521. The Difference Between Companionship And Commodification

521.  The Difference Between Companionship And Commodification

In the entries 519 and 520 I mentioned the objectification of women.  But after further pondering I got aware, that objectification in the literal sense is only a part of the bigger problem of the commodification of women.  Women are not only used as bodies, they are often also degraded to the function of rendering other services.  

Literally, objectification is degrading women to be used as passive objects, mainly by rape, prostitution and pornography.   

Commodification degrades women also to the role of objects.  But they are considered as more advanced objects, which are not just passive but have functions like appliances.   

An appliance like for example a toaster or a vacuum cleaner is perceived as an object to fulfill a specific function, whenever a button is pressed.   

1. Without functioning, the object has no value.   
2. The object is maintained according to a manual or common knowledge.  
3. The object is not an individual, but one specimen from mass production and thus interchangeable with any other object supplying the same function. 
4. Only the user decides, when and how to use the appliance.   
5. He expects to retrieve it from where and how he has left it, no matter for how long he stores it in a locker.   
6. The purpose of the existence of the appliance is serving the user by functioning at his convenience.    
7. Once he has gained control over an appliance, he considers it his property to be used at his convenience ever after.    
8. He feels entitled to benefit from the function as long as it pleases him and to discard of the appliance also at his convenience.

When a man commodifies women, he perceives and treats them as if women were appliances.   This is derived from an attitude of the asymmetrical entitlement to selfishly living his live entirely at his own convenience, no matter what this does to the women.

1. A woman is not appreciated or valued independently of the benefits, which the man subjectively derives from her according to his needs.    The man is maximizing the quality of life for himself by adding whatever benefits he can usurp by using a woman.   This is not limited to using her body, it includes also using her skills and knowledge, which are perceived as isolated benefits, not as indications of her having any other competence.   
2. The man decides to treat the woman according to what he considers as her due and expects her to respond by functioning and not failing.    His assumption as to what is her due comes from many sources, be it hearsay, prejudice, projection, previous experience, even trial and error.    This can be any source except asking her.    He does not consider to ask her as he does not consider to ask the vacuum cleaner how to be handled.
   When he believes to keep her under good maintenance, any dysfunction is believed to be her flaw.   
3. The woman is not perceived as an individual with a personality, but as one specimen from the multitude of standard women, easily interchangeable with any other woman to get the same benefits. 
4. The man makes solitary decisions the same way as a single man does, including the one when to demand and receive the benefits from the woman and the modalities of how.  
5. The man comes and goes at his convenience, he decides when to be together and when to be separated without her consent. But he expects the woman to always be there waiting and ready for him.  
6. The man believes the woman to exist for the purpose of serving his benefits at his convenience. He is oblivious of the commodified woman's own needs and personality.  
7. Once he has gained control over a woman, he considers her as his property to be used at his convenience ever after, no matter how he treats her.    
   His control causes her insecurity.  Being commodified by a man, whose decisions come for her out of the blue, while she is helpless to influence or prevent, what he does to her, means to have no security, no reliability, no predictability.   Anything can be done to her at any moment, she cannot even prepare herself for what she cannot foresee.    
8. The man feels entitled to dump a woman, when she does not function any more due to his expectations. 

Commoditification and domination are two sides of the same coin.   The attitude of commodifcation serves to justify domination, and only domination enables someone with an outrageous attitude like commodification to have an impact upon victims.   

The situation of asymmetrical distribution of power in a relationship facilitates the domination over an commodified woman. 

A man's superior power can be caused

• by his physical strength
• by his economic strength
• by the discrepancy between the biological differences.      A man, who is attracted to a body, which he perceives as easy to replace, is less attached than a woman attracted and attached to a man's unique and individual personality.   Attachment creates vulnerability, while lacking attachment gives power.

There is a vicious circle:   Commodification impedes emotional attachment.   Lacking emotional attachment adds to the power needed to maintain domination and commodification.    Thus, commodification tends to perpetuate itself, once it is established.   

Commodification precludes companionship, which is defined by sharing decisions, sharing resources, cooperation, the identity as a part of a couple being a team, a fair exchange of giving and receiving, communication, consideration, responsibility.   

Examples:

1.  By the traditional gender roles, a house wife is commodifed, if the man only wants her for the purpose to find dinner ready every evening, have a clean home and share the bed, while he is not interested in spending any leisure time or sharing any activity with her.   Spending his free time instead with his hobbies and his buddies denies her to be a companion.

