The Theology of HETEROSEXUAL LOVE, LOVING, and MARRIAGE (Briefly: God IS LOVE (the noun), but has not capacity TO LOVE)

A)  DISCLAIMER: Genesis 1-3 is not History; but is an eternally True Story. 

B)  PREAMBLE: 

NRSV, Matthew 22:34-38: "Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest? He said to him, 'You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the greatest and first commandment.'" 

     There is NO MENTION, here, of God DOING ANYTHING LOVING. 

 NRSV, John 3:16: "For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but have eternal life." 

     Here, God is described as BEING VERY LOVING, but in a bizarre and frankly abusive context. Does a father have the prerogative to so use/'trade' a son? (and what about Jesus' Mother?). But, of course, John  and Paul were enchanted by and purveyors of patriarchal "loving". The subsequent history of Christianity (including such phenomena as Inquisitions and Crusades) reveals the weakness/'corruption' of such purveyance. 

 C)  LOVE - THE NOUN, A THING: 

     Yes, God IS Love. 

     Similarly, when a man sincerely (or even insincerely) addresses a want to a woman, she perceives this want as Love (a 'thing') because it gives her a PURPOSE and, thus, EMPOWERS her. 

     Genesis 1:3, "And God said, 'Let there be light'". God's words (want) constitute Love, a PURPOSE that EMPOWERED "the heavens and the earth" to produce light, etc; not unlike how the chromosomes of a spermatocyte empower the ovum to become a new life. 

D)  LOVING - THE VERB: 

     NRSV, Genesis 2:18, "And the Lord God said, 'It is not good that the man should be along; I will make him a helper as his partner.'" 

     NRSV, Genesis 3:16, "Yet your desire shall be for your husband, and he shall rule over you." So in this Story, the woman is cast as being 'tuned' to the man - by both her role as a "helper" and her own "desire" to thoroughly love him and expedite his wants. 

E)  HETEROSEXUAL MARRIAGE: then, whether formal or informal, is an interaction between male LOVE (want) and female LOVING (helping). 

     Everyone woman (like a 'force of nature') plays her role naturally and flawlessly. But a man must learn to constructively want, respect and appreciate how the woman is LOVING/HELPING him. 

F) PERSONAL: If I had understood the above half a century ago, I would not have left my Original Wife. But, who knows? Any 'complaint' I have would focus on my own ignorance of the importance of what I (negatively) said/declared ("let there be...") to my Original Wife.

POST XXXVII -- THE FOUNDATION OF THIS THEORY is POST V "Humanizing the Soma, Perceiving the Human Body Anthropomorphically"

This earlier POST is still available at "Older Posts", below.

POST XXXVI - CONCLUSION

A MIND (male, female or trans) is a manifestation of a BODY's anatomy and physiology (male, female or trans) and its physical and social interactions with its ENVIRONMENT.

[Both monastic religion and contemporary political correctness have pursued a fantasy that a mind is a socially constructed free-standing entity independent of a body.]

 POST XXXV - ADDENDA: To Clarify Some Implicit Concepts

1)   A woman, except for occupations requiring brute strength, can do anything a man can do - and often better than a man!

       Yet such female capacity depends, to some extent, on a man telling her that she can perform the task.  This is what a woman/girl is referring to when she says she needs a father/brother/husband/boyfriend/teacher/cleric or even a passing acquaintance or a senior mother or aunt to verbally and emotionally "support" her.     This phenomenon is implicit in much of what this blogger has written before in terms of a female 'giving birth to' a reality in accordance with how she has been 'impregnated' by male words, action and wants.

       Unfortunately, a female is exquisitely sensitive to male complaint and criticism that undermine her confidence and capacities.  Such is the real lesson of the Genesis 'Garden of Eden' story. 

  2)    BASIC SEX EDUCATION:  Boys and Men of All Ages should be taught to address only positive and constructive words and actions and wants to (and about) a female.

      'Flattery Gets a Man Everywhere and Everything!'

3)    To the extent that good and evil exist, there is no such thing as a good man or a bad/evil woman.

      A river becomes bad/evil only when it has been polluted upstream by mankind.  Similarly, a woman becomes bad/evil only when she has been emotionally or conceptually 'polluted' by a man or an institution.

4)    It has been said (and this blogger concurs) that a man 'follows his phallus'.

      A female, on the other hand, organizes her environment to be 'in tune with' her complex and highly innervated genitalia.

5)    Aside from the trivial 'yin' and 'yang' of Oriental philosophy, philosophers (both East and West) have ignored the possibility that their ideas might be valid for males but not for females.   This Philosophy of Heterosexuality begins to address this conceptual/intellectual deficiency!

6)     Although a woman or girl likes to be able to engage in traditional male activities, she does not "envy" males or male sexuality (notwithstanding Freud's assumption).

  7)    Female children, virtually from birth, are keen observers of human relationship and quickly perceive that male functioning is different from (and complementary to) female functioning in social interactions.

       A boy pays primary attention is to the surrounding environment (including other people) and what he can get from it.  While a boy might obtain different things from a man than from a woman, he is unlikely to analyze how male-female interaction per se works.

       Thus, into adulthood, most men (like Freud) have failed to recognize that a woman is more than simply a different kind of man - while girls and women all know this!

