I consider it my duty to express profound acknowledgement to all participants of the Discussion Club as well as to the readers who shared their comments in private correspondence. Your opinions, remarks, comments, and questions were by far not the least of the things laid down in the foundation for the enhancements of the second edition. A special thanks to Leonid Ivanov for his help.
I'd like to express special gratitude to Irina Patseva, without whose moral support, this Treatise could have never been issued.
To the English reader
The original essay was written in Russian and at first was intended only for the Russian audience. Russian folklore (fairy tales, jokes, anecdotes, humor and etc.) is widely used in the manuscript. In this translation whenever possible we tried to explain such places or alter them to make it clearer for the English readers. We thank you for any comments and remarks regarding translation quality. So, let's begin...
A few words about human ethology
Foreword written to the publication of this book in Bulgaria in 2002
Traditional psychology as well as other sciences of human beings were always interested in the issue of proportion of biological and non-biological bases in man's behavior. At different times either biological or non-biological influence was considered as predominantly meaningful. In the 19th and at beginning of the 20th centuries there was commonly accepted opinion of biological component prevalence. As one of the most notorious (though, not the only) representative of these views one might call Sigmund Fried. However, constantly speaking actually about instincts ("libido" and "mortido") and their influence on a man even he did not take an attempt to research its physical nature and genesis. That's why there is no surprise that his conclusions and findings did not look really convincing and were constantly criticized. In addition, Eugenics based on a similar paradigm seriously discredited itself by the ties with despotic regimes using it for ideological support to conduct policy of violence and persecution. That's why beginning with the 1920s of the 20th century a pendulum swung into the opposite direction and as usual in such cases, overflew the golden middle. Up to the most recent time the concept of mighty domination of socially based component in human behavior was totally prevailing. Sometimes this concept is called a concept of "Tabula Rasa", i.e. "Blank List". It was suggested within the scope of this concept that at birth a man is a blank list where society and environment write one or the other rules of behavior and thus whatever is written will make a kind of human being. However, as time passed the inability to explain clearly and without strained interpretation the whole range of human behavioral reactions within the scope of this concept became more and more evident. At the same time, a lot of these seemingly unexplainable behavioral reactions of a human being find more or less natural explanation within the scope of hypothesis of presence of a powerful layer of inborn behavioral schemes in a human being! That's why at the very end of the 20th century the extremes in interpretation of human behavior were started to be removed, and a view of a human being as a creature in no small degree biological, born with a far from insignificant luggage of built-in behavioral schemes have begun to find wider and wider support. Nearly the most determinant contribution to this view was made by a science called ETHOLOGY and other disciplines branched from it. Ethology studies instinctive bases of behavior of living creatures by comparing the behavior of various species between themselves. A human being for ethologist is just another mammal having a fair conceit of oneself, but in reality only one of a species sharing equal rights with all other biological species.
Comparing behaviors of the specimens belonging to the various zoological species from the most primitive to the most complex scientists discover striking similarities and conformity which are evidence of existence common behavioral principles involving all members of zoological domain including humans. Such research methods are very productive and widespread in other sciences. For example, astronomers know much more about Sun's internal structure then geologists about Earth's inner structure. This happens because there are a lot of stars and all of them are way different. There is a lot to uncover by comparing them. But the Earth is unique and there is nothing to compare it. The same applies to studying a man. Restricting ourselves to study the one alone we take a risk to remain greatly limited in our comprehension of it.
However, studying ethology of humans is not simple. Besides objective difficulties deriving from powerful effect of brain masking and modifying many instinctive exhibits, researchers regularly get in conflict with public unacceptance of ethological method applied to the humans. Many people deem unacceptable and feel even insulted by the very fact of comparing human behavior with an animal. And this has its own ethological explanation! It consists of the effect of the instinct of ethological isolation of the species. The detailed examination of it is out of the scope of the book. The essence of this instinct can be expressed by motto "love your own kind but hate a different one". "Different ones" in our case are presented by apes and monkeys. Hostile attitude to them spreads as well on the thesis of relationship between our behavior and theirs. Despite up to this day non-stopping (due to the same hostility) attempts to overthrow Darwin theory, it is firmly and irrevocably accepted by the scientific community, and majority of the educated people completely agrees with their descent from the apes, however even a thought that one or another feeling is a call of instinct as before causes strong protests among many people, mostly getting no rational explanation. Meanwhile, the root of this hostility lies in subconscious unacceptance of our relationship with the apes. Please remember about that, my dear readers.
What else can an ethologist tell about a human being? A lot! He can tell about aggressiveness and about the nature of authority, about innate morality and the forces behind nationalism, and even about the oddity of love! And exactly the oddity of love we are going to discuss in this book.
About the subject
Question to an Armenian radio station:
How to avoid pregnancy?
Answer: Drink mineral water.
Question: When - before or after?
Answer: Instead of.
(old anecdote)
In my point of view all attempts of the society to enlighten the young and older people in sexual matters are extremely lop-sided. While the issues of the techniques of sexual intercourse, pregnancy prevention and the ways to avoid contracting sexually transmitted diseases are widely presented and available, the choice of partner is discussed casually, lacking the system, contradictory, and unconvincingly by the reason of subjective and purely speculative argumentation. Oh yes, discussing sexual techniques is damn pleasant but the majority of the tragedies on sexual ground happens not because the sex itself is not done RIGHT but because it is done with not the right partners. In fact, all the advice regarding choosing the partner are boiled down to hard way learning and staying away which in no way can guarantee that everything will be OK. From another point of view, while trying out the advice one might lose not one but many really suitable matches.
During the whole written history of human civilization, it was widely accepted to trust a feeling of love in choice of a partner. Moreover, in the last decades love as a conjuration became opposite to one minute passion and was counted as a guarantee of unerring choice. However, it hasn't been precisely proven so far that this trust is fully justified. The difference between big love and momentary chemistry is purely quantitative but not qualitative. Instead, the sensations arising from it are explained and colorfully described, but the basic logic of this event is left behind the scenes or is simply negated as something supernatural. There is no need to look for a mystery where one does not exist. In reality, all these irrational things of love are rational, logical, and wise in their own way. In order to see this rationality it is necessary to move from civilized society's coordinate system to one of primeval-herd. Below, I will try to show how to do it and prove the correctness of such transition. To be certain we shall speak about instinctive bases of conjugal behavior of human beings in terms of biological species. The process of sexual intercourse will not be examined. We are also not interested in FEELING itself, i.e. that sensations experienced by the lovers and physiological mechanisms which cause it.
I am sure that knowledge of this logic will not impoverish the perception of love, as one of the most beautiful feelings, like knowledge of flower structure does not hinder a botanist to be delighted with its beauty and like knowledge of harmony rules and musical instrument design does not hinder a musician to enjoy a masterpiece performance.
The instinctive bases of human being's conjugal behavior are studied by science called ETHOLOGY. However, there are practically no popular publications on this topic and I hope that this article will fill a gap in the lack of them in some way.
Why, properly speaking, is reproduction needed?
Who has come in this world - his grief is clear
He must come back to nonexistence.
(Omar Khaiam)
During the lifetime of any being its genetic material is gradually distorted, faults accumulate in it and as a result its viability diminishes and finally it dies. We will not examine the other theories of obsolescence as this is out of scope of this article. The phenomenon of reproduction of all known beings lies in the fact that the descendants obtain genes practically free of these accrued faults. Otherwise children would have inherited not only the body features but also age. So the rising generation would have faded out very quickly and probably it would have never started in the first place.
Briefly speaking:
Reproduction is the method of genetic material refinement from faults, i.e. the kind of way to live eternally.
Budding and sexual reproduction.
The best way of multiplication is division.
(from the talk of two amoebas).
Vegetative reproduction is just a simple division of cells, however this process only seems to be simple, but it is very complicated in fact. Genetic material is not simply duplicated but after the cells bifurcate chromosomes intricately exchange their different parts and as a result of this the defective genes are excluded from being forwarded to the next generations. Only after this, does a cell split into two. Nevertheless there is a very high probability that all genes in a chromosome's spirals happen to be damaged and it will be impossible to get non-damaged one.
As the way to eliminate or to significantly decrease this probability, nature came to the sexual process. Its main difference from vegetative is that two non-identical genetic sets from two different specimens with absent correspondingly damaged genes participate in exchange. Besides, it becomes possible to build the features and characteristics from different parents and this simplifies adaptation to ever-changing environmental conditions.
The advantages of sexual process are costly. Vegetative process is more simple and reliable, that's why many beings still practice reproduction in both ways. The sexual process is usually resorted with deterioration of living conditions, when the faults in genes become more often and the necessity to change something in life becomes more obvious. When everything is fine, simple division is the way to go.
Briefly speaking:
Despite the complexity in implementation, sexual reproduction provides higher quality refinement of genetic material from generation to generation.
It also creates higher diversion of properties, characteristics, and features in specimens and that gives significant advantages for adaptation to ever-changing environmental conditions.
About hermaphrodites and evolution of reproduction methods.
Do not multiply the fundamentals needlessly.
(W. Occam)
There must participate two different specimens in the sexual process but it follows from nowhere that they must be of two DIFFERENT genders. Hermaphrodites use sexual reproduction but of one sex! Each hermaphrodite individual has complete set of genitals and can equally play a role of a male or female and it is not unusual for the specimen to do it simultaneously. For example, some species of snails can copulate in large groups jointed in long ribbons or rings.
Hermaphroditism is not so bad. It is more reliable and simple than different genders. In fact, if we were normally hermaphrodites, our conjugal life would have become easier but probably not poorer. Judge for yourself, in spite of double the chance to find life's companion we would have had simplified acquaintance and courting procedures at least. Then why don't unisexual creatures dominate on Earth? From this point, the most interesting things begin!
Life on Earth was conceived approximately 3 - 3.5 billion years ago and reproduced vegetatively at first. The moment of "invention" of sexual reproduction is not certain, but the first cellular organisms, which appeared about 800 million years ago, used sexual reproduction, at least occasionally. Most of those organisms like snails, worms, etc., that survived to our days, were mostly hermaphrodites, i.e. obviously unisexual beings appeared much earlier. Their predominance ended in the Silurian period (approximately 400 million years ago). Along with them, the predominance of unisexual propagation came to an end. Since that time, dioecious reproduction is a rule because it has important advantages. What advantages?
One of them is very obvious. Some hermaphrodites (but not all) are able to copulate with themselves, and unlike masturbators can have posterity. Of course such an extreme incest contradicts the sense of dioecious propagation and should be prevented somehow because this kind of "sexual" reproduction is barely different from vegetative. However, real hermaphrodites practice self-copulation very seldom and generally for a very valid reason - absence of another being within its reach. Otherwise, some safety mechanisms eliminating self-fertilization are triggered. Initially, sex specialization is one of such mechanisms but this is not enough to squeeze out hermaphrodites.
About different genders and sexual selection.
- Do you love me?
- Yes!
- Ah! But where are the bees?
(From the talk of two flowers)
Since old fellow Darwin, it is usual to believe (partially against his opinion) that natural selection is based on casual, spontaneous death of creatures which are not adapted enough to living conditions. Such selection together with variability was called evolutionary force. Meanwhile, this way of selection is very inefficient. The man himself acts with far greater efficiency selecting new breeds of animals and plants. He achieves results in a few generations rather than in hundreds of thousands of years. The essence of such selection is to choose deliberately the parents of initial species, who carry the desired properties and disallow a reproduction of another beings without such properties. Actually there is no need to kill these outsiders. What humanism! Besides, a chance still remains to correct "judicial mistake" if this is going to occur.
Obviously, the usage of the same selection methods by nature itself can accelerate the pace of evolution and thus, improve the ability of the species to adapt to ever-changing environmental conditions. However, how can nature implement this in reality? It needs to have some kind of Judge, making the decisions of who deserves and who does not. The easiest way is to apply a hypothesis of God's existence, but this is a way to avert the answer. It is acceptable that this Judge is not alone. The most important is that they all should judge more or less by the same laws.
And there are a lot of judges and they are named "female". They pass a verdict which males will last in descendants and which will not. That's why such selection is called sexual. It is interesting that Darwin himself paid great attention to sexual selection but this did not find the proper response with the other scientists.
Can there be a sexual selection among hermaphrodites? Let us imagine a unisexual being which should have been rejected as sire. It is refused time after time but finally after some refusals, it finds the same loser and ... they will agree someway. In the world of different sexes, one outcast male can not help another one in bringing offspring but there are no outcast females in the animal world because one male can mate with many females. And usually it is still far from the limit of its fertilizing productivity. Taking into account that the number of males in population usually equals the number of females, hence male fertilizing potentials are in extreme abundance and it means that females always have more or less wide choices of a mating partner. This choice might be disguised or hidden but nonetheless it always exists.
Exclusion of females for the same purpose of selection from the reproduction process is too risky because their unborn cubs cannot be born by another female. A female gives birth by herself to as many offspring as she can and simply physically cannot substitute another female. A male is a different matter! All non-conceived cubs by one particular male will be conceived by another one with pleasure (and who would refuse...?)
That's exactly how it happens in reality. The 1/6 seal males fertilize 5/6 of females, the others have to pretend that they do not need this at all... Even more extreme disproportions are known among sea lions where 4% of males mate with 88% of females! The same picture is typical for all gregarious animals. Amongst the species which live in pairs, especially birds, it is customary to fertilize before a pair (family) is formed and sometimes after but with another male, often in sight of a "lawful husband". In other words, the pair is formed for doing household chores but fertilization is often done under gregarious laws. Besides, males are born in slightly higher numbers than females (and the more males are born the worse the living conditions for the species are). All this leaves room for choice even among strictly paired animals.
Plants, even diclinous ones, are not able to make such selection (see epigraph), that's why complete heterothallism in the floral world did not become dominant and probably remains as one of the ways preventing self-fertilization.
Thus, gender differentiation assumes some explicit or implicit form of copulative polygyny, but the fundamental principle of dioecious propagation is the principle of female's irreplaceability.
For accelerating selection and making it purposeful, some part of possibly potent males by all means will be excluded from reproduction process, with the growing share of the others.
From the principle of female's irreplaceability follows the fundamental differences between males and females behavior. As females are of a far greater value for the population and males are born in significantly higher numbers than needed to sustain specimen reproduction, thus, their personal value for the species is far lower. This circumstance is fixed in appropriate instincts which require from female to be more careful, avoid risk, take care of themselves in the first place and demand caring from surrounding people. For example, it is well in line with this instinct that women are more egocentric and trust more intuition and feelings than logic. Intuition and feelings are based on practical experience, including the experience of a whole species, so they are proved with practice and considered to be something more reliable. We will return to this subject below any number of times but once and look it through with greater details at the end.
Briefly speaking:
Dioecious propagation provides much faster pace of natural evolution by setting up effective sexual selection under which some part of males purposefully rejected.
About variety and risk
Without any born to creep - the others cannot fly.
(it is ascribed to Maxim Gorky)
If all the specimens are look-alikes like nuts on a conveyer belt, then all the hassle about choice does not make any sense. In order for the selection to make any sense, there has to be a due variety of specimens. Of course, after hundreds and thousands generations it is possible to form some optimum features and properties, which will provide the highest viability of each specimen and thus, the highest viability of a whole species but ...
As a matter of fact, the conditions which affect the very existence of species are anything but permanent, and a direction of future changes is totally unpredictable by nature, despite its so-called wisdom. That is why specimens are needed with non-optimized, needless, and perhaps, harmful features and properties for the current conditions. If the conditions change some of these features and properties might happen to be extremely useful. Giving birth to such creatures, nature definitely takes a risk - they are currently less viable, but it is necessary to take a risk since "no risk - no champagne". Nature does not know any other way "to predict the future" except hit and miss despite of whatever it is ascribed.
