“What a woman really wants is rarely congruous with what she really needs.”

- Xenocrates

I have heard many conversations between men and women debating what women really want. I’ve often found such conversations to be just as entertaining as they were meaningless, largely because women rarely know themselves well enough to know what they want, let alone what they need.

However, I believe that I have inadvertently discovered what women really want. If you’re a man, you may find this interesting. If you’re a woman, I can tell you right now that your sense of denial will probably kick in before you get to the end of this post (if it hasn’t already). I’m prepared for you. So let’s talk…

Rules of Engagement

To the average man, women seem like unnecessarily complicated animals. But some close observation will reveal that there is in fact a pattern to their madness. Patterns, as any cryptologist will tell you, are the key to deciphering language. So when a woman says she wants, there are two rules to observe:

Rule #1: What she wants is not what she needs

The first thing you need to understand about women (and I’m speaking to you even if you are a woman) is that what a woman really wants is rarely congruous with what she really needs. Women have a talent for saying one thing and meaning something else entirely. It is most incredibly frustrating.

Why this disparity exists between what a woman says and does is because (as I’ve elaborated to death on this blog) women prefer to use their right brain. This is the part that is responsible for creativity and emotional “fuzzy” logic; hence why we men often claim that we can neither live with nor without them.

With that said, the obvious qualifier of this declaration is that its applicability is directly proportional to the significance of her immediate concerns. In other words, whether she’s trying to decide between four ice cream flavours or two guys, the principle maintains a corresponding level of relevance in each case.

Rule #2: When expressing desires, women often speak in code

Women don’t like being explicit. They prefer when a man can “infer” what she means. That’s what they call ’sensitivity’, and it’s a highly desired trait in men. Scientists call this type of precognition “emotional intelligence”, i.e. the ability to manage one’s current state of mind during an emotional response.

Women don’t have this feature built in by default. It is thus up to the appropriate male to tune in to his feminine side and decode appropriately. As such, there are a few factors that may influence the relevance of what a woman wants. These factors are critical in deciphering feminine cryptology.

Using these simple principles, we can establish a framework that will act as something of a Rosetta Stone for further determining wants vs. actual needs. Apropos, this post is not quite so much about what a woman wants (since this is irrelevant) as much as it attempts to discern what she actually needs.

Corollary:

While one could argue that needs and wants are mutually exclusive, for the sake of this discussion, we will treat needs as being automatically superior to wants, thus making the latter redundant. Ergo, technically, what a woman really wants is really her needs. She just doesn’t know it yet in most cases.

The Tragedy of Satisfying a woman’s wants

Since most women are not left brain reliant (even though they use it extensively), they are not likely to have taken the time to differentiate between their wants and needs. That creates a whole different kind of problem that has a most disturbing effect on many of their frustrated men:

The Satisfaction Frustration Paradox

Any woman who always gets what she wants from a man, becomes bored with him very quickly. Either way, giving a woman exactly what she says she wants is synonymous with relationship suicide. This seems to be relatively consistent right across cultures, except those that are largely patriarchal.

Seems perfectly illogical, right? Well the problem is that women are not logical animals like men are and as such we should not have such an expectation in the first place. When a woman expresses a want, I am now pretty certain that even they don’t realise that they are actually subconsciously encoding a need.

This is why when men reward them with exactly what they say they want, they remain unsatisfied, or why when they give us the silent treatment, we are expected to magically know what’s wrong. All of these (and similar) circumstances are usually a direct result of men interpreting women literally.

There’s a very simple solution to this problem:

The Inverse Satisfaction Theorem

As a matter of principle, it is better for a man to give a woman what she needs as opposed to what she wants. When a woman expresses a want and gets her need instead, she is more likely to feel satisfied, even when she complains. The reason why she complains is because she really can’t tell the difference.

Sounds bizarre? I know, right? But I have proven this to be true in the large majority of cases. I just don’t tell the woman what I’m doing and it seems to work with a great degree of consistency. In my experience, women learn to realize that they have only been pacified enough to be left wanting more.

Rule #3: Never consistently satisfy a woman. Ever.

When a woman always gets exactly what she wants, she knows that you’re her own flesh and blood Squeeze me Elmo, that she can juice whenever she feels like it. She’ll also never respect you. However, If you only give her what she needs, she’ll still be satisfied, but will never get bored or loose interest.

It almost never fails.

Now, I know that there are some men out there who have been so whipped by western social constructs that you’re thinking that I’m being chauvinist. So if it sounds like I’m making condescending recommendations on how to manage the manager of your home, then I invite you blokes to consider the following:

• Women always know when they’re being irrational, illogical or otherwise deliberately throwing you a curve ball.
• Women like cattling among themselves about how dumb men are and how they’re the more sophisticated human.
• Women do these things all the time because they know we men will always let them get away with it.

So you the patriarchal male are really the bitch in the relationship of this westernized matriarchal society. Yes, you read correctly. You’re her bitch. At least this way you can reclaim your sanity without sacrificing your relationship in the process. Besides, you value her enough to keep her happy, right?

Men with boundaries tend to be more respected by women. That’s why they pelt you with their ludicrous wants from time to time. They’re like hackers feeling for a weakness in your perimeter, seeking to determine what they can and cannot get away with. If this sounds familiar, then do read on my friend.

What Women Want by Age

With women, the disparity between want and need is inversely proportional to age. In other words, the older a woman gets, the less disparity exists between want and need. This is why you will often find many younger men who secretly desire slightly older women – especially those salacious cougars.

Being more mature, older women tend to be less giddy, loquacious and fickle. Although, technically that’s because they’ve been around and sampled much of the food from the buffet. As such, they’ve developed a taste over a period of time for a particular selection of qualities that they won’t deviate from.

The only trouble is that generally speaking, older women never really shed some of their insecurities (especially as it pertains to their age) and are not likely to be quite as flexible as their younger kin when it comes to relationships. They tend to want more stability, not a just really a good time.

The following is a break down of some things older women are likely to say. The arrow ( ) translates their want to what they actually need. Please note that while these general case observations obviously do not apply to every woman, there are enough women out there to adequately validate them:

• I want marriage I need stability – marriage is just the first thing I could think of that would give me that.

• I want a really nice guy I need a gay friend – I just don’t realise it yet.

• I want a younger man I need to validate my sexual capacity to attract men – I’m insecure about my age, and you are my guinea pig.

• I want a new kitchen/house/renovation I’m bored and I need a distraction – I may just need a change of scenery, or just to paint the walls a new colour.

• I don’t want any casual sex I don’t need another heart break – and I’m taking precautionary measures.

• I just want to cuddle I need emotional reassurance, but I’m sparing your ego by not flatly telling you ‘no’.

• I want to loose weight I need you to tell me I’m beautiful – lie to me if you have to. It shows that you care.

• I want children I need to satiate my maternal instinct – and I’m getting old.

• I don’t want children I need to preserve my shape – and I’m getting old.

• I want you to show that you care I need you to wash the dishes when I cook – tell me thanks when I dust and clean, and remind me as often as possible why you love me when I do these little things.

Now if you observe carefully, the actual need is not very far from the want expression used. Women have an uncanny ability to creatively express their desires without being explicit. Compare and contrast then what a young woman is often inclined to say and what she really needs in similar cases:

• I want marriage I need to feel reassured that you love me – I’m not sure if you love me at all.

• I want a really nice guy I need a hot, swaggering jerk of a jock – whether he actually loves me or not is irrelevant.

• I want an older man I have a fantasy that I need to fulfill.

• I don’t want casual sex I need casual sex – just not from you. [OR] I don’t want you to think I’m a whore.

• I want a puppy I need to satiate my maternal instinct without getting pregnant – because I’m too old to still be playing with dolls.

• I just want to cuddle I need a break for my period – (or some other biological issue) but I want to be tactful about it.

• I want to loose weight I need to satisfy my ludicrous self image issues – no matter how much you tell me I am fine.

• I want you to show that you care I need you to lie to me – it’s the thought that counts.

• I want you to prove that you love me I need to break up with you, and I’m giving you one last chance to change my mind.

• I want us to see other people I need you to move on – because I’m already seeing other people

Can you see the relationship here? While older women are no less likely to encode their needs, younger women have virtually no correlation between the stated want and the actual need. That’s why they give their fathers early gray hairs and their boyfriends hair ripping moments of inconsolable frustration.

What Women Want in Men

Gentlemen; If you should query any bachelorette about what they want in a guy, you will get a dreamer’s list of qualities that sounds very much like those possessed by her gay friend. This shouldn’t be surprising, since this is why she is still single. At this stage, she still doesn’t know what she wants in a guy.

You will also find women who drift from boyfriend to boyfriend and have tallied up quite a score by the time they hit 30 – sometimes even in the double digits (if you count the one night stands) – again, because she doesn’t know what she wants. These women are still hoping to meet a man who doesn’t exist.

The following is thus a list of five of the top qualities women often say they want in men that they can’t actually handle:

1. An emotionally sensitive man

Really? Guys with above average emotional sensitivity are usually gay. Haven’t you ever wondered why you always complain that all the good men are married or gay? The ones that are married didn’t develop their emotional sensitivity before marriage. Some of them that are married are actually gay.

With that said, which woman in her right mind wants a man who is as emotionally sensitive as she is? Emotional sensitivity is something women possess in spades – and with good reason! What a woman actually needs is someone to balance all that emotional surplus in the relationship, not add to it.

When she’s emotionally distraught, does a woman need a man who will be just as emotionally disheveled, or be her shoulder to cry on? I mean, do you want onions when you’re crying or a rag? Girls, get your priorities straight. Gay men are just looking for silly women like you to hide in the closet with.

2. A really nice, gentle guy

Nice guys are ok – and that’s why you don’t want to sleep with them. They don’t turn you on because they’re dull. That’s why you’ve subconsciously castrated them and turned them into your gal pals with a frustrating hard on. Can you imagine being married for life to someone who is exactly like that?

Ladies, do you really want a spineless dude who always wants what you want, never has an opinion of his own, never stands up for himself and always tells you what you want to hear? If so, you’re a future cheating wife in training. Your marriage will have all the excitement of watching grass grow…

…in the desert.

3. A man who doesn’t lie

Rubbish! Women love it when men lie to them. They just don’t love when the lie is an act of betrayal. Allow me to be clear: Women love it when men lie to them about everything, except when it is to cover up something bad he did, that would affect her negatively. Otherwise, women love a lie with conviction.

I say that without apology, because it is 100% true.

Women love men when they lie about her looks, her cooking skills, her attractiveness, her intelligence, her sense of humor, her ability to make sense during an argument, and anything that would validate her need to have sex with him when he is drop dead gorgeous. She’ll sleep with him regardless…

…even though she knows he lied.

Men can’t hide lies from women. We all know that. The only women who believe the lies men tell are the ones that have managed to lie to themselves before hand. That’s called cognitive dissonance, and it’s the same reason why women stick with jerk wad boyfriends that treat them like utter crap.

Women need men who lie. Western women especially can’t live in a world without lying men. That would be the equivalent of living in a patriarchal society where women are second class citizens and men are their slave masters. Think Taliban controlled Afghanistan. It’d be nothing less than that.

When men don’t lie to women and tell them the raw unbridled truth at all times, that’s when you hear that he’s “insensitive to her feelings” or that he’s a “jerk” or that he “lacks emotional sensitivity” – all of which is a trailer load of crock. Men lie to allow women to sleep well at night. Women know this too.

So go ahead. Lie to me. Say it isn’t true.

4. A man with a large member

Ladies, your vagina is only 4 inches deep on average. If we account for distance gained due to curvature of the canal and the distance between his crotch the entrance to your precious place, then reasonably speaking, the average woman can handle nothing substantially larger than 6.5 inches.

Not comfortably anyway – unless you’re practicing to deliver live young.

While the vagina does stretch to accommodate the extra length in particularly large men, it is no less painful and according to many women, will feel a lot like trying to force a sausage into one of your nostrils. Yeah. It’s that sexy. Women talk about wanting a big man all the time, when they can’t really handle one.

I like your ambition though. It’s amusing.

Women change their opinion on this all the time. They tend to only want a big man when they’re horny, but coil up in pain when it doesn’t fit. It’s a lot like going to a supermarket when you’re hungry. You tend to buy a lot of useless crap you will never eat, only to have your refrigerator filled with spoiled goods.

A survey by the Kinsey Institute revealed that the average American woman finds men with large phalli to be just as sexually appealing as the thought of them using it on them to be frightening. This is because most men with a large penis have no idea of how painful it is to have one inserted into them.

That’s why they tear up vaginas as if it were a joke.

What a woman really needs is a man who knows how to use his penis to pleasure her. Men with large members never usually bother to learn, since they think that their size will automatically take care of everything. As such, they tend to be far less caring than their smaller brethren when thrusting.

Men with big penises have a nasty tendency to try and fit all of it into a woman at once. Sounds painful? What’s worse is that they also tend to be anxious to use it and don’t usually want to wait until you are lubricated enough before attempting penetration. You’ll bleed through your spleen when he’s done.

So the next time you ladies think about wanting a man with a big John, think about needing a man who knows how to make love to you. You don’t want to have your cervix bludgeoned to bits by what amounts to little more than a really horny a battering ram – not unless you’re really into that sort of thing.

Freak.

5. A really handsome / famous / successful guy

Again, women fail to examine the economics of things they say they want before they ask for them. Nothing is wrong with wanting a really hot catch. It’s just that having a particularly outstanding male as your beau comes with two particular issues that you might want to think about very, very carefully:

1. The improbability of his faithfulness – He’s cute, so he’s going to get a lot of tail being offered to him for nothing. Good looking guys are rarely faithful, not because they can’t be, but largely because the buffet is much larger. He will have the finest selection from the gene pool being offered to him daily (which may or may not include you) and the urge to upgrade will be a terribly irresistible temptation.
2. Other women circling your nest – If there’s one thing I’ve found out about female sexuality, it’s that there’s no honour among women when it comes to men. Men will trade war stories about their exploits, while women trade claws. What’s worse, is that women tend to prefer men who are unavailable; married men especially. I see this happen all the time. Girls don’t care about their sisters’ feelings when they go trawling for male meat. At least men have a bushido code of honour that we are blood bound to by death. Women are bound by fangs and claws and not much else. Just ask Tiger Woods’ mistresses.

I’m not suggesting that you can’t snare yourself an übermann. It’s just that the price of freedom (like any other high ideal) is eternal vigilance. So the moment you snare your ultimate hot dog, you may need to shed your girlfriends post haste – and prepare to deal with the imminent insecurity.

What women need in this context is a guy who genuinely loves them. If he happens to also be attractive, rich and / or famous, then you should consider that a bonus – not a requirement. Putting the cart before the horse like that is sure to snag you some class A jerks, pimps and maybe a STI or two to boot.

Men who make it in life long before they get married are almost impossible to tie down – not with all those women swarming them like vultures after carrion. Furthermore, if you’re not notably better looking than most of his female friends, you’re going to have some serious self image issues to deal with.

What Women Want in Life

Like clockwork, there are some things that you can dangle in front of any woman and get them to perform simple tasks:

1. Chocolate
2. Shoes
3. Handbags
4. A Sale where you buy two pairs of shoes and get a handbag or chocolate free

Nah… I’m kidding. (Actually I’m not, but my lawyer said I should type that in). However in life, there are certain things that women claim to want that appears to be grossly unrealistic. The following are five of the top things women claim to want that seem to be in conflict with what they actually need:

1. Career

Sooner or later, you’re going to have to choose which one is more important: Having children first or just focusing on Career. Many women do both – albeit, with mixed results. However, this is one of the many reasons why many women claim to be migrating from STEM careers – to go start a family.

What women actually need in this context is self actualization. Too many of them sacrifice their marriage or home life in the pursuit of this trite form of happiness. Many do realise eventually however that they derive a greater sense of self actualization from raising a family, with career in second place.

2. Equality

Women claim to want equality with men when they only actually need equal recognition. The chant for female equality has long outlived it’s natural purpose, becoming a dangerous behemoth that threatens the natural structure of the family while insidiously endangering the role of men in society.

But think about this carefully: If women become equal with a men, not only does that mean that chivalry would be automatically killed by these over ambitious women, but it would also mean that women would no longer be exempt from certain unpleasant things men once held strictly in their domain.

I find it most odd that women in this day and age who have drawn themselves up to the same level of recognition as men, still expect to be romanced and to enjoy the benefits of chivalry. I have no issues with these things. It’s just hypocritical to want equality with men and then still expect to be treated as though they were still the fairer sex. Ladies, be careful of what you want.

Equality does not consistently work in your favour.

3. To be Appreciated

While everyone wants to be appreciated, women tend to use the word out of context, usually irking their male counterparts when they make false claims about the true nature of their lover’s affection. Men show appreciation very differently from women. The trouble is that most women fail to recognize it.

When a woman says she wants to be appreciated, she actually means she needs to feel acknowledged. Women complain all the time that men don’t appreciate the hard work they do at home – which in some strange leap of logic, implies that he doesn’t love her. Men are not quite so complicated.

The remarkable simplicity of a man’s psychology is usually misinterpreted as his being aloof and uncaring. I’m not saying that men are therefore off the hook from saying “thank you” or putting a little more effort in keeping the house tidy, or doing the dishes after he’s had dinner. Those things still count.

However, men show appreciation for a woman’s lifestyle by facilitating it through his role as the head of the house hold. Just as how no woman would want a man who is an unambitious bum, most men don’t want a woman who is useless in the house as a nurturer. This is a most critical observation.

A man knows a woman loves him not by how much she says it, but by the things she does. Similarly, when he maintains his role as faithful husband, primary (or secondary) bread winner, father, family patriarch and role model, he is doing exactly the same thing by complementing her role at home.

However, there’s nothing wrong with men covering that insecurity before it becomes an arguing point. While we men do find it annoying to have to repeatedly acknowledge these little things on a daily basis (isn’t once enough?), I personally find that the daily top up technique makes her happier.

…no matter how irrational it seems.

4. To not be sexually objectified

Even if we say we won’t, that’ll never happen. Women claim to not appreciate being cat called at – but it’s the same kind of cognitive dissonance they exhibit when they get what they need instead of what they want. Every woman needs to feel recognized daily as being beautiful and sexually attractive.

…even if the recognition is poorly packaged.

I mean let’s be honest; How many of you women would opt out of wearing those form fitting pants, low cut blouses that slightly expose your cleavage, or those short skirts that expose just enough thigh to get a man’s mind going? I didn’t think so. You need to feel sexy and you can’t turn that feeling off.

…just like how we men can’t turn off our excitement about it.

I’m not saying that a woman’s desire to feel sexy is a free pass for a man to be sexually oppressive. One doesn’t justify the other. However, one does cause the other. I think it is highly irrational to leave your house looking like hot sex in a short skirt and not expect to get propositioned. That’s just silly.

Ladies: Don’t slit your wrist and jump into shark infested waters and expect to not get nudged by a great white. That’s why we sometimes have a hard time taking some of your complaints seriously. We’re all more than aware that many of you girls don’t just love the attention, you need it. Every woman does.

5. The Elusive ‘O’

I find it very amusing that many women who want an orgasm are frustrated that they can only give it to themselves (or get it from another woman). It’s amusing because it proves unequivocally that women seem to prefer fantasy over reality. You ladies need to stop reading those trite romance novels.

They are grossly misleading.

Women who can achieve regular orgasm without trying too hard were more architecturally designed by natural biological forces (i.e. genetics) to have that capacity. For such women, they could reach an orgasm irrespective of the size of a man’s penis or his sexual prowess – or even without penetration.

So for most of you men who think you are God because your woman comes every single time, you probably need to check if she can do it by just thinking about it. Yes, there are actually women out there who can bring themselves to an orgasm by just thinking about it. Sorry to burst your bubble, buddy.

(See video interview here with Dr. Barry Komisaruk on psycho-activated female orgasms.)

But ladies, people don’t magically orgasm together. Over 80% of women don’t achieve any orgasm at all during sex. A smaller number has never experienced one at all. Finally, no man comes equipped with the natural talent to bring a woman to climax. Any man who can, simply learned how to do it right.

But what’s really going to bake your noodles, ladies, is that even if a man learned how to bring a woman off, the technique is highly specific to individual women. So a technique that works for her, may not work for you. But the truth is that technically, female orgasms are not necessary for reproduction.

Male orgasms, however, are.

What women really need in this context is a man who is as deeply invested in her interests as she is in his. Such men are rare, but they’re out there. They are the guys who will go to great lengths to explore a woman’s body to actually figure out the idiosyncrasies of what makes it work to give her an O.