POST XXXIV - CLARIFICATION REGARDING 'WITCH' TERMINOLOGY

a) The OED offers a definition of the noun "spell":

 "An attraction or fascination exercised by a person, activity, quality, etc.;   a mysterious power or influence.  Also, a state of enchantment or trance (as) produced by a magic spell."

Females, virtually from the crib onwards, cast such spells of attraction and fascination by their dress, bodily comportment, tone of voice and chosen syntax (ie., how they say or don't say something).   

Such spell-casting is largely automatic, involuntary and unconscious and not associated with 'practicing magic' or 'witch-craft' as such.


The female capacities of "affecting", "transforming" and "interpreting" noted in POST # V above ("Humanizing the Soma") can be seen as manifestations of female casting of spells.

b) Regarding male-female verbal interaction:

The November 22, 2005 issue of Discover Magazine has an article by David Epstein entitled "Men Hear Women's Melodies: Male and female voices activate distinct regions in the male brain."

Thus:  "Psychiatrist Michael Hunter and fellow researchers at the University of Sheffield in England monitored the brain activity of 12 men as they listened to voice recordings and found they processed male voices differently from those of females.  Women's voices stimulate an area of the brain used for processing complex sounds, like music.  Male voices activated the 'mind's eye,' a region of the brain used for conjuring imagery.

"One reason, Hunter suggests, is that women generally have shorter vocal cords and a smaller larynx, giving them higher-pitched voices.  Women's voices may also have more 'natural melody', he adds.  Qualities like pitch and volume vary more during speech.  'There's more prosody in female speech'."

References: 1)  Dilraj S. et al. in NeuroImage , Vol 27, No.3, pages 572-578; September 2005.
                    2)  www.sheffield.ac.uk/news/nr/422-1.174743

c) DISCLAIMER

Earlier (POSTS IX and XIX) I have compared natural procreative male functioning (effecting, informing and defining) with God's presumed supernatural functioning in Genesis 1

In this present POST XXXIV, on the other hand, I have compared natural female procreative functioning (affecting, transforming and interpreting - as described in POST V) with a witch's presumed supernatural spell-casting functioning.  

IN BOTH CASES, THE PHENOMENA ARE ENTIRELY NATURAL;  AND FEMALE SPELL-CASTING MUST NOT BE CONSTRUED AS SUPERNATURAL WITCH-CRAFT THAT RENDERS A MAN POWERLESS TO CONTROL HIS OWN ACTIONS!

NEITHER PEDOPHILIA NOR SEXUAL ASSAULT/RAPE ARE CONDONED OR DEFENDED.

XXXIII - ADDENDUM: ON MONOSEXUAL TRADITIONAL PHILOSOPHY

On page 126 of his Must We Mean What We Say? (updated edition-2008), Stanley Cavell writes:

"And philosophy is what thought does to itself.  Kant summarized it in the opening words of the Critique of Pure Reason: 'Human reason has this peculiar fate that in one species of its knowledge it is burdened by questions which...it is not able to ignore, but which...it is also not able to answer.'"

EUREKA!  This conundrum is understandable and resolvable if one comes to terms with the fact that traditional philosophy has been generated by male thought processes, logic and language usage (even if occasionally composed by a female) that constitute only the male HALF OF REALITY.  There is ANOTHER (complementary) female HALF.

Similarly, emotionally/existentially, a man sometimes finds that he is neither able to ignore a woman nor to conclusively answer the questions and situations she poses.

POST XXXII  - EPILOGUE: SOME HETEROSEXUAL WISDOM

With regret and apology, I cannot recall where I came across the following quotation:

"Women hardly ever marry for love.  A woman has regular sex because of her killer body and yet she fails and fails and fails to fall in love. Her killer body, meanwhile, is running covert genetic-compatibility tests and reminding her, with constantly updated and worsening fetal-retardation statistics, of how little time she has left to improve on the fool kneeling before her."

So much for Patriarchy!

POST  XXXI - HETEROSEXUALITY AS THE FOUNDATION/CONTEXT OF THE COSMOS

Contemporary cosmology is close to fully clarifying the physics of how the universe of time, space and events came to be - but has no idea where it comes from.  Similarly, a theist is certain that God created the universe of time, space and events - but has no idea where God comes from.

In the preceding two POSTS, I have described 'Divinity' and the 'Supernatural' as being complementary - with the former a manifestation of male functioning and the latter characterizing the female.

I suspect that the very universe of time, space and events back to and 'before' the 'Big Bang' comes from ongoing and PRESENT interaction between heterosexual 'Divinity' and the 'Supernatural'.  There is nothing OTHER - such as a free-standing 'God'  Thus, time, space and events take place and evolve in the context of male-female procreative sexual interaction rather than vice versa as commonly thought.

And such heterosexual interaction CHANGES THE PAST.  And when the PAST changes, there is then a new PRESENT and a new FUTURE.

Of course there is no way to prove that the PAST  has changed - because if the PAST has truly actually changed IT HAS ALWAYS BEEN THAT WAY!

St. Augustine broached the possibility that the PAST, the PRESENT and the FUTURE are all one and the same.  And contemporary particle physics suggests that some phenomena are most easily understood if one thinks of time as moving BACKWARDS.

The anatomy of the cosmic heterosexual intercourse situation would be as follows:

1) The is a point- for-point correlation between a woman's sexuality and the universe of time, space and events wherein a man lives.

2) When a man's phallus enters a woman's vagina, he (if he pays any attention at all) learns the nature and characteristics of the universe of time, space and events wherein he lives.