2.  Commodification is not limited to manual services as a housekeeper.  It can be more subtle.  Even a woman's mental skills can be used as a mere commodity without appreciation for her person.    

When a couple travels in a country, where only the woman speaks the language, and the man has health problems, there are two scenarios:

2.1.  As companions, they discuss and decide together, how to handle the situation.   Then she communicates on his behalf with whoever is consulted.   They perceive themselves as a teamed couple and they trust each other as being able and motivated to act in the best interest of both.

2.2.  When the man considers the woman as a commodity, the situation is very different.   He decides alone and without consulting her, what he wants to do, and he demands her to execute his unquestioned decisions.  She is to him nothing better than a translation machine, who is not recognized as having any more competence except the isolated skill of translating.   He demands her to translate every word as authentically as possible. She is not considered as apt to interfere at all with any of his decisions.   

3.  A couple has unresolved conflicts and their time together is limited.  

3.1.  As companions, both suffer from unresolved issues and solving conflicts has priority in their shared decision, how to use their time.

3.2.  For a man, who has commodified a woman, there are no unresolved issues.   He considers it his task to handle the commodity for his benefits.   When he gets, what he wants, nothing is wrong, no matter, how the woman experiences the situation.  Whenever he does not get, what he wants, he considers it his right and his job alone to enforce his will and impose his decisions upon her.   Getting, what he wants, is success, again no matter what she experiences..    

When he prefers to spend the time without her, he just does it.   When he wants to leave, he just leaves.   Her needs do not matter and do not exist for him.    When her ignored and denied needs make her too dysfunctional to what he feels entitled to get from her, this justifies his dumping her.

My mindmate to be found is a man, whose innate intrinsic needs are to be a companion, and for whom commodification of a woman is alien to his personality.  

520. An Irrational, Unjustified And Outrageous Distinction

520.   An Irrational, Unjustified And Outrageous Distinction

Under German law, being caught having child pornography on his computer usually suffices to send a man to jail.    But any man is legally free to consume as much pornography as pleases him, as long as the abused objects in the pictures are above a minimal age.  

The prohibition of child pornography is justified by its goal to prevent abuse.   Pornography has been produced by the abuse of real life children and there is the probability that consuming pornography is the first step of lowering the threshold towards subsequent real life abuse.      

This makes perfect sense.   But it makes just as much sense concerning grown up women.    Restricting this form of prevention to the protection of children cannot be rationally justified.   It is an absurd outrage to deny to women the same entitlement to be spared abuse by all possible methods of prevention, which are recognized as necessary for children.    

1.  Abuse is as bad for women as it is for children.

Any man of average physical strength has sufficient physical power to force the same amount of harm upon a woman of average strength as he has to force it upon children.    Women have no better chances to defend themselves against physical violence than have children.   Women are as much at the mercy of men's civilized self-control as are children.       

Any variety of real life abuse, no matter if rape, manipulation, taking advantages of someone's helpless and dependent situation or apparent self-objectification, is enabled by the abuser's mental process towards replacing inhibitions, self-control and restrictions by subjective justifications and excuses.  

The first step in this mental process is objectification.   (More about the perceptive objectification in entry 519.)    Objectification is an attitude concerning the essence and quality of other humans, which usually follows desensitization until the abuser's perception is distorted.   The abuser is void of the ability to perceive other humans as persons with human dignity, instead they are only perceived as objects, utilities, commodities.  

While some people objectify others due to some mental defect in their brain, like psychopathy, objectification is also the unavoidable result of desensitization and habituation.  This can happen both by the passive observation of role models abusing other human beings and by actively participating in and practicing abuse.    When women and children are objectified as existing for the purpose to be used sexually, pornography is one major source of this effect.  

There is always the hazard of objectification, because a body is perceived as a visible object, while the personality, the qualities of the mind are not directly visible.  Their discovery is only accessible indirectly by communication.    Therefore there is an unfortunate vicious circle.   Any attempt to communicate requires at least a minimal expectation of the other's ability to communicate as a person.   Nobody expects to communicate with an object.   Objectification precludes communication, while communication can reduce objectification.   Thus, once there is objectification, it reinforces itself further by the loss of any chance to rediscover the person hidden inside of what is perceived as an object.   

2.  No differences justify abusing women more than children.

Objectification includes the general fallacy of believing in and accepting, that the alleged purpose of the objectified person's existence is being used.   Whenever abuse of women becomes normal, common and regular behavior, some men are not even aware of the alternative of appreciating, noticing and recognizing women's mind and personality.  

