quest


I am a woman born 1949 and my quest is to find a mindmate
to grow old together as a mutually devoted couple
in a relationship based upon the
egalitarian rational commitment paradigm
bonded by intrinsic commitment
as each other's safe haven and secure basis.

The purpose of this blog is to enable the right man
to recognize us as reciprocal mindmates and
to encourage him to contact me:
marulaki@hotmail.com


The entries directly concerning,
who could be my mindmate,
are mainly at the beginning.
If this is your predominant interest,
I suggest to read this blog in the same order
as it was written, following the numbers.

I am German, therefore my English is sometimes faulty.

Maybe you have stumbled upon this blog not as a potential match.
Please wait a short moment before zapping.

Do you know anybody, who could be my mindmate?
Your neighbour, brother, uncle, cousin, colleague, friend?
If so, please tell him to look at this blog.
While you have no reason to do this for me,
a stranger, maybe you can make someone happy, for whom you care.

Do you have your own webpage or blog,
which someone like my mindmate to be found probably reads?
If so, please mention my quest and add a link to this blog.


Friday, August 31, 2012

580. Pseudoscience, Lacking Abstract Thinking And The Dunning-Kruger Effect

580.   Pseudoscience, Lacking Abstract Thinking And The Dunning-Kruger Effect

Before the internet, I took it for granted, that having a university degree were an indication of a person's ability for abstract, scientific and skeptical thinking.    The internet has opened my eyes for the fact, that people can get degrees by having a good memory even in the absence of sufficient rationality.    Therefore for such people, a university degree is no protection against falling for pseudoscience.

Pseudoscience is a blend of scientific methods and gullibility to irrational beliefs.   The fallacy of pseudoscience can be on both ends of research, either by using the claimed belief as if it were a proven fact to be further investigated, or by interpreting results as if they were a proof of an unproven claim, and of course there can be both.   Sometimes even the methods are only pseudo-scientific.

This is a list of examples of pseudoscience:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_topics_characterized_as_pseudoscience

Those people, whose belief in a non-existent deity is blatantly absurd, often are at least aware, that their specific belief is not of general validity, but only shared by a limited number of people.   They can be aware of the impossibility of convincing others of a mere claim, which they cannot proof.  

Some believers in pseudoscience are even worse, because due to their impaired abstract thinking, they are not aware, that they confound pseudoscience with valid serious science.  They are duped by the superficial resemblance.  They are even more prone to be duped, when the pseudoscience appears to fulfill some of their dire needs.  
They expect to be rationally able to find general agreement based upon the validity of the results, the same way as if they were evaluating serious science.    

When a seriously ill person is religious, he may do both, praying and getting scientifically based standard medical treatment   Someone believing in pseudoscience as if it were science, gets duped to prefer quackery over standard medicine, believing it to be the most advanced science. 

The belief in pseudoscience leads to a variety of the Dunning-Kruger effect.   Someone believing in some variety of pseudoscience has often the delusion to be the one knowing better than the skeptical and rational person, who rejects and disbelieves it.   The rejection is misinterpreted as ignorance. The believer does not reconsider his belief, instead he feels a mission to instruct the allegedly ignorant.

People believing in pseudoscience are as annoying as are religious people.    It is better to avoid them, when the contact is not superficial enough to be able to avoid such topics.    I once attempted to explain to someone, why NLP is pseudoscience.   It was as futile as talking to a wall.    It is much more pleasant to interact with fellow apistics, who feel themselves annoyed by religion and pseudoscience.   



579. The Rotten Apple Metaphor

579.   The Rotten Apple Metaphor

Apples can rot inside and remain perfect on the outside.   They look and smell very appetizing and appealing to bite into them.   But the first bite into the invisible rot causes to puke and to spit.   
Putting the apple on display with the bite on the hidden back side, the apple continues to appear appealing to the senses in spite of the cognitive knowledge of the eating experience.   It is the classical case of an appetence-aversion conflict, which is best solved by discarding the apple from the vision.

There are men like this.   They appear perfect, when it comes to similarities in values, hobbies, interests, attitudes and tastes.   They radiate pseudo-propinquity.    But as soon as a woman gets involved, she gets harmed.   It is her moment of truth, of experiencing the rotten jerk inside, who hurts and disgusts her with abuse, domination and commodification. 
As soon as she distances herself out of the reach of immediate harm, he continues to appear as appealing as before due to the same attributes, but she is cognitively cured by her knowledge of what she experiences by getting near him.  Such a man also brings a woman into an appetence-aversion conflict, which is best solved by severing all connections.  

There is just one difference.   The rotten apple mercifully destroys itself by rotting entirely and no second person is tempted to have a bite.  Those rotten jerks continue to harm women.  Whatever harm they do to them has no impact upon the jerks themselves, whose misleading appearance as nice guys does not get damaged.     

Thursday, August 30, 2012

578. There Is Nothing Wrong With Being Different

578.   There Is Nothing Wrong With Being Different

There is nothing wrong with being different, as long as one does not want to be like everybody else.   It has only the big disadvantage of the scarcity of likeminded people.  

As already mentioned in entries 575 and 577, propinquity creates attraction between personalities, it contributes to people becoming significant to each other.   
When people are forced by circumstances to interact in the absence of propinquity, this can lead to unpleasant situations and experiences.  Those people, who are not only puzzled due to their incomprehension and who misinterpret and misunderstand, often carelessly harm and reject those, who do not fit in.  

The probability of finding propinquity depends upon how much people are average and how much they differ.    The more people are at the extremes of the bell curve for any trait, skill, tendency, disposition, propensity, the less often they find propinquity and the more often they get rejected.  

But not all people suffer from rejection, some reverse the rejection and consider those, with whom they share not propinquity, also as not attractive to interact with.  Instead of feeling rejected by insignificant people, they prefer to search for people with propinquity.  

There are billions of people on this globe, and the leap in technology during the last few decades enables people today to communicate with others, no matter where they are.  Nobody needs to be bothered about insignificant people, while there are ways to find those with the potential to become significant.

According to research, being different can be beneficial for those persons, who are not motivated to be be like the majority:
http://digitalcommons.ilr.cornell.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1622&context=articles

Sharon H. Kim/Lynne C. Vincent/Jack A. Goncalo: SOCIAL REJECTION AND CREATIVITY

"In three studies, we show that individuals who hold an independent self-concept performed more creatively following social rejection relative to inclusion. We also show that this boost in creativity is mediated by a differentiation mindset, or salient feelings of being different from others."

Wednesday, August 29, 2012

577. Propinquity - Significance - Importance - 2

577.   Propinquity - Significance - Importance - 2

This continues entry 575.  