3) And when the man's phallus informs (ie, forms/shapes from the inside) his woman's vagina, he also informs the world of time, space and events wherein he lives (Cf. POST #V) and potentially impregnates such.

[When a person's vagina is entered, the person is subject to being impregnated.  When a person's rectum is entered, the person may become programmed.]

POST # XXX - SERENDIPITY, REALITY, RELIGION: AND ONE MAN'S TESTIMONY

Preamble:

(a) As a child, I attended a Christian Church that sometimes invited members of the congregation to stand and give their religious "Testimony".

(b) Before I left my Original Wife, she sometimes proffered: "You don't know what you want".

(c) Immediately on leaving my Original Wife, I began to do what I wanted to do rather than what I should do or would like to do - and began to notice the occurrence of a plethora of coincidences in my favor, ie., SERENDIPITY.

Next, I will quote from John Hick's Introduction to the Second Edition of his An Interpretation of Religion: Human Responses to the Transcendent  (p. xxiv):

"But whilst we cannot apply to the Real in itself such terms as loving and wise, which presuppose personality, we can use a more general concept and say that in relation to us the Real is serendipitous or benign.  The term 'serendipity' was invented by Horace Walpole to refer to the course of events when they turn out well for us.  They are happiness-making and as though planned for us by a benevolent power.  Accordingly, serendipity can be experienced either as the structure of the cosmos or as the work of a personal Being.  Likewise 'benign' can be used in both personal and non-personal senses:  we speak of a benign ruler and a benign climate.  And so the benign or serendipitous character of the Real , in relation to us, can be expressed both theistically as the benevolence, goodness, love of a personal deity, and non-theistically as the process leading to nirvana or moksha or being at one with the Tao, the eternal order...  These are different human ways of conceiving and experiencing what I have called (Chapter 4) the cosmic optimism of the great world faiths."

My Analysis:

Along with some other contemporary theologians/philosophers, Hick finds it appropriate to apply the definite article 'the' to the term 'Real' ie., "the Real" - producing a noun, a thing, rather than writing about what is "real" (an adjective).  In doing so, some supposed reality becomes a free-standing semantically 'manufactured' transcendent entity as "the Real".

On the other hand, in previous POSTS, this blogger has posited reality as being 'conceived' and 'born' as a product of male-female procreative interaction - rather than being a manifestation of a mysterous transcendent thing or person - "the Real".

By thinking/writing without considering the possibility and implications of male-female differential and complementary 'religious'/'spiritual' functioning, Hick - as is the norm for Western philosophers and theologians - obviates the conceptual possibility that both (i) divinity and (ii) the supernatural are natural manifestations of real human heterosexual functioning rather than aspects of a transcendent "the Real".

If the natural serendipity that is commonly experienced by males* is identified as being supernaturally provided by a Transcendent entity, it is easy to make a religion out of the matter with priests, etc., who offer to teach people how to 'harness' and control such good fortune by ritual, worship, prayer, etc.

*I believe that a female is a critical part of the generation of serendipity for males, rather than being its beneficiary - except indirectly by her relationship with the male.  One woman offered that serendipity, for her, is a positive happy feeling and mood rather than events producing such.

A woman is less likely to kowtow to a transcendent 'Higher Power' because she correctly recognizes that her very Being personifies such. This is the essence of the 'Garden of Eden' story up to the point where Adam humilated both himself and Eve by blaspheming her.

Testimony:

In this blogger's personal experience, I found that when I, so to speak, simply answered God without blaming any woman, God disappeared!


[The question presents itself:  Is the very existence of the Judaeo-Christian "God" founded on men blaming women?]

POST #XXIX - METAPHYSICS OF HETEROSEXUALITY: LIFE'S NATURAL SUPERNATURALISM



A.  WHAT'S NEW?

Creation  is accomplished by one or more people (or, perchance microorganisms) using (i) materials at hand and (ii) Classical cause-and-effect physics and chemistry and/or (iii) the probabilities of quantum mechanics to make something new.

[Sometimes the "God" of Genesis 1 is reputed to create without any materials already being at hand (ie, ex nihilo)]

Procreation is accomplished by the intimate interaction of one male and one female entity.  The male element contributes (genetic) information, while the female element contributes both (genetic) information and materials used in the making of the new thing. [cf. POST #V]

Interestingly, Genesis 1 easily can be read as an interaction between the (male) "God" who donates (verbal) information (eg. "Let there be light, etc.") to "The (female) heavens and the earth" so that the latter can 'give birth to' light, etc.  [cf. POST # XIX]

Serendipity  is defined by Merriman-Webster as "the faculty/phenomenon of finding valuable or agreeable things not sought after";  and the OED as "(a supposed talent for) the making of happy and unexpected discoveries by accident or when looking for something else;  such a discovery."

Over the years, I have had occasion to ask men whether they are "religious".  Commonly, men offer the answer that they simply believe there is "a Higher Power" - because they have had experiences wherein events turned out better than they expected.

I suspect that such men have simply experienced (as has this blogger) serendipity; a natural phenomenon.

But this experience is so universal and puzzling that some men have invented various supernatural religions in an attempt to 'harness', 'control' and 'sell' this phenomenon.  (John Hick - see below - does not proffer such a direct and mercenary connection.)

When I have asked a woman whether she is "religious", she commonly replies that she is "spiritual".

I suspect that such a woman simply perceives that she is, naturally, an incarnate manifestation and resource of serendipity for the man/men in her life.

