Seduction

Personally, I beleive that a touch of seduction in a good way,and not to take advantage of others but to boost confidence may be good, but then, who defines limits or extents of seduction? its complicated. I dont condemn her totally, neither do I agree with her totally.

This was a comment I read at youtube for a TEDx video about seduction. I don't even want to link it. Go to youtube if you would like to see it. Youtube.com



Mike: It's complicated? I'll show you how complicated it is. And thats my point. If you want to be moral, you have to think sophisticatedly. Thus, if you want to use seduction in everyday life, you best be sure about your ability to adjust how you act with different people. To for instance, be aware of how you're being seductive. Some people don't like that, and if they give you a signal in their body language, the normal (and rational) thing to do is understand and honor their feelings.

If you can do this, than fine. You're morally justified as a person to play the seductress from time to time.

But most people lack the mindfulness for this type of behavior. They lack incentive - they're not very impressed by the dynamics of their inner world - and so they will lack the ability to monitor themselves before they act.

The great thing about the human brain is, the more we practice a certain behavior, it eventually becomes unconscious and implicit in the brains associational centers. A particular context - say, a person you often relate with - will bring to your mind a particular behavior. These two factors are coded together, so that when you interact with that person who seems bothered by your seductions, it'll bring to mind a certain behavioral action tendency i.e. speak to him without seductive behaviors.

But you know what? The more I think about this, the more bothered I become. There is something obnoxious about relating with non-partners in a seductive way. But what essentially bothers me is that seduction is a volatile emotion. Its evolutionary basis lies in a man seeking to woo a woman. Its not simply a behavior, it's a behavior with a context.

It's essentially well known that an overly sexualized and wild society flies to the edge of "chaos". It's inevitable. Its a simple fact of emotional dynamics priming human cognitions. Besides that, sexuality is the strongest emotion mankind knows.

At the other end of the spectrum you get religious conservatism, mindlessly rigid and stubborn.

Life really is about balance. Look at the body for an example of how you should live life (if you think, maybe, the body can be a source of wisdom). The body needs balance to thrive. It needs a particular diet with a particular nutrition. It needs at least 8 hours of rest a night to optimally function.Things that are not relevant to the human organism, and which cause a massive dysregulation in it's homeostatic state, cause disease to happen. Too much sugar, too much carbohydrates, too much fat, too much sodium, etc, will have definitive, repeatable effects on the bodies health.

Human beings also need physical activity. For milennia, our species was active. We needed to run, and move, and carry, and lift, and climb, far more than we do today. This means our metabolic needs work in rhythm with activity levels. There are genes called hox genes which contain information like 'how much activity level this species generally acts with".

Yes, complicated. This is how organisms work though. Everything about the organisms shape, size, behaviour, life span, activity level, is coded in our genes as meta-information, to recreate the organism in exactly this way.

This being the case, why not acknowledge, as we have learned and keep needing to learn (for some deep reason) that seduction - a behavior which uses sexual innuendo in relating with another - done in excess promotes dysregulated behavior patterns?

I am not saying seduction is bad. But I am saying it a powerful force best kept between a couple.

This left liberal "do whatever makes you feel good" way of thinking is the left extreme correlate of pat robertson christian conservatism. The former is too chaotic, while the latter is too rigid. This is actually how systems theory (an interdisciplinary study of systems) defines systems. Systems need to work in harmony to maximize output. The optimal range lies in the middle. Too much disorganized and unintegrated activity will produce chaos; too little differentiation and movement will cause rigidity. In my mind, this is promoting seduction as a "necessary life skill" and religious fundamentalism. It's just a nervous system correlate of the same thing observed in systems theory.

Human society is going in this direction, I am firmly convinced of this. If we can incrementally convert more and more people to this balanced way of thinking and seeing things, we will see incremental improvements, generation after generation. I'm not sure how long this will take, but what I do know, the world is becoming a more moral place every year (Steven Pinker proves this in his masterful study of evil behavior over the last 6000 years). Today, we show a conideration and mindfulness that we never demonstrated 50 years ago, or 80 years ago. Our emotions are being clarified year after year. Compassion is taking a broader role in our collective thinking. Tolerance is also playing a more expansive role. But notice: tolerance is not universally applicable at all times. To do that would be to engage in chaos. It would throw society all out of whack if we let people just do what they want without stricture. We also need laws, against killing, against stealing and against assault. The more we hone down, the more things become wrong. Its wrong to embezzle money - it's a type of stealing. It's wrong to commit insurance fraud - it's a type of stealing.

We can also look at emotions in this way. After all, it is the interaction between emotions and objects in our environment which create events in the world. If a certain emotion, like seduction, is engaged in again and again - we need to keep in mind the type of emotion were experiencing. Not only do we experience, but with each experience, we are training our brains to seek this sort of behaviour: basic dopamine reward seeking.

