The Problem with Modern Love

0:00 thank you to Squarespace for sponsoring this video more about

0:03 them in just a moment to love at all is

0:06 to be vulnerable love anything and your heart will be rung

0:11 and possibly broken it seems like we have entered a sort

0:15 of Dark Age for love it has almost become a great

0:18 unifier across the political and social Spectra no matter who we

0:22 are and no matter what views we hold everyone seems

0:25 to agree on one thing the way we approach Love Today is

0:29 fun fundamentally broken they may disagree on the causes or even

0:33 what is broken about it but they tend to concur

0:36 that something is rotten in the state of Romance when

0:40 this many people Converge on a single point you can normally bet

0:43 that there is some excellent philosophy involved and with something

0:47 as universal important and life affirming as love at stake it is

0:52 imperative that we take a careful look at the issue so

0:54 in this video I'll be taking some of the most common

0:57 complaints about love from across the internet and explore the philosophical

1:01 background behind those ideas and also consider some constructive criticism

1:06 for the way we might approach friendship passion affection and more

1:10 get ready to learn how optimism and cynicism are close cousins

1:14 how we have killed commitment and why our ideas about

1:17 love are not just muddled but outright contradictory as always bear

1:22 in mind that there is so much more to say

1:23 on this topic than I will do here and that I absolutely

1:26 do not have the final word on the issue I largely

1:29 hope this can simply serve as an aid in your own

1:31 thinking and Reflections about love I would also like to give

1:34 a special mention to the works of Simon May and alandi

1:37 Boton as they were incredibly helpful while researching this video

1:40 but before we get started I want to thank the very

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2:21 purchase of a domain or a website but anyway back

2:24 to love first I recognize that people get a little bit

2:28 embarrassed when they're talking about love so I want to clear

2:31 the air by reassuring you that when it comes to love

2:33 we are all a little bit mad one the terrifying

2:38 Power of Love in Johan Von gerta's the Sorrows of young

2:42 verta we get one of the most extreme yet troublingly

2:45 honest portrayals of love in all fiction and specifically its darker

2:50 and more terrifying aspects the plot follows a young romantic man

2:54 named Vera as he falls deeply in love with a young

2:57 lady called Charlotte who in turn is promise to her lover

3:00 Albert in the frustration and pain of his thwarted love

3:04 verta becomes increasingly erratic whereas before he seemed peaceful calm

3:09 and generally like a reasonable chap if a bit eccentric now he

3:13 was almost violent in his madness he eventually drives both Charlotte

3:17 and Albert away with his outbursts and alone turns a gun

3:21 on himself to end his torment now this is obviously

3:25 a very dramatic story and today it seems incredibly extreme but I

3:29 bring it up because I think it hits upon an important

3:31 point that often goes overlooked in discussions about love and specifically

3:35 that kind of passionate erotic love that can hit us

3:38 at the early stages of dating I think we all know

3:41 the experience of getting to know someone and it becoming

3:43 clear that our feelings for them have become out of touch

3:46 with what is reasonable or rational to feel at this stage

3:50 you become painfully aware of the fact that you are too

3:53 key you think about the object of your affection far

3:56 more than you would admit to anyone outside of a therapist's

3:59 office and suddenly this person who you don't even know all

4:03 that well is of supreme importance to you and their attitude

4:06 to you takes on a quasi metaphysical significance the objectively

4:10 quite trivial details of their actions become tiny opportunities for Obsession