This fatal process, that pornography leads first to desensitization and objectification and then to lowering the threshold towards real life abuse is the same, no matter if the degraded human being is a woman or a child.   Any distinction cannot be rationally justified.   Whenever men justify such a distinction, it is based upon a fallacy.

Male fallacy 1:  

When the victim is a woman, biologically her body is apt for male homeostation, while a child's is not.  This difference leads to the fatal fallacy, that abusing a woman's body as an object for sexual homeostation is often considered as less evil, less harmful and less traumatizing.    

The implicit implication of this fallacy is an outrage.   Those men, who objectify women by perceiving and believing, that women's ultimate purpose is to serve men's needs for homeostation, often also see nothing as really wrong in getting the fulfillment of this purpose by hook or by crook from reluctant and resistant women.    It is a monstrous fallacy to believe, that forcing women into their alleged natural purpose is more acceptable than forcing something upon a child, who is not considered to exist for the same purpose.      

Male fallacy 2. 

There is one difference between children and women:  Only women can be made to appear preempting male objectification by self-objectification, while children are usually accepted as being too young for consent.

The general male fallacy, that women exist for their homeostation is reinforced by the subsequent fallacy of believing in some women's apparent free choice of self-objectification.   Men often succeed to usurp control over resources for survival and they use this control to coerce women by dire necessity into submission to the objectification.   When hopelessness and resignation cause women to refrain from resistance to their fate, this is often mistaken as agreement.   This alleged choice of self-objectification facilitates the abuse and it allows men to condone and justify the objectification of women.    Manipulating women to comply by self-objectification is in reality a part of men's strategy and method to succeed in achieving the benefits of objectification with the least effort.

Male fallacy 3.

Some women are as much the unhappy victims of their instincts as are men, they too are feeling the urges of dishomeostasis.  This female dishomeostasis is the unfulfilled breeding instinct.    These women only appear superficially to cooperate with men's objectification by self-objectification.   It is men's fallacy to misinterpreted it as women's acceptance of existing to serve men.  In reality, these women's self-objectification is their method to restore homeostasis by becoming pregnant.   

Once they have reached their breeder's homeostation, they have no longer any reason to continue the self-objectification to men.   These men are dissatisfied when the women's breeding homeostation ends the men's recurrent sexual homeostation.  The women continue the self-objectification, but they shift the target away from the men and towards the slavery of raising the children. 

Objectification of people is not restricted to sexual abuse.   Whenever someone reduces his evaluation of a human being to the benefits and advantages to be derived from a utility, this is a form of objectification.    Whenever self-objectification blurs the awareness of both the abusers and of the victims for the true outrage, this perpetuates the abuse.  

When a person is forced by slavery to labor for the owner's profit, the objectification of slaves cannot be denied.    Therefore when and where slavery was abolished, it was done based upon the acceptance of the principle, that no human being exists for the purpose to be used for another person's economic benefits.   

It is time to abolish all sexual abuse too by this principle:

No human being, no matter if child or grown up woman, exists for the purpose to be used for men's homeostation. 

Apparent self-objectification is no ethical justification for the objectification of human beings.

 

A man, whose self-worth and self-esteem depends on his own correct and decent behavior only, refuses to participate in any objectification of women, even in spite of alleged and apparent female self-objectification.    Unfortunately, such men are a minority of men, they are the ethical quality elite.  

The majority of men are gullible and self-deceiving by willingly mistaking any appearance of women's self-objectification as sufficient justification for abusing women.   As long as they can maintain their false belief in female self-objectification, they allow themselves to feel decent and no jerks.  

They are oblivious of being jerks and abusers, when they objectify women directly as users of prostitute's bodies or indirectly by consuming the actors' images in pornography.  They really believe the absurd myth, that women prefer this form of earning an income over a decent job, where they could use their brain instead of their body.   It needs a lot of moronity in men to really believe such a myth.       

519. The Effects Of Desensitization On Perception

519.   The Effects Of Desensitization On Perception

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/05/120515131719.htm

"everywhere you look, women's sexualized bodies are on display. A new study  [....] finds that both men and women see images of sexy women's bodies as objects, while they see sexy-looking men as people.

Psychological research has worked out that our brains see people and objects in different ways.

Pictures of people present a recognition problem when they're turned upside down, but pictures of objects don't have that problem.

People recognized right-side-up men better than upside-down men, suggesting that they were seeing the sexualized men as people. But the women in underwear weren't any harder to recognize when they were upside down -- which is consistent with the idea that people see sexy women as objects. There was no difference between male and female participants."

