point on the background of other developments.   It is estimated that for a long time until 12.000 years ago, the earth's entire population was about 1 million.    4.000 years ago, it is estimated to have grown to 27 million, 3.000 years ago to 50 millions and 2.000 years ago to 200 million.   
This can only explained by the general progress in better adaptation to the environment, as
in this phase of the human history, important skills have been developed, building big dwelling from stone, life in large cities, farming, pottery, the use of metals.    All this is well explained by Savanna-IQ Interaction Hypothesis.  

But why did the people, who already 35.000 years ago painted animals on the walls of caves, not yet start to farm or build stone houses or write philosophical texts on the walls?  
As far as I know, they mainly painted animals on the cave walls, but never any pictures of loving couples.  
I suspect, that couples or polygynous families in those days were formed entirely based upon the urge to procreate, that they had not yet evolved the capacity to have any emotion of the kind of what we nowadays can feel as romantic love between a couple, which is based upon the feeling of emotional and intellectual bonds, independent of procreation.   
I assume, that the evolution of this kind of love was the reason, that people started to choose to institutionalize monogamy 2500 years ago.   


Written texts can be traced back nearly 5000 years, and the Greek philosophy started with the Milesian school roughly contemporary with the institutionalised monogamy.  
The same growing ability for abstract thinking, that had enabled philosophy and science to emerge, obviously also has lead to more awareness for the individual needs of personal happiness, and allowed people to consider monogamy as more rewarding for individuals and for the society as a whole.    Rationality allowed to consider the instinctive urges from a mental distance.  
Such a better adaptation itself can only be explained by a rapid evolution not only of intelligence and rationality, but also of human consciousness, abstract emotions and emotional intelligence.  


I only can see one plausible hypothesis as a more general explanation:   The evolution of the species homo sapiens as an animal with instincts to survive and procreate under the conditions of the savanna is independent of the evolution of the specific human abilities of the brain, which I am as a simplification have been and am calling rationality as the counterforce to instinctivity.   But it really means a lot more, like cognition, abstract thinking,  intelligence, self-awareness, emotional intelligence and communication.   
The development of instinctive survival and mating strategies like polygyny or monogamy in groups and in adaptation to external factors of the environment are in no way specifically human, and have become part of the genetically based instincts of animals during many millions of years.   Logically, they are very persistent and not easily changed in a fairly short time.  

It seems that during the last about 15.000 years, there had been a rapid evolution of rationality, that seems to have been accelerating until our present time, and this evolution of rationality has not modified or influenced the persistent instinctive urges.   It seems much more, that instinctivity and rationality are two independent forces competing to determine behavior.   

If instinctivity is a gas pedal and rationality is a brake, then a human is like a car driven at full speed, and rationality is a brake also pressed to max.  The gas pedal is fixed to its maximum position, because this is the result of the long history of animal evolution. 
In the beginning of the evolution of rationality, the brake was very weak, and could hardly slow the speed, but with further evolution, the brake got stronger, and the influence of the instincts could be more and more reduced.    Now in some people, the brake has evolved so far, that it stops the car entirely.    No more instincts drive us childfree people to breed, our rationality is stronger.   While the gas pedal is fixed, not all cars without a brake would run at the same speed, because there is a wide variety of the strength of the engines, so a weaker brake can already stop a car from moving, when the engine also is weaker.   

As I had mentioned already before, rationality can either control instinctivity or not, depending on the relative strength of both.

48. The Puzzle of Women's Acquiescence to Polygyny

The Puzzle of Women's Acquiescence to Polygyny

Polygyny is an asymmetrical arrangement (entry 46), that it is degrading and devaluing.   It is not compatible with having self-esteem as a woman being human with equal value as men.   As a rational egalitarian, it is beyond my imagination and capacity for empathy, and it is even hard to find an explanation, why women consciously chose to enter a polygynous marriage, when they have an alternative.   

Yet from the point of view of evolutionary psychology, it is plausible that the overwhelming instinct makes women accept any situation promising the most success to spread their genes.   

I can only think of one explanation for such a conscious choice:  All available men are such jerks, fools or nitwits, that there is nothing rewarding or attractive to spend even one minute in their company.  The women either have no economical choice to stay alone or they prefer to bond instead with children and to be in sisterly friendship with other women rather than be alone.   

1.  The Quality of Men

There is a fundamental difference between mating by instinct for the purpose of procreation, and the mating by rational wishes to enhance the emotional and intellectual quality of life.   
That difference is the time together.   Procreation can be reduced to getting a woman pregnant and handing her over the provision for survival, it can be done in a few minutes of contact every once in a while.  The two bodies agree by instinctive reaction to procreate, the personality can be haphazard, it is insignificant to the genes.  The couple can lead two separate lives under the same roof.  The couple might not even know, what to talk about, if they would as much as try.    They might in the extreme not even speak the same language to have healthy offspring.       

If a woman accepts for the only purpose of procreation such a man , for whom she feels nothing, who maybe is only stupid, maybe even a brute, beating his wives, demanding a lot of work of her, then it is no wonder at all, that she considers him as not even worth to want his exclusivity or to be jealous of other wives or concubines. 
The other wives become more like companions sharing a hard fate and relieving her of some of the burden.   Once I read a story about how a woman actually encouraged her husband to get a second wife, so that she would have someone to share the hard household chores with her.    I have vague collections of having read and heard more of the same kind.   

