Reductionism and Holism

I believe that the male brain is naturally more reductionistic, attempting to understand things by breaking them into pieces and understanding the pieces. And ascribing rules to describe and control the world around them. Like in physics or chemistry, understanding the smaller elements in order to gain insight and influence on the larger systems. The part teaches about the whole.

The female brain on the other hand is more holistic, tending to use the wider context to give meaning to the smaller pieces. For example, the particular words you say are much less important than the context of the interaction. In fact, it's the context and tonality that gives the majority of the meaning to the particular words. The whole teaches about the part.

Different domains are not equally well suited to reductionistic vs. holistic styles of thinking. Some domains are all about analysis and dividing. Other domains are better suited to synthesis and merging.

The interesting thing is that interpersonal things, including (especially) male-female interactions is I think very well suited to a holistic understanding, where she "just knows" this or that (or thinks she does). But a lot of it just doesn't fit with the male brain, specifically with male styles of learning or of knowledge. But you have to seek understanding with the brain you have. The Game is an attempt to force the soft, non-logical, holistic information into a hard, logical, reductionistic framework. And it succeeds to some extent, but at times it can get frustratingly vague and touchy-feely. The occasional vagueness is not a weakness exactly, but a symptom of the underlying phenomenon being described.

Historically, no understanding was required. Prevailing culture dictated that women should get married, and women were essentially transferred from being subordinate to their fathers to being subordinate to their husbands. Income patterns reinforced it. It was unfortunate, but it did mean that in courtship men did not have to understand social dynamics to any real depth, which is convenient because the male brain is less suited for it anyway.

Things are clearly different now, and understanding social dynamics is not an optional bonus skill for men.

Selected forum posts

I decided sometimes when I have a particularly "good" post on the Dallas Lair forums, I'll also put it up here. Since I'm not taking the time to write for the blog, I can reuse my other commentary here.