4:15 the time they waited before texting you back whether they laughed

4:18 at your ever so slightly cringey joke whether they broke off eye

4:22 contact just a second too early each of these probably means

4:25 nothing but your AOS adult brain hunts them through the night

4:29 and invest investigates them for Clues like a modern Seer reading

4:32 the future in the entrails of a cat and the patterns

4:35 of amorous Insanity do not end there once you are

4:38 together you start to become ever more attached to this person

4:42 slowly the sense that you could do without them Fades

4:44 into the background and they become a fixture of your life you

4:48 know that you could very well survive on your own

4:50 but in some sense that idea remains unconvincing your cognitive faculties

4:55 are at odds with your emotional reality the other person starts

4:58 to feel like an all while you know that that is

5:01 not strictly true you push the idea that you could even

5:04 be separated far to the back of your mind the concepts

5:07 that your partner might one day turn around and no longer

5:10 love you or die in some horrible accident or that you

5:13 might be split by circumstances outside either of your control

5:16 all of these very real possibilities are denied they are viewed

5:20 as as absurd as asking whether the sun will rise tomorrow

5:24 you are deep in emotional investment and are willing to ride

5:27 this thing as long as it goes alternatively maybe something entirely

5:31 different and equally strange happens your partner does something that you

5:35 find vaguely irritating and all of a sudden you notice

5:38 other parts of them that are annoying as well our Rose

5:40 tinted glasses start to come off but rather than replacing

5:43 them with a more compassionate kind of love one that learns

5:46 to appreciate our lover for who they are our minds immediately

5:50 flip to the reverse we replace our Ruddy spectacles with dark

5:54 ones and everything our beloved does strikes us as unconscionably

5:58 infected with them them we resent them for not living up

6:01 to our expectations while at the same time crying out for them

6:04 to love us in the way that we want to be

6:06 loved paradoxically we both desperately want to stay and desperately want

6:10 to leave our mind is torn between two poles and we

6:14 start to go a bit mad to take a fourth

6:17 example of Love's Madness we might allow our love to Blind

6:20 us to someone who is really quite awful they might neglect

6:24 us or hurt us repeatedly beating us down with their scornful

6:27 emotions they seem to Us in contempt hate us even

6:31 yet at the same time this only draws Us in more

6:35 we say that the problem must be us and we chastise

6:38 ourselves for not earning their approval the beloved's level of affection

6:42 becomes the barometer for our self-worth and we drive ourselves

6:45 crazy attempting to attain it if one of our friends was

6:48 in this situation we would tell them to get out

6:51 say that they are out of their minds that almost anything

6:53 will be better than their current position and yet we stay

6:57 inexplicably against our r Ral Wills only realizing our own Insanity

7:03 after we have already left these four examples illustrate something

7:07 that will become a general theme over the course of the video

7:10 it's a thing we all know and yet we hide

7:12 from it because it makes us really quite embarrassed at almost every

7:16 level love can make us a little bit irrational insane

7:19 and erratic it can make us do things that we would

7:22 never have dreamed turn an ordinary person into some Earthly Angel

7:27 and hide the fact that we are being treated in incredibly

7:30 poorly by someone who professes to love us I want

7:33 to acknowledge this point because if we're going to talk about love

7:36 then we're going to have to get over this embarrassment none

7:38 of us are perfectly rational especially in this sphere and there

7:41 is a reason why being hit with Cupid's arrow was

7:44 seen as almost a sign of Madness why it drove Dao

7:48 to the funeral P even when she had an entire Kingdom

7:51 at her disposal many of the complaints we look at today

7:54 are going to acknowledge the inner emotional chaos of love

7:57 but I want to let you know that it is totally

7:59 okay there is nothing to be embarrassed about and that it

8:02 is Perfectly Natural for this topic to draw out of us

8:04 all those aspects of our characters we desperately want

8:08 to hide so for this video I want you to bear

8:11 in mind n's famous aphorism that which is done out

8:14 of love always takes place beyond good and evil with that groundwork

8:19 laid let's take a peak behind the curtain of our own

8:22 affectionate insanity and see the first complaint that people have

8:26 about modern dating two l expectations a huge number of the issues

8:33 people have with modern dating come back to the idea

8:35 that men or women or both have expectations that are

8:39 far too high we are told that all women really want

8:42 is an absurdly tall man with baby blue eyes who works

8:45 in the city and that conversely every man desires a comically

8:49 proportioned impossibly beautiful young lady

8:51 who is simultaneously sexually veracious

8:53 and chased to the point of parody and to be fair I

8:56 am sure that there are some genuinely awful expectations out there

9:00 and that many of them are very shallow but I think

9:02 that these superficial high standards mask a far deeper more

9:06 philosophical expectation for love that we really ought to reconsider

9:10 the idea that love will redeem us totally and unreservedly

9:14 to a certain extent I think this is baked into the structure

9:17 of falling in love the early stages of courtship are accompanied

9:20 by an unprecedented flush of chemicals in our brain that almost

9:24 resemble a drug binge and this helps cement the idea

9:27 that there is something truly special and unique on the horizon additionally

9:31 we have inherited a whole host of philosophical beliefs about

9:34 love that promise extraordinary things notably many early church fathers began

