Dude, that’s pretty deep stuff…
For me the “subconscious†is a term referring to the part of the brain where excess or disturbing, self-destructive, perceptions are stored.
In the course of a day the mind processes huge amounts of information.
Some of the information is simplified or generalized so as to incorporate as much of it as possible within the judging process.
This is why reality is always a generalization where as much detail is attempted to be incorporated in the interpretation/abstraction of sensual reality.
The speed of incorporation determines how many details get included in the abstraction and so determines how accurate or precise it is.
Different minds have different processing speeds.
Then one must add to this the psychological constitution of the person perceiving.
Each person has different tolerance levels, a different nerve, a different temperament, produced by genetics and experiences.
This determines how much of the information perceived will be accepted in the processing.
For example, what is disturbing or goes against the person’s trained moral sensitivity will be excluded from the abstraction and be stored in the subconscious as unused information.
The subconscious is a kind of quarantine/storage partitioning of the consciousness where sensual information is placed either because it is too dangerous to be processed or because the mind lacks the ability or the speed to adequately account for them.
In other words when the mind is unable to place a piece of the jigsaw puzzle or has no clue where to begin because its abstraction lacks the necessary pieces, the excess it stored for a period of time.
This excess information is sometimes called intuition.
To return, somewhat, to the topic of the thread, females seem to be more dependant on this information because they lack the abstracting speed of males.
Females ‘feel’ things more than men do without knowing precisely why.
That’s because male brains are more capable at ordering and abstracting, on average. This would also explain their inability to philosophize or innovate in any great extent, except for some notable exceptions.
The information in the subconscious affects the information in the consciousness without being completely processed.
This excess information is also discarded, incorporated later, or defragmented out – to use a computer analogy – during sleep.
I believe that the ‘Know Thyself’ refers to what you are talking about.
To truly use something, you must know it completely and honestly.
Self-knowledge, self-consciousness involves more than identifying yourself in a reflective surface.
That is but a primitive, first step.
When the brain partitions a piece and turns it on itself, it must explore with as much courage, unprejudiced objectivity and genuine curiosity as any explorer of unknown frontiers.
Most of the things to be found will be uncomfortable and some will be truly dangerous.
This is why most people never truly know the one thing they can know with any degree of accuracy or intimacy, their own self.
This is why ideologies that offer a relief from this discomfort of facing up to one’s own self and those ideologies which preach ‘goodness’, benevolence and purity are always so attractive to the mind.
The mind does not want to face up to what is ugly or disturbing or confusing or terrifying within its own existence.
It therefore wears uniforms, it creates onionskins around the emptiness, it partitions the disturbing, and it denies its own essence choosing to identify with what is most flattering and comforting or choosing to find self in how it is reflected in the other.
This, I believe, was what Heidegger’s meant by “theynessâ€.
It also corresponds with much of what Sartre and Nietzsche were talking about.
It is easier to impress or fool the other, by adjusting yourself or objectifying yourself to him, than it is to fool and impress your own self.
Although the latter often happens, as well, usually by first impressing and convincing the other and then receiving positive or negative input to construct an identity.
This identity is an attempt to hide the self, the empty self, from the inward turned eye of self-consciousness.
I disagree.
We make ourselves much more available to others than to ourselves.
The ability to incorporate detail determines the accuracy of the perceiver.
Everything from form, color, movement, tone, smell or any sensual stimulation exposes the self, even while it attempts to mask and hide itself.
The talent is sharpened by a kind of double reflection.
We first perceive ourselves in the eyes of the other.
Then we become self-conscious about how the other judged us.
We then return the favor by using what we’ve learned to judge them.
In other words the information the other used to pass judgment upon us, if we perceive and understand it sufficiently and honestly enough, then becomes a template to judge the other.
Furthermore I believe that there is something to Ernst Kretschmer’s ‘Physique and Character’ thesis.
A fool is someone who never learns.
I resist absolutes.
To accept one would mean you would have to, at least, consider all of them possible.
For me the fact that the universe is not at rest is because it fails to become absolute.