Significance is correlated with propinquity, importance is not and can have many reasons.

The difference between significance and importance determines the behavior towards others.   The difference between being important and being significant determines what behavior can rationally be expected.  
But this difference is too often blurred in too many people's awareness.  This is the cause of a lot of unhappiness and harm.  

The following are some possible constellations of this difference. 

Reciprocity

  • Neither significance nor importance

    As long as people do not know of each other's individual existence, they cannot experience each other as significant or important persons.  

  • Importance without significance

    People can be important to each other without being significant.  The bus driver is important for someone in need to go someplace, and the paying customer is important for the bus driver to earn his wages.    They can either have nothing in common or they are ignorant about each other's person.   In either case, there is no subjective propinquity and they are not significant to each other.  

  • Limited significance

    Acquaintances, coworkers, sport buddies, pen pals and such can have a partial area of propinquity and a limited significance to each other. 
    Their propinquity is either limited, because they do not know each other well.   Or it is counterbalanced by some essential disagreement, which creates a mental ditch.   
     
  • Predominant significance

    People can be friends, when the areas of propinquity are far bigger and more attractive than what separates them mentally, and when they can rely upon not being harmed.   The limitations of mere friendship of not sharing the home, nor all hazards of life nor the full intimacy including the body allows some tolerance for differences.

  • Ubiquitous significance

    A committed, bonded relationship including intellectual intimacy and trust requires propinquity without mental ditches.   
    The partner is the one person specially elected for the privilege of sharing a safe haven with.  He is the one chosen as deserving unrestricted full intimacy, even including the body.  
    He is not just a friend, he is the one best friend having a special significance, which would be disrupted by mental ditches. 

Asymmetry
  • Anonymous partial significance

    Asymmetrical, anonymous propinquity of any degree can be experienced with persons, who are known by any media, books, movies, public events, newspapers.  
    Reading, watching, listening to their expression of the perceived propinquity reinforces their partial significance.  This is independent of their own ignorance of the existence of any individual person in their audience.     
    This can be any author, actor, philosopher, musician, scientist, politician, no matter if dead or alive.  

  • Onesided significance and/or importance in personal interaction

    • Interaction based upon propinquity is sometimes a onesided choice.   Someone choosing a trainer for what he is fascinated with as an essential area of propinquity makes the trainer significant.  But if the trainer happens to be teaching, what does not really interest him, then the pupil is important as a source of income, but not significant due to lacking propinquity. 

    • A chosen guru or teacher can be very significant to the pupil, while for any guru each of a multitude of his many pupils is someone with propinquity but does not have the same significance for him.

    • Interaction based upon propinquity is a choice.  But there are many situations, where interactions are instead forced upon by circumstances in the absence of any propinquity and where there is no significance.  The school teacher of a disliked subject is an example.   So is the boss of a disliked but needed job.
        
    • Many dysfunctional relationships are pseudo-reciprocal in spite of being dyads. A woman, who has chosen a man by propinquity experiences him as significant for herself. But when he has followed his instinctive urges and objectifies her, then she can be an important utility, yet she is not significant.

Tuesday, August 28, 2012

576. Politics And Instincts

576.  Politics And Instincts
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/08/120827122410.htm

"recent studies suggest that genes also strongly influence political traits. Twin studies show that genes have some influence on why people differ on political issues such as the death penalty, unemployment and abortion."

Political differences are basically different attitudes somewhere between the egalitarian view of all humans being entitled to equal rights, and the attitudes of inequality by justifying privileges and restricted access to resources either for specific groups or for the holder of specific positions of power.   This favorable attitude towards inequality represents either one or both of the ingroup-outgroup instinct and the hierarchy instinct.  

Thus it seems logical to me, that high or low levels of these two instincts do predispose people to lean towards specific political ideas.   My emphasis is only on political general ideas, programs, goals, not on what politicians and parties really do.  

Oversimplified it seems:
  • Fascism and Nazism are attractive for those driven by a high ingroup-outgroup instinct.
  • Globalized capitalism is attractive for those driven by a high hierarchy instinct.  
  • Other forms of conservative politics are attractive to those driven by a combination of both instincts.   
  • Those low on these instincts are more attracted to leftist and ecological political ideas.
As the level of instinctivity is innate, it seems plausible to expect people's political preferences to be partly and indirectly determined by their genes.

In my quest to find a mindmate, I am using a man's expressed political leanings, whenever they are indicated in a profile, not only as a direct indication for either propinquity or the lack thereof.   
Even though the correlation between political preference and instinctivity is mere speculation, the probably high level of general instinctivity of a man with right wing preferences could indicate that such a man is also so much driven by his physiological urges towards female bodies, that he is an especially high risk for women being commodified and objectified by him.    
There is also the risk, that a man with a strong hierarchy instinct also is more prone to establish and enforce a hierarchy of his domination over a woman.  

Monday, August 27, 2012

575. Propinquity - Significance - Importance -1

575.   Propinquity - Significance - Importance -1

I just got aware of a word, that suits to be used in my quest: Propinquity.  
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propinquity

"In social psychology, propinquity (from Latin propinquitas, "nearness") is one of the main factors leading to interpersonal attraction. It refers to the physical or psychological proximity between people. Propinquity can mean physical proximity, a kinship between people, or a similarity in nature between things ("like-attracts-like"). .....just as two people with similar political beliefs possess a higher propinquity than those whose beliefs strongly differ. "

Propinquity as the psychological proximity depends on the identity by what is subjectively experienced as constituting the essence of the personality.   
Perceiving propinquity means having an awareness of the own identity and having knowledge about the similarities with the other's same traits and attributes.
Experiencing propinquity means the additional knowledge of the other's sharing the same identity.     

Propinquity is cognitive or intellectual between those persons, who identify with the same cognitive essence of their personalities.   They share similar cognitive preferences as are attitudes, opinions, convictions, beliefs, values, morals and world views.   Cognitive propinquity is often not obvious but requires profound knowledge about a person's cognitive preferences.   Ignorance or misinformation impede it. 
But the subjective perception of the importance of areas of propinquity can vary widely.   People can for example also identify by their looks, by their physical fitness, by their fertility, by their religious delusion, by their artistic abilities, by a shared passion for a hobby or by congenital traits as ethnicity and nationality.   

Propinquity creates attraction, and attraction contributes to the perception of people as significant.    But attraction can also have other causes, which then lead to the perception of people as only important but not as significant. 

