515. Responsibility And Liability Without The Myth Of The Free Will

515.  Responsibility And Liability Without The Myth Of The Free Will

Discarding the concept of the free will does not imply to accept, condone or excuse harmful behavior.   It only means a different approach how to protect people from being harmed.    Not harming others is a moral issue, no matter if there is a free will or not.  It requires to redefine the moral quality of behavior from the perception and experience of the target, recipient or victim.   The harm suffered by a victim does not depend on the ability of the transgressor to control his behavior or not.   The need to be protected from harm is independent from how this is done.

People's possibilities to harm others are drastically restricted by legal systems, and subtly also by social norms.     The myth of the free will limits the success of these protective methods for the innocent.   Without the myth of the free will, a person's inability to act responsibly is not a suitable and rational justification to release this person from all liability resulting from his actions.


Responsibility is the cognitive ability to behave deliberately without harming others.   The myth of the free will considers the ability to act responsibly as a part of human sanity.   Harming is legally punished for the purpose to enable the transgressor to learn how to apply his free will for not repeating the harm in the future.  
Only those declared as insane are not punished, as they are considered to have no free will to learn and to control themselves.  

As a consequence of this paradigm, the suffering of victims is considered the unavoidable collateral damage of the learning process of those, who are supposed as having merely strayed but have a free will to decide to change.    The focus is on the transgressors, the victims are considered the objects of their learning.  

The free will myth leading to dealing with a person lacking the ability to act morally by first allowing them to do harm and then punishing them is an inappropriate and cruel mistake.    It burdens too much suffering upon too many innocent victims by being too lenient with the transgressors.    Any person, who for the first time commits a crime causing serious physical or traumatic injuries to the victim, no matter if it is assault, robbery, rape, gets free after a few years.   Only when he has repeated harming innocent victims several times, is he considered as dangerous enough to be locked away for good.   

This is an outrage to the innocent second and further victims of known transgressors.   No punishment can ever undo and heal the damage to the victims.    Punishment may even impede those with lacking morals from changing their behavior.    They experience their time in prison as paying for the benefits of the crime.   Having paid is their reason to feel not or less guilty.  


Without the free will, the concept of universal responsibility has to be replaced by the concept of unrestricted liability.    Liability focuses upon the harm done by someone independent of the reasons for, causes and triggers of any behavior.   The focus is upon protecting the innocent from becoming victims, no matter, how this is accomplished and no matter the consequences for those, who are not able to refrain from harming.  

Responsibility does not require a free will, as it can be motivated by a cognitive calculation of preventing dishomeostasis and of expecting future stimulation of the pleasure center.    Responsible behavior can be the best behavior for the own long-term needs as already explained in entry 514.  

Under the liability paradigm of protecting the innocent, those able to act responsibly are the lucky ones, whose brain allows them to live without being externally restricted.    The others are less lucky, they need to be externally restricted from becoming the cause of harm. 

The ability to behave morally as experienced by the targets, to live without harming is a talent and a disposition, that people are either lucky enough to have wired in their brain or they are unfortunate enough to lack it. 

It is not in any way different from intelligence.    Logically, it should also not be dealt with differently.  
Most people take the benefits of intelligence for granted without even wondering about any injustice, when an intelligent person receives a lot of expensive formal education and reaches high positions of power in a factory.  He earns a lot more for a rewarding job than does the person lacking intelligence, who is given no choice but to do a dull repetitive job at the assembly line.  

Less intelligence is usually accepted as a justification for less quality of life, even though those with less intelligence are only detrimental to themselves.   But the lack of the ability to behave morally is even more detrimental, because suffering is imposed upon innocent victims, and the transgressors often get away with it.   It is time to accept the fact, that the inability to act morally is at least as much a justification if not much more than is intelligence for limiting and restricting the quality of life.   

Intelligence can be at least roughly measured and noticed by limited achievements, thus mistakes by wrong decision can be often prevented.  
Morals are more difficult to assess.  Unfortunately for the victims of first crimes, it is impossible or very difficult to predict the first occurrence of someone seriously harming another.  The first victim cannot be protected.   But after the first crime has been proven beyond doubt, the danger is known.   The second victim of the same criminal is not only a victim of him, but also a victim of a society, which fails to protect the innocent. 

I am not defending or justifying the inequality of chances.   Only when two needs are in conflict, then the needs of the innocent should have priority over the needs of the person known already as a potential danger.    The need to remain unharmed should have priority over the need to have a freedom, which includes the freedom to harm at the next occasion.   

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

513. Morals And Ethics Without The Myth Of The Free Will - 1

513.  Morals And Ethics Without The Myth Of The Free Will - 1

In entry 512 I discarded the myth of the free will.   This has many implication.   

Some aspects of moral behaviors are not universally logical, but they depend upon the extent of how different instincts determine the brain differently and what needs are predominantly experienced by the subjective perception of homeostasis.   

People suffer physical and emotional pain as a consequence of being harmed and hurt.  Suffering is a form of dishomeostasis, and not to suffer is a basic human need.    This need can be in conflict with another person's different needs.   Morals and rules are attempts to solve the conflict of needs.  

Unfortunately, there is no absolute basis for a general moral principle.  There are two competing principles, depending on the view of human beings as either individuals or particles (defined in entry 74).   Both moral principles include a very disparate approach to suffering, which logically leads to an equally disparate approach to the justification of harming others or protecting others from being harmed.  

1.  By the particles' principle, the species is more valuable than the individual.   Thus suffering can be justified whenever it is required for the survival of the species.   Morals serve not only to minimize individual sufferings, but also to force individuals to suffer.

2.  By the individualistic principle, individuals are in conflict with each other for their wellbeing.   The logical method to minimize suffering and maximize the quality of life applies the comparison of the impacts of all behaviors upon others.   Morals are based upon the acceptance of the basic human right of not being harmed. 

The preference for one of the two principles is not an independent choice by a free will.  It is determined by the wiring of a person's brain in combination with modifications by external influences.  This determination is expressed by the the person's subjective identity as either more a particle or more an individual.    What appears naturally and logically as moral is very different for particles from what it is for individuals.    Especially the individually different magnitudes of the procreation instinct, of the ingroup-outgroup instinct and of the gregarious instinct have a decisive impact upon the identity.  


An example:   In the case of a shipwreck, the general rule is to save women and children first.   This is clearly an implicit choice for the survival of the species without considering individual sufferings.

Assuming 240 persons to be rescued, 80 families of a couple with one child each, while there are only 120 places in the life boats.   Theoretically, by weighing the suffering, there are alternatives to the general rule of women and children first.  
Drowning is an agony for every of the 120 persons, no matter who they are.   But when considering also the individual suffering of the survivors, there are huge differences, depending on their selection.    

