Open Relationships vs. Enforced Monogamy (vs. Jordan Peterson!)

what is my opinion on open relationships
polyamory other forms of non monogamy first of all I think casual sex is a contradiction in terms I don't think there's anything about sex that's casual you tell me what's more of an embarrassment to conservatives the sexual politics of Donald Trump who seems to take pride in being caught with his pants down especially when it's women who've had extensive plastic surgery and have appeared nude in what widely known magazines or the sexual politics of somebody like Jordan Peterson who in some ways is more of an authentic conservative but in other ways is more of a laughable prude and makes your whole movement seem out of touch with reality in as much as any of these people can be construed as members of any movement I hope or topple Trump get on the streets and protesting for our goddamn thing in the ten years I don't remember being a member of any movement now that I think about it let alone a leader of a movement yeah hmm funny that same same with Jordan Peterson I remember Jordan Peterson making a lot of really lame appearances on TV on zero anyway so look guys I'm gonna cut to a six minute clip here a clip of Jordan Peterson and then separately a clip about Jordan Peterson you got to see what his position is on this and I'm gonna follow up my commentary in a few he essentially says that sort of monogamy should be enforced and everybody needs to like you know like men needs to be delivered sex and and so they she was like doesn't that sort of like contradict your sort of non-compulsory politics and you just make society seem to function better that is less violently let's say when there's one woman per man if there's many women per man there aren't many women for every man there are a handful of men let's say a minority of men a Pareto distribution of men who have a disproportionate number of women and a lot of men who have none and those aren't happy man let's that way they're men who are very likely to get up to no good very rapidly violent attacks are what happens when men do not have partners mr. Peterson says society needs to work to make sure those men are married was it no one who's married has ever raped anyone he was angry at God because women were rejecting him mr. Putin says of the Toronto killer the cure for that is enforced monogamy what that's why actually why monogamy I don't even know understand that that's not very libertarian but wait a second he's not talking about enforcement agha me he's talking about enforced mating well this is the further there's a further quote he said but aside from interventions that would redistribute sex mr. Peterson is staunchly against what he calls equality of outcomes in an effort to equalize society he usually calls them pathologically evil Wow what is my opinion on open relationships polyamory other forms of non-monogamy well I think that as a medium to long term strategy they're completely untenable because human beings as far as I'm concerned are fundamentally pair-bonding and you know if you're just talking about casual sex first of all I think casual sex is a contradiction in terms I don't think there's anything about sex that's casual and I think that people are deceiving themselves badly whenever they think so they might like to live in a you know 1970s playboy adolescent fantasy but I don't I've never seen that work under any circumstances whatsoever and I think people get hurt badly otherwise women will only go for the most high status men I okay but this is that's not enforced monogamy is you somehow must pair up with one while he's conferring while he's conflating that exactly he's he's he's synchronize you would have a knock on him it would have a knock-on effect what you don't understand what effect he's complaining two things first every man needs to have sex or it's dangerous and then they need to be married and marriage needs there needs to be enforced monogamy that's literally that's what he's saying okay but he but the horsemen agha me is a second-order issue that's whether or not your wife is going to cheat on signals in that please saying the there needs to be enforced mating yeah but he's saying like we can get there if that's if we enforce we have society like pressures towards monogamy because then the like alpha males are taking up less of the women you know that sort of thing oh I see so the ins regulation on the men you can only sleep with one woman at a time yeah it's like yeah maximum income but for sex to sleep around casually is to imply that sections casual to imply that sex is casual is to assume implicitly that it can be divorced from the rest of life emotional life motivational life values all of that and you can divorce it but you pay a big price for that I think the price you pay is like the virtual it's well the word psychopathic keeps leaking leaping to mind leaking to mind yeah good old Freud you have to reduce a person to the casual pleasure of a transient sexual interaction in order to sleep around casually and I think that once you establish that as a habit with sex which is a deep deep experience if you if you'll do that with sex which is a deep experience then and you learn how then what makes you think that won't transfer to everything else that you do I mean sometimes they're open people and they're creative and they're exploratory and all of that and fair enough but often they're just unconscious and they don't want to take any responsibility and they want to live in this wish fulfillment fantasy where everybody can have all the sex they want all the time and it's always wonderful and no one gets hurt and it's like sorry that just doesn't work in the real world Jordan Peterson that's a bold move to be like oh you know