After writing a bunch of
different websites I finally get around to making a
website about myself and my most profound interests. Do not
miss the Heal Normality bulletin Board
sponsored by me and by
Dendron as a forum for people with similar ideas.
You can send me an e-mail at a3@a3.com
Normal people are strange
It seems I come from a different world. I think normal society and people are strange. I will cite a few skills that are essential for normality.
Rules of polite behavior require us to lie constantly to strangers, friends, and lovers. Imagine telling the policeman you had fun driving 80 miles an hour, and that you think speed limits are stupid. Or telling your spouse that your prior mate was a better lover. Or try explaining your boss that you were late at work because you drank too much last night. Honesty does not pay!
See a draft of a paper on
Truth, Half-Truth, and Lies : Human mechanisms for
Honesty, Deception, and Hypocrisy (1995). Also a paper about
Social Influence, Evolution and deception.
(1993)
We laugh about other societies' customs and tribal rituals but do not notice how many senseless and expensive rituals our society requires. Those who do not wear the right trendy clothes, do not look attractive enough or do not believe in all the rules and norms of our society suffer great disadvantages. Children and teenagers who do not fit tare unliked, ignored and suffer heavy pressures to conform to the norms of their peers. People even get locked up in mental institutions and treated against their will. See also Sally Clay's article Normalcy as threat to world peace .
But, there are people that go against the norm, aren't
there? Well, norms are so ingrained, that the anti-norm
people instantly create new norms. Among the hippies, one
should wear the right type of flowing Indian clothes. And
imagine how punks would treat a peer dressed in a
suit.
By the way, the picture on top is about Galileo, whose
true scientific findings were repressed by the church, and
the pope who insisted that his throne was the center of the
Universe. A little late, in 1992, the catholic church
rescinded Galileo Galilei's condemnation (Montalbano, W. D.
(1992). Earth moves for Vatican in Galileo case. Los Angeles
Times, Nov. 1, pp 1, 8.) "Normal" people often do
not react very quickly to new circumstances.
Normal people compare themselves to others. No matter how
much money they make, they are always unsatisfied if they
make less than others. It does not matter that in countries
like the US, the standard of living of a working class person
is better than that of upper class people 200 years ago, what
counts is that other people are doing better.
The main element that maintains this system is self deception.
I arrived at a lot of my thoughts and conclusions because
I tend to think differently. I used to take seriously what
people said. I thought people were usually honest, understood
themselves and knew what they said. I tried to be honest
towards myself and others, and was open to logical argument.
These features of mine seem quite normal, many people would agree that they also think this way. I will try to demonstate that this is not so (see self-deception, hypocrisy).
People tend to have stubbornly held opinions. They do not notice them too frequently, because these opinions are shared by most of their friends and the people in their culture. These beliefs and attitudes are, in my view, are responsible for a vast amount of human problems. Not only for fights and wars, but also for scientific backwardness.
Why does it usually take 20 years to reach an obvious
conclusion? Like putting on seat belts? I saw one scientific
report on seat belts 25 years ago, and from then on I used
seat belts. Why does it take 20 years for the majority to do
so?
At 14 years of age I read one book by Bertrand Russell
(something like: "Why I am not a Christian") and
dropped my until then strongly held religious beliefs within
a few days.
You can probably see how I easily get myself in conflict
with other people. The social ostracism far outweighs the
reproductive advantage [see for terminology] due to increased
survival in car accidents or due to a more realistic view of
the world. Similarly, for a member of an ancient tribe, the
avoidance of some absurdly dangerous initiation rite would
yield grave social consequences and thus not yield
reproductive advantages.
At 7 years of age I refrained from buying sweets to
donate the savings to starving African children.
There is a scientific and popular debate about human
altruism. This entire altruism debate is flawed: Consider the
price difference between a decent transportation ($1500) and
a nice new car ($20 000). This could finance the education or
medical treatment of many children here, and of entire
villages in the third world. The cost of a designer shirt can
provide life saving treatment to a third world child (which
then will contribute to further death due to overpopulation,
but this is another point). Who wants to see these truths?
Who wants to know that our vanity to have a new car is more
important than saving a dozen sick children?
In my personal and love relationships, I have argued, with
little success, that I was born in a free country. My
constitution allows me freedom of expression. So why would I
enter into a conventional "love" relationship or
marriage, that prohibits me from mentioning or even thinking
that I consider another woman attractive? But, it is normal
that a "lover", similar to the devil in fairy
tales, can demand one's soul and one's freedom. See my
poem called
"Love"
(
"Amor" in Portuguese, Liebe
in German).