Then we probably have different definitions of absoluteness.
You could make the argument that the system is in balance and harmony by moving and that this is part of its stability.
But for me the fact that change is needed to stabilize it points to an internal imbalance, even if regional.
A truly balanced, absolute, ordered system, for me, would be totally inert.
I consider surrender, even in the face of certain defeat, a coward’s way out of self-responsibility.
To be accountable for self is to face up to its inevitable conclusion and to the consequences of its own acting.
I hate to use pop-culture as symbolism here, but this reminds me of one of my favorite cinematic scenes.
Remember in the Matrix – I forget which one – when agent smith asks Neo, after pummeling him into the ground over and over again:
“Why? Why Mr. Anderson do you fight?†or words to that effect.
Neo responds:
“Because I choose to.â€
That is nobility.
To die with your head up.
It also reminds me of the ending to Kazantzakis’s ‘The Life and Times of Zorba’ when Zorba gets out of his death bed and faces the horizon “snorting like a horse’ on his feet before he dies.
That is nobility.
To cower beneath the unknown like a sniveling, groveling slave, begging for compassion and tolerance and eternity and love and the absolute (God), is degrading and a blemish on a life lived.
To seek escape within a whole, to hide behind a multiplicity and absolve yourself from the responsibility of self, is a debasement of the very individuality you sought to complete.
Dan~
Not deep enough.
My sincere apologies for taking the course of your thesis away from its’ intended line. Again, not my intention to offend.
It is rare to find one who is willing to openly discourse with brazen and honest recount of their ideologies. Moreso, I am not often given to attempting to flex my own ideologies against a superior mind, as in the current case.
I thank you for your time and the depth of your thoughtfulness. We will continue another time, in a more appropriate format. You have the mind of a warrior, and most certainly, my admiration for telling of such.
Thank you Satyr.
There is one very big mistake in this essay: that men and women are behaving like instinctive animals or like super logical surviving machines. This is simply not true. We are making mistakes, thanks God. Love is about loving and accepting someone who is not perfect.
Different motivations and drives can strengthen or weaken each other.
I think we are not looking for a super biological machine, we are looking for someone who is us but in the form of the opposite sex. Being in love somehow is finding “something” which is missing from us but is similar to us.
And another thing: women are behaving differently in the company of men and in the company of women. Maybe men really can’t see women as other women see women. But then we must ask: which is the illusion?
There might be more than a few mistakes in this essay.
I wrote it years ago and reading through it now there are things I would add or change.
But the opinions, expressed in it, have remained relatively unaltered.
I knew “God†would be involved where ‘love’ was mentioned but not deconstructed.
I can understand the vanity and fear behind the dissatisfaction concerning mankind’s animal nature.
Human beings simply want to be born special and unique – they prefer to inherit greatness – instead of working for it.
When we fail to perceive ourselves and our true motives, behind the pretence, we become victims of ourselves.
You cannot overcome what you deny or what you ignore
This difference is part of it.
There is no illusion for one that does not buy into the act.
The change in behavior is the behavior.
Many women love thinking of them selves as more complicated creatures - this because they, themselves, cannot comprehend their own behaviors completely or they ascribe to them motives or reasons which are incorrect or imprecise.
They act intuitively. They feel things.
The same can be said for most men – especially when they are brought up in environments where many male characteristics or natural predispositions are considered a product of dysfunction or illness or are considered disruptive and immoral.
We love thinking of ourselves as pure and honest when we participate in social dynamics which force hypocrisy.
Civility is a form of hypocrisy.
Truth is females are very simple creatures.
It’s the way they hide this simplicity that creates the façade of complicated minds.
It’s how they adapt their natural instinctual need to the prevailing cultural environment that makes them seem mysterious to most men.
When one stops listening to what people say and just watch what they do, things become clearer.
Language, being a sophisticated form of grooming, is also used to mask and to divert and to pretend.
Words are how the mind clouds the waters around its becoming, so that it can make its escape – sometimes escaping from self as much as from the other.