Once in a chat a Pakistani man in absolute seriousness told me, that he was searching on the web for a second wife.   He would not divorce his first wife as an act of consideration for her, and his first wife would not want to be divorced but prefers him to have a second wife.    Sometimes the web is like a time machine, I felt like talking to a caveman.  

I will never forget some muslim women, whom I met in former Jugoslavija ages ago.   In the presence of their husbands, they were docile, silent, subdued, servile.    But the moment, when the husband left the house, it was as if a switch had turned life on in them, and they cursed those husbands full of hatred.    But as far as I know, there was not even polygyny then.    

2.  Boredom

To spend rewarding interesting quality time together needs a mate, who can offer quality content.   He needs to share enough interests, and to have enough education to communicate about those interests.  Also the environment needs to offer some opportunities for intellectual pursuits.  
A couple of two intellectuals in the modern world can visit art exhibitions, archaeological sites, watch movies, read books, and spend hours every day talking about.  Both perceive this as spending quality time and it fulfils their lives.   

But what would a young couple of cavepeople have to talk about, when they sit infatuatedly staring at the same landscape and listening to the same birds, that are not romantic to them as they have been used to them during all their lives?   He can tell her his hunting adventures, but they might be similar to those dozens, of which he had told her already many times before.   She can talk about her excursions to collect berries or about some household problems, that he has heard of too often too.   Both will soon just get bored with each other.  

The ability to spend rewarding time together and to enjoy it as the focus of a relationship could only evolve with rationality, intelligence in individuals getting education and living in a society creating a stimulating environment.  

Even today, some people lacking intelligence and education get so bored, that they watch the most stupid stuff on TV all day long.   

So, while the question of consenting to enter a one-sidedly disadvantageous asymmetrical situation only concerns women, the issue of boredom is mutual.    Therefore the couple of newly wed cavepeople in their first marriage might also be too bored with each other to even consider happiness as a childfree couple.   Instead, she probably fills her boredom with children, and he probably fills his boredom with having more than one wife.  

3.  Strong Bonds with Children

There are things going on in the mind of breeding women, that will always be a mystery to me.

I have a friend, who got her third child 14 years after the second, and she freely admitted, that had she lived in a different social environment, she would have preferred an abortion.   But she also told me, that at the moment of giving birth, she had some kind of overwhelming emotional experience bonding her to this child as much as to the others.    My best approximation to this is the comparison with someone having the first shot of a strong addictive drug, that gives a great flash the first time and at that moment the addiction to compulsive self-destructive behavior starts.    The substance addict is compulsed to his next dose, the mother is compulsed to change dirty napkins.  

Also children often are used for compensatory functions, when a woman is unhappy with her husband.  In the cavepeople situation, when the man is a dominating brute and makes the wife helpless, then sometimes she might find relief by her own power over the children.

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.        

____

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.   

46. Symmetrical and Asymmetrical Relationships

Symmetrical and Asymmetrical Relationships

Breeders and polyamourous people claim to be capable of an unlimited capacity of loving.   I cannot judge, if this is true or not.   But one thing is certain:   On the behavioral level, the amount of loving attention, of affection as is expressed in gestures like hugs, that an individual can give in any unit of time, is limited and would thus be divided.   

In the following, I am omitting the bonds with the family of origin.  

In a symmetrical relationship between two childfree persons, who are each other's closest person, they give each other mutually 100 % of their expression of affection.   They express to each other the same attributed value. 
When a couple has one child, it still can be a symmetrical situation.   The wife and the husband each share the affections between the wife and the child, so does the child between mother and father.

But there are asymmetrical situations, where one person A is involved with two persons B and C.  As two examples, A can be a husband married to two wives, or A could be a person, either man or woman, who raises a child, but his or her new partner has no own children.  
A gets 100 % of all available affection of B and of C, that makes 200 % of what he has to give.   But his affections are split, so that B and C only receive 50 % each.    In both cases, A receives 4 times more, than what that person gives to each of the partners.    In economical terms, people are usually willing to pay as much as they attribute value to any commodity.   Therefore, in such a constellation, As value would be 4 times the value of either B or C, and if they choose to enter the relationship, there is implicit consent of the relative value of each.

Something seems to be very dysfunctional, when a man and a woman enter a relationship, where both implicitly accept to be either 4 times as valuable or having only a quarter of the value of the other.  
Except some weird Mormons, everybody in the western society accepts that monogamy is the only fair symmetrical relationship for men and women.    
But not, when it comes to offspring.    In my simplified example, I assumed the parent A sharing his affection equally between one child and the childless partner.   But in reality, usually the child or children get the main part, and the parent usurps an affective value of 5 or 10 or even 20 times over the partner's value.   
Only if both have children, they can create a symmetrical situation.

It is beyond my personal comprehension, how any childless or childfree person in his or her right mind would ever get involved with a breeder raising brats.    But I know, that christian and mainstream breeders' society brainwashes people, that raising children is such a high goal, and that only monsters reject people, who have children.    In this case, I am gladly considered a monster by all breeders.  
I am getting tired of being contacted by breeders, who feel entitled to be entangles with their children and grandchildren, and who do not comprehend, that I would be a fool to ever share them with their brats.     

I am convinced, even though I have no statistical evidence for this, that if there would be a situation of emergency, where a father could only safe one and would have to decide, whom, either his offspring or his partner, he would nearly always choose to save the bearer of his genes.    Of course I could never know, if any specific man would really treat me so drastically as less important than his offspring, just the suspicion that he could, would impede me from ever trusting him.   