Is there any other way to minimize undesired consequences of such risk? How to make the consequences of such chaotic experiments (mostly misses) less threatening for the viability of the whole species?
Elementary! If possible, females should not deviate from the optimum but instead, males should become the objects of experiments, because unsuitable males can be easily excluded from the reproductive process without a danger of decreasing the number of children in a whole population. On the other hand, just a few outstanding males can father all the children in a population.
It was noticed long ago that the ratio of newborn males to newborn females strongly depends on living conditions of the species. Under unfavorable conditions a share of newborn males increases, thus, variety increases, selection speeds up and toughens and this in turn leads to the faster adaptation to the new conditions. Under favorable conditions a share of newborn females increases and that creates possibilities for fast proliferation of species.
Briefly speaking:
To increase the effectiveness of sexual selection, males, as objects of choice, must own a widespread variety of different features, properties, and qualities up to the explicit non-optimum of certain specimens, in order to cover the widest possible spectrum of future probable species demands.
This diversity can only be chaotically random due to the impossibility for natural evolution to predict the future thoughtfully.
On the other hand, females do not need to be extremely diverse because it is too risky, and carrying out the advantages of such diversion will fail due to the small numbers of descendants from each one.
About conjugal strategy
A lecture in a zoological college: Lecturer: A good sire-bull should make up to twelve copulations a day.
A woman's voice from the first row: What? How many did you say?
Lecturer: Up to twelve.
A woman's voice from the first row: Would you please repeat it louder for the people in the last row!
A man's voice from the last row: Excuse me, is it meant to be with one cow or with twelve?
Lecturer: With twelve, of course!
A man's voice from the last row: Would you please repeat it louder for the people in the first row!
(an old student anecdote)
Why cannot women and men find each other even if they are so eager for each other's companionship? That is so because they make a search based on different criteria as they pursue the different goals in their eagerness. Moreover, this eagerness for each other is not unconditionally friendly and resembles people's behavior on a market. Seller and buyer are eager to find each other and strike a deal as well, but each of them tries his or her best to get the maximum profit from the deal, frequently without any consideration of another party's possible losses. Nature, alas, is devoid of sentiments...
As it has been mentioned above, the principle of gender separation assumes that the small group of males fertilizes the disproportionately large share of females forcing the major part of male population to pose themselves as hopeless bachelors. Such strategy allows to quickly adopt new and useful features and properties in descendants and saves females from reproduction of useless genes.
To achieve this, males and females should have significantly different behavior while searching for their nuptial partners.
Every male should be eager to change females as often as possible, considering himself as the carrier of uniquely useful genes. Let's imagine that one man somehow has a gene with immunity, let's say, to AIDS. It is extremely necessary to spread this gene among the population! But he is, such a scoundrel, faithful to one woman only. How many children can be born by one female? OK, 10, maximum 20 and according to the genetic rules only half of them will inherit this gene. This is a crime in face of the species! However, if one tried to behave like a sultan, he can father possibly 1000 or even up to 2000 children. This is something ... Therefore public opinion treats male infidelity pretty repressively as it is not without a reason. This is an instinctive program and so to say, it is very sane from the biological point of view. Male should not confine his sexual expansion. There are females for this.
Thus, the instinctive goal of male conjugal behavior is More female's bodies, pretty and different.
And what if a female has such a unique gene? What should her behavior be in order not to sink this gene into oblivion, but rather transfer it to the future generations? In general, it is also possible to increase the number of children but ... Will the frequent changing of the males help a woman to increase the number of children? Absolutely not, but this could significantly lower the quality of children! That's why public opinion treats women's infidelity with much louder condemnation. A woman unscrupulous in her sexual partners does not take care of her future children! If a man transferring his genes fathered a child with an unsuitable woman, he did not lose anything. He can repeat the same literally the very next day with a better woman, it found. But a woman conceived from an unsuitable man cannot correct her fault so soon (nature does not know abortion). Moreover, the number of such trials is very limited in general. To fix her genes in descendants more reliably, a woman should strengthen the severity of selection for the candidates, in order not to mix her own, supposedly unique genes with any other male genes deemed unfit. However, she should be attractive to all men in order to have a possibility to choose from. The more men are attracted to her the wider the choice that she has. The ideal case is to make all men fall in love with her, but admit only one, or maybe, none at all. The copulation itself is an almost incidental side effect of the seduction process.
So, the instinctive goal of female conjugal behavior is more man's hearts, nice and different.
After a man's heart is captured, a woman can lose any active interest in him, just continue keeping him for her collection, meanwhile seducing the others.
It is necessary to make a point that only the base of the differences of conjugal strategy is described here. Below we will look at instinctive factors which fill this base with specific content.
Briefly speaking:
In order to implement the advantages of sexual selection, male should be eager to mate as much as possible. They are the fighters for QUANTITY of offspring because their qualitative mating potentials are practically unlimited.
To achieve the same goal, females having limited childbearing potential, are eager to get the best quality of posterity. Due to this fact, only females are the selecting subjects and they are interested in the maximum widening of the pool of potential partners in order to ease the choice of one with the best qualities while denying all others.
About our primeval "ego".
Within me are two "egos"--two poles of the planet,
Two different men, two enemies,
When one of them is rushing to the ballet
The other one is rushing to the races...
(V. Vysotcky)
It is well-known that a man belongs to the species of HOMO SAPIENS of the primate group. Classified relationship with other Primates is determined by greater or lesser similarity of genetic material, which is expressed externally in the resemblance of our physical constitution. For example, the genes of man and a chimpanzee resemble each other in more than 95% of the cases. However, species-specific attributes are not only the physical features, but are also behaviors and habits (hunting methods, marriage rituals, etc) as well.
As all species-specific attributes are hard-coded and passed by inheritance only, (that's why they are species-specific!) so behavior appropriate to the species is inherited as well. For example, the ability of the hunting dogs to make the stance is transmitted by inheritance and especially tightly linked to hunting breeds. Another example of an instinctively conditioned reflex is lowering the eyes as an acknowledgement of subjugation to another. This is typical for Primates, including humans. In the same situation, the dogs lower their tails. This kind of inherited behavior is commonly called "instinctive" and its separate aspects are called "instincts". There is a term "inherent behavior model" which denotes such instinctive behavior programs. Such an interesting act for our topic as a kiss is part of congenital conjugal ritual of Primates, which is derived from the feeding ritual.
To what degree is all of this related to human beings? The man has a mind, some kind of laws, all which make following one's instincts not compulsory. However, a man evolved into a modern being and became truly rational only 30-40 thousands years ago but our historical epoch is only 5 - 7 thousands years old. Meanwhile, the evolution of Primates began approximately in the Tertiary period, 20 - 30 millions years ago and such important instincts as obedience to animal hierarchy have existed almost for as long as life itself.
For sure, during such short evolutionary periods of time instincts cannot vanish. They are slowly and gradually formed by evolution and as morphological attributes, disappear only as slowly as they accumulate. So instincts do not ask whether a man can live without them. They are just acting up when they find it necessary. Unreasonable and unexplainable from a rational point of view, instinctive motivation is very logical and explainable in a primeval coordinates system, and it was expedient in primeval times. But in contemporary situations, the behavior realized by instincts is not always adequate and we are often bewildered how evil and blind love can be...
Monkey instincts will live inside of us for as long as we belong to a group of Primates because they are hard-coded in genetic memory. If mankind succeeds in getting rid of some important monkey instincts and fixes the changes in the genes, then man will pertain to another species and probably will be separate from Primates. Development of humanity demanded other than primeval-gregarious forms of marriage, but instincts do not disappear from subconsciousness so easily and keep working, even if their time past long ago.
Individual mind cannot change it's own instinctive programs in any way and moreover it does not know about their existence! It can only to disobey them in some cases but the next time instinct will want to do the same thing again. The lowest level of subconsciousness - instincts, they carry out available programs directly and without alternatives. Programs of middle level of subconsciousness such as traditions and habits can be modified with time. Mind also widely use fixed behavior programs but they are just "food for thoughts" for it. Mind does not exactly carries out the programs but more improvises on a theme.
Instincts direct us by means of emotions not bothering themselves with motives. The instincts, inducing a woman to beautify herself with cosmetics, do not inform her why she should do this - she just wants this and that's all. Logical sense of this is obvious - to attract men's attention but most of women will categorically deny this saying that they are doing this for their own pleasure. However, normal men do not do the same "for themselves"! Such behavior program does not exist in their instincts. By the way, many modern men treat a woman with cosmetics negatively but instinct does not want to know about this. Also it is worth to pay attention that the lower a cultural level of a woman the brighter her cosmetics and she applies it in a bigger quantity. In this case instinctive motives are neither restricted nor corrected by her mind.
Neural structures which fulfill the instincts, arose in the deepest antiquity. Thinking, analyzing or even simply extrapolate is absolutely impossible task for them. They are triggered whenever schematic and static template fitted in instinct matches some kind of external signal attributes which can by chance look like actually required. However, having free and direct access to the motivational centers of brain instincts can evoke the FEELING of it's correctness on any subject. This influence can resemble some narcotic intoxication. Narcotic illusions can also be perceived as high level wisdom. That is why love has no "wisdom". It has only a feeling of wisdom. Actually love evaluate the object of choice very superficially according to a strict (sometimes stupid) genetic program which sets a strategy for choosing a marriage partner. The mind is left nothing to do but to find a way to justify the answer. It is in nature of any person to look for ways to justify the answer when he tries to explain his instinctively motivational behavior.
Real picture of individual behavior becomes more complicated and confused not only because of two "egos" coexisting side by side but also because there is no clearly marked border between them. Instinctive and rational motivations can get intricately mixed. Besides that, for each particular case a person has several instinctive programs of behavior, which appeared at different evolutionary time and sometimes contradicting one another.
Briefly speaking:
A human is born with a lot of behavioral programs given at birth. Those programs appeared at different evolutionary time and due to this fact they often contradict each other.
Mechanisms of carrying out the congenital behavioral programs are capable only of frivolous analysis of the surrounding, which suggests an only formally superficial comparison of the surrounding with the schematic signal attributes fitted in these programs.
Adequate resemblance of the external conditions with these signal attributes creates one or another emotion inducing a human to carrying out an appropriate instinctive program.
The real motivations of the actions are not realized. To explain instinctively motivational behavior, the remotely occasional arguments are drawn which have much closer resemblance with just a desire to justify the answer no matter what.
About hierarchy in a herd.
Impudence is a second fortune.
(commonly known banality)
In theater as in life, the most demanding
person is the one who has not paid for a
ticket.
(a French proverb)
There are no equal rights anywhere at all. Those outraged by unfairness in our society can comfort themselves with a fact that in a world of all other animals the situation is much worse.
While feeding a group of mice, it can be noticed soon that every time the best and the biggest pieces always fall to the share of the same specimens. These ones occupy the best places for resting and have the highest number of mating.
The other ones are satisfied with remnants after the first ones, the third ones - with whatever left after the second ooonnes and so on... I.e., there is a certain hierarchy within a group.
One of the most magnificent description of hierarchical relations was given by V. R. Dolnik [1], I just can't agree with his statement that human hierarchy is formed only by men (see below in details).
Such hierarchy is known among all kind of beings which lead even rudimentary grouping lifestyle. Even amoebas have rudimentary hierarchy. The places (ranks) in this hierarchy commonly marked by letters of the Greek alphabet: alpha is a high-ranking specimen, omega is correspondingly a low-ranking specimen. However, this definition system is not completely fine, in the large groups hierarchical structure divest its linearity of alphabetical row and becomes more reminiscent of pyramid where several beings can have practically equal rank. Highest rank beings are also called "hierarch", "dominant". V.R. Dolnik suggested to use the term "ringleader" - rather roughly but true.
Obvious the rank in such hierarchy has a huge significance for each member therefore the members of a group constantly compete with each other for rank advancement or rank preservation. The higher the rank the fiercer the struggle. Sometimes it might happen that alpha takes from life less then beta because it is too busy with struggle. However, alpha reserves the right, at least theoretical, to take away any piece from beta.
The rank of a being in a group depends on correlation of ranking potentials of this being with the other specimen in the group, so the same being can have different ranks in different groups.
But what is ranking potential? Obviously it is closely linked with physical strength but it is not determined by it unequivocally. Wasps ranking potential, for example, is identified by the number of bristles on particular body parts. Rooster's ranking potential is identified by the height of his comb. The number of bristles (height of comb) just shows the rank but does not determine it and the other beings are guided by these attributes which are coded by the same genes as ranking potential. The same happens with the other animals but not all of them identify ranking potential in a such simple way. Even among the animals with not too high organization (for example mouse) good physical strength only allows avoiding the lowest places in hierarchy but does not guarantee the highest. The higher animal's level of development the weaker correlation between ranking potential and physical strength.
Since very different species, especially including very primitive ones which are incapable of learning, possess hierarchical behavior, so it is possible to admit surely that the base of a ranking potential is given to a being with its birth (maybe together with bristles or something like that). Specific low- or high-ranking behavior is started showing from the first days of life. Thus, behavior of a being inside the hierarchy is controlled by indigenous behavioral mechanisms, i.e. by instincts.
Victor Dolnik calls this ranking potential "the power of IMPORTUNATENESS". Well-known psychologist Vladimir Levi calls it "power of IMPUDENCE" and that is possibly more precise. They prove that the crucial component of ranking potential is ASSURANCE in a own superiority, possibly and very often, not supported by any real merits and even totally groundless. Indeed, assurance of one person can hypnotize the other one and including himself or herself. It can be assurance of a student before passing the exam, or a driver in front of a policeman, or guru in front of believer, or a politician facing a crowd, or a leader of a sect facing his followers, and etc... <...>
Usually, alpha concentrates on internal struggle with greater determination, persistence and pleasure which often turns into end in itself. This struggle is much less pleasant for omega - he is more inclined to yield. From here there is one more parameter affecting ranking potential - ranking potential is a degree of compliance (or vice versa - degree of propensity to conflict). Acceptable volume of conflict tension is directly linked with ranking potential for each being - the lower ranking potential the less intensive conflict causes the sense of discomfort.
The number of vacancies on hierarchical Olypmus is limited by default and does not depend on average ranking potential. In other words, increasing ranking potential of all beings in the group the number of high-ranking beings will not increase. The same hierarchy will be formed but probably even tougher and more aggressive.
Different degree of individuals' compliance has a very important biological meaning. It allows to decrease tension of internal struggle within a group and thus avoiding needless death of its members. The spreading of the conflicts in such community or a group, even if they arise, are restricted to the closest neighbors in hierarchy instead of everybody-against-everyone. Besides, altruism of "omegas" opens a possibility to consolidate the efforts of all members of the group on its fight for survival which is particularly important for species possessing no big physical abilities. Exactly this circumstance combined with "alphas'" higher death rate (in part due to the conflicts between themselves) prevents unlimited growth of the average ranking potential of the species. Not only the strongest specimens survived, but also the strongest and the most organized groups.
