What blind spot to men have?

Discussion of the nature of Ultimate Reality and the path to Enlightenment.
Starbird
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What blind spot to men have?

Post by Starbird »

Dear All,

I was going to proffer this in terms of women's blind spot, but, I thought it better to start with men. Is there some aspect of reality that women see that men don't? Or, a la Otto Weininger, does masculinity encompass femininity wholly so that only women have an intrinsic blind spot, a place "terrifying to women" (Herbert) where only men can go?

Yours,

"Starbird"
Animus
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Re: What blind spot to men have?

Post by Animus »

Umm, men are more likely to suffer from color-blindness, while a recessive allele on the X chromosome can produce a 4th cone type giving women 4 base colours instead of 3. But the fourth is a division of the Red to Low-red and high-red. Also researchers found the color red is mostly likely to excite a woman's sexual desire.
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David Quinn
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Re: What blind spot to men have?

Post by David Quinn »

Starbird wrote:Dear All,

I was going to proffer this in terms of women's blind spot, but, I thought it better to start with men. Is there some aspect of reality that women see that men don't? Or, a la Otto Weininger, does masculinity encompass femininity wholly so that only women have an intrinsic blind spot, a place "terrifying to women" (Herbert) where only men can go?

Yours,

"Starbird"
There are some aspects of reality that women are more aware of. For example, since women are generally more anxious in their psychology, particularly in social situations, women tend to be more acutely aware of other people's subtle signals - their body language, the nuances in their voices which might suggest hostility or judgment, the signals that express the ever-changing status of the social relationships around them, etc. Men, on the other hand, tend to be more focused on the content of conversation and block out a lot of that peripheral stuff.

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Starbird
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Re: What blind spot to men have?

Post by Starbird »

Dear David,

Those aren't intrinsic, though, those are matters of degree. A sufficiently skilled man can master perspicuity relating to nuances of gesture and voice. However, I have read (from one Simon Sheppard, as I recall) that women intrinsically cannot stand to be exposed to "pure masculinity" or the like--that when they are exposed to it, they crumple. Hence the modern Feminist's attempt to demasculinise the education system and the culture in general, leaving only easily disposed-of caricatures of masculinity (e.g. Bruce Willis movies) in their wake.

Yours,

"Starbird"
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Blair
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Re: What blind spot to men have?

Post by Blair »

Starbird wrote:that women intrinsically cannot stand to be exposed to "pure masculinity" or the like--that when they are exposed to it, they crumple.
Pure masculinity is to not see them at all, so in that respect, yes they crumple, become vicious and indignant, too.
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David Quinn
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Re: What blind spot to men have?

Post by David Quinn »

Starbird wrote:Dear David,

Those aren't intrinsic, though, those are matters of degree. A sufficiently skilled man can master perspicuity relating to nuances of gesture and voice. However, I have read (from one Simon Sheppard, as I recall) that women intrinsically cannot stand to be exposed to "pure masculinity" or the like--that when they are exposed to it, they crumple. Hence the modern Feminist's attempt to demasculinise the education system and the culture in general, leaving only easily disposed-of caricatures of masculinity (e.g. Bruce Willis movies) in their wake."
True, it's very much in the interests of women to waylay men and keep them focused on their needs - hence, modern culture (and most of history) . But I'm not sure that women (in general) are conscious enough or advanced enough to be aware of higher forms of masculinity, let alone to be afraid of them. Those men who do push themselves into higher forms of masculinity quickly disappear off the map. They become as invisible as garbage collectors and tramps - that is to say, they become non-entities.

As far as most women are concerned, the world of womanhood is all there is. There is nothing else besides. And men, eager for pussy, happily reduce themselves to being serfs of that world.

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cousinbasil
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Re: What blind spot to men have?

Post by cousinbasil »

DQ wrote:They become as invisible as garbage collectors and tramps - that is to say, they become non-entities.
To women, you mean. It's as if in their world of Supermen, one has slipped into a nearby phone booth and become Clark Kent. (Not that there are many phone booths left.)

But make no mistake - tramps and garbage collectors are by no means invisible to women. They are deliberately ignored, actively filtered out. Once again you fail to give Woman her due.
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Re: What blind spot to men have?

Post by Starbird »

Dear David,

Doesn't your statement, "...I'm not sure that women (in general) are conscious enough or advanced enough to be aware of higher forms of masculinity, let alone to be afraid of them...." imply that women are fundamentally different in their mental processes as to have that lack of awareness? That is, isn't that lack of awareness itself the blind spot, and, if so, where does it come from? Neurological differences?