Significance and importance are not the same.   Any inanimate object and any person can be important as a source of benefits, while remaining insignificant as an individual specimen.  
When any smashed regular car is replaced by another, the new car becomes equally important for giving the equal benefits as a vehicle.  But the last remaining specimen of an antique car is significant, because it cannot be easily replaced.  
The same with persons.   When a man is attracted to a woman's body due to obtaining a lot of pleasure from using her, she can be very important for him as long as he gets, what he wants.   But when he dumps and replaces her with another equally attractive body, this body becomes just as important.  These women are important, but they are not significant.   
But when a man is cognitively attracted to what he shares with a woman's unique brain and personality, then she is more than important, she is significant for being herself, and when lost, she cannot be easily replaced.  

Significance is more than importance.  People can be important to each other without propinquity, but only propinquity makes them significant. Therefore propinquity and significance are correlated, while importance can have many reasons.   
People can even be negatively important.  It can be very important to avoid those, who are unpleasant, repulsive and aversive.

There are several constellations of reciprocity or asymmetry concerning propinquity, significance and importance.   This will be continued in another entry. 

Sunday, August 26, 2012

574. The Baseline Of Insignificance

574.   The Baseline Of Insignificance

There are billions of people of this globe.   I know that they exist as an abstract mass of people, but not as individuals, as long as I have never even heard their individual names.  They are insignificant for me personally.    This has nothing to do with the ingroup-outgroup instinct.   The German stranger living down the street is as insignificant to me as any stranger on another continent.  

I perceive all human beings as a kind of prototype, as long as they are not known to me personally as individuals.  People visibly and unequivocally engaging in specific behaviors, no matter if for example performing religious rituals or as spectators at a sports event, are a subgroup of the general prototype distinguished by one of more special additional attributes.  

The existence of these prototypical humans has only one impact upon myself:  They are beings not to be harmed.  
Not harming as the baseline of behavior with strangers requires nothing more than distant politeness in the case of superficial haphazard interactions.  As long as I keep away from them and it causes no harm, I am free to choose, what to think or say about them.   
Their insignificance for me is the baseline.   I owe them no proactive beneficial behavior.    I do not owe them any respect, because I cannot know, if they as individuals deserve it or not.   


Based upon this, it is justified to discreetly ridiculing the weird irrational behaviors of people in Lourdes as explained in entry 573.  
  • It is not harming by propagating prejudice.   Laughing at irrational expressions is laughing at something really and publicly displayed.   Propagating prejudice would mean to make unfounded detrimental claims by alleged contingencies. 
  • It is neither interpersonal cowardice not talking behind people's back, because both these behaviors are clearly defined as reproachable under the limiting conditions of concerning people personally known.
    Encouraging a person into his face to pray for health and then talk with others behind his back about his foolishness to pray is cowardice. 
    Being told in confidence about someone's illness and then breaking the trust of telling this to others is talking behind his back.
    Sharing the opinion about how expecting to be cured in Lourdes is preposterous and laughing about it is neither of this, because it concerns the public behavior of strangers. 
    Nobody has any rational reason and even less moral obligation to approach a complete stranger to inform him of the own unfavorable cognitive reaction to his public behavior (unless the interference serves to protect a third party).      
    The rational reason to approach a stranger would be the intention of mutually beneficial interactions, not to offend him.
  • The absence of personalization is not the same as depersonalization.   As stranger is insignificant but is considered as the prototype of a person entitled to not be harmed, he has just not been known as having an individuality.   
    Depersonalization is an ingredient in the justification of harming by commodification.   Depersonalization is the wilful undoing of a previous personalized contact for the purpose of asymmetrical advantages.  

Saturday, August 25, 2012

573. The Justification For Ridiculing Irrational Beliefs

573.     The Justification For Ridiculing Irrational Beliefs

In entry 436 (Religion As Entertainment), I described, how the weirdness of behaviors based upon irrational beliefs can be very entertaining and that some religious events are spectacles worth visiting.   I mentioned Lourdes as an example.   

In a forum discussion I mentioned, how shared laughter at irrational behaviors is a way of feeling close with someone because of sharing the same attitudes, while the necessity to censor myself and refrain from laughing in the company of persons afflicted themselves with those weird beliefs is an indication of the separating mental ditch.  
Mentioning Lourdes as an example I was accused of laughing at cripples.   There is a fallacy in this accusation.   

The evaluation of a person's situation and the evaluation of a person's method of coping with a situation are independent.   Compassion with a person's unfortunate situation does not require automatic respect for weird coping,
  • Every religious and other irrational belief and every behavior based upon such beliefs are so preposterous and ludicrous, that this justifies ridicule and making fun of it.   This is independent of who is afflicted with the irrationality and of the reasons to behave irrationally.   This ridicule is principally justified by the irrationality.  
  • Justified ridicule is no justification for hurting the feelings of the misguided believers.  Ridiculing has to be restricted to be shared only by those in agreement.   It is important to be guided by the consideration to ascertain, that the unfortunate believers are kept ignorant and are not exposed to the ridicule.     
  • The moral justification of ridicule depends directly upon how much choice there is.   It is not justified to ridicule someone for being sick, because this is not a choice.   But it is justified to ridicule someone (without his knowledge) for praying or taking homeopathy, because this is irrational and it is a choice.  
  • When looking at the absurdity, there is not difference between someone praying to win the lottery and someone praying to be healed from an incurable condition.    The urgency of the suffering of the sick, which is not there for someone merely dreaming of being rich, explains the susceptibility and gullibility to behave irrationally, it does not diminish the absurdity.   
  • Justifying hidden ridicule is the combined expression of two distinctive consequences of the same underlying strong rationality.  
    Irrationality is defined as the absence of full rationality, no matter the circumstances.      The rational moral principle of not harming people, of behaving according to the golden rule and a tit-for-tat strategy requires not to show the ridicule.  It requires instead to independently perceive and acknowledge the need for compassion and support.     
Having visited Lourdes, standing there hidden in a corner and sharing a discreet good laughter about the weird spectacle was restricted to ridiculing the irrational religious behaviors of making fools of themselves by going to Lourdes.  Ridiculing this choice does not imply any devaluation of the unfortunate and tragic situation of being crippled and sick.   They have my compassion and my sympathy.   


There is the Darwin award, ridiculing especially absurd and stupid ways of people causing their own accidental death.  I would never jump to the fallacious conclusion to mistake people as cold and immoral monsters for nothing more than having invented the Darwin award.   Laughing about weird ways of getting killed does not preclude their having compassion with dying and suffering persons and those grieving for them.  