One of the biggest irrational beliefs of people is
religion. It is strange that children of Christians rarely
become Muslims, and children of Muslims rarely become
Christians. Rather, they blindly follow the footsteps of
their parents. The "truth" depends on the country
you were born in. I can prove, in two lines, that over 50% of
the population firmly believes in the wrong religion, an
effect also called overconfidence. [proof: all large
religions are mutually exclusive, so only one can be true.
The biggest religion has less than 50% of humanity as
followers. Hence over 50% firmly believe in the wrong
religion (of course, the correct one is the one you, the
reader, believe in)]
Try to argue like this and you will see enormous
resistance and blindness. And people can continue to feel
comfortable to call themselves lovers, altruists, and
truth-seeking researchers.
In a Social Psychology class, a world famous professor once explained:
While Social Psychologists were still adhering to the
'naive scientist' models of humans, the cognitive
psychologists, one floor up on this building were
demonstrating a large amount of human biases. It took five
years for these findings to enter the social psychology
research. I asked her: "What measures are social
psychologists taking, so they don't miss the next train by 5
years?" She was not at all amused at this comment.
People do not learn from their mistakes. NO matter how
often they erred, they act like the modern pope, whose claims
to infallibility are not at all shaken by the fact that his
infallible predecessors committed innumerable mistakes, like
the condemnation of Galileo Galilei or the torture of
witches. But, a healthy self confidence, though false and
unrealistic, enhances one's success.
The answers to the above puzzles are obvious from the
point of view of
evolutionary theory . This is one of the main reasons
it is o compelling to me. But, most people do not even see
there IS a question, this is one of the reasons why they do
not want to hear about evolutionary theory. So, I believe
this is central to the lack of recognition for evolutionary
psychology.
Actually, now I sometimes wonder: how have my genes
survived until now? These genes who allow me to get myself in
such deep trouble by thinking too logically and by being too
honest and consistent.
This is probably the conflict for the evolution of
intelligence: how to construct a mind with sharp intelligence
and the capacity to muddle the waters about social truths. I
suggest this is the reason why engineers tend to be socially
inept. They do not understand the warped deceptive social
logic.
I believe there must be mechanisms in the human mind,
that actively avoid finding reproductively detrimental
truths. Like Freud's unconscious, but even stronger.
Similarly knowledge of conception and ovulation evolved
to be hidden from women. A woman who could avoid conception
due to this knowledge would obviously be out-reproduced by
the ignorant. Is it a coincidence that the method of the
cervical mucus never became widely known? It is a vast
improvement over the regular rhythm/calendar birth control
method, has no side effects, is cheap, and allowed even by
the catholic church.
There is some obscure research showing that people
routinely lie to their mates. That, in everyday
conversations, about half of the sentences are not completely
honest. Rather they hide, conceal, exaggerate, embellish etc.
This research is not popular and has not been replicated or
followed up.
Richard Alexander makes some provocative statements
("Human society is a web of lies and deceit"). Can
this not be made a psychological hypothesis and be
empirically tested?
The problem is: no matter how conclusive the results,
they will be ignored. For example, a series of articles and
an entire book by Shelley Taylor on "positive
illusions" shows very detailed evidence that humans have
"illusion of control", "positive
illusions", and lack of this is related to depression
and less recovery in illness.
The author herself was shocked when I suggested to
incorporate this truth into the therapy for depressed people:
telling them that they need to learn to be less realistic and
to acquire positive illusions. Also, after showing all the
evidence for human biases and illusions, the author made a
sudden, image-saving turn, suggesting that social control
would keep these illusions in check. My suggestion that there
could be commonly held societal illusions (religion, .. .)
did not meet much sympathy either.
[
Truth, Half-Truth, and Lies ]
[Social Evolution and Social Influence: Selfishness,
Deception, Self-deception
]
You have to have illusions. And to preserve them you need
the illusion that you have no illusions. And the illusion
that you don't have the illusion that you have no illusions.
And .....
Similarly, about self deception and deception. You have
to deceive yourself into believing you do not deceive. And,
in order not to blow your cover, you have to deceive yourself
that you are not deceiving yourself about not deceiving
yourself?