Option 1 is saving 60 women, each with her child.   The consequence are 60 women suffering for a very long time not only the loss of their partner, but they are also burdened by the necessity of raising the child alone, which is additionally a severe obstacle towards finding a new partner.   
Option 2 is saving 40 families and leaving 40 families behind.  

The choice between option 1 and 2 is the choice between the two moral principles of either the priority of the individual or of the species.    It is a choice between minimizing individual suffering and minimizing the reproductive loss.  
Option 1 causes extreme emotional suffering but biologically it is the least possible loss of reproductive potential.   No children are lost, and 20 wombs.   The saved women can be made pregnant again by any man.  Biologically seen, the husbands left behind are not needed to prevent a loss of reproduction.
Option 2 avoids the emotional suffering of directly bereaved survivors, but to the species, there is the biological loss of 40 children and of 40 wombs.  

By implicit calculation, the moral of society prescribes forcing the agony of losing the beloved partner plus the dreary life as a single mother upon 60 women.   This is implicitly considered to be an acceptable price for preventing the loss of 40 children and 20 wombs.

There is no free will, when instinct driven particles force the priority of the species upon individuals.   The procreation instinct is a determining force, which is stronger than rationality for all those driven by it.  The afflicted persons sacrifice their individual wellbeing in favor of the survival of the genes and this sacrifice is their justification to force sacrifices also upon others.  

Another example:  The woman, who is compelled to change stinking diapers instead of reading a book, does this to restore homeostasis.  By submitting to all the detrimental consequences of the procreation instinct, she is a victim of her biology.   The man, whom she tricks with lies to become the payer of child support is also a victim of instincts.   

512. Discarding The Myth Of The Free Will

512.   Discarding The Myth Of The Free Will

While learning about evolutionary biology and evolutionary psychology, I got more and more aware of how much people are determined by subconscious instinctive urges and impulses. As a side effect, already for a long time I have been implicitly and slowly discarding the myth of the free will, but postponing to consciously think this through.   
Implicitly this entire blog is based upon the concept of finding a partner, whose fulfilling my own relationship needs is not a decision by an alleged free will of his.  Instead I am looking for someone sharing with me the same innate inclinations towards the same behaviors and activities, thus enabling both of us to simultaneously fulfill the own and the partner's needs.

But as often, someone else has expressed my implicit idea already much better than I can.   There is an excellent video, in which Sam Harris discards very convincingly the myth of the free will:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=pCofmZlC72g#!

Human behavior is very complex.   It is too complex to be sufficiently logically explained during social interaction.  The mere observable behavior of any human does not reveal all or enough of what contributes to determine it.   This makes the attribution of any behavior to a free will a very tempting fallacy.   But the mere inability to fully understand the complexity is no justification to accept the myth of the free will as a substitute for the lacking full explanations.  

  
Discarding a tempting fallacy is not enough without some rudimentary alternative.   By extreme simplification, all behavior can ultimately and theoretically be explained as serving to either reduce subjectively experienced dishomeostasis or to stimulate the pleasure center of the brain by what is subjectively believed to be appropriate methods. 

The limitations of this simplification are due to the complexity of many variables and influences.   

The following are some, but certainly not all:

1.  Physical Or Cognitive.

Dishomeostasis and stimulated pleasure can either be triggered physically and materially or caused and enabled by faculties of the human cognition.  

 
Examples:

• Physical dishomeostasis. 
  Hunger
• Physical pleasure. 
  Bubble bath
  
• Intellectual dishomeostasis: 
  Boredom; the curiosity to know something.  
• Intellectual pleasure: 
  Flow experienced during a creative activity; enjoying an art exhibition.  
• Emotional dishomeostasis. 
  Feeling lonely in need of a mate; feeling betrayed in need of justice. 
• Emotional pleasure. 
  Feeling happy with a partner or by an achievement.   

2.  Intrinsic Or Extrinsic

Dishomeostasis and stimulated pleasure can be either intrinsically triggered by innate needs originating in the person's brain or extrinsically by influences and impact from the environment.  

Examples:

• Intrinsic dishomeostasis: 
  Hunger.
• Extrinsic dishomeostasis: 
  Fear as a reaction to a situation of real danger.
• Intrinsic source of pleasure stimulation:  
  The joy of finding the solution to a problem or puzzle.
• Extrinsic sources of pleasure stimulation:  
  The fragrance of a flower; listening to music.
  

3.  Innate Or Acquired

Dishomeostasis and stimulated pleasure can be either experienced by basic human faculties or only experienced by applying learned skills or previously gathered information. 

Examples:

• Spontaneous dishomeostasis: 
  Hunger
• Learned dishomeostasis:  
  Worries about a predicted real hazard, like a flood or a storm.
• Spontaneous pleasure:  
  Listening to the birds; enjoying the warmth of the sun.
• Learned pleasure:   
  Reading, swimming.

4.  Immediate, Anticipated Or Delayed

Behavior can be either an immediate homeostation or an immediate reaction to noticing a source of pleasure, or there can be a delay, anticipation and preparation.  This is enabled by the human memory for past experiences and by the cognitive ability to anticipate future experiences.   

Examples:

• Immediate homeostation: 
  Eating as soon as hunger is felt.
• Delayed homeostation:  
  Distributing the consumption of limited supplies over a long time in an emergency situation.
• Anticipated homeostation:  
  Carrying provision on a hike.
• Immediate pleasure:  
  Entering a cinema at the moment, when the announced movie stimulates the wish to see it.
• Delayed pleasure:  
  Rewarding oneself only after having finished a task.
• Anticipated pleasure:  
  Buying a ticket for a theater play in advance.

5.   Reality Or Delusion

Dishomeostasis, anticipation of dishomeostasis, pleasure and anticipation of pleasure are subjective experiences.  The perception and expectation of its magnitude is independent of objective evidence of the existence of its cause or the probability of its occurrence.
The subjective belief is enough to determine people's behavior, even when there is no real source or cause at all.  

The religious delusion of the existence of deities supplies good examples:

• Delusional dishomeostasis:  
  Feeling guilt of breaking a religious rule, even though nobody is harmed, like a catholic eating meat on Friday.  
• Delusional anticipation of dishomeostasis: 
  The belief in the purgatory and in hell.
• Delusional pleasure: 
  Religious experiences.
• Delusional anticipation of pleasure: 
  The belief in a heaven, where all suffering is allegedly rewarded with pleasure.   

6.   Reality Or Manipulation

Anticipation of improbable dishomeostasis and of slight pleasure can be enhanced and magnified by manipulation to appear significant.  Dishomeostasis of fear, anxiety and worries can be artificially induced to create markets for profit.

Examples: 

• Artificial dishomeostasis:
  Selling safety equipment.
• Artificial anticipation of dishomeostasis:
  Selling insurances
• Artificial anticipation of pleasure:
  Selling products for consumption.