Men like that are not the “wham bam, thank you ma’am” types. They are the guys who will spend the time necessary to get you to see the face of God before he follows behind you through heaven’s door. That’s the ultimate act of chivalry – especially considering that your orgasm isn’t really that important.

So put away those romance novels and find a guy who is willing to do just as much exploration as you are. You need to invest in learning about each other so that you can develop a certain sense of rhythm and sexual chemistry that can only come from an authentic, deeply loving and trusting relationship.

Then, and only then, will the O’s come (no pun intended) in spades, along with simultaneous, mind bending, reality altering, spinal rending, epileptic seizure inducing moments of cognitive retardation. It’s just that for most women, it takes a lot of work, a lot of time and a lot of real love to boot to get there.

Conclusively;

Doesn’t it bother anyone else but myself even just a little that women appear to be strangely more obsessed with the process of getting married as opposed to actually being married? While I understand that wedding preparations are the ultimate right brain candy for women, is that all there is?

This is one of the best examples of where women confuse their wants and their needs. Little girls spend their entire childhood lives dreaming of that glorious white wedding. They dream of the fanciful fair of the events leading up to the day from the moment he proposed, but their dream stops right there.

If half of the women who are now divorced poured a quarter of the effort into their marriage as they did into the glamour of their wedding day, I’m sure they would probably still be married right now. The other half probably should have spent just as much effort learning about the guy they were about to marry.

But I digress.

My point is that what a woman wants is largely irrelevant. What a woman really needs is the thing we should become more preoccupied with. The often impulsive nature of a woman’s instinctive taste should be our first clue that emotional intelligence is something many women seem to lack by default.

Either way, that’s why there are both men and women in the equation. Women fill a functional role inasmuch as men do. Women are men’s hearts while men are their minds. The two roles complement each other in a beautiful ballad of symbiotic harmony as both parties truly learn to satisfy each other.

…that is, in all the ways that genuinely matter.

While we strive not to forget that, understanding the psychology of a woman’s expectations will prove to be a lot more rewarding for serious relationships. If you play your cards right, your woman will thank you for it, even though she may not be consciously aware of why. Technically, she doesn’t really need to.

Hey everyone,

You may have noticed that I haven’t updated this space in over a month. Truth be told, I’m in Shanghai, China at the moment on business. Why I agreed to this is beyond me, but here I am. Apparently however, the Communist Government in China has blocked a lot of websites, like YouTube, Facebook, Twitter and yes, even WordPress. I think it’s time I hosted this blog on my own domain.

Anyway, the only reason you are able to read this is because I’ve managed to find a proxy site that I could use to bypass this country’s communist attempt at inhibiting free speech (or maybe they have some other justification – perhaps one of you can inform me). Either way, I’ll be here for the better part of two months on consultation with the Chinese Government with respect to governance, policy and a bunch of other stuff.

So there you have it. Now you know why and where. As soon as I get off this side of the planet and return to the liberal West where I rightfully belong, I’m going to rip China a new one. I can promise you that. With that said, this proxy site is a tad slow, and so it doesn’t lend itself to a proper blog post as per my regular M.O. So if you guys have any suggestions, I’m all ears (or eyes, rather).

Looking forward to hearing from you.

Cheers,
Xen.

“Stupidity is an unfortunate but necessary by product of cognitive evolution.”

- Xenocrates

Every once in a while, we hear about someone doing something so profoundly dumb, that it makes us wonder what compelled them to do it in the first place. However, stupidity is not exclusive to people who are notably less intelligent than others. In fact, if you think about it, you’ll see how pervasive it really is.

There are several every day actions that people seem to have a certain proclivity for that they never seem to think about until after the fact, when the reality of it sinks in. These are things most of us – myself included – do with a kind of blind routine; subconsciously at times, without even realizing it.

I call the collective of these actions the function of a “stupid gene” as it were. We all have it to some degree and most of us are only aware of it at a subconscious level. Let me be clear though: I don’t think there’s necessarily such a thing as a stupid “gene”, since DNA is not quite so simplistic. I’m using this description more as a metaphor for describing the ubiquity of this quality.

Now, while there are some incredibly stupid people in the world, this post is not dedicated to those who have unwittingly separated themselves from the gene pool because of their own profound lack of foresight. Rather, I invite you to consider other less obvious examples that we’re all inexcusably guilty of.

With that said, the following is a description of what I believe are the top 10 most common, most stupid things we often find ourselves doing – often times with great conviction and a sense of blind, indiscriminate, ill placed cognition:

1. Valuing process over function

Have you ever heard of the expression that the journey is more important than the destination? It would appear as though humans all seem to derive a greater sense of purpose from being involved in a process as opposed to its intended function. We see this behaviour in everything from romance to war.

Why it’s stupid:

Because it’s synonymous with putting the cart before the horse.

Function defines process, but we often get caught doing it the other way around. Sometimes we get so tied up in the process that we forget the whole purpose of the function altogether. That’s when process supersedes function.

When people loose their sense of direction, they tend to make the same mistakes over and over again. For example; People who become preoccupied with the process of romantic courtship become so addicted to the emotional roller coaster ride (aka “drama”) of the process that a functional relationship is never actually predicated out of this ultimately pointless, meaningless farce.

But it’s not only in romance that people meander aimlessly. You’ll find the same kind of clumsy behaviour in careers and education. There are people who’ve quite literally become professional students, because they choose the career after they’ve gone to college and not before selecting their specialty.

The same can be said of many on-going modern wars. Between Iraq, Afghanistan and the rest of the Middle-East, there appears to be no clear direction in what some of these people are fighting for. As a result, casualties mount on both sides with no clear gains or losses in any particular direction.

Every once in a while, people need to stop what they’re doing, drop everything and take a long hard look at how what they’re doing gets them to what they want to achieve. In many of these cases, people will either realise that they’ve forgotten what they want to achieve or now realise that the process is the achievement, and not so much what it was originally stipulated to do.

In my observation, people seem to value the process more than the purpose. For while it does appear that the pursuit of happiness is indeed the cause of unhappiness, any pursuit that has gone on for too long seems to cause people to ultimately find more satisfaction in the pursuit more than in happiness itself.

2. Trolling on a troll

Source: PennyArcade

Trolls, as described by internet parlance, are people who take insidious pleasure at attacking others for no other reason other than to enjoy the fallout that inevitably ensues. Trolls are most evident on the internet, on forums, newsgroups, blogs and now even on social networking sites.

Why it’s stupid:

Surprisingly, people choose to argue with them.

What most people don’t know however, is that trolls are not only the anonymous, obnoxious twats that trawl the internet for a good meaningless face off. They are also the people who appear on television talking smack about public officials just because they disagree for the sake of disagreement.

They are the people who demonstrate at the G-20 gathering for no other reason than to promote anarchy, and other miscellaneous, but completely unrelated or irrelevant ideas. They are the Deontological tea-party crowd who march on Washington to protest government regulation meant to help them.

These people all fall into the troll category, largely because their concerns are either invalid, unsubstantiated, based on eccentric sensationalism, straw man arguments, or even a part of a much larger conspiracy theory initiative designed quite explicitly to sew seeds of fear, uncertainty and doubt.

I understand that people will ultimately disagree because on a microscopic scale we are cognitively different. However, what I don’t understand is when we are compelled to become embroiled in an endless trade off with someone who can only derive satisfaction by attempting to make other people feel just as miserable as they are. Trolls thrive on attention. So don’t give it to them.

It’s that simple.

Trolls exist exclusively for the purpose of sewing discord. Whether that discord is meant to destabilize a system for some other agenda or just to start a flame war on a forum for the purpose of enjoying the ensuing anarchy is irrelevant. Like common animals, trolls don’t care about your values or objectives.

That’s why the co-opted old English word which was originally intended to describe large, obnoxious, stupid, mythical creatures of old Europe (often compared to the Japanese ‘Oni’) is now used to describe such people.

Quite a fitting anthropomorphism, don’t you think?

The instant you get involved in an insult war with a troll, they win – since that was their objective in the first place. This is where the old adage about arguing with a fool becomes especially relevant. They will drag you down to their level and beat you. They win because they’re not playing by any rules.

Admittedly, when I just started out on public discussion groups on the internet, I too was drawn in by the appeal of squashing these annoying cockroaches – (even on this blog in some places). But the thing about cockroaches is that there’s so many of them, that killing one only to have a thousand take its place quickly becomes a meaningless and pointless chore.

Ad hominem remarks are usually the first indicator that you’re dealing with trolls. Thank god for spam filters and administrative key word / e-mail / domain / ip blockers. But even if you’re not dealing with internet trolls, the process is the same. That’s why there’s no point in getting worked up about Fox News, Glen Beck, Sean Hannity, and their entire army of clowns at the front gate.

Even if trolls start an initiative to discredit someone, giving them a voice automatically validates their cause. This is where the vicious cycle of circular arguments begin. Don’t value the process of troll bashing over the function of communication. They only become effective when you patronize them.

3. Forming Factions

I said in a previous post that humans seem to value group membership more than group purpose, and our history is fraught with examples of this. People seem to instinctively form groups among themselves, most of the time serving no other function other than to create unnecessary divides among us.

Why it’s stupid:

Because most of the time, group membership gets taken more seriously than group function.

That’s when we get caught up in defending the group, fighting for a cause that does not ultimately solve the problem. Instead, it usually serves to create all new problems in a vicious cycle of tit for tat that will ultimately be carried on in perpetuity by those who don’t even know how the conflict started.

You see these stupid factions all over the world and in every walk of life. Just give humans a choice of group to join, then let them compete for resources and it quickly goes to hell from there. Whether it is a relatively innocuous conflict between between Star Wars and Star Trek fans, Democrats and Republicans or Israelis and Palestinians, the nature of the conflict is the same.

On either side of the fence, there are people who are only interested in putting forward the agenda of the group to which they belong – yet, they are not willing to listen to the opinions on the other side. This obviously creates a perpetual deadlock, which ultimately leads to more meaningless conflict.

These pissing contests will never end until someone decides to zip up their pants first. It’s just that usually no one is willing to be the first to withdraw for fear of it appearing to be a form of concession. Wouldn’t it be far more interesting if people found more ways to unite us instead of ways to divide us? But alas, I don’t think such a propensity is an intrinsic quality of human nature.

This would be an epic face off – even though the Enterprise would be destroyed.

4. Upholding Double Standards

Originally posted here.

I see this all the time. One group makes a declaration about another or does something to another as if that action doesn’t also apply reflexively. Yet they become surprised when someone else does the exact same thing to them. I talk smack about Republicans a lot, and that’s because they’re prime suspects.

Why it’s stupid:

For no other reason than the fact that it exposes one’s narrow-mindedness.

If a woman declares that all men are dogs, it implies that all women are bitches. If a white man accuses black people of being “crabs in a barrel”, then he needs to be reminded of who started the two World Wars. People who say that all Asians look alike, need to be reminded that they can’t tell the difference between most people from other races either. You get it, right?

Double Standards expose an inherent narcissism in people where they succeed in identifying flaws in others, but fail to recognize the same flaw in themselves. This is why Republicans annoy me so much. They accuse the Democrats of wasteful spending after they supported an illegal, 6 year, 10 billion dollar per month war, loosing focus of it’s original objectives (if any).

But I digress… *pauses to regain composure*

What fascinates me is not so much that people do this nonsense at all. I tend to expect this kind of errant miscarriage of intelligence from the intellectually challenged, (like trolls for example) which is why I tend to ignore them. Most of the times anyway. What really fascinates me is the ubiquity of this behaviour.

But truth be told, what really pisses me off is when intelligent people do it. Nothing disappoints me more than when a seemingly intelligent person goes crazy about an idea of theirs that someone criticized, as if it is somehow exempt from the same kind of scrutiny they level at others’ opposing ideas.

Atheists I find are particularly guilty of this.

I suppose when we get emotionally caught up with an idea that we value dearly, we tend to loose focus on our intellectual integrity and veer off the side of the road of logic. But I always follow a very simple rule when making any kind of observation: How does it apply to me? I find this keeps me honest.

…at least, as honest as far as I can tell. I do admit, even I miss the boat at times.

5. Confusing Opinion and Fact

A fact is anything that can be verified. An opinion is a relatively unsubstantiated position. Yet, people go around making “intelligent guesses” and pass them off as fact. While I do admit that there is a certain temptation in doing this, we live in an age where almost anything can be quickly verified.

…and therein lies our problem.

Why it’s stupid:

Because in this age of information overload, there’s a very thin line between opinion and fact.

I’ve had a number of discussions on this blog where we’ve flung websites at each other in a desperate attempt at disproving each other. What I notice was very common though, was where people only read the title of an article and assumed that it validated their point. In most cases, it worked against them.

Of those cases, people were largely quoting:

1. out-of-date information (like old research or dated news articles)
2. opinion pieces (like other blogs)
3. white paper that only partially correlate their opinions

I find that in the case of #3 especially, people tend to go off on a long rant about this and that, then quote an article that only speaks to that but not this – which automatically invalidates the congruity of their argument. In all honesty, it’s not so much that they haven’t tried to validate their ideas.

It’s just that their effort reeks of grasping at straws.

We see the same kind of behaviour with Republicans (here he goes again) when various senators recently tried to make a case against the recently passed Health Care bill, coming up with all kinds of ridiculous contrivances, one even going as far as trying to quote a baby he held in his hand. I mean, wow.

I really need to lay off the Republicans. It’s not good for me.

More importantly, while this behaviour is by no means indigenous to Republicans (the democratically leaning CNN, MSNBC, et al are at times no different), it is no less bothersome. I can respect a man’s desire to have an opinion. What annoys me is when this opinion becomes dangerously correlated as fact. A certain news organisation has accomplished just that.

Bigots like Martin Luther (yes, the same reformist Martin Luther – he hated Jews) and Adolf Hitler are men whose opinions were so succinctly corelated with fact that people actually died. I can think of a recent US president whose opinion cost over 4,000 soldiers their lives for a seemingly pointless war.

But he’s no bigot …at least, not as far as I can prove.

But it’s not just in bigotry that we see a confusion of opinion and fact. It was a fact that 8 glasses of water per day was mandatory for everyone. It turns out that it was the opinion of the editor of a popular health magazine back in the 50’s that simply became a part of pop culture. There’s no scientific proof of this.

But I’m not going to repeat myself here. I’ve already done a write up on the truth about the truth – which more elaborately goes into how popular opinions become fact. I wonder how many people out there realise that many of the facts based on abstract ideas were actually borne out of someone’s opinion?

Think politics and religion. You won’t be too far off.

6. Playing with fire

Why do people become surprised when they get burned after playing with fire? Why are women surprised when the guy who cheated on their wives with them, cheat on them also? Why do black people who join the Republican party become surprised when one of them calls him a “nigger” behind their back?

(there I go hitting on Republicans again)

Why it’s stupid:

Because it’s madness to think that we’re somehow exempt from the laws of nature.

I remember a tale someone shared with me when I became enamoured with a pretty mixed woman who deviously had me promoted to senior management. The tale tells of a frog crossing a river with a scorpion on its back. Even though the scorpion promised not to sting the frog, midway through the crossing, it stung it anyway – and they both drowned. Heh. No surprises there at all.

True to the tale, the very same woman who had me deviously promoted to senior management tried to use me to accomplish some rather, shall we say, devious and morally questionable personal political objectives. Apparently she thought I would be one of those unopinionated, brain dead “yes” men.

Wow. Did she get a rude awakening.

I’ve met many other people like that – like this really hot chick who was fun to talk to, even though she is a complete, epic bitch of biblical proportions. I’ve seen this woman gut people like fish over the silliest things – and yet I continued to be her friend. Then when we went shopping on Valentine’s day, she totally flipped out about the way I recommended a laptop. I kid thee not.

Her silence to this day is testament to her guilt over what transpired that day.

Is it naivette that leads people to put their trust in other people who they know are bad for them? Probably. But it doesn’t make us any less stupid. We already knew about this person’s rotten ways, and we trusted them anyway. We think we’re somehow special and thus exempt from their behaviour.

A person who is devious with others, will be devious with you as well. A person who is obnoxious with others will be obnoxious to you as well. A deceitful or dishonest person will be no more honest with you. A racist is still a racist, no matter what party he hails from or how many black “friends” he has.

Don’t be surprised when you trust the untrustworthy, or sleep with a whore, or do business with a con man, or befriend the unfriendly, or host an unkempt person in a tidy home, or employ an ex-con, or forgive a betrayer, or marry your ex-girlfriend, or keep a wild animal as a pet, or join the Republican party.

(I really need to stop doing that.)

When you tame a pit bull, the vile nature of the animal never really disappears. Similarly, people don’t really change. They just become better or worse at who they really are. By extension, the laws of nature are relatively consistent. Exceptions to this rule are quite rare. So if you play with scorpions, bitches and the like, don’t be surprised when you get bit. It is only a matter of time. Fuck you Heather.

7. Winging It

I find it interesting that there are people in the world who believe that life is an adventure and that you shouldn’t try to plan everything on your journey to your grave. Isn’t it interesting then, that it’s the very same people who are often shoulder deep in credit card debt or lost their homes in a foreclosure?

Why it’s stupid:

As the old adage goes; a failure to plan is a plan to fail.

Whether you risk living on the street or even gene pool separation is irrelevant. The point is that winging it, however tempting the thought, is just as foolhardy as it is potentially liberating. I concede that all the planning can take the fun out of an adventure, but some things should just never go unplanned.

The trouble with winging it is that the people who do it rarely know when to stop or where to draw the line. It is an addiction to the adrenaline rush that comes with uncertainty. The thrill of going bare with a woman you just met, or hedging the title of your house on a game of blackjack is just plain stupid.

It doesn’t matter if you don’t pick up something like genital herpes or if you double your winnings. Wrecklessness by any other name is still wreckless just the same. When the probability of risk and reward are equal, going ahead without a plan B is just plain irrational. It’s all about proper risk management.

In fact, I am reminded of a Christian missionary group that went into Ecuador to spread the gospel to a violently primitive tribe of indigenous people. I kid thee not. Before you laugh, I need to add that they went in there just with their back packs, a biplane and their Bibles and with no form of self defense.

While the tragic outcome was not unexpected, Christian missionaries do this nonsense all the time. Then when their inexplicable attempt at imperial indoctrination gets them killed, they call it martyrdom. I call it stupidity.

Now even though a second group of missionaries followed up on their slain colleagues and got the job done, they learned from the bones of their fallen comrades that no amount of faith (and this is important) will change the probability of the occurrence of total disaster. This is an undeniable fact.

So think twice the next time you decide to get that Widescreen TV when your credit card interest rate is in the double digits, plan to get married without discussing critical issues like family, religion and politics, lay that hot someone without protection, or travel unsecured to a foreign country currently at war.

Concordantly I don’t understand educated people who are suprised when they have unplanned pregnancies, are decapitated by Muslim extremists in Iraq, lose their their life savings in a Casino in Vegas or are impaled by a rampaging bull in Spain. Winging it is such an epic load bull excrement. No pun intended.

8. Giving unsolicited advice

“Y’know what would make this super?”

Is there something you’re really good at? Something you’ve practiced and honed to a perfection? Ever notice that when you get noticed for it, there’s always a lackey here or there that’s quick to become your “manager” or “talent coach” as it were, offering unsolicited advice on how to do it better?

Annoying sons of bitches, aren’t they?

Why it’s stupid:

Because it reeks of gross insecurity – especially when it’s obvious they can’t do any better.

When you’re really good, there’s no shortage of supply in people in the world who want to share your glory or live vicariously through you by kissing your ass. But, there are some really sad, pitiful folks out there, who would rather find a way to take away from your glory through harsh, unconstructive criticism that nitpicks at every insignificant little nuance like self destructive parasites.

These little trolls (because that’s what they are) are so pathetic that their only hope of feeling good about themselves is by attempting to tear down people who they obviously perceive to be better than themselves – that is, people who make them feel insecure about their hapless, self imposed mediocrity.

I gotta tell ya, we come across some really interesting people both in real life and on the internet. But these people stand out the most, largely because they’re usually your greatest detractors. So I tend to use these morons as a barometer of how well I’m doing. The harsher the crticism, the better.

I can’t help but feel really bad for them sometimes, because it’s really, really sad when someone who notices that you’re doing well, simply cannot feel happy for you and would rather tear you down than encourage you on.

I revel in your tears of inadequacy, Ms. Miller. Yummy.

When they’re not busy trying to tell you how bad they think you really are, they feel compelled to offer up suggestions on what they think you should be doing with your talent. It reminds me of that parable about the father, his son and their donkey and how they tried to please every one that passed by.