572. Art Immersed Into Nature: Nature In Hombroich

572.   Art Immersed Into Nature: Nature In Hombroich 








 

 


 

 

 

 
























Friday, August 24, 2012

571. Art Immersed Into Nature: Art In Hombroich

571.   Art Immersed Into Nature: Art In Hombroich 


 

 








Wednesday, August 22, 2012

570. Politicians And Morals

570.   Politicians And Morals

As mentioned before, there is a biologically caused asymmetry of many men harming women by excessive instinctive urges for sexual homeostasis and of many women not only getting harmed but participating in their own self-harming due to their instinctive urges for breeding.    As a result, the co-evolved gullibility to religion has established a general desensitization to women's plight of being harmed.   Women's bodies being used by men is not perceived as an outrage and a transgression, but as morally acceptable and as their innate doom. 

But this attitude of accepting the desensitization has consequences far beyond merely harming individual women in private situations.    When someone considers and accepts it as correct behavior and his entitlement to harm women by abuse, commodification, objectification, exploitation and taking advantage, this indicates, that he is a hazard to others, not only to women.  

Not only are politicians elected to work for the benefits of their voters, who have entrusted their interests to them.    Politicians are also paid a salary out of tax payer's money, which is so high, that many of the voters can only dream of such an income.    The trust and the salary oblige politicians to balance their self-interest with the benefits owed to their voters.       

But this is not reality.   As can be easily derived from reading daily in the newspapers about the frequent scandals and misdemeanors of politicians, many of them seem to be more or less corrupt, drastically taking selfish advantages of their positions.   Some are limited by what they can do legally, many get even away with criminal transgressions.   

What a politician does to women is an excellent and valid indication of his attitude to his voters.   If the voters were fully aware of this, they would base their political choice not only on the promises of a politician, but also on his moral integrity.  

A man without hesitation nor inhibitions to cheat on his wife can be expected to also cheat on his voters.    A man not hesitating in abusing a prostitute's body for his selfish instinctive urges can be expected to abuse the power of his position for his own greedy selfish interests.    A man using his position as immunity to rape and harass women can be expected to be criminally corrupt.   

The frequent scandals reported in the press and news indicate clearly, how many of the male politicians are not only commodifying and objectifying women as if this were their entitlement and privilege, but that their position also supplies them with more occasions to harm women than has the average jerk.    

Unfortunately too many voters are themselves desensitized to abuse women and even the female voters are manipulated to overlook, that politicians forfeit their trustworthiness by abusing women.   These voters tolerate the immorality, which harms women, and then they are disappointed and angry, when the corrupt politicians fail to do, what the voters expect.   

But the impact of abusive politicians being reelected is even worse than their mere failing to fulfill their obligations.   The fact of having been voted for by many people creates their reputation as role models worthy to be copied, no matter how morally rotten they are.    
Every time, when a politician is reelected in spite of the public knowledge of his cheating and frequenting brothels, this emits a very wrong signal.   It reinforces the fatal social norm of oversexation, promiscuity and harming women by objectification. 

In an ideal world, politicians would only be elected, if they have sufficient moral integrity of not taking advantage of occasions to harm and exploit others, neither women nor voters. 

Tuesday, August 21, 2012

569. Differentiating Between Instinctive And Cognitive Transgressions

569.   Differentiating Between Instinctive And Cognitive Transgressions

In entry 568 I pointed out the importance of the liability principle in restraining known hazardous persons from ever harming another victim.   But I am not sure, if I made it sufficiently clear, that the objective of this is the protection of individual victims only.  

It is important to distinguish between instinctive transgressions and cognitive transgressions.   Under the myth of the free will and the religious bias towards tolerating harm to victims as a god's will, this distinction is omitted in the legal system of many countries.   It is time to acknowledge, that people's excessive instinctivity has to be dealt with to their personal disadvantage and not to that of innocent others.  

Instinctive transgressions are those harming acts to individual persons, which are done by those (predominantly men) lacking sufficient cognitive control over their sexual and aggressive hierarchy and ingroup/outgroup instincts.   They are the dangerous beasts.   

Cognitive transgressions cause material damage to abstract entities or the general welfare of society, which cannot be accepted or tolerated, but which are not directly tragic to individual victims.   
Criminals, who steal or do any kind of financial fraud against companies or the government are acting by a deliberate decision based upon a thinking process.    If punishment results in a change of their behavior, then punishment is a reasonable consequence.   In the worst case of a recidivism, the damage is limited to be material but there are no traumatized, mutilated or dead victims.    Therefore risking their recidivism can be justified.       
The same is true with people, who cause harm by carelessness as is drunk driving, which they would never do deliberately.   They can also learn to change their behavior.   The shock of their guilt is often enough punishment by itself.   

It is known, that prisoners often commit atrocities to each other.  Beasts are dangerous to harm anyone in their reach, no matter if in freedom or in jail.  The distinction between instinctive and cognitive transgressions requires a distinction between types of prison.  
The instinctive beasts should be locked away in prisons apart from those, where the cognitive criminals are supported to improve.   
If a psychopathic murderer kills a brutal rapist, it is good riddance.    If he kills a fraudulent accountant, it is a tragedy.   

Monday, August 20, 2012

568. Rational Feminism, Male Biology, Harm And The Liability Principle - 2

568.   Rational Feminism, Male Biology, Harm And The Liability Principle - 2


This continues entry 566.

The following metaphor is about a cage, a human and a lion.    The human is protected, as long as the bars of the cage separate the lion and the human.    This protection is independent of who of them is inside the cage.    The difference is the freedom of one and the confinement in a limited space of the other.
The metaphorical lion is a person, who by previous harming behavior has already given clear evidence of being dangerous.    He is known as a beast. 
       
The legal system in many societies including Germany is based upon the fallacy, that the lion has the free will to decide to not attack humans, therefore humans and lions are allowed to mingle freely.   After the first attack, the lion is punished by being put into the cage for a limited time under the illusion, that this teaches him the lesson and enables him to derive the insight to not attack humans again.  Only after several more attacks, punished by more sojourns in the cage and more releases will he finally be locked away permanently as dangerous.    
The attacked victims are either told that their suffering is based upon the lion's right to be free or they are even blamed for not having enclosed themselves in the cage.   In the zoo, the dangerous animals are locked into cages, so that the visitors can walk about in safety.   But when a woman walks home in the night after having missed the last bus and gets attacked, nobody asks, why the dangerous male animal was not safely locked away in a cage.  Instead the woman is blamed for not taking a taxi, she is supposed to pay a lot of money for her safety.   

This example shows the unjust distribution of the burden.   The woman is burdened with being responsible to protect herself at her own cost, but men are not held liable for what they do.   
When a man rapes a woman, in many cases the woman is traumatized for the rest of her life.   In Germany, when it is the first conviction, he is released after a few years in jail.   Having merely lost some years of his life in prison, he is better off than his victim, as soon as he is free again.   