restrictive redistribute of tax policies that's Soviet on the other hand we literally need to fix the culture in many ways nothing far right about that god I'm not far right have a fascist rape state that's all what you call a fascist rape state unbelievable contagious chameleon what do you think the implications are I mean the argument here though okay let's say there are not any high status males who are available at that time the implication is like the women are still going to have sex with like the Jordan Petersons exactly the world exactly exactly now who's laughing now some you might think this is the easiest sort of video for me to make as opposed to a video that's about like the history of the Cambodian genocide but it's actually the most difficult for me because it's about six different issues at the same time I prefer to deal with what issue in a focused manner genocide or some other disaster or what have you so many things spring to mind on this first and foremost is I think that Jordan Peterson's whole position is built on a misconception about what open relationships entail when you scale them up socially of course it's also truly as misconception what it means for just one person in isolation now if if the problem being faced by in cells by people living in involuntary celibacy if the problem really were a scarcity of available women which it is not I mean patently if you just look at if you read their own statements on the internet the problem isn't that there are no women you know not even in in you know Alaska and so on to people phrase the problem this way you know anyway sorry there are some incredibly remote areas of the world where you live in a mining site or you're in the military and there were just no women around there are some situations you know where the gender balance is way off but with that aside on a social scale on a national scale nobody not even the guys who are struggling with in military celibacy say that it's it's scarcity of females but if it were just ask yourself this this question honestly how often do you hear about women who have been taken off the market who are not really available in this way because of disability because of a drinking habit because of alcoholism sir look I'm from Canada I used to live in Scotland alcoholism is that epidemic proportion through these countries I remember a government report oh sorry I shouldn't say it was really like an anti-government report was a criticism of government policy pointing out that the government was spending vastly more money dealing with the AIDS crisis than it was dealing with alcoholism but actually in a country like Canada alkyl ISM and even specifically fetal alcohol syndrome these were much much larger problems much larger concerns you see you see that right now what are the odds that that siren you just heard going past the background it's alcohol-related uh uh alcoholism drug addiction obesity there are a lot of women who are you know you know I see some of them on my Jim we have some really morbidly obese people trying to get in shape opposite am i Jim and so on there are people there are huge numbers of people who are off the market in this sense due to drug addiction even gambling major social problems we all hear about and that frankly you probably have relatives you've heard about going through these people who are not dating or not getting married or not settling down and having kids because of serious health problems psychological problems and of course the mother of all these problems the mother of all sociological problems is poverty right there are women who are in no situation to date or start a family because of poverty so these are factors that have taken if you look at it and route from Jordan Peters perspective if you look at it as if the fundamental problem is there are a lot of men trying to settle down and get married and there just aren't enough women for them to compete for I think any any sincere person in the Canadian context in the Scottish context or and many others would say you know these are the kind of kinds of factors and of course if you even just ask the women if it's the problem that there are so many men wanting to sell I don't think anyone perceives the problem this way and again even the in cells themselves the guys who have these websites discussing involuntary celibacy that's not how they perceive the problem so he's he's starting off he's not just posing a false solution it's a false solution to a false problem but stick with this for a minute if you know people in open relationships if you know people who practice poly Emily or if you just know people who in the parlance of our times [ __ ] around did they really take large numbers of people off the open market permanently I've lived in many condition of the world and I mean a large number of these countries it is completely normal for married couples to have other partners to sleep with people other than the person they're married to have you heard of far-off distant and exotic France really French culture think about extramarital sex in French culture have you heard of you're at a Thailand in China there's a lot of emphasis on celibacy and having few sexual partners before you get married but then once you get married it's a much more permissive culture there their concept of fealty in the marriage it well it's not Christian right in all these cultures I mean if you think about the stereotypical French relationship and several prime ministers of France were in these types of relationships you know and it's been talked about in newspapers and what-have-you especially by people who aren't from France switch from outsiders looking in and how differently the French regard extramarital affairs from the way Bill Clinton was regarded