Yours,

"Starbird"
Pam Seeback
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Re: What blind spot to men have?

Post by Pam Seeback »

Whether one is male or female of finite form, the ultimate goal of being cleansed of one's lust toward either form is the goal of being cleansed of one's lust for all finite forms of the earth so that the formless spirit of man can be liberated from the gravity of this lust.

The blind spot both male and female forms have is the lack of knowledge of this deeper pull of spirit to be purified of the division of form into all of the dualities of acceptance and rejection, of which "beauty" and "ugliness" are but one.
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Russell Parr
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Re: What blind spot to men have?

Post by Russell Parr »

Starbird wrote:Dear David,

Doesn't your statement, "...I'm not sure that women (in general) are conscious enough or advanced enough to be aware of higher forms of masculinity, let alone to be afraid of them...." imply that women are fundamentally different in their mental processes as to have that lack of awareness? That is, isn't that lack of awareness itself the blind spot, and, if so, where does it come from? Neurological differences?

Yours,

"Starbird"
There are studies that show that, yes, there are differences in the physical makeup between of the brains men and women.

Here's an example: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/20 ... 100142.htm
In general, men have approximately 6.5 times the amount of gray matter related to general intelligence than women, and women have nearly 10 times the amount of white matter related to intelligence than men. Gray matter represents information processing centers in the brain, and white matter represents the networking of – or connections between – these processing centers.
Using this information, you can assume that the increased grey matter in the brains in men allow them to delve deeper on a single thought, while the increased white matter of the female brain cause women to be more inclined to move from thought to thought, dwelling on an individual thought for shorter periods. The decreased amount of grey matter means the thoughts tend to be more shallow as well. This may also explain why women are more talkative in nature, as the white matter in their brains gives them the ability to discuss numerous subjects in rapid succession.
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Re: What blind spot to men have?

Post by Starbird »

Dear bluerap,

That is an interesting article, with a compelling statistic, but, does it lead to a fundamental difference, by which I mean a principled difference? Are men and women's minds different in degree or in kind?

Yours,

"Starbird"
Carmel

Re: What blind spot to men have?

Post by Carmel »

bluerap:
Using this information, you can assume that the increased grey matter in the brains in men allow them to delve deeper on a single thought, while the increased white matter of the female brain cause women to be more inclined to move from thought to thought, dwelling on an individual thought for shorter periods. The decreased amount of grey matter means the thoughts tend to be more shallow as well. This may also explain why women are more talkative in nature, as the white matter in their brains gives them the ability to discuss numerous subjects in rapid succession.

Carmel:
The biggest blind spot men have is their ego which tends to interfere with their ability to be unbiased and objective, most notably in their approach to gender issues, particularly with regard to intelligence. Please note the selective quote mining from bluerap, followed by a blatant attempt to "spin" the information. Here's the more relevant quote, without the spin:

From the article:
"This, according to Rex Jung, a UNM neuropsychologist and co-author of the study, may help to explain why men tend to excel in tasks requiring more local processing (like mathematics), while women tend to excel at integrating and assimilating information from distributed gray-matter regions in the brain, such as required for language facility. These two very different neurological pathways and activity centers, however, result in equivalent overall performance on broad measures of cognitive ability, such as those found on intelligence tests"

Carmel:
One could just as easily "spin" this in women's favor by saying women are better comprehensive thinkers, see "the big picture" because they are better at "integrating and assimilating information", and men are intellectually myopic, better at trivial, detail oriented and mundane tasks.
Last edited by Carmel on Sat Dec 25, 2010 6:06 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Alex Jacob
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Re: What blind spot to men have?

Post by Alex Jacob »

David writes: "True, it's very much in the interests of women to waylay men and keep them focused on their needs - hence, modern culture (and most of history)."

You'd have to say 'for all biological creation' to be accurate. It is biologically imperative that women direct a male's energy toward her 'biological products', and it is also imperative that a man cooperate.

"But I'm not sure that women (in general) are conscious enough or advanced enough to be aware of higher forms of masculinity, let alone to be afraid of them. Those men who do push themselves into higher forms of masculinity quickly disappear off the map. They become as invisible as garbage collectors and tramps - that is to say, they become non-entities."

For you, if I am not mistaken, 'higher form of masculinity' is to become a celibate and to have little or no contact with women or a woman. Complete severance. (Mind you, after you have fathered a child). It would make a certain amount of sense that, doing this, you would become invisible to women. But let us say that you were to become an authentic Taoist monk, a hermit up in some misty forest, contemplating the stars in the heavens and the movement of the water, immersed in other levels of experience of Reality: at that point, yes, you would become a frightening figure to 99.9% of all women. And to many men as well. And if people did approach you, they would do so as an oracle: to get information about how to conduct their lives, which lives are also part of Tao.