B.  NATURALLY SUPERNATURAL

In POST #XIX, I have described male words and wants as having the effect of "Divinity".

Here, I additionally propose that female Being/existence itself is properly construed as "Supernatural".

Thus (as I have noted in previous POSTS), when a man addresses words/wants to a woman who loves him, she has the (even magical) capacity to 'conceive', 'gestate' and 'give birth to' a reality/future corresponding with what he has said and wants.

In addition, I suspect that a female has the very cosmos (ie, "the heavens and the Earth") as her agent  to supply serendipity to men in general.

When men feel 'spooked' by such apparently supernatural female power, they tend to critically identify the woman as a "witch" rather than simply respecting and appreciating what she provides.

While not considering male authorial "divinity" or female "supernatural" power, John Hick, on page xxiv of the Second Edition of his An Interpretation of Religion: Human Responses to the Transcendent (2004) writes about serendipitous events: "They are happiness-making and as though planned for us by a benevolent power.  Accordingly, serendipity can be experienced either as the structure of the cosmos or as the work of a personal Being."



C.  IN SUMMARY

Whether a man realizes it or not, a woman naturally perceives his words and wants as being, to all intents and purposes, 'Divine' while she, unavoidably, orchestrates 'Supernatural' power/capacity in his favor.

The Genesis 'Garden of Eden' story describes what happens when a man fails to understand that he functions as a Divinity and his wife functions Supernaturally: A CIRCUMSTANCE THAT RENDERS A FREE-STANDING "GOD" IRRELEVANT.

AND A MAN MUST BE EXTREMELY CAREFUL TO ADDRESS ONLY POSITIVE AND CONSTRUCTIVE WORDS/WANT TO A FEMALE.

She is, after all, something of a 'Genie in the Bottle' that must be considered and addressed very carefully and respectfully.



D.  ADDENDUM

The concepts 'divine' and 'supernatural' have usually been thought of as essentially synonymous.  Here, this blogger identifies them as being complementary, rather than interchangeable.  Similarly, in POST # XV, I describe 'soul' and 'spirit' as complementary, rather than synonyms.

Historically, physics could not advance until the difference between such concepts as 'force' and 'momentum' was clarified.  I believe the same principle applies to terms in philosophical-theological formulations.

And, a man does not have to tell his Wife that his words/wants are as though 'divine'.  She has always known this in the core of her Being --- THAT'S WHY SHE LOVES HIM!



A man may endlessly try to prove that a supernatural "God" exists while his supernatural Wife clearly exists -  right in front of him!

POST # XXVIII - SELF: AN INTERPERSONAL AND HETEROSEXUAL FORMULATION

Alison Gopnik is a professor of psychology and an affiliate professor of philosophy at UC Berkeley and is the author of The Scientist in the Crib and The Philosophical Baby.

In the October, 2015 edition of The Atlantic, she offers an Essay entitled David Hume and the Buddha: How my search for the Eastern roots of the Western Enlightenment may have solved a philosophical mystery -- and ended my midlife crisis.

Gopnik, identifying with the writings of David Hume and the tenets of Buddhism, describes her own "self" as being generated by her interactions with people and life experiences.

Thus, when her children were grown, her marriage had disintegrated and her writing seemed complete she did not know who/what she was and found that she was bereft of any sense of future - leading to depression.

Then, researching possible sources of some of the ideas in Hume's A Treatise of Human Nature,  she found herself involved with a new purpose and its associated self and future.

The concept of a self not being free-standing but contingent on and constituted by interactions with the psychosocial environment is reminiscent of Mark Johnson's theory (The Meaning of the Body - cf. POST #XXIII) that an organism has no free-standing mind but, beginning as a neonate, engages in a process of body-mind self-structuring and self-programing as it notices (i) how its body moves and feels and (ii) how interactions with other people and objects in its environment work.

But both Johnson and Gopnik fail to take into account that a male organism and a female organism have differing, albeit complementary, sexual bodies (regardless of gender).

Thus, a male and female infant (again, regardless of gender) will unavoidably notice and feel somewhat different physical aspects of their bodies and environment;  and maturing and mature organisms will 'tune in' to differing aspects of their psychosocial environments and tend to develop differing SELVES including the possibility of gender inversion - whether fashionable of not.

Now, what does an organism pay attention to (ie., notice) after its needs for food and shelter are met? What does it want?  And does the latter become its SELF?

Freud is quoted as saying: "The great question that has never been answered, and which I have not yet been able to answer, despite my thirty years of research into the feminine soul, is 'What does a woman want?'"  Regardless of the accuracy of this quotation, it is a theme on the minds of many contemporary men.  Also, Freud's concept of a female envying a male's sexuality suggests that he thought that a woman ought to want him.

The present writer submits that a woman wants to give birth;  and what she has conceived and given birth to becomes her SELF.

She doesn't want the man but needs male participation -- and the male to want her as his SELF.

A female gives birth to more than babies.  She also conceives and 'gives birth to' such things as a career, a home, a week-end rendez-vous, a relationship, etc., etc. and, indeed, a future.

On the other hand, the one thing that a man must want is the woman - and she becomes his SELF.  If a man does not want a woman as she is, he must leave her - without complaint or criticism.

When a man fails to respect and appreciate his wife as constituting his psychosocial SELF - and, in addition, psychosocially 'kidnaps'  their children as being his SELF (SELVES), he has engineered a dereliction of the marriage.