Now you guys (you know yourselves) know why some of you are ignored when you offer unsolicited “advice” to someone. It’s not that some of your suggestions aren’t good. I bet some of them are brilliant. But when everybody does that, it makes one feel like they’re owned by their audience and it becomes really nauseating really quickly. Nobody likes a tasteless critic.

…especially one that cannot do any better themselves.

9. Soliciting scams

No. Not really.

When are people going to realize that you can’t fix your weight problem with a pill? When are we going to stop throwing our money at the next spot exercise gadget they market on TV? Why do people continue to purchase that rubbish that the late Billy Mays and his army of pitch perfect con artists try to sell?

Why it’s stupid:

As if you need a reason.

Even though we all have a natural instinct that fires off a warning that says “this is too good to be true“, people deliberately ignore the still small voice of their inner wisdom and throw their money at these scam artists anyway.

Despite the fact that we see special effects on television and in the movies all the time, we somehow think that you can’t use it in less obvious ways to sell a product that only works as advertised on television. You’d think by now that people could tell when a really bad actor vouches for a product with their grossly over dramatised facial expressions and fake, glossy vocal inflections.

Whether it’s Mighty Putty or ShamWow, the wanton and indiscriminate marketing by false advertising never seems to stop. Neither Mighty Putty nor ShamWow works as quickly (or at all) as advertised. And for some strange reason, they also try to market products that already exist on the market as though the new versions are any better than what you can get in a store.

I mean, good grief man. It makes you think Billy Mays got what he deserved – and don’t get me started on these weight loss ads that are filling the airwaves. Dangerous products exposed by the FDA prey upon the wallets of our overweight culture that only wants to pop pills instead of pump iron.

It took a while for the FDA to catch up with those weight loss products that use ephedra – because it was killing people left right and centre. When it wasn’t that, it was all of these gimmick machines that only exercised one part of the body – usually the abdomen – as if sit ups and crunches actually work.

Newsflash: THEY DON’T – not by themselves.

Fat people actually buy this thing!

Whole body exercise (like Cardio) is by far the best type, because it effects fat burning all over your body simultaneously. You buy these stupid gimmicks like the AbLounger or Tony Little’s Gazelle because the notion of hard work and a good pain inducing exercise is an unpleasant thought – you lazy bastards.

Don’t you find it strange that it’s only heavily muscle toned people who are used to advertised these products? Why is it that they never use a fat guy to sell an exercise machine? Did you think those actors got that way by using a machine that looks like a porn star giving a brisk hand job to someone?

And what about these internet scams? It’s fascinating to me that there are people who still get hooked on these Nigerian scams – you know the ones where some estranged prince offers to deliver a large sum of money for a small deposit to aid in the transfer? Yeah, those. I mean how dumb do people need to be to realise the obvious trickery involved here? I mean, really?

Oh by the way? Avoid those work at home kits – especially those Google AdSense kits you have to pay for. You can get it for free from Google. All the others are scams. Even if you actually make money from them, they are marketed based on false advertising. Don’t you ever wonder why someone making millions on some marketing secret would want to share it with anyone?

Duh!

Another thing with these work at home scams is that even if they actually work, by the time you get into it, the market they pander to is so over saturated that there’s virtually no leverage for you to make any real money. What’s worse, is that chances are there are several hundred thousand other people selling the exact same product for much cheaper on eBay right now.

Gentle people, if it takes over half an hour to sell a product during the wee hours of the morning, chances are, it’s a scam. If you have to read through an incredibly long web page or e-mail, filled with BIG BOLD COLOURED TEXT, chances are it’s a scam. If someone offers to give you money for little or no work on your behalf, except that you send them some money, it’s a scam.

Nobody safely or practically looses weight by exercising one body part, or by taking pills, or paying exorbitant sums of money to diet programs – not without some serious side effects like a dead liver or a maxed out credit card. Anything you see marketed by a TV pitch man can be had in any department store with a warranty, a guarantee and even technical support where applicable.

And as for you folks who invested with Bernie Madoff, COME ON! Did you honestly think that someone who can’t tell you how your money was being invested could give you a consistent, monthly, high percentile return on your funds without seeming suspicious? Where did you think it was coming from? I find it hard to pity you. These Ponzi schemes have been around for decades.

For every con artist, there exists at least two fools; one who is greedier than he is and one who is lazier than he is. If either your greed or your laziness is stronger than your commitment to reason, then you deserve to get scammed.

I say that without apology.

10. Believing in Urban Legend and Hoaxes

This photo fooled even National Geographic. Ahh, the power of Photoshop.

People who believe in religion annoy me. People who believe in urban legend piss me off. People who believe in hoaxes however, I want to strangle with a chainsaw rip cord. I know that should be the other way around, but I have some really good religious friends, so I’ll let them slide – for now anyway.

Why it’s stupid:

Because paranoid gullibility is easily manipulated.

I will say this though; I don’t take kindly to people who are so dumb that they forward every e-mail about a cancer stricken girl’s sob story or a tear jerking religious anecdote with a moral that was pilfered from Zen philosophy, or how my luck will change depending on how many people I forward their silly, mindless tripe to. These internet memes really need to die. Like seriously.

And as for you retards who believe Queen Elizabeth planned Diana’s death, or that Obama is the Anti-Christ or that George Bush is a distant cousin of Hitler (heh, wouldn’t that be entertaining), and any other related garbage that has absolutely no proof whatsoever, can you do me a favour? GTFO my internet.

NAO.

If you are quick to  believe in conspiracy theories and urban legends, it demonstrates that there is a gaping hole in your rationality engine. People who are both paranoid and gullible are the easiest to manipulate, because they will quite literally believe in anything – including the incessant garbage that is regularly fed to gun toting, right wing extremists by Fox News.

If you want to see what happens when gullibility runs amok, just examine the tenure of the previous American government. An entire nation of paranoid, impressionable folk tossed logic to the wind and went cowboy on the world. The damage is likely to have far reaching effects well into the next decade.

Fear is the most powerful motivator for a gullible mind. Therefore, a campaign of fear, uncertainty, doubt and disbelief (or FUDD for short) on a religiously leaning, paranoid population will enslave all but the most discerning of minds. It’s no small wonder then that Republicans are largely supported by the temperament of the religious right and Democrats by everyone else.

Religion and gullibility it seems, are very strongly correlated.

Conclusively;

I hate it when I do something stupid – especially in cases where I’m supposed to know better. I am even less tolerant of when other people do stupid things, like ice skating uphill – in a blizzard – with no goggles or protective gear. However, I cannot fault humanity for producing stupidity every once in a while. So I cannot even be too hard on myself. It’s all a part of a grand process.

You see, just as how any process that is engineered to produce a greater good will have undesirable by products, human cognitive evolution is no different. As we get smarter and innovate, we will ultimately produce a few samples of human DNA that will produce humans at the bottom of the pool of the collective intelligence of all mankind combined. But it doesn’t stop there.

Stupidity is an unfortunate but necessary by product of cognitive evolution. How else would we know that some appliances are for “indoor use only” or where the “CAUTION: HOT” stickers should go on things that generate heat, or that “objects in mirror are closer than they appear“? I mean just think about it.

If some idiot didn’t cause grievous bodily harm or outright kill themselves doing something that they shouldn’t be doing, the rest of us who wouldn’t have thought to do something that dumb would never have figured how incredibly dumb it really was (like blow drying our hair while sitting in a tub of water).

Therefore, embrace your inner idiot; for that is the purpose of the stupid gene. Without it, we probably wouldn’t have advanced technologically as quickly as we did. Now that we have six billion beta testers willing to off themselves at the newest trends, technological and social advancement can proceed with a greater sense of purpose and alacrity. What can I say? I love you fools.

“While we are young, lust is indistinguishable from love.”

- Xenocrates

A girlfriend of mine once said that young people love with their eyes and old people with their hearts. However, what she doesn’t realise is that she has just highlighted the fact that romance is inherently rife with a certain type of hypocrisy that has completely maligned the way we understand true love.

Hypocrisy #1: That Love is a feeling

Do you think you’re in love? What would your response be if someone asked you why you’re in love with someone? That she’s smart? That he’s funny? That she’s affectionate? That he’s sensitive? Don’t kid yourself. You’re misdirecting. Love is nothing more than a chemical that makes us say and do stupid things.

The flood of oxytocin in our brain that results after the onset of physical attraction tends to give the impression that we’re in love – especially after having sex. This is especially true in women who’ve had an orgasm. The intensity of the chemical onslaught brings about powerful new feelings.

That’s the “Chemistry” that people often refer to that they can’t otherwise describe when they meet someone. These things are all chemical reactions in the brain. It tends to fade away with time – only to be replaced by something else entirely. That’s why this “something else” had better be really good.

The trouble is that young people don’t realise that what they feel is a pleasurable sensation designed specifically to engender a desire for procreation. While we are young, lust is indistinguishable from love. That’s why young people tend to not know what true love is until they’ve gotten old.

This will last for as long as the power of the lust is alive. However, given time, boredom sets in, and the chemical production facilities in the brain dry up. The human mind has no capacity for what we call “true love”. We fall in love with novelty – not with each other. That’s why people cheat in relationships.

So in the absence of lust, couples then try to find something else to complement the lust – but never to replace it. In fact, you can always tell if a marriage has problems if the sex is bad or has completely gone AWOL altogether. If sex seems to have a way of fixing a lot of your relationship problems (if only temporarily), then rest assured; it’s the chemicals at it again.

You ever wonder why make up sex is so good? It’s because anger produces an over abundance of coiled up muscle tension that can become explosive in any number of ways. That’s why anger can so easily lead to physical violence.

However, if sex follows immediately after a falling out, the incredible sensation running down your spine is the result of the tension releasing endorphins into your blood. The angrier you are, the more endorphins are released.

Once that coil of built up angry tension is sprung using the positive act of sex, *BOOM* – you get the most powerful, mind altering, toe curling, epileptic seizure inducing, quantum tunnelling, god smacked, spinal tap of an orgasm that your central nervous system has the capacity to handle. That’s when you die happy and go to whatever heaven you’ve been raised to believe in.

The rest of it is cognitive dissonance – rationale we invent to comfort ourselves after the flames have long died. I’m not saying that sex is a silver bullet for relationship problems. Rather, the chemical reactions in your brain (which also produces sex), are the single most powerful driving force behind “love”.

Am I saying that there’s no such thing as “love at first sight”? Precisely. There is only lust at first sight. Love is a hyperbolic idea (like ‘justice‘ and ‘perfection‘) that exists only in our minds. We are nothing more than bio-electric machines run by chemical reactions that have a profound effect on our behaviour.

Between the time when you just met your girlfriend/boyfriend and the time you got married, there is a very strong production of these electro chemical reactions in your brain. However, when you are forced to live together in a social construct that introduces other chemical reactions, you will quickly realise that the concept of romance is not so much about love as it is about tolerance.

Love is not enough. It was never enough. While there are ways to chemically induce the feeling of love over a life time, it is probably not worth the risk of chronic depression. The point however, is that there had better be something else there other than love. Love is only a fleeting feeling. It’s not a reason.

So the next time someone tells you that they are in love, look closely at their pupils and see if it dilates, or listen for an inflection in their voice at the end of their sentence when they talk about the person they’re in love with. If you notice either of these occurrences, they’re only victims of Oxytocin poisoning.

…not love.

People who have dealt with unfaithful lovers, dirty kitchens, messy bedrooms, vomit, mood swings, blood in the pool, flaring tempers and other assorted portions of crap from each other have a far better idea of what love is. In fact, I think it’s fair to say that any decent relationship worth having needs to have a really strong bullsh*t filter, since Oxytocin is known to impair judgement.

…just like weed, mushrooms and alcohol.

But you never hear anyone talking about these things when they claim to be in love or run to the alter to say “I do”. There are so many different expressions, both in song and prose which attempt to glorify the treachery of monogamy. Yet, none of them will tell you what happens when the chemicals wear off.

Hypocrisy #2: That looks aren’t everything

A lot of people keep saying that looks don’t matter. But the only people saying that are those who are being politically correct. The only people who actually believe it are the ones who aren’t very attractive to begin with. So in essence, we have two opposing schools of thought perpetuating this fantastic fallacy.

I suppose this is yet another one of those things that demonstrate the innate human propensity to think more highly of themselves than they rightfully deserve. But let’s not kid ourselves. As animals, we are driven by lust.

The truth of the matter is that lust (as in carnal lust) plays a very critical role in romance. It’s what gets the ball rolling. It’s quite literally that important. 9/10 times, lust is what originally incited interest in couples that decide to get together. In fact, one’s attractiveness is directly proportional to their lustfulness. Pretty people get more attention and lots more hot sex.

Also, because they know that they attract a lot of attention, pretty people get to choose from the best genetic stock on the market. This is perfectly rational, since there’s little point in wooing a sweet hearted ugly duckling when you can get an obnoxious swan right out of the box – no cognitive dissonance needed.

Either way, this is the reason why pretty people prefer pretty people (irrespective of whether or not they’re nice) and why ugly ducklings tend to settle for other ugly ducklings (because nobody else wants to love them). The only known exception is where an ugly duckling is both male and quite rich.

I’m not saying that chicks are gold diggers. It’s just that you’re not likely to find a hot chick dating an ugly dude unless he’s rolling in it or he knows how to make her feel good between her legs. It almost never fails. When questioned, they will give you all kinds of pre-rendered cognitive dissonance to justify the obvious aesthetic mismatch that is their romantic relationship.

Ugly ducklings in particular have to make some kind of compensation for their aesthetic deficit in order to guarantee their chance at securing their genetic immortality. They have to be really smart, rich, or otherwise endearing to score any tail. That’s one side of this massive hypocrisy we call “love“.

The other side is of this particular hypocrisy is that this double standard is ridiculously and unfairly stacked in favour of men… not that I’m complaining. Men can get away with this B.S. largely because of how women think.

Men and women both approach romance differently. Women are subconsciously looking for an alpha male and proceed to grade the men they encounter according to their net worth. If he’s good looking, then that tends to trump most of the other requirements – even if she’s already with an alpha.

Concordantly, Alpha males beware; the résumé is not enough.

This is why you’ll see a lot of marriages with balding, pot bellied billionaires having their trophy wives cheat on them with the hot Mexican gardener. But it’s not that hot chicks are hard to please. It’s just that carnal desire beats “love” any day of the week. Your body is a biological machine that doesn’t care about high minded concepts like “true love” that have no intrinsic meaning.

But if you think women are bad, men are worse. Men tend to not give any woman the time of day unless she’s at least sexy. At least women have the capacity to “love” a man who isn’t terribly attractive, since women are biologically engineered to want masculine affection more than raw masculinity.

Well… that depends on which phase of their cycle they’re on. Psychologists have shown that women tend to prefer men who are more masculine in appearance as they approach their menstrual period, but then desire men who are less masculine in appearance after their period passes. I kid thee not.

So if you’re a muscle bound football player, don’t be surprised if she wants you like hot sex between slices of bread before the cycle begins, but suddenly shows an interest in Peter Parker and the nerds from IT after her period passes. You’ll want to keep the geek squad at bay post menstrual cycle.

On the other hand, if you’re a scrawny quantum physicist or a pot bellied Texas oil magnate, don’t be surprised if she keeps telling you she has a headache before her menstrual cycle, but wants to rape you like a rag doll after. Either way, keep those muscle bound steroid effigies at bay pre-cycle.

Again, I kid thee not.

So let’s get real here. Physical attraction is a VERY big deal. It is a key factor. If you see a woman who is well past her 30’s or a man well past his 40’s who have still not found love, you can bet the bank that there’s something wrong with their capacity to either attract or keep the attention of the opposite sex.

Don’t believe any of that horse crap B.S. they feed you. Everybody wants to be loved by someone.

Some women will tell you that “they just don’t want to be tied down“. Rubbish. They just haven’t met someone that they would like to be tied down to who likes them back. The same goes for average or less than average looking men. The really good looking people out there are the only ones who can use this excuse with impunity. With their libido, it’s not altogether inexplicable.

This is why concepts like monogamy (however useful) can be ultimately defeated by the raw unbridled power of physical attraction. Nobody who gets involved with someone looses their ability to become attracted to someone else. Marriage doesn’t take away the ability to cheat. Rather, it enables it.

This is why some male pastors try to avoid counselling young women in their church, or why some people who are genetically blessed never bother to get married. So let’s not fool ourselves. True Love only becomes meaningful to the two people who have found a unique kinship in each other’s eyes that they can find in none other. Everything else is sex, lies and blatant hypocrisy.

Hypocrisy #3: Compromise, the understated requirement

Some people have convinced themselves (albeit, through cognitive dissonance) that they were meant to be alone and that they enjoy their own company more than they do that of others. This is mostly rubbish. If they managed to meet that one person out there who would be a perfect complement of their personality, they would recant every last word.

Nobody wants to be alone.

Everybody wants to have somebody to love and to be loved in return – even people who prefer to be alone. If you do not have this feature turned on in your brain, you’re quite probably a dangerously antisocial sociopath.

I say all that to underscore something very primitive: True Love is all about compromise – and the only people who don’t want love (or have had really hard time at it) are those who have failed to understand the necessity of compromise. Lust and Oxytocin may start a relationship, but compromise is what sustains it. That’s why love is mostly about tolerance – not feelings.

With that said, most of the people who encourage relationships never underscore the necessity of compromise. You largely only hear about all the great things about love and being in love. In fact, based on my very limited observation of female behaviour, I get the distinct impression that most of them live for the wedding day, but never for the marriage that follows.

This explains with great clarity the prominence of female wedding planners who aren’t themselves married. They get to live the thrills of the wedding day over and over again and get paid for it, without having to deal with the ugly necessity of compromise. I can probably imagine that it’s certainly a very appealing thing for a woman – not that I get any of it, being a man and all.

This is concordantly why most romance oriented websites are a sham. The one or two rare exceptions are sites like eHarmony.com that actually go to great lengths to factor in the little things that piss people off when they’re trying to match them up. The others only care about three things: age, sex & location.

…and then they take your money.

What many people who get into relationships fail to understand is that for the hyperbolic idea of “true love” to work, you have to become a little less of who you really are, to become a little more of who the other person may like. In so doing, both parties create the necessary half of the circle to make each other whole. This is a symbiotic process and it cannot work any other way.

That’s why those who are too self centered can’t (or shouldn’t) get married. They tend to have little oddities about them, like women who don’t desire children, men who are very easily bored or people who are obsessed with their careers – that would make a long term relationship largely impractical.

There are some rare exceptions, but they’re rare…

This is why I don’t understand people who get divorced shortly after getting married. They’re like children who ask for toys made in China and are completely oblivious to the warranty period, care and maintenance guidelines, the quality of customer service, health and toxicity and other legal fine print.

But marriage isn’t a toy, is it?

Let’s not fool ourselves. For any kind of relationship to work, you have to be prepared to sacrifice a part of yourself in order to facilitate romance. That’s one of the reasons why humans are functionally different from other animals. It doesn’t matter how compatible you and your lover think you are, love is all about compromise and sacrifice. There’s positively no getting away from it.

In fact, if you find that you and your love partner have everything in common, like all the same things, hate all the same things, love to do all the same things or have never had an argument, I’d recommend that you two get DNA tested to ensure that you aren’t related. I’m not kidding. It’s happened before.

Conclusively;

When it comes to romance, humans seem to have become more obsessed with the process as opposed to its intended function. I wish more people would get their heads out of the clouds and say what love really is instead of perpetuating ad nauseum the idea that the feelings somehow embody the whole thing as opposed to being merely an instigator for procreation.

That’s why most people don’t understand the curious feelings they have to battle with when in and out of “love”. Then they go on to write these god awful songs, poems etc., or behave in a way that is unbecoming of a rational adult when their animal side wages war with their super-ego. I find the whole thing to be frightfully nauseating and predictable – sobbing females and all.

To make matters worse, I’ve found that the prominence of political correctness when it comes to relationships can prove to be more damaging than managing the psychological fallout that follows when people are rejected. I find that people tend to do far better when they have more realistic expectations.

I’m not trying to pour cold water on people’s feelings or to somehow trivialize what people felt when they claim to be in love. Rather, I’m merely trying to get people to understand why they tend to do stupid things when under the influence. And please, don’t tell me about “over analysing” anything. Relationships tend to do far better with more reason and less magic.

This doesn’t mean that magic isn’t important. Rather, it is by no means the definition of what love really is. Most of what people think they know about love is steeped in fallacies propagated by commercialism and pop culture.

For example, the kind of marriage counselling people get when their marriage has problems should happen before they get married – not after they say ‘I do‘. However, I suspect if more counsellors told people what they don’t want to hear, they’re not likely to get paid.  No wonder I can’t help thinking that this practice of putting the cart before the horse has some commercial value.