It would take tremendous mindful to control this behavior. But the problem really isn't your lack of control. It's other peoples lack of control. If this type of mindfulness is rare, that means most people are at the mercy of their emotions. They can't help it. So, even though you - do not mean your seductive behavior to imply that you want to have sex with that person - the individual, most likely a member of the opposite sex, will feel frustrated by these experiences. One, he would not have your perspective of things, so he wouldn't naturally engage in seductive behaviors. And two, if he's a man in a particular, he will get hard just talking to you. Ever heard of blue balls? That is not just a feeling in the body, but an emotional feeling as well. Each experience contributes a new aspect or perpetuates an old aspect in the developing human nervous system.

It's amazing the nuances and subtleties in how our nervous system and brain functions. Emotion is such a powerful and primal force within us humans. We need to better respect that, acknowledge how evolution has shaped particular action tendencies, and how they are blueprinted and strongly implied in each of our behaviors.

...This...is just some of my reasoning for opposing this woman. I know I shouldn't call her a tramp, dimwit, whore, but I am so bothered by non-experts sharing their view on how they think society should function. She's not a social scientist, or a psychologist, so why would her view be conidered important? It's as if people don't realize that human behavior follows particular laws - which are based upon psychodynamics - which are based upon activities in the brain - which are based upon genetic and epigenetic coding within our cells.

The field of interpersonal biology, led by some of the leading academics in psychology and neuroscience today, such as UCLA's Dan Siegel, Allan Schore, University of Illinois' Stephen Porges, the founder of sensorimotor therapy, Pat Ogden, and so many other leading figures in the brain science, I truly believe are helping lead the way to building a better world. The scientists involved with this area of research have so far justified the inclusion of mindfulness practices in school districts in 4 different states, British Columbia, and parts of Europe. Human beings need to develop the inner awareness of their emotions if they are to wisely shape their experiences towards one of integration and stability. It takes a lot from eastern contemplative practices and brings it together with recent research in psychology, and neuroscience, to develop practices that will promote right brain development, i.e. social skills, which is now being studied as an important aspect of the human experience. We are social creatures; our brains are hardwired for one on one connections, in facial expressions, in voice, in touch.

Anywho. I've gotten tired. Long piece I just wrote. Going to be now. 

As a guy, this is an interesting subject for me because when I take my wife out shopping I usually get hit on by a few women even though they can see I am with my wife, it is pretty amusing.. My wife doesn't mind, and I just pretend I am single so I can "play along" a little bit.. It is a lot of fun to me..

The last time I took her grocery shopping, I was approached and greeted by 4 different females with big smiles.. I had never seen any of them before.. quite strange.

reply to post by Astrocyte

Anywho. I've gotten tired. Long piece I just wrote. Going to be now. 

Very impressive, Astrocyte. Thank you for putting thoughts to words. I enjoyed reading it.

Astrocyte
...This...is just some of my reasoning for opposing this woman.

Who?

I imagine the person from a Tedx video? There are more than one Tedx videos on seduction.

reply to post by Pinke


Chen Lizra, TEDx Vancouver. She wrote a book called "my seductive cuba: a travel guide".

In her 16 minutes of self promotion at TEDx, she tries to argue the importance of seduction in peoples lives. She even tries to argue that school should help children develop this "important life skill".

She is not a social scientist, or a psychologist, or pretty much anybody who has spent a lot of time studying biopsychosocial dynamics. She just thinks it would be a "good idea" based upon her own experiences.

Shes also worked in the business world, for MTV, and other corporations.

In short, she should not have been given a venue to spread her ideas, because they're incoherent, unscientific, reckless, poorly thought out - and this is obviously apparent to the more educated posters at youtube. The video itself has a pretty bad rating there.

It's really simple. If your ideas are justified - if the science shows it to be justified. Fine. But if your ideas are clearly reckless, and the science shows it to be reckless, you should be ridiculed - or atleast admonished - for trying to extend your idea of seduction to such a brazen level.

The people who organize TEDx conferences don't seem to have much of a decisive idea of what kind of ideas they want to promote. I don't see Islamic or Christian fundamentalists promoting their views - so the idea of TEDx gathering varied and disparate views for an "ark" doesn't seem very objective, that is, if they want to give an accurate sense of the world today, they have to show the good and the bad.

I've seen countless interesting TEDx conferences that promote mindfulness, social awareness, the value of internet in connecting the globe, etc. But they dropped the ball by letting this girl speak at TEDx. I'm sorry. I just got to say it plainly: the view she tried to promote was absolutely ridiculous. And I wasn't the only person who thought this was one of the worse TEDx's ever.