A game with words? Not quite. These mechanisms must be
completely air-tight. Once the truth leaks in somewhere, the
house of cards of our beliefs would collapse just like the
Soviet Union did as soon as censorship relaxed.
To maintain the deceptive system, any messanger of the
truth must be ignored or eliminated.
Has human language evolved purposefully to be vague? Ask
people to define honesty? If somebody has a bad breath, you
notice it constantly and think about it constantly, but you
don't say it. Is this honesty? You did not lie! If you see an
attractive member of the opposite sex with romantic or sexual
thoughts constantly on your mind and you talk about the
weather. Do you feel dishonest?
And I try to pin people down on this topic of hiding
relevant information. And then somebody says that they cannot
all the truths, the do not tell the person with the bad
breath that he has five fingers on his hand. They try to
overlook the difference between omitting information about
the bad breath and the five fingers. Humans are extremely
inventive to avoid looking at their manipulative
strategies.
Machiavellian intelligence and deception are central to
human interaction. As a result of a sophisticated arms race,
these facts are very effectively hidden.
Note: you might want to start reading the last articles first, because they are the most recent ones.
A poem called "Love" ( "Amor" in Portuguese, Liebe in German) was inspired by a woman who "loved" me and treated me worse and with less respect than I would treat an enemy. But, this is how love relations normally are Husbands are the leading cause for violent death in females.
I
wish, love was not such an abused word. I wish they would not
hide their selfish interest and their lack of respect for the
individuality of the partner behind a word that seems to be
as positive as love. It is funny: at least in the US, it is
now not accepted for a man to see a woman as a "sex
object". But, it is totally acceptable to see a partner
as an object of domination, whose actions, thoughts and
feelings need to be controlled.
An experience with a humanistic growth center around
1990. It is strange. I get along better with redneck cowboys,
who are openly repressive. These guys in the growth movement,
though, had a lot in common with me, I agree on large parts
of their philosophy. Unfortunately, they tended to fall into
the same trap as anybody else. Their concept of
"freedom" became institutionalized and rigidly
predetermined. So when I found out what was unconsciously
false and stifling there, I got in trouble. They were so
upset by my article
"Humaniversity" that they spent the money to
call me in Brazil just to tell me never to show up there
again. And, note, the goals of their work are
"self-awareness", finding oneself, being authentic
etc. Though some of my theoretical attitudes about therapy
and human nature have changed since then, the basic message
is still true:
Read Humaniversity (1988) with lots of cute
cartoons.
This type of experience, that wherever I go I do not fit,
because I see to much, prompted me to write the poem about
loneliness. This poem is quite pessimistic and can probably
understood better after reading some of the other readings (
Poem: Loneliness ). It got me interested in human
blindness and the adaptiveness of self deception. Read :
"The misery of the seeing
among the blind ".
Evolutionary theorists think that self deception helps one to believe in his or her own lies and to deceive other people better. But, due to their own self deception about the true state of human affairs, they missed the other purpose: fitting into a society with lots of stubbornly held false beliefs, that are viciously defended. A few hundred years ago, people who believed that Mary, Jesus Christ's mother was not a virgin after giving birth to a son, were summarily executed.
And even in the most liberal places, like University of
California in Berkely, the so-called "naked guy"
(see a
photo of him "dressed up" for a court
appearance) was expelled for going to class naked. Who are
other people to tell him what he needs to wear? It you do not
like it, do not look! But, discrimination on the basis of
clothes is officially sanctioned. In job interviews, men who
do not put a useless and ridiculous tie around their necks
and women who do not wear high heels shown to be damaging to
your feet and posture, are legally discriminated and
guaranteed not to get the job.
And people who are against racial , gender, and religious discrimination (again, they have a lot in common with me) get really vicious when I ask them about dixcrimination on the basis of clothes and on the basis if you do or do not say "Hi, how are you". They say, clothes can be voluntarily changed. I tell them that I am just as convinced about the clothes I wear, and in my rejection of dress codes enforcing uncomfortable clothes such as ties and unhealthy clothes such as high heels as other people are about their religion. If they think I can change this conviction, then religious beliefs can be chagned jsut as easily.. This is usually the end of the discussion, due to irreconcilieable differences. Well, among liberals, combatting discrimination based on race, gender, and sexual orientation is fashionable and socially sanctioned. Real tolerance is rare, like the attitude of the ACLU to defends the right of political adversaries, like the right of Nazis to congregate and demonstrate.