7.   Simultaneous And Competing Triggers

Dishomeostasis from more than one deficit can simultaneously exist and several stimuli can compete to have the strongest impact upon the pleasure center.    

7.1.  When there is full conscious perception of all options, the human cognition allows to choose on a long term basis between possible behaviors as the reaction to the competing urges and the available stimuli.

Examples.  

• The self-control during a diet, when the phyisical dishomoestasis of being hungry is competing with the mental dishomeostasis of being discontent with being obese.  
• The self-control of decisions to spend money or to save it for a purpose.  The marshmallow test is a good example.  

7.2.  Strong dishomeostasis can sometimes hide weaker dishomeostasis temporarily from being noticed. 

   
Example:

• A hungry person with limited money buys food and not a book.   The dishomeostasis of being bored only reaches the awareness after having eaten. 

8.   Attribution Of Causes
 

People often do not understand the real cause of dishomeostasis.  Therefore they fail in their attempt to cope with it. 

8.1.   Own dishomeostasis
Diffuse feelings of dishomeostasis are not understood or attributed to false causes.   Sometimes the attempts to cope replace one dishomeostasis with another.  

Examples:

• Overeating, physical addiction to drugs and emotional addiction to gambling are two examples of mislead attempts to cope with some other dishomeostasis like stress or unrecognized relationship problems.

8.2.  Other's dishomeostasis
People are often not aware of innate differences.   They project, that what is good for them is also good for others.   They are oblivious, that what stimulates their own pleasure center sometimes causes others' dishomeostasis.

Examples:  

• People getting pleasure from eating garlic or fish are unaware, that even the smell can cause nausea to others.    
• People playing their favorite music are unaware, that it can be annoying noise to others.  

8.3.  General expectation of dishomeostasis
External influences like social norms and desensitization modify or destroy the general perception, awareness for and recognition of the real and genuine innate dishomeostasis.   This distorts the expectations about how others are impacted by the own behavior and of how to best deal with the own dishomeostasis.   
 

Examples: 

• The desensitization by being exposed to too much sex and violence in the media has destroyed the dishomeostasis of feeling empathy and guilt as a deterrent to hurt and abuse others.
• The dishomeostasis of lonely nice guys in need of finding a companion is modified by the social norm of promiscuity.  They are manipulated to feel instead the artificial dishomeostasis of wanting to be oversexed studs.

As a consequence of discarding the free will, I do not expect anything from anybody, unless I get it either in return or as a side effect of an interaction, during which my behavior contributes to either the other's homeostation or to the stimulation of his pleasure center.  With strangers, this is trial and error based upon the tit-for-tat strategy.   

In a relationship, communication revealing the partner's most urgent dishomeostasis and special susceptibility of his pleasure center is very important.   Know this reciprocally is an important part of knowing the partner and of making a relationship last. 

511. Evolution, The Cassandra Dynamics And Too Much Television

511.  Evolution, The Cassandra Dynamics And Too Much Television

People can close their eyes to end all visual input.  Also daylight is available on average only during half of the life time.  But people can never stop hearing, they can only filter, what they consciously listen to.   
The human brain filters on a subconscious level, which sensory input is allowed into consciousness, and which automatic reactions are elicited.   

On this level, the human brain is still in the evolutionary state of the adaption to when human interactions were limited to a restricted number of personally known people. 
 
I already have mentioned Kanazawa (http://personal.lse.ac.uk/kanazawa/pdfs/ehb2002.pdf), who describes the confounding of virtual and real people by the example of men's reaction to pornography and by the experience of persons on TV as friends.

But the more I ponder over this, the more I can see, that the flooding of the human brain with virtual people has even much more drastic effects than Kanazawa has suggested. 
 

The invention of the radio, of cheap color photography, of color movies and even more of TV and the internet has created, installed and enhanced the ubiquity of virtual humans.  

Virtual humans are all technically preserved and recorded representations of real humans.  This can be anything auditive or visual, which is realistic enough to expose the brain to the same kind of stimulation as does the presence of real persons.  

Until about a hundred years ago, such representations were rare, because only a limited number of artists were able to produce realistic paintings or sculptures and it was a time consuming occupation.  Only few people could afford to get their likeness done. 

I am convinced that the overwhelming of the brain with the stimulation by too many virtual social and psychological contacts has drastic effects upon attention and communication.  Virtual humans are only a recent technological development, the human brain has had not enough time to evolve the ability to subconsciously cope with the difference between real and virtual humans.  

I am even wondering, if ADD (attention deficit disorder) may not be a logical reaction of the brain to an environment, to which it is maladapted.   Maybe it is even more astonishing, that not more people have such problems.

  
The environment of the human evolutionary adaptation was an environment, in which hearing a human voice or seeing a human person meant automatically to be in the presence of a real human.    People lived in small groups, knowing all other group members personally or at least by sight.   Strangers were rare.   This did not change much for the majority of people living in villages until more recent times.

Under such circumstances, every perception of another human's verbal or non-verbal expression is a probable source of important information requiring and warranting attention.   The importance of any dialog with significant persons is obvious, but strangers are possibly dangerous and need to be assessed.   Usually only one person requires attention at the same time, no matter if in a dialog or being listened to as a narrator of a story.   
For people living in small groups or villages, the amount of input from human interaction usually does not exceed the attention span of people. While people's span of attention is limited, real people's ability to monologue without a pause is also limited.    Humans have evolved to be able to pay the necessary amount of attention to other humans, that allows them to thrive under such circumstances only.


There are decisive differences between the environment of evolutionary adaptation and the modern life situation, both having a drastic impact upon focusing attention.  These environmental changes confuse and irritate the brain.  

• The sensory flooding with virtual humans that are confounded with real humans as already mentioned.
• The recordings of virtual humans get never tired and can be repeated endlessly, even against the wish of those exposed.   
• The crowding and mingling with strangers, who are not social contacts but part of the environment.   Everyday life includes being in close proximity with strangers, be it in public transport, restaurants, markets, events. 

The brain gets easily habituated to repeated sensory input, as soon as it does not indicate danger.   Not consciously hearing the singing of birds most of the time is an example.   But any expression from a real human in personal contact is an important stimulus to pay attention to.   

I grew up without TV and only listening to selected programs on the radio.   Whenever I happen to enter a household, where people are talking with the TV or radio in the background transmitting spoken language, I observe a difference.  They have successfully learned to filter out all the information from the TV and focus on the conversation.   I have the problem, that the TV distracts my attention against my wish.