When a man pays more attention to things like sports, cars, and his 'buddies', such become his SELF - and the woman's relationship with him, ie, her SELF, withers and dies.

In summary, a man's SELF is his woman and a woman's SELF is her off-spring.  Of course, a man's/boy's first SELF is his mother.  An immature female, a girl, may initially be her own free-standing SELF.

POST # XXVII - 'DISCRIMINATION' and 'DISCRIMINATION': A Tale of Two Meanings

Historically, the verb 'to discriminate' has meant (OED) "Make or recognize a distinction, esp. a fine one; provide or serve as a distinction; exercise discernment."

If I correctly understand the concept, such discernment is a prerequisite for Critical Thinking.

However, since the Civil Rights Movement in America, the verb 'to discriminate' has come to mean (OED) "Make a distinction in the treatment of different categories of people or things, esp. unjustly or prejudicially against people on grounds of race, colour, sex, social status, age, etc."

It seems that as the two meanings have become conflated, Critical Thinking has come to be seen as 'old-fashioned' and obsolete.

The latter has been aggravated by some genres of psychotherapy that focus on how a distressed person "feels" rather than on how he/she "thinks".

For my part, sexist that I am, I have taken it upon myself to formulate the present careful discrimination (albeit complementary) between procreative (as distinct from 'creative' and 'mere reproductive') male and female interaction without discriminating against either male or female.

POST # XXVI  - IN BRIEF: A SUMMARY

The essence of my Philosophy/Theory of Heterosexuality is that whatever can be observed and said about the microscopic interaction between a sperm cell and an egg cell can also be observed and said regarding the macroscopic anatomical interaction between a male body and a female body and the psycho-social interaction between a male personality and a female personality.

Thus, the microscopic male-female interaction serves as a natural and reasonable MODEL for understanding male-female procreative (as distinct from 'creative' or merely 'reproductive') interaction generally.

This is elaborated in my POST #V - HUMANIZING THE SOMA:  PERCEIVING THE HUMAN BODY ANTHROPOMORPHICALLY.

Yes, I, a male, function as a spermatocyte writ large.

POST # XXV - MR. DONALD TRUMP'S IGNORANCE

Mr. Trump's disparaging description of Ms. Megyn Kelly and her careful questions during the August 6th, 2015 Republican Primary Debate do not demonstrate "Political Incorrectness" as he suggests;  rather, mere ignorance on his part.

Evidently, Mr. Trump shares Freud's view that there is only one sex - male;  and that a woman is simply a defective man (e.g., lacking male genitalia and bleeding every month).

Mr. Trump and his ignorance give 'Political Incorrectness' a bad name.

Addendum

While Mr. Trump prides himself on being "Politically Incorrect", his pattern of verbally combating a woman as though she were simply another man is reminiscent of the sameness doctrine of 'Political Correctness' that teaches that there is no difference between male and female;  and no call on a man to function as a Gentleman who respects a Woman as being something special and different than him.

Logically, Mr. Trump and his on-line acolytes can be seen as disciples of the asexual or mono-sexual culture of 'Political Correctness'.

XXIV - 'SOCIAL CONSTRUCTION':  A SECULAR THEOLOGY

 Google and oakes.ucsc.edu offer the definition:  "Social construction is how society groups people and how it privileges certain groups over others.  For example, you are a woman or a man because society tells you that you are, not because you choose to be.  Simple as that.  Just like it tells you what race you're classified as and what social class you belong in."

While the definition contrasts the individual MIND (the "you" of the definition) with a collection of MINDS ("society"), both the "you" and the "society" present as free-standing mental/MIND phenomena unrelated to any BODY.

Prima facie, Social Construction countenances the MIND and ignores, as best it can, the BODY.

In Mark Johnson's The Meaning of the Body (cf., my POST # XXIII) his omission of a body's genitalia from his consideration of the meaning of the body - if applied to both the "you" and the "society" of the definition - is compatible with Social Construction theory (that, in any event, tries to pretend away the whole body);  but invites disqualification of his thesis.

Society, as an omnipotent Social Constructor, seems to have become a kind of disembodied Deity in a quasi-theology underlying the contemporary cult of 'Political Correctness';  and such an entity is very reminiscent of the traditional omnipotent disembodied God of 'Christendom'.

As with religions in general, for both belief systems (ie, Social Construction and Christianity) the reality of the human BODY and male-female physical procreative interaction is/was a problem to be ignored, pretended away or otherwise dealt with (e.g., historically, 'burning the body at the stake').

XXIII.  A POPE, 'POLITICAL CORRECTNESS' and STORKS:  YET WHAT ABOUT EMBODIED HETEROSEXUAL PROCREATION?

      In The Meaning of the Body (University of Chicago Press, 2008), Mark Johnson, explicitly following on Dewey, James, Damasio and his earlier co-author, George Lakoff, cogently describes the process of a neonate engaging in a process of body-mind self-structuring and self-programming as it notices (i) how its body moves and feels and (ii) how interactions with other people and objects in its environment work.

     Johnson ingeniously explains how non-propositional 'analogies' (my term) or "schemas"  (his term) are perceived and 'computed' (my term) by the living and interacting BODY of the organism - resulting in what we think of as MIND.