But actions have a cost and so demand more honesty.
…and even protecting ones you love from those who are not perfect.
Kinda creates a problem there.
The evaluator with the biggest gun decides the value. Love doesn’t have to be something two people agree on…the gun will make sure of that.
Its times like these that we need a God, I think, because sometimes you have to go around your elbow to get to your thumb. Hey, here’s an idea, no guns, no evaluators. Solved!
I tell those only who wish to become politicans this information. Those who are not capable of leading cannot know that God doesn’t exist, or we are foiled.
(this post will self-destruct in five seconds)
I think Satyr your problem is that you cannot see the inner thoughts of women. Women are not as aggressive as men so their thought process is much more balanced. Of course it can be a weakness too, because innovation, art, or generally any kind of fighting needs aggressive and robust motivation. So I think female personality is very similar to male personality but females are suppressing their aggression because of fear, because of their relative emotional and physical weakness. The female superego is responsible for the lack of personality: females are hiding their real personality because their survival depends on it. But trust me they have their detailed personality. On the other hand it is very interesting that you cannot sense their hidden personality. Your dilemma is a tough one: you can’t decide that females are superficial or they have an instinct to pretend to the death this superficiality. Maybe you never met a woman without this “hiding” instinct who has respectable intelligence. Shame.
Anyway, what you call “personality” in men is really just making more noise, being more agressive.
m: Aggressive.
f: Subversive.
Zunya
No kidding?
I can’t “read the thoughts†of anyone.
All I can do is read their actions.
It has more to do with their procreative dependence on others.
Fear is present in all minds.
The personality is not allowed to develop or grow when it is suppressed.
It atrophies or becomes retarded.
I can “sense†much.
I’ve been cultivating my feminine side. 
I enjoy the company of women, for the most part – their adolescent exuberance and psychology can be charming.
-I know women “know†things without knowing how or why they do.
-They sense and feel ‘truth’ or ‘quality’ but can never rationalize their sensations and feelings – they surrender to them without ever mastering them.
-They have a keen eye for detail, but can never pinpoint what exactly affected their judgment. For this reason they can come to correct assessments and use common sense but they can never order and systematically deconstruct why or how.
-They can psychoanalyze another on the fly, but they can never follow their own reasoning down to its source. They sense the environment and they feel the others character but they can never explain what particulars went into their judgment.
-They are attracted to confidence and power (both ways of describing indifference) and they consider men that are too attentive weird or weak, even if they will never say so outright. They like those that like them but they do not respect them. They cannot comprehend why anyone would place them on a pedestal when they have such a low opinion of themselves and they think that the other must then be inferior to their own judgments of themselves and so not worthy of them.
-They believe in love and compassion and tolerance – all social norms that facilitates cohesion and cooperation – and they resist anything that points to selfish motives or underlying self-serving reasons for their ideals. They prefer the façade and the myth to any ‘truth’ which will taint the illusion.
-They desire to ‘belong to’ more than they desire to ‘posses’. Their highest ambition is to belong to what is most worthy of them. For this reason religions, ideologies and spirituality, in general, are particularly appealing to them.
They make great followers and are natural groupies.
This, in turn, makes them effective social and cultural filters.
They are readily and easily assimilated and they hold the keys to the precious ovum, ergo they only accept insemination from those that exhibit the ‘correct’ social’ and ‘cultural’ markers. Yet, a part of them is still stuck in that primordial past with different considerations and standards.
That’s when duplicity and confusion ensues.
-They compete by using underhanded, duplicitous methods because they cannot compete in any other way - human procreative practices have caused them to evolve a dependence on the group.
Men do so because they are prevented or discouraged from using their original methods of competition and dominance, and so they turn feminine in their guile and duplicity and social ascending strategizing to survive and to procreate in a system that prefers female passivity and hypocrisy instead of direct confrontation and honesty.
-They are far more emotionally influenced and motivated than men are – although this too is changing due to the feminization I speak of. They exhibit passions to degrees that men cannot.
Women have always been more sexual, hornier, than men are or could ever be, due to biological factors.