45. Judgement, Tolerance, Projection, Indifference in Reaction to the Force of Instincts

Judgement, Tolerance, Projection, Indifference in Reaction to the Force of Instincts

I suspect that the relative strength of instinctivity and rationality determines or influences, in combination with other factors, how people cope with differences between their own attitudes and those of others, if their reaction is judgement, tolerance, projection or indifference. 

As an example, the instinct to eat as much high calorie food as was available and possible was an advantage to be fit in an environment, where food was plenty at some times of the year, and scarce at others.    Today, that same instinct causes obesity and lack of fitness.   Rationality causes the awareness for the necessity to reduce eating to a healthy level.  

People perceive and notice the urge to overeat in themselves and in others, and react with an conscious attitude to this urge.

People with high instinctivity and low rationality get fat, and most probably, they might avoid thinking about it at all, accept it as a fate and are not bothered to have any critical thoughts about their eating habits or those of others.  
Someone with low instinctivity and low rationality get not fat, but they also are just not bothered.    They are probably just indifferent and not interested.

Someone with low instinctivity and high rationality, who is fully aware, that obesity is not only a health risk but costs a lot of money to society, can be rightly judgemental of the costly obese.    They do not overeat, they do not cause the costs, but they are obliged to pay for the obese as a member of the health insurance.   

But those, whose instinctivity and rationality are about equal, both at least of medium strength, are permanently struggling between the rational knowledge of the necessity to resist eating, and the urge to eat, whatever is near their mouth.     If they would judge their own strong instincts as bad and stupid, they would feel bad about themselves, and that would cause them cognitive dissonance.   
Instead they have two options, tolerance or projection.   If they catch themselves too often in the weakness of eating too much, as do those, who alternate between overeating and dieting, then they have to acknowledge their tendencies.  They solve this by just generally evaluating overeating with tolerance.   This kind of tolerance can even be an expression of condescension.    While the person struggling successfully to keep the weight in healthy limits, expresses tolerance for those, who are obese, this is a way of expressing pity with inferior others, who lack the same amount of self-control.   

Those, who are maybe just that bit more rational, so they can control their weight to their own satisfaction by an endless struggle, might project their weakness upon others.  They might criticize harshly every person, whom they see enjoying a savory meal, as an overeater, while ignorant, whether the person is really hungry from hard labor or not.   That projection is part of the denial, how much they are driven themselves by the overeating instinct, that they do not like in themselves.  
So both, tolerance and projection, are strategies to feel better by noticing really or allegedly their own unpleasant instinctive urges in others.   The tolerant one feels in victory over his urges, the projecting one is in denial of having them.


In entry 6, I made the point, that I am looking for someone similar to me, not someone attempting to cover incompatibility with tolerance.   Now I add, that I am suspicious of tolerance, as much as of projection and indifference, even when someone proclaims to share my values and attitudes.   Only when someone explicitly judges something as not acceptable, not for himself and not for others, beyond tolerance, as a general statement about his attitudes, then I can at least assume, that he is not hiding his own instinctivity.  

If someone is tolerant about values, attitudes, opinions, that are incompatible with his own, instead of declaring his mental distance, this to me is a big red flag.   I do not trust anybody, who has double standards.   When someone does no consider something as correct for himself, then it is suspicious, if he tolerates it as correct in others.    

I illustrated this with eating as an example.   But it is the same with promiscuity.   I have more trust in a man, who explicitly declares, that his own human dignity is based upon his rationality and low instinctivity, and who would never copulate like a stray dog.    If he would declare, that he tolerates promiscuity in others as normal and natural, but it is not his own habit, because of personal reasons like lack of time, opportunity, fear of illness etc, that is not the mindmate for me, because his attitude of tolerance is an expression of his instinctivity.    His lack of indulging in promiscuity in spite of an positive attitude towards it makes him incompatible.

Somebody's behavior is more or less determined by his attitudes, and some behavior allows quite correct conclusions of the underlying attitude.    But the absence of the indicating behavior does not automatically mean, that the attitude is not there and will cause the unwanted behavior at another time.  

44. Is War a Valve for Instincts?

Is War a Valve for Instincts?

The following is a text, that I wrote in 2004 in my late msn group.   I put it here unchanged, but I will elaborate this topic later

______________

I had a discussion with someone, who had been in the military for 35 years.    This made me think a lot and maybe the result could interest anybody.  

First, there are two types of soldiers.   (I am using this word for any person, who is a member of the armed forces of any country with any position in it.)

Extrinsic soldiers are persons, who were either drafted, joined the military under social pressure or for material benefits, or because they were indoctrinated and brainwashed to fight for a cause.  

Intrinsic soldiers are persons, nearly always men, who have a specific type of personality.   Some men join the army, because they are intrinsic soldiers finding their perfect place, and some extrinsic soldiers become intrinsic soldiers under the influence of the military life.

As mentioned elsewhere, according to psycho-biology the instincts of human apes are still those as developed by evolution for the survival of small hordes of people in prehistoric times.   Such hordes needed fighters to survive in an environment of dangerous animals and dangerous other hordes competing for resources.  

An army of soldiers is an organised life form of fighters to host and reinforce their special traits and needs.  