If the legal system would be based upon liability, the first attack of the lion would be sufficient to recognize him as too dangerous to be allowed the freedom to harm again and he would have his permanent place in the cage.   The freedom would be given to the innocent, nobody would expect from them to take shelter in a cage for their own safety.  

Liability means the full recognition of who is a hazard and the logical principle of distributing and imposing disadvantages according to nothing except the known probability of more harm. When someone is a known hazard, no explanations of any kind are valid to justify any leniency for his actions as excusable nor to justify the resignation of forcing risks and collateral damage upon others as future victims.   A known hazard requires to reduce the risk by putting restrictions upon the source of the hazard.   

When the lion's instincts are a hazard, whenever he is hungry, then the disadvantages need to be imposed upon him and not upon the victims.   This makes a lot of sense to most people.  Hardly anybody would agree to have lions roam German cities.  But when the lion in this metaphor is replaced by a man, who cannot control his instinctive urges to abuse women, nobody holds him sufficiently liable for immediate and appropriate protection of women.   


Women need to be protected from being harmed by restricting men's possibilities to do harm, no matter how many disadvantages this has for men.  There is no rational justification to allow men all the freedom to do harm, whenever they cannot help it, while women are manipulated and coerced to accept restrictions to assure their protection as a fate.  When men are unable to control their instincts, demanding from them the responsibility to act against their biological inclinations is futile and stupid.  Instead they need to be impeded from being able to do so.    The burden of preventing harm has to be born by those, who are the danger of the harm, not by the innocent potential victims. 


If someone in the zoo opens the cage of a dangerous beast, and the beast harms a visitor, then the beast is liable but not responsible for the harm as it cannot help what it does by instinct.   The person, who opens the cage is the one responsible for the harm, because he has the full cognition and insight of allowing danger.  
It is the same with the rapist.   He is a dangerous beast, who is liable but not responsible for what he cannot help to do driven by his instinct.   But all those people, who make and enforce the laws giving him his freedom back are enabling the rapist to harm more victims.  They are fully responsible for these victims' agony and trauma.

 
A zoo is a safe place while all dangerous animals are inside there cages.  One escaped beast is enough to make it a dangerous place, and every beast more makes it more dangerous.    Experiencing and noticing the limitations of the freedom of women by the peril of male violence does not depend on how many men are dangerous beasts, but only on the uncontrolled freedom of those already known as beasts.   The danger is real, as soon as one beast is loose, and the number of additional beasts adds only more danger.  

For women, the world is like the zoo, where the women are offered the cages to lock themselves in as a protection from an unknown number of free beasts.

I do not mean to be misunderstood.   I neither hate nor fear men in general.    Nor do I imply that the majority of men are dangerous, even though the fact, that men are on average physically stronger than women is a real hazard.     I fear the known beasts, who are free, and I hold those, who allow them the freedom to harm, responsible for what they directly and indirectly do to women.    Every known beast in freedom is one too many.

Sunday, August 19, 2012

567. The Pulvinar And The Commodification-Objectification Disorder

567.  The Pulvinar And The Commodification-Objectification Of Women Disorder

When a man commodifies a woman, he perceives her as if she were not different from an inanimate utility, which only exists for the purpose to be used by him.  Insufficient information about her person and her needs as the basis of his decisions causes, enables and aggravates the commodification.    He acquires such information only by proactively fetching them.  He studies her like a new appliance or a lab rat by observation, probing, trial-and-error.    

His reception for verbal input from her is limited to receiving the answers to his own questions. Any initiative from her to influence and improve his treatment by proffering additional information input about herself fails, because this information is not received.    It bounces off his mind with no impact.   
He communicates with the woman as if using a walkie-talkie, where only his device has the buttons to switch between transmitting and receiving.
His being thus deprived of ever getting sufficient information precludes any improvement of his behavior and perpetuates the commodification. 


There are two possible dynamics leading to this problem.    
 
Small children are self-centered and commodify their caregivers.   At some stage of maturation they get aware of and become considerate about another person's needs, and they learn to perceive and receive the necessary information. 
 
1.   The distorted misconception of women as utilities is established first and never corrected.   A boy remaining immature and having been exposed early to strong commodifying role models is never prompted by any occasion to awaken his dormant potential to receive input from others.   

2.   The reception of information input from others does not work properly.   Maturation is delayed due to lacking and never acquiring sufficient information about other people.

The following text has made me wonder, if maybe the pulvinar could be the dysfunctional part of commodifying men:     
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/08/120817151519.htm

"A mysterious region deep in the human brain could be where we sort through the onslaught of stimuli from the outside world and focus on the information most important to our behavior and survival,"

"The researchers report in the journal Science that an area of our brain called the pulvinar regulates communication between clusters of brain cells as our brain focuses on the people and objects that need our attention. Like a switchboard operator, the pulvinar makes sure that separate areas of the visual cortex -- which processes visual information -- are communicating about the same external information "

"The brain instead selectively focuses on, or attends to, the people and objects most relevant to our behavior at the time and filters out the rest. "

"Saalmann said these findings on how the brain transmits information could lead to new ways of understanding and treating attention-related disorders,"


The commodifying man may only be puzzled, irritated and frustrated, why the commodified woman does not function as he expects.    The woman experiences such a man's behavior nevertheless as disordered.   

I would be very curious about the results, if any scientist would ever make a brain scan of a man, while he stares with a blank face and no reaction at a woman, who explains to him, why she feels hurt by his behavior.    

Maybe some men have a Commodification-Objectification of Women Disorder (COWD)?

Unfortunately I can only suggest men's COWD as food for thought, because of the ubiquitous desensitization and bias towards acceptance of and tolerance for harm, abuse, deprivation, exploitation and domination of women, which has become part of the culture and is derived from religion (more in entries 552, 553, 554).    Men, who do this to women are generally not considered as having a disorder, but as normal men doing, what they are born to do, what they are meant and entitled to do.  

Saturday, August 18, 2012

566. Rational Feminism, Male Biology, Harm And The Liability Principle - 1

566.  Rational Feminism, Male Biology, Harm And The Liability Principle - 1

Entries 565, 554 and 552 were about the unjustifiable acceptance of and desensitization to harming and being harmed and how this is connected with religion having become a part of many cultures and being taken for granted as if there were no alternative.   
Even feminism is not free from this, often being much more politically concerned with justified anger about inequality and abuse, but not with the principle of avoiding harm. 

Lately I read an article protesting against any recognition of biological differences between the genders as a danger to feminism.    I strongly disagree.    Feminism without awareness for the insights of evolutionary biology and evolutionary psychology is doomed to be irrational.  
 