Gentle people, love is not a feeling. It is a process. The feeling you have is highly contingent on trivial factors – no matter how profoundly attracted to a person you are. While I fully appreciate the fact that you can’t control the way you feel, you can control the way you behave. Feelings don’t justify anything.

Ergo, if you find that you’re:

1. Attracted to someone who is already involved with someone else
2. Drawn to a person other than your significant other
3. Find someone very attractive that you KNOW is bad for you
4. Tempted to engage in a relationship that would endanger the stability of your life
5. Have sexual feelings that would get you in trouble with the law

OR more tamely that:

1. The ‘fire’ has gone out of your current relationship
2. You are heart broken by someone who you were never “in love” with
3. You’re in “love” with two people – with the same intensity (yes, it’s VERY possible)
4. You feel terrible after being rejected (or unacknowledged) and want revenge
5. You are tempted to romantically pacify the pain of someone you know you’re not attracted to
6. You love someone so intensely, that you want to marry them.

…then STOP and remember this: No feeling lasts forever, and any action taken on that feeling can become potentially regrettable. This applies to both positive and negative circumstances. While the repercussions of the negative circumstances tend to be more plainly obvious, the positive ones aren’t.

For example, lots of people get married without doing the necessary due diligence. I know men who’ve married women before they realised they didn’t want children. I know women who’ve become involved with men who are either already married or otherwise involved even though they know there’s no future in the relationship. It happens all the time and without ceasing.

The fascinating thing with the latter circumstance is that most of these women actually believe that a man who is willing to leave his current lover for them will somehow be any more loyal to them than they were to their estranged lover!

Why do people do this? The answer is simple: People are more obsessed with gratifying their short term sexual desires than they are about realising their long term relational needs. We live in a culture that is more obsessed with the doctrine of instant gratification at any cost, as opposed to rational behaviour.

The hypocrisy of love is seated in the fact that the very concept has become interchangeable with that of lust, such that people are no longer capable of telling the difference between incendiary passion and long suffering.

Then when women sit and watch daytime soap operas about people living rotten lives and men indulge in dirty magazines that objectify women, we wonder why some of us are so lost when it comes to understanding true love.

You silly humans. You amuse me.

“When people go in search of the truth, they tend to find whatever it is they’re looking for, whether it is the truth or not.”

- Xenocrates

Remember when Pluto was a planet? Now it isn’t. Remember when removing tonsils cured tonsillitis? Now we know better. Or what about when the moon was completely devoid of water? Recent discoveries show otherwise. All of these things were true once. So I’ve got to ask a really tough question of you:

What is truth?

Is truth whatever we can verify? If so, how do we verify it? If it is by checking the facts, then that means that truth is contingent on fact. However facts are relative to our perception, since as we’ve shown, what is fact today, may not be a fact tomorrow. By proxy, this means that truth is relative to perception.

If truth is relative to perception, then truth has no absolute value. But if the truth is not absolute, then whence do we call it truth? If there is a sliding scale upon which we measure the truth, then the truth about the truth is that there’s no such thing as truth – only the relative perceptions of cognition.

This means that the truth is ultimately unverifiable. The truth is thus highly contingent on faith. Something can only remain true so long as we believe it is. Therefore, much of what we’ve developed in the name of civilization is based on the premise of faith. Even the scientific principles that we’ve come to know and love are only true in this universe – so far as we can tell anyway.

Every once in a while, we’ll hear about some other scientific principle that we have to “forget all we know about“, as some new discovery touts itself as being “the true nature” of this or that. Textbooks are rewritten all the time to reflect this shift in cognitive perception. It’s an all too familiar reality we’re faced with.

Since then, I’ve come to learn several things about the truth:

1. Popularity doesn’t validate truth

Catholicism is the most popular and least scripturally accurate form of Christianity

When I first set out to validate my faith, I came across so many different versions of the truth that I was ultimately disappointed with what I found. Ever since I discovered how people misinterpret ubiquity as validation of truth, Religion no longer held the same appeal for me. I became inherently skeptical.

I discovered that people were just literally making it up as they went along. People borrowed bits and pieces of other culture’s practices, mythologies and arcane rituals and created an astro-heliological hybrid that was used as a political smelting pot to forge the reins of control it enjoys today.

If Christianity is a hoax of biblical proportions (literally) then because of its ubiquity, people assume that it is the truth. Fundamentally speaking, there are useful lessons to be derived from Christianity. In fact, I will even go as far as to say that religion is usually fun until people start to take it seriously.

However, when a fornicating Christian presumes to judge me for the blasphemy of daring to question the validity of their faith, I usually take the time to remind them that their charade is no more relevant than that of the ancient Egyptians 5,500 years ago, when Horus was the original Sun of God.

If ubiquity were to become any validation of the truth, then in a few hundred years, if the Atheists don’t have their way, then Islam will become the truth and Christianity will have fully fallen away into a long line of mythological fads that encompassed our epistemology for a time. Truth is anything but popular.

This fallacy also extends into science. Many scientists have tried to pass on ideas which have become a part of urban legend. When they aren’t busy declaring that microwaves are deadly (not quite), that teflon causes cancer (not true), that fat is the one thing to look out for in food (then it was cholesterol, then it was carbs – and the list goes on), then they are recanting.

Now there is a process of peer review to achieve some level of objectivity. We may be satisfied with this process to some extent, but we must also remember that peer review does not make a scientific claim any more valid than two billion people who believe in a hybrid religion rooted in ancient Egypt.

Scientists can verify each other’s claims all they want. However, sooner or later, some new discovery will ultimately render all that peer review moot. For example, the ubiquity of the acceptance of evolutionary theory means very little on the large scale as scientists are finding holes in it every single day.

The ubiquity of an idea does not validate it as truth. Popularity and truth are mutually exclusive. Viral communication techniques have proven that it is exceptionally easy to propagate a lie through most of the populous several times over before the truth has a chance to launch out of the stables. In fact, lies and ubiquity are more inextricably linked than the truth ever was.

I could go a step further and say that the believability of an idea is directly proportional to its sensationalism. Maybe that’s why there are people out there who still try to avoid standing in front of a microwave oven when it’s running or why only a celebrities’ dirty laundry consistently makes the tabloids.

New Rule:

If everybody believes it, it’s probably not true. Ergo, if everyone’s doing it, it’s probably a bad idea. Contrary to popular belief, the wisdom of crowds has proven to be strangely misleading. Herd Logic is as tremendously empowering as it is frighteningly misguided. Beware the flawed wisdom of ubiquity.

2. Personal revelation isn’t truth

Prison seems to be a favourite place for having epiphanies

There have been countless numbers of people who while going through a rough patch in their lives had an epiphany of life changing proportions that changed their life outlook forever. A number of them have gotten rich by writing about their experiences. Others have started self help groups.

Between those who have gotten speaking engagements (not because of what they had to say as much as how much people love to hear them say it) and those who’ve gotten book deals, millions of dollars have been thrown at them. To say that some of them are con artists is a gross understatement.

The bottom line is that much of what they had to say was only useful to them. Many of the people who’ve subscribed to their work never had to have those kinds of terrible life experiences to know some of these things. These people thrive on selling drama – not wisdom. No wonder so much of it is garbage.

If I had a dollar for every jail bird who converted to Islam/christianity/[insert your favourite religion here], I would buy me a television station dedicated to exposing these merchants of gullibility for what they really are.

Between the people who’re telling you how to “double your dating” by being a jerk to those who’re telling you that “being positive always equals opportunity”, you will find several million ways how their doctrine is flawed. Then there are those annoying folks and their near death experiences.

I remember sharing a conversation with a Christian colleague who was relating to me the life after death experience of a guy who claims to be a Christian. He was so compelled that this guy’s experience was the real deal, that it took a good hour to explain to him why people have these experiences.

Life after death experiences are a result of electricity seeping out of the brain of someone who is near death. People who experience severe sleep paralysis also have a very similar experience. I don’t mean to sound insensitive, but this guy just never got a chance to kick the bucket properly. It’s that simple.

There are hundreds of other examples of people like that dude who have had such an emotional upheaval in their lives, that they feel compelled to share it with everyone. What they fail to understand is that their experience is only relevant to them. What everyone else fails to understand is that the person sharing the experience is only trying to make a quick buck off their ignorance.

…or trying to validate some right wing agenda.

If a Muslim had a near death experience, they would see Allah and Muhammed and 72 virgins. If a Mormon had a near death experience, they’d see Joseph Smith, Jesus and Jehovah. If a Catholic had a near death experience, they’d see Jesus, Mary, and perhaps their patron saint and some family members.

You see where I’m going with this, right?

Have you ever heard of a Muslim having a near death experience and seeing Jesus? What about a Jehovah’s Witness having a near death experience and seeing Joseph Smith? Or a Buddhist seeing Mary and a Patron saint when they are in their last throes of death? Why have I never heard of such things?

For a very simple reason: Because it’s all make belief.

A Near Death Experience doesn’t validate your faith. It’s nothing more than a reflection of your own life experiences and social engineering. In fact, scientists have found that the content of Near Death Experiences differ between cultures. Concordantly, they’ve also found that children who’ve had near death experiences don’t experience any religious content of any sort. That says a lot.

Whatever feels like the truth for someone, becomes the truth for that person. However, the validity of that truth looses its effectiveness outside of the domain of people who also accept that relativity. This is why when people join self help groups, they find that so much of the material is useless to them.

This is the same reason why people can defect from one religion to another. It’s not because the religion to which they defected (or converted) is any more true for them than the one they chose to abandon. It’s just that in terms of that person’s personality, the chosen faith just fits better. It’s just that simple.

There are Christian colleagues of mine who’ve converted to being Seventh Day Adventists, not because they believe in the Sabbath law, but simply because they prefer to have rest day before going back to work. They will then use all the Sabbath teachings (however irrelevant) to validate their choice.

It doesn’t matter that the Sabbath law is a cultural approximation that has no validity outside of the Jewish culture. It doesn’t matter that Christ himself demonstrated that the Pharisees completely misinterpreted the law. It doesn’t matter that Bible itself guards against Sabbath day misappropriation.

Once they’ve chosen to believe it, it becomes true.

New Rule:

Truth is relative to the individual. When people go in search of the truth, they tend to find whatever it is they’re looking for, whether it is the truth or not. There’s no such thing as ‘salvation‘ or ‘nirvana‘ or ‘enlightenment‘. These are all states of the mind. Our minds make it real and there is nothing more to it.

3. The truth is always incomplete

No matter what we already know, there’s always more to learn.

Can you show me a triangle without drawing one, or finding an image of one, or pointing to a conceptual abstraction in architecture or a cardboard cut out? The idea of a triangle is man made. It doesn’t exist in and of itself. If mankind should cease to exist tomorrow morning, then so would the hapless triangle.

In fact, much of human epistemology is highly contingent on our continued existence. There could be a race of super humans who while vulnerable to kryptonite, acquire god like abilities when exposed to a yellow Sun. However, they were wiped out by a cataclysmic seismic core failure in their planet.

Providing that none of them were smart enough to send a rocket ship to the Earth with the last son of their doomed civilization, all of their knowledge, technology, culture, science, literature, philosophy – would be gone.

Did they exist? As far as we’re concerned, only in comic books. But is it true that they existed? Nope. Not as far as we can tell anyway. Or maybe they do exist, but unfortunately, space is so vast, that it is invariably impossible to tell with our limited technology. We’d be floundering in the dark for centuries.

Every time we set out to prove something, we need to validate it with something else that we assume to be true in all cases – until we come across an exception. That’s when the text books have to be reprinted and all the people who championed one theory over another swallow their arrogance.

This is why it amuses me when one troupe of scientists are embattled by another on a popular debate. You must’ve heard of some of these by now: Nature vs. Nurture; Evolution vs. Intelligent Design; Infinite vs Finite Universe; String Theory vs. Quantum Loop Gravity – the list goes on and on:

But what if our civilization were wiped out tomorrow morning? None of these things would matter. All of these things are human inventions. They are human representations of the natural world. These representations have no value outside of the human race, and may even be no more than half true.

Even mathematics that we hold so dear is relative to human cognition. Some abstract principles are quite probably universally true for all intelligent life forms in the universe. However, they may only be partially true or very narrowly true because of the incredibly limited understanding mankind has.

Ideas like the triangle and equations like y=mx+c are self reliant constructs that will always remain true in the limited domain for which they are conceptualized. Their limited domain of application is what validates them.

The caveat is that Mathematical ideas we’ve derived are not necessarily the most complete model of the phenomenon it seeks to describe in the universe. Mathematical constructs are not inherently wrong. They may however be poorly or incompletely designed. (Cue: Gödel’s Incompleteness Theorem).

Just as how we found water on the moon, broke the earth’s gravity, operated on the human heart and brain, cured smallpox,  broke the sound barrier, put a man on the moon among many other achievements, one day we’ll break the speed of light, traverse black holes and teleport matter with indiscretion.

New Rule:

All evidence is only partial proof. Certainty is a mild form of arrogance. There’s probably no such thing as science fiction, as much as it is science speculation. So don’t quote that text book so tersely. They’ll need to reprint it soon.

4. Longevity does not validate Truth

This man knows more about the science of deception than he lets on.

If you tell a lie long enough to enough people, after a while, they’ll eventually start to believe it. People are animals that instinctively trust herd logic – whether or not it pans out for the greater good or not. Thus if you were to constantly repeat the same lie over and over and over again, sooner or later, the herd will buy it and everyone will start to believe in it, without question.

One of the most fascinating things I’ve found about the American idiocracy, is their willingness to believe in something that has been told to them over and over again, even though it is without substantiation. In fact, I’ve gone ahead and make a list of these things. I’m pretty sure I’m going to get some irate comments about this, but it’s worth mentioning even for the sake of debate:

1. There was legitimate reason to get into the Vietnam war
2. George Bush won the 2000 election fair and square
3. 19 incompetent foreign terrorists could have pulled off 9/11 on their own
4. The terrorist alert colour codes are a useful warning mechanism
5. The Iraq War was somehow linked to 9/11
6. There were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq
7. Iran is a dangerous anti-American state
8. Barack Obama was not born in the USA and he is Muslim Socialist.
9. Socialism is a dangerous thing
10. Government regulation is evil

…I could go on, but you see the point. Over the last eight years, so much rubbish has filled the airwaves with such longevity, that it is no small wonder that the hapless denizens of the TV generation soak it up like limestone slowly absorbs water. Sooner or later, speculation becomes indisputable fact.

But this propensity is not something that is unique to the American Idiocracy. You will find the same type of behaviour in humans right across the globe. Atheists convince each other that religion is intrinsically evil. Theists convince each other that a 2,000 year old hybrid mythology is somehow original. Then there are urban legends of all kinds that still exist today in many forms.

The longer an idea stays around in human epistemology, the greater the likelihood that it will be accepted as being truthful. After a while, everyone will just accept it without even trying to do original research to see if it really is true. People will even laugh mockingly if you dare question an age old idea.

I can just imagine the mocking Galileo endured when he suggested that the earth goes around the sun. What about Christopher Columbus? People thought he was sailing to his doom. What about John Forbes Nash, who questioned Adam Smith’s theories in Economics? The list goes on in perpetuity.

I can imagine within the next 50 years, some cocky young scientist is going to question Einstein’s theories of relativity, only to be scorned by the physics community, until he builds the first FTL engine powered by water. It’s a pity I won’t live long enough to see the look on their faces when over 100 years of accepted theoretical physics gets thrown out the window in a blip of genius.

It’s no different within the Christian faith:

To this very day, I still hear some Christians saying that Adam and Eve ate an apple in the Garden of Eden (the Bible did not mention the fruit by name) or that God helps those that help themselves (there’s no such scripture at all) as well as saying that Mary Magdalene was a prostitute (again, there is nowhere in the Bible that says this). These are all popular scriptural fallacies.

The truth is that one day, some guy in a pulpit made an inaccurate declaration that the congregation never bothered to validate by reading the Bible themselves. It happens every Saturday and Sunday. If you preach the same nonsense long enough, people will eventually assume the Bible backs it up.

But why stop there? Most Christians don’t know about Attis, Dionysus, Mishra, Krishna, Horus and the like. Most Christians still celebrate the pagan rituals called “Christmas“. None of these people have dared to question their faith because they assumed it was true from being around for centuries.

Isn’t it odd how Christians are completely oblivious to the fact that they’re practicing a pagan religion, yet will route wiccans and other pagan ritualists for being just the same? Ignorance it seems, is not without a sense of irony.

New Rule:

Just as how we believed for decades that the moon was dry, for centuries that the earth was flat and for millennia that the elements were gods, I urge you to consider the bothersome reality that lies have a longer shelf life than the truth.

5. Truth is a function of belief, not proof

What if I told you that I can prove that women prefer men that lie? It wouldn’t be hard to rig a survey or a psychometric examination to validate this claim. In fact, there are many “scientific” surveys that are conducted daily to validate this or that claim. However, the scientific method is inherently flawed.

I’m pretty sure I’m going to hear from a few scientists (or highly educated people) about that last statement, because they believe in the method. Well that’s exactly the point, isn’t it? Who says that there isn’t a better method?

We believe in the method because we have convinced ourselves that it is the most objective way to obtain hard data – yet this is how black people were proven to be stupid, vile, soulless animals. Science did that – even though there is enough evidence to the contrary. How do we explain this anomaly?

Truth is a function of one’s willingness to believe, not in their willingness to prove. This is why all “scientific” surveys that set out to find the truth are automatically skewed by the intentions of the researchers. Everyone has an agenda and thus, something to prove. Objectivity is a matter of opinion.

Sure, there are people out there who are willing to find the hard cold truth. The Human G-Nome project is one such initiative. But even when they discover some secrets of the human gnome, they are terrified of publishing their findings due to their awareness of the vile propensities of human nature.

Even when you take the co-relational evidence out of the equation, who’s to say that the data will remain valid after the last box has been checked? The universe is in a constant state of flux. If you cross a river at noon and cross it again 5 minutes later, technically, it isn’t the same river you crossed earlier.

So when a survey is published that proves this or that, even 10 years after the data has become invalid, people still feel the need to quote the survey – even if there is more recent evidence to suggest otherwise. It’s the same way how Christian fundamentalists quote the Bible out of context and Muslim Jihadists pervert the teachings of the Koran. It’s what they choose to believe.

Christianity and Islam agree on as many things as do scientists who believe in Quantum Loop Gravity or String Theory. Evolutionary Theory and Intelligent Design proponents also agree on some things. In fact, you will find Jehovah’s Witnesses and Mormons who agree on a few things. But this means nothing.

When I first discovered atheists who disagreed with scientists, that was the first time I realised that neither team was being compelled by some mutually indisputable train of logic. In both cases, like the cultural affinity of Christianity and Islam, they were being compelled by their preference, not the proof.

This ultimately reveals that the perception of truth lies almost squarely inside the head of the individual. Take the use of language for example. Do you notice that expletives are indigenous to culture? Even where two countries use the same language, expletives in one country are nonsense in another.

So if someone uses an expletive of his native origin on national television in another country, he wouldn’t be crucified in the same way as if he had done so at home. The philosophical implications of this paradox insinuate that the double standards governing this issue are inextricably bound to culture.

Similarly, whatever we have determined to be truthful has a very strong cultural context to it. It becomes unique to the individual(s) in such a way that it’s effectively a facet of their cultural construct. This is why things like Religion have such a strong cultural context. Judaism and Christianity both carry principles that are steeped in cultural ideology. Islam is no different.

Despite this obvious caveat, most religious practitioners (like western Seventh Day Aventists) have yet to realise that their mythological preference automatically implies cultural adoption or as it is in most cases, indoctrination.

No amount of proof will convince someone of anything once they’ve chosen to believe an idea contrary to that proof. This is why whatever we can validate as truth is really relative to the individual. I’m sure there are still scientists out there who think Pluto is a planet. They will let the evidence be damned.

New Rule:

The existence of proof is not quite as important as the interpretation thereof. Two people can observe the same proof and use it in two completely different ways and it will remain completely valid. Ergo, proof is ultimately subjective.

6. The Truth does not set you free

Judas Iscariot, the enabler and greatest unsung hero of Christianity

I am sure when the character of Jesus insinuated that the truth will set men free (John 8:32) he was not referring to anything outside of freedom from sin – although that’s debatable.  For one could even argue that a lie that saves lives is better than a truth that destroys them. Yet, many people continue to quote this passage of scripture out of context due to incidences of point 5 above.