Genetically successful in evolution were men with a high level of virility.   Virility is a combination of instincts:

- aggression, brutality, destruction 

- priority of physical achievement over intellectual achievement

- accepting the principle of hierarchy forming plus a strong competitiveness and ruthlessness to fight for a high position

- ingroup vs outgroup thinking, making a strong distinction between group members as carriers and protectors for the own or related genes, and a complete mercilessness for non group members

- promiscuity to procreate as much as possible

As long as someone has a high level of virility but also a strong rational capacity to control himself, he can live in his group without a problem.  

But there are the intrinsic soldiers, those with high virility and low control over it.   High virility is a part of their identity. 

They are a lurking danger inside the group, their instincts might overwhelm them and they would kill, rob, rape and upset the peace and cooperation inside the group that is needed for survival.  

Therefore armies are formed to accommodate their needs and give them a valve.  

The armies are regularly sent outside the group to give the intrinsic soldiers a chance to live according to their instincts, they are allowed to kill the enemies for the group safety, plunder for material benefits, and rape the out-group women to spare the women of their own group.    And instead of being criminals at home, they become heroes for the same behaviour with different targets elsewhere.   

An army is thus organized as a from of institutional hyper-virility.  

- aggression is enhanced by the training to fight, and by the systematic training to conquer any killing inhibition

- physical fitness is a vital goal in the training, critical thinking is repressed as it jeopardizes obedience

- hierarchy is a basic principle

- ingroup thinking is enhanced by sportive group competitions

- frequenting prostitutes is usually considered as normal behaviour of soldiers, and quite often the army organizes and facilitates it

Thus, an army creates and maintains an atmosphere of hyper-virility as its norm.    Intrinsic soldiers are accommodated and dominate.   Any person either lacking or openly questioning this hyper-virility is disturbing the core of the system.   Thus he will be either mobbed or expelled, if lucky, and killed, if in a war and unlucky.  Else he will become more and more an intrinsic soldier with time.    

Would people with low virility take control of an army, the army would loose its genuine original purpose of providing a valve for the intrinsic soldiers.    

So how can wars be stopped as long as so many men are born as intrinsic soldiers?  

Evolution has favored that different men are born with a wide variety of virility.   There was no need for rational control of high virility in ancient hordes and tribes.   Everybody contributed to the survival of the group, intrinsic soldiers by plundering, making slaves and killing enemies outside the tribe.   Those with less virility were farmers and craftsmen, and for those with little virility, there was still the role of healer or spiritual guru.   

But there is no place for intrinsic soldiers in a complex society living in overcrowded cities in times of peace.  

People still identify mainly as members of groups with limited members or very simple distinctive attributes.   Thus modern society is still fragmented into groups and subcultures like villages or neighbourhoods, sport teams and recreation clubs, different religions, political parties and many more.  

Only it is not possible to draw a strict in-group vs out-group line between friend and enemy.   Survival depends on the society as a whole, not on a group, and also people are not just members of one tribe but belong quite often to several groups.   The same person can be an out-group enemy and an in-group friend at the same time.   

In such a complex situation, virility needs to be controlled rationally or socially by rules and sanctions and there is no place for intrinsic soldiers.   

But as long as a peaceful society is in danger of being the target of attack, there is a (subjective) need to have an army to be ready for defence.   

This leads to a paradoxical and dangerous situation:   In the moment of war, intrinsic soldiers with hyper-virility are needed as being the most efficient.   Men with ethics and scruples do not win a war, if the other side has none.    But by training and forming such soldiers, and not providing them with a place to act out their reinforced instincts during times of peace, this creates a very difficult situation.   If they cannot be allowed to do harm outside their own society, they become dangerous.   

But some of those, who would become the most dangerous, stay away from this situation, as it does not suit them.   While for ancient tribes the army was a legal place to suit the instincts of born intrinsic soldiers, today the army has become more attractive and suitable for extrinsic soldiers.  

Born intrinsic soldiers quite often do not choose the legal military, but prefer groups, where they can live a life of hyper-virility illegally but without a need for self-control and with less danger of sanctions.   Criminal street gangs, motorcycle gangs are examples.    Many of them get their training for hyper-virility in jail, just as in ancient times the intrinsic soldiers got this in the army.  

Such gangs have gone back to the same basic situation, for which intrinsic soldiers are genetically adapted best for:  to survive as a small group in a dangerous and hostile environment.    But there is one difference: the ancient tribes put the intrinsic soldiers into an army, while the gang is the tribe and the army at the same time.  

43. Rationality and Values

Rationality and Values

In entry 6 I declared the denial of incompatible differences by tolerance as a highway to unhappiness, and in entry 20 I pointed out the importance of creating closeness by solving problems with the method of constructive communication.    But constructive communication requires the common ground of shared values, upon which an agreement of what is rational can be reached.    People, who have incompatible value systems, can only avoid conflicts by keeping distance and tolerance, they cannot get mentally close.    By using tolerance as a tool for the denial of incompatibility, they can well get infatuated with each other, and even emotionally attached the same way people get emotionally attached to pets, who have no value system.   A deep mental bond can only be created upon shared values.  

As much as I dislike to do so, I have to acknowledge, that the basic values of a person cannot be judged as rational or irrational.    What can be evaluated in the light of rationality, are only the derived attitudes and behavior, when the values are influencing the coping under the conditions of the environment and circumstances.   

I suspect, that the relative strength of the several instincts in comparison with rationality determines the identity of a person as either an individual or as a module in a chain of bearers of genes and more generally as a particle of something greater.   This identity determines the value system as its conscious consequence and representation.   