A rational form of feminism is needed, which focuses on ending not only the daily and ubiquitous harm to women by men, but also the tolerance to and acceptance of being harmed by women themselves.  
Feminism is rational, when it has been cleaned of all religious beliefs and myths concerning women and also of all indirect consequences of such beliefs on how woman are treated and what they accept as appropriate.     
Rational feminism has the predominant goal to avoid and to reduce harm to women.  This can only be accomplished by taking realistic account of the biological gender differences.  

Rational feminism includes the task of overcoming two fallacies.  Both fallacies are enhanced and reinforced by the underestimation of the disabling effect of instinctive urges upon the morals, the reasoning and the self-control of many men.  
  • Fallacy 1 is the irrational denial of biological differences and the subsequent overestimation of the general moral qualities to be expected and demanded from men.   Men are not only believed to have a free will, but they are also considered to be able to act responsibly by always having a sufficiently strong self-control.  They are believed to be capable to behave morally by simply deciding to do so.   Whenever they don't, it is attributed to an individual man's personal failure or momentary blunder.   
    Women are considered as having no part in how they are treated nor are they held responsible for influencing men. 
    No matter how often and how strongly abuse of women is denounced and protested against under this fallacy, harm to women cannot be avoided, as long as men's attributed moral qualities are overestimated and unrealistic .  

    This fallacy is found by all female feminists, who focus on demanding different behaviors from men as a deliberate decision and it is shared by those more decent men of low instinctivity, who project their own rare qualities upon all men.

  • Fallacy 2 is the irrational acceptance of all biased consequences of gender differences as unchangeable innate male privileges and innate female fate or doom to be harmed.  Any gender difference, no matter if by biology or by learned gender roles is mistaken to justify, condone and excuse inconsiderate treatment of women.  In more drastic cases, entitlement and grandiosity delusion lead to ruthless commodification and objectification of women.  
    Men are considered as unable to be responsible towards women. They believe their alleged male superiority as placing them above the requirement of responsibility towards women.  The trifled weakness of lacking responsibility towards women is not considered as significant enough to impair their alleged self-attributed superiority, because they perceive women as too insignificant.
    This fallacy is shared by men, who consider their abuse, domination and exploitation not as such but as women's appropriate fate, and by women, who are suffering in resignation without even feeling an outrage.  
    Women are not protected from but exposed to harm, their only method to reduce this is restricting their own liberty and scope of life.  
Both fallacies include the oblivion or denial of the fact, that the problem is caused by men's tragic defect, that their instinctive urges are far out of proportion of what would be beneficial for women.   

 
Making feminism rational means to discard both fallacies and focus upon how to end the harming of women on two levels:. 
  1. Those men, whose cognition enables them, are required to take the responsibility to not harm women. 
    Taking responsibility requires to be able to have and to act by the insight, that harm to women is an outrage beyond any justifiability.  But to ask and to expect responsibility is only rational with people, who not only have this insight, but are also in the full capacity of being controlled by morals.  
  2. When men are unable to refrain from harming women by responsibility, because they are too much enslaved by their excessive biological instinctive urges, then the protection of women requires stronger measures.  The study quoted in entry 565 is an example of the absurdity of punishing transgressors less due to biological explanations of their inability to act responsibly.  
    Such men need to be held accountable and liable by any means, no matter if and how much the procedures used are drastic, detrimental, disadvantageous, restrictive and unpleasant for the transgressors.  

When there are two option, either allowing a transgressor harm an innocent person, or to do some unavoidable harm to the transgressor to protect the Innocent, I consider the protection of the innocent as much more ethically justifiable than any clemency for the transgressor.   
The victims to be spared are innocent and therefore fully worthy of protection.  The transgressors have forfeited and damaged their worthiness by the harm already caused by them.   The innocence of not having harmed anybody is a strong moral justification for the privilege of being protected.

This general moral dilemma between protecting the innocent and forcing liability on transgressors is of course not restricted to men as transgressors and woman as victims, but it is the most drastic problem, because of the biological asymmetry  
  • The average man is physically much stronger than the average woman.   Only a man has the choice between harming, forcing, dominating, coercing a woman and not harming her.  
  • Men have a biological urge for homeostasis, which above a certain level of their instinctivity makes them predators, who harm women by objectification.
  • The combination of urges to motivate and strength to enforce makes some men so fatally dangerous.

Rational feminism aims at finding methods, how to deal with this asymmetry in a way that ends the harming of women.

What I mean by holding men accountable and liable, will be continued in another entry.  

Friday, August 17, 2012

565. And What About The Next Victim?

565.  And What About The Next Victim?
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/08/120816121825.htm

"A University of Utah survey of judges in 19 states found that if a convicted criminal is a psychopath, judges consider it an aggravating factor in sentencing, but if judges also hear biological explanations for the disorder, they reduce the sentence by about a year on average."

"Judges who were given a biological explanation for the convict's psychopathy imposed sentences averaging 12.83 years, or about a year less than the 13.93-year average sentence imposed by judges who were told only that the defendant was a psychopath, but didn't receive a biological explanation for the condition. In both cases, however, sentencing for the psychopath was longer than the judges' normal nine-year average sentence for aggravated battery."

This is another example of the outrageous lack of concern about harming people and about how to prevent it.   The judges are only bothered about responsibility and punishment of the transgressors.   Protecting the next victim from being harmed by someone, who is considered or suspected of being innately unable to refrain from harming is not in any of these judges' agenda.  
  
The probability of harm to a future victim does not depend upon how much a judge understands transgressor's brain, but on the time, that the transgressor remains behind bars.   

Every moment of a dangerous person being locked away reduces the risk for innocent people to be harmed.   But nobody cares about this.    
Without being able to know it, I assume that in the political climate of the USA, the majority of the judges in the study quoted above are christians.   They do their job to apply laws, which have been made also mainly by christians.    
Neither the judges nor the law makers are bothered about the victims, who are considered as their god's business and job to deal with by compensating the victims after they are dead.   They consider it as their god's will to decide, who is to be harmed and to use the transgressors as his tools.   Protecting innocents from becoming victims is implicitly considered as unwarranted interference and defiance.   
 
Christian judges and law makers apply what they interpret from the commands in the bible as their god's will concerning transgression.   They attempt to reconcile, what seems contradictory.    Some parts the bible prescribe and allow revenge after having become a victim, other parts demand passive and humble forgiving of any atrocity.    
Only the option of preventing harm by protecting the innocents, before they become victims seems too alien to be even mentioned anywhere in the bible.  

Christianity based legal systems have found a specific work around for the contradiction.  
The victims are expected to accept being harmed, to forgive and to wait for the reward in the afterlife.   The legal and penal systems take over the revenge as the proxy of the victim.   The amount of punishment as depending upon the magnitude of the transgression is an estimation of the appropriate revenge in the judgment of the god, could he be consulted. 