The brain cannot pay adequate attention to several voices at the same time.  In this situation, the brain is forced to filter and to select only the most significant information to be consciously processed. Even by repeatedly switching the attention to and fro, processing information from one source means losing information from the others.   Filtering is learned as a result of the necessity to cope with such an input overflow of information.  
When people learn to selectively listen to some chosen voices and ignore the others, this choice is determined or at least influenced by what interests them most and what is important for their personal needs.    People exposed simultaneously to more virtual and real human voices than their brain can process, their attention is predominantly attracted to what pleases, entertains, amuses, thrills or excites them.  They can afford to discard by filtering, whatever they do not like to hear.    It is the same as with food.   When food is scarce, people eat anything, that fills their stomach.   But when food is plentiful and cheap, they only eat their favorite dishes.  

In entry 507 I described the Cassandra Dynamics including the problem of a partner not listening to the warnings of Cassandra in spite of her efforts to communicate, before it is too late.   I am wondering, if the learned selective filtering by the exposition to too much TV has also destroyed the ability to be a partner in constructive communication, whenever listening to unwelcome but necessary information is unpleasant.  
 

I suspect, that growing up with the TV running all day long, including falling asleep in front of the TV, has a very detrimental effect upon people's ability to decide consciously, what to listen to, even when listening would be beneficial for themselves.  Those people, who have grown up being exposed to too much TV, are at the risk of confounding even their significant other with just another figure on the TV screen.   

On the subconscious level, the brain being generally unable to distinguish between virtual and real humans, filters all pleasant information discarding the rest, indiscriminately of its source.   A dull politician on TV or the partner attempting to communicate about serious matters are both just triggers to mentally zap to something else.  

Unfortunately, such problems are aggravated by people taking too much for granted.   Before someone can learn to listen, he first needs the insight, that listening even to unpleasant feedback is an unavoidable part of making a relationship work.   

510. The Remedy For Grumpiness

510.   The Remedy For Grumpiness

In entry 507 I described the Cassandra effect.   It is the experience of mostly women, who are aware of something going wrong in their relationship, and who suffer, because they are not taken for serious and they are powerless to prevent the catastrophe.

Grumpy old people are the counterpart of Cassandra in their concern about the development of society.  The grumpy old men are more visible, because of their more aggressive and angry way of expressing their grumpiness.  There are also grumpy old women, but they tend to be more silent about it. 

The grumpiness of sane people is different from dementia. Being a nuisance or not is a question of mental health and of self-control, it is not a question of age.   

This entry is about sane grumpy old people with comprehensible reasons to be grumpy.

Grumpy old people are much more alive and healthy than are docile old people.    Feeling grumpy is an indication of the awareness, that something is not as it should be.   Grumpiness is the logical, reasonable and comprehensible reaction to perceived real grievances.  

Grumpy old people are those, who

• have lived a long time and have observed and experienced the changes of society with open eyes.  
  They have grown mature.   They have gained the wisdom to evaluate, what has improved and what has deteriorated.   
• have self-confidence and independence in their thinking.  
  They recognize grievances.  They are critical and outspoken.  They reject detrimental social norms.    They are not easily gullible to manipulations.
   

Blaming people as if being grumpy were a defect is a misconception, which does not lead to a solution.  Those who do the blaming are usually immature youngsters.  Old people cannot change a society dominated by those, who are younger and less mature.   They need a way to live in this situation without suffering.

Being lonely, especially being intellectually lonely is a sufficient and logical reason to become grumpy.   I have mentioned intellectual loneliness before.    An apistic and skeptic can feel intellectually very lonely between religious people.   

But a person, who sees the world with over six decades of life experience can feel intellectually lonely too in a society, where the influential power of the media and the political power over life are all dominated by people, who are much younger.

Only the removal of the reasons for being grumpy is a rational remedy.  It is a huge emotional relief to be able to share the own world view and the agreement about what is going wrong with likeminded people.   

The best remedy is the emotional safe haven of a bonded relationship with someone in the same age group sharing the same attitudes and the same world view.  

A happy person has no reasons to be grumpy, and a grumpy person lacks happiness.

Therefore I am willing to accept a grumpy old man as a potential partner.   If he is my mindmate, he will not remain grumpy.   Knowing me will end his grumpiness. 

509. The Fallacy Of Tantra

509.   The Fallacy Of Tantra 

The word Tantra in a man's profile makes me suspicious.   The word Tantra in the context of our western culture can have two meanings, both indicating something, that I prefer to avoid.  

Those who claim to be sophisticated, experience and define Tantra as one of many eastern woo-woo cults.  In entry 508, I already presented the debunking by the Great Tantra Challenge.   A man with such beliefs is not more my mindmate than is any other believer in some irrationality.   

But there is an even cruder interpretation, which reduces Tantra to a technique of instinct-enhancing gymnastics.  
While I react with repugnance towards the vulgarity of Penn & Teller, the last part of their show is nevertheless an example of how people are trained in Tantra:  
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2jFj_RL5QvM
 

The documentation shows people in the public activity of near-copulation, the pornographic display reminds me of the behavior of dogs from the gutter, void of any human dignity.    I cringe at the mere idea of getting involved with a man, who has participated in such a session.

It was not even clear, if the participants were committed couples.  But assuming them as couples attempting to improve something wrong between them, learning Tantra is not more an appropriate remedy for their problem as would be fighting a headache by hitting the head with a hammer.   The enhanced pain and enhanced pleasures are both only stronger sensation covering temporarily a persistent and not solved real problem.  

Long term happiness as a couple requires more than attractive bodies, but also specific psychological conditions.  When a couple is dissatisfied with what happens inside their bedroom, Tantra cannot be more than a pseudo remedy.  

Their real problems are very different, they are a consequence of the general mating fallacy.     
In many mammals including homo sapiens, the physiological male needs for sexual homeostasis and the motivation to pursue this by the stimulation of the pleasure center in the brain has evolved to trick people into procreation.  The infatuation between bodies has evolved to produce healthy offspring, but it has not evolved to last, especially not as long as people live today.    

The sad consequence of this is promiscuity.  

But there has also been the second evolution of human cognition including both emotional and intellectual needs and cognitive abilities to be guided by long-term thinking, non-physical enjoyments and self-control. 

The more the human intelligence has evolved enabling people acquiring education, sophistication and intellectuality, the more they are able to enjoy intellectual and creative pleasures.  Logically, in comparison with non-physical enjoyments, sexuality becomes a dull banality and less rewarding.  

The theoretical consequence is the cognitive ability to find happiness in monogamous close long-term bonding based upon intellectual and emotional intimacy.

In spite of the benefits of the advanced evolution of the cognition compared with the evolution of the more primitive instincts, many humans continue to fall into the trap of the general mating fallacy.   Due to this fallacy, people continue to consider sexual satisfaction as the purpose of and the reason for having a relationship and as the criterion for the choice of a mate.    

This fallacy is maintained and enhanced by the social norm of oversexation as already explained in entry 498 and entry 493.   