I am a predominantly rational person, I perceive myself as an individual in exchange with other individuals.   That makes me an egalitarian.   My value system declares every person, who is no doing damage to others, as deserving the same right to a good life.   One hour of the life of the factory worker is of equal value as the life of the factory's owner.    One hour in the life of a person in any poor third world country is of equal value as that of a person in Europe.    The misery of the first and the much better life of the latter are in no way justifiable.  
If the worker and the manager are born with about the same potential and talents, it is an unacceptable injustice that they did not get the same chances to develop and that at some later time in life the measured intelligence of the factory worker has become much lower than that of the owner.  
Nobody has any justifiable right to inflict disadvantages upon strangers in favor of anybody because of a shared gene pool.   

The factory owner, having a dozen children, being the owner of the factory in the fifth generation, being determined by the procreation instinct and the hierarchy instinct, perceives himself in his identity as a member of an eternal chain of handing on his genes and the material achiements of the previous bearers of his genes down to the future bearer of his genes.   His value system is subjectively to him very moral as having obligations to his genes more than to all genetically unrelated human beings.   
He perceives the inequality of himself having privileges as justified by being a member in a chain of powerful, rich and capable bearers of genes, his privileges being the requirement and necessity for his gene chain's survival as part of the survival of the gene pool of the entire group or society.    He perceives himself as fitter by natural selection, as a garanty for the survival of the species, and therefore as deserving his priviledges.    He is driven by the principle, that the fitter the genes, the more they are entitled to privileges.    He might exploit, even kill genetically unrelated persons, and subjectively believe himself a good person doing his duty to whoever he consciously considers above him, but who on the instinct level are his genes.

I personally loathe that factory owner.   But there is no ultimate absolute way to logically call his doings wrong, I can only subjectively loathe him based upon my own values.   But I cannot claim my values to be more rational than his.   I wished I could.  
Evolution and natural selection and the power of the genes are facts, that are beyond any value judgement.     Procreation and inequality are as rational for the survival of the species as they are irrational for the individual.   

It is a dilemma.   Subjectively, I cannot accept his values as equal to mine and be tolerant, because they are too alien to my whole being.    I cannot refute his values rationally as being wrong compared with mine.    So all I can do is avoid people with such values.   


I had written the above before I discovered the research of Kanazawa, and again, in a rough way, I see my ideas backed up, when he connects differences in values with differences in intelligence.     
http://personal.lse.ac.uk/Kanazawa/pdfs/JBS2009.pdf

But again, I see things more drastic than he does.   He seems to see that the increase of intelligence as still completely under the realm of the selection of the fittest serving the species.   He sees evolution still in progress to improve the general fitness of the human species.   That being childfree could be a result of evolution having overstepped its own purpose does not seem to be included in his theories.   I did not find any biography of his, so I wonder, if he is a breeder himself or wishing in vain to breed and is caught inside his own genetic determination.   

42. A Metaphor for Immaturity

A Metaphor for Immaturity

Some people never grow mature, but superficially, nobody notices.

Imagine a person, who cannot see colors, who sees the world only in black and white.    Imagine him painting a picture.    He takes the paint from a tube with 'blue' written on the label, because he knows, that the sky is blue, he takes green for the meadow, red for flowers, yellow for the sun.    With enough such knowledge, he might paint a picture, that while he himself only sees shades of grey, could look completely natural in color to anybody.  Those, who do not know of his affliction, would never suspect anything.  
He can either be aware, that he can never recognize the color of any object.   He knows 'blue' as a label, a trait of an object to memorize, it is stored information, not his perception.    He describes the sky as blue, like everybody does, so nobody suspects, that he does not perceive, what he is talking about.
Or he might himself not be aware of his affliction, if yellow is a lighter shade of gray than is blue, and he has learned to distinguish those shades of gray.  

An immature person is just like him.   He can talk about trust abstractly and very sincerely as very important in a relationship.   But when in a situation, where he has to decide to trust or not, or to behave trustworthy or not, he has not clue at all, what to do and what others expect from him.   
Again, he might either know himself, that he is too immature and attempts to pretend or to learn, what is expected, or he might not know himself, that his immature understanding of trust is not the same as that of others.   
The same with love, commitment, responsibility.   He can accept them, appreciate them and mean it sincerely, and yet he is not capable to behave accordingly.   

This makes immature people such a hazard to unsuspecting others, who rely that if somebody agrees on the importance of trust as the fundament of a relationship, they both mean the same when using the word trust.   When the mature person finds out, that trust was for the immature person just a meaningless word, it is many times already too late to recoil without having been hurt.

41. Wow - a Discovery

Wow - a Discovery

So far in this blog, I avoided to blur out:   We childfree, leftist atheists are much more intelligent than others and I am proudly one of them.   I did not want to appear haughty and arrogant.

Today I made a discovery.   I came across the Savanna-IQ Interaction Hypothesis in
http://personal.lse.ac.uk/Kanazawa/pdfs/JEP2009.pdf

I have been writing about rationality, but I can replace this easily with the general intelligence as defined by Kanazawa and Savage.   As far as I have linked rationality with evolution as an explanation of being childfree, an atheist and egalitarian, I can see my admittedly more diffuse ideas as being consistent with the Savanna-IQ Interaction Hypothesis, and I do appreciate this mental backup.  
While I had just looked at rationality/intelligence as having somehow evolved in humans ahead of the instincts, this hypothesis now explains, why this has happened, and it makes a lot of sense.    