It comes as no surprise then that Judas is villified by Christians, despite the fact that if he didn’t betray Jesus, they wouldn’t inherit salvation. In fact, on facebook when my status update read: “I need 30 pieces of silver“, the misplaced outrage of my christian colleagues shows that they couldn’t handle the reality of anyone betraying Jesus – although Judas never requested silver.

Truth be told, Judas couldn’t handle it either. He did off himself shortly afterwards. One way or another, the truth of his betrayal was that it was necessary and that God himself designed the outcome that way. I am therefore fascinated by the ignorance of my colleagues. Judas should be glorified!

Can you imagine if the worst atrocities that have been committed in our history were for some greater good? Do you think you could handle that? When emperor Qin sought to unite the six kingdoms of the orient, genocide was an inevitability – yet, without that act of conquest, China wouldn’t exist today.

I’m not saying that the end justifies the means, although Machiavelli wasn’t enirely off his rocker. Rather, the horrific reality is usually inversely proportional to the utilitarian benefit that was ultimately derived by everyone else.

Besides, time heals all wounds.

Surely if one’s conscience is weighed down with something, telling the truth may liberate them from the guilt – or land them into even bigger trouble. Many men have learned the hard way that there’s no point in being truthful with an irrational contender, whether they be women, Republicans or Muslims.

Don’t get hung up on that sentence. You know perfectly well what I mean.

What bothers me then are those who are Deontological thinkers – people who do not have (or choose to ignore) the capacity to determine the greater good where the truth could prove to be dangerous. They’re the anti-stem cell people who fail to see the life saving benefits of science and the pro-life pundits who fail to see the suffering of the woman with child. Such is utter blindness.

The problem with these individuals is not that they lack the capacity to understand as much as they lack the will. That is why politicians (for better or worse) often find themselves telling the people what they want to hear. Similarly, some pastors won’t preach messages that would drive people away.

It has been quite well established that ignorance is bliss. What has not quite yet been established is the fact that the cost of ignorance far outweighs that of knowledge. To complicate matters further, we have to also consider that ignorance is more ubiquitous than wisdom. Humanity thrives on deception.

One of the most salient points that came out of the Wachowski Brother’s Matrix trilogy is that there’s no way to defeat human ignorance without simultaneously destroying humanity itself. Because we’re pleasure driven creatures, we far prefer the bliss of ignorance in enslavement than the vitriol of knowledge and wisdom that freedom gives. We just can’t handle the truth.

Even though no god intervenes in our lives, we would still prefer to believe that one did so. Even though death is the inevitable end of all life, we fantasize that it isn’t. We tell ourselves these things not because we believe them to be true, but rather because life is too a terrible thing to have without them.

So can you imagine trying to get someone to let go of an idea that brings them such joy and comfort? That’s the same thing as telling a young child to eat its vegetables. It will take years for it to wean itself off the sweetness that it has become so accustomed to in its relatively short span of existence.

In fact, I recall a hymn we used to sing in church when I was much younger, that had a line which read “Even if there was no heaven, I would still love him [Jesus]“. Although I was just 16 years old, I knew this was utter rubbish.

Although my church elders wouldn’t understand Cognitive Dissonance even if I broke it down to them all Fischer-Price™ like, it was very clear to me even then that the hymn writer obviously knew very little about human nature.

By extension, imagine the only son who has to tell his father that he is gay, or the single mother whose daughter has become pregnant, the pastor whose child has renounced their religion or the president who has to break his own promises. None of these people will be set free by the revelation of the truth.

Fragile psyches abound with more regularity than the minds capable of discerning such things. The truth must therefore be applied sparingly. There’s no point destroying such minds in the process of delivering the payload. After all, that was the whole point of inventing the hypocrisy of political correctness.

New Rule:

Despite the fact that knowledge removes all fear, there is a certain kind of ignorance that fears knowledge more than fear itself. Ergo, if we were to persist with alacrity in telling each other the hard cold truth about the world at all times, then our lives would be excessively violent, brutish and short.

7. There is only faith, and nothing more

Science has failed us before – but our faith drives us forward

The truth is that you have to accept anything being purported as truth within the context of faith. There is enough proof to prove almost anything you want to prove. It probably doesn’t matter what side of the fence you choose to sit.

You have to have faith in God. You have to have faith in friends, family, your job, your marriage and even in science. When we put our trust in science and it goes wrong, we don’t put away science do we? Of course not. We try again.

This is concordantly why Christians assert that Jesus never fails – because imaginary friends only have imaginary powers. Our faith is what makes it real. This is why televangelists are often known as “faith healers“. We are doing nothing different when we put our faith in a scientific theory and test it.

We have faith in evolution, in astrophysics, in mathematics and even in that chair in which you’re sitting, reading this. One doesn’t have to be religious or a non believer to recognize the raw unbridled power of blind faith. We built an entire civilization around it after all – from the wheel to the internet.

New Rule:

Either way, we should be humble in whatever we choose to declare as being the truth. Our faith is what gives the “truth” its value. Even so, our faith only proves something to be true so far. Everything else is equally relative.

“As every woman fetches a price, it should come as no surprise that men treat them like assets to be counted and valued.”

- Xenocrates

Do men ALWAYS buy sex? This is certainly worth contemplation.

In 2006, I had a most enlightening conversation with a young woman who wasn’t what you’d call one of the sharpest knives in drawer. Needless to say, the profundity of what came out of her mouth stumped me for several weeks. Yes, it was that earth shattering at the time. This is what she said:

“All men buy sex. The men who get married pay the most, while the patrons of prostitution pay the least.“

Needless to say, I was appalled. Surely this lass who wasn’t necessarily as smart as she was pretty merely stumbled upon this epiphany through someone else’s cognition. I hadn’t decided to give it further contemplation then until a very recent experience with another woman. Now I fear that she may have been right. No wonder many men are so sexist.

Do men buy sex?

I have never paid money to a prostitute and I never will. One would have to put a gun to my head to compel me to stoop that low. However, when I thought of most of the women I’ve dated, I realised that the quality of the experience was almost always contingent on how much money I put down.

Whether those dates evolved into sex or not is irrelevant. The point is, like Kanye says, she doesn’t have to be a gold digger. It’s just that women are not quite as likely to notice a man who has no money – and I suppose that is a reasonable expectation given the expected result of the exchange.

I just don’t like it one bit.

The little miss who provided me with this epiphany is not a prostitute. She’s a fairly respectable girl (stress on “fairly”) who for the most part conducts herself like a perfect young lady. She is however, very clear about her expectations of men. I find that women who’re more educated are less straight forward.

Our conversation evolved out of why I had a problem with her attitude. She insists that she doesn’t date men who don’t own a car. That means the fat kid working in her department who was pining for her attention didn’t have a shot – even though he’s a nicer guy than I am. Poor fellow. If only that guy knew how incredibly shallow she was. Nice guys were always too naive to get laid.

*sigh*

Never the less, long after that conversation ended, years in fact, I took a long hard look at every woman I had ever been close to romantically and I asked myself a very hard question: “What is the difference between them and her?” I was desperate to find one. Surely not all women are quite this shallow.

When we were teens, girls used to hang out with us after school. As I went to an all male Catholic institution, they came over (or we went to them) and we shared all kinds of fun, Catholic sanctified extra curricular activities. Relax, I’m not Catholic. Needless to say, there was no price tag on that experience.

Oh wait, there’s a school fee involved. But that was for my education. The girls were a bonus for attending a prestigious Catholic school. So technically, that was free love. Well – for me anyway. My dad might think otherwise.

After high school though, the game changes. People start to think about sex in a very real sense. Finger bound explorations are no longer enough. But how do you do that when you still live with your parents? Creative solutions aside, it became more and more obvious that something had to change.

The Initial Cost of Ownership

Once we hit adulthood and we (mostly) move out of the parents’ home, we realise that the mind set in women becomes very, very different. One of the first questions I constantly heard from women I just met were “so… do you live alone?“. Depending on the answer to that question, the evening may or may not wear on. This is especially true if she happens to want what you want.

Price so far: Rent/Mortgage

Another question I constantly encountered was, “So what do you drive?” I never get asked “do you drive?”. Women almost always assume that a dude at a certain age automatically owns a motor car. What if I didn’t drive? I’m pretty sure, based in my friends’ experience, that the conversation would’ve ended very differently. Apparently, having wheels means opportunity. Fair enough.

But what about those really great guys who don’t own a car? Can you imagine all the swell guys out there who are missing out just because there are so many women out there who genuinely don’t know what’s good for them? Then again, those kinds of girls are probably doing them all a favour.

I suppose the cultural dynamic is a lot different in countries where cars are irrelevant (because the public transportation is fabulous). Either way, there appears to be a direct correlation between the hotness of a man’s car and the hotness of the girl he will be able to snag. It almost never fails.

When I was in college, I knew this gorgeous young woman with whom I was merely a friend. Being the nerd I was then, she would only spend time with me when I was helping her with assignments. I jumped at every opportunity.

However, I didn’t yet own a car. Thus, every guy who rolled onto campus with a killer ride got to sample her company at a more advanced level of interaction than I did. One of them almost even raped her. Now, despite the fact that all these guys were obviously bad for her, their cars changed that fact.

She was as predictable as she was pretty. It made me start to think that it wasn’t just blonde’s who were that dumb. So in my final year, after having come across a surplus in available funds, I finally bought my first car. Now guess who got to take her home in the evenings and stay up late with her?

You’re damn right.

Price so far: Rent/Mortgage + Wheels

The Price of Woo

This lovely half French Cajun and I had a most enlightening debate...

Girls need to be wooed. To woo a woman, it takes more than having some place to get hot and intimate. In fact, even if one is a smooth talker, you still need to purchase tickets to her attention. This is especially true on dates.

The cost of the ticket may range anywhere from a round of coffee, to a drink at the bar, to the cost of a full course meal, to the cost of an all inclusive outing at the night club. The bottom line is that there is a cost and it can almost always be measured in dollars and cents. I struggled to find exceptions.

Recently, my friend accused me of always seeing everything in terms of dollars and cents (which is not true – I see everything as symmetrical mathematical equations – but I digress). She accused me of taking the magic out of everything by measuring the cost of everything we do together.

This is a transcript of our conversation that night. My words are in blue and hers, green:

“If I was unable to ferry us here in my chariot, would you be ok with us taking a taxi?“

“Absolutely!“

“What if I couldn’t afford a taxi, would you come with me on a bus?“

Her answer had notably less exuberance:

“Sure – but then I’d rather subsidize the cost of the taxi.”

So far so good. Albeit, she’s a smart one. So I upped the ante:

“What if I couldn’t pay for this meal?“

“Then we wouldn’t be here, would we?“

That wasn’t quite the answer I was looking for. So I pulled for the heavy artillery:

“How is what I’m doing here any different from hiring an escort?“

There is a short pause. I could see the cognition in motion in her eyes. After she realised where I was going with the discussion, she broke the din of silence:

“Well first of all, you actually like me. Secondly, we could always find something else to do, right? We don’t always have to do things that cost money.“

Still not the answer I’m looking for. She knows what I’m gunning for and is deliberately dodging the questions. I press harder:

“Would you have been satisfied if we only did things that didn’t cost money?”

A playful look momentarily occupied her countenance as she deflected yet again:

“I don’t think either of us would have been satisfied.”

Realising that this deflection was going to continue ad nauseum, I decided to go for the kill:

“Would you have seriously given me the time of day if I was completely broke?“

Her smile disappears as she slumps back into her seat. At this point, her body language tells me quite clearly that she feels cornered. So it means that I’m running a very dangerous risk of ruining the evening. I have to pursue this with less alacrity. The waiter comes over to offer us wine. I motion to him to get us her favourite. We’re regulars and my credit card has never declined.

She finally speaks:

“Well, even if you were broke, we would still find a way. I do admit though, that it would have been much harder for us to get to where we are in our relationship.“

That’s definitely not the answer I’m looking for. In fact, I knew that women tend to use diplomacy to say “No”. So, generating as much empathy in my voice as humanly possible, I look her deep in the eyes and make my point:

“Well that’s just it, isn’t it? Men are expected to buy the attention of a woman – quite literally in fact – which doesn’t help us in the way of not perceiving you all as assets.“

She was quick:

“I didn’t notice you because of the size of your pocket.“

But so was I:

“True – but what if you’ve never read my work. Would you still have?“

She was resilient:

“That’s not a fair question. Would you have been talking to me if I wasn’t attractive?“

At this point, I couldn’t believe what I was hearing.

“Are you implying that I got what I paid for?“

Her, without missing a beat:

“Relationships are investments, dear. You get out of it what you put into it.“

Appalled, I had to ask the obvious:

“And what if I didn’t put any money into it?“

“You’re missing the point. Money is only a means to an end, not an end in and of itself. If we lived in the 13th century BC, you’d have used sheep and cattle instead of your credit card to achieve the same objective. You said it yourself: Men rule the world. We women are just playing by your rules.“

At this point, it was no longer a debate. She was making herself abundantly clear. She had a serious look on her face, while a wide grin embraced mine. Now I remember why I enjoyed her company – and why I couldn’t see us having a real future together. This wasn’t over yet. So I continued:

“Touché. Well played. Well since you women are playing by ‘our rules’, I suppose you wouldn’t feel too bad about me trading you in for a prettier girl.“

Her next response made me realise that she finally got what I was getting at:

“Are you implying that I’m not worth the investment?“

“Not at all. Rather, I was hoping that your worth could not be measured by ANY investment – whether it be by cattle or credit card. I’d want to think of you as being priceless – not pricey.“

At this point, it’s obvious that she is just as amused as she is offended. Loosing some composure, she breaks into her native French;

“Aaah, le grand Xenocrates se prouve avec la splendeur de mots.” (‘Ahh, the great Xenocrates proves himself with splendorous words’) “Your words are like fire and ice. You can heal with as much power as you wound.“

I respond with my sword slightly drawn:

“The essence of truth is never earned without bloodshed, mon cher“

Her brown eyes narrow, with a fierce look of predatory vindication on her now pursed, pink lips. She raises one eyebrow, indicating that she is about to pounce, with this:

“Than you are just as naive as you are brilliant.“

The ad hominem remark made me smile (much to her chagrin). That’s how I knew the conversation’s effectively over. So I close:

“Indeed. My last Santa Claus just died – and for that, I thank you.“

And with that, the icy stare coming from across the table could’ve given me instant hypothermia. Needless to say, it took some fancy footwork to earn my way back into her graces after that. But I was now more certain than ever. Every woman carries a price tag – and I was one of the last to realise this.

Not to worry, we’re still very good friends. It’s just that the demerits of that conversation haunt us both to this day. Maybe we’re both too smart for our own good or maybe I have a lot of growing up to do. In retrospect, It’s probably more the latter than the former. If not, then women are being grossly misrepresented by women like her who believe that they must be bought.

Price so far: Rent/Mortgage + Wheels + Woo

The Upgrade Principle

I’ve always heard from my less cognitively entertaining colleagues that the quality of the woman you snag is highly contingent on the quality of one’s chariot. I suppose in some context, it’s just like in the days of cowboys, the masculinity of a man was measured by the impressiveness of his horse.

Of course, I thought that was a load of horse bunk. I had met enough women when I was a teen – long before I could own a car, to know that a chariot was not quintessential to scoring a ticket to a woman’s heart. It wouldn’t be long before  I was proven wrong. Some of years ago, when I upgraded from this:

…which happened to be my first car, to this:

…the quantity and quality of female attention quite literally tripled. Overnight. I was being hit on by women at work, on the street, at school, at play, at the drive through, on the internet, at Burger King, in the rain, at the beach, in my own father’s house, in my backyard, at my neighbour’s fence, while feeding my dog, while doing the laundry, while I slept, while I ate – what the hell?

In retrospect, a more appropriate question would be: “Why the hell?”

I soon learned that women measure a man’s masculinity by his possessions in as much as a man measures a woman’s femininity by her appearance. The sooner I stopped thinking about humans as being more than animals, the less reviling it appeared to be. Dogs sniff each others’ butts anyway.

Now, the thing is, once your girlfriend becomes accustomed to the upgrade, downgrading is not an option. No siree. I contemplated the possibility of selling that chariot to get an older one (economic recession and all that). The protests I engendered from the female populous became a raucous din.

The interesting thing is that when I proposed the completely illogical option of selling that car to get a more expensive car at a cheaper price, they agreed, despite the fact that the proposition makes absolutely no sense whatsoever!

No amount of rational explanation would suffice – which is not surprising, considering women prefer the right (emotional) side of their brain for cognition. Needless to say, the protests of women circling my front yard with picket signs reading “No downgrade!” were sufficient to change my mind.

This taught me a very valuable lesson:

When you “upgrade your masculinity” (vis-a-vis your possessions or status) most women correspondingly upgrade their expectations of a man. I only say most, because I think there might be one or two exceptions out there.

(…right – since pigs can obviously fly)

For example: If you move out of your parents’ house, even if she broke up with you, she will never date a guy after that who lives with his parents. Her expectations became upgraded with your upgrade. If you upgraded to a home with warm water in the pipes, she’ll never date a guy who doesn’t have that.

If you upgraded from being a pedestrian to driving your own car, she will never date another guy after that who doesn’t drive (which is what I suspect happened to the girl I mentioned at the outset of this post). Heck, if you upgraded your car, she won’t date men after that who drive lesser vehicles.

When I queried my friend about this enigma, her answer was unusually direct and honest this time:

“Downgrading reduces a woman’s perception of a man“

Fascinating. So there you have it boys. I call this phenomenon the Upgrade Principle, and it goes like this:

“Never upgrade without a plan B“

Plan B is basically what you would be forced to do if your upgrade turns out to be an unsustainable development. Plan B will more than likely include finding a new woman who hasn’t yet experienced an upgrade. The frightening thing is that guys do it all the time. They downgrade and move on to the girl on the side.

…and you wonder why men cheat.

Even some married men have to deal with this conundrum. Although their wives mean well, telling her that he can’t afford that new kitchen is almost the same as telling her that she has to find a new man. When she finally gets through the loss, she may come around. But can you imagine all the stress involved?

Price so far: Rent/mortgage + Wheels + Woo + Upgrade Insurance Policy

Taking Stock

Women often capitulate to being assets in a man’s pleasure trove

Earlier I used the word ‘most‘ to describe women in this context. Of course, that’s just a fail safe, since it obviously does not apply to every woman – or so I hope. I’m pretty sure I’ll be hearing from some women who think that I need to meet more females. Well certainly, I would never turn down that opportunity.

Plan B – remember?

Originally, I thought this issue would only be relevant to women in modern western hemisphere or northern European cultures. Surely it doesn’t apply to women in countries where the capitalist mentality is not quite so pronounced, right? Wrong. The Bible has enough examples of capitalist females to certify that the source of this propensity is most probably genetic in nature.

To be fair though, the Bible is pretty misogynistic. So grain of salt and all that…

It doesn’t mean that I’m not a bit disappointed though. There is a certain dread hypocrisy at work here. Women don’t like it when men treat them like pieces of meat. But I ask you, with this attitude, how are they to expect men to treat them differently? I really shouldn’t expect more from human animals.

If that is true then it leaves us to one very simple conclusion: As every woman fetches a price, it should come as no surprise that men treat them like assets to be counted and valued. I’m not sure that’s a reality that will ever change. Women seem to acknowledge it while we men stock pile them like options.

Either way, so long as men have to buy sex (whether directly or indirectly), women have unwittingly put a price tag on their face and reduced themselves to little more than objects of desire. It is therefore irrational to expect men to treat women (consciously or subconsciously) as more than pieces of meat.

With that said, god bless the men who met their wives while they were yet children – when their love was still pure. Once they become adults, the game changes, expectations rise, and true love becomes a very subtle, very implicit, yet inextricable form of monetary exchange which devalues the relationship.

But I’m pretty sure there are women out there who would stick by a man out of genuine love – irrespective of what he has, how much he has up (or down) graded or whether or not he could afford to treat her like a queen. I met just such a girl recently. I asked her the same question I asked my Cajun friend:

“What if I was totally broke. Would you have still given me the time of day?“

With what I can only describe as pure love in her eyes, she took my hands and responded with child like innocence:

“Honey, there are two of us.“

That’s the answer I was looking for. It was that simple. It’s a pity my lovely Cajun friend couldn’t appreciate that. I suppose some things are so simple that they confound even the wise. I guess I’m not so naive after all.

“People seem to instinctively value group membership more than group purpose.”

- Xenocrates

This is a trailer for a documentary called “I’m biracial… not black, damnit!“. It chronicles an ongoing and topical issue among Americans. Is a person who is mixed to identify with blacks or whites? Personally I think the whole issue is moot. Scientifically, the question is as irrelevant as the whole topic of race.