     Yet in the index of The Meaning of the Body, there is no listing for "sex", "heterosexual interaction" or "procreation". It would seem that Johnson's neonate lacks genitalia as part of its embodied mind to use to understand and interact with the world - either presently or in the future!

      Such omission is reminiscent of the Pope who ordered that the genitalia of the Vatican statuary be chipped away.

     Apparently, Johnson (and Damasio) are in thrall to the sameness doctrine of 'Political Correctness' which teaches that there is no such thing as "sexual" difference related to physical anatomical differences between male and female - only "gender" related to a free-standing (disembodied ?) mind.

     But without heterosexual anatomical interaction between male and female bodies (or heroic modern medical techniques), one must fall back on the Stork Theory of an infant's provenance.

Post # XXII - IMPEACHING INDIVIDUALISM: THE 'PTOLEMAIC' FOUNDATION OF CONTEMPORARY PSYCHOLOGICAL AND SOCIAL SCIENCE 

      The astronomical implications of Copernicus' revolutionary concept of the Solar System are described in Thomas S. Kuhn's The Copernican Revolution: Planetary Astronomy in the Development of Western Thought (copyright 1957 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College Eleventh Printing - 1981 - ISBN 0-674-17103--9)

      Thus,  (p.1)  "In 1543, Nicholas Copernicus proposed to increase the accuracy and simplicity of astronomical theory by transferring to the sun many astronomical functions previously attributed to the earth.  Before his proposal the earth  had been the fixed center about which astronomers computed the motions of stars and planets.  A century later the sun had, at least in astronomy, replaced earth as the center of planetary motions, and the earth had lost its unique astronomical status, becoming one of a number of moving planets.  Many of modern astronomy's principal achievements depend upon this transposition.  A reform in the fundamental concepts of astronomy is therefore the first of the Copernican Revolution's meanings."

       In contemporary Western culture and its social sciences, free-standing and independent INDIVIDUALISM has become the central organizing principle and goal of mature human functioning - not unlike how the GEOCENTRIC organizing principle was accepted by astronomers before Copernicus.

       Yet, the English word 'nature' is related etymologically to the concept of birth-giving that, at least in all higher life forms, is a consequence of non-independent and non-individualistic male-female procreational interaction.

       Could human functioning be better understood by perceiving and studying a mature man as a half-individual and a woman as a complementary half-individual?  [The formula of marriage would then be 'the two halves become one'.]

       Neither a man nor a woman can make a new life or a new reality alone.  Both new life and new realities require procreational interaction between one male and one female.

       Certainly, male(s) and female(s), individually or in groups, can build, construct and create a myriad of new things, situations, art, etc. - but a new life or a new reality results only from interaction between one male and one female who relate to each other as two complementary halves of a procreative process.

        SO  -- this blogger proposes that male-female procreative interaction rather than the individual become the focus of such scientific endeavors as psychology, sociology and psychiatry.

         Of course, in the same way that most people in Copernicus' time proffered that it was obvious that the Earth stands still, most men (not so much females) will currently declare that it is obvious that each person is essentially a whole individual rather than a half-individual.


Addendum-a

        Kuhn (p.2) "Initiated as a narrowly technical, highly mathematical revision of classical astronomy, the Copernican theory became one focus for the tremendous controversies in religion, in philosophy, and in social theory which, during the two centuries following the discovery of America, set the tenor of the modern mind.  Men who believed that their terrestrial home was only a planet circulating blindly about one of an infinity of stars evaluated their place in the cosmic scheme quite differently than had their predecessors who saw the earth as the unique and focal center of God's creation.  The Copernican Revolution was therefore also part of a transition in Western man's sense of values."

         And, if the mature human being is perceived and studied as a half-individual in terms of procreating both new life and new realities* and a man considers that he is "an image or God" [this blogger believes that a woman is not restricted to being an image of anything] it suggests that God also is not a 'free-standing' whole individual - but half of a process!

       * an overt indication about the presence of a new reality is the sense that "the earth has moved" consequent to male-female sexual intercourse.  Less flagrantly, new realities produced by male-female communicative interaction are common-place.

Addendum-b

        As critiques of Professionalistic Individualism, I note:  W. Epstein, Psychotherapy as Religion: The Civil Divine in America; J. Hillman, We've Had a Hundred Years of Psychotherapy: And the World is Getting Worse; and Thomas Szasz, The Myth of Psychotherapy

 Addendum-c

        And, of course, my "half-individual" concept challenges the Christian tradition that each person will appear before God as an Individual at Judgement Day at the end of time,

 XXI.  HETEROSEXUAL INTERACTION: AN ANALOGICAL ADVENTURE

                                     "...your body's really you."
                                                        Leonard Cohen
                                                             Closing Time

                 "...the human mind is the idea of the human body"
                                      Antonio Damaio quoting Spinoza
                                                        Looking for Spinoza

A.    While a number of computer 'geeks' have assured this blogger that analog computers were/are merely primitive forms of digital computers, this is not at all the case.  A cursory 'google' search of "analog computer" will clarify the matter.

Although I am not a computer expert, I gather that digital computation involves converting all input data into (binary) numbers/digits, manipulating the latter and, finally, converting the resulting numbers/digits back into overt real-life data.  The same digital computer can accept any number of different programs and, hence, solve any number of problems/projects.

On the other hand, an analogue computer accepts data (eg., voltages) directly and manipulates such directly without conversion to numbers.   But a given analogue computers is able to perform only the computation that it is specifically constructed to carry out.

