What is Gender Good For

So this article asks 'what are men good for', of course the author was asking it on the level of sociological gender differences, but I found myself last night asking 'what are women good for' on a personal level. Aside from my sexuality, I am not sure it matters to me whether a woman is a woman or a man. Surely the fact of a person's gender is part of the mental frame through which I interact with that person; it's part of the mental frame through which they interact with the world, just as it is part of mine.

I think I am uxorious because my wife is the person she is, and happens to be a woman; if she were a man, she'd either be my best friend or I'd need a different word than uxorious to describe myself and a different phrase to describe our relationship than 'female led'. (I am so not an apologist for female led relationships.)

So I sincerely wonder, on a personal level, after one's sexuality is discounted, is gender merely a part of my social reference frame, and then not even a very important part? What is gender good for? To what extent have we managed, will we ever manage, to surpass our gendered evolution? Does it matter?

Self Worth

Self acceptance, acceptance of one's self including all the less than perfect parts and the less than 'normal' parts, is not the same as self worth. I have already pointed out how a fact is different than a fact's worth, different than the personal valuation of a fact that is gained on one's interior through experience. One can accept another person or themselves as they are, not expect them to change, be different, be 'better', be more 'normal', than they are; but this is not the same thing as to value that person, to find worth in that person, or even to find certain worth in that person, or to value that person in a certain manner.

In a very real sense it is an obvious point, but today I found myself, actually telling myself in defense against another (who also felt I offended them), "I have worth, I have value; what I think, what I believe, what I feel, and my opinion, even if no one knows them, matter." And as I said these things to myself I realized I meant these words for myself and not for the other person, I meant to speak the truth and encourage myself, not to convince any other person.

I derive so much meaning from adequately representing and symbolizing my experience, to my self and when communicating with another, I think it is sometimes difficult for me when it seems no one can or will listen, seems no one around who can or will understand. It is at these times I find myself reminding myself I have worth, worth to myself, though no one else may see it, I, from my interior experience, still know.

System Superiority and the 'Real-ness' of Numinous Experience

It occurs to me: so often people scientistically figure we experience what we experience because of our evolutionary genetic 'program code', but what if they have it just reversed? Perhaps the purpose of our having the evolutionary genetic 'program code' that we have is so that that we experience the meaning and significance that we experience.

And this makes me think about why these East meets West grand theories are so problematic: while one side investigates the 'code' system (and infrastructure) and so sees its supremacy over experience, the other investigates the 'meaning' system and so sees its supremacy over the 'code'; one is scientism, the other ideology, but both are equally dogma in their absolutist claims. Perhaps more truthfully they may only be effectively superior to the other in some areas and ultimately neither is superior over the other in the larger picture. Perhaps together they make a single integrated interface with feedback loops on both scientific and experiential scales (both material and spiritual scales, both micro and macro scales, both individual and human-wide scales, both compact cosmological and diverse differentiated scales and 'both' etc. ad nuaseam).

And this naturally makes me wonder how such a system might come about, and it's a question I fear because I cannot fathom how there could be a single resolved 'originating both' (with real explanatory power on 'both' sides) as with the 'systematic both' cases above.

Andreas Kluth says here: "Sure, it might be helpful to see meaning (= believe in God), but that does not mean that there actually is meaning (=God). Sartre might be right after all." Yet I rather think Sarte had a belief, because he believed there no God, and this belief and its consequences had meaning for Sarte. Thus I agree with 'Phillip S Phogg' here when he says it may not matter whether we believe there is or isn't a 'God', what matters is that we believe something and thereby we have meaning. (Although unlike Phogg, I refrain from making any blanket [objective] statements about ' all so-called objective realities'.)

I somewhat agree with 'Solid Gold Creativity' who argues in the same place that "human beings are meaning-making machines". Although I'd use 'meaning-matrices' because machine connotes a certain scientism I'd avoid, and while 'making' underscores his thought that there is no innate meaning within the universe or cosmos, such a thought seems a dogmatic assuming presumption, as does that meaning is already there and that we simply 'find' it.

Similarly I believe I am an agnostic: while I believe humans can make no non-dogmatic statements about the absolute nature of the universe (or cosmos) or the (or any) divine, I yet derive meaning (and observe other humans deriving meaning) from the association of our numinous experiences with 'divine flavor'.

For me, meaning and the numinous experience are, and remain, my experiential bottom line, but I cannot resolve to place them in any hierarchy.

Fearing (the Programming of) the Numinous Chase

In a way perhaps it matters not whence cometh the numinous relationship meaning (see also here), perhaps if one found the source, the efficacy, the power, the mystery, or some other part of the process, might fade away. Again: unneeded differentiation can destroy effective symbolization of the experience - yet when can one say this is enough differentiation, that I need go no further than this, especially if the manner in which one is accustomed to furthering symbological meaning in their life by the process of differentiation. Where the line in the sand?

If we are here, living life, in order to experience the experientially derived meaning and purposes in life (again I wonder how many numinous nodes of human experience there can be, at least whether infinite or finite), then chasing the source of the numinous relationship experience must be like chasing the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow: it works only for a little while and then one finds one's self lost with the rainbow gone.

And then I think about the idea of humans as 'programmed' for meaning, 'programmed' for the purpose of finding meaning, purpose and significance (perhaps why I find that article so interesting, the idea of human evolutionary genetic code, our 'programming', being scientific and sacred, without being scientistic). I happen to find meaning in chasing the numinous via the node of increasing differentiation (though I run the risk of over-differentiation) as well as through the node of a rather uxorious romantic relationship - I don't think the exact nature of the 'programming' is significant, other than what it is programmed for, e.g. finding meaning, purpose, significance, value and worth through experience.

This seems to me an especially powerful idea, potentially with great explanatory power. It admittedly has all the hallmarks of a (personal) 'grand theory of everything', but who doesn't seek to make their mental framework increasingly accurate and adequate for their human experience, or even all human experience?