I have said many times on this blog that race is scientifically irrelevant because it only represents a set of conspicuous biological characteristics that account for no more than 3% of our DNA. Unfortunately, human nature has demonstrated that we humans are inexplicably more concerned with the things that could divide us instead of the things that would unite us.

The Scourge of Tribalism

Tribes: A facet of human nature where birds of a feather kill together.

A university professor once said that the key to why black people are struggling to advance in modern civilization is that they are fiercely tribal – just like their African ancestors. You’ll see this manifested in their heightened propensity to form gangs, cliques, and their very tightly knit family units.

However, there’s no validity to this claim whatsoever. Tribal behaviour is not exclusive to black people at all. Tribal behaviour is a function of human nature. The genocide in Rwanda and Sudan are not the first times in human history that tribal behaviour has gone deadly awry. There are countless examples of other races wiping each other out because of deadly tribal politics.

This propensity in mankind to enact acts of violent tribalism is what created such lovely periods in our history as the English Reformation, The Catholic Crusades, The American Civil War, the Holocaust, the American Civil Rights upheaval, Apartheid, the Croat-Serbian War and today’s Islamic Jihad. None of these were perpetrated by blacks. Tribalism is a function of human nature.

What does this tell us about human nature? Something profoundly simple: People seem to instinctively value group membership more than group purpose. It’s a redundant function of herd logic that in today’s global village tends to do more harm than good. This is what ultimately affects peoples:

Colour Perceptions around the world

The Jamaican populous features a rich tapestry of multi-ethnic people

In many Caribbean and European states, multiracial people are extremely common. Nobody seems to care too much – until they get to the USA. People still haven’t gotten over racism there, so the feelings still run hot. White people want to forget that slavery happened, but black people won’t let them. This tension only seems to be palpable in the USA though. Not so elsewhere.

In a country like Jamaica for example where “jungle fever” is rampant, it is common for the locals to refer to their fair skinned counterparts as “brownings” (if they’re more black than white) and “red” (where they’re more white than black). You might say that the fairer skinned folk are sometimes treated as whites. These people however get a very different experience when in the USA.

In the USA, they’re black – and it pisses them off.

But take a look at this statistical map from the Happy Planet Index. It shows that Caribbean states number among the happiest in the world, with Jamaica being listed as the third happiest country in the world. By comparison, the United States, is one of the unhappiest countries in the world.

With people still being hung up on trivial issues such as colour in the US (as if the economic crisis wasn’t already enough to worry about), there’s positively no surprise there. Maybe Jamaicans anxious to migrate to the US would do well to realise that the only reason the grass appears to be greener on the other side is simply because the water bill is substantially higher there.

…but I digress.

Race Encounters of the Third Kind

If they’re neither Black nor White, where do biracial people fit in?

If ethnicity was really that important, then the genetic material of differently coloured people would be incompatible. But they aren’t – and the children of these unions are beautiful! So what’s the big deal? Now we have multiracial people who are trying to differentiate themselves from both source races.

What great social benefit will it impart unto mankind if we think it is relevant that our colours necessitate that we be recognized as separate? We spend so much time copying each others’ behaviour that we are hardly very different from each other anyway. We only seem to care about our individuality when someone makes a generalization about a particular demographic.

Concordantly, people who get hung up on colour fall into one of two categories:

1. The Superiority Complex sufferers – “We are better than you because we think so“
2. The Inferiority Complex sufferers – “We are being polluted / made extinct / victimized because we think so.“

You can be in either camp irrespective of race – so long as you think colour is important.  The trouble arises when people who are multiethnic come about and are then expected to matriculate to one side or another, depending on the school of thought being unfairly and unreasonably forced upon them. They unwittingly then become the third kind of colour conscious folk:

3. The Identity Crisis Sufferers – “We are biracial/multi ethnic. We don’t know where we’re supposed to belong. So leave us alone.”

It is no small wonder they feel the need to separate themselves from both ethnic groups – like when Tiger Woods declared that he’s not black several years ago. It frees them of the nonsensical contentions from either side of the fence, free to live in a domain that doesn’t require matriculation to any of the other bits of rubbish that comes with tribal race politics.

Unfortunately, multi-ethnic people are being forced to make the same kind of mistake all over again from being pressured by this tribal race political movement. The inherent human capacity to overvalue group membership will create a whole new context for separation and segregation. We could solve this problem rather quite simply if we looked at the bigger picture:

You’re HUMAN, not biracial, damnit!

Our humanity is much more important than our ethnicity.

Many years ago, (hundreds of years in fact), Caucasians were viewed as only people who were blonde haired and blue eyed. This is what Hitler tried to reclaim as the “master race” with his doctrine of Aryan Supremacy. Over six million Jews who weren’t white enough paid the ultimate cost. Today we recognize not just Nordic Caucasians, but many other permutations worldwide.

Thousands of years earlier, the East Indians developed a caste system which treated lineage (among other things) as grounds for distinction among people. We now know that this perception was grossly derisive and only served to inhibit Indian development using this ancient form of divisive politics. However, millions of Indians suffered because of this primitive system.

The point of these examples is that this idea of separation (for whatever reason) is inherently self destructive. Separation is always grounds for conflict. Always. The number of separations that exist, if left unchecked, represents an escalating probability of conflict. Absolutely no good can come of it.

Similarly, while I understand why biracial folks would want to break away from the herd of dissent, it would be more providential to consider yourselves as something beyond race itself: Human.You don’t need to make any excuses for your ethnic makeup. You owe no one an explanation for your diversity.

We are children of DNA. As such, like everything else in the animal kingdom, we can be expressed in a variety of ways depending on the unique conditions of our various environments. There are many more permutations of appearance that exist in our DNA that we haven’t seen yet. Therefore our preoccupation with the current races is largely based on narrow sighted ignorance.

The mere fact that you exist as a child of multi-ethnicity, shows that your humanity is something so profound that it cannot be defined by something as innocuous as your physical appearance. By virtue of the fact that your parents are from different races, this shows that they have already been so enlightened.

People who preoccupy themselves with the meaningless nature of racial differences are like children fighting over the value of identical toy trucks from the same brand just because one is coloured blue and another red. Variety is the spice of life. Without it, none of you would care about your individuality.

Conclusively,

Beauty has no racial identity.

I don’t mean to suggest that the value of the Civil Rights movement is moot or that the struggles of blacks in America were all for naught. Rather, I wish to highlight the simple reality that we’re making the same mistake all over again with this issue of distinguishing biracial people from other races.

Biracial heredity is irrelevant. We’re too old a civilization to still care about what shades of chalk we’re made of. We’re so caught up in the perception that identity requires validation through group membership, that we’ve become forever trapped by the tunnel vision of racial politics. One begets the other.

If we could, just for once, look at the big picture and see ourselves for what we are and not what we look like, then I think for the first time in our history, we will be well on our way to transcending our humanity. We’re so much more than human. We’re just still too blind to look beyond our colours.

Can you imagine if we could? It would spark a new age of human cognition. By eliminating segregation, we’d mostly cure social inequality, thereby paving the way to harnessing the full power of humanity. The possibilities are endless.

“It is unnatural for any one man to sexually desire only one woman.”

- Xenocrates

Why do men cheat? A lot of women have pondered on this question with great frustration. The answer however is so profoundly simple that I suspect the reason many have failed to appreciate the utter simplicity of it is largely because they are needlessly looking for an answer much deeper than the obvious. However, science shows that the simplest answers usually suffice.

Ladies, the first thing you need to understand is that this article is being written by a man, from an entirely objective perspective. I’m not going to take any sides or validate any behaviour. As best as possible, all I’m going to present here are the facts. I will of course inject my opinions as well.

But I’m sure you already knew that.

Dudes, before you flame off, please examine your feelings. Search your thoughts, padawan. You will know these things to be true. I’m going to make some very general remarks that might take some of you by surprise – but please note, I’m well aware that there are exceptions to every rule.

You don’t need to remind me.

What is Cheating?

When it comes on to romantic interests, men and women view cheating differently. For most men, cheating is defined as sexual infidelity. For most women, cheating begins long before sex even enters the picture. Men and women have these differences of opinion because of how their brains work.

For women: Straying Thoughts

We all know that men are more logically inclined and women more emotionally so. Therefore it should come as no surprise that women are more likely to forgive a cheating man so long as he isn’t emotionally involved with the woman. The rest is all up to her level of tolerance and long suffering.

In fact, women tend to draw the line at flirting or any other emotional display of affection or interest – even if it is innocent. I’m sure some women will have an issue with the last part of that sentence. Many women don’t think flirting can be innocent at all. They consider it a serious breach of confidence.

However, most of the times when a man flirts, it’s not with an explicit view to get laid. It’s more driven by the same instinctive urge to pursue just for the sake of pursuit. I do admit that flirting can be dangerous – particularly in marriage. However, the thrill of the hunt is not something men will ever tire of.

For many women, it’s the very thought that counts as cheating – even though this is inherently preposterous. If thoughts count as cheating, then every man cheats every day, on average of once every 6 minutes with every even remotely attractive piece of ass wrapped in a short skirt or form fitting jeans.

Because women don’t have this trigger in the back of their minds, firing off every time someone of the opposite sex walks by, they tend to impose such standards on men. Women need to remind themselves that men don’t think the same way they do. In fact, men view cheating in a whole different context:

For men: Property Violation

At the back of their minds, even if they don’t say it explicitly (and I’m sure I’m going to hear from a few outraged men at this), once a man has had sexual intercourse with his girlfriend or his wife, she becomes his property in a sense. She becomes an extension of his ego. It’s like a dog marking his territory.

(This is concordantly why many men don’t think a husband can rape his wife – but I digress.)

Now before you women run off and say “see? I told you! all men are dogs!“, please consider for a moment that women belong to the same species of animal that men are. If all men are dogs, then that unwittingly validates the use of a certain derogatory expression that is used to describe some women.

But that’s not the issue here.

The issue is that men are instinctively territorial. Once he has claimed a woman as his own, whether or not the woman has feelings for the other guy she slept with, men are inclined to see sexual infidelity as a violation of territory. This breeds a far more powerful emotion than that of hurt: Vengeance.

This is why men are more likely to express raw, unbridled jealousy in the face of infidelity as opposed to hurt. Because now it becomes an issue of dishonour – not so much an issue of emotional infidelity. It’d almost in the same category as if someone scratched his car, or parked in his spot at the company lot.

I kid you not.

Now I’m not saying that men don’t get emotionally hurt by cheating. We do. The issue is that we often see it as such a bruise to our ego, that the actions of the cheating woman become second to the desires to hire a ninja to off the Joe Schmo that nailed her. So we want to get even, not comforted.

In less civilized times, men were less likely to break down and cry when another man sleeps with one of his women. In fact, this would often become a cause for war, (and in some cases, annihilation). The only difference between then and now is that we’re wearing business suits instead of chain mail.

Humans are animals

Dad: I’m divorcing your mom this summer. Kid: But you just met!

Search the animal kingdom. There are an extremely low number of animal species that have been noted to exhibit any kind of distinct monogamous behaviour. The most prominent example of course, is that of the Emperor Penguin of Antarctica. There are not many other comparable examples.

Of course, technically, this isn’t monogamy as much as it is a necessary function of reproduction. The male Emperor Penguin braves the harsh winter season protecting the one egg laid by its mate so that the females can run off to feed themselves before they drop dead from starvation.

This is necessary in the first place to facilitate mating while they waited on the males to come to meet them for the grand mating orgy. While mommy is away, the male Emperor Penguin must keep the egg warm and wait for mommy to return so she can bond with the new born hatch-ling.

She takes over from there, while the males now take their turn to run off and feed themselves. This is after their long fast, protecting the egg with their body warmth from the ensuing winter storm. You might be wondering: Why am I mentioning all of this? How is it relevant? To demonstrate a very simple point:

Emperor Penguins are only monogamous for one year.

This includes the total time it takes to get the kid birthed, hatched and bred. After once cycle of this, they change mates. If you take the harsh winters and the great distances the Emperor Penguin has to face down in order to survive at all, they are no less promiscuous than any other animal in the kingdom.

Promiscuity is a genetic survival mechanism designed explicitly for the purpose of maximizing the survival of any species. No animal in the kingdom is stupid enough to be monogamous by choice. Humans invented the idea of monogamy as a means of population control to facilitate sustainable social development.

At the end of the day, humans are animals. We live in zoos where the rules are dictated by social laws of the super-ego. It’s a society of pretentious order relatively void of sexual anarchy. Society can put as many restrictions on raw animal instinct as it likes – but it won’t stop us from being any less an animal.

Males were designed keep the species alive

This king has many wives. Humans weren’t so different once.

The sex drive many men experience early in their boyhoods is a part of nature’s design to keep the species from going extinct. You will find a corresponding alacrity for sex in the males of most animals. Primates, canines, cetaceans, avians, crustaceans – you name it. Males want sex – and lots of it.

In fact, some of you may recall some time ago where I wrote about the Caveman instinct as a now useless bit of genetic code (Click here to read that post). Therefore this near treacherous desire for sex in men should come as no surprise. Understanding the animal kingdom gives deeper insight into this.

So am I saying that the reason your husband or boyfriend cheated is because he is an animal? Not quite. What I’m getting at is that the incredibly intense drive for sexual intercourse in men is perfectly, 100% natural and that nature intended for it to be that way originally. Given this obvious reality, it is unnatural for any one man to sexually desire only one woman. ‘Sexually’ is the key word.

What women probably don’t understand is that this desire is so intense, that it’s like an infinitely recurring decimal sitting in the back of our minds slowly driving us mad. Every man experiences these desires. We have just learned, through social engineering and some cognitive dissonance to boot, how to tame and control these propensities for the good of mankind. *cough*

Why do men cheat?

Bill sampled the succulent lips of this nimble number.

Let me be abundantly clear: Men don’t cheat because of an obnoxious wife or a nagging girlfriend. It’s not because his mistress is prettier or sexier. It’s not because she’s a nicer person or because of a loss of interest. So asking your cheating boyfriend these questions is a pointless waste of time.

Men don’t cheat because they’ve “fallen out of love” (women are more likely to cheat because of that). It’s not because of a “lapse in judgement” (we are quite cognizant of what we’re doing – unless we’re drunk) or because of weakness, or boredom or desire for adventure, or to get even. Simply put:

Men cheat for the same reasons dogs chase cars – because they can.

Yes, it’s that simple. More specifically, opportunity defines cheating. Allow me to elaborate: Men are very much aware of the fact that they can’t have every woman on the planet and dogs are very much aware of the fact that they can’t stop any car they haven’t tinkled on that’s driving through their urine defined territory. Rather, the function of infidelity represents a conflict of interest.

We humans are sexual creatures. Sex is always on our minds. We don’t have sexual seasons or need to wait for a female to be in heat or the occurrence of a full moon. We have sex so long as we are in the mood. So long as we’re feeling healthy, men are always in the mood. So sex is relatively inevitable.

However, we are quite aware of our unspoken social contract. It states that once we are in a relationship with someone, we should be faithful to that person and them alone. Unfortunately, this flies right in the face of our genetic imperative. So we obviously have a very serious conflict of interest here.

The instinct to cheat represents a war between a powerful genetic imperative and a binding social contract that goes directly against it. Our genetic imperative states quite simply to “be fruitful and multiply”. Now that we have 6 billion people on the planet (and counting), we no longer need the imperative, and yet, here we are, looking at the fine pair of legs in another skirt walking by.

When men cheat

Mark Sanford admits to an extra-marital affair – June, 2009

There are only two things that ultimately controls when men cheat:

1. Opportunity

Men will cheat so long as an appropriate opportunity presents itself. By “appropriate”, I mean an opportunity that is compelling enough that will also allow for the relief of that sexual desire without the repercussions that might be experienced through social engineering (i.e. getting caught).

So don’t think that the reason a man hasn’t cheated is because of religion, or because he’s happily married. He just hasn’t been presented with the right opportunity yet. Without the right opportunity, most intelligent men would never cheat. So if you’re still faithful, pray you are not tempted with the right opportunity. That’s the only thing separating you from infidelity.

I know some religious married men out there are reeling at this right now (or rolling their eyes). If so, I laugh (scornfully, even) at your naivete. I don’t care how strong a man claims to be. For every man that lives, there exists a woman out there in the world that is sexually compelling enough, that given the right opportunity, he would enjoy it with mind bending exuberance and alacrity.

You just haven’t met her under the right conditions yet.

If you were to travel a thousand miles away from the prying eyes of your wife, kids, family, friends and pastor and you had the opportunity to Benedict (pun intended) with a woman who doesn’t even speak your language, who you know you would never meet again, (or so you think), you would. Just ask Governor Mark Sanford. He got an opportunity and he took it. Ole!

I know you can’t wait to get to the end of this to flame on, but I ask you to consider this one thing: Have you ever met a woman out there that is more sexually attractive than the one you’re currently involved with? Since I already know the answer is ‘yes’, I can tell you with great certainty that you haven’t been presented with the right opportunity yet. Let’s hope it stays that way.

2. Social Engineering

If there were no angry wife to deal with, no disappointed socially engineered kids to pander to, no outcry from friends, from church members, no public embarrassment or shame to contend with, no divorce or rendering of your estate in half to pay for, men would cheat wantonly and indicriminately.

This is why most men enjoy their single life.

Marriage is a function of social engineering. It serves a very useful and (somewhat) effective purpose: Population control. Yes sir. Marriage was originally invented as a way for a man to declare ownership of a woman – that was back when polygamy was cool – not now that monogamy is law.

But if men could still marry many women, the population explosion that would result flies against every sense of sustainable development. However, if we had invented an effective means of contraception long before we thought of marriage, the world would be a very different place today.

Of course, I’m pretty sure the feminist movement of the 1950’s would have put an end to that sooner or later. (Thank God for feminists!) While I could admit that it is more honorable for a man to be seen with only one woman, I could also admit I’m only saying that because of my social engineering.

Now that things like diplomacy, education, equal rights for women and marriage have roughly stabilized the number of men and women in the world, polygamy would no longer be practical. If you consider the fact that men slightly outnumber women in the world, it could even mean an act of war. (Men can be so childish, that we’ve started wars for far less significant things).

Infidelity and Religion

Do you remember this guy? Jimmy Swaggart - at the time, the ultimate Televangelist, fallen from grace. This was back in 1988.

Don’t even mention religion. Religion is little more than a psychological placebo. But not even that can stop a man from cheating. While some christian circles have gone as far as to say that “God has let us down” (dear atheists, try not to laugh too hard at that article), I doubt that God even cares about such.

While I was growing up as a christian, I’ve heard Pastors declare that:

1. They don’t allow young girls to travel in their cars
2. They don’t counsel young girls in their flock
3. They have prayer meetings for women separately
4. …the list goes on.

If these men of God were so trusting in the “power of the lord” to save them from temptation (as the Lord’s prayer would seem to suggest) then why would they make such a big deal about keeping those hot young females away from them? Oh, that’s right. The book of James chapter 1:13-15 suggests that we are tempted by our own desires, not by God. He’s so hands off in this case.

That’s fascinating to me, since Christians would like to think that God intervenes in our lives when we need him most – except when it comes to things like satisfying a sexual desire that he created in the first place. But it makes sense to me that God wouldn’t contravene his own commandments.

I mean, what kind of duplicitous “loving” God would give people the powerful urge to have sex and then forbid them to do it? Oh right; the same God that placed Adam and Eve in a garden and forbade them from eating from the one tree at the center of it all. Makes perfect, logical sense to me. Not.

Look, let’s be reasonable here. Pastors are just people like anybody else. If they are men, then the rule of opportunity applies as well. The holiest of men have fallen from grace because of the powerful allure of the loins of a woman. It has nothing to do with their faithfulness. It has nothing to with God. It has nothing to do with a 2,000 year old mythology that ensnares their minds.

Sex is just more powerful than God or any other imaginary friend. The Book of James made that abundantly clear. We humans are responsible for our own actions. We are biological machines designed for one thing: Procreation. Without it, we’ll cease to exist. It’s just that we’ve created a social construct to advance our species that also goes against our biological imperative.

How do we fix this?

I wrote sometime ago that we still carry around useless DNA – genetically induced behaviours that no longer apply in today’s world. At our basest instinct, we are all still cavemen. It’s just that the world is very different today from it was two million years ago – ultimately rendering this DNA obsolete (or at least, until another world war plunges us back into the dark ages).