the United States common topic of conversation the the stereotypical situation is that the the given French man has a wife he's married to and having kids with and then there's some other woman on the side who he has some kind of affair with do you really think that other woman is off the market do you think she stops I mean look if she wants to get married have kids if and not everybody does do you think she stops looking for a man to get married to and have kids with like permanently really it's it's just ridiculous the vast majority of open relationships let's keep it all the way real here I would encourage you and I would encourage Jordan Peterson and I would encourage the hosts of the majority report show shout out to them I'm use the clips I would encourage all of these people to be in open relationships at all times and the reason for that actually is in a weird sense is not sex it's because if you want a relationship to last forever if you want to have permanence and durability in the relationship I think you have to face up to accept and embrace the extent to which you know the merely biological desire for sex and things like human curiosity is really something very short-term and fleeting if you go into a relationship with the attitude either this person is has 100% fealty to me or the minute they slip up the minute they sleep with someone else it's over I'm never talking you again well you know either you're setting yourself up for disaster as many people do you're setting now ground rules that will foretell the end of the relationship sooner or later if it's a long enough relationship if you're together 30 years look guys we're a bunch of bipedal monkeys we're not angels trapped in human form we're really not and before proceeding further with this lowbrow commentary I'm one of the most important social issues of our time let me just throw in a little piece of jargon and say that I think Jordan Peterson's whole worldview here is based on a false dichotomy this happens a lot of the time in politics people talk about health care and they present it as if either you have 100% coverage universal health care or you have a hundred percent free market coverage and the reality is most of the real-world examples we can look at including Canada even including Taiwan are a really weird mix of government control and free-market elements universal health care is never universal blah blah blah but it's very easy to stand behind a podium and present this to an audience as if there are two and only two mutually exclusive examples that are diametrically opposed extremes and that's what Jordan Peterson is doing here at every stage the argument when he attacks the concept of casual sex okay so you want to pillory and insult this terminus this point on the extreme on the spectrum and you want to contrast it to the extreme of monogamous intensely meaningful long-term high commitment sex well you know there really is a spectrum of health you see her at goddamnit if this guy's actually worked as a therapist he must have had people coming into his practice who were in monogamous long-term marriages and who found their sex completely meaningless and couldn't get along with her husband her life at all come on the fact that you're not gonna commit a relationship doesn't mean you have great sex it doesn't mean you have meaningful sex and someone his position on it ought to know that anyway but there's a there's a whole range of things here and I think it's really important to reject this kind of false dichotomy and face up to the values that are somewhere in the middle what if sex doesn't have to be either a dirty despicable disposable treatment of one human being that one short one human being using the other as a disposable short-term source of gratification as I think you know Jordan Peterson eloquently you know insults everyone's intelligence by saying what if it doesn't have to either be that or the opposite extreme what if it's possible for you know your sex life you know with people other than your primary partner to be a vote is meaningful as a skiing trip I mean what if you have relationships with these people that are to some extent meaningful and involve some kind of mutual knowledge mutual awareness mutual cooperation some common interests some mutual respect something you put some real effort and interest in maybe a skiing trip wasn't the best possible example I could have thought of maybe I should have said something like visiting the pyramids in Egypt when I think of an undertaking like that it's a significant amount of time it's a significant amount of effort it's something you're gonna remember for the rest of your life even if it's shallow even if it's disappointing I mean I don't think going to visit the pyramids in Egypt or when I rode my bicycle across you know the plains of northeastern Thailand and visited ruins of ancient Buddhist monuments and saw stone inscriptions you know it's shallow the first time I saw the Mekong River it meant a lot to me and I remember for the rest of my life but yeah it's shallow it's not as meaningful as falling in love getting married and having a baby but it's also not something at the despicable opposite end of the scale you can do things with your time and energy where you pour in a certain amount of effort preparation imagination you get to know other people you have meaningful connections and yes you do remember it for the immediate rest of your life maybe you create friendships that last the rest of your life too as a consequence maybe not but the idea that this is something fleeting that this is a matter of treating other human beings as disposable and you being discarded and treated as disposable in itself I don't think that's any more ineluctably true for sexual relations than