This study shows the real devastating harm caused by the social norm of the oversexation of society together with the media exposing everybody to its impact, even those, who do not wish to be desensitized.  

The results are scary.   Not only is the objectification limited to female bodies, but even worse, this perception is shared by the women.   

Taking into account men's physiological need for recurrent sexual homeostation as a biological reality supplies an explanation for the impact of the overwhelming influence of the ubiquitous desensitization by the media as far as it concerns men.   

Theoretically, men have different options of how to cope with this necessity.  There is the choice of either being a companion in committed monogamy or physical and virtual promiscuity.  This choice is determined by the emotional and intellectual influences of education and culture.  (In entry 101 -  Promiscuity is a Scourge of Humanity - I considered the existence of a promiscuity inhibition that predisposes people to pair bonding, until it is destroyed by desensitization.)   

But the desensitization by the oversexation of the media has deprived many men of a real choice, it leaves them only the two varieties of abuse by objectification of women's bodies, which is virtual promiscuity by the exposition to pornographic pictures and real promiscuity by copulating like dogs from the gutter.   They are desensitized to the state of complete oblivion of the fact, that women's objectified bodies contain a personality inside.    

Unfortunately for the women, the objectification of female bodies gives a huge benefit for their most primitive instincts to all those men, who are unaware of what they are losing by depriving themselves of the higher quality human benefits of emotional pair bonding.     

It is much more difficult to explain, why the women share the effect as is shown in the study.  Being degraded and abused as objects can certainly not be declared as beneficial to women by any person aware of the fact, that women have a personality, a mind, a cognition inside the body.    

Men's control over the media not only favors their own desensitization motivated by the urges of their instincts, obviously it also enables men to manipulate stupid and even average women into self-harming compliance with being used and degraded.   

It cannot rationally be denied, that many women today present their exterior in public in a way, that functions as a very strong appeal to elicit male instincts.  Many women are radiating the unequivocal message of being available as objects.   

This description of facts does not imply, that these women are consciously wanting, accepting or tolerating to be abused or to be the intended target of abuse.   They are the victims of the same devastating desensitization by the media as are the men.  But these women are double victims.  In addition to being the victims of male abuse, they are also the victims of themselves by enabling and contributing to the male abuse.  

The oversexation and objectification by the media has several effects upon women.  These effects are reinforcing each other:

Men have economic power and under extreme circumstances even physical power enabling them to supply for or withhold from women the means for survival and for a higher and more comfortable standard of life.  These men often use their power to coerce and manipulate women to serve their needs for homeostation.   

Whenever women subjectively experience the scarcity of men offering attractive resources,  they are prone to compete by deliberately sending triggers to men's instincts.  The strongest signals are considered as the best strategy to gain access to their resources.  It is a competition by self-objectification.    

People are at the risk of being oblivious of those effects, which never elicit any reactive behavior.   This is also the case for women, who do not usually experience male instinctive reactions to existing triggers, only because there is the contrast of other, even stronger triggers.    A woman in decent shorts and a t-shirt is the probable prey, when the alternative is a woman under a shador.   But the same woman has a good chance to be spared annoyance, when the alternative is a woman in a tiny bikini.  

Some women's competition for triggering men's instincts has led to a dangerous and dysfunctional extent of the self-sexualization of nearly all women, no matter if this helps or hinders their real intentions.  Fashion for average women has currently reached a generally accepted and tolerated amount of lascivity, that is biased to accommodate only the competition of the self-objectified women.  

For those other women, who do neither want to trigger instincts, nor to sell themselves nor to be abused, it hides men's true hazardous extent of susceptibility to triggers.  These women are only spared to experience themselves as triggering instincts as long as they are compared with those doing worse on purpose.  

Being a bit less lascivious does not protect them from being abused by desensitized men, whenever there is nobody else to serve as a stronger trigger.  By the general desensitization, these women are made unaware of how contra-productive this is to their real goals.     Being less lascivious than the extreme desensitized average is still too much, when a woman wants to attract a man with her brain and her personality. 

The more a woman is intelligent, educated and cultured, the more she is aware of the potential for the emotional benefits of a deep and dignified bonding with an intellectual companion and the more she suffers when degraded and objectified.   The ubiquitous oversexation is predominant in those media, which are catering mostly for the low and medium education level of the majority and not for the critical minority holding an elevated education.   
Thus the majority of women is encouraged to attempt selling their bodies as an acceptable way of getting advantages.   They are manipulated to not feel bad about selling themselves.  This attitude is enhanced in the media by omitting entirely the alternative of the true non-physical benefits of the monogamous companionship from women's awareness.   