The god in the christian bible does not care about the victims, so the legal and penal systems also do not care.  

Thursday, August 16, 2012

564. Foolish Lies

564.  Foolish Lies

Trust in a close, bonded and committed relationship requires sincerity and honesty without exceptions.   But with strangers and unrelated people, there can be situations, in which lies are a necessity of self-protection.
 
Independent of any moral consideration of the possible harm done by lies, there are rational and irrational lies.   Rational are those with a high probability of getting away with.  Irrational and foolish lies are those, which are determined to be discovered.    In the latter case, being caught with the lies often does more damage than the truth would have done.


Lies in profiles on matchmaking sites are extremely foolish by any person using such a site for its real purpose.   During real life encounters, many of these lies will be discovered immediately.  
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/13/fashion/online-dating-as-scientific-research.html?_r=1&pagewanted=all

"about 81 percent of people misrepresent their height, weight or age in their profiles,"
http://www.nypost.com/p/news/national/exagger_dating_7N5Irwi6wBf636XjbJjV3O

"Men are on average 2 inches shorter than they say in their profiles, while women are an inch shorter. About 50 percent of daters fib about their weight. Almost everyone exaggerates their income by 20 percent,

"*24.3% of men and 13.1% of women lie about their age
* Men are on average 2 inches shorter than they say in their online profiles, women are 1 inch shorter
* 59% of women lie about their weight, 55% of men lie about their weight
* People tend to inflate their salaries by 20%
* It rises with age: 20-year-old men and women inflate by 5%; jumps to around 35% for men and women at 50 years old."

The choice to either lie or to be correct about facts and to apply the cautious preference of understatements in the case of attributes with only fuzzy self-evaluation allows some conclusions about the person's motivation and goals.   
It is the choice between disappointing and surprising.  

The preference to risk disappointing is the attempt to manipulate someone to meet once.  
If the disappointing person is a man, he probably is convinced to be such an irresistible guy, that he can seduce the woman for a night, even though his lies have forfeited any trust in him.  
If the disappointing person is a woman, she probably just wants to take advantage of a man paying for an expensive dinner.   

The preference for hoping to be a pleasant surprise is the method to find someone for a long term relationship.    When correct information and understatements are already sufficient to be acceptable for a meeting, then a pleasant surprised adds to attraction and eligibility.      


Wednesday, August 15, 2012

563. Where Are The Apistics?

563.   Where Are The Apistics?

In entry 432 (APISTIA Is More Than Atheism Plus Skepticism) I explained, why the correct label for my complete absence of any belief is apistia, which is more than atheism plus skepticism, as compared in entry 365.  

There are many web pages, forums and groups of and for either atheists or skeptics.   But when I googled apistia and forum, I found nothing.    There are lots of Greek language pages containing this word, there is even a beautiful Greek song called apistia.   
But I found no forum of people, who are so free from any belief, that they consider apistia as their shared common ground of similarity.    
The clearer someone including myself gets aware of who one really is, the less often one finds likeminded people.   Knowing oneself well can be an ingredient of intellectual loneliness.  

 
When skepticism is used to evaluate the belief in a specific deity or set of deities, it leads a rational person to atheism.   But there are atheists, who are no skeptics, and there are skeptics, who are no atheists.  

An atheist is literally just someone without a god, without the belief in any deity, which is defined as an entity with clearly described attributes of traits and powers.    This does not include any information, why someone is nor how he has become an atheist. 

Atheism can be the result of someone's maturing rationality overrides the child's belief in an elusive deity.    But it can also coexist with irrationality:
  • Someone may have grown up in a culture, where irrational beliefs do not include deities.  
  • Someone may have experienced a personal disappointment of how the deity has treated him.   Discarding this specific deity as unfit to rely upon is not a general rejection of the possibility of a replacement deity.
  • Someone may imitate an admired role model's atheism without any real comprehension of this concept.  
Such varieties of atheism do not preclude irrational beliefs like those in homeopathy, dowsing, astrology, reincarnation and chi.  

 
Some skeptics restrict the application of their skepticism as a method to the prospective scrutiny of whatever claim they encounter.    But they do not automatically apply it also retrospectively upon those beliefs, which they had been brought up into, before their maturing brain was rational enough to learn scientific thinking.   
Therefore there are skeptics doing excellent work debunking fraud and woo-woo while they have never given up their religious beliefs.    There are even those fervent religious people, who claim to be skeptics, by applying pseudo-skeptical methods on atheism.   

I am wondering, why there are so many non-skeptical atheists and non-atheistic skeptics, while real apistics are so rare.     

I can think of one possible explanation:   
Non-skeptical atheists and non-atheistic skeptics seem to me as if they are people attempting to get the best of two worlds, even though the worlds are incongruent.
They want to continue to benefit from the emotional and mental crutches supplied by irrational beliefs acquired by their residual gullibility.    But they also want to feel good about themselves based upon a self concept as being rational and of acting in accordance with it.   By discarding and fighting some especially weird beliefs they can have the illusion of being sufficiently rational, while they are in denial of their never overcome gullibility.  

Tuesday, August 14, 2012

562. Animals - Empathy, Emotion, Sensation

562.  Animals - Empathy, Emotion, Sensation

Some people deny the human cognition to be unique enough to be a fundamental difference between animals and humans.  I consider this cognition as unique by its effect of enabling only humans to have a conscious identity as an individual.   The decisive criteria for this conscious individuality is one special quality of the human cognition:  It allows the insight, that rejecting procreation is beneficial for individuals, especially for women, who are those most directly harmed by breeding.   
As long as no animal has the cognitive ability to prefer not to breed, I will continue to consider humans as very distinct from animals.

One of the arguments against the distinction between humans and animals is the alleged empathy of animals by the interpretation of research results finding active mirror neurons in brain scans.   

Of course I recognize that animals suffer pain and that not making them suffer is a moral issue. 
But apparent suffering or contentment of animals does not imply, that they feel emotions and are not just reacting like programmed robots to sensations by either avoidance of unpleasant stimuli or appetence to pleasant stimuli.

I prefer to define as a sensation any perceptive event triggering an instinctive automatic reaction, no matter if the reaction is innate or learned and no matter if it comes from inside the animal's body as is for example hunger or from outside as is for example fear.
I prefer to restrict the word emotion to what is consciously felt, reflected upon, remembered, communicated about in a way, that requires the use of the unique human cognition.  
In this sense, empathy is a human emotion.   Mirror neurons may trigger instinctive behavior in animals, but I am reluctant to call this empathy.
There is no way to get direct answers from animals concerning how much, if any cognition any of them might have.   There is no unequivocal method to decide, if animals have emotions or only sensations.  