I would not be astonished, if some of the participants in the Tantra course were even singles and as mislead as to believe, that such skills would be of more advantage in the competition for a mate than personality and intelligence.   

Mistaking Tantra as a remedy when experiencing physical dissatisfaction as a couple is a behavioral expression of this general fallacy.  

1. How affective physical intimacy is experienced depends on the quality of the intellectual and emotional intimacy of the couple.   The quality of physical intimacy is a measuring device for the emotional quality of the relationship. 
   When there is a distortion of physical intimacy, it is absurd to apply mechanical remedies like Tantra.  Instead the couple needs to find out, what is wrong in the relationship.   When unresolved conflicts are damaging the emotional intimacy, then the couple needs to solve the conflict and repair the emotional bond.   When they restore the close bond, they also restore the non-verbal message of belonging together expressed by physical intimacy.    If external help is needed, couple's therapy improves much more than Tantra instruction. 
   
2. Some people are innately hedonists, and hedonists are the kind of consumers, who bring the most profits to capitalists.   Therefore they are the preferred role models as shown in entry 498.
   Others are Epicureans with predominantly cognitive and emotional needs.   It is absurd, when Epicureans are manipulated by the capitalistically propagated hedonistic social norms to attempt to experience the same as do hedonists.   Methods like Tantra are used to override Epicurean innate preferences.   
   Some Epicurean couples are mislead by the general fallacy to expect much more benefits from sexual activities, than there really are, when seen realistically with an unmanipulated mind.  Sexuality is nothing more than an instinct shared with animals, who have no cognition, who cannot enjoy anything better.   Animals have no choice, but humans do.
    
   Only maintaining a man's physiological homeostasis is a necessity for a relationship, but nothing more.  There is no rational reason to artificially attempt to get more pleasure from something, when it is experienced and considered as a mere banality.   
   
   If intelligent and educated people would be free from the detrimental social norm of oversexation and would instead fully recognize that they can enjoy a visit to a museum, a lecture or a good movie together more than bed activities, this would enable them to just shift their focus in a positive way to share, what they really enjoy most.    They would be out of the reach of capitalists selling Tantra.  

If a man believes in the possibility of improving a relationship by methods like Tantra, this scares me.   I am looking for a man as my mindmate, who shares the full awareness and recognition, that the quality of the affective physical intimacy depends only on the emotional quality of the relationship.

508. Hilarious Woo-Woo

508.    Hilarious Woo-Woo

Sometimes I have been suspected to lack any sense of humor. Yesterday I found something, that made me laugh, until my belly ached:

First the information:

"On 3 March 2008, in a popular TV show, Sanal Edamaruku, the president of Rationalist International, challenged India’s most “powerful” tantrik (black magician) to demonstrate his powers on him.

[Pandit Surinder Sharma] claimed that he was able to kill any person he wanted within three minutes by using black magic. 

After all his chanting of mantra (magic words) and ceremonies of tantra failed, the tantrik decided to kill Sanal Edamaruku with the “ultimate destruction ceremony” on live TV. "

http://www.rationalistinternational.net/article/2008/20080310/en_1.html

On this page are the three videos of the event:
http://indianrationalists.blogspot.de/2008/07/great-tantra-challenge.html

The first can be skipped, but the display of woo-woo in the second and the third are between the most hilarious stuff, that I have seen in a long time.  

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. 

506. The Harmful Effects Of Pornography On Jerks And On Emotional Morons

506.   The Harmful Effects Of Pornography On Jerks And On Emotional Morons

As shown by a lot of scientific evidence in entry 505, exposure to pornography converts men into hazards to women with emotional needs.   

When men are knowingly harming women. they are ruthless jerks.   Others are emotional moron, who want to be decent and moral people, and who have a clear conscience believing to do nothing wrong.  They are oblivious or in denial of the real damage done by them.
This is a general observation, but it is also the case, when men harm first themselves by pornography and whose harming women is a direct consequence of having damaged themselves.  

When damaged men are outspoken in their refusal to commit, women have at least a fair chance to avoid being abused by them.   

But those men are the most dangerous, who appear, pretend or believe to want a companion, and whose bonding-disability is hidden until the discovery as the consequence of actually getting involved.   Women are mislead to agree to intimacy, which for them is the beginning of commitment.  They give and expect affectionate physical intimacy.  All they can get from the damaged men is being an object used in their mechanical copulations.  

These are two examples:

1.  The jerk:
 

I read somewhere on the web the desperate complaints of a guy, who has not only damaged himself by too much pornography, but who has reached the consciousness of suffering from it.    He describes with words, that resound his genuine pain and distress, how much he would want to have a woman as a companion.   But every time, when he wishes a woman to become his companion, the desensitization overrides everything else.  Physical involvement automatically converts the attempted mating into the subjective experience of another instance of his habitual abuse, and the woman meant as a companion is perceived as just one more degraded object and utility.    
This guy is a jerk, because he has recognized this effect upon himself, but in spite of knowing, what he does, he repeats his futile attempts to have a companionship.    Every time, when he tries again, he harms a trusting woman without feeling responsible.  
He is also jerk by being very selfish. His extreme exposure to pornography is the result of his making a good living by selling it.    He admits, that he continues his profitable business, knowingly inflicting the same harm upon others, in spite of being aware of having harmed himself.

2.  The emotional moron:

Recently I have corresponded for a while with a man, whose denial is remarkable.   He told me quite convincingly, that he really wants a long term monogamous relationship, and how much he is interested in communication and in companionship.   He put emphasis on his alleged appreciation for women.   He told me, that he never had a one-night-stand, and this of course made him attractive to me.  
When I asked him about his use of pornography, I thought it was merely a routine question.  I really expected a negative answer.    Instead I was consternated and horrified, when he admitted to having been consuming pornography habitually since over 40 years, whenever he was not in a relationship.   After 40 years, it is most probably an addiction.    

He naively considers pornography as a harmless everyday habit.   I have sent him the links to scientific articles about the harm done by pornography listed in entry 505.   Reading these articles had no impact upon his complete denial.   He claims that even if everybody else gets harmed by the exposure to huge amounts of pornography, he continues to believe, that he alone is the one exception, who has not been damaged.  

My mindmate to be found is neither a jerk nor an emotional moron.   He has no life history of abusing women, he has not desensitized himself neither by promiscuously using real bodies nor by exposing himself to the pornographic representations of abused bodies.

505. Science Indicating The Harm Of Pornography

505.   Science Indicating The Harm Of Pornography

For emotionally unharmed people, monogamy, commitment and exclusive pair-bonding are basic cognitive and emotional human needs. 
Promiscuity, polygyny, cheating, dumping, degrading and abusing others as mere bodies cause serious emotional harm to people.   