In fact, there are two possible ways to congregate a group - the military and voluntary. The first approach assumes rigid hierarchical structure of subordinance with ruthless suppression of any disobedience of subordinates. The second is based on altruism assuming sincere and volunteer help of group members up to self-sacrifice. The first approach is predominant among more primitive species as the more native for basic instincts, reliably implemented in reality, and requiring no any kind of substantial intellect. But it becomes ineffective for organization with very complex collaborative behavior. Obviously that living in extremely dangerous (in terms of predators) Savannah, our ancestors went the most of the evolutional path using the military form of group consolidation. Altruism became a relatively mass phenomenon only when development of intellect made very complex behavioral schemes possible. In its turn, widespeading of altruistic forms of behavior even more complicated human behavior and created prerequisites for even faster acceleration of social evolution that set Humans apart from the rest of the animal world. Thus altruistic behavioral programs appeared in comparatively later evolutional time and did not have enough time to be firmly embedded in genes. Therefore, altruism, so essential for mankind, has to be conveyed by non-genetic means, those which form a notion of "culture". However, the stronger the genetic base of altruism the higher the cultural level under the same conditions.
Ranking potential can be initial (inborn), actual and visual. Initial is given at birth and is not subjected to upbringing or environmental influence but rather mainly determined by genetic inheritance and less by conditions of prenatal development. Actual ranking potential greatly depends on circumstances. It is determined by initial ranking potential and by specific situation in which the being finds itself. Circumstances can either hinder the realization of inborn ranking potential or encourage its full disclosure and even strengthening. For humans actual ranking potential is typically 2/3 based on heredity and 1/3 on conditions of growing up and care. However, this is just averaged statistical data and for a specific person this correlation can be different.
Since ranking potential is defined by different attributes, including ones which are not interrelated to each other the real hierarchical portrait of a specimen can be MOSAIC, i.e. when some attributes point to a high rank but others to low rank. For instance, untidiness is an indication of a low rank. Noticing untidy person we usually not without grounds judge him as loser who achieved almost nothing in life, i.e. as low-ranking. However, once he demands to let him cut a line in bold-faced and aggressive form then the majority of the people agree to yield his demand thus admitting his higher rank! Even though, the social status of this person can be extremely low!
Here is another example (although fiction but it has many parallels with reality). An old song about a brave captain of a ship says that:
... he survived fifteen shipwrecks,
pirate assaults, drowning, and shark attacks
but he was never scared.
Here we see a person who takes relatively high-level position (captain!), who is capable to fight and survive and that means this person has high enough ranking potential. However, here we can mention low primativeness of our hero and that will be discussed later. But here is how the same person behaves himself with women:
...he blushed fifteen times,
stuttered and turned pale,
and never dared to smile nor say "hi" to her.
But this behavior is mostly typical for a low-ranking being! At the same time there are plenty of men who are at ease and very bold with women but desperately chicken-hearted and compliant when it is necessary to put up a real fight. From mosaic of the ranking potential as general notion is derived a notion of visual ranking potential as a sum of signaling attributes, possibly secondary ones, expressed prominently enough for triggering the other specimen's instincts. A good example of the visual rank is a low-ranking rooster with a glued-up big comb. Such one is perceived by all other roosters as high-ranking but once the added comb is removed, its status plummets down. One more example, a person suffering from narcissism (a person who is "in love with himself") can produce an impression of high-ranking on some people. But at the same time he can be completely deprived of ability to fight for his place under the sun that is the very essence of high rank. On the other hand, a friendly person, even quite successful in life, can make an impression of low-ranking.
Moreover, different specimens can be impressed by different signs of ranking potential, i.e. sensitivity of the different specimens to the different signaling attributes comprising the pattern of the specimen's image can vary. Visual rank can be equal to actual rank but might be not. As it was mentioned above, this happens because the neural structures implementing instinctive behavioral models arose in the deepest antiquity. They are relatively primitive and react on surrounding conditions very superficially and stereotypically. A specimen can be low-ranking by nature but possess one or two visual attributes of a high rank. Then these one or two distinctively visual (signaling) attributes can have an affect on someone, despite of the objectively low-ranking potential of their owner. Alas! Even their own primeval goals are achieved by instinctive programs only on average and with high inaccuracy due to the primitive mechanisms of their realization.
Briefly speaking:
Humans as all other gregarious animals have propensity to form hierarchical social structures where behavior is regulated by proper instincts.
The ability to take a certain rank in a hierarchy called ranking potential. Ranking potential is defined by many parameters, starting with physical power, but for highly organized creatures, it is mainly defined by an individual's profound confidence (primarily, innate) in his/her right to be above others, probably neither supported by any real merits nor having any grounds.
Other most important elements of the rank potential also are: conflictability, i.e. a desire to initiate conflicts; then, conflict endurance, i.e. ability to withstand conflicts dictated by someone else; then, the degree of compliancy (or incompliancy)- that can be either closely connected with the above named factors or can be an independent phenomenon.
Due to the certain independence of the factors affecting ranking potential there is a possibility that hierarchical status will be revealed as mosaic, i.e. when some attributes point to a high-ranking potential but others to a low and thus, it is acceptable to judge about ranking potential as a general notion.
Right from its birth every specimen has a certain ranking potential which is conditioned as much by hereditary factors as conditions of prenatal development and serves as a foundation for the actual rank in the adulthood.
Actual ranking potential depends also on conditions of growing up, upbringing and formation of personality. All these can either suppress or empower inborn bases of ranking potential.
Visual ranking potential is defined by presence in specimen of one or more secondary but nonetheless clearly expressed attributes of high- or low-ranking potential.
Visual ranking potential often can be illusive, i.e. not corresponding to the real ability of a specimen to ranking struggle.
About primativeness and culture
What is the difference between woman's logic and
iron logic?
- Woman's does not rust.
(an old anecdote)
To the English reader: "Primative" - is NOT misspelled "primitive"! This is a scientific term offered by the author, originating from "primary" and "primates", that is described below.
In contrast to the majority of animals, different people are subject to instinct's influence with different degree. If someone is not subjected to instinct's influence completely, but lives by rational thinking that means such a person is absolutely non-primative (in real life such people do not exist). The other man that is directed in life only by feelings, that is to say is fully subject to the instincts, is absolutely primative (such people sometimes exist in real life). D. Zaraiski introduces a term "power of the model", which is an index of ability of a given behavioral program to dominate among similar ones. This is because for each situation a brain usually has several behavioral programs, among which there are both innate and obtained, and which one of them will be accepted for execution under other equal conditions depends on the power of each behavioral model. So, primativeness is a degree of domination (power) of instinctive over rational models.
Rudiments of non-primative behavior are observed among many higher-level animals, more significant traces of it are seen among Primates, but only in human society did non-primativeness become relatively mass phenomenon.
The term "primativeness" is not identical to the term "culture". Culture is kind of a derivative of primativeness. Among artistic people, even with a highest level of culture and decency, the people with high primativeness are predominant as such people live in a world of feelings.
Although a term "culture" is intuitively clear without any explanations, it is very difficult to give it a precise definition. It is obvious only that culture is a product of upbringing and education (in the broad sense) and primativeness is something inborn. Primeval motivation of a cultural man is suppressed by upbringing and is replaced by requirements of the laws and societal traditions. However, it can appear on occasions when the laws and traditions do not determine the situation strictly and leave some freedom, and also under influence of alcohol or in times of strong stress. The higher the primativeness, the more often and stronger the appearances are. The old dispute about physicists and lyric poets is actually a dispute about primativeness.
The primativeness correlates more with emotionality than with culture. Instinctive programs, when finding resemblance of internal signaling attributes with some factors of outside situation, create corresponding emotions and a highly primative person gladly submits to them. A low primative person, feeling the same forceful emotions, is capable of acting contrary to them.
As ranking potential, the degree of primativeness is basically determined genetically and by uterine growth conditions. It changes inconsiderably during upbringing and education, however, it can have influence on the behavioral manageability and the ability and propensity to certain kind of education. It can happen that a man with a strong scientific education does not trust his knowledge in everyday matters, relying more on feelings, and vice versa. A man with very low primativeness lives kind of outside of primeval hierarchy. On the other hand, a highly primative person is very sensitive to the rank of the people around, recognizing the smallest display of concession as a signal for beginning of hierarchical attack, but meeting someone with superior rank causes him a will paralysis and vile toadying.
The higher the inborn primativeness the greater the pedagogical efforts are needed to make a cultured person. In the next generation, everything repeats once more. The man whose culture achieved only by immense pedagogical efforts can have extremely uncultured children because the base remained the same. A newborn child, of course, has no mind and therefore lives according to instincts regardless of the level of inborn primativeness, but soon this level will begin revealing itself. There is a very important nuance: primativeness is not an indicator of a power or a weakness of one's mind. It is a degree of confidence to one's mind in practical cases. Highly primative but highly intellectual scientist can easily combine strong scientific knowledge with sincere religious faith which dates back to the instinct of submission to alpha.
As was mentioned above, women trust intuition and feelings more than logical conclusions, this composes a so-called woman's logic. I.e. the highly primative specimens are prevalent among women. It is known that girls study better than boys in schools, universities and other institutions even in ones with technical majors. While studying, not only theory is lectured, but also practical tasks are solved, and laboratory works are held. And girls are doing this better than boys! But when the time comes to utilize the knowledge in practice, the much needed thought does not come to mind.
The fact that women are more religious is also caused by higher primativeness - there is no rank higher than God's, but it does not really matter whether a God exists or not in the first place.
Undisputedly, a man as a social being is very multidimensional and is not completely fitted into the three dimensional space: low-high primativeness, alpha-omega, and high-low culture. However, the events interesting to us occur exactly in this space. And also it is worth to make a point that primativeness is a general notion, showing average power of all instinctive behavioral programs. However there are quite a lot of such programs, including contradictory ones, and each can have different power, and that tangles up even more the observable scene.
Briefly speaking:
Primativeness is an indicator of power of inborn behavioral programs relative to rationally motivated behavior.
Externally it is expressed in an inclination to emotionally based actions and has only an indirect relationship with intellect and culture themselves as well as to temperament in the choleric - phlegmatic axis.
About princes and princesses
THE WOMAN - is a female who has a MAN;
THE MAN - is a male who has MONEY.
(an anecdote)
What a pity that generals get married while in
lieutenant's rank!
(from the conversation of two old virgins)
Such exclusively important for all animate world process as reproduction could not be left without the control of the instincts. Correspondingly, love, as the strongest feeling, is a voice of the same primeval instinct that forces to prefer the best being of another sex for mating. And what are the criteria of this preference? It is unnecessary to prove that these criteria are kept unchanged since primeval-herd times when all the instincts were formed. It is possible to say that during its formation the instincts "took a photo" of the situation existed at that moment and keep verifying with this "picture" for as long as the species exist. Thus, the instincts allow choosing a perfect partner from the primeval point of view. The simplest and the most demonstrative attribute of such superiority in primeval hierarchy is a high rank. Though it is very obvious that rank, strictly speaking, is more of visually superficial indicator of preference but it is almost impossible to imagine anything better in unwise nature. External attractiveness (beauty) is less reliable in this sense. In general, the number of couplations is the simplest and clearest quantitative index of a male's rank in hierarchy. For females this correlation is very weak and, perhaps, inverse.
It is customary to think that alpha simply takes away a female from beta (gamma...) just as food, however, the rules of behavior in a hierarchy are obeyed by all the members of a group including females. That means there is not needed to take female away in most cases. She herself, complying with an internal instinctive program, prefers high-ranking male. Not in vain, speaking about ideal groom, women mention word "prince". Real prince is not a plebian job and usually he is a real candidate to become king.
Sure, it is not the only tendency. For instance, there is an "instinct of fresh blood preference" manifesting itself as sexual curiosity. The goal of this instinct is a counteraction to mating with close relatives unavoidable in isolated groups. According to it, under other equal conditions the preference can be given to a new and unusual partner desirably from outside of the group. The instinct is clearly seen in male's behavior, since it conforms well to the principal of unlimited sexual expansion. In female's behavior it is seen with some limitations. These limitations mandatorily include ranking potential of a "guest" that should be not lower than certain minimum. And of course, these tendencies are combined with individual tastes and sympathies. It is important to emphasize that the high rank of a male does not give a GUARANTEE of access to the certain female, but it is a weighty factor raising PROBABILITY of this event. A correlational factor between sexual attractiveness of male and his rank is different among the species, and substantially non-linear. Males of the first several ranks of hierarchy can be almost indistinguishable by their sexual attractiveness for females. Therefore dominant males must fend away sub-dominant males from females. However, beginning approximately from the middle of hierarchy and below sexual attractiveness of males decreases so much that dominant can afford not to worry. It is highly probable that such male will not be admitted by females themselves. To the English reader: Now let us tell you a couple of words about such picturesque character of Russian anecdotes, as the captain Rzhevsky. Captain Rzhevsky was a hussar. Hussars were an elite kind of cavalry in Russia in 19th century. Only tall, healthy, often handsome men were accepted. Beautiful uniform along with a huge mustache made them very popular among women. Soon the word "hussar" became synonymous to Don Juan. Captain Rzhevsky completely matches this definition. Along with phenomenal success among women, he was distinguished with self-confidence, vulgarity and ignorance, which he was not ashamed of. This character is very much like 19th century captain Frank Drebin from the popular movie series "Naked Gun". For example, one of anecdotes of a series about captain Rzhevsky:
Once captain Rzhevsky was dancing on ball with a noble young lady.
Subbenly she is telling him politely:
- Ah! I am not feeling well. Would you eexcuse me for minute, I need some
fresh air?...
- Captain: OK, go. But be quick on it. JJust fart off and be back.
Cornet Obolensky is more delcate character of these anecdotes.
Now for illustration, an old but very demonstrative for our topic anecdote:
Once cornet Obolensky asked captain Rzhevsky:
Captain, sir! Would you share your experience in seducing women so quickly!
- But what's here to explain? Come up tttoo a lady and ask: "Ma'am! May I stick
it in?"
- But captain! That's a sure way to be slapped in the face for such
rudeness...
- Well, there could be a slap in the face. But nonetheless, I somehow still
manage to stick it in.
And now let's imagine that cornet followed the captain's example. Imagined? So what? You are absolutely right. He will get slapped in his face. However, it does not follow from the text that cornet is less attractive than captain and moreover, he is obviously more civilized and decent. Also let's imagine that captain expressed his proposition in oversophisticate and delicate phrases. Will he get a rejection? Of course not, but even more possible consent. But what if cornet will propose in the same refined language? In this case he might not get slapped in his face immediately but the final result probably will be the same though for some time he will be kept on a short string and jerked around. And he will be ridiculed. I.e. actually it does not have any serious significance for a woman HOW a man expresses his desire but it is extremely important for her WHO does it.
If a man has a high rank ("captain") then women will forgive him almost any behavior and almost any weaknesses; if he has a low rank ("cornet") then even complete impeccability will not help him.
Moreover, captain really does not see any problems with this. Neither he has them personally nor he even suspects that the other men might have them. Because he does not assert any efforts to conquering women (moreover, women themself often put up certain efforts to win him) and he sincerely thinks that women treat all other men the same. But who of these two will be a better husband (faithful, decent, hard-working...)? Anyone but the captain! But whom will women want to marry the most? You are right, the captain. And in addition to this, in original (movie "Hussar ballad") the captain Rzhevsky was an open and convinced opponent of Hymen.