The majority of women are not only kept ignorant and unaware, but they are manipulated to feel good about themselves as they are.   
They are the majority, and they have a detrimental impact on what is considered standard, normal and thus justifiable for all women.

I was wondering about the women participating in the study.  Do they really perceive all women as objects whenever presented visually as sexualized or do they distinguish between themselves as different from whom they would consider self-objectified and self-sexualized?  

Which led me to find the published original study, which suggests the female students could indeed be lacking to identify with the sexualized targets of the study:

https://dipot.ulb.ac.be/dspace/bitstream/2013/107553/1/Bernard%20et%20al.%20%282012%29.%20The%20sexualized%20body-inversion%20hypothesis.pdf

"Seventy-eight university students (41 men, 37 women; mean age = 20.5 years, SD = 2.7 years)

This suggests that, at a basic cognitive level, sexualized men were perceived as persons, whereas sexualized women were perceived as objects. Future research should examine why people perceive sexualized women as objects. One may expect that object-like recognition of women could be explained by a lack of identification with sexualized women among female participants and by sexual attraction among male participants

our findings showed no differences related to participant gender, which suggests that cultural beliefs that women are sex objects are shared by both men and women at a basic cognitive level."

518. Women May Be Getting Wiser By An Ongoing Evolution Of Their Cognition

518.   Women May Be Getting Wiser By An Ongoing Evolution Of Their Cognition

The following are speculations in continuation to entry 487 (Wide-Faced Or Narrow-Faced Men), where I quoted two sources:
http://www.world-science.net/othernews/120107_facialstructure
http://www.livescience.com/14909-wide-faces-predict-unethical-behavior.html

According to these sources, some studies allow the cautious conclusion, that narrow faced may be less of a risk to a woman's wish to be treated well, while wide faced men may be more of a hazard.  

The first of the two sources also mentions one plausible objection to this conclusion:

"A major objection to the idea that facial fea­tures could predict bad be­ha­vior, they said, has been that men with such fea­tures would swiftly drop out of the gene pool. Pre­sum­ably, no one would trust them so they would have trouble mat­ing. "

Today I found another source, which is highly interesting in this context.  It could indicate, that such men's traits and women's susceptibility to become the victims are indeed dwindling away from the gene pool: 

http://www.world-science.net/exclusives/120508_crania

"In a trend that can be iden­ti­fied go­ing back to the mid-1800s, U.S. skulls have got­ten big­ger, taller and nar­rower as seen from the front,"

"Over 1,500 skulls were in­clud­ed in the re­search"

"The av­er­age height from the base to the top of the skull in males has in­creased by 8 mil­lime­ters (0.3 inch­es), the Jantzes found; skull size has grown by 200 cu­bic mil­lime­ters, a space equiv­a­lent to a cou­ple of small peas. In fe­males, the cor­res­pond­ing increases are 7 mil­lime­ters and 180 cu­bic mil­lime­ters."

The authors are considering different possible reasons for this change without preferring one thereof.
 

  
I am wondering and speculating, if the reason could not be a real impact upon the gene pool of both genders, because of the combination of two factors upon women's procreative behavior:   

• Women's growing cognitive awareness and intelligence, enhanced by better education, enables them to make wiser choices. 
• The availability of appropriate methods enables them to successfully live in accordance with these choices.

1.  Wise choices.  
Women, who are less prone to blindly follow instinctive urges, but who are instead more careful in their rational and cognitive choice of a man, tend to prefer the caring and decent men over the physically powerful and ruthless studs.   If the most agreeable and least hazardous men happen to be predominantly narrow faced, then the measured changes of the skull proportions over the relatively short period of less than two centuries could indicate evolution by sexual selection.   It would be the evolution of a more cognitive and less instinctive control of the mating behavior.  
Under the presumption, that narrow faced men really are more agreeable and less detrimental to the emotional wellbeing of women, while the wide faced men are greedy and selfish by usurping resources as the better providers for their offspring, the shift in women's choice is a cognitive shift.    

It is their shift towards more awareness for being an individual person entitled to correct treatment, therefore refusing to be exposed to bad treatment.   

It is a shift away from the acceptance of and submission to being only a womb and to making sacrifices in the favor of procreation, as is the goal of the instincts.  