"As far as most women are concerned, the world of womanhood is all there is. There is nothing else besides. And men, eager for pussy, happily reduce themselves to being serfs of that world."

One has to describe and define a relatedness in order to make your argument for 'divorce' really cogent. Obviously, it is not possible for all men to become hermits or celibates. There is no social model that could ever be built on it. Even you as a hermit/celibate exist as a parasite to the system where, at the core, is this man/woman team, however dysfunctional that relationship is, however much women may have overstepped correct bounds, however off-track culture may (or may not) be.

Men asssociate themselves with women, are compelled to, now and in the future and for all time. It is perhaps only with you, inhibited more than gifted (?), who can even propose such a radical separation.

It is necessary for men and women to produce and educate children, as you have done, and as your parents did. This puts a certain wrench in much of your argumentation, it seems to me. You were given life through male-female union and you gave life to your son in exactly the same way.
_________________________

Little going on at KIR, Carmel? ;-)
Ni ange, ni bête
Carmel

Re: What blind spot to men have?

Post by Carmel »

Alex Jacob wrote:Little going on at KIR, Carmel? ;-)
It's quite peaceful there, thanks for asking. ;)
Animus
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Re: What blind spot to men have?

Post by Animus »

I'm not sure I agree with the correlates of white and grey matter as they are given.

The grey matter, the cell bodies, are the switches, and the white matter, the axons are the connecting tissues 'tween cell bodies.

To that end, the grey matter serves as the discrimator, and the white matter serves as the connector.

Neither function by itself does anything, if there is no discrimination, then connections between objects cannot be possible, and if there is no connection between objects, discrimination is pointless.

So perhaps, men more easily discriminate between objects, but women more easily make connections between objects. Men see the world in fractured-form, and women see it in nebulosity. Perhaps, men could more readily see the difference between black and white, but women more readily see the relationship between them.

Of course, it is not easy, by any means to tease out the role of white and grey matter specifically, especially concerning the fact that mylination and extracellular milieu (e.g. glia cells) play a role in the operation of cell bodies and axons. A role which is not well understood and little explored. It is also some speculation what the consequence of cell density or cortical size is, some portions of the female brain are denser in the number of cells, while the same portion of brain in the male is physically larger, but not as dense. Presumably, density dials down the time it takes for cells to communicate with each other, as the connecting white matter is of shorter distance. It is also speculated that greater density provides greater discriminatory power, based on the premise that more cells equals more discrimination. But the same would be true of larger cortical areas, they also house more cells, but the cells aren't as tightly knit, and this raises the question of the comparative effects of cell density verses cortical size. Perhaps too high of density causes problems like cross-talk on electrical cabling, or re-excitation of gap junctions (a feature of the brain speculated to be the basis of free-will in many field theories of consciousness).

One thing is certain though, the brain is plastic, and whatever you do, whatever mental exercises you engage in, whether its doing laundry or driving a rig, the portion of the brain that handles those activities will grow, refine itself and become expert at the task.
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Russell Parr
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Re: What blind spot to men have?

Post by Russell Parr »

Carmel wrote:bluerap:
Using this information, you can assume that the increased grey matter in the brains in men allow them to delve deeper on a single thought, while the increased white matter of the female brain cause women to be more inclined to move from thought to thought, dwelling on an individual thought for shorter periods. The decreased amount of grey matter means the thoughts tend to be more shallow as well. This may also explain why women are more talkative in nature, as the white matter in their brains gives them the ability to discuss numerous subjects in rapid succession.

Carmel:
The biggest blind spot men have is their ego which tends to interfere with their ability to be unbiased and objective, most notably in their approach to gender issues, particularly with regard to intelligence. Please note the selective quote mining from bluerap, followed by a blatant attempt to "spin" the information. Here's the more relevant quote, without the spin:

From the article:
"This, according to Rex Jung, a UNM neuropsychologist and co-author of the study, may help to explain why men tend to excel in tasks requiring more local processing (like mathematics), while women tend to excel at integrating and assimilating information from distributed gray-matter regions in the brain, such as required for language facility. These two very different neurological pathways and activity centers, however, result in equivalent overall performance on broad measures of cognitive ability, such as those found on intelligence tests"

Carmel:
One could just as easily "spin" this in women's favor by saying women are better comprehensive thinkers, see "the big picture" because they are better at "integrating and assimilating information", and men are intellectually myopic, better at trivial, detail oriented and mundane tasks.
I have no doubt that the author would choose to use light and mostly undiscriminating examples of where the studies would apply in reality, as popularity is a goal of those conducting these studies. The article would probably have never seen the light of day if harder facts were used as evidence (ie. the vast majority of inventors are men), or else would have been made popular as an "unfair accusation that women are dumber."
Carmel

Re: What blind spot to men have?