It is said that women love masters. This is true, but it is only individual case. Even possession of "strong elbows" i.e. the ability and readiness to fight for one's own interests, is an individual case in conjugal relationships. Love, as a call of instinct, can not contemplate and that's why it is often triggered on visual rank rather than on actual one. It happens that "captain" looks like pitiful whiner crying that he is so perfect and superior but the ungifted people around do not appreciate him; or like capricious child with child-women egoistic character and all people tiptoe around eagering to please him in every possible way (any other cases are possible). The main thing is that he is sincerely sure in his own superiority. It is obvious that such whiner and moaner is not the worthiest family continuer (even from primeval point of view) and the actual rank of these people as an indicator of their ability to succeed in life is very low. However, instinct formally reacts to the above mentioned assurance which is the main signaling attribute of a high rank. Since instinct does not bother itself with explanations and mind does not usually recognize such self-assurance as a merit so everybody feels hymned in poems and in prose a mystical and enigmatical sensation of love choice - because it is wanted against common sense and it is unclear what for.
Whom do men love? A Princess is not necessarily required. Men's instinctive criteria of preference are simpler and radically different from women's ones. The main woman's qualities attracting men are the newness, availability and physical perfection. Of course, if all these qualities are combined in one woman then her attractiveness will be the highest and such woman will be the center of men's attention in the first place but only until either gaining access to her body or making sure of no chances to get it. However, this is correct only in respect of women as sexual partners. Men choose wives by rational judgement (only those who have choice and enough brain). The sensational criteria of men's preference of women are much fuzzier due to the higher diversity of men (and hence, their tastes) and less desperate necessity to make a choice. A male does not have to choose a females since he needs them all without any distinction. But women's rank, having big importance in relations between women, is relatively less important for a man. For sure, high ranking woman can turn men's heads more quickly but modest and shy (low ranking) wives were valued at all times. It is well-known that women much more often than men fall in love with their chiefs, bosses, tutors, and etc. whose high visual rank is manifested by their position and partially age.
If high rank is a key to women's hearts for a man ensuring his freedom of choice but for a woman her high rank is a source of problems with men. Average-ranking men are not acceptable for her neither sexually nor platonically (not to mention low-ranking ones) but high-ranking men are very scares and most of them are easy-riders. And if they are not easy-riders then they are hopelessly engaged and not free. Low-ranking woman as every woman preferring "alpha" is still open-minded toward "omega". In some circumstances she can forgive a man his low rank and therefore his other strengths get the chance to be appreciated.
Briefly speaking:
Emotional choice of a marriage partner (sympathy, crush, infatuation, love - depending on the strength of feelings) is implemented in accordance with a system of instinctive criteria of evaluating a potential partner.
In woman's emotional choice of a man the following has the highest significance - man's instinctive hierarchical status (including purely visual rank) that might not coincide with his social status. His physical characteristics takes the second preference.
In man's emotional choice of a woman the following has the most important meaning in equal degree - women's novelty, accessibility, and physical characteristics.
I'd like to remind that we settled not to examine the rational choice in this Treatise.
About the struggle of two "egos"
And I'm fighting, suppressing the scoundrel inside of me
Oh, my anxious fate!
I am afraid of the error, it might happen that
I am suppressing not the right "ego"
(V. Vysotsky)
Back in the Soviet era a poll was held among the students of Leningrad's universities. First, they were asked what personal strengths and qualities they would like to find in the future spouse and second, what qualities in the opposite sex they were attracted to. The priorities ranked as follows (see table 1, 2):
Table 1. Young men opinion Successful girl Desirable wife
1 Beautiful Honest, fair +16
2 Cheerful Cheerful 0
3 Likes to dance Hardworking +7
4 With a sense of humour Self-controlled +11
5 Brave Energetic +2
6 Clever Likes her job +8
7 Tries to help the other
8 Energetic
9 Tries to help the other -2
10 Hardworking Clever -4
11 With a sense of humour -7
12 Strong-willed Strong-willed 0
13 Beautiful -12
14 Likes her job Brave -9
15 Self-controlled Likes to dance -12
16 Honest, Fair Tall +1
17 Tall
Table 2. Opinions of the girls Young man with success Desirable husband
1 Energetic Hardworking +13
2 Cheerful Honest, fair +11
3 Handsome Clever +5
4 Likes to dance Self-controlled +12
5 Tall Brave +6
6 With a sense of humour Strong-willed +4
7 Tries to help the other Cheerful -5
8 Clever Likes his job +5
9 Honest, fair Tries to help the other -2
10 Strong-willed
11 Brave Energetic -10
12
13 Likes his job
14 Hardworking With a sense of humour -8
15 Likes to dance -11
16 Self-controlled Tall -11
17 Handsome -14
It was not the goal of the poll to find out the attitude to primeval rank. Otherwise, such feature as "to take everything of one's own from life" (and why not somebody's own as well, just to oneself) probably would have taken the first place in the left columns. But even without this, it is obvious that the left columns reflect the primeval ideals and the values of the family life are reflected in the right. Especially it is necessary to emphasize the liking to dance. While it is almost useless in family life, the dancing technique has important ritual meaning. Dance is a part of conjugal ritual of many animals including Primates. The non-dancing one does not demonstrate conjugal behavior and from primeval point of view looks like not sexually mature. It is very indicative that such qualities as hard-working and self-controlling take the last rows of the left columns. "Omegas" were the most uncomplaining in the primeval group and worked more than others... Also it is easy to notice that the left and the right columns are upside-down mirror reflections of each other. It is especially typical for polled women. Men's attitude toward women is a bit more consistent and that confirms the thesis that men trust more to their mind, i.e. they are less primative.
It seems like an "upturning" of the requirements of mind and instinct is the main reason of difficulties in a search for a partner for highly educated people. Traditionally, it is customary to assume that the problem is in the high level of requirements. Taken alone, these requirements might not be so high after all, but they are very conflicting. The heart wants something that is justly rejected by the mind and the wishes of the mind do not satisfy the heart. Indeed, such qualities as kindness, decency, honesty, respect, tactfulness, clear conscience are considered to be the attributes of well-educated, polite, honest man and a good husband, but at the same time from the primeval point of view these are the attributes of low rank in the hierarchy!!!
In the course of this argumentation, the seditious idea is creeping in that the former practice of joining a man and a wife by parental will is not so bad despite its obvious disadvantages. Of course, in terms of the present cult of love, it is stupid to stand up for its revival. This will not cause anything more than a storm of protests and a lot of mockery. Neither can I imagine how this can be implemented in real life now. But in the case of parents, who, searching for the matches for their children, evaluate the candidates from the civilized standpoints, even if they keep in mind their own interests, they thus make a self-selection of HOMO SAPIENS in the direction of increasing culture and development of civilization. Trusting a call of instincts, mankind is drifting slowly back, to the primeval herd,
And in my opinion, we already observe some attributes of such a drift. Intelligence, sensitivity, mutual respect becomes unfashionable. Opposite to this, brutal force and aggression, indulgence in a riot of desires and incontinence pours in from screens and pages. Writing off all this on the influence of everyday culture is incorrect. Household culture - is the generalized reflection of natural culture of all people. "Soap operas" are most popular among the elderly people whose whole conscious life passed in the soviet time, when totally different ideals were being cultivated.
Lessening of the above mentioned selection at first leads to the growth of primativeness and average ranking potential, and then on this basis to the declining of the cultural level. And afterward, perhaps, Einstein will happen to be right, the fourth (if not already the third) world war will be fought with cudgels...
Briefly speaking:
Following the instincts (i.e. feelings) in choice of nuptial partner contradicts the contemporary ideals of monogamous marriage, neither does it promote the selection of HOMO SAPIENS in the direction of the growth of altruism and the cultural level;
however, it can contribute to the growth of average physiological indicators known as and called acceleration.
About alcohol
Our consciousness is determined by three things:
Being, beating, and drinking.
(ascribed to Karl Marx)
In the course of the above mentioned poll, the attitude to alcohol was examined as well but for unknown reasons it did not get in to the tables. It was found that the girls would like to have a non-drinking husband, but in reality man's sobriety did not give him any advantages and on the contrary invoked some kind of suspicion. Suppressing the mind, alcohol introduces a kind of bestiality in a human image that is so amiable to primeval instincts. You could also notice how often this fateful decision for each man (and for the whole mankind...) is taken in a drunken state and how close relationship between sex and alcohol is. Love, and without Champagne?!
Tests on animals give very interesting results: Alcohol raises the low rank, and diminishes the high one!
This is one of the reasons of ineffectiveness of the "dry laws" and other measures struggling for a sober way of life. Without releasing primeval instincts and raising the ranking potential, which is achievable by the alcohol in the easiest way, mankind would have faced difficulties with its own reproduction. And the biggest difficulties would have occurred with the worthiest people who personify civilized society - low ranked and low primative persons. We can only regret the negative effects of alcohol consumption and that it is mostly used by the people who do not need any releasing of primeval instincts.
Since there are no alcoholics among animals hence sexual selection does not recognize what it is, and thus, the fact that a certain man is addicted to alcohol or simply a drunkard practically does not affect his popularity among women. Moreover, a majority of women who got stuck with such husbands, put up roughly the same pretext: "I thought he would start a family life (become a father and so on) and quit drinking." But there is no clear answer to the question: "Why did you jump to this conclusion?"
Briefly speaking:
Alcohol, by releasing at large primeval instincts and leveling ranking potentials, eases sexual intimacy, thus increasing the chance for low ranking people, however negative consequences of alcohol consumption are widely known.
Since instinctive sexual selection does not know anything about alcoholism, symptoms of alcohol abuse do not hamper subconscious preference of the potential partner.
About Bastard and Fatherless Children.
A sleeping Reason gives birth to monsters.
(Francisco Goya)
It is obvious that the fathers of such children are mainly "captains" - regardless if it was done in marriage or not. Even when an out of wedlock child grows up in a two parent family, (with a step-father who might not be aware...) people around notice the "difficulty" of the child. It is commonly known that out of wedlock children are often regular clients of the criminal groups. Usually under the euphemism "difficulty" we mean the inability to control a child by civilized methods, which confirms his high ranking potential.
The "difficulty" and criminality of a child is usually written off to the problems of upbringing in such conditions. For sure such pedagogical problems exist in reality but these are not the problems responsible for the forming of specific low or high ranking mentality. It is the game of genetic inheritance. Please tell yourself if a man who deserts a pregnant woman is decent? At least not very. However, males in the primeval herd did it exactly this way. But do the features, which caused his indecency, have the right to be genetically transferred?
I will remind once more that the initial ranking potential is something inborn and it is well seen at the infant stage. High or low primativeness is displayed at a later time. As was mentioned the higher the primativeness of a child, the more pedagogical efforts should be exerted for bearing a decent and educated person. It is also important that a tutor should have a ranking potential not lower then a child, (it is usually said that a "tutor should be authoritative over the child"), otherwise all these pedagogical efforts will lead nowhere.
Researches of monozygotic twins separated in babyhood show that the role of heredity in the educational process is diminished and there is no way to correct (nor to damage) everything by education. Quite often such twins living separately in different countries behave themselves like they grew up in one family side by side. This detraction of the role of heredity in a world and especially in Marxist pedagogy goes back to idealistic and utopian conceptions of the past - forerunners of Marxism.
We can accept as proven the fact that friendliness or its main components are predetermined genetically. A man bred out a dog selecting the friendliest wolf cubs for reproduction.
Briefly speaking:
Conceiving a child by reason of love (against the popular thesis) IS NOT the circumstance contributing by itself to the appearance in a child of such qualities as love to the people around and high morals. Since the women tend to fall in love with the egoistic men the child conceived because of love will be more inclined to the same egoism.
Conception of the parent showing UNSEXUAL love to the people in general, (altruism) contributes of the appearance of this quality in a child.
About the husbands and the lovers
Who is a lover??
- Just the same, as husband, but he
does not need to wash the dishes.
(anecdote)
All the illnesses are caused by nerves.
But only syphilis - by love.
(an old medical anecdote)
Here we will not examine a lover like a sponsor or a source of material welfare but let's consider a lover only as the means to satisfy a woman's sexual desires.
It has been proven that any woman can be physiologically satisfied by any man (if we don't take into account medical pathologies like complete absence of genitals). Most cases of dissatisfaction are in nervous and psychological sphere. Something to notice is that the majority of dissatisfied women get satisfaction doing masturbation. It is not a penis that satisfies a woman but a MAN. And he satisfies not as a physical body but as IMAGE, which meets more or less some criteria. If this image fits these criteria quite sufficiently, a woman starts getting a "tuning" to this probably fantasized man. It can be a kind of amorousness, interest, curiosity or anything else... Without this "tuning", satisfaction can be problematic particularly to highly primative women. But if some women can "tune" easily to any man, the others can somehow "tune" to only one of hundreds. Obviously the first probably have low-ranking potential and/or low primativeness while for the second they are high. The "tuning" appears more often with a man whose ranking potential is not lower than that of the female and his behavior goes along with the primeval conjugal rituals. The cases when there is no satisfaction with a husband but rape satisfies instead illustrate that well because a rape is usually performed in a swine-like fashion like it was done in a primeval herd by the high-ranking males. By the way, such a phenomenon is not the last reason why women often do not report a rape to police and in some cases even protect and cover the rapists! Married by the rational decision of the mind, a woman can remain dissatisfied at least for the first time until she gets used to this man. As a proverb says, love comes with habit.
Do you want to force a husband to wash clothes, to clean floors or to look after the baby, etc? Did high-ranking males in primeval herd do such a contemptible job? If you succeed in this (but this is unlikely if he was not inclined to it by himself) your mind probably will be satisfied for some time. However, your primeval "ego" will immediately recognize the lowering of the rank of this male... and you will want to get a lover.
Briefly speaking:
Most probably a woman's sexual satisfaction comes from a subconsciously attractive man even though on a conscious level he might be unpleasant even disgusting. If there is no such subconscious attractiveness of the man (even giving him a logically high mark) then the attempt to achieve sexual satisfaction only by perfecting sexual technique might not give a result. Most likely is the allurement of high-ranking and highly primative men, which are dominant among the most successful lovers.
Even with all the positive sides, getting married by the rational reasons (for kind, honest, decent ...) might be filled with problems of your sexual satisfaction during the first time.
So, of whom are there more?
I had forty surnames
I had seven passports
Seventy women loved me
I had two hundred enemies...
(V. Vysotsky)
In mass media and in informal conversations the opinion is often expressed that loneliness of women is caused by the lack of men. However, there is a well-known fact that there are more boys born than girls! The results of a census in Russia clearly show that the initial predominance of boys remains until the age of 35, from 35 to 45 men and women are approximately equal in numbers and then women dominance becomes obvious. The fact that there are more women than men ON AVERAGE perplexes the society. Women over 50 (who are really much more than men) are not the objects of any real interest as conjugal and sexual partners. But the men are prevalent in their reproductive age. That means that the average statistical woman has a choice during the whole reproductive period and that probably has a very profound biological meaning. Details
I suppose that there is a strong visual selection here - women always tell about their marital problems often and without any uneasiness, but having such problems for men was always shameful and therefore carefully hidden. If a child does not cry, a mother does not realize. A men's deficit could take place if one woman would have been able to marry a few men even unofficially. In this case the other women actually would not have gotten any man. However, in reality women are more inclined to congregate in the secret harems of high ranking married men and they often exhibit such an enviable loyalty that it leaves nothing to do for the other available men. And such women are considered to be single! Meanwhile if the number of men and women is approximately equal (not counting the percentage and even this is on the women's side) so according to "the law of connected vessels" the bigger number of women in single men harems the more other men are forced to pose as staunch bachelors. As a rule, a man who is a lover of a married woman is married himself and he is never faithful so much to both of them that the other women would have no chances.
Briefly speaking:
The public opinion that it is hard to get married for women because of the lack of men is a mass delusion based on superficial knowledge of statistics, intensified by men's unwillingness to disclose their sexual and marital problems.
