https://youtubetranscript.com/?v=hBz-pmhEEkg
We’re seeing a whole, I guess, collapse of intimacy, let alone sex. And I don’t think that’s just explained by the political nature. So I’d be interested in your thought. Yeah, well, I don’t know the literature on the decline in sexual activity well enough to know if it’s valid or reliable. But I mean, I think that in a stable society, you take lots of things for granted. You take the fact that men and women are going to be sexually attracted to one another for granted. And even though it’s more fragile than it appears, and it’s suppressed more easily than you might think, and you take the idea that men and women are going to move together towards the establishment of long-term intimate relationships for granted. But that’s partly because you don’t understand what invisible preconditions exist to make that self-evident. And when those invisible preconditions are disrupted by rapid technological or sociological change, then things shift underneath you, and you don’t know why. A lot of it is traced to the advent of the smartphone, especially in the Generation Z. Kate was explaining this to us, that you could see it was broadband internet and the smartphone that led to this increasing fall-off of relationships. Well, maybe the abstract is more interesting than the proximal. You see that when you’re having dinner with people. I want to know the truth. Have you ever been with somebody you loved, and found fascinating and all that, but you really want to get back to your smartphone? Has that ever happened? Yeah, well, it happens all the time. It happens to me. She’ll never admit it. No. It happens during our podcast. Yeah. Yeah. I’m just going to tell you to put your phone down. No, I’m researching things for the purpose of the podcast. They’re very addictive. Yeah, they’re very addictive. And I read the other day that the perforated. They’re very alluring. They are. They’re kind of going together. The preferred method of interpersonal communication between young people now is texting rather than face-to-face communication. And the swiping. The apes don’t swipe. That’s a very interesting topic, too, like the Tinder phenomenon. Because that’s also a major technological revolution. Because what it’s done, I would say, for the first time is reduce the cost of rejection to males to zero. Because it hides it. The only people you ever hear from are people who haven’t rejected you. Although they, true. But there was one man who had to make 300. He actually tallied it. He had to make 300 requests of swiping right away. Yeah. To yield one. So I think he had the sense of rejection. Sure, sure, sure. But it’s massively attenuated. And it’s not observed. You’re not being humiliated. Not at all. Not at all. It’s really at arm’s length. And you can swipe very, very rapidly. And so you can get all that rejection over with in a very short period of time. It’s like losing a video game or something. Well, less. Worse. I mean, not nearly as bad. Yeah. So I don’t know what. And Tinder also reduces the. One of the other things that you want to think about with regards to sex, and I think this is probably particularly true for women, is that to what degree is it in women’s interests to allow the cost of sex to fall to zero? Because pornography certainly does that. And it just seems to me that that’s not a very good long-term strategy for relationships between men and women. Because whatever sex is worth, the cost of zero is the wrong price. And so that’s. You know, I’ve heard from. Well, you can go to the bunny ranch and pay quite a bit for it. Well, true. True. But that’s true. But you don’t have to. And I’ve heard from a number of women, what Red Blog reports on their frustration with their attempts to be relatively sexually selective. Like, let’s say they decide that they’re not going to sleep with their new partner on the first date. You know, they’re frustrated by the fact that to the degree that they’re being cautious in their sexual behavior, which I think is actually an admirable idea, that they’re instantly out-competed, especially if their partners are somewhat impulsive, by women who will say yes at the drop of a hat. And so, well, again, I don’t think. You know, it depends on what the goal is. That’s the thing, is that there’s the short-term sexual gratification. But the literature indicates that married couples, for example, or couples in a permanent long-term monogamous relationship are more sexually satisfied than single people. And maybe the single people have to be parsed out into those who are sexually successful and those who aren’t. But I suspect that wouldn’t make that much difference. But whatever. There’s the utility of relatively immediate sexual gratification for whatever that’s worth and the adventurousness that goes along with that, let’s say, the hunt and the excitement of having a new partner and all of that. And maybe even the danger that’s associated with that, because people like to have a little bit of danger in their life. But what’s the goal? It’s like, what do people want? And I mean, there’s a great book called A Billion Wicked Thoughts that was written by Google engineers. And so it contains great psychology, because Google engineers don’t care about political correctness. And they just write down what they find. They don’t even notice that it’s politically incorrect. Hence James DeMore, for example. And what they found was that women use pornography just as much as men. But the pornography that women use is verbal. It’s not imagistic. And that pornographic novels, essentially, follow the same extraordinarily standard plot line to the degree that publishing houses like Harlequin, which are I was going to say, it’s the Bodice Rippers, the romance novels. That’s right. So in the Harlequin series, you have the ones that were published in the 1970s that are tame. They’re pretty hot, actually. Well, there’s a variety. They range from completely tame to, essentially, to hardcore pornography. But the plots are quite similar. And the plot is young, relatively innocent woman finds powerful, interesting, dangerous male, tames him, and then they live happily ever after. Yeah. And it’s the Beauty and the Beast plot, which is a fundamental. Wasn’t the biggest search for women on PornHub we discovered, we did an episode on porn, was for women it was