Post by Carmel »

Oh, so the scientist was trying to be politically correct by saying that women and men's iq's are the same which incidentally, nearly every study ever done on the subject confirms.

That's truly laughable.
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Re: What blind spot to men have?

Post by Animus »

Carmel wrote:Oh, so the scientist was trying to be politically correct by saying that women and men's iq's are the same which incidentally, nearly every study ever done on the subject confirms.

That's truly laughable.
Most studies before the dawn of the new millenium had results suggesting men had higher IQs. However, certain stereotype-effects, expectency-effects and the like have been identified, which when controlled for, produce more even results.

For example; women primed with the stereotype "women are poor at math" scored lower than the average male score on math tests. Women who were primed with the positive statements, e.g. "Your history shows you are above average at math." scored on or above the male average. There is some kind of anxiety that gets in the way of doing the test confidently.

This same 'anxiety' can be seen in female sports psychology. Coaches, have to spend more time encouraging females than males. Females deman more reassurance from the coach, and frequently make mistakes while worrying about their appearance. A woman doing a backward summersault to hand-stand might begin worrying about how she will look and fail the performance. Coaches, according to sports psychologists, should reassure their female students that they look good.

In many of these studies, its not the capability of learning, discriminating or organizing the data, but an issue of anxiety which interferes with their thinking.
Carmel

Re: What blind spot to men have?

Post by Carmel »

meh. Test anxiety is for pussies. ;)
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Russell Parr
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Re: What blind spot to men have?

Post by Russell Parr »

Carmel wrote:..women and men's iq's are the same which incidentally, nearly every study ever done on the subject confirms.
.. and that explains why the vast majority of inventors are men?

Anyway -
Starbird wrote:Dear bluerap,

That is an interesting article, with a compelling statistic, but, does it lead to a fundamental difference, by which I mean a principled difference? Are men and women's minds different in degree or in kind?

Yours,

"Starbird"
I'm not sure what you're looking for, Starbird.. Obviously neurological differences between the sexes will cause different results, and different mental obstacles for an individual in whatever goal they may have. If an accurate perspective of reality is the goal, yes women do seem to have more obstacles to overcome.
Animus
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Re: What blind spot to men have?

Post by Animus »

Carmel wrote:meh. Test anxiety is for pussies. ;)
Perhaps so, the point is, maybe the point of dilineation between the male mind and female mind is not in the capacity for discrimination, analysis or synthesis, but in keeping interfering thoughts and emotions at bay. Perhaps that is the consequence of the additional white-matter, but this should only be true if the white-matter is coming from the limbic-system and would not be true of axons running from V1 to V2, as they have nothing to do with emotions.
Carmel

Re: What blind spot to men have?

Post by Carmel »

bluerap wrote:.. and that explains why the vast majority of inventors are men?
...but the vast majority of men aren't inventors, are they?

...which can easily be explained by the fact that men's average iq is a mere 100, same as the women's average. none too impressive for either gender, really.
Animus
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Re: What blind spot to men have?

Post by Animus »

With that said, I believe the posterior corpus callosum (splenium), the bundle of white matter connecting the two hemispheres, is denser in the socialized female brain. And, if I'm not mistaken, the splenium joins the two halves of the limbic system.
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Russell Parr
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Re: What blind spot to men have?

Post by Russell Parr »

Animus wrote:
Carmel wrote:meh. Test anxiety is for pussies. ;)
Perhaps so, the point is, maybe the point of dilineation between the male mind and female mind is not in the capacity for discrimination, analysis or synthesis, but in keeping interfering thoughts and emotions at bay. Perhaps that is the consequence of the additional white-matter, but this should only be true if the white-matter is coming from the limbic-system and would not be true of axons running from V1 to V2, as they have nothing to do with emotions.
This is a good point. Perhaps it can be said that since men are generally better capable at keeping emotions at bay, rational thought and understanding is easier to maintain.

Funny how it is often a talking point for women that "men harbor their emotions too much."
Carmel

Re: What blind spot to men have?

Post by Carmel »

Some men do repress their emotions too much or let them build up and then unleash them upon the world at large. Rampage shooters are usually men, or always men, to the best of my knowledge.
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