For this reason their emotions are fleeting and not steady or permanent. They can rise to the extreme heights of love and hate, exhibiting them both to degrees where men fail to rise and then they get over them just as easily and completely. They fall in love and out of love at the drop of an endorphin – they call their sexual passion love because it is closely related to their motherly nurturing instincts and menstrual cycles.
How can you be anything but superficial when your entire world-view depends on your senses and immediate awareness?
Actually I have met a woman of extraordinary intelligence on another forum.
We also met and spent a summer together.
She was pretty but very masculine in many ways. I still keep in touch with her.
I think any time reason is present to any great degree sexuality takes the backstage.
Reason is a resisting element, a questioning challenge to the world and so it is synonymous with masculine defiance and the Will.
Femininity is about willingness and acceptance. It challenges only what threatens its participation and belonging and all its energies are directed into fitting in and playing the social game.
In most cases, yes.
But if you read the disclaimer at the beginning of the essay I mention there that the terms ‘masculine’ and ‘feminine’ denote a state of being and a way of facing the world and that both are present, to varying degrees, in both males and females.
I have met women that are far more masculine than many men and I have met men that are far more feminine than many women.
That the masculine will be more present or pronounced in males is a matter of nature, which nurture warps or surpasses or nourishes.
The same goes for the feminine and females.
Looking at other species we see that social groups are characterized by their feminine character.
Species like ants, bees, termites etc. show a preference for the female type, for some reason.
This is why species like elephants or lions are predominately female groups with males coming and going from the periphery.
This is not a coincidence.
We should settle this once an for all.
Get a country with only women governers and see how well it does compared to a country with only male governers.
No-wonder the boys in the collective have such tastes…
Satyr: the fact, that you are using terms like “every”, “they” presupposes, that you know all women, past, present and future. This is stupid. First, I bet you never know a woman really and never lived together in love with one for a longer time.
I must point out that you should examine yourself: where does your frustration come from. You cannot get satisfaction from spiritual erection and verbal sex. Try the real thing and your hate will crumble.
Every rule has its exceptions.
Did I use “every” again?
When we speak about a phenomenon we do not deal with what is not included in it nor do we follow our every statement with a disclaimer.
If I say that all zebras are striped I imply that this is a general rule and that there might be zebras that are not striped.
Thank you.
I think that of all things you certainly must know what “stupid†is.
Of course….this explains everything.
I’m thinking it’s because I can’t get laid.
See? I knew it.
My sexual frustrations must be behind my ‘stupidity’.
Thankfully most, like you, have no problem getting laid and so have no such frustrations.
Thank you for proving me wrong with your example. I believe that you, especially, proved, with your intelligent and sexually ‘satisfied’ interjection, how completely off I was with my comments about women and men.
I also believe that if you continue posting you will make it all the more painfully clear how wrong I was.
So please continue posting.
I would humbly suggest that the next time you reach an impasse and you run out of arguments to counter what you desperately want to believe is not true or what you cannot fully comprehend that you should refrain from attacking the person behind the opinion and only focus on discrediting his views.
If you cannot do so, then perhaps, you should not comment at all.
Then you can depart with your pride intact and your sense of well-being unaltered.
I know that the sexually satisfied and the loving people of the world, like you, find it difficult to understand why the universe is so unfair and cruel but at least you’ve got your mental health and your well-adjusted psychology to keep you happy.
And finally thank you for using that keen insight, and that brilliant mind of yours to clairvoyantly perceive my past and present sexual and emotional relationships.
I always wondered why I hated people so much and why I found women so threatening.
I always wondered why I had no friends.
Now I know.
This is my last reply to you.
Anything further would be a waste of my time.
Satyr, a typical woman would reply for you post: sorry, I didn’t want to hurt you. Maybe women are really cruel to you. Maybe they cannot see your values and your real personality. Don’t give up your search and you will find a girl for you who loves you.
A typical man would reply for your post: be a man you sissy and find a girl for yourself don’t just cry like a baby.
