"Hooking Up" as opposed to just plain "Hooking".

21 November 2018 [link youtube]



Youtube Automatic Transcription

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no no one one of my ex-girlfriends used to claim that I was like tone-deaf because my whistling was so bad I'm like what well you know I'm great if I don't know I think I think I get the tone across that you can recognize the song I'm whistling if you're a regular viewer on this channel so a lot of the times when people want to change the way we express things the way we talk about things the vocabulary we use in 21st century culture is for the purposes of censorship or it's for the purposes of I guess behavioral engineering try to change the way people act so one of the most bizarre examples of this there was actually a law proposed for New York City to ban stand-up comedians from using the n-word like I think it would have banned anyone at like a public gathering or ceremony from the N word something like this but it actually would have included stand-up comedians I seem it died in committee like I said honestly never even googled it again to see whatever that law but I remember Chris Rock and a bunch of other stand-up comedians we're like oh yeah right you're gonna stop me from using the n-word this kind of thing but you understand the ultimate purpose of that kind of censorship is the the dream is the fable that you're gonna change human behavior you're gonna change the underlying values by changing the words that mask those values and you can feel you can feel my my skepticism others as Shakespeare says you know like a rose by any other name would smell as sweet what I got to tell you we can come with you for a lot of things in life and whatever the thing being euphemized about is gonna be the same um but you know I have a separate reason for why I often want to change the language we use in 21st century culture and that is to avoid self-deception so you know have a female friend and she asked me she she asked me a question in which a crucial phrase was hooking up okay so I'm this is the intro I'm gonna tell you it's gonna tell you the scenario bus I really can't quite cut it down to one sentence here and I've got to say part of my feeling is couldn't we ban the phrase hooking huh not another thing I want to ban the F word or the S word I don't want to ban the action but there's a really strange kind of self-deception going on in the 21st century you know revolving around human relationships and hooking up so this put of a mine partly for that reason and partly because I had a conversation today with somebody somebody who was sincerely inspired by Jordan Peterson subject for another video I'm not a fan of Jordan Pearson but it was interesting again hearing from someone who really responded positively to his kind of cranky old man discourse about monogamy but you know so he has a kind of hyper monogamous view of human relations that basically everything has to be married I don't know if he even allows sex before marriage that guy I don't know if he's taking up if he's taking a hard Catholic position on that or what he seems to hint at some of that alright anyway leaving that aside that also put them on so this friend of mine you know asked for my opinion asked him advice and she said well there's this guy that she's interested in and that she's to some extent already involved with and she saw him with another woman on social media and he's with this other woman he's approximately thirty years old I don't know the woman's age wasn't mentioned in the anecdote and this other woman he's spending time with is a single mom with a kid so there's pictures of him on social media with the whole family so to speak right and so she asks him look is this serious are you in a relationship with this woman and his answer was no we're just hooking up and you know from my perspective I'm asking like even hypothetically what would that mean what could that possibly mean how is it even conceivable that you could be spending quality time with a woman and her kid you know what do you think they don't talk you think they communicate through hand gestures you think they mine you think they have no emotional involvement what exactly is the illusion or delusion or excuse what does it mean to be just hooking up now again no homo no Jordan Peterson no no false Christian like morality here but you know there is such a thing in our culture as just hooking up where there's no emotion involved and there's no you don't talk or care about each other's taste in music or movies it's called prostitution right so like but my girlfriend got a little bit upset about me a couple days ago they're gonna tell the whole the whole scenario because she watched a mainstream TV show called the x-files and she knows I'm not interested in watching the ex well it's not that big a deal it's no big deal like you know we I joked around about it with her she wasn't really joking he was pretty upset I was like so you're secretly watching the x-files and you didn't want I wouldn't approve this TV show okay okay okay okay if you care about someone enough to lie about the facts but even the opposite if you care about someone enough that you even want to know their opinion about a mainstream TV show you know like oh I care about your taste in music and movies this is setting the bar real low people we're not not getting you the history and politics and science and ethics and philosophy here but even at that level there is no such thing as hooking up right now on the other hand okay hypothetically if whether you are male or female watching this video whether you are gay or straight if you just pay someone to pretend to be your girlfriend or boyfriend for one shameful night if it's just prostitution and then they want to talk to you about the x-files show you may imagine yourself saying look look homeboy I do not give a damn what you have to say about the x-files season six I am NOT here for that I don't respect your opinion whether I like the show and you hate the show or maybe I hate the show and you love the show no no we are just hooking up that would be that would be just hooking up but are you gonna tell me or are you gonna tell yourself that it's possible to be involved with somebody to sleep with them to have sex with them to eat meals with them to have conversations with them to babysit their kid to get to know their family to be involved in this way and to be quote unquote just hooking up right this is why I say to me it's not like censorship it's not like the N word it's not like you know trying to eliminate something for just being noxious I think there's a really kind of dangerous form of self-deception here if we're willing to tell ourselves that in the set that there even is a category called hooking up and look I mean you know I've lived in all these different cultures living in Thailand is like the world's strongest argument for not legalizing prostitution if you think you're the most liberal person in the world just live for a chunk of time in Thailand and look at the social consequences of living in a country with massive levels of legalized and normalized prostitution right societies like Japan even Taiwan the impacts of prostitution are massive I want to live in a tolerant society I don't want to live in some kind of repressive Catholic or repressed Muslim society where they really try to stamp these things out you know they're all these kinds of things but I think I mean you know I think there is a very fundamental yearning in human nature to be a member of a tribe to be a member of a clan to be a member of a small group that's larger than a family because you know not even in evolutionary time but in historical time we all get ill we all get amoebic dysentery we all get even the common cold and diarrhea if you don't have people around you who care for you and love you enough to take care of you when you're sick if you live in a society where everybody treats everybody else like a prostitute where all of your relationships are transactional or short-term exchanges of favors even if it includes flattery and personal interaction to some extent you know where everything is commercialized and commodified to that extent you know who's gonna take care of you when you're the one who's sick who would raise your child if you die early and who's gonna you know go through the work of raising she'll with who's gonna build a home with you who's gonna care about you in that way I don't think that tendency is in any way ineluctably monogamous I don't think you know Christianity or Islam got it right but the question of how do you build meaningful relationships friendships or otherwise in the 21st century I think we've got some stumbling blocks and we can remove those stumbling blocks but maybe removing some of the deception and self-deception that's even built into this kind of language because the end of the day we can all pretend we're cool we can all pretend we don't care we can all pretend we're just hooking up but ultimately I think what we have to say to one another is don't treat me like a prostitute I don't want to wake up and feel like I'm just a prostitute to you and the odds are neither to you