it is for ski trips or making a pilgrimage to see the pyramids in Egypt or putting your feet in the Mekong River and feeling that you're getting in touch with something whether it's history art politics some kind of meaningful connection to the outside world honestly I think it's a lot easier to have a meaningful connection to another human being than it is to have a connection to a piece of rock or just a view of a landscape I'm really anti skiing I've got to tell you and one of the differences between sex and skiing is that skiing is way more likely to kill you way more likely to break your ankle way more likely to engage result in brain damage hashtag Sonny Bono but you know that aside one thing that sex and skiing have in common is that both are way more dangerous when there's alcohol involved I'd say also they're way more dangerous when there's self-deception involved if you think you're better at skiing than you are then you take risks that you shouldn't and this is probably true about sex and the the human ego and in many other ways but look fundamentally we're a frail breed of bipedal monkey and we're a lot better adapted for finding ways to love each other finding ways to build friendships and meaningful relationships and yeah you know what we really do have this fundamental impulse to relate to one another sexually and you can learn a lot out of that you can have a lot of meaningful relationships meaningful relationships your life with more than just one person especially if you're talking with over a period of decades of long-term relationships and it doesn't have to be one extreme or the other so it serves understand the next and final point I'm making here you have to understand that I'm rejecting both aspects of uh professor Peterson's reasoning I'm both rejecting the idea that uh you know open relationships lead to some kind of nationwide scarcity of available women and and then secondly I'm rejecting the idea that anything other than marriage is dirty despicable is one person reducing another or two to two being a you know disposable means for their their short-term gratification it happens it happens but I mean you know how difficult or easy would it be to challenge the image of marriage presenting do you really think there are no marriages where people don't treat each other terribly I mean that's that's out there too right okay sorry um but this is kind of like a character built on top of a caricature so come back if I was making before and we close on this we're not angels who are trapped in human form and I mean that idea it's actually older than Christianity sorry I've got some ancient Greek philosophy here on the table I was reading poor fury it's remarkable to me that pre-christian Greek philosophy still contains this idea that the soul is trapped in the human body and is trying to escape and you know the soul is just ever so rational and virtuous but it's dragged down to this earth by petty desires no terrible and despicable these desires are look if you can get a little bit comfortable with the fact that flesh and blood skin and bones is all we've got that you know we are you know after all you know biological entities we're not only biological entities we can aspire to do all kinds of wonderful altruistic and creative things are their lives in our time but that is that is what we're made of and that's not a fleshie prison we're trying to escape that's the only vehicle we've got to take us through this life and when that vehicle breaks down and stops running that's the end of it for all of us if we can embrace embrace our own limitations and mortality I think we can at the same time appreciate that you know human curiosity and convey reality and warmth and love and respect and friendship these are things naturally bundled up with sexual instincts probably if you have a co-worker of the opposite sex that you admire in all these ways there's probably a little bit of that sexual attraction bundled up in there and that's not necessarily an evil and despicable thing you have to repress and it's expurgate and again Jordan Peterson this is his field feeling so many ways created by Sigmund Freud Esai give a shout out to you'd think if anyone on earth were comfortable with the contradictions we all have to live with in taking you know a medieval set of moral and moral expectations a medieval set of social institutions and dragging them into the modern era and reconciling them with our awareness of who we are biologically and maybe who we aspire to be philosophically maybe we want to be something more than just a hairless bipedal ape maybe wanna do something better guys you know more is possible than this don't be a prisoner of this kind of ridiculous reductionistic civil joystick pardon me ridiculous reductionistic syllogistic reasoning that presents you with only these two diametrically opposed opposites one of which is pure and one of which it is impure you can be warm and accepting and loving of your primary partner and you can maybe recognize especially if they haven't already been with a thousand partners before they go with you it's they're not already just burnt out on human sexuality and have no more curiosity or capacity to to get with others you know you can set aside those feelings of possession and jealousy and control and revenge and you're actually not harming your primary partner you're not harming others you're definitely not depriving the Jordan peer systems of this world you're not taking anyone off the market at the end of the day the free market we all have to deal with is the free market of ideas it's trying to find other people who find the same things meaningful that we find meaningful finding ways to share our lives with them and yeah tbh sex is part of that ant ant ant ant [Music]