rape? Wasn’t that like the show? No, lesbianism. Or at least that was your porn. That was your search. That’s not me. OK. I don’t know. My porn is going to the William Sonoma store. I know. It is. It is female porn. All those pots. Oh, the pots and pans. No, but they’ve been serious. The philosopher, Bill Maher, once said that men and women should never tell one another their fantasies, because women are outraged by what we say and we’re totally bored by what they say. And I thought, like, women have kind of these scenarios and, you know, I don’t know, unicorns. I don’t know what they’re doing. Storylines. Storylines. And men are just like, I don’t want to say this to you, but there’s a lot of just close ups of female body parts. Yeah. Well, men are much more visually oriented sexually. But now they’re being shamed. I mean, now it’s called the male gaze. And so there’s all of this, like, oh my god, the Sports Illustrated is exploiting the female figure. I say, yeah, I mean, men like it. And I’m worried that now, sort of the way in the past, gays were shamed. We’re now reversing it and shaming, like, heterosexual. Yes, that’s definitely happening. Remember, we had the young woman who complained about being whistled at, and I said, don’t worry, it stops. Yeah. Do we have a little bit of time for a couple more topics with you? Because one of the things that is coming out of this younger generation, and you have a chapter of it in your book, which I don’t. Sorry, I wanted to finish the line that we were pursuing. Oh, sorry. I should do that. Well, with sexual behavior, the question is, what’s the end game? And this is what people have to ask themselves. It’s like, one of the corollaries to the female pornographic romance is actually the establishment of a long-term relationship. And the question is, you know, it’s so funny, because I got pilloried in the New York Times for talking about enforced monogamy. It’s quite interesting, because I talk to them. That gets brought up, like, in every Starkey interview. It’s so ridiculous. I talked to that woman for two days. I know, and it’s just like a little side comment, and then that became the center of the showcase. Can you just explain like enforced monogamy? You mean forced marriage? No, I mean that it was an anthropological term, which she knew perfectly well, because she’s a very smart person. And all it means is that there’s a pronounced proclivity in human societies around the world to enforce monogamous relationships at multiple levels of the sociological hierarchy. You do it culturally. You do it in expectation. You do it legally. One, enforced monogamy. So my son was just married, and if he came to me next year and he said, you know, hey, Dad, guess what? I’ve managed to have four affairs in the last year with hot women, and my wife hasn’t found out about any of them. I’m not going to pat him on the back and say, good job, kid. You know, I’m going to say, what the hell’s up with you? You know, you violated the vow that you took. You’re putting your whole future at risk. You’re betraying yourself and your wife. And well, that’s enforced monogamy. You know, the idea is that the social norm is the establishment of a long-term monogamous relationship and that there are strictures put in place to support that, but also to punish deviation from it. And you say, well, you know, maybe not so much on the punishment end, but it depends. It’s like, what do you want? What is it that you want? You want a long-term stable relationship or not? And if that’s the goal, then your behavior should be devoted to whatever it is that facilitates that goal. And I don’t see that. I certainly don’t see that casual and impulsive sex fits that bill, not in the least. And all of the evidence with regards to living together shows that that’s actually detrimental to the establishment of a long-term relationship. So first of all, common law marriage, people who are in common law marriage are much more likely to be divorced. That’s the first thing. The second thing is people who live together before they get married are much more likely to be divorced after they get married. So the idea that, well, you can try someone on for size and see how it works, and then you’re going to see if you’re compatible, it’s like, that’s one story. Another story is, well, how about you and I live together for a little while, and you’re not so bad, but maybe I can find someone better. And if I do in the next year and a half or so, because we’re not hooked together in any formal way, I can just trade you in. It’s OK. You can do the same to me. But I don’t really see that as the sort of complementary mutual interaction that leads to the formulation of long-term trust. And I think it’s a better story for interpreting what constitutes living together than, well, we’re going to try each other out because that’s what mature people would do. It’s a lease or a rental. Yeah. Well, that’s right. You can wash the rental cars or you can use the lease. Yeah. Well, that’s it. But most importantly, the data indicate that it doesn’t work, is that you’re more likely to get divorced, not less likely. Because maybe the right attitude is, well, you’re probably about as flawed as me, and we’re lucky that we found each other. And so let’s see if we can make a commitment, because we’re engaging in something that’s very risky, you know, an intimate relationship. And we’re going to commit to each other and see if we can build something of value across time. And there’s a definite risk in that, but there’s a compliment to your partner. It’s like, well, I think you’re worth making a sacrifice for. And what’s the sacrifice? Well, it’s everyone else. It’s a big sacrifice. And if you don’t see that as a compliment, then I don’t think you’re thinking. Because not only is it a compliment, it’s sort of like the ultimate compliment. And maybe you don’t get to have a marriage that works without that compliment. Maybe it’s so difficult to establish a long-term relationship that’s functional that you have to make a walloping sacrifice very early on in the relationship in order for that to even be a possibility. And maybe not, because what the hell do we know about what binds people together? But it’s not that easy to stay with someone for a long period of time. You know, it’s a real commitment. It takes a tremendous amount of effort.