I bet you find the last one the better personality (sorry, the existing personality).
Anyway, we can decide the truth of your ideas by examining real men and real women. I’m just doing this with my posts.
I wonder whose remarks are an expression of hate here.
“Know a woman really” - what does this mean? How can you ever know anything “really” (i.e., completely)?
“In love” - what does this mean? Is not “love” your word for the complex consisting of sexual passion, motherly nurturing instincts, etc.?
Oh, but then I have never known a woman really and never lived together in love with one for a longer time. Neither had that other great masculist and “misogynist”, Friedrich Nietzsche. Is it perhaps something unmasculine to do so? Must one not, in order to understand women and live together with them, - be feminine?
It is not a question of what a typical man would say, considering that you two have agreed that men, in most cases, are not really masculine (but really just making more noise, being more agressive); the question is, indeed, what a real man would say.
It is these “deep fountains”, these devisers of new values who are the real men. Today, where all is market-place, where are they?
Satyr, I remember Nietzsche saying that woman’s reason is like a battle ship, whereas man’s is like a little row-boat; but that, because of the gales of his passion, his would usually get much farther than hers.
I think woman is generally much more calculating than man, whereas he is much more passionate. I think the masculine and the feminine are poles, which behave as opposites. It is all a question of strength of will.
The Sanskrit word rajas is usually translated as “passion”. It is derived from the word raja, meaning “king” (cognate to rex). I equate rajas with what Zarathustra calls Herrschsucht, which Thomas Common translates as “passion for power” (but which literally means “seeking to rule”, being a compound of sucht “seeking” and herrschen “to rule”, the latter which is derived from Herr, “master”).
It seems to me that reason is rajas turnt back upon itself. It is passion for power, which is usually turnt outward in search of conquest, but is now seeking to master itself, to moderate itself. Moderation is, of course, the opposite of mediocrity: the former requires strong will, the latter, weak will, lack of will.
I equate ratio, which literally means “measure”, to the Sanskrit sattva, which is usually translated as “harmony”, and which is derived from a root meaning “to remain”. Sattva, reason, harmony stands still, whereas rajas is emotive, outward-moving. To be reasonable is not to be without emotion, but to be in harmony of emotion. It is the opposite of that feminine weakness of emotion, which is set off by every stimulus.
“To discern: that is DELIGHT to the lion-willed! But he who hath become weary, is himself merely “willed”; with him play all the waves.”
[Zarathustra, Of Old and New Tables, 16.]
I don’t remember this passage.
Then again I haven’t read Nietzsche in over two years.
Yes.
Learning to sail the seas of passion is something to be learned - you are either diverted or pushed around by them or you can use them as motivations and as a force to steer your boat and to create with.
Interesting.
I believe that even the pursuit of power is the veiled pursuit of completion or perfection or of Somethingness.
To be without emotion or passion is to be indifferent and detached (free).
It is to be complete and absolute – inert, timeless, unchanging, inactive.
To be alive is to be in a state of awareness of incompleteness, and so to be alive is to be attached or caring – moving, acting, temporal.
Emotions either fuel the fires of overcoming or they burn wildly.
All movement, all acting, all becoming, all energy can either be directed, focused and controlled or it can be left to chaotically expend itself before it fizzles out.
Indeed.
There was a quote, an aphorism, by Nietzsche concerning how marriage raised women and diminished men but I forget it now.
Your last question hits the nail on the head.
I’ve used the terms ‘masculine’ and ‘feminine’ to exaggerate the two “poles” of human nature, as you described it.
One seeks to overcome and dominate and control and hold: The Apollonian.
The other seeks to abandon itself, to surrender, to belong, and let go: The Dionysian.
Any unity forces a compromise and a sacrifice and a loss from the parts uniting. They are molded, formed, shaped, assimilated to fit into the unity harmoniously.
This process discriminates and suppresses and leads to a change.
The masculine wants to shape the world to fit into it, as a means of making self complete, by absorbing.
The feminine wants to shape itself to fit into it, as a means of making self a part of completeness, by being absorbed.