There is only one point, where I dare to differ from Kanazawa and Savage:   They do not doubt that everybody is ultimately determined to serve the purpose of the survival of the species, and that intelligent people only have less children as a result of this being the best strategy.   

I still uphold my view, that the relative increase of rationality/intelligence compared with instinctive adaptations to the prehistoric environment has reached its breaking-point, where some people are childfree for having evolved beyond the innate command to make their genes survive.   Therefore I suspect, that the human species has evolved so far, that the kind of intelligence/rationality, that allows to override breeding, will either not evolve much further, or the human species will get extinct.   

40. The Importance of Teaching Emotional Intelligence

The Importance of Teaching Emotional Intelligence

Humans have evolved for a life in small groups of people, whom they all knew well as individuals.   People died young, procreation was unavoidable for survival, which also required a lot of hard work.    Social control was strong, hierarchies formed, undisputed rules were compulsory with little need for responsibility.   The difference between ingroup and outgroup was clearly defined.    There was a limited amount of mental stimulation in the environment, and people most probably were usually too tired to reflect too much.    
They had no need to read and write, and they had no need for emotional intelligence.  

In our modern complex societies, the skill of advanced emotional intelligence as a method how to interact with others is as vital as the skill to read and write.   It is time to stop expecting people to become mature and to function successfully in a complex environment, for which evolution has not prepared them.   They need to be prepared better.    Reaching maturity requires emotional intelligence, that they have no chance to learn as early in life as when it is needed.   

Children are taught to read and write at school.   Nobody teaches them emotional intelligence as a skill to become responsible human beings guided by their own moral judgement.  

Children are taught, what the parents, their deity and the law is going to punish and to reward them for.   As far as they ever develop emotional intelligence, they learn in slowly by trial and error, after having already made serious mistakes in basic, life determining decisions.    Children are taught to be aware of consequences of crossing a street without attention, before allowed to do so by themselves.    They are not taught the long term consequences of wrong decisions upon themselves.           

As far, as there is any support, it is only given, after some drastic mistake has already been made, whatever intervention it is, from anti-aggression training in puberty to psychotherapy for people, who are in trouble and pain.

There needs to be prevention.   
Emotional intelligence should be made a subject at school as important as reading, writing and calculation.   
If children from the first grade on were taught communications skills, empathy, introspection to know themselves, their values, needs and peculiarities, awareness and self control, then most of them would be enabled to make wise choices, rational decisions and fair deals with others.   

This could prevent a lot of bullying, juvenile delinquency, psychological dysfunction as a result of choosing an unsuitable mate, having children without wanting them or choosing a career that does not fit their needs.    It could enable people to be more aware, when they are in a detrimental situation, before they have gone sick from it.   It could prevent a lot of people damaging others by ignorance, even when they mean well.    It could prevent some people to become dangerous and teach people to recognize, who is dangerous, so that maybe some damage done by them could be avoided.  

There is nothing wrong with teaching pupils at school geography, chemistry, physics, biology, sports, music, art and so on, but these are subjects, that people can learn about elsewhere, when they are interested, they can study them at university.   But teaching such topics is futile, as long as too many of the pupils go truant, bully their class mates, become delinquent, substance addicted or pregnant during puberty.   
Teaching such subjects to pupils, who are not capable to become mature, is like the attempt to build a house by starting with the second floor but omitting the fundament and the ground floor.  

39. Verbal Fencing

Verbal Fencing

I suggest to first read 16. Competition or Cooperation.

Male animals, who live in groups, like deer, wolves, lions, are driven by instinct to fight for a high position in the hierarchy.    Most humans are driven by the same instinct, the society is organized by countless hierarchies, at work, in political institutions, in the administration, in the military.    Animals fight with physical force.  In the past centuries, when those organizations were developed, physical fighting outside sports and the military became a valve for aggressive lower class men.    Hierarchies were formed instead upon a competition of real skills, financial and social power, and skills for intrigue and manipulation.  

Behind all this is a conscious representation of the hierarchy instinct, that makes people always compare themselves with others.    They do not want to have something, because the need it, they want to have something better than what has another.    They do not want to be good at something, they want to be better than someone else.  

How marks are given at school, is a good example.    Regulations require a hierarchy of achievement, and the teachers are expected to have results distributed along a bell curve, as many As as Fs.   If all the pupils have As and Bs, this is not appreciated as an indication of a good teacher with clever students.   If all have Es and Fs, it is not accepted as an indication of pupils with special problems or a bad teacher.   
There has to be a bell curve to put the achievements relative in a hierarchy.   Rationally, this makes no sense.    The same pupil with the same achievement, could by haphazard be in a class, where he gets an A for it, or in another class, where he gets an F, his achievements are distorted by others, whom he might not have even chosen.
Rationally, marking should be independent of the other pupils, measured instead on how much he has learned of what has been taught.     Everybody, who has learned 100% or little less, should get an A, independent of how many others have achieved the same.   That would be just.  
By the bell curve marking, school reinforces and enhances the hierarchy and competition thinking.

I have read somewhere, that competing and fighting for a position in a hierarchy is mainly a male trait.   As far as it means using physical and financial power, this appears plausible.   But in any other form of competition, I see women as not any better than men.   