While the emotional benefits for individual human beings derived from the exclusivity of monogamy are the topic of romance in novels and movies, scientific research instead focuses mainly on general social, economic and evolutionary benefits of monogamy.  

Whenever I am reading men's profiles and the ubiquitous promiscuous and perverse wishes and goals, in addition to some feedback to this blog and to my own profiles, I sometimes feel as if I were an alien from another planet thrown into a filthy gutter.     

But luckily, I am not entirely alone with my evaluation of the damage done by the artificial social norm of an oversexed society.   There are learned and knowledgeable scientists studying the serious harm done by pornography.  

When already repeatedly expressing my disgust about the ubiquity of jerks openly pursuing promiscuity on the Internet and about the general oversexation of society, I had omitted to put special emphasis on pornography as the core of the problem.  Promiscuity is more an abstract concept, while pornography is its real life representation.  
The entire detrimental effects of the general oversexation including the subtle and indirect damage are like an iceberg, of which only one seventh is visible above the water.   This visible part is pornography, of which the harm can be shown most easily.     I already have called promiscuity a scourge of humanity, and so is pornography as its most visible expression.
 
While I was fully aware of the kind of damage done to users' brains by the exposure to pornography, I had not been aware to which extreme extensity and pervasiveness pornography had grown along with the ubiquity of the Internet.    While I cannot avoid being exposed to the general oversexation of daily life against my will, the access to pornography on the web requires proactive behavior.    By being able to avoid it, I was not fully aware the real magnitude of the problem.    

I attributed promiscuity directly to men's being physiologically driven by their strong animal instincts, this being aggravated by their having lost first the sensitivity to appreciate an emotional safe haven and subsequently also lacking the motivation to use self-control.  
Those promiscuous jerks and emotional psychopaths, whom I described throughout this blog as prototypes from my worst nightmares, have probably not become obnoxious and disgusting merely by an innate disposition.   Instead it is more probable, that the additional exposure to huge amounts of pornography has magnified their innate predisposition, until all their human qualities had been destroyed.  

It seems that pornography converts potential jerks into irreversible jerks.  

There has been done a lot of research on the different aspects of the harm done by pornography, and learned people have expressed and explained it much better, than I could do.   The following is a list of a some very good sources for further information.

Patrick F. Fagan: 
A Poison In The Home
http://www.diolaf.org/documents/Marriage%20and%20Family%20Life/Pornography%20Resources/a%20poison%20in%20the%20home.pdf
 

Patrick F. Fagan, Ph.D.
The Effects of Pornography on Individuals, Marriage, Family and Community
http://www.wifamilyaction.org/files/trya.campaigntoolbox.org/downloads/FRC_PornStudy_0.pdf
 

Mary Eberstadt  Mary Anne Layden 
THE SOCIAL COSTS OF PORNOGRAPHY
http://www.internetsafety101.org/upload/file/Social%20Costs%20of%20Pornography%20Report.pdf

Dr. Victor B. Cline:  
Pornography’s Effects On Adults and Children
http://www.stop.org.za/Victor%20Cline%27s%20Study.pdf

Ana J. Bridges 
Pornography's Effects on Interpersonal Relationships
http://www.socialcostsofpornography.com//Bridges_Pornographys_Effect_on_Interpersonal_Relationships.pdf
 

Jackson Katz: 
Pornography And Men's Consciousness
http://academic.evergreen.edu/curricular/genderandmedia/assignments/katz001.pdf

Rebecca Whisnant: 
Confronting pornography:  Some conceptual basics.
http://stoppornculture.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/Whisnant-Confronting-Pornography.pdf

504. Science On The Benefits Of Monogamy

504.  Science On The Benefits Of Monogamy

Joseph Henrich, Robert Boyd and Peter J. Richerson
The puzzle of monogamous marriage

http://www.sscnet.ucla.edu/anthro/faculty/boyd/HenrichBoydRichersonPhilTransB12Monogamy.pdf

"norms and institutions that compose themodern package of monogamous marriage have been favoured by cultural evolution because of their group-beneficial effects-promoting success in inter-group competition. In suppressing intrasexual competition and reducing the size of the pool of unmarried men, normative monogamy reduces crime rates, including rape, murder, assault, robbery and fraud, aswell as decreasing personal abuses. By assuaging the competition for younger brides, normative monogamy decreases (i) the spousal age gap, (ii) fertility, and (iii) gender inequality. By shifting male efforts from seeking wives to paternal investment, normative monogamy increases savings, child investment and economic productivity. By increasing the relatedness within households, normative monogamy reduces intra-household conflict, leading to lower rates of child neglect, abuse, accidental death and homicide."

503. Evolution And Monogamy

503.  Evolution And Monogamy

In entry 502, I pointed out, that human instinctive behavior has not yet evolved to adapt to the novelty situation of being free from survival needs, in spite of the cognitive reality, that emotional and intellectual needs have become strong influences upon human behavior.   
Under the pressure of survival needs people are coerced to make choices, which they would not make, were they free to choose by taking full account of their emotional needs.  

In this study, women's choice between polygyny and monogamy is explained by the survival benefits of the choice.   It is a very good example of the force of circumstantial restrictions upon options.   

Sathoshi Kanazawa / Mary C. Still:
Why monogamy?

http://personal.lse.ac.uk/Kanazawa/pdfs/SF1999.pdf

"If resource inequality among men is great, women choose to marry polygynously and the polygynous institution of marriage emerges. If resource inequality among men is small, women choose to marry monogamously and the monogamous institution of marriage emerges. The theory explains the historical shift from polygyny to monogamy as a result of the gradual decline of inequality among men."

The explanation makes perfect logical sense, as long as the options of the choice between monogamy and polygamy are restricted to those for physical survival.    When the choice of a man is a choice between starving and eating, the wish for an exclusive attachment is an unobtainable luxury.   There is no free cognitive choice considering also emotional needs.

Today the environment in the rich modern societies offers for the first time in history the true freedom of choice.    Relieved from the pressure of physical survival struggles, people are now able to sense and perceive their emotional and intellectual needs.   In this situation, monogamy is the best cognitive choice (entry 497)

10,000 and even 1,000 years ago, the situation was very different.   Physical survival depended upon access to scarce resources of food, clothing, firewood, shelter.   The total availability of these resources to a community, village or group was limited.   Even under the best favorable circumstances, people could not produce much surplus above their own needs.

• Everyday chores were time consuming.   Water had to be carried from the well, cooking required a fire and fire wood.      
• Without machinery, the production of all goods were slow and limited.  
• Food production depended on the climate.    Food had to be produced locally.
• Skills and knowledge were limited. 

As long as the access to fertile land, forest and water was unrestricted to all people, the sum of the resources allowed the survival of everybody on an equal low level.   But any inequality of power over such resources meant, that only the powerful men had the means to survive, while there was not enough left for everybody else.  Medieval systems of rich landowners exploiting their tenants are examples.      