Origin of family, prostitution, and promiscuity
Dedicated to the cherished memory of F. Engels...
Research of conjugal behavior on animals shows that a family should be distinguished as a household unit and grouping of specimens with the purpose of mating. The fact that in reality both roles are very often combined does not mean that there cannot be any other way.
For instance, those species where one parent is capable of upbringing the offspring alone, family as a household team mostly consists from this parent and its offspring. That means that a male-female union here pursues only the goal of mating and has nothing to do with the family itself, as we understand it. The same can be said about the species practicing R-strategy of reproduction where the parents do not take any care of their posterity. This is one pole of the conjugal world.
For the other species, upbringing of offspring becomes impossible without outside help and thus there is a reason to bring in the second parent as a helper. Species with a strictly paired family structure (for example, birds, especially nesting birds) are another pole of the conjugal world. Here the mating and upbringing of posterity looks as something naturally inseparable. However, as it was mentioned before in such conjugated families spouses do not always keep copulative fidelity. Up to one quarter of all the chicks might be conceived from someone other then the "lawful husband", although from a household point of view such couples might represent idyllic picture.
Well, the second parent is not the only possible helper in this business. Grandmothers and sisters can be brought in and a kindergarten of some sort can be created and so on. For example, a female hare nurtures with milk the first found baby hare regardless of its relationship to her. But which way is more preferable? If the main parent (i.e. the one who fulfills the major part of the job of caring for offspring, most often it is a female but sometimes it can be a male) needs only some additional help that does not play a principally important role, then the help from the whole group in general is preferable. This is done by the canines for example. However if the required help borders on self-sacrifice then this way becomes unreliable. A personal commitment is required here.
How was our predecessor's business being done? Probably the "main parent" was female. It is obvious as well that not every grandmother lived to see her grandchildren, the sisters have their own children and clearly women are worse hunters then men. At the same time a child or a fetus devoid of sufficient proteinaceous food could seriously suffer from malnutrition. In these conditions the help from the men had to play the main role, though not excluding secondary help from the other members of the group.
A typical feature of the hominid behavior is the complete absence of instinctive programs of male's caring for babies and for females outside of rut period. When our predecessors did not differ from regular apes there was no necessity in these programs. Females managed quite well themselves or with minor help from grandmothers. But when our primogenitors became bipedal and the volume of the brain began to increase (with the corresponding intellectual growth) the female started failing to manage alone. From one point the size of the fetus head increased, from another point upright stance narrowed the pelvis of primeval women. This complicated child labor to the point that the child had to be born very prematurely in biological terms and that meant helpless to follow in the tribal paths. From the third point, the growth of intellect entails prolongation of the period for brain formation and training, i.e. an even longer lasting childhood and period of child's helplessness. In fact, humans have the longest childhood relative to their lifetime among all animals. Human childhood comprises approximately from one-fifth to one-quarter of the whole life. Of course, the children of our primogenitors had a shorter childhood. If a contemporary child is helpless almost up to six years old then helplessness of HOMO ERECTUS lasted probably up to two years old, which is long enough.
So we have: a child with the mother who needed prolonged and serious care, forming a smart brain required proteinaceous food (meaning meat) that could not be obtained by a mother burdened by a helpless child, but a male did not have an instinct of caring for the female. Intellect that would have been enable to make such a rational decision was rudimental and was incapable of such action. So what to do?
Since instinctive behavioral programs cannot appear out of nowhere, hence it is required to find out what other instinctive action could serve as the bases for the appearing of instincts of caring for females and babies in primeval males. What can serve as a base for developing an instinct of fatherhood? The most realistic way is sexual affection. However, there is one very important obstacle in the way of using it. The problem is that for most species female's (and often male's) sexual activity is obviously of cyclical nature. Their sexual readiness lasts only for several days during a year; outside of this period (period of rut) the females of such species are absolutely incapable of copulation. Nonetheless, this is the most effective way since sexual attraction is one of the strongest. Probably, one of the ways, if not the only way, is increasing the time limits of rut (specifically, widening the time limits of female's ability to copulate without being fertilized) and concealing the external attributes of the very moment of ovulation itself (see 2 for details). And in reality women are unique among the animated world in their sexual readiness around the year. If a male's year-round sexual readiness is reasonably frequent, then menstruation is known only among females of the HOMO SAPIEN species and none other.
Now a female has something to offer! Thus a male gets a stimulus for her nourishing and other ways of caring for her during the whole reproductive period, (and other manners of caring for her) and by the way the fertilization of this female in general may not be expected. To be more specific, a male in accordance with principle of unlimited sexual expansion, desires the maximum number of fertilized females and is somehow subconsciously interested in impregnating this female. Especially if one keeps in mind that alimony was paid not for the number of children but for the number of copulations. But a primal woman needed only one conception a year for childbirth and not just from anyone but from one the strongest and highest ranking. But who is going to feed her?
Getting a high-ranking male as a breadwinner is a dream but with almost no chances of realization. As a getter, he is not really bad at all (including at the expense of robbery of low-ranking males) but he is in high demand neither is he physically able to feed and support all the females who want him. But maybe only one or two favorite wives. Neither he has any stimulus to this. Why should he pay for copulation if he has it for free? If it were possible to own him monopolistically (as it was said - it would have been the ultimate dream come true) then all the problems would have been solved once and for all. However such monopolistic ownership of a high-ranking male was virtually impossible. Even the "favorite wife" could not rely on him. Of course, she could rely on his preferential (once again - not monopolistic) treatment, but not on his sexual fidelity. Sure it seems like a female does not need much of sexual fidelity itself. At least once a year he will find a time to fertilize her. However, sexual infidelity of such male had certain serious consequences for the female. First, there was the risk of loosing her "favorite wife" status. Second, there was a risk for her of diminishing sexual activity from this male and that means insufficiency of pleasures (low-ranking males are bad substitutes and they do not deliver such satisfaction). And even furthermore, the loss of the "favorite wife" status means lowering her own rank in the hierarchy. But here we are talking only about the "favorite wives" which were mostly the females with high enough ranking potential. What to do for the others?
It is very simple! For conceiving a child and for one's own enjoyment, a high-ranking male was preferred, invoking the jealousy of his "favorite wives" and at the same time deceiving several low-ranking males pouring gifts in wavering hope for a long awaited sexual act that was delayed by the female for as long as possible, up to the complete avoidance in favor of a high-ranking male. But all these low-ranking males simply did not have any other choice but to pay for their access to the body. Even considering that he probably will not be the father of most of the children of this primeval woman. In reality such practice is a paradigm of polyandry. I'd like to point out that this necessity for females to have a breadwinner opened a gate for low-ranking males to have a real chance to transfer their altruistic genes to the descendants. Isn't this connected to the abrupt acceleration of social evolution of mankind observed in the last couple of hundred thousand years based on the strengthening altruistic tendencies in people's behavior?
Furthermore, during the development of humanity, during the transition from gathering to agrarian society (sometimes called the "Neolithic revolution") at some moment getting food from several different men became unnecessary, one became enough, or a rich one became enough for a few females, and even she became herself an economically more viable subject. In these conditions the disappearance of necessity to get food from a few men lead to the automatic disappearance of necessity to give herself to the many men! Due to this fact, our ancestors' desire to secure a nuptial union (either monogamous or polygynous) seems like natural. This not only reflected the new economic realities but hampered the spread of venereal diseases. Automatically it also met some ideals of justice - instead of the primeval "one male has everything, others - nothing, "there appeared" a woman to every man." I have no intentions of exaggerating the influence of ideas of equality on people of the Neolithic revolution, but in this case the equality happened as a side-effect of the above mentioned factors and taken alone was not really meaningful. Moreover, at the beginning there was a predominance of polygyny as more habitual for high-ranking males, but seriously unfair for low-ranking ones.
There is one more important thing to notice. The attitude toward a female as a thing that can be bought (and that does not object to being bought) multiplied by the absence of the male's instinct of caring for the female lead at last to the system known as patriarchy. Matriarchy as the a mass phenomenon did not exist among our ancestors at least for the last ten million years since they moved to the Savannah and probably it never existed at all. There was no instinctive, economic, or any other presuppositions for that. (see 1 for details) And even otherwise, by the reason of high danger living in the Savannah, the role of males as defenders increased together with a kind of militarization of the population, resulting in giving privileges to the defenders (including at the expense of the female's rights). The practice of tracing a relationship based on the mother's genealogy among few peoples reflected only the impossibility of establishing a firm fatherhood under active promiscuity and nothing more. But nonetheless, since patriarchy formed relatively late, it was fixed in instincts weakly and thus could not void the fundamental principle of the female irreplaceability, that is at least half a billion years old. But every time the juridical pressure diminished, the woman became a selecting subject. Let's remember medieval knights. Moreover, even in the midst of patriarchy, a groom himself did not select a bride. It was done by a third party. (usually by parents)
Briefly speaking:
The beginnings of bringing males to take part in the baby's upbringing appeared among our predecessors with the transition to upright posture and bipedal gait and the increasing of the brain size resulting in a complete helplessness and prolonged childhood of the newly born. This created a necessity for material support of primeval females during pregnancy and the raising of the child, which could not have survived without such support.
The stimulus for such male support could be (and became!) only the constant sexual readiness of the primeval women, which is not seen among any other species.
As a result, the copulation became used for two independent purposes: one as before - to conceive the children and another - to pay for the material welfare provided by males. Because of weak inter-dependency of these tasks it is not mandatory to have the same males in both cases, i.e. a peculiar mixture of polygyny and polyandry took place and the polyandry component was based mainly on the material reasons.
The transition to the contemporary monogamous or polygamous marriage was promoted by the economic development of the mankind liberating a woman from the necessity of giving herself to many men.
More about choice
Who makes a choice? In the animal world it is always a female who chooses the male. If a male chooses this will conflict with the fundamental principle of gender separation - a principle of female's irreplaceability. Those few species where visually a male makes a choice can be considered as a short-term evolutionary deviation and even there the female's choice is probably rather camouflaged. For example, a female can make no choice by herself but instead she can provoke males to fight each other and then prefer a winner (or might become capricious and not prefer anyone at all...). The main feature of the selection is that there are a few males on "input" but only one on "output" and the mechanism of this selection significantly varies from species to species. It is obvious that exactly such reflected selection takes place among people. It is considered indecent and even impossible for a woman to make a choice directly without a preceding competition or even fight among men, even if in absentia or imaginary (let us recall medieval knights). Afterwards it is very hard for her not to prefer a man who demonstrates the behavior of a winner.
As we already clarified above, a woman, building her relationship with the men, instinctively pursues two, perhaps loosely connected, goals. Form one side she wants to get as much as possible material benefits from the men (not only instinctively but consciously as well!), from the other side she wants the one who would win her heart. In primeval times any kind of convergence of these goals in one male were possible only for very few females, the majority of others achieved those goals by promiscuity - the impossibility of being fully provided by one high-ranking male, was compensated by the high number of low-ranking males, at the same time given a chance a high-ranking male was usually preferred for sexual service.
However, with the growth of economic development of humanity the necessary conditions for arranging permanent conjugal relationships in a form of monogamous or polygamous marriage. Hence, free changing of the partners after creating a union was prohibited either legally or traditionally. Naturally, the sexual relationships outside of the marital union as the rule were forbidden. Historically this happened at a very late time and that's why it was not fixed in instincts - feelings as usually continued existing in a "primeval herd" state.
In these conditions if potential spouses were given any freedom of choice, then the future wife was put into a very complicated and mostly contradictory situation. From one side she needs a HUSBAND, i.e. who is an assistant in family business and who is able to treat her as a HUMAN BEING but from the other side, since copulating was allowed only with the husband, she wanted someone with whom it would be pleasant, someone she would feel for from the bottom of her heart. As a rule this is a high-ranking male.
At the same time (again, if any freedom of choice was given) it was considered preferable and purposeful to make a choice based on a call of love, which was in full accordance with the instinct of sexual preference, and that's why there was no cause for any objections from those getting married. But by this, family values as a way of mutual upbringing of the children and other mutual support were actually supposed to be left out of consideration. More specifically, it was suggested to rely on luck, though marriage was meant to be for life (the span of a lifetime was necessitated by economic reasons). Although divorce could be permitted but one way or another, it was condemned. Specifically it was suggested to strive for love to the very end. Alas, we well know where it leads in reality. A bewildered mind confuses everything, once and for all, making at last a random or a known non-optimal decision.
Since now personal freedom and with it a freedom of choosing a partner is uplifted into a cult, nothing restrains instinctive calls. Naturally, all women wish to choose a high-ranking man naively thinking that they can easily set a monopoly possession on him. Since in most of the countries a monogamous marriage is established and high-ranking men aren't enough for every women then a deceiving situation appears that it is the men who choose. The fact that not all men can choose goes almost unnoticed. Low-ranking men shamefully keep silence about their personal problems. Yes, having a big success with women, high-ranking men indeed have a possibility of a widespread choice and can realize their choice without burdening themselves with thoughts of a long-term relationship ("HE HAS TAKEN" for his wife... - this is said about them). A dominant man objectively does not need a marriage. Such a man can get whatever he wants from women. Without any problems he will find a woman (and not one) who will cook for him, wash his clothes, serve sexually, and will resignedly raise his children alone, despairingly dreaming about him as a husband.
It is worse for women. The instinct of sexual preference requires choosing high-ranking men, but the reality of contemporary life requires creating a family. By my estimates, high-ranking men are about 10-20% of all men. Therefore all women desiring high ranking dominants create the contest of 5-10 women per vacancy. The so desired men for monogamous families actually are not enough for all - this is the source of all groans about the lack of men. This is another example of visual selection - women's stares get fixed only on captains, the memory carefully stores only their images (although not always pleasant) and speaking about the men "in general" women unconsciously mean only them. Plus of course there is objective selection, which will be described below. In a primeval herd this 10-20% of males would have fertilized all females, all females would have been satisfied, including sexually as well. However, one wants him to belong only to herself, isn't that true? But he has a different opinion regarding this ...
The low-ranking men are in the worst position. Everybody gets at them - omega is beaten by everyone, but concerning women - they get "only grief". However, from the side of family values they are more preferable over "alphas" . At least, they are more faithful. Their problem and the reason for loneliness is they do not excite any interest in women. Therefore, among the men liked by women there are really only a few decent ones.
A low-ranking man mainly needs a marriage only for getting sex and having children. Without marriage he is "slapped in his face" and even in family life he is constantly in danger being deprived even if he gets his luck and succeeds in getting married. (But is it really a luck if such men do not get good wives?). So a low-ranking man is sometimes allowed to have sex in exchange for doing other home chores, with which he copes better then high ranking ones. Due to egocentrism and visual selection, women are biased to exaggerate men's inability to self-service as well as the burden of women's fate. Thus, cooking and washing are not the main motive for low-ranking men to get married.
Briefly speaking:
The recommendation of "getting married because of love" basically is very contradictory and only leads to confusion, perplexity, and disappointment.
There are two types of old bachelors: high-ranking, who do not need a marriage and low-ranking, who would not mind getting married, but with all their strengths are not needed by anybody...
What the men having no luck should do
It's better be forgiven later then missed now.
(from Murphy laws)
It is obvious that it has a sense to recommend something to "cornets" because "captains" easily manage without any advice. By the way it make no sense to ask advice from "captain" either or it will be like in the anecdote. "Captains" conduct themselves with women very differently and their high rank is denoted not so much by their relaxed behavior but by a subtle self-assured mimic and specific face expression.