For example, I could never understand, how any woman in her right mind would get involved with a married men and then compete to get him divorce his wife, when there are enough men free and available.   
This example again shows, how irrational competition is for the individual, as I already outlined in the business example in 'Competition or Cooperation'.    But from the point of evolution, it makes sense, that all females want to have offspring with the fittest of all males, which obviously is the alpha-male.   Thus, by instinct, many women compete for males, while for their individual happiness they would better look for the one, who is for them alone.    

If the hierarchy instinct has become pathologically determining the entire relationship with the social environment, then the result are people, who have NPD, the narcissistic personality disorder.    They do not just compare themselves with others all the time, they are addicted to be better all the time, even if being better is only their delusion.  

Empathy for other's pain is such an important trait in social relationships of any kind.   But it seems, that empathy gets deactivated in favor of competition.    Competing with success means winning, and every time, one person wins, another person looses.    Those who fight and compete to win, never seem to have empathy for the ones, whom they logically make to loose.   
It seems that the strife for a high position in the hierarchy for the best survival of the genes, by the choice of a fit mate and by acquiring the power over resources, had already evolved in the animals, while empathy is more recent result of human evolution and therefore a weaker impulse.

As a rational person, I can decide to keep away from competition as much as possible, and find my peaceful corner in the ivory tower of the egalitarian search of wisdom.    Unfortunately, this is difficult too.   
When duels became illegal in England, the skill of fencing with a sword became obsolete for young 'gentlemen'.   (I have never understood, what is gentle in those blokes...)    So they developed a replacement art of fencing with words, the duel being named a debate.    The topic was of little importance, the objective was to win by showing the better wit.   By playing the devil's advocate, some even tried to win against their own true sincere convictions, when the opponent shared them.    Winning over the own convictions in someone else was still a victory, more important than being true to oneself.  

This fencing by words seems to have spread through the entire English-speaking world.   I have read countless discussions in forums about anything between atheism and computer problems, and again and again, I had the impression, that it was more about being right and proving another wrong than about the topic in question.   
This, unfortunately, leaves women not much choice.   They can refrain from participating, or they can attempt to learn how to fence with words too and adapt to the male world.   

38. Getting Legally Married or Not?

Getting Legally Married or Not?

In a comment to entry 37, I was asked, if I have ever been married, to which the reply is no.  

In entry 2, under The Meaning of Commitment, I already outlined the emotional and psychological meaning of commitment for me.   

When I was at university, there was a leftist-progressive atmosphere, and getting married was considered an obsolete procedure, at least as long as there were not children to be considered.   

Unfortunately, this was part of the so called 'saksual (misspelled on purpose) liberation', which lead to promiscuity and disgusted and disgusts me.    Instead of taking control over the own behavior based upon own values and responsibility as humans by refuting the interference of society by the requirement of formal marriage, humanity was renounced in favor of uncontrolled submission to instincts.  

I could never understand, how the regression from being rational humans and forming bonds with mind and body down to copulating indiscriminately like stray alley dogs could be misunderstood as progress.    

To me, formal marriage was obsolete, because it was an external meddling into a completely private decision.  

The private decision is entering the marriage of the mind, the beginning of the commitment, and if anything could be a 'ceremony' of entering that marriage, it is the symbolic act of the beginning of physical intimacy as sealing the bond of the mind and the heart.

Animals copulate and forget the target body the next minute.   Sealing an emotional bond of commitment instead is to me the liberation from being animals, it is a way of being human. 

Practically seen, for childfree atheists from the same country, legal marriage is more a hazard than a benefit.  

For religious people, marriage is a ceremony, where two partners reduce themselves to obedience to rules of how to treat each other, that are imposed to them by a deity.   They are not two free individuals, who decide together, what obligations of commitment they agree to have to each other.    If they fail, there is a probability, that they feel more guilty to the deity to the partner.   I doubt, that a catholic has much motivation to self-control, if he can go to confession, do the prayers and whatever the priest demands, and feel, that he has payed for the transgression, so he has earned the freedom to transgress again.   

Legal marriage is a signature in a townhall, that bears certain financial benefits and certain financial risks.    Depending on the personal situation, it is an advantage for some people, and a disadvantage for others.  

Legal marriage is only needed as a protection by law by a person, who is raising children, to be provided for.    

I personally can only see one reason to get married, and that is, if someone from outside the Schengen area would come to live with me here.   

The big deterrent of unnecessary legal marriage is the fact, that in most countries, divorce is much more difficult to obtain, than getting married.    The higher the obstacles to divorce, the better it is not to get legally married at all.    In Germany, divorce is done in a court of law, at least one lawyer is obligatory, and there is a full year of legal separation required as a condition.    But it makes no sense, that divorce should be any more difficult than marriage, as long as there is consent.  

 

Many people, who do get married, have the illusion, that marriage is some magic protection against bad behavior of the partner, as if the threat of the divorce would make bad persons control themselves.   Most of the time, marriage gives advantage to the ruthless and makes life more difficult for the weaker part.    A signature in the marriage registry does not change the character of a person.  

If someone is not content in a relationship, it is better, that he is free to go, rather than having the deterrent of the high costs of the divorce making him stay and cheat instead.

If someone wants to mistreat the partner, and the divorce is a deterrent to the partner, he dares to behave much worse than if the couple is bound together only by emotional commitment.   In this case he knows, that if he breaks the commitment, there is nothing to stop the other from ending the mistreatment by leaving.    