Under such circumstances, a woman's theoretical choice between being the exclusive wife of a poor monogamous man and sharing a rich powerful man's wealth with other wives was not a free choice.   Her emotional needs were an unobtainable luxury beyond her reach, when the price for one poor man's emotional exclusive attachment was perishing and starvation for her and her offspring. 

This situation was aggravated by the lack of safe methods of family planning.   The woman was not even able to choose the monogamous poor man by restricting the number of offspring to match his resources. 

The woman's choice was further determined by her parents' power over her.  Under the pressure of lacking sufficient resources to keep all their children alive, parents coerced their daughters by dire necessity into the choice of the man, who could maintain them, even if she had to share him in a polygynous arrangement.    


Evolutionary biology and evolutionary psychology are very valuable methods to explain hidden instinctive tendencies toward certain behaviors.   But it is a fallacy to confound explanations with justification, connivance or acquiescence.  

It is historical reality, that the superior physical strength of men allowed them to first exclude women from independent access to the survival resources and that the physically strongest men usurped greedily a disproportionally high share of the totally available resources.  This enabled a minority of men to gain control over the majority of women. 

Today the cognitive perception of non-material needs are just as much a reality, including the ability to act morally, to distinguish between justice and injustice and to suffer excruciating emotional pain as the victim of injustice.   Today we have reached a situation, where the instinctive reactions, that were helpful in a different environment, have become obsolete and detrimental.   

The most rational and least instinctive people are guided by their cognition to new adaptive behaviors to the changed environment, while the majority are still driven too much by dysfunctional and anachronistic instincts.


Therefore no scientific explanation of the choice of polygyny in the past by reasons of necessity can be morally used to deny people in the present society their emotional needs for the safe haven of a monogamous exclusive commitment.    No allegedly free choice for polygamy in the past is a valid excuse today for the promiscuous cheating and dumping by desensitized jerks.
When scientific research uncovers instinctive tendencies, which hurt others emotionally, then this is a reason to teach people enhanced awareness to fight their subconscious harmful tendencies, it is not justifiable to use scientific discoveries as an excuse for cruelty.     

502. Evolution, Survival And Emotional Needs

502.  Evolution, Survival And Emotional Needs

Bertold Brecht said it quite drastically "Erst kommt das Fressen, und dann die Moral".   There are different ways to translate this, because morals can be understood differently.   The translation as 'a hungry man has no conscience' may be the closest to Brecht's meaning. 
But it can also be translated like this: 'There are no morals, unless there is grub.'   In this sense, morals are more generally any cognitive influence on the behavior.  Usually (there are exceptions), as long as someone is driven by urgent and strong physical deprivations, non-physical cognitive needs are not strong enough to determine or even influence the behavior and all emotional needs are a luxury beyond imagination.   

I have already mentioned the theory of the environment of the evolutionary adaptation.   Today we life in an environment, that has drastically changed from what the human brain has adapted to by evolution, which according to this theory is the savanna as it was about 10,000 years ago.   But this environment had only insignificantly changed until a few centuries ago.   The most drastic changes for the majority of the population in the rich western countries came only during the last century.    

Only today's physical comfort and security of unlimited food supply, bright electrical light, warm water from the tap, central heating in sturdy buildings, health care, laws and law enforcement, safe birth control and nearly unlimited access to information provide people with an environment, in which they now are free to be fully aware of their emotional needs.    

This freedom to have full access to cognitive awareness is so new, that there has not been enough time to adapt the innate automatic responses for appropriate coping with emotional needs.      People have not yet learned to use their cognition as a tool to adapt to their emotional reality.   Today people are still driven by strong instincts, impulses and tendencies, that are dysfunctional in our highly technical environment:  

1.  The human brain has had not time yet to evolve sufficiently to the difference between real people and technically reproduced life-imitating representation of voices, still and moving pictures, because these only exist since about a century.   

2.  The human cognition has evolved as an evolutionary adaptation to survive successfully.   The sensitivity to have emotional, intellectual needs and to suffer pain, when such needs are not met, are only a byproduct of the evolution of cognition.  But these non-material and non-physical needs were hidden from the awareness by the much stronger dire necessity of a daily struggle for physical survival needs.   Someone at the point of starvation and perishing due to lack of shelter or serious disease has no awareness for feelings like dignity and appreciation.  Being hidden from awareness, the by-product did not influence evolution.     

Not being aware of emotional needs like for attachment and trust and of intellectual needs like for knowledge and comprehension while being under the pressure of hunger and life threatening perils is like being unable to hear the birds sing underneath the much louder noise of an electrical drill.  The evolutionary adaptation of human instincts is like being adapted to permanent loud noise.   When the electric drill is turned off, someone hearing the birds for the first time does not know, that what he hears as an irritating sound are birds.   Since in the recently changed environment the permanent threat of perishing has been removed, this has left people without sufficient innate understanding for the own and even more for the expressed emotional needs of others.     Whatever innate empathy and mirror neurons there are, they do not suffice to enable people to avoid hurting and harming others without a cognitive decision to do so.          

The tragedy of today's situation in modern rich countries is the discrepancy of people still treating others as the same ruthless instinctive driven animals in the savanna, while the comfort and security of the standard of life has freed the cognition and enhanced the perception for pain and suffering.     

Would people only ignore their own emotional needs, they would only harm themselves.   But the worst tragedy is the harm done to others due to the general oblivion and denial of emotional needs.   While people suffer emotional pain as targets of behavior, they continue to be unaware of inflicting the exact same pain on others, when they act driven by their own instincts.

The choice of how to interact with the other gender is a good example.    Today's environment allows everybody to attempt happiness in a monogamous committed relationship with one partner.    Instead men continue to promiscuously abuse women's body, and women are driven by greed to exploit men.   These causes suffering and makes them gullible customers for psychopharmaceuticals as already explained in entry 498.   

501.   Desensitization By The Media 
In entry 498. (Capitalism, Media, Social Norm And Monogamy) I pointed out the detrimental effects of artificial social norms created by the media and how the resulting desensitization has enabled capitalists to make profits by selling psychopharmaceuticals.   My emphasis was on the devastation caused by the oversexation of society.     But there are also other areas of life, where desensitization by the media also has devastating effects.   

Describing growing social acceptance of relational aggression in the quotes below uses different words for describing desensitization.      

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/03/120307145428.htm

"Research over the past few decades has shown that viewing physical violence in the media can increase aggression in adults and children. But a new study" .... "has also found that onscreen relational aggression -- including social exclusion, gossip and emotional bullying -- may prime the brain for aggression."

"This matters because relational aggression tends to be considered more socially acceptable -- it's often portrayed on television as funny and how friends treat each other," he said. "Yet, several studies are starting to show that relational aggression can cause long-term harm."