9:39 to place love and specifically Divine love as the thing

9:42 that grants Humanity its dignity and meaning Simon May explores this point

9:47 in fantastic detail in his history of love for these early

9:50 Christian thinkers love eventually Rose to become the Supreme virtue

9:54 that we humans should strive for we see St Paul write

9:58 that if we do not have love then we have nothing we

10:00 could do whatever great Deeds we wished have faith Beyond

10:03 imagining and even the Divine gift of Prophecy but if we

10:07 don't have love then we gain nothing in other words

10:11 love is painted as a missing ingredient and an essential component

10:15 of a fulfilled and meaningful life to a certain extent religious

10:18 thinkers have a lot more leeway here because when they say

10:21 love they are often talking partly about the Divine love of God

10:25 since God is omnipotent and all loving there are all sorts

10:28 of things his love might be able to do save us

10:30 from hell for instance or give his only son to redeem

10:34 Humanity the trouble is many of us are applying this framework

10:37 not to God but to other people a huge number

10:40 of romantic narratives present love as having an almost god-like power

10:44 even when it is felt by us mere mortals some have

10:47 argued that this is a peculiarity of the Romantic age

10:50 that emerged in the 18th and early 19th centuries but I think

10:53 we can see examples before them for instance in Shakespeare's Romeo

10:57 and Juliet we often focus on the traged of the protagonists

11:00 and forget that it is their love and the consequences

11:03 of preventing it that caused the two vones families to put

11:06 aside their deadly Feud it is because of the misadventured

11:09 pitous overthrows of the two starcross lovers that their death buries

11:13 their parents Strife as a side note a lot of people

11:16 really rag on Romeo and Juliet these days but there's a reason

11:19 it's a classic it's not just two teenagers did stupid things

11:22 even if it is definitely sometimes that this idea that love

11:25 is the Panacea the cure for all your psychological and philosophical

11:29 ills has only increased in recent years I cannot count

11:33 the number of romcoms whose plot is specifically about a protagonist's

11:37 personal problems being plugged by another person romantic love is pitched

11:41 as the solution to everything from Financial stresses to existential crisis

11:46 Beyond this we've inherited historical ideas from the 12th and 13th

11:50 centuries about the ennobling power of love which filtered

11:53 from the Muslim world into Europe in the wake of the Crusades

11:56 under this conception it is not just that love can

11:58 be a motiv Ator to make you better but that love

12:01 in and of itself had a noble ethical quality to it

12:04 this idea was famously dubbed the religion of Love by CS

12:08 Lewis in his book The allegory of love and it is

12:10 true that Romanticism has only intensified this idea in everything from Jan

12:15 Austin to DH Lawrence you see love as the answer

12:18 to General problems of Life which at least in theory seem

12:21 to have very little to do with romance in lady chat's

12:24 lover the protagonist is stuck in a Loveless marriage and her Affair

12:27 certainly helps with that but it also manages to fix

12:30 her General onwe about life itself this is actually a really

12:34 interesting staple of infidelity plots more generally the affair not

12:38 only rekindles the protagonist's views on Love It reinvigorates their entire

12:42 conception of life as I said I think this is

12:45 partly because falling in love does kind of feel like all

12:49 your problems are being solved provided that that love is reciprocated

12:52 we are filled with such rushes of excitement that the very

12:55 notion of an issue almost seems a bit absurd how could

12:59 we be unhappy when they are there with Millennia of cultural

13:03 artifacts supporting this idea it is easy to wholeheartedly believe

13:07 it but there is a small problem because while love is

13:10 wonderful it is not the cure to every problem we have

13:13 and deep down we know this love did not save Tolstoy

13:17 from his depression and it will not help us pay

13:19 the bills the ideal conception of Love rubs up against the nonideal

13:24 world and does not quite fit this might not be so

13:27 bad if we became comfortable with this IDE idea that love

13:30 is great in a whole host of ways but it

13:31 is not omnipotent however we often draw the exact opposite conclusion

13:36 we say that since this love did not solve all

13:38 our issues it must not be real love we might not even

13:41 consciously think this in explicit terms but we begin to blame

13:45 our lover for the things that go wrong in our own

13:47 lives or as debaton wonderfully put it we confuse being

13:51 unhappy around someone with being unhappy because of them in voltaire's

13:55 candid he makes an incisive critique of the idea that we

13:59 in the best of all possible worlds he shows how

14:01 an overly optimistic Outlook can not only Cloud our view

14:04 of reality but also prevent us from actually bothering to improve

14:08 our situation he leans towards a sort of moderate pessimism where

14:12 we approach life safe in the knowledge that things will definitely

14:15 go wrong and that there is no total solution to the issues

14:18 of existence and I think this attitude may help us

14:21 in the way that we approach love it may be very

14:24 comforting to believe that once you are in love the trials

14:27 and tribulations of life will gently Fade Into the background

14:30 and we are constantly bombarded with the idea that this is

14:33 the case but I don't think it's a concept that will

14:36 serve us very well in the long run it expects

14:38 our beloved to have the power of a God and that is

14:42 far too much pressure to place on a single mortal

14:44 person of course unlearning such a deeply rooted cultural belief is

14:49 far easier said than done but this exaggeration of Love's power

14:53 can quickly become a destructive cycle because it has the further

14:57 rather unfortunate effect three The Cult of Aeros as is

15:02 mentioned in probably every article YouTube video and thinkpiece on Romance