B.    There is no reason to believe that the interior of the skull/cranium is the only anatomical location  that cognition takes place - or the only place that memories are stored.  Surely a concert pianist remembers his/her performance in his/her fingers (and arms) as much as in his/her intracranial "brain".   And hormones no doubt also participate in this mental functioning.

C.    To this blogger's knowledge, although both Antonio Damasio (Descartes' Error and Looking for Spinoza) and Danial C. Dennett (Consciousness Explained) identify the soma (body and brain) as being the foundational substrate of mental functioning, neither addresses consequent implications associated with the fact that in the highly innervated genital areas (and hormonally), male and female are quite different from each other both anatomically and functionally.      [In the present era of 'political correctness' they may fear losing their university positions and funding if they dare to investigate possible male-female differences.]                                                

D.    The cortex of the brain is now widely regarded as a "neuronal net/network".  (see 'google' again).  But this cortical net/network has myriad neuronal connections (both afferent and efferent) to other parts of the brain, hormones and the whole body.

And, in turn, the neuronally-based sensory organs connect this net/network to the world/universe in general.

All of this without the intermediate necessity of converting data into numbers/digits.

E.   Thus, living organisms such as mammals like homo sapiens would seem to be analog computers made - under the direction of DNA - of 'meat' (ie, bones, muscles, nerves, etc.)

Insects (and plants), of course, would be analog computers constructed (again under the direction of DNA) as different non-'meat' fabric.

F.     And what tasks/problems/projects are these 'meat' analog computers constructed to carry out?

The male body-mind human organism/computer is built to:
(i) seek food, water and shelter;
(ii) learn about and use natural laws/resources to expedite the obtaining of food, water, and shelter;
(iii) (analogous to male genitalia) seek and keenly perceive opportunities to impregnate (ie, inform, effect, define cf. Post # V)  females and situations;
(iv) compose potent, interesting and constructive/positive genetic/'genetic' material (both physical and psychological) and secondarily assist to nourish and raise offspring (physical and/or psychosocial); and
(v) learn about, develop and use culture to compete successfully with other men and favourably impress females so as to impregnate the latter physically and/or psychologically.

The female body-mind human organism/computer is built to:
(i) seek food, water and shelter;
(ii) organize events/reality so that her family has enough food, water and shelter;
(iii) (analogous to her female genitalia) attract (ie, transform, affect, interpret - cf. Post # V) interesting, potent and positive/constructive male and/or institutional impregnatory input;
(iv) conceive, gestate and give birth to babies and futures/realities and primarily nourish and raise her off-spring by/with the male (both physical and psychosocial/existential);
and
(v) learn about, develop and use her social and cultural organizing capacities to cooperate successfully with other females so as to nourish and raise her/their off-spring (physical and psychosocial).

 G.    Taking the ideas of Damasio, Dennett, Cohen and Spinoza a step further (or maybe not further, after all) this blogger submits that a life form such as the human animal thinks, and can only think, in ways analogous to how its body functions - because thinking is precisely a manifestation of somatic function.

Rephrasing and increasing the precision of Spinoza's concept: 'the human male mind is the idea of the human male body; and the human female mind is the idea of the human female body.'

Yet the language of homo sapiens expedites both (i) 'jerry-building'/reconfiguration of the basic procreational male-female interactive model and (ii) the development of culture.

H.    The intimacy of human physical sexual intercourse (involving direct contact between highly innervated elements of anatomy) suggest that one partner's actions and responses may become part of the other person's 'thinking' 'brain' (ie., the other person's mind).

Less intimate physical and psychological interactions constitute milder forms of one person's actions/word/emotions becoming part of another person's mind.

A person's 'thinking 'brain' (ie, mind) is not entirely localized within his/her body let alone within his/her skull.

I.  ADDENDUM:  a boy goes to school to learn about the world/environment wherein he lives;  a girl goes to school to learn about the world/environment that she is.

Post # XX -  LOGIC: HETEROSEXUAL MANIFESTATIONS

Werner Heisenberg's 1955-56 St. Andrew's Gifford Lectures have been published (2007) as a Harper Perennial Modern Thought Edition (ISBN 978-0-06-120919-2) entitled Physics and Philosophy: The Revolution in Modern Science.

While Heisenberg makes no mention of possible male-female difference, this blogger perceives a number of aspects of quantum mechanics as being analogous to female psychological function - especially female logic that males often perceive as being illogical.

After several pages of detailed analysis (including the use of complex numbers) of the language and concepts used to describe quantum processes as contrasted with classical logic, Heisenberg describes:

page 155 - "The vagueness of this language in use among the physicists has therefore led to attempts to define a different precise language which follows definite logical patterns in complete conformity with the mathematical scheme of quantum theory.  The result of these attempts by Birkhoff and Neumann and more recently by Weizsacker can be stated by saying that the mathematical scheme of quantum theory can be interpreted as an extension or modification  of classical logic.  It is especially one fundamental principle of classical logic which seems to require a modification.  In classical logic it is assumed that, if a statement has any meaning at all, either the statement or the negation of the statement  must be correct.  Of 'here is a table' or 'here is not a table', either the first or the second statement must be correct.  'Tertium non datur,' a third possibility does not exist.  It may be that we do not know whether the statement or its negation is correct;  but in 'reality' one of the two is correct."