This ultimately means that we can’t fix this – but we can control it. Now you don’t need religion to control your sexual urges. In fact, unless you’re of a particular type of mind, religion will be absolutely useless to you. You’ll need a far more powerful incentive – and I can give you a few to get you started:

1. Self Preservation

Herpes is nothing to smile about.

It seems pretty stupid to name one of these incentives “self preservation“, right? I mean, what could a man possibly need to preserve himself from by scoring up a plethora of women? Well, some STDs are pretty lethal. A significantly larger population means that there is a correspondingly greater opportunity for the occurrence and spread of dangerous organisms.

This is one of the lesser known laws of biology. There is a population threshold at which organisms survive best. Once over that threshold, the incidence of pandemic disease increases exponentially, because of a more thorough iteration through the many permutations of DNA. In other words, the more people there are, the greater the likelihood of the occurrence of disease.

Fidelity reduces this probability by several orders of magnitude of mathematical complexity. Keeping only one woman under your belt means that the probability of the occurrence of bad DNA is limited only to inherited disease, not communal ones. Since the probability of the occurrence of the latter is greater than the former, one woman relationships are much, MUCH safer.

2. Cost Effectiveness

Every woman has a cost. No sex is for free. Whether the price of the sex ranges from a Coors™ Light to a ticket to Venezuela, every ounce of vagina has a price tag. Even if you’re rolling in it like Eliot Spitzer, the paltry 80 grand you spend will cost you some employment opportunity. There’s always a cost.

The question is, is this extra vagina cost effective? Don’t laugh, I’m being totally serious. Even if you fly half way around the world to score with a lusty African diva, is being an HIV infection medication poster boy worth it? How do you like being featured on a herpes hit list after your tryst outside state lines?

Even if there is no cost associated with disease, there is a psychological cost. When you cheat once, your wife probably won’t know, but you will. If you got away with it once, there’s probably nothing stopping you from trying to get away with it again, and again …and again? …and then you get sloppy.

When men get drunk with the power of their penis, they start to think they can’t get caught, and that’s when people like Spitzer get outed. The only person who could get away with openly cheating on their spouse were men with absolute power, like King Henry VIII. He was a bad ass of biblical proportions – literally! His grandson was editor of the King James Bible!

However, such kingdoms are largely long gone. There is only one man with that kind of power today, who openly enjoys his wives. That man is the famous King of Swaziland, and he has many, many wives. See more here:

Men with power like that will have no trouble having multiple women out in the open. There appears to be some kind of psychological precedent (that men are actively aware of) where they seem to attract more women by virtue of the number of women they already have at their disposal. Strange, but true!

This is especially true for men who wield a great deal of power. It doesn’t have to be the kind of power as is exhibited by a political figure. It can simply be the power to exhibit raw sex appeal. For some reason, women are overwhelmingly attracted to this – although that’s nothing a little education can’t fix.

But even the King of Swaziland has to maintain those wives and each one of them comes at a price. Sure, he’s wealthy and can more than afford to do so. But do cheating men realise that it is not economical to keep more than one woman? Your penis and your pocket may be at odds with each other.

It’s not only large companies that have to think about downsizing in these harsh economic times. You may have to think about downsizing your harem too (*gasp!*). Then you have to factor in the cost of each and every love child you inadvertently fathered on your merry way to Fish Town. It gets pricey fast.

3. Emotional Fallout

This now famous micro expression is not of sorrow – it’s of shame.

You bastert! How could you? *smack*

Most men who cry after having an affair are not usually crying because they’re sorry for cheating. They’re more likely crying because they got caught. Shame is a far more powerful deterrent to men from cheating than the sudden realization that they committed the ultimate act of romantic betrayal.

So cut the BS, Mr. Spitzer. You don’t fool us.

If nothing else can deter you, then consider the shame. If it’s not the shame of being a two-timing, bastert (misspelling intentional), then consider the shame of facing the people who look up to you – like your kids. Cheating on your kids’ mother is an excellent way to raise a young pimp (if a boy) or a young whore (if a girl). If you don’t have any kids, then for humanity’s sake, don’t have any.

It’s not just the woman and her children that are hurt, but it’s also the people who respect you. When you spend your career going after illicit government officials who pander to prostitution, or you spend a lifetime charring hellfire and brimstone at fornicators in your congregation, you’re going to cause a hell of a fallout (pun unintended) when your infidelity is inevitably discovered.

Even if you’re not in a position where you think you have nothing to loose, what do you think is going to happen when you cultivate a mentality that abhors the respectability of women? You will grow into an insatiable dirty old man; a 60 year old boy chasing after women who could be his daughters.

From the looks of it, men in this position are never happy (and they rarely live very long) because they keep thinking just like an alcoholic; that the next woman will be his last – as if there is such a thing. Men who are serial cheaters are not the type to fall in love with a woman. They fall in love with novelty. In other words, they’re addicted to the emotion of starting a new relationship.

That brings us to the most powerful incentive:

4. Quality vs. Quantity

John Edwards cheated on his cancer stricken wife with his videographer.

This is my personal favourite. When I think about the sanctity of a relationship, I think about it as a cult of two. When a man truly loves a woman, the real value of the relationship is the uniqueness of what she brings to the table. If a man should take the time to really appreciate the full value of the woman he has chosen, it significantly reduces the appeal of seeking another.

Think about it.

What’s the one thing that your girl can do for you that most other women out there could not? If you can’t answer this question, then you might want to start thinking about it now. For while having a strong emotional bond with your woman is great, sexual desire should never be underestimated.

All men would do well to remember this: Sex with all women feels exactly the same. The difference is only a perception that lives inside your head. Concordantly, this is why men seem to prefer the emotional experience of having a new lover as opposed to the emotional experience of stability.

They’re like children constantly craving the newest toys. The craving is not for the toy. It’s for something new. Therefore, men who cheat are not so much in love with their wives as much as they’re in love with the novelty of having a new lover. If this is how you think, you will never be satisfied. Ever.

However, an inability to break an addiction to novelty is more a function of an inability to value quality over quantity. When men are unable to derive quality, they seek quantity to make up that deficit. If you could find one woman who could satisfy all of his relational needs, you will never develop the need to seek another, since the deficit would have already been adequately filled.

But wait a minute: Does this mean that a straying husband is the wife’s fault? Far from it! Men are not children to be coddled by their wives. They are intelligent human beings with the capacity to think for themselves. The real problem is that out thinking a powerful biological imperative is hard to do.

Hard… but not impossible.

If all else fails, it is better to end the relationship with the old lover before starting anew. While the emotional fallout from this is inevitable, it’s nowhere near as tumultuous as having your infidelity being found out surreptitiously. Just ask former presidential Candidate, John Edwards. Although, the less that is said about that act of infidelity, the better. His was particularly vile.

The Dog Hearts

These men know nothing about sexual fidelity. Absolutely nothing.

If all else fails and you really are a heartless, gutless, yellow bellied, two-timing, back stabbing, dirty double-crossing, mother[censored]ing, son of a whore, then please do the rest of the world a favour and get a vasectomy. At the very least, you won’t perpetuate your ruinous DNA to mankind.

While I do admit that some men really are dog hearted (like the men who cheat on perfectly wonderful women – whether they be wives or otherwise), even they can see the hurt that they cause. Some men really are dogs in the truest sense. They are completely devoid of any emotional capacity.

Such men are not quite as rare as I’d like to admit. There are parts of the brain (specifically, the amygdala), which are notably less developed in such men than others. These men are the true dog hearts – the ones who could develop such conditions such as satyriasis (aka coitophilia, or sex addiction).

There’s not much you can do about men like that. That’s a function of genetics. They would have sex with their own female relatives (however slightly removed) if they could. These are men who simply do not have the capacity to inhibit their own indiscriminate socially destructive sexual behaviour.

…not without professional help.

What about women?

Now, I am perfectly aware of the fact that women cheat as well. In fact, women are far better at covering up their infidelity than men, simply because they are better at hiding those micro expressions that insinuate lying. Men only appear to be bad liars because women are phenomenally better at it.

What I don’t get is the women who go after men who they know are married. Is the power trip of one upping the old lady really worth it? Surely there are more constructive ways for a woman to certify her sex appeal without destroying someone else’s marriage. Thank god for Karma (is that blasphemous?).

Every mistress from Monica Lewinsky right back to Rielle Hunter certainly knew their lovers were married men. Yet, it is not these women who received the brunt of the flak – I suppose because they were approached by these powerful men. Never the less, the media will not spend too much time crucifying these women when these powerful men make a much more sensational sell.

With that said, there is only a small subset of women out there with a libido equivalent to that of a man – not quite enough to develop a whole discussion around. However, when a woman cheats, that’s usually the end of the relationship since women rarely cheat purely for raw sexual reasons.

Here’s why:

Women don’t quite get as much pleasure out of sex as men do. The only exception is her lover knows what he’s doing, or she is one of those rare women whose g-spot is placed deep enough inside the vagina to get direct penile-vaginal stimulation. So the motivation is not usually for the sex. Rather:

Women cheat for emotional gratification.

That’s the complete package. Men usually cheat for one half of the package (particularly younger men). Therefore, if your girlfriend cheats on you, there’s usually no recovery in sight. Your relationship probably ended long before you even realised it. That might not even be something worth fighting for.

Finally

But is cheating really worth it? In my mind, it’s easier to doge pots, pans, an icy stare and china ware than it is to dodge the social and emotional upheaval that will ensue when you’re found out. I mean, this is precisely why men rarely invest in kitchen ware anyway. But make no mistake, you will be found out.

It is as inevitable as day follows night, shining a penetrating light on the hidden incidences that transpired before. Gentlemen, know this: We may at one time have been slaves to our biology. However, we are humans. The key thing separating us from lower animals, is that our biology can be enslaved to us. Anything less would render us as nothing more than dogs of a different breed.

I beseech you therefore brethern, by the gift of life afforded us as champions of the human race to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, wholly and acceptably to the one woman who would love you as your reasonable service. Ante up your game, or step down. This new world is for men, not animals.

“Life is more cost effective when you have more acquaintances than friends.”

- Xenocrates

Have you ever wondered what true friendship really is? It is a most curious thing. Between the people who overvalue casual acquaintances to those who undervalue the one or two people who would truly lay down for them, most people don’t really have any appreciation whatsoever of what friendship really is. But before anyone can appreciate the true nature of friendship, know this:

There’s no such thing as Altruism

All friendships are ultimately based on symbiotic relationships. Even where people appear to do something for nothing, in doing that thing, they are ultimately driven by a desire that they wish to have fulfilled – however intangible that fulfillment may be. Nobody does something for nothing.

Therefore, technically, there’s no such thing as altruism. We use the term anyway to describe the behaviour of people who appear to do good for no explicit reward. The truth is however, that their socially engineered value systems are what give them that reward. It comes from learned behaviour.

For example, if they were socially engineered as children that it is good to be helpful to people in need, then being helpful will reward them a great sense of accomplishment because that’s how their minds were programmed as children. As adults, this behaviour becomes a fundamental part of their psyche.

If a child grows up with a strong sense of service, patriotism and duty, then they are more likely to join the armed forces and risk their lives in the defense of their home country. Their reward comes from the intangible pleasure derived from gained honour, earned respect and a sense of accomplishment.

People are intrinsically pleasure driven creatures. Even when people physically harm themselves in the name of such things as religion, politics and other abstract ideas, they are deriving a sense of satisfaction from the purpose their motivation gives them. That they are delusional is completely irrelevant.

The bottom line is that everyone is driven by self gratification. There are no exceptions.

Therefore, every single one of your friends derives some pleasure from being acquainted with you. For some of them, it is purely materialistic (e.g. in business) or opportunistic (you’re in a position of power). For others, it’s because your life brings them joy. Either way, they all get something from it.

Evaluating Friendship

Every friendship thrives on some kind of exchange. This symbiotic nature of friendship means that there’s always something for something. Therefore, it is not unreasonable to state at this point that all friendship is conditional (just as how love is selfish). Once there is exchange, then conditionality exists.

But there’s a catch; this also means that once that condition ceases to be, the friendship will ultimately end. But I know what you’re thinking as you read this: “Not all of my friends want something for something!” If That’s what you just thought, then I would like you to carefully consider the following:

1. If you don’t think that all of your friends require some reward, then this shows that you can’t differentiate between acquaintances and friends.
2. People tend to subconsciously refer to individuals as friends whether or not the symbiotic reward appears to be something conspicuous.

In other words, most people consider virtually anyone they are familiar with to be a friend. You can see the same fallacious description on Facebook, where some people literally have thousands of friends, many of whom they have never (or will never) meet. But the issue here is not about Facebook.

Fundamentally speaking, while we understand the meaning of the word “friend” in that context, at the back of our minds, we only regard most of them as acquaintances. Thus the word “friend” has become something of a misnomer while the word “acquaintance” is sometimes considered disrespect.

The Nature of Friendship

If you think that friendship should be determined by how abstract the derivative reward is of the people who you are fond of, then you’re probably on the right track. However, this is a double-edged sword since the reward has to be of equivalent value on both sides – even if the reward is intangible.

If this is not the case, then this “friendship” would be nothing more than a parasitic relationship. That’s the key difference between “real” friendships and acquaintances. Unfortunately, most people tend to be indiscriminate of such things, and are more likely to throw everyone into the same barrel.

Parasitic Relationships

If your “friend” appears to enjoy your company more than you do theirs, then chances are, your friendship with them is ultimately parasitic. It is even more conspicuous if that person only appears to be around you when they need something. Such “fair weather” friends tend to be bold and easy to spot.

If however your  “friendship” with someone only appears to be to your benefit, (meaning you are the primary benefactor) then chances are, you’re the parasite and they don’t really consider you a friend. Of course, most people in this position are too narcissistic to ever be honest enough to admit it.

Now the interesting thing is that the person on the other end of your parasitic  bond may not see it necessary to demote you as a “friend”. They are likely to avoid the unpleasantness of calling you an acquaintance, (referring to you as a “friend” anyway) in the interest of keeping up appearances.

The Acid Test

Now how many of your friendships are like that? If you can find even one, then I would strongly recommend that you seriously consider re-evaluating all of your friendships. The reasoning for this is very simple: People tend to use the same flawed strategy repeatedly when recruiting friends.

Most people tend to lack the emotional intelligence needed to determine their own level of genuineness. This is why some people can be dishonest and be genuinely unaware of it. Thus they tend to make friendships in the same way they conduct their business – like assets to be counted and valued.

Now if you’re the kind of person who is consciously aware of a handful of people you’d call friends, you probably have that emotional intelligence well developed. If you have a lot of friends, (say, more than 5) then you may want to consider doing a friendship acid test. Simply yourself this one question:

“What is the one thing that could happen that would render us enemies?”

Depending on the significance of that thing, you will be able to determine the significance of the emotional investment between you two – if any. The less significant that thing, the more easily they can be turned against you. The more significant that thing, the less easily they can be turned against you. In the latter case, you may have a real friendship on your hands.

This acid test question also automatically answers another question: “What is the likelihood that we could become enemies?” The probability of the occurrence of that one thing that could turn you against each other helps you to determine whether you should be watching your back or theirs.

Emotional Investment

If you’re thinking to yourself, “we don’t have to be enemies – we can be civil“, then you’re wrong. You can be civil with someone in whom you have invested zero emotional interest. However, once emotional investment becomes involved, then you’re effectively dealing with a whole new ball game.

You can be  civil with someone at work who you had a political disagreement with. You can be civil with an ex-lover who you only liked as a sex buddy. However, once you become emotionally attached, a disagreement carries a very different weight from before. That’s when the fireworks start to fly.

The anger you express at a friend with whom you are quarreling is rarely about the issue as much as it’s about each individual’s broken trust. Do you notice that when a friend upsets you, you are more angry at them than when you’re angry with someone that you are not quite as familiar with?

The Duality of Love and Hate

Why does this happen? Because people love and hate with the same intensity. Thus the degree to which you could hate a friend is equivalent to the degree that you love them. This means that passionate people are just as loving as they are bitter. This is why family feuds are worse than others.

Do you recall the popular adage that says “there’s a thin line between love and hate“? Technically, it’s actually the same emotion expressed as a duality. Love exists between people as an expression of passionate trust. If that trust is broken, the resulting emotion that follows is an auto-defense mechanism.

The intensity of the defense mechanism depends on the depth of the trust. It’s the same way how a soldier who sold secrets to the enemy wouldn’t just be liable for court marshal as opposed to one who just went AWOL or disobeyed orders. Betrayal may be brutal, but the acid test can help you to avoid one.

Friendships in Children and Adults

Children tend to be far better at making friends than adults. This is because children trust implicitly. They quite literally give away their trust just for the sake of having someone to play with. Adults on the other hand tend to trust explicitly, making some kind of declarative action that indicates such.

This is the reason why adults tend to subconsciously put a premium on their friends and why their friendships tend to be significantly more conditional than that of children. There is an unstated value that adults place on each friendship. Once this value depreciates, the friendship is likely to end.

This is also the reason why people tend to be more forgiving of friends they had since childhood as opposed to friends they made as adults. As a child’s brain has significantly less synaptic wiring than an adult’s, every trust that a child makes has to be implicit since there are no other known conditions.

Adults have had significantly more time to learn of the intrinsic duplicity and selfishness of human nature and so they tend to put higher and higher premiums on friendships. While this psychological self defense mechanism serves its purpose, it ultimately compromises the capacity to make true friends.

While every child’s first loving acquaintances become true friends by virtue of first contact, an adult tends develop greater and thicker psychological walls, making it harder for them to trust implicitly. As a result, most adult friendships are actually more likely to be acquaintances which will expire in short term.

This is where the acid test becomes so much more valuable. People tend to think that it is possible to have many, many friends. But the human psyche only has the capacity to bond very closely with no more than 3 – 5 people at a time. The acid test allows people to determine who they trust implicitly and who they don’t. Concordantly, this will make all the difference in evaluating:

The Difference between Friends and Acquaintances

Now let me be abundantly clear:

1. Friends

When we use the term “friend”, we’re talking about a relationship that has a notable amount of emotional investment. It doesn’t matter if it’s your Sunday Football sports buddy, your Saturday afternoon shopping gal pal or your significant other – all friendships require emotional investment.

Relationships based on emotional investment are automatically symbiotic. This is because human emotion must first be mutually expressed for the friendship to exist in the first place. Additionally, the intangible value of this emotional connection gives the relationship flexibility, thus making it much harder to break (which also means that it is much easier to maintain.)

With that said, this doesn’t mean that emotionally invested relationships are unbreakable. This is why I mentioned from the outset that there’s no such thing as altruism. Every friendship has a causa finita – the one thing that would make it unsustainable – and thus, which may ultimately break it.

Never the less, the breaking of a friendship is highly contingent on one’s capacity to forgive. Forgiveness is directly proportional to one’s valuation of a friendship. This is why one needs to conduct the friendship acid test on all ‘friends’. You need to know which of your friendships can be easily broken and which ones may survive even the fiendishly treacherous act of betrayal.

But remember, this works both ways. So while you may be able to forgive a friend of some act of betrayal, they might not forgive you in the same vein. This simply means that they value your friendship less than you do theirs. If you find this to be the case, then arguing is as waste of time. Any relationship that lacks the reciprocation of forgiveness is not worth fighting for.

2. Acquaintances

By comparison, acquaintance level relationships are usually parasitic. Even though the reward system goes both ways, one side tends to fare better – even if both parties aren’t aware of it. Such relationships tend to be based on an explicit exchange, which implicitly becomes the value of the relationship.

This doesn’t mean that acquaintance level relationships are devoid of emotional investment; they just weren’t started that way. The emotional imbalance tends to occur when the explicit exchange (usually a favour) is emotionally valued by one party, but is generally ignored by the other.

The trouble is, if the person expressing emotional interest is not aware that the other does not feel the same way, then the latter could use the relationship as a means of extracting favours from the former – and they will continue doing so until the former realises that they’re being exploited.

Examples of acquaintance exploitation include:

• The hot guy/girl who befriends the class nerd to do their homework for them.
• The co-worker who uses a team mate’s alacrity to pass along tasks they would rather avoid themselves.
• The government official who promotes a loyal supporter to handle a touchy political issue.
• The king who appoints a duke to carry out executions on his behalf.

This doesn’t mean that acquaintance level relationships are categorically bad. It just means that they are more easily exploited. Thus the real problem with acquaintance level relationships is that people tend to confuse them with real friendships. That’s where the exploitation becomes palpable, or even deadly…

Just ask the ghosts of the following people:

1. Ann Boleyn
2. George Boleyn
3. Thomas More
4. Thomas Cromwell
5. Robert Aske
6. …and many, many more.

As said before, the survivability of your relationships will ultimately determine which are friends and which are merely acquaintances. Even people you like to be around may not necessarily be your friends. In this case, you have to be able to differentiate between novelty and acts of genuine affection.