But I am not the only one with doubts concerning the empathy of animals:     
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/08/120812160800.htm

"Empathy -- recognizing and sharing feelings experienced by another individual -- is a key human trait and to understand its evolution numerous studies have looked for evidence of it in non-human animals."

"'To prove empathy any experiment must show an individual understands another's feelings and is driven by the psychological goal of improving another's wellbeing. Our view is that, so far, there is no proof of this outside of humans.'"

"The ability to rescue another individual in distress, a typical empathic response of humans, appears in several other animals. ....  such studies are not rigorous enough to separate examples of 'pro-social' behavior, the tendency to behave so as to benefit another individual, from genuine empathy."

''however, the reproductive benefits of this kind of behavior are relatively well understood as, in nature, they are helping individuals to which they are likely to be genetically related or whose survival is otherwise beneficial to the actor."

"It would also need to disentangle empathy from acting simply to stop the trapped animal's stress signals -- something that can be psychologically selfish and does not need to involve empathy."

Monday, August 13, 2012

561. A Fallacy When Applying The Bell Curve

561.   A Fallacy When Applying The Bell Curve

The bell curve is a very useful statistical representation of the distribution of given facts.   But it is dangerous to use it without careful consideration for making decisions. 

In entry 39 I wrote:
'Regulations require a hierarchy of achievement, and the teachers are expected to have results distributed along a bell curve, as many As as Fs.   If all the pupils have As and Bs, this is not appreciated as an indication of a good teacher with clever students.   If all have Es and Fs, it is not accepted as an indication of pupils with special problems or a bad teacher.   
There has to be a bell curve to put the achievements relative in a hierarchy.   Rationally, this makes no sense.    The same pupil with the same achievement, could by haphazard be in a class, where he gets an A for it, or in another class, where he gets an F, his achievements are distorted by others, whom he might not have even chosen.

Rationally, marking should be independent of the other pupils, measured instead on how much he has learned of what has been taught.     Everybody, who has learned 100% or little less, should get an A, independent of how many others have achieved the same.   That would be just.'  

A recent comment to this entry contains the expression "defiance of the logic of the bell-shaped curve."

This phrase caught my attention to the problems of the fallacy of confounding segments of a bell curve with an entire one.    

The marking of pupils' achievements is a good example:
As long as all children attend elementary school together, it can be assumed that their intelligence is roughly distributed along the bell curve and thus also the achievements, as long as the teacher optimizes the teaching for the pupils of average intelligence.

In Germany, children are sorted into different schools usually after four years of elementary school.  While I have not information about the actual fractions, when and where I went to school, one third went to the school with the lowest level, one third to the one with a medium level and one third entered the school leading to university after having passed a test.      
Thus each type of school catered for a different segment of the bell curve of intelligence.  

Looking at the distribution of only the segment containing the highest third of the bell curve, it is a downward curve.   The higher the intelligence, the fewer the cases.   
The fallacy of assuming the distribution of the ability of the pupils in this segment as an entire bell curve misleads teachers to confound the median of intelligence with the average.   The average intelligence in this segment of the bell curve is much closer to the lowest than to the highest.   
By lessons optimized for the median, a predominance of bad marks can be expected by the majority below.    Teaching needs to be optimized for the average pupils in this segment. 

Distributing marks along an alleged bell curve for the purpose of obtaining more As and Bs in a class of this segment is not a solution but a distortion.  A bell curve of marks with C as the average implies to have roughly as many Fs as As, but this cannot be the case in the upper segment of the bell curve of intelligence.  It cannot be justified to make the worst student fail, if he is only slightly less intelligent than the average, while the really bright students cannot be deprived of their As.  

Sunday, August 12, 2012

560. The Bigfeet Relationship - A Metaphor

560.   The Bigfeet Relationship - A Metaphor

There is a proverb about the existence of a good match if found.  
'Every pot finds its lid.'  
But as an egalitarian, this is too asymmetrical for my taste.    A pot has a value even without a lid, while a lid without a pot is useless.   If I were to make a guess I would expect men to claim to be the pots.

So I have come up with my own symmetrical metaphor.  

A couple having a viable relationship is like an entity moving smoothly along the road of life on two feet in comfortably fitting shoes.   Each partner contributes one foot and the shoe for the other's foot.  

A foot represents a partner's relationship needs, a shoe is the place available in the own life for a partner.  The size of the available place for a partner is determined by what is offered to fulfill the partner's needs, and this depends on what is expected by a fair deal in exchange for getting the own needs met.          
Fitting means, that both feet and both shoes are all of the same size.   Both partners' needs are reciprocally met.   

When fitting shoes and feet are large, couples share intellectual, emotional and physical intimacy as much as both feel comfortable with.    
They are reciprocally significant to each other.

When fitting shoes and feet are small, both partners commodify each other in a complementary way.  This is for example the case, when the man only wants the regular use of the same body and the woman only wants his regular income for a materially secure life.  They both fulfill their other needs elsewhere.   
They are reciprocally insignificant to each other.


Couples are mismatches, when the sizes of the shoes and feet do no match.   When one partner's foot and shoe are small and the other's foot and shoe are large, their feet are not comfortable.  They have difficulties to move forward, stumbling and struggling instead.  

The one with the bigger foot is the one with the major disadvantage.   A large foot in a too small shoe hurts and gets harmed, while a small foot only is loose in the too big shoe, which may slip off.    The too big shoe does not hurt while worn, but walking barefoot on rough ground is painful after having lost the shoe.     
Walking in too small shoes causes painful blisters.  When the blisters are inside the shoe or sock, they are not visible to others.   Unmet emotional and intellectual needs are like invisible blisters.    
The one, whose needs are not met, suffers deficits and deprivations.  The other one getting all needs met would be satisfied, but experiences the other's expectations, demands and pressures as annoyance.   

Thus the damage to the relationship starts on the side of the unmet needs but has an impact upon both.  The failure of such a relationship by removing both shoes is experienced differently.  The one suffering harm from unmet needs tends to feel relief by removing a hurting shoe, while the one getting all needs met suffers a loss, when forced to walk on bare feet without the protecting shoe.     

There is also a variety of this situation, in which shoes do not fit by being too large in one direction and too small in the other, simultaneously hurting and being loose.   This is the common situation, when both have needs not met by the other.    Each partner suffers from the own unmet needs and is annoyed by the demands from the partner.

People needing the safe haven of bonded, committed close relationship have big feet.   Thus it can be called a 'bigfeet relationship'