page 158 - "In classical logic the relation between ... different levels of language is a one-to-one correspondence. .  The two statements, 'The atom is in the left half [of the box] ' and 'It is true that the atom is in the left half [of the box]' , belong logically to different levels.   In classical logic these statements are completely equivalent, i.e., they are either both true or both false.  It is not possible that the one is true and the other false.  But in the logical pattern of complementarity this relation is more complicated.  The correctness or incorrectness of the first statement still  implies the correctness or incorrectness of the second stement.  But the incorrectness of the second statement does not imply the incorrectness of the first statement.  If the second statement is incorrect, it may be undecided whether the the atom is in the left half;  the atom need not necessarily be in the right  half.  There is still complete equivalence between the two levels of language with respect to the correctness of a statement, but not with respect to the incorrectness.  From this connection, one can understand the persistence of the classical laws in quantum theory;  wherever a definite result can be derived in a given experiment by the application of the classical laws the result will also follow from quantum theory, and it will hold experimentally."

p. 159 -   "All these difficult definitions and distinctions can be avoided if one confines the language to the description of facts, i.e., experimental results.  However, if one wishes to speak about the atomic particles themselves one must either use the mathematical scheme as the only supplement to natural language or one must combine it with a language that makes use of a modified logic or of no well-defined logic at all.  In the experiments about atomic events we have to do with things and facts, with phenomena that are just as real as any phenomena in daily life.  But the atoms or the elementary particles themselves are not as real;  they form a world of potentialities or possibilities rather than one of things or facts."


Perhaps male 'classical' logic analogous to classical mechanics is the foundation of male cognition;  whereas female cognition may be substantially based on the kind of 'quantum' logic associated with quantum mechanics (e.g., the disqualification of the principle of 'tertium non datur').

Is the essence of romance, perchance, an interaction between two kinds of logic?

Post # XIX - NATURAL DIVINITY: 'WHAT MAKES THE WORLD GO ROUND'

Preamble: 

When I find myself informally in the company of another man (eg, sharing a seat on public transportation for an extended period of time), I will often open conversation by saying/asking, "What do you think 'makes the world go round'?"  If he gets past offering a quasi-'scientific' answer such as "gravity", etc. , the question can elicit a 'philosophical' answer such as "money", "people", etc.

Recently, an older man unhesitatingly and enthusiastically proffered the answer, "The Lord" (ie, 'God').

He then asked what I thought and  I replied, "Male-female interaction".

He countered by saying that without God as original Creator, there could not be any male-female interaction.  I replied that, on the contrary, "God" is an  [illusory] consequence or 'side-effect' of male-female interaction.  He disagreed; and I reassured him that his thinking was "normal" and mine was not!  (I do not fear God but do fear another man's fists.)

[When I noted that, in the Garden of Eden story, God never directly told the woman not to eat from the famous tree (because God gave the command to Adam before Eve was made), my friend noted that I was completely wrong: that in Genesis 5-6, sic, it describes God making Eve (from Adam's rib) before He made the Garden of Eden;  and that it was her conversation with the Snake that led to all the trouble.  He encouraged me to read the Bible more carefully and I did not attempt to disagree.]

Nature and Divinity: 

As has been noted previously, the etymology of the term 'nature' has to do with birth-giving.

The term 'divinity', on the other hand, is commonly associated with the concept of a supernatural (ie, beyond nature) god/God.

Yet the verb 'to divine' has a non-supernatural meaning:  to discover something without being told about it.

Perhaps the 'staying power' of Judaeo-Christianity arises from an underlying sense that Genesis 1: 1 really means, "In the beginning, God divined (ie, discovered the natural capacities of - without being told about them) the heavens and the earth".  How did God do this?  By (i) speaking the words, "Let there be light, etc., (ii) observing the results (perhaps the harbinger of a scientific experimental attitude towards nature) and then (iii) declaring the results to be good (ie, 'blessing' the out-come).

Similarly:  Genesis 4:1 "And Adam knew (ie, divined!) Eve, his wife and she conceived and bare a son...".

And then the words of a contemporary song: "To know, know, know [her] is to love, love, love, [her]...".  [Yes, my 'political incorrectness' shows through here:  it is the male role to know/divine the female.]

A Man as a natural Proxy for an illusory (ie, something that is different than how it seems) supernatural "God":       

In the absence of any actual supernatural god/God, a female correctly perceives a male as having the natural function/task/job of divining/knowing/eliciting/effecting her capacities so that she can naturally give birth to babies, realities and futures. 

But the results are so amazing to them and apparently (at least in the past) beyond their natural capacities that they tend to regard the process as produced by a supernatural god/God.  Then, they commonly try to pacify and control this illusion by fear, worship and praise. 

To avoid having to recognize, study and honour the importance of the male intelligently, constructively and respectfully divining, knowing and eliciting/effecting the natural capacities and power of his woman, he/they project this function onto an imagined supernatural Divinity. Worship of this illusion, then, is a lazy man's way of avoiding having to think about and relate to what is actually naturally going on.

Of course, the male phallus is the ultimate anatomical divining rod!  And the male may be perceived as, in effect, an existing natural proxy for the non-existing supernatural illusion noted in Genesis 1. 

Thus: 

The God of Genesis 1 is an off-shoot of male-female interaction, not vice versa. 

But when this blogger declares such, he is suspected of being as crazy as Copernicus and Galileo when they professed to believe that the Earth orbits around the Sun - when common knowledge declared that even a fool could see that the Sun goes around the Earth!