Being a parasite to someone who can’t do anything about it is one thing. However, if you were a parasite of King Henry VIII, you would have rued the day you first became his royal subject. Henry VIII was not averse to decapitating even those with whom he was fond. Friendship can be costly.

With that said, everyone should learn to evaluate:

The Total Cost of Friendship

Just like anything that one can possess, friendship has a cost. Right away, I imagine some people might be thinking that true friendship doesn’t cost anything. That could be no further from the truth. Every friendship costs something. It’s just the bad ones that have material costs you can measure.

The more of these you can check off, the more valuable the friendship. People tend to be subconsciously aware of these requirements – but emotion has a funny way of clouding our judgment. So evaluate your existing friendships and see if they check out in any of the following sections:

1. It is based on an intangible investment

How did your friendship begin? This is a key determinant in whether or not you have a genuine friendship on your hands. Behavioral Psychologists have determined that people tend to value friendships that blossomed out of mutual interest in each other. Therefore, if you became friends through:

• A business (0r other monetary) arrangement
  
• Favours exchanged
  
• Unrequited romantic interest  (i.e. “let’s just be friends”)
  
• Sexual liaison (e.g. “friend with benefits”)
  
• Association by proximity (e.g. by being coworkers, neighbours, classmates, team mates etc.)

…then chances are, you’re not really friends. In this case, we say that you are only “socially contracted”. This means that your friendship is based largely on situational relativity. It’s the same as making a friend with someone just because you were on the same flight to the same destination.

It’s perfectly natural for humans to become socially contracted to each other. It’s that instinctive component of herd logic that binds us together. However, this is only useful for civility. Real friendship requires genuine emotional interest in each other. Therefore if you became friends through:

• Sharing common interests (e.g. hobbies, careers, cultural affinities, etc.)
• Having potent chemistry between personalities
• Having discourse, disagreement, contention, strife or some other struggle with each other
• Experienced a life changing event together
• Sharing the same value systems or life philosophies (e.g. religion, politics, family values, etc.)

…then there’s a very excellent chance that your friendship is the real deal. All of these circumstances tend to generate such powerful emotional connections (even where people originally met as enemies) that ultimately, the bond transcends the humanity of every individual involved. There’s not much in the world that can change that – barring death and betrayal.

Don’t get me wrong. I don’t mean to suggest that two people can’t become friends if they originally met in one of the conditions outlined in the first list. So long as at least one of the conditions in the second list is accounted for, then friendship has a chance to evolve from that acquaintance.

2. It is low maintenance

What are the functional requirements of your friendship? What are the conditions upon which your friendship is maintained? Real friendships make very little demand of each individual involved. This is because the mutually expressed emotional interest usually fills that requirement.

In other words, relationships that make an inordinate demand on the kind of interest that each party is to play is a parasitic relationship and thus not a true friendship. However there are a few extenuating circumstances in which you may find yourself that are very clear indicators that you have a parasite on your hands that is falsely masquerading as a “true” friend:

• People who are constantly in need of attention. In any kind of relationship, this is manifested as people who are overly dramatic about everything. They tend to make a mountain out of every mole hill and / or are constantly in need of someone on which to vent their passions, troubles, life challenges, romantic failures, whether or not it is of any genuine interest to the person they’re venting on. These people are emotional leeches. They are selfish, self serving, egocentric hypocrites who are using you as an emotional punching bag. You’ll want to be sensitive, but firm when dealing with such people. Be sure to indicate you have little interest in people who constantly place themselves in the same problems over and over again. You are not their shrink (unless you are being paid to do so) and they need to grow up. Alternatively, gently remind them that happiness is an inside job. People are only happy when they want to be.
• People who regularly expect material gifts as a precedent. There are people out there who would take offense to not receiving a gift for their birthday or some other special occasion. It doesn’t matter if it is a romantic interest. You’ll want to keep these people as acquaintances so that the requirement doesn’t apply to you – even if it means sacrificing a potential romantic pursuit.
• People who make a big deal about your frugality. Have you ever been invited out to an occasion that had financial obligations (whether for protocol or otherwise) that you simply could not meet, and were razed by your friends for being frugal? Remember this: Friendship is about the person, not their effects. True friends would step in to subsidize the cost instead of criticizing you for “being cheap”. This shows that they care more about you as opposed to what you can afford. Failure to do otherwise shows they only value the friendship for the status – not for the camaraderie.
• People who are constantly borrowing money. Real friends never demand money of each other as favours tend to reduce the intrinsic value of the friendship. There should be such a level of interest in each others’ well being that if there is a monetary requirement, it would be automatically offered, however small – often times completely eliminating the need for anyone asking for anything. With that said, people who are constantly borrowing money are only interested in immediate self gratification and you are their ATM machine. Concordantly, you should never lend your friends money – otherwise you will have to decide between them later. If you cannot afford to give cheerfully, then don’t make (or promise) a loan. Friends often assume that the words “loan” and “gift” are interchangeable. Acquaintances however, rarely make this mistake.
• People who ask you to breach your moral standards. If you have ever had a friend who asked you to do something that broke a personal standard or moral code, you can only forgive their ignorance if you knew they didn’t know you better. Otherwise, it’s a clear sign of a lack of respect. These people are not your friends. You are a pawn in their game of chess. You’ll want to keep them in the acquaintance bin indefinitely.

When evaluating the cost of a friendship, one should always remember a very simple rule: Life is more efficient if one has more acquaintances than friends. Thus if a friend should become too taxing to maintain (whether in terms of time, finances, emotional involvement or otherwise), it may be prudent to seriously reconsider noting them as a “friend” in any significant context.

3. It has survived (or was spawned by) contention or betrayal

Individually, people are different. Therefore disagreement among friends is inevitable. If you’ve never had a disagreement with your friends, then that’s probably because you aren’t that emotionally invested to be considered friends in the first place. You can’t get that close without disagreeing at least once.

Now when we consider forgiveness, we have to note that people only forgive when the benefits outweigh the risk of reinvesting trust. Therefore, if you and a friend had a disagreement, you can determine how well they valued your friendship by examining their willingness to forgive. This of course goes both ways and ultimately determines if  the friendship is worth fighting for.

Concordantly, just as how a chain is only as strong as its weakest link, the value of any friendship is measured by the least frivolous thing that could cause it to end. Thus if one were to try and measure a friendship qualitatively, it could be done in degrees of frivolity. The more frivolous the cause of the end of a friendship, the less significant its intrinsic worth. So, save your tears.

I’ve seen friendships end over politics and religion. That’s could be considered significant – but not quite as significant as a friendship that ended over a betrayal of trust. However, I’ve seen friendships end over things as frivolous as insubstantial sums of money, sex, an off remark and bruised egos.

Friendships that can’t survive such trivial events were never really friendships to begin with. In fact, it would be safe to say that they were nothing more than glorified acquaintances. This is commonly the case with people who are extremely popular who love attention (more on this in the next section).

Surviving contention is one thing. Needless to say, any friendship that survives betrayal of trust is virtually unbreakable. Betrayal is the least forgivable act in a friendship because it breaches the most critical foundation upon which friendship was originally built: Trust. Without trust, a friendship simply cannot survive. However, let us be clear about what we mean trust is:

If you befriended someone because you trusted their expertise about something (like the stock market) and they gave you bad advice, that does not constitute a breach of trust in the friendship. In fact, that would not be considered a friendship at all. That’s a relationship whose intrinsic value is based on their expertise. There’s no significant emotional investment here.

If however, you trusted a friend with details or assets of your personal life while they in turn used it against you (however they do so is irrelevant), that could be considered a breach of trust fatal to the friendship. The people who trusted Bernie Madoff with their savings are not quite as pissed as the parents who trusted a family friend who sexually molested their daughter.

It easier to turn enemies into friends than to regain the trust of a friend who has become an enemy. Thus if a relationship is capable of surviving a betrayal of trust, then that is a true friendship for which no valuation exists. Unfortunately very few people are capable of sustaining such a breach. This proves categorically that no one is truly altruistic as we all can be broken.

4. You are in an “inner-circle”

There are only a very small number of people with whom you can develop a deep emotional bond. Everyone else is an acquaintance. This has some very serious implications for people who are extremely popular. Having a lot of friends doesn’t necessarily speak very kindly about one’s personality.

In fact the number of friends one has is inversely proportional to their capacity to value friendship of any kind in any way. Thus the more friends one has, the less discriminate they are about what friendship actually entails. This is why friendship with popular people tends to be flaky at best. They are not particularly as interested in friendship as they are in gaining attention.

Yes, you read correctly.

Even people who are rich and famous only have a very small set of people who they consider friends – again, no more than 3 – 5 people. Therefore if someone says to you that “I have like, 400 friends on Facebook“, they don’t have the first clue of what friendship is. Having friends is not the same as having fans. There’s a huge difference – and popular people can rarely tell.

Attention junkies tend to measure their happiness by the number of people they know – not by the quality of their relationships with them. People who are very extroverted tend to be like this. While there is nothing wrong with this, they tend to have a much harder time finding help when in need.

It’s one thing to desire friends – it’s a whole other ballgame to desire attention. People who are very liberal with their Facebook profile are not interested in making new friends. They’re more likely to be attention whores. However, even attention whores have their inner circle. You just don’t know it.

Don’t be fooled by numerical bloat. Inner circles loose their cohesiveness when they bulge beyond 5 people. This is where you’ll have a prevalence of a lot of hear say, “he said, she said” arguments, among a great deal of wanton and indiscriminate drama – which ultimately causes the circle to implode.

Usually, the “inner circle” of people tend to know each other. This isn’t always the case especially if that inner circle doesn’t consist of friends who grew up together. The congruity and number of people within the inner circle really depends on the person and how they choose to invest their trust.

Depending on the individual, that inner circle can be one person or it can be a small selection of family and close friends. With that said, this small inner-circle only consists of people who enjoy the trust and loyalty of all intersecting members of the circle – as each member may have their own circle.

You can tell if you’re not in someone’s inner circle. Inner circle members get first dibs on everything – including time and affection. They’re the ones that are trusted with secrets and other matters of deep personal interest long before all other acquaintances. If you find that you are not privy to this kind of detail in first person, then you’re out. Second hand receivers are outside the circle.

Having membership in an inner circle is an indication of the highest level of trust. These are the people who are often selected to become a groom’s best man and a bride’s maid of honour at a wedding. It’s a certification that is the equivalent of what knighthood originally stood for before the English royal court decided to lavish it liberally on every person of some remote repute.

Of course, with the highest level of trust, comes the expectation of the highest level of loyalty – even though that is ultimately fallible. In fact, friendship is expressed as the Greek Philia love (you might want to examine my write up on the Five Types of Love for more details on this).

5. They are there when you need them

This is the ultimate test (and perhaps, the ultimate purpose) of friendship. There are some people out there (and very few of them at that) who would have often inconvenienced themselves (or so you think) to be there to assist when you’re going through a rough patch. Sometimes they’re even there when you don’t need them at all. Needless to say, they are keen to your needs.

The sad thing is that people who are always there to help are rarely ever appreciated (inasmuch as most people take for granted that they have running water in their homes). They’re what I like to call “dial-tone” friends, because just like the omnipresence of a dial tone, they’re almost always available.

They’re the friends who would gladly jump at the opportunity to take you home when it rains, pick you up at the airport when you’re stranded, watch over your kids when you’re not around (even when the kids don’t know it), subsidize your lunch when you’re a little short, be the first to forgive you when you get mad at them, and would never render evil for evil. Ever.

These are the people who will also be willing to tell you the truth – even if it means that doing so will put their relationship with you in jeopardy. You see, people sometimes don’t always know when they’re in need. Real friends can tell when that need is apparent and will automatically rise to the occasion.

Dial-Tone friends are extremely rare. They’re usually the kind of people who are so forgiving that they appear to be totally selfless. The real issue is however, that dial-tone friends tend to be the kinds of people who love like children. They trust implicitly. They are good people purely by natural design.

Those special folks aside, if you have even one person in your circle who would genuinely put out to keep you afloat even when you’re not requesting help, then you’ve already secured yourself a real genuine pal. Even if their efforts prove to be moot, the mere fact that they went all out is proof enough.

About Romance and Friendship

It would suffice to say at this point that you may enjoy the company of your platonic friends more than you enjoy the company of your romantic interest. If this is the case, then you may want to re-evaluate your romance. Too many people become “romantic” before they’ve become friends. The former must precede the latter, as romance is inextricably based on friendship.

The failure of a romance can often be linked to a failure in friendship. Romance is nothing more than friendship with a sexual texture. Take away the friendship and it becomes a sexual arrangement. People who cite irreconcilable differences for divorce never learned to become friends first.

With that said, it is completely ludicrous to marry someone who isn’t your best friend. Some people would argue and suggest that your best friend isn’t necessarily the man or woman you marry – it could be someone of the same gender you grew up with. But that is utter rubbish for the following reasons:

Eros love (love of the sexual kind) must contain Philia love (love of the loyalty kind). If you’re going to share your body, your house, your bed and your bank account with a romantic interest with whom you do not share a higher level of affinity than your boys (or girls), then you have a serious problem.

Your lover, the one person in the world you desire to share your entire life with, must be more trustworthy than the girlfriends you vent on when your husband goes rogue or the wing men who helped you score her in the first place when your wife gets obnoxious. It can’t work any other way. By doing this, you’re betraying the foundational trust of your marriage.

The one person in the world who brings you the most joy should be the same person who you would marry. If the person you intend to marry isn’t your best friend, then you are providing room in your marriage for a breach of trust. As we’ve already established, betrayal is almost irrecoverable.

Choosing Friends

The act of choosing friends is largely subconscious – albeit, it’s not foolproof. However, human nature is a machine that can be deciphered and manipulated to obtain the best results. Therefore, if one were to follow these 10 basic rules, then choosing friends should become a more fruitful exercise:

1. Powerful friends are potentially deadly enemies – Never befriend the King of England when he’s so willing to crop his detractors at the shoulders. Even if they are your friend today, their fickleness could make them your enemy tomorrow. Powerful people are rarely genuine people. While they may be powerful allies, always remember that their power can flex both ways. Powerful people tend to have a very fickle mind. Tread cautiously.
2. Passionate People are just as loving as they are bitter – When befriending someone who is intensely passionate, you have to remember that they are intrinsically insecure. If you’re not willing to invest an equivalent level of emotional intensity into your dealings with them, you might want to keep them as acquaintances. When they get pissed, they take the histrionics to a whole new frightening level of alacrity. They love to make a scene and they usually don’t work with a script.
3. Popular People are highly conditional friends – Befriending popular people is like trying to build a sand castle on the ocean floor. They are only as loyal as the novelty of the acquaintance. The value of the friendship is not quite as significant as the volume. As such, most of their “friendships” have a very high turnover rate. As a result, they tend to have as many enemies as they have friends and are likely to be in category #2 above.
4. Chatty people have the least regard for loyalty – People who are loquacious (i.e. talkative) usually have zero emotional intelligence. This means that they are rarely able to monitor their own behaviour. They tend to be driven more by the thrill of the revelation. Just because people are willing to divulge others’ secrets to you doesn’t mean they are loyal to you. Gossip mongers are only loyal to their own lust for sensationalism. You, and everyone else are all fodder for their sordid entertainment.
5. You can make friends in business, but never business with friends – Business partners know what’s up. They know that if your parent companies can’t agree, or if the deal falls through, it means no more power lunches or country club memberships. If you can transcend all that, then even if your bosses can’t agree, then at least you can still go grab a cup of Joe. Friends on the other hand always expect you to be helpful – even if it’s bad for business. This is not a flaw with friendship. It’s a flaw with social networking. Trying to integrate business into an already existing friendship lowers its intrinsic value and thus makes it easier to break.
6. There’s friendship without romance, but not romance without friendship – Every romantic relationship must begin as friendship in the very real sense. If it didn’t, then it is nothing more than a tryst. If it somehow evolves into marriage, then it is going to be a very expensive tryst. Romance without friendship is not very different from prostitution.
7. Fear not them who love not, but rather them whom everyone loves – Do you know that one girl (or guy) whom everybody fawns over when they’re around? Someone with an entourage is like a King with loyal subjects willing to die for their monarch. That’s their inner circle and it tends to be a viciously defended one. This social construct only trusts within the entourage. Outsiders are seen as trespassers – even if they seem to like you. Keep them as acquaintances. As an acquaintance, they are simultaneously easier to manage than friends and less dangerous than enemies. People who are easily liked are much more powerful by virtue of the number of people at their disposal. Being loved or hated by them is equally dangerous (see points #1 & #3).
8. Never destroy your enemy completely – For enemies may one day become powerful allies. Always leave room for forgiveness. In fact, never make enemies where friendship is more cost effective. While duplicity is one of the least desirable traits of humanity, it is not altogether useless. People who are easily vexed are easily manipulated. It is almost always more costly to fight a war with your enemies than to let them fight one for you. Therefore, never unsheathe a sword when an open hand will suffice. The spoils of victory may be insignificant in comparison to the spoils of diplomacy.
9. Ugly ducklings make for the most loyal of friends – People have a natural propensity for being inclined towards people who are easily liked (for whatever reason). This is a function of herd logic. While it does have its uses, people who are not as easily liked tend to have a much stronger appreciation for the few friends they have and thus their loyalty usually comes at 100% right out of the box. Never pass up the opportunity to have one or two ugly ducklings on your team, for when the feces and the fan become intimately acquainted, they’re usually the last ones standing around.
10. Trust implicitly – Do you know the expression that says “first impressions last“? Well know this: The first impression of someone is usually not authentic. When you meet someone for the first time, you’re actually meeting their representative. As people get older, they tend to develop a facade – a pseudo version of themselves that handles all first time acquaintances. People use a representative of their personalities when they are insecure about themselves and as a conspicuous display of not trusting by default. Where people feel that they are trusted, the facade slowly disappears and you get to know them for who they really are. This is why trust is so important. Therefore, like a child, (within reason) trust with faith but never distrust without proof.

With specific reference to #10, it has been scientifically and mathematically proven that people who are more trusting tend to have more meaningful relationships. This is because most people naturally return trust when it is implicitly invested. People who are not rather trusting tend to be more lonely.

Friendship is about Trust

Business enterprises which are more trusting tend to attract more viable partners and more brand loyal customers. Trust automatically defeats jealousy in a romantic relationship, gives it a greater degree of longevity and binds friends together even in the face of what appears to be inevitable betrayal.

One of the single most important things to understand about human nature is that hurt is inevitable as humans are inherently flawed. However, we must strive to remember that no matter how much we are hurt, we still have to learn to trust in order to heal. Otherwise we will grow old and lonely as stubborn old fools who’re always suspicious of everyone’s true intentions.

While we were children, we fully appreciated the inherent necessity of trust. As we grow older, let us not forget the things that made childhood a beautiful thing. For what is humanity without friendship? And what is friendship without trust? It may be easier to trust an enemy than a friend who has bretrayed us, but it only takes one bold act of forgiveness to renew all.

True friendship is defined by trust. Without it, we are no more than animals.

In the unlikely event that you haven’t noticed, I’ve leaped onto the latest, nearly useless internet based communications band wagon sensation designed to let everyone know your business and to sell smart phones. Yes, that’s right, I’m now a twit; literally and figuratively.

If you like, you can follow me here: http://twitter.com/accordingtoxen

Unlike the other twits however, I won’t be posting mundane tropes such as what I’m doing right now. Rather, I’ll be posting what I’m thinking – which 9 out of 10 times is a lot more interesting than what I’m doing anyway. I mean, how many of you care about my need to convert a byte array to a string?

Precisely.

Since most of my blog posts begin as one line epiphanies that roll out into 4,000 word exegeses, I usually write them down when they come to me – usually as a simple outline for a new post (I have several in the pipeline right now). Since that process is a lot more tedious than just jotting it down, I’ve decided to twit them, thus adding to the content here. It’s much simpler.

While I admit that as an IT consultant, I recognize the inherent redundancy of Twitter (RSS feeds, Facebook and MSN do exactly the same thing), by design, Twitter is a lot more convenient and straight forward to use. Now you can preview ideas for upcoming posts before they are fully fleshed out.

If any of you are twits and we’ve exchanged ideas here, I’d be more than happy to follow you as well. You can see the latest thoughts in the panel to the left, directly under the page count. I do this sort of thing several times per day (I now understand the addiction factor), so the content changes often.

In the mean time, I’m going to see if District 9 is anywhere near as good as the critics claim. See you back here in a bit.

Cheers,
Xen