The root of your problems regarding relationships with the women is in your low primeval status and you would like, of course, to raise it. I can tell how to do this right on the spot: you need to become rich or famous (for example - to make a career). It is also possiblllee to get drunk but this will not help for a long time. It is well known that the women love money very much but not everyone guesses that wealth is not the end goal for a woman but it is also an attribute of high primeval rank and women love not only money but also the men who managed to make them. Getting wealthy for low-ranking men was next to impossible in primeval herd. Higher superiors would have plundered everything. In contemporary society it is possible to achieve certain wealth but if your real rank is way below your wealth you might face with her infidelity later. It is pleasant to milk a breadwinner encouraging him with sex but she'd like to have someone different as a lover.
As far as the glory the best way is to become a pop super-star, and save you God from committing heroic deeds risking your own life. Readiness for self-sacrifice is definitely an attribute of a low rank but foul readiness to expose the others (to rule over the others) is the attribute of a high rank!
As it was mentioned above it is typical for people to have different levels of primativeness. The primativeness of animals, especially primitive ones, is always close to maximum. I will remind that a low primative man follows his mind rather than his instinctive programs in everyday life. Since instinctive nuptial rituals are dialogic like password-response, the unconformity of such man behavior to these rituals can seriously complicate his quest for a life companion. Such man may not be apprehended as a sexually mature male.
It is said that women love with ears. To say more this is typical not only for people! Songbird males sing the songs only for attraction of females. For the same purpose grasshoppers cricks, frog male croaks, male cat yawls in march and etc., etc., etc. It is not worth to mention the pop-stars. They are one of the most favorite category of men among women... And yea, they sing mainly about love!
What is more important for success - high rank or high primativeness? For sure, high rank! Captain is forgiven for everything including low primativeness. Moreover, high ranking men with low primativeness have often particular charm and have a big success with respectable decent women. However, they are not the ones who have the biggest harems. However primativeness is inborn feature and it is very difficult to change it even by hard training especially you do not have artistic gift.
Low chances can be compensated by the big number of attempts. Do not hesitate to use favorite women's tactic - having several romances in parallel but take certain measures to prevent crisscrossing of them. At least, you will gain practical experience and probably obtain lacking self-assurance. One of the other ways of gaining experience is to date by classified personal ads but do not treat them seriously. They are extremely ineffective as a search method for a life partner.
Of course, women tend to make fun of low-ranking men but treat this philosophically and do not quit attempting. In any case neither make a tragedy out of this nor fall into depression. Considering that we live in the world of probability and chance, and as it was mentioned above, high rank by itself is not a guarantee for the total success, and right contrary, low rank is not guarantee of a complete failure. All these are the factors which seriously affect the likelihood of mutuality. Besides that there exist an instinct of sexual curiosity...
And one more thing, if your rank is low try not to waste your time on high ranking women.
And now some real advice.
It does make sense to try some psychological training to raise self-confidence. However, be careful and picky in choosing such type of training and its instructor. If the instructor is really high-level specialist then your chances to raise up your rank (at least visual one) are high enough. Virtuosos can help you in acquiring the above mentioned hardly noticeable self-assured mimicry. For example the following exercise can be recommended: looking at woman think where to kiss her, looking at man think where to hit him. I emphasize that this should be only imaginable exercise. The results maybe noticeable in about couple months. However, be careful with training on men. High-ranking man can apprehend too brave stare as a challenge for hierarchical duel and accept it! But this can be totally out of your plans. Because by hierarchical "etiquette" low-ranking male must lower his eyes when dominant is looking at him.
Trying to display your high rank to women, do not be malignant and aggressive! Remember that the root of high-ranking potential is in the high self-esteem and following from it self-assurance. Probably opposite to it, malignancy is destiny of low-ranking men. Cheerful happiness of self-assured person having success in life, having to some degree everything from life, is not afraid of getting in contact with others, this is a lifestyle and behavior one should try to achieve. Moreover, even the most highly primative woman has some kind of rational thinking and open aggressor can invoke purely rational antipathy.
Never condemn your beloved ones for making eye contacts with other men and perhaps dating not only you, even if you are kept at certain distance - nature made mostly them responsible for the choice, although a lot of water under the bridge since ancient times. And never condemn your wives for irresistible desire to be attractive to all the men - it does not mean infidelity. Remember that without serious reasons a woman will never introduce anything dangerous in her life.
However! Do not waste your time if you see that the distance between you is not getting shorter for a long time - that means that you are kept just for collection. In this case she does not need you but only the signs of your care. Actually the need for signs of men's care for most of the women is the end in itself, the kind of psychological food. And dosed favor is given you in order to make this source of care not drying up for as long as possible. It is proven that very long courting do not lead to successful marriages. And even if you succeed in such case then for the rest of your life you will be considered like half a loaf is better than no bread.
If the initiative of your dates or other contacts (for example by phone) is always going from you but she in the best case scenario just mercifully does not refuse, this is the exact sign that your relationships are hopeless. In this case you are just a specimen of her collection or even maybe, the source of the gifts.
Making the gifts and giving a hand, try to be within limits of the ritual. No way this should look like a sincere self- sacrifice. Gifts should be presented with careless ease. She might be pleased to see how you kill yourself trying to get what she wants because it means that her goal regarding you is achieved but this pleasure of hers will not end up in a pleasure for you. As a rule, accepting gifts, woman does not feel obligated. For example, if a woman asks you to do her a favor that humiliates you one way or another and there is no possibility to decline then the formality and ritual meaning of your submission must be heavily emphasized. Do not rush to accomplish the favor with slavish obligingness - this is the way it is done by low-ranking men but instead do it condescendingly. Thus your submission completely loses its hierarchical nature and becomes nothing more than purely conjugal ritual.
Never try really proving that you are hard-working, sober, careful, responsive, and etc. By doing this you will neither break her heart nor probably capture her mind especially if she has never been married.
As it was said above, different kinds of parallel promiscuity usually platonic are typical for women. So they are inclined to try a few men simultaneously. And if she keeps the sufficient distance with all the tried men except perhaps one, this is the NORM and usual practice which allows to widen the pool of candidates. Such practice in combination with egocentrism is apprehended as craftiness. This term is not really exact because often she does not know herself who will become her choice until the last moment (although as a rule she knows well who is not going to be her choice) and after the choice is done she does not always realize clearly why one is chosen over others. So do not make the scandals and do not strain your relationship over this issue. According to the instincts women simply must behave this way.
"Admitting to body" can be used as one of the most powerful (though risky for the women themselves as well) ways of men's seduction. In these cases, a woman comparatively easy agrees for a short-term intimate relationship which do not suppose their further development and deepening. The main subconscious goal of such sexual connection is to bind a man to herself and at the same time satisfy the instinct of sexual curiosity. On a rational level, woman usually explains such behavior as "having fun". However, after very short period of time (very often on the very next day) you might be refused in continuation of this intimate relationship, possibly with the offer "to stay as friends". Poor thing, if you managed to fall in love with her. In such case the outlooks of reciprocity are next to illusory and negligibly small. Briefly speaking, do not rush to fall in love with a woman only because she had sex with you several times. It might be only a bait with nothing following after but painfully stinging fishing hook. Sure, it does not mean that one should decline closeness. The bait should be accurately eaten without biting a hook (meaning without loosing one's head).
The less we love a woman the more she likes us... This can be applied to Pushkin himself but such recommendations as "never pay attention to her" or "show her the place", "shout" and etc. are suitable for captains and work well in their implementation. Dominant male does need to love women. They love him anyway. And if your rank is low then your deliberate inattention will go unnoticed but your attempt to "put her in the place" will be growl of paper tiger and will cause nothing more then smile or righteous anger.
About woman infidelity. Without examining explicit or implicit prostitution, i.e. sexual intercourse for material welfare, then a woman has liaisons in most of the cases when she is not satisfied with the rank of her husband, especially if the power of her innate program of sexual curiosity is increased. And if you do not satisfy your wife sexually but somebody does then the reason is neither in his special ability nor in the size of his genitals but exactly in the rank. Even the potency is not the first in the list of reasons for infidelity. If she is not suited with something else (low intellect, abusive manners, laziness, and etc.) she will probably leave you rather then start having extra marital love affairs.
Women have propensity to whimper about difficulties of getting married. However, do not apprehend this too literally and do not make illusions that women will rush to you pushing rivals aside (of course, if you are not a pop-star or someone similar with the highest rank). Women even trying to be attractive to all men, nonetheless will keep sitting up until senility and waiting until somebody will conquer them (and they will put up a defense! - the fortitude of which will be inversely proportional to man's rank), thus proving by this his primeval right of close contact, even if there are no chances left. In reality, they want to get married much less than they talk about it. Especially if they are over 30, in this case, besides other things, unwillingness to change habitual way of life is triggered into action (that is also typical for men as well).
Saying "no men" or "nobody pays attention" a woman deliberately or inadvertently cheats. A woman of reproduction age getting ABSOLUTELY no men's attention is something practically impossible (if only men physically exist within a few kilometers). At least she will be accosted by a drunk. Such statements should be comprehended as "not enough real men" or "not enough admirers" and there is none suitable enough among them (and we know who this suitable is). And admirers, like money cannot be TOO much. So, courting a woman, even ugly, never assume that she does not have other admirers, but better consider that you're only one of possible candidates.
However, be careful if a woman is overlooked or competition for her is clearly weak! It is good if only the reason for this is in her unappealing look. Otherwise, the reasons can be very serious. If women reject men for discordance with primeval criteria, then men judging by the mind reject women for more objective shortcomings. The same is true for divorced women. Good wives are tried not to lose. It is advisable to find out the reason for divorce.
Do not be modest and do not criticize yourself. If you have something to be proud of, do not put telling it off thinking that this is going to be a pleasant surprise for her. This later time can never come to true. Also do not assume that she will recognize your strengths herself - notorious women's insight is nothing more than myth. Illusion of women's insight is created by ability to read well gestures and mimicry as ancient nonverbal language. However, only current state of a man but not his biography or moral cast can be determined by gestures. As it was mentioned above, women, following the feelings, evaluate men very superficially. I do not say about all women but an average woman is not so insightful at all which is caused by her egocentrism. If it were not true women would not have suffered from pickpockets in public transportation.
A woman evaluating your strengths (as they are catered for her) probably compares them not with her own strengths and weaknesses (according to the principal of female irreplaceability, her own strengths and weaknesses are less important comparing with the very fact of the women existence) but with the strengths of the other men (also the way the strengths are shown to her).
Please note how shamelessly experienced Don-Jovans glorify themselves not hesitating to lie under some circumstances. Of course, I cannot recommend a lie as a method but whatever you have should be shown at its best. And it is not worth to forget old fellow Karnegy - "Going fishing I take worms with me, though I personally prefer strawberry with cream". I.e., the things that you like might not be of a dislike for others.
Be careful with admitting of love! This can be the end because the conjugal goal of a woman's behavior is to make men fall in love with her and if this goal is achieved then further relationships can get uninteresting for her. You will be flabbily kept just for collection. The very fact that hearing of such admittance is very pleasant for a woman is just a satisfaction of a person who achieved the goal.
Practical conclusions for lonely women
What should a hen running from a cock think about?
-Am I running too fast?
(an anecdote)
As it was mentioned above a male can fertilize the maximum number of females if it cares for each female only minimally needed amount of time. This is the reason for preference of easily available women by men. In other words, after the body was obtained he may lose any interest because the goal is achieved and it is time to take care of another woman. So, we can advise women to avoid intimate contact and even hints at it for as long as possible (of course, except the cases when you need only THIS). If you worry that without THIS he will abandon you that means that he will leave you anyway, and after THIS even faster. By the way, men's love is more transient than women's but often is more powerful. To say, it blazes up brighter but burns down faster. The sense of this for men is the same - not to waste time.
Do not condemn your men for looking on other women. There is nothing terrible if he does nothing more than looking on them. You also assert all the efforts to make men looking on you (and the more and longer the better) even if you are married for a long time. To forbid men to look on other women is equal forbidding you to look nice and attractive (attract men's looks).
Slightly simplifying we can say the following: all women like the same men. If you like one man it is very likely that other women also like him, if you do not like a man it is very likely that none of women ever likes him at all. So, if you feel that you have to compete with other women for any particular man, you should know that you will have to compete for the rest of your life even if you succeed in marring him. And if you see that a man looks like a good one but you feel no call of heart, do not comfort your soul with thoughts that another woman will like him. It is very probably that this good man is doomed for loneliness. At school, when mind is not ripened yet, such "anisotropy of sympathies" is well displayed. All girls in the class like 1-2 boys who are objectively not the best. The interests of boys are distributed on girls although not uniformly but more evenly.
For men such phenomenon also takes place though it is less typical. Men's tastes of women are much more diverse.
Do not be born nice but be born happy. This proverb is very correct since it reflects the circumstance that men like beautiful women and that's why there is extremely fierce competition for such women where only high-ranking males win. The word "male" rather than "man" is much more suitable here because well-bred, cultured and honest man as a rule does not have high rank in primeval hierarchy and primeval swines hopelessly block him from you, who is so pretty. Besides this, such fierce competition for beautiful women cause women to get illusionary feeling of infinitely wide and unlimited in time freedom of choice. When such illusion disappears the bitter feeling of aimlessly spent years and undeserved resentment toward ALL men is left. But meanwhile there were the same men with insignificant differences flickering in front of your eyes. The men of the other type were busy with those who were less pretty.
So, do not get your whole mind fastened on your look! Subconsciously evaluating a man from primeval point of view you likely involuntarily attribute to men the same customs and try to increase your own primeval attractiveness missing men's rationality. Yes, there are men who react only on this but do you need them?
Having perfected your appearance to the best you can achieve a reverse result! Looking prodigiously fashionable and refined you provoke a feeling of your inaccessibility (maybe, a real one). And inaccessible women are not preferred by men, especially by low-ranking ones. How a poet said:
... So inaccessible for men
That their look cause spleen...
So the more stylish you look, the higher concentration of "easy-riders" is around you. Of course, we mean here an extreme degree of stylishness, I do not campaign for slovenliness.
Men follow their mind in higher degree, justly considering some elements of primeval marital ritual impolite, uncultured, tactless, humiliating and so on. You often expect that until the loss of the memory a man will be storming the inaccessible barriers built by you (and the lower the man's rank the higher the barrier's height) but he will consider impolite and humiliating to bother you. Found your defensive reaction, a man might decide that he is unpleasant and annoying to you and will leave in order not to give you unpleasant feelings with his presence. And he is absolutely right from rational point of view! Highly primative and high-ranking man simply does not care that he can be disgusting and his importunate annoyance blocks the reason of your mind, thus achieving the desired result. Those importunate annoyances are the most ancient ritual!
Low-primative man discards such impolite rituals and assumes that mutual intimacy of intelligent people should be reciprocal since it is necessary for both.
For example, according to the instinctive ritual you switch your attitude from warm (for baiting) to cold and you are puzzled why he does not fight for you? But a low-primative man is puzzled - why did you suddenly become so cold without any reason? He does not suspect that this has to be done according to the ritual and he is suppose to start conquering you without taking into account any possible impoliteness and humiliation.
This does not mean that you should be sexually easily accessible! We are speaking about barriers on the way of intimacy of souls but not bodies.