2.  Availability of methods.
As long as inconsiderate jerks were able to manipulate and coerce women to have offspring against their wish, they contributed more to the gene pool than did the more considerate men.      

The modern medical possibilities are allowing women the option to only have wanted children and only with the partner of their choice.   This has certainly an impact upon the gene pool.     It not only explains a shift in the gene pool of male traits, it also explains the shift in the inherited female trait of the mate preferences.    

A woman with the power to decide, with whom she has how many children, is only prone to have as many children as she wishes, when she is satisfied with how she is treated by her wisely chosen mate.   Unhappy women, whose instincts have caused their wrong choice of a jerk, are prone to restrict the number of children.    Therefore by having more children the women with the genetic predisposition to choose the caring and decent men contribute more daughters with this predisposition to the gene pool.

517. Realistic Expectations After Having Discarded The Myth Of The Free Will

517.   Realistic Expectations After Having Discarded The Myth Of The Free Will

This is the reply to a comment on entry 515.   

I am fully aware, that I can only expect good behavior from people, whose reasons for treating me well are beneficial for themselves according to any of the varieties described in entry 512.    As long as there is no such reason or as long as I am ignorant of them having such reasons, I consider people as a possible hazard for being hurt or harmed.   I am reluctant to trust and rely upon anybody, unless I know, what benefits they get or expect from me in return.

This is important for the choice of a mindmate, whom I need to be reliable and trustworthy enough to make a relationship a safe haven.    

I can realistically expect to be treated with behavior determined by care, consideration and responsibility only under at least the following conditions:
1.  The partner knows, what I subjectively experience as such behavior and what is required from him to provide me with this experience.   
2.  The partner derives benefits from being with me and is fully aware of them.  He appreciates the benefits without taking them for granted or feeling entitled to have them.

2.1.  He either evaluates the benefits as sufficient to justify to himself all the necessary disadvantages to earn them.  
2.2.  Or the benefits happen to be simultaneously beneficial for him and for me.  
3.  The partner bases his behavior consistently upon the expectation and anticipation of maintaining long term benefits and upon the realistic knowledge of the consequences for himself if behaving otherwise.

This of course has to be reciprocal.   I can only earn a safe haven for myself, if what I can offer is also perceived as sufficiently beneficial by the partner.  

I am realistic.   If someone is selfish, has entitlement delusions, takes one sided advantages for granted, then there is nothing to be done except to protect myself by keeping at a safe distance from such a jerk.     An entitlement delusion to perceive a woman as a utility is not a decision of a free will to change.  It is a predisposition of a jerk's brain, which makes being with him a hazard.   
As long as someone feels good about himself and about his own behavior, he will not change, no matter what I do or say.    Jerks cannot be changed, only avoided.

516. Apparent Altruism Without The Myth Of The Free Will

516.   Apparent Altruism Without The Myth Of The Free Will

When discarding the myth of the free will, I explained that all apparently moral behaviors is caused by some beneficial motivation, either by serving to reduce dishomeostasis or to stimulate the pleasure center of the brain, either immediately or by anticipation.   While I mainly focused on the motivation for the most basic moral behavior of avoiding to harm others, this does not exclude proactive altruistic behaviors like helping others.  

The following source compares the diifferent motivation to help of religious with that of non-religious people.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/04/120430140035.htm

"But new research from the University of California, Berkeley, suggests that the highly religious are less motivated by compassion when helping a stranger than are atheists, agnostics and less religious people.

For highly religious people, however, compassion was largely unrelated to how generous they were,
 

The results challenge a widespread assumption that acts of generosity and charity are largely driven by feelings of empathy and compassion, researchers said. In the study, the link between compassion and generosity was found to be stronger for those who identified as being non-religious or less religious."

Helping behavior is triggered, when the motivation is strong above a threshold.   The motivation of the same subjective strength can consist of very different reasons.   When there are two identical cases of a person in noticeable distress, and the religious and the non-religious person engage in the same helping behaviors, this can be both explained very differently, each without a free will.

1.  A religious person's motivation can be strongly influenced by religious rules and norms concerning whom to help and how. 
A religious person can feel compassion without helping, if the observed suffering is considered as the god's will not to be interfered with.    When the religious person helps, this can be caused by the anticipation of a reward after death and/or by feeling dishomeostasis due to the fear of hell in the case of not helping.     

2.  When another person's suffering triggers a non-religious person's mirror neurons, this causes the compassion by empathy.  This means, that the other's suffering is experienced as a state of dishomeostasis, which can be reduced by homeostation.    

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.