Easy

Thanks for making that a little more clear. I did not get that from the OP. The model's images make more sense to me now.

Non, You have either misread the studies or they have been misrepresented to you. This is the how the myth of which you wrote began: 1. When either a male or female fetus is in utero, the level of testosterone in the mother's system is reflected in the degree of facial symmetry in the offspring. High levels of testosterone means a higher level of facial symmetry, i.e. how the two sides of the face match up with each other. (Handsomeness and beauty are both generally ascribed to those who have have a high level of facial symmetry.) High levels of testosterone in a male child while in utero and at birth also generally produce a more robust kid who will mature into a robust man; a man in ancient times who would be more capable of providing sustenance and protection to a female and her offspring than someone from the average range of potential mates. 2. The recent studies to which you refer (and which in part were conducted by a woman--a very good looking woman who had fine facial symmetry and who was once my lover) sought to distinguish what was the most important factor in women's mate selection at mating (ovulation) time; high levels of testosterone or high levels of socio-economic status in the potential mates. 3. To conduct the studies a wide number of undergraduate females were selected. (Note: these were mostly middle to upper middle class white women in their peak child bearing years--U.S. college girls) They were instructed to keep records of their menstrual cycles and they were presented daily with a wide selection of photographs of men in more or less the same age range. These photos also gave broad hints as to the subject's socio-economic status: crisp haircuts as opposed to uncombed hair, neckties as opposed to T-shirts, etc. Somewhere in those always fluctuating and inconsistent panoply of photos were ringers, a man or two of obvious low socio-economic status who had a high degree of facial symmetry. There were also planted photos of average looking men who obviously held high socio-economic status. The women were asked daily to pick out the men who they thought were the most attractive. 4. It was found that during most of the menstrual cycle the majority of the women tested preferred the men whose context showed them to be of higher socio-economic status. But during the ovulating time in their cycles they tended to pick as attractive the men with the greatest degree of facial symmetry despite whatever socio-economic contexts were evident in the photo. 5. U.S. culture generally makes "bad boys, and sinister, non-monogamous and violent type" to be those who come from lower socio-economic status. But the studies were not designed around "bad," "sinister," etc. types. The studies were designed to show that facial symmetry was predominate in the instinctual mate selection of women. This "bad boys, and sinister, non-monogamous and violent type" was just a wrong-headed, cultural projection, a dim-wit blow-by arising out of the nature of the studies. 6. The bottom line is that after thousands and thousands of years of human evolution the female instinct is to select a mate who has the physical attributes to be able to bring home the meat to keep their kids alive. 7. When the two selection alternatives, facial symmetry and high socio-economic status, are put together it becomes obvious that a symmetrically featured, handsome man of high socio-economic status is going to attract more women than any other man, definatly more than your "bad boys, and sinister, non-monogamous and violent type(s)" because he has both of the winning qualities and they have only one...if and only if they have a high level of facial symmetry. The ugly bottom-feeders get nothing but what they can rape or pay. But you, Non, knew that already. Right? How does your face shape up?

Good thinking, nicely written.

This is a good space for me to flow into this interesting thread to write that I while I can understand Stig's original model, I think it has more problems than it has "cash value" as the pragmatists call it. In my way of thinking the problems begin with the apparent dualistic separation between the known and the knower. In my perception the known is a processual emergent in my mind (which is not just the brain) and I am a manifesting event that encompasses that mind. Perhaps the only thing I know that has any cash value is that I am a continually emerging event that permanently, though ever so slightly, effects reality, makes tracks, fathered children, creates steel artwork and generally degrades energy a la the Second Law of Thermodynamics. That story might not be in accord with the Great Metaphysical Truth Of It All, but metaphysical truth is perpetually beside the point. In other words the known is grounded within me, thus it can't be an island. The other problem with the model is that the known, as island, is delimited by its surrounding shoreline and that limits possibility for growth and flow and other dynamics. As you can see I am writing this from a 'process" perspective that has the known in a continually emergent flow. I am going to have to think about this some more, but the corollary of that might be that the unknown is not the ocean, but also a flow in itself that exists just beyond the horizon of now.

It has been pretty clear that Immortal(etc) has been pouring fundamental Christian dogma into this site since he joined. It has been somewhat covert until now. I was wondering when he would come out.

Scurry for the hole Songs, anarchists are out there to get you, get your momma too and sis and her Filipino house boy and the neighbor's Great Dane...yum yum! So many dogs, so few recipes. (As Marble says, Hehehe.) Hohoho.

And that is how anarchy works. No rules from the outside, but respect from within. Here we make it up as we go along; stay close to our side arms and all is ok.

