A Writer Comments...
Dear Melanie – I greatly enjoyed the Advanced Dramatica class
last night. It is a testament to the power of your ideas that in my sleep-deprived
state I could sit still for three hours and be quite riveted.
I had a comment on Male-Female mental sex that might be of some
interest to you, though I suspect you may have been over this ground already.
For some time I have thought that there are two ways of knowing
– 1) rule-based/logic, and 2) pattern matching. An example of
rule-based would be "A=B and B=C ==> A=C"; an example of pattern
matching would be a director knowing that the cast of a stage play is motivated to do good
work because he’s worked with other successful casts.
Rule-based works well on many classes of problems (e.g., if you fire a
rocket at such & such a trajectory it will land on Saturn). It allows you to
support a conclusion by referring back to defined elements and their proven
interactions. It fails to work when elements are not clearly distinct or
interactions are complex. For instance, it seems unlikely that that anyone will ever
be able to predict global weather based on number crunching of simple elements such as
molecules, pressure and temperature.
To solve these more complex problems, pattern recognition is
necessary. In other words, you discover that generally whenever it’s cloudy in
Fiji and snowing in New York, Seattle is warm and dry. You don’t know why that
is; you can’t "prove" it; yet it is a rule you can live by and
therefore recognizing that pattern is adaptive.
So when I hear Male vs. Female mental sex, I frequently translate it
to Rule-Based vs. Pattern Matching. This seems to explain all of the relationships
simply and helps me avoid getting distracted by stereotyping one gender or the
other. However, I do not yet know what to make of Chris’s comment that
"the biggest difference between male & female mental sex is the way that time and
space are perceived." So I look forward to hearing more on that at some
opportunity.
--Mark
Melanie Replies...
Hi, Mark, and thanks for the note. I'm glad you are enjoying the class. I'll try to
make the next one a bit more boring, so you can catch up on your sleep!
As for male/female systems of perception, the linear (IF "a" THEN
"b") and the pattern (WHEN "a" ALSO "b", as exemplified in
the statement, "where there's smoke, there's fire") are both inherently male
mental sex appreciations, because they are both spatial/binary/particulate. Even in your
example of weather prediction by pattern, the "given" that is built into that
perspective is that there is a difference between Fiji, New York, and Seattle. Female
mental sex would find no such distinction.
You have correctly named two items in a quad of perspectives. The first one is linear,
the second one is comparative. Here are the other two, by analogy: If linear sets the
direction and pattern determines the speed, then the first FEMALE mental sex perspective
would be like acceleration, and the second perspective would be CHANGES in acceleration.
In terms of another analogy, the first female mental sex perspective would be like
watching the changing colors in a sunset. The second would experiencing changes in the
rate at which the colors change.
Have you ever stepped outside on a blustery day with big puffy clouds that cause
dappled patterns of shadow and light to move across the ground, from where you are all the
way to the horizon?
Even if you don't think about what causes the patterns (linear) and even if you don't
register the patterns directly at all, you still get an emotional sense of the
"flavor" of the landscape as areas brighten and darken, and this
"flavor" is due to the fact that the lightening and darkening is not linear, but
accelerates, starting out slowly, then gradually increasing in speed until the final
breakthrough of sun happens very quickly. That experience is like the FIRST of the female
mental sex perceptions of the world, but female mental sex will experience EVERYTHING IN
LIFE primarily from that perspective (or from the second female mental sex perspective.)
The second perspective can also be seen on that cloudy day. Do you know how it feels
when the sun ALMOST peeks out but flirts with the clouds instead? So, it is accelerating
toward appearing and then slows down, perhaps changes its mind, and heads deeper into the
shadows with not only greater speed, but greater acceleration.
That constantly shifting flavor of the emotional experience as the RATE OF ACCELERATION
changes is very close to the second female mental sex perspective.
Now, the point about male and female seeing Time and Space differently... Imagine that
all four of these perceptions are available to both male and female mental sex
individuals. But, the male mental sex begins in the linear, then seeks the pattern, then
senses the acceleration (indicating the forces at work) and finally arrives at an
awareness of the change in the forces through observing change in acceleration. In
contrast, female mental sex would FIRST sense the changes in acceleration, then refine
that to see the average acceleration (making acceleration appear temporarily constant),
THEN see the patterns as being comprised of distinct units of shadow and light, and
FINALLY see the linearity of progress from light to dark to light.
Each mental sex would see all four, but due to the ORDER or SEQUENCE in which the
perceptions are experienced, the personal MEANING and therefore the VALUE and IMPORTANCE
of both the entire scenario AND it's components would come out differently.
Looking at SEQUENCE is a binary temporal view of the whole above process. Another way
to look at it would be that male and female mental sex individuals give a different
EMPHASIS to each of the four perspectives. That is a binary SPATIAL view of the process.
So, as you can see, even in my description of the differences, I have adopted a binary
framework as a means of communication. Therein lies the real answer to you investigation:
because the spatial and temporal (binary/holistic) frame of reference is built in to the
brains of male or female mental sex people, no matter how much you look toward the
opposite side, no matter how far you step back, you will always still have a point of view
that is biased toward the binary or holistic on top of your perspective.
This is why male and female mental sex individuals will never be able to ever TRULY
experience how the other variety sees and feels about life, but can only approximate it in
terms of the spatial or temporal bias that forms a foundation of our very awareness.
Hope this give you cause for thought, and doesn't keep you up all night!
Melanie
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