Marriage is better suited to the feminine even if it was invented by males to stabilize social groups by allowing for greater numbers of males to participate in procreation - this minimizes sexual competition and ironically results in the degradation of the species.
Female sexual power, as I mention in my essay, is a filtering mechanism.
Marriage is a technology which harnesses natural forces and directs them to mutually beneficial creations.
A woman’s sexual power is controlled in this way, yet because of her tolerant, accepting nature and her need to belong; she accepts it willingly, unquestioningly, and finds ways of expressing her power through it in indirect ways - usually through the male or through a male-replacement entity such as an institution.
Institutions are what replaces the masculine which is being weeded out of human nature.
The male must sacrifice his masculine sense of independence and his pursuit of self-sufficiency and dominion so as to participate in a unity where his field of control is limited. This, also is a means to belong to a social norm which he cannot overcome or avoid.
He succumbs to his feminine side.
This same process can be called emasculation or castration - it may relate back to Freud’s concepts about the fear of castration - and is the same process which results in lower-level males behaving like females in such species as wolves, for instance.
Science tells us that this process is accompanied with a lowering of testosterone levels in these ‘lesser’ males.
Another instance of feminization.
I wonder if these lowered levels could result in genetic mutations over prolonged periods of time, especially when these 'lesser’ males are allowed to procreate, thusly passing along this trait.
Homosexuality?
When the male is prevented from alpha-male status he bides his time or he leaves, or foreced to leave, the group (isolation or expulsion) or he surrenders to his fate by acquiring more feminine dispositions which make him more acceptable and tolerable to the group, and especially less threatening to the alpha-male.
In our modern times this ‘alpha-male’ position has been taken over by institutions, forcing all other males into subordinate roles.
This is feminization.
The male cannot control the group directly and so chooses subversive, more feminine, more indirect ways.
Leaders today are put through a process where they must first prove how emasculated they are. That is they must not become threatening to the institutions of power but acquire the dispositions or characteristics which the institutions need.
The position characterizes the ‘individual’ and rarely does the individual characterize the position.
Every upwardly mobile person must prove his allegiance to the system’s rules and morals and beliefs by convincing all the intermediating individuals, whom have done so themselves, of their ‘purity’ or loyalties.
One is promoted when he convinces his superiors that he is no different than them or that he will not threaten the status quo.
The feminine is unifying and social and cooperative and submissive and tolerant and willing.
The masculine is discriminating, domineering, controlling, and intolerant.
This is why science and philosophy are products of the masculine mind resisting the unknown, wanting to dominate nature and existence by comprehending it, accepting no controlling force, no authority, over it.
The Greeks could have only nurtured this challenging force, because even their gods were approachable and closer to human nature and not raised to Judeo-Christian unreachable heights of absolute authority.
Religion and spirituality is feminine. It wants to be a part of a whole, to belong. It does not challenge or question but only seeks ways to participate and find a place.
This distinction between the two poles is a product of procreative strategies which have enhanced or nurtured certain psychological predispositions, resulting also in physical differences because the physical is simply the same thing as the psychological within a different context.
What you are or how you look physically isn’t accidental or superficial; something that can be separated from the mind and minimized in significance creating the myth of a pure or impure self or of spirit and body.
It is a projection of what you are in essence.
So, in fact, globalization or the need to assimilate larger and larger populations and more and more diverse minds from diverse backgrounds creates the premise within which feminization occurs, as a necessity, and it creates the conditions where domestication and the leveling of personality and character and intelligence, happen.
Men will conquer the world, women will conquer just men. A female can dominate a male and the male will think that he is dominating the female. Stealth domination can be more powerful than clear domination.
I think there is only one female quality: to give birth to a child. There is just one male quality: to impregnate a female.
It is good to be female, it is good to be male, but what is it like to be God? Not asexual, but “supersexual”, being all consciousness?
I think you do not really understand that in love the female and the male parts are really becoming one. It is an unbelievable experience to feel that you are part of a human: a human is two body, two consciousnesses morphing into one.