Hey, I find this amusing on several different levels. 1. Apparently no one else has gone searching the web for clues to what is going on with this video. Just call this the instincts of a 33-year-year veteran of various investigative rackets. The spokesman in the vid is Garret LoPorto who claims to be a psychologist or someone who is deep into psych and one of his interests/passions is to direct the energies of young people with AADD etc. into creative channels rather than into substance abuse and so on. It is a recruiting video. I followed it up. I took the test to see if I was a "Wayseerer" and found out that I was, but of course I knew that already. When I was 18 (1963) I organized one of the first anti-Viet Nam War demonstrations in the USA. I also spent 18 years as a private investigator specializing in criminal defense. My mission was to help keep outlaws on the street. I had any number of clients who were AADD (etc) and junkies and crank heads and strangely enough they all had a deep hunger for spirituality, but no way to connect to it because the Little Goody Two Shoes spiritual seekers and philosophy huggers were frightened by their energy and locked them out and then locked them up. 2. It is not surprising that the two of the most prolific posters on this site (a spiritual/philosophical site) didn't quite get the point of the vid. Carl Jung went a long way to demonstrate that the Spiritual/Philosophical fans are hard wired a little bit differently than the kids that LoPorto is trying to reach (Intuition verses Sensory...google "Myers-Briggs" or "Keirsey Temperament"). Apples and oranges. 3. When Songs writes "Yeah, but we need rules to function. Rules are necessary..." I want to reply, "Who is this 'we' you are talking about? You and your sister's Filipino house boy? You and the neighbor's Great Dane?" One of the few things I like about Venezuela is the almost non-existent enforcement of The Law. There is no regulation of traffic and as a result Venezuelans are the finest drivers with whom I have had the honor of sharing the road. There is no law on those highways, but there isn't any road rage either. Everyone respects the right of the other to do what he has to do as long as he is respecting them as well. Venezuelan highways prove that anarchy works because everybody gets where they need to go, happily. Maybe only those who think there is a need for law, need law. 4. I've long since thought that one of the finest sentiments of humanity was expressed in the admonition: "Keep a song in your heart and a smile on your lips as you set out to smash the state." Who else agrees?

Aaron, When I googled "scientific measurement of qi" I was directed to a number of different studies that indicated that qi, as bio-electrical energy, could be measured. Or, in other words, qi is physical. I am not a highly trained practitioner in any manner of speaking but my experience with qi development in internal alchemy and medical qi gung gave me the phenomenological sense that it is physical energy. I always assumed that this was a given among expert practitioners also. My use of the word metaphysics goes more toward the realm of mythology. The experience of which you wrote, my similar experiences, are definitely real. They are actual happenings. But I do not think it is useful anymore to contextualize them in mythological terms.

That is a great sentiment Mythmaker, but what you say only tells us something about yourself. To say that everything is god or dao or green cheese or whatever robs each of them of any significant meaning. Any universalizing statement gives the reader neither effective nor essential information about god or dao or everything or green cheese. It says in effect 2+2 = 2+2. The significance of god or dao or green cheese lies only in their being distinct from everything else.

MH, Nice post, good clarification. You are a man of apparent faithful belief in the abstract. I was born in 1944. I spent the first 15 years of my professional life as an investigative journalist and after that another 18 years as a private investigator and after that I lived in Venezuela. Those three experiential stretches have taught me, and reinforced in me, that I would be insane and probably dead if I believed in anything other than what I can touch with my hands right here and right now. However I can entertain myself with the speculation that The Dao, as mankind imagined it, is a slightly more satisfying fantasy than mankind's imagination of god, but a fantasy in that very same vein nonetheless. It isn't as good as a story, but it makes a little more sense, at least to me as sensible stories go. Different lives can agree to disagree, no?

MH, How do you know that? Were you there? After I wrote in a previous post, "Haven't we had enough metaphysics," I thought through it all and decided that I was being too hard on metaphysics and convinced myself that they are ok as exercises in metaphor. In these days metaphysics can work well as stories as long as all concerned recognize they are grounded only in the mind which is grounded only in the body. In this light metaphysics and statements like the quote above have to be seen as real, but only in the same sense that fantasy science fiction is real. Protagoras wrote "Man is the measure of all things." Whether it is right or wrong is incidental to the fact that anyone who says differently will, at some point, be content to be a subordinate.

Why don't we discuss the observation that the Dao is a function of the human body. The human mind (and the Mind of Dao) emanate within the body to perceive and formalize this apparently all-encompassing and infinitely deep Dao-function. Thus when one experiences the Dao, they are experiencing the one-and-many aspects of the endlessly wondrous human body...nothing more. Haven't we had enough metaphysics?

Hey, When Stig writes that he is not a Taoist, and then Marblehead writes that Stig is in fact a Taoist it becomes clear that this is not a philosophical debate but one of linguistics. As such it cannot be resolved due to the elusive nature of that thing through which humans write and speak. Until there is a universally accepted definition of the words Tao and Taoist then the debate that has taken place on this thread is nonsensical. The first chapter of the TTC (seminal to the context of "Taoism") indicates that by its very nature the Tao cannot be defined...it is by definition impossible to define. So without the ability to define Tao, how can one define Taoist within the boundaries of the context of Taoism? This reduces the problem from one of philosophy to one of marginally intellectual entertainment. I am an old man and I have long since become bored with ideas, debates etc that are essentially only entertaining. I am however highly entertained by the behavior of those engaged in the debates. Occasionally it becomes evident that a few of the debaters are using the process not just for a chance to strike some thoughtful appearing posture, but to make themselves clearer to themselves. If their increasing clarity makes a coherent and sensible change in their behavior than this helps to slow my waning respect for humanity.

Look Blasto, you don't have to go with any of those superficial chemical routes. All you have to do is get underneath it all. Go deep into that pain, let that pain become your entire being...it will only take 10 minutes or so. Let that pain become your ALL, your totality. Immerse yourself in its source. Empty yourself of all but the pain. And then remember the Heart Sutra... "Therefore, Sariputra, in emptiness there is no form, no sensation, no discrimination, no conditioning, and no awareness." NO SENSATION! Let that flood your being! NO SENSATION! You will be pain free...pain free forever...because the Heart Sutra is THE TRUTH!