About man's infidelity. It has been already mentioned above that the instinctive limitations of sexual expansion are absent in men. However, there are two serious issues. First, this expansion can be released only by a man with high rank. Low-ranking man maybe also would like but... Women, whose husbands suddenly became rich, notice that he started betraying or even left for good. This man did not change. The explanation is easy. His rank increased and women began to love him. To love and not only to sell themselves. Second issue, absence of instinctive limitations does not mean the absence of rational ones. Men follow mind much more than women do. You will laugh but men sometimes deliberately do not allow themselves to betray due to moral and ethical considerations! Of course, if you suit him comprehensively.
About personal ads in classifieds. Men resort to it if their rank is low or they have some problems in biography (conviction, for example). If you write in your personal ad that you want "a kind, honest, etc." then having met exactly such man you will probably find that you have no feelings toward him. And regarding former criminals, be aware that anti-social behavior often is an attribute of high rank. Be careful! Furthermore, you want this man to be well-off. It is understandable but men perceive such your requirement with abhorrence justly supposing that love for money is prostitution (but maybe, you had in mind only his high rank, i. e. ability to "take everything from life").
Your 40 year birthday is very close but you still have no man. Have you already agreed for any man? But what do you mean "any man"? Actually lowering the requirements for the desired husband a woman usually lessens the requirements to civilized part of his personality but not to primeval because it is difficult consciously to lower requirements for something what you cannot realize by your mind.
If you really want to get married but not only chat about it you should take initiative in your own hands. The one, who needs something more, speaks louder about it. However, do not try to storm porutchiks. This is hopeless and not original. If you really want to get married but do not want to act, this is, sorry to say, self-delusion. Sometimes it can be enough just to lower the speed of running away but I warn once more about inadmissibility of early intimate contact. Almost every man always agree for that and almost with every woman. His agreement for an intimate contact does not affect the outlook of long-term relationships. Here an analogy can be drawn with your reaction on his signs of attention - you will accept them but this does not mean anything.
Do you find this to be humiliating and cannot "step over yourself"? I can just feel sorry for you. Decent men do not want to stoop either, especially taking into account that men are less interested in long-term relationships. Trusting woman's "nature", i.e. instinctive behavioral program, that proposes defensive and waiting role of woman toward men, you will again and again recreate primeval environment around yourself where there was no monogamy marriage and a female was taken by the most aggressive and bold male. Expecting such one to be decent is, at least, naive. Speaking in other words, if you are going to sit and wait until somebody finds you then you most likely will be found by a real "male" ("easy rider").
It makes sense to trust your heart only if your goal is maximum of momentary (especially sexual) sensations. Even in this case if you do not want to bear a difficult child or moreover, if you worry about growing aggressiveness of mankind, it is better to protect yourself from pregnancy. To build a stable family the voice of heart cannot be trusted. Since turned on instinct blocks your judgement you should try to resort to the help of other people who can judge with common sense.
If mulling over the perspectives of marriage you have a goal to become a Grand-Lady at any price, you, of course, need a high-ranking dominant despite of all the dangers connected with him. But even in this case it is better not to trust the heart. It can call you to the self-enamoured grumbler whose behavior has some resemblance with behavior of a real dominant. Meanwhile, the main value of high-ranking person is his ability to succeed in life, may not exist. It might happen that your beloved one will have neither the advantages of a faithful family man credited to low-ranking males nor the ability to take everything from life pertaining to high-ranking ones but will have only high-ranking arrogance and nothing more.
Women who were caught by dishonest womanizer often tell the following:"Yes, I understand that he lies to me, that all his nice and tender words are lie but I cannot do anything with me!" This is an example of highly primative behavior. Subconsciousness, realizing instinctive marital ritual, neither can reason by itself nor is interested in opinion of mind. The main thing for it is the match with template. And when it matches the feelings start working with all the cylinders firing! Trusting her mind, low-primative woman will not be caught in this trap - primeval sorcery might not affect her.
What lies more often a heart or a mind? A lie can be different. Rational judgement is based on knowledge gained during upbringing, education and on one's own and other's life experience. If because of any reasons the mind is weak it can deceive (lets say, fail) due to its weakness. It can fail to "calculate" all the consequences of the situation. That's why with passing years and gaining some experience the number of failures decreases. Experience does not affect instinctive programs at all. And heart does not lie because... it does not promise anything at all! Even if it promises then it promises nothing more than the moment of bliss. Since monogamy marriage is not foreseen in instinctive programs as well as participation of males in children upbringing, so it is easy to imagine the following evolution of events.
From all the above mentioned does not follow that I appeal to you to reject high-ranking men and to prefer low-ranking ones. Low-ranking man is not necessarily educated, cultured and honest. There are some very odious persons among them especially at the bottom of hierarchical pyramid and vice versa, not every dominant is cad. Quite the contrary, I call you upon not to pay any attention to the rank! What I mean is that you should not come under the influence of hypnosis of high-ranking male blocking the perception of objective advantages and weaknesses. The present touting of low-ranking men's virtues in the text is created to compensate dominating everywhere strongly biased opinion in favor of high-ranking males. But even if I'd like to recommend someone then it would have been the low primative men regardless the rank. Another point is that the heart does not understand them but the triumph of mind is possible only with the appropriate genetic base...
Of course high-ranking men have not only imperfections and weaknesses. Many of them are very good breadwinners and if you are lucky and his rank is real, you will be much better off behind him. However, high-ranking male is usually always egoistic and the material welfare which he gets may be handed down not to you or not only to you. Moreover, his ability to accommodate himself in life can play a trick with you, he will accommodate himself and succeed in life at your own.
About valor and humiliation
As it was mentioned above, the number of copulations is the clearest quantitative index of a rank. By allowing a male to approach her, a female acknowledges her lower rank. Therefore consent for copulation is one of the most striking signs of acknowledgment of submission. That's why the talks about sex among men are often characterized by bragging and scorning to women and among captains - not only chats. The usual component of curse is the phrase like "F@@k you" that has unambiguous purpose to humiliate an opponent. Though, it seems what can be humiliating in a natural physiological act? Their desire to humiliate even more is considered to be a kind of valor because, although it is sad but humiliation of the people around one is the most widespread way of increasing one's own rank. Especially if it concerns a sexual partner. Of course, women are offended when they are humiliated, but just try to take away such a humiliating man from a highly primative woman. She will fight but will not give him up.
Due to the same reason, men practicing masturbation are scorned. Women's masturbation does not cause such scorn even though it is barely less widespread then men's. The logic is the same: one masturbates -> means that one has no woman -> low-ranking one has no woman...
Briefly speaking:
Aura of indignity, humiliation and secrecy surrounding human sexual relationships arises from the closest connection of these relationships with hierarchical ones. Moreover, sexual failures are most hidden by men as an attribute of a low rank in hierarchy.
Women's secrecy goes back to the times of gregarious promiscuity when one breadwinner did not have to know about the number of others.
Ethological continuation
About optical illusions and observational selection
- What are you looking for?
- I have lost the keys.
- And where have you lost them?
- Over there.
- Why are you searching them here?
- There is more light here.
(an old anecdote)
Public opinion is full of the prejudices, especially in this sphere. For example, the women are sure that it is much easier for a man to find a woman than for a woman to find a man, although sociological research proves otherwise, the majority of women are sure that it is a man who chooses a woman, even though in reality it is exactly the opposite. In order to clarify the mechanism of origination of such illusions let us imagine the following example, overdone for simplicity:
There are one hundred men and the same number of women living in some village. Five out of these hundred men are arrant Lovelaces who change the women once a month in average. The other men stay home and rarely hang out. After a not so long period of time these Lovelaces will date all the women but the others will meet no more than one. As a result women meeting each other will be telling approximately the following: I dated six men and five of them were such a ... Of course they will come up with the wrong conclusion -- that 5/6 of all men are skunks, cheats, old foxes, easy riders and so on.
Mentioned above, observational selection is objective. It means that even impartial robots would have fallen into this trap. Besides there is also subjective selection which is derived from the peculiarity of human memory - emotionally meaningful events are remembered at their best. Those 5 Lovelaces will be mostly well remembered for a long time because they excited bright emotions. As a result the only one more or less decent man out of these six will not even be recalled.
It is very difficult not to fall under the influence of such illusions for an unprepared man. Mass media also endorses the distortion of a statistical situation preferring to inform about rare, unusual, untypical events and creating the illusion of their mass character and typicality.
About specifics of behaviour
I am a weak and helpless woman, I won't let you!
I've already sued three tenants, and for such words
of yours you will be crawling at my feet!
(A.P.Chekhov. "Helpless creature")
So, biological roles of males and females are drastically different. Lower viability of males due to, in part, more risky behavior, was mentioned above. Obviously, the differences in behavior do not end here and certainly should suit the biological roles. Since the personal value of each female is higher than that of the male because males are born in much higher numbers than needed for fertilization of all females, then there dominate in female behavior the care for herself (and demand of such care from people around her), caution, avoiding risk, and if a self-sacrifice needed then it must be only for the sake of her children as the final goal of caring for herself. Societal traditions are solitary with women primacy because naturally they go back to instinctive behavioral programs - women and children are saved first from a sinking ship. Besides, while there is a great number of the laws and resolutions showing concern for women one way or another, there is none for men. The law takes care either of a PERSON (any person) or a woman.
For example, marriage legislation of Russia and especially legislative practice in this sphere are openly discriminative toward men but nobody pays attention to it. For millions of years everybody got used to this. If a man killed another man in self-defense he would face long and not necessarily successful judicial hardships in Russia. Under the same circumstances a woman probably will be acquitted even without getting a court hearing. And moreover she will be praised. There are many public organizations and movements struggling for the rights of women but there is nothing heard about the same for men. In mass media women's problems are discussed deeper and more attentively than men's are. This is in addition to the fact that even without this, the women are idealized by both men and women and this also goes back to the principle of female's irreplaceability.
It is possible even to speak about men's "presumption of guilt". A husband beats his wife - he is blamed, a wife beats her husband - again, a man is blamed; rape - a man is blamed; divorce - the same; a woman cannot get married - once again, the men are to blame. Yea, men, those villains are to blame for women's unemployment as well. Examples abound. Innocence of a man should be proven every time in such cases. Should you fail to prove it - you are guilty by default! It is the most fertile ground for abuse. Why take care of men if even nature does not take care of them!
I think everybody will agree with the following:
Women take supernormal care about their health and it seems like men have the goal of shortening their lives. It is well-known that men resort to suicide three to five times more often than women.
Men have a strongly developed investigative instinct and women a have propensity to known and tested actions (let it be worse but the good old way). Women typically have the primacy of tactic over the strategy - this minimizes the losses in case of failure though it does not allow to score a big victory in case of success. One today is worth two tomorrows.
Women have a clear inclination to keep low profile satisfying with dull enough life. This can explain for example lower public and business activity of women. Women's soaking in everyday life is a secondary reason (behavior of unmarried women is slightly different in this sense from married). The most outstanding people (that means "more poped out") both genius and scoundrels are men in general. The one who does pop out, takes a risk.
Women trust intuition and feelings more than logical conclusions. Intuition is based on a past experience and feelings as a voice of instincts are based on experience of a whole species and therefore it is more reliable on average because it was tested by practice. Due to the same reason women better than men comprehend the language of gestures and body language as the ancient means of communication.
Women are more subject to herd instinct and authorities because majority is usually more often right on average than minority, and authority is a person supported by majority. Also it is possible to mention a higher than men's sexual corporate solidarity among women for as long as it does not contradict the personal interests.
Average man is more lazy than average woman. It does not mean the absence of lazy people among women but on average it is true. Women's anti-laziness is one of the demonstrations of her concern for herself and for her children. It is not so important for a man to take care of himself. However, laziness is the mother of progress.
Taking a risk to incur anger I will make a point that burden of notorious "women's fate" is very often exaggerated. And it is so, in order to be pitied even more. This exaggeration in the end goes back to the principle of female's irreplaceability and is tightly interconnected with egocentrism that will be described a bit further.
Women are not kinder than men! Illusion of women's kindness is caused by instinct of motherhood but it is not identical to kindness and works only in favor of the children.
Victor Dolnik deems that primates' hierarchy is formed by males only. Regarding macaques it might be true but for people it is clearly incorrect. Neither the differences in levels of inclination to conflicts among women nor the differences in power of elbows need any proof. Another thing is that women's hierarchical struggle is not characterized as an open one and generally speaking, is less dangerous for life because of irreplaceability of every female. We can also agree that women's hierarchy is built independently from men's, but they are closely linked together. Anyway, a comparison of male's and female's rank is totally correct. Ranking potential of some ladies is out of limits and easily can get above average men's ranking potential. Let us recall a famous "Tale about a fisherman and a golden fish" by A.S. Pushkin. Ranking potential of the old woman was much higher than of the old fisherman and that coupled with egocentrism lead to what it had lead. Should we throw away the fairy entourage the described situation becomes real and not so rare at all! A children's hierarchy also exists and in general independently from an adult one. However, not any grown-up can tame every high-ranking teenager. Forget about teenagers! Even high-ranking cat is capable of winding its master round its little finger...
About egocentrism
Self-loving is the only romance that lasts for a life.
(Oscar Wild)
Egocentrism is inability to WISH to put oneself in another's place or to get in another's shoes. Egoism is unwillingness to divest oneself of one's own interests. There are the terms "reflection" and "empathy" in psychology. The first term means the ability to adequate self- evaluation in eyes of other people, the second term means ability to apprehend emotions of others. Egocentric has both abilities diminished. Non-egocentric person sometimes is called reflective but this is not quite correct.
I do not allege that there are no egocentric persons among men (moreover, the champions of egocentrism have to be looked only among men!) but it is more typical for women in average. Whatever is said about women's emotionality, empathy is the ability to evaluate the emotions of others correctly but not intemperance of one's own reactions on the environment. The ability to read gestures and mimicry helps to read the emotions of others but in order to read the mimicry one has to want doing this in the first place! Meanwhile, the surrounding world and especially the inner world of the others is not interested for egocentric. He is interested only in the world of oneself, right up to self-admiration. This is indirectly proven by women's love to mirrors.
Here is the following anecdotal scene for illustration:
- Honey! In such weather a dog owner wiiilll not kick his dog out!
Egocentric person can answer: Then go without a dog...
Egoist will probably respond: You aren't made of sugar! You will not get dissolved...
Here is another scene. A bus stopped abruptly. Egocentric women yelled: "Driver! You are carrying a human cargo!" Men: "What is a crazy person running in front of the bus?"
Egocentric did not even try to put oneself in another person shoes or understand what his/her problem is all about. The point is not in the fact that he is incapable of doing this! It simply did not come to his mind. On the contrary, egoist understood everything but deliberately disregarded the troubles of another one. Egoism is one of the important demonstrations of a high rank.
Egocentric is not necessarily a nasty person! He is just insensitive. For example, he can pour out tons of kindness on the person who does not need this without feeling its irrelevance. And also oppressing somebody he sincerely does not notice the inconvenience which he causes. As a sort of this feature we can mention the extreme restraining of egocentric people in expression of gratitude to the other people.
And egocentric can simultaneously be an egoist (what a horror!).
It is determinate that egocentric people are robed in a crowd (transport, shops) more often and they do not notice or feel anything at the very moment.
It is proven that propensity to egocentrism is handed down genetically from generation to generation even among men meaning that reasonably deep and ancient brain structures are responsible for this.
In an age of from 3 to 5 years egocentric children usually do not ask WHY or they do it very rarely although their development does not fall behind from their peers in any other way. They are not so interested in surrounding world as in their own world.. From the biological point of view feminine egocentrism is justified, and moreover, more or less NORMAL!!!,
if every female is objectively irreplaceable then nature forbids women from thinking seriously of anything but their own interests or interests of their children as well as concealing their problems. For this males are especially created.