Marriage is therefore no way to prevent pain, it is only a choice for what kind of pain it will be, if the couple is not a good match.    But if they are a good match, then there is no reason to ever get married at all.  

37. Possible Long-Term Effects of Internet Matching

Possible Long-Term Effects of Internet Matching

Before the world wide web, the matching of couples by their own choice was determined by:

1.  Limited choice of available possible partners.  
Meeting people at school or work, at friend's or during leisure activities in the home area restricts the number of people to choose from.   Social factors add to this by further restricting the scope of who is socially acceptable. 

2.  Starting situation of any new contact is perception of physical attributes as looks and smell, before knowing anything about the personality.   This constellation enables the procreative instincts to influence the choice for the optimization of having healthy offspring while not providing or overriding any concern for long term happiness.  

The consequences are devastating for many of such couples, who after some years become unhappy with each other.   
Depending on the circumstances, they are either forced or coerced to stay together and suffer, maybe there is also cheating and violence.     Or else it leads to divorce with all the suffering caused, also on the children.  



The matching with the instrument of web sites has completely turned the two effects into their opposites:   

1.  The choice is limited only be the number of people with a common language, who are connected to the web.    This not only gives average people a better chance to find a compatible match, it also gives people with any statistically rare wishes, habits, traits, needs a chance to find a suitable match.   This could spare a lot of people to become the victims of such people, who due to lack of a consenting other impose or force their peculiarities on non-consenting partners.   People with any eccentric hobby can find each other, as can childfree atheists.  

2.  By the process of communication on the web, reading profiles of others on dating-sites, reading dating advice, chatting, blogs, forums, people have a chance to learn more about themselves and gain more awareness about their own needs, and what is intolerable in a match.    All this can help to prevent mistakes and avoid the hazards of premature personal encounters, with the risk of instincts taking momentarily control over reason, luring people into involvement with painful long-term consequences.   It also helps people to find out, what they really want and need, before getting involved, without the painful process of learning this as the consequence of several failed relationships.

3.  New contacts start mainly verbally, exploring the other mentally long before being subject to physical attractions during a personal encounter, where instincts jeopardizes to override all rational choice.   Therefore there is a good chance that the sequence of 
- choosing by a profile before initiating contact,
- emailing, messaging and chatting too and fro for quite a while,
- telephone calls,
people have well established a lot of similarity and compatibility before deciding to ever meeting in person.   

Therefore there is a very good chance that those couples, who get together at the end of such a careful process, are much better matched for a long-term happiness than those, who follow their instincts.  


As a consequence, some impact on society is there to be expected, but very different for two groups, and here are my speculative predictions:

1.  For those actually stuck with wrong partners from matching in the pre-web way, during the years to come, the web will accelerate breaking up by facilitating all kind of disrupting behaviour.   Thus, for some years, the divorce rate might well rise even higher than it is now, and there will be a lot of suffering due to the splitting of dysfunctional couples and until finding better matches on the web.  

2. For those young people, who have grown up with online communication, choosing and matching online will become the standard method.   Less of them will start coupled life involved with an incompatible person, so that there is a good chance for more long- lasting relationships and more long-term happiness. 

The long-term effect could therefore be a considerable drop of the divorce rate, as soon as most of the pre-web mismatches are better rematched and most matching takes place on the web. 

36. Conscience - Self-Control

Conscience - Self-Control

I just read 'The Sociopath Next Door' by Martha Stout.   It is a very good book, it is mainly about the lack of a conscience as a core problem, when people suffer from the ruthless behavior of sociopaths. 

But I do not really agree with the last chapter, where Stout connects the concept of a conscience too much to religion.   She talks about conscience as an emotion, and somehow seems to assume, that everybody knows it well enough to make any further look at it obsolete.

I think that conscience needs to be seen in the wider context of self-control.   Self-control can be considered as a strength of constraint, that is stronger than any urge, wish, instinct, temptation to do something, that is evaluated as not desirable.   Self-control can be extrinsically motivated by the consequences, or intrinsically by the effect upon self-respect and self-esteem.   

The behavior under constraint can be either something only being detrimental for the individual himself, or it can be derived from the individual's values guiding his judgement of what is right or wrong in how to treat others.    In this sense, the joy of gained self-esteem, when doing, what is right, and the pain of damaged self-esteem, when doing, what is wrong, can be the emotion, that is called conscience.  

But the individual's sense for right or wrong can come from very different sources.    It starts with the super-ego, that puts rules into the child's head, then religious upbringing and the culture influences it too.   That is it all for many people.  

But rational people can decide on a fair balance of giving and receiving, on a tit-for-tat strategy, and when they feel good in their self-esteem about themselves by following it, and feel bad otherwise, then they can have a conscience, that is independent from any religion.    

35. One Month of This Blog

One Month of This Blog

As I can see in the stats part of the dashboard of this blog, it has been viewed several times each day so far.  

Only the feedback is nearly nil.   One guy, whom I had known in a chat, left two comments, nobody ever did.

One guy accused me in a private email of being a fundamentalist and doctrinaire.    But I am only telling my personal opinions, I have no mission to convince others of what I think.  

There is just one real objective of this blog:   To have my mindmate read it, and react with the enthusiastic exclamation:  "Wow!"  Because he could have written the same, only I happen to have put his thoughts into words first.    Or he has written similar things somewhere else, and I have not yet found it and exclaimed "Wow!"

He is out there somewhere.    Bad luck for both of us, that he is still missing to find this blog.