500. Statistics Of My Quest

500.  Statistics Of My Quest  

This is the 500th entry in this blog.   When I started blogging, I did not expect to write so many entries.   But by looking at the endeavor statistically, it is no surprise.   Nothing in life comes without efforts.   Happiness like everything else has to be earned, and not only by investing efforts in making relationships work, but also by investing efforts to find a suitable and compatible partner as a match.   

In entry 69 I already estimated by rough statistical assumptions, that maybe 1 in every 10,000 men in my age group is a suitable match according to my search criteria.   

By the algorithm of sequential searching, a ratio of 1 in 10,000 requires on average to look at 5,000 until success.  

The result of having written 500 entries about a variety of topics is a growing number of google search hits and of daily page views.    The overall number of page views since I started this blog in July 2010 is close to 14,000.   But some persons read multiple pages (every entry has its own page URL), and the visitors are persons of any age and of both genders.    Probably even 14,000 page views do not indicate, that there had been more than 1000 men in my age group being unique visitors.

Statistics and estimating probabilities supply nothing more than numbers.  But this is nevertheless a rational way to be aware of reality and to continue my efforts without losing hope.    My task to earn happiness includes the task to get notoriety for my blog.   Every person reading the blog for the first time could either be my mindmate or at least know him and get us into contact.    


Writing more entries contributes to increased notoriety.    But sometimes help comes from unexpected sources too.   A few days ago, someone involuntarily did me a great favor.   The guy meant to present me on his own blog as some kind of an oddity.  
As a side effect, I got an amazing boost of publicity.   This guy sent lots of visitors to my blog.   Suddenly, on one single day there were more page views than there had been in some entire months.   
Not all people are gullible and immature and automatically share that guy's attempted mockery.  Some of these visitors are certainly able to appreciate my blog as independent thinkers.   

He labeled me as the 'finalized product of feminism'.    Calling me a mere product of feminism is an underestimation.   I did not need other feminists to gain my insights about what is obvious to any woman with dignity and intelligence.  I had my ideas, attitudes and values concerning egalitarian interactions between the genders and the logical baseline of equal rights and obligations long before I ever had even heard the word 'feminism'.  

But I appreciate being called a 'finalized feminist'.   Finalized means considered as perfect due to being finished without any need for possible further improvement.  
It is encouraging to be presented as the prototype of a feminist.  This involuntary and accidental compliment is a reliable, valuable and genuine feedback.  According to an old proverb, children and fools speak the truth.   In this instance, immature men can be included either with the children or with the fools.   But this is also an example, that while immaturity does damage to those close enough to be victims, immature people can also do unintended favors.  

I do hope to get more publicity of any kind.   When my mindmate will have found me, it does not matter, if his finding me was enabled by praise or by mockery.

499. Demisexuality And Monogamy

Demisexuality And Monogamy

Demisexuality and monogamy are both beneficial for the emotional and attachment needs of those people, who are sensitive and intellectual and not just instinct driven robots. 

Demisexuality and monogamy are connected, but they are not the same.

In entry 498 I described, how capitalists have created absurd social norms to acquire high profits from those, whom they had successfully manipulated to experience themselves as allegedly deviant.   In entry 493 I pointed out, how the definition of demisexuality by those self-labeling themselves as such is based upon the agreement of being deviant according to the accepted social norm of oversexation, while refusing to buy the capitalists' remedies.   

As explained in entry 496, when discarding the capitalists' absurd social norm by seeing demisexuality as the cognitive adaptation to the middle of the bell curve of libido and sexual instincts, it is not at all a deviance.  According to the evolution of the human cognition, demisexuality and monogamy are appropriate, realistic and suitable as social norms, because they are beneficial for the human emotional needs for attachment.   Such social norms bring no profit to capitalists, but they are superior for the purpose of avoiding individuals being harmed and suffering and social troubles and disruptions.  

Monogamy and demisexuality are closely connected without being the same: 

Sexual attraction in demisexuality and the wish to be part of a monogamous dyad are caused by the same personal attraction.  This personal attraction enabling sexual attraction in demisexuality consists of the same traits and attributes, which also attract couples to choose each other for the benefits of being committed companions sharing quality time and living arrangement.   Monogamous sexuality and sharing a home require both the same kind of trust to share exclusivity, intimacy and resources and the wish to be together and to enjoy each other's company and activities, which also causes the sexual attraction of demisexuals. 

• Demisexuality does not automatically lead to monogamous life arrangements.
  
  When taking the predominant definition literally and orthodoxically, demisexuality does not imply monogamy.   It is theoretically true, that someone can get into an emotionally close relationship with more than one person leading to sexual attraction and activities.   It is theoretically possible to imagine a mormon or muslim demisexual man having a polygynous family arrangement, that fully satisfies his personal needs.  
  But this does not imply, that he can reciprocally fulfill dyadic needs of more than one partner.  Any kind of arrangement may suit the needs of someone demisexual, while asymmetrical arrangements do not offer the same safe haven as does a dyad.
  
  Demisexuality is a cognitive predisposition, a trait, a predefined reaction or lack thereof to specific stimuli, demisexuality is wired into the brain, even in the absence of consciously experiencing the lack of stimulation.   Demisexuality does not require someone being aware of having such a predisposition. 
  
  
• Demisexuality is not the only possible cause for monogamy.
  
  Monogamy is a life style based upon the choice of the exclusivity of sharing the safe haven of the dyad with one specific person.  Monogamy is the exclusivity of the special combined intellectual, emotional and physical intimacy shared with only one significant other. 
  
  Monogamy can be either maintained by a successful use of willpower as the consequence of the cognitive insight of the superior long-term benefits of exclusivity or it can be facilitated and enabled by demisexuality.
  
  Choosing the life arrangement of a dyad (entry 497) is the choice for an emotionally healthy life style, when two partners support each other as a caring monogamous exclusive couple against the inclemencies of life.
  
  G.K. Chesterton only needed two sentences to express it beautifully in his novel 'The Man Who Was Thursday': 

  "there are no words to express the abyss between isolation and having one ally. It may be conceded to the mathematicians that four is twice two. But two is not twice one; two is two thousand times one. That is why, in spite of a hundred disadvantages, the world will always return to monogamy."

 

Demisexuality does therefore not lead automatically to monogamy, but monogamy without demisexuality is fragile, while demisexuality stabilizes monogamy.    Demisexual monogamy is a better safe haven than any form of monogamy, where exclusivity is only maintained by self-control in fear of consequences.   Demisexuality is the absence of those instinctive inclinations and predispositions, that are the biggest hazards to monogamy.   

Demisexuality is the best precondition for a lasting, stable, reliable and monogamous commitment.  
Monogamy is the best option for demisexuals.