Try mentally to change the roles of old man and old woman in mentioned above "Fairytale about a fisherman and a golden fish". Can't make it? Don't you say this cannot happen? Correct, this would have been too untruthful even for a folktale. Since the folklore is already touched it is worth to pay attention that if a fairytale presents such character as stepmother then by all means she is nasty, evil-minded stepfather is not quite typical character for folktales. The reason is not in malignancy itself but in absence of concern for the other people and stepchildren needs. The fact that mass media much more often reveals cases about stepfathers' brutality is the result of the mentioned above men's presumption of guiltiness. Folktales are more reliable statistically. If a folktale does not adequately model the relationships between people it will be not a fairytale that can teach children about real life but an idle fantastic absurd. The thesis about statistical reliability of folklore is correct although its correctness varies for all kind of folklore such as anecdotes, verses and etc.
Why does unbearable moral working environment quite often exist in purely women teams or staffs? Because nobody wants to make any sacrifices for the sake of others.
Lower egocentrism can be seen among women who drive car. Driving a car in a traffic is impossible without constant forecasting of the other drivers' actions and concern about predictability of one's own actions. That is incompatible with egocentrism. Women's unwillingness to use rear view mirrors became household word. That's why the average egocentric woman feels quite uncomfortably behind a driving wheel writing this off to the boorishness of male drivers (again, here is a presumption of male guilt!) and therefore decline to drive voluntarily. However, if she drives a car (of course, it is worth to see HOW well) then the level of her egocentrism is lower than average. But this does not guarantee the absence of any other imperfections or weaknesses. However, this egocentrism in reasonable doses is included as a necessary piquant flavor in the notion of femininity.
Ethological sketches.
All people are equal. However, some of them are more equal.
(Suggested by G. Orowell)
The subject of primeval hierarchy in our society is extremely interesting itself and perhaps deserves a separate treatise. That's why I suggest in the end to step aside from gender relationships and to look at relationships of the people in general. Especially as this will allow us better understand gender relationships as well.
Primeval hierarchy explicitly or implicitly runs through our society. We can observe this in relatively pure form inside many children groups, especially in orphanages, when mind is not fully developed yet. Gregarious hierarchy and propensity to be influenced by an authoritarian leader without any critical judgment of the one are the instinctive behavioral programs without any rational restrictions. By the way, the children from decent families very rarely find themselves in the orphanages. Therefore, this specific behavior is significantly predetermined genetically. Provoking anti-social behavior of teenagers (and not only them), unmotivated cruelty, baiting of "omegas" (who are objectively not the worse children) are the demonstration of a hierarchical struggle. A low-ranked child occupies not the best place in a street hierarchy hence there is no rational sense for him to take part in it. A low-primative child will do exactly this. He will distance himself from such hierarchy. A highly-primative child cannot do the same since his instinct powerfully requires taking part in hierarchy irrespectively how bad he feels in it. There was a perfect movie after R. Bykov "Scarecrow" where this primeval relations were shown with scientific accuracy. Unfortunately, the end of the film is not plausible. In reality, such repentance of hierarchical leaders is impossible.
Among adults hierarchy is well seen in conditions when civil rights are restricted one way or another. This is, for example, prisons; our army with all its violence and hazing; groups of people with a low culture and especially, criminal gangs, where each new person is evaluated from the point of his rank, and where there is extreme intolerance even to the hint of disrespect.
* * *
Inability to feel the own guilt is typical for high-ranking people (especially for egocentric). It is exactly "inability" and exactly "to feel". In other words, their brains have no convolutions creating the sense of guilt. Under pressure of logical evidence he might agree with accusations (in case he cannot keep silence) but he will never sense any guilt. Striking example - J. Stalin. While making the mistakes he was sincerely sure that the "enemies" are guilty in it. And such his assurance was transferred to almost all the country.
Very often a highly primative man subconsciously apprehends a respectful attitude as an attribute of a lower rank and he starts giving orders to this person turning to humiliating submission to a person with a higher rank. There is no middle point for such people: either to order or to submit.
This is the ground where hostility of low-cultured people to "eggheads" is based on. Demonstrating by his culture and education what looks like not high rank such man will never agree with the role of "omega". But this perplexes the instincts and invokes a desire to show "omega" his place. However, there is no precise dependency of cultural level from educational level and fulfilled work, rather it is only probable. An uneducated person may be highly cultured, which is based on low primativeness. It is appropriate to repeat once more here that a low rank is not equal to the high culture. High culture is perceived as low rank but the contrary is not necessary.
* * *
Probably each of Russian people observed the following situation at least once. A ticket collector has boarded a public transport and is trying to check the ticket at the passenger with a higher rank who has no ticket. A ticket collector cannot do anything and he looks pitiful despite of his position. This passenger radiates so abysmal and impudent assurance of his victory that some strange and even mystical force makes a ticket collector step back. On a rational level this ticket collector decides not to get involved with this passenger. A high-ranking person can easily stand a conflict with such tension that can cause extreme discomfort for low-ranking one.
* * *
Hierarchical struggle is often confused with the aspiration for "one's own significance". A person worrying about his own significance does not need to humiliate the other people, in contrary the easiest way to raise one own rank in hierarchy is to humiliate the people around. I think each of us observed many times and even experienced oneself such aspiration of the some people to humiliate the others.
* * *
It is easier to keep the rank than to raise it therefore artificially created hierarchies can substitute natural and self-organized ones to some degree. This "level of degree" is determined with by initial ranking potential of a person leading the group and if it is insufficient then there appears a so-called informal leader and the group can be disband.
Social position and primeval rank are quite closely interconnected but do not strictly determine one another. A person taking high post, increases his rank by this. From another point, low initial ranking potential almost prevent a good career growth. Even if due to some occasional reasons a man with low ranking potential takes high post, he will not keep it for long or in any case, will not grow any further.
* * *
Depending on absence or presence of other qualities and attributes a person with a high rank occupying a high position in society can be either a LEADER (also called charismatic personality) or a TYRANT. Leader is usually a person with decreased primativeness, not really aggressive with subordinates, and even capable to some self-sacrifice. Tyrant is usually coward (resulting from his high primativeness) but aggressive. Leader is most likely a case of a person with increased but not necessarily very high rank and exactly with a real rank but not only visual one and for sure with low primativeness. There are many well-known examples when a man occupying high position is henpecked by his wife. This can never happen with the tyrants (to be more specific, henpecking means that the rank of the wife is higher than the husband's one combined with the wife's high primativeness). Tyrant somehow heading a group lives purely by his own interests and in time of danger when the group asks him for protection he can show the cowardice and a desire to hide behind the backs of the other people (strong self-preservation instinct!). Meanwhile, tyrants take the high posts not less but more often than real leaders. In hard times real leaders become apparent and tyrants fall out... That's why a famous joke of comedian M. Zhvanetsky "I directed you - I will take responsibility for everything!" causes laugh since typical leader is very often tyrant who does not want to suffer for the other people. It was written by a poet about such situation:
It would've been better to send him to logistics
He was brave only with us
He was awarded with execution
By a tribunal for self-shooting
I will remind you that this song of V. Vysotsky was about a head of a prison who was sent to front together with the prisoners. He was certainly a dominant, at least due to his high position. However, suddenly on the other side of a front line there appears something that absolutely does not care about his high rank and a powerful instinct of self-preservation is triggered in our hero...
At the same time very low rank is also contraindicated for a leader as the party starts playing the king's role or control and management over the group gets completely lost. Obvious case is Russian tzar Nicholas II. Even his undoubtedly high level of culture did not help him. Here is one of disadvantages of a monarchical state - there is a certain probability that it may be headed by a person with unacceptably low rank. The consequences of this are well known from the history. In the other cases it is necessary to fight for a high position what sifts out very low-ranking people. A famous book after Niccolo Makaivelly presents a set of recommendations (like that: a sovereign should never justify for his action) for keeping a visual rank of a leader on a reasonably high level.
* * *
"The main point in dispute is to jump to personal attacks at the right moment..." (M. Zhanetsky). Getting to personality, a participant changes the focus from the subject of the dispute to uncovering ranking potentials. And if opponent's ranking potential happened to be lower then he instinctively subjects to higher rank thus admitting his defeat in dispute though he might be right in essence of this matter.
* * *
There is a widespread opinion among the vulgar public that it is necessary to beat a wife from time to time. By this a husband beating his wife demonstrates kind of high rank (visual, of course). And this can even attract a low cultural woman especially with high primativeness (masochism probably grows on this ground). Such woman rushes to defend her man as soon as the first hair falls down from his head despite asking to punish him only a moment before. Highly cultural and especially low-primative woman will not act this way. And actual rank of this man can be quite low. Even his buddies may have no respect for him. However, it is appropriate to mention that the instinct cannot analyze anything it just reacts on some key attributes, in this case - aweless attitude to a woman (if he beats -> he does not appreciate -> he has many women -> alpha has many women).
Here is the similar Russian picture: a drunk man in a public transportation is brawling and swearing. Women start yelling: "Are there any real men? Make him quiet!". Finally, a couple strong men or policemen get the unruly passenger down, as suddenly the very same women begin protecting him! Paradox? NO! Anti-social behavior is one of the strongest attribute of high rank and physical power demonstrated by the real men in enforcing the order has relatively loose correlation with high rank. Moreover, defending someone but themselves these men demonstrated a certain self-sacrifice that is an attribute of low rank. If they were able to nail the villain down only by glaring that would have been totally different thing. By the way, observing such gratitude real men will not get involved in fight next time. Women suddenly start feeling sorry for this cad. While he was dangerous the positive feelings were overcast by fear. But as soon as the danger disappeared highly primative mind started justifying the answer (since it was necessary to justify positive feeling toward obviously negative personality) and found that the most suitable word for this situation was "pity". Somehow these women are not pitiful for other people which were threatened by this cad.
About aggressiveness and crime
Never pull apart the fighting people - they
are probably soul mates...
(ascribed to ancient Sumerians)
Ethological basics of agressiveness are described in K. Lorenz [9] and V. Dolnik's book [1]. I will allow to share some of my own considerations on this subject.
In the root of many crimes against a person lies a contradiction between criminal's high initial ranking potential and his low social status. This can happen if a man has no any other strengths than primeval impudence that is not enough thanks God for a good career in a modern society. If such situation combines with high primativeness then this man tries to realize his demand to dominate by any means. However, if his social status is low then these means are not a lot. That's the way he comes to crime as a method of realization of ranking ambitions.
In our Russian police high-primative dominants are prevalent that's why law-abiding population is afraid of police almost as much as of criminals. For these people service in police is also a way to realize their ranking ambitions and it is very bad that the form of realization is barely different from the form of criminals...
High aggressiveness of teenagers and their impudence towards adults is explained by that a teenager has to make his way in hierarchy from the bottom up. But this is very difficult because adults occupying the high stages of hierarchy make all the efforts to keep it that way. By making anti-social action a person declares to the people around: " I am alpha, I am above society, I do not want to submit to you but you should submit to me or prove that your rank is higher". I.e. anti-social behavior (contraposition of oneself to the people in a society) has very deep instinctive roots which are as deep as the aspiration to build the hierarchy.
How to recognize the rank of a person next to you? The closer your ranking potentials the harder it is to do, at least from the beginning. Besides obvious assurance and forwardness, high rank is shown indirectly (at least at men) by custom to undo a few upper buttons or to wear the clothes unfastened. And vice versa, fully fastened clothes, quiet voice and a custom to fold the arms mean low potential. But dangerous aggressiveness is typical for dominants with high primativeness.
And if meeting somebody, your eyes as magnetized lowers down, be sure that there is alpha in front of you. But he will stare right into others eyes gladly, noting with pleasure that the eyes are lowered down acknowledging his superiority. It is very important for him, since aggressive and highly primative dominant (tyrant) is usually coward and keeps power over the people only because they submit to him voluntarily. In mentioned above experiments with cocks researchers glued the combs to dominants and despite of their excellent fighting abilities they were downgraded. And this is so because nobody submitted to them voluntarily.
And what if one will try not to subjugate to people? If you rank is low it is extremely risky! No, there is no need to get humiliated either. You should avoid such situations. Your suddenly boiled over pride can give out one impulse of confliction but probably you will not be able to withstand its continuation. But he has already revealed your rank and he knows for sure that you will give up sooner or later. And a conflict is his environment, he gets high because of it. He will refuse to struggle with something what is out of his power (for example with power of nature) but you are right in his mercy! It is necessary to bridle such people but this should be done not by you. Owning a victory over you (and this is almost inevitable), he will harden even more in his aggressiveness. Getting involved into conflict with high-ranking ones is worth only when you are absolutely sure in your victory.
What can be advised in this case? Commonly known advice is not to show the fear. This is true! If you fear that means that you admit your lower rank and hence, you are an easy prey. However, never try to pose as a high-ranking one without a good training. There is a high chance it will not work but an aggression will be provoked. Omega would-be alpha should be punished. The best way is not allow to have your rank revealed at all and to show that you do not play into hierarchical games. For example, if it is possible, do not pay any attention to him or show that you do not care. Without knowing your rank, such a one may not get into conflict because he is coward in a sense that he does not engage into fight unless sure of victory. But he gets such assurance only after your low rank is recognized. Afterwards he will not retreat halfway.
About religion, art, and advertising
Religion as a system of undoubtedly civilized norms (I mean of course the big universally recognized global religions) could not have carried out civilizing functions if God had not had the highest rank, the highest position. Otherwise, a highly primative society with low culture could not be persuaded that making harm to the fellowman was inappropriate since from pragmatically egoistic points of view it was exactly right! At least, in the nearest future. But the fact that it harmed as much personally him as the whole humanity could be simply neither accepted nor realized by a certain individual. In practice, the super-hierarch was anthropomorphized with humanistic qualities which were being digested by congregation as samples for repetition because of his highest hierarchical status.
It is worth to pay attention that practically all religions appeared in the low levels of the society. It was extremely important for a person with low-ranking potential to have somebody "above" and at the same time it was wanted this one above to be just, kind, and merciful.
Aura of assurance which circumfluenting most of "saint books" (for example the Vedas) is the inexhaustible source of authority together with complete incomprehensibility of the content. Sense and value of these books are entirely lost for a modern man (not researcher) that's why their influence cannot be explained by the value of the contained information. On the contrary, self-criticism and public doubts which are typical for a real science severely damage the attitude to it from unscientific public.
Talented piece of art is also able to convince in anything as it directly affects subconsciously instinctive mechanism of brain. This is the purpose and the social destination of art - to convince in anything that is otherwise impossible to persuade or to prove logically (for whatever reason) in any way. However, whatever is proven this way is not always good in reality.
Modern advertising shamelessly and impudently exploits instinctive programs. Instincts are devoid the ability to rational analysis. So, finding the right hacking tool (template) to a man's instinctive programs makes possible to force a person to want virtually anything. The main point is to demonstrate assurance. Any proofs or detailed explanations beyond that is redundant. It is necessary to pay attention how the commercials are done. As a rule they are pretty illogical but very emotional. Information is presented in a very high pace, often tangled but attention is diverted with something flashing. Often text is read with a speed of machine gun. All this based on the fact that subconscious with its templates works much quicker than mind and if a mind is not given a chance and/or time to look into the situation (and probably to protest) thus making possible to instilled anything to man. The most deceptive mode of advertisement perception is to pay no attention to it. In fact, only mind misses it and it goes directly to subconscious. And that's what really needed.
1996-1999
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