15:07 the ancient Greeks had a number of different conceptions of Love

15:11 among others there is Aeros erotic love filia friendly brotherly love

15:16 and Agape or Universal spiritual love Plato held that every single

15:21 type of Love had its place because all of it set

15:23 us on the road to what he saw as the ultimate

15:25 goal of Love contemplating the forms of the good

15:28 and the beautiful today we tend not to agree with Plato about

15:31 the end goal of love but these distinctions still remain

15:34 supremely helpful because the prizing of romantic love has also led

15:38 to the prioritization of Aeros Above All Else and this has

15:42 potentially quite unfortunate consequences let's

15:45 start by considering the Romantic concept

15:47 of the one in its classic form the one is something

15:50 like a soulmate they Walts into your lives pre-made and perfect

15:55 metaphysically destined to be with you perhaps this idea is best

15:58 expressed by Aristophanes in Plato's Symposium where he theorizes that each

16:02 of us is one half of a single multi-med organism

16:05 that has been separated by the gods we must then spend

16:08 our lives searching for our missing half so that we may

16:11 then be complete this idea has the component of the one

16:15 that has received the most criticism in modern years the metaphysical

16:19 uniqueness of the one this concept that there is one specific

16:23 person we are destined to be with is falling out

16:25 of fashion and probably for good reason a te logical conception

16:28 of the universe doesn't mesh that well with dating apps however

16:32 predestination and metaphysical specialness are not

16:35 the only properties of the one

16:36 that exist in our cultural Consciousness there are a whole

16:40 other set of qualities that we often skim over but are

16:42 equally open to philosophical critique to name just a few

16:46 there's the idea that the one is someone with whom you

16:48 are effortlessly compatible that they trigger an instinctive erotic response

16:53 that has a unique phenomenological character that all-important special feeling

16:57 that they fulfill all of your emotional and physical needs just

17:00 by themselves that you do not argue or dispute or disagree

17:05 and if you do then it's a sign of deep narrative

17:07 trouble and that they know you intuitively almost to the point

17:11 of mind reading or Clairvoyance you can see so many

17:14 of these in our classic romantic narratives when Romeo has one conversation

17:18 with Juliet he is instantly smitten as she is with him

17:22 verta describes in detail the special feeling that Charlotte arouses

17:26 in him believing that they would be the perfect pair

17:29 in Notting Hill Hugh Grant is pitched as being just what Julia

17:33 Roberts needs and while in all of these stories there is

17:36 dispute or conflict between the lovers and they may not even

17:39 end up together this is pitched as a great tragedy because

17:42 of the idea in the audience's mind that they are meant

17:45 to be together that they display all the characteristics of being

17:49 each other's ones now some components of the one might

17:54 be very helpful for some people there are very few things

17:56 worse than ending up with a lover who makes you miserable

17:59 so it is useful to have some idea of what

18:01 you want out of romance for some people the cultural myth

18:04 of the one may do just that and nothing more however

18:08 I want to hone in on this idea that a partner is

18:10 meant to fulfill all your emotional needs because this is

18:14 quite an idiosyncratic Concepts and I think it risks idealizing love

18:17 to the point of unattainability it asks an awful lot

18:21 of just one person for Aristotle it was not just romance

18:25 but friendship that was needed for a satisfying life he

18:28 wrote more on simple felia than he did on the passions

18:31 and he specifically praised having a small group of close friends

18:34 with whom you would all strive to be virtuous the Buddha used

18:38 to say that being surrounded by a loving caring Community was

18:41 a good step towards Enlightenment while Michelle deont thought that friendship

18:45 was how we became known by other people without fear where

18:48 we can reveal our secret thoughts and be assured that we

18:51 are not being used but appreciated in some ways I

18:55 think we've taken these insights on board in our modern conception

18:58 of love people are much more likely to describe their partner

19:00 as their best friend than they were in the previous Century

19:03 nonetheless if we look at the emphasis we currently place

19:06 on erotic love and compare it to the meager attention we

19:09 give to Friendship culturally speaking there is no contest besides

19:13 a few Staples like the buddy cop movie and the heist film

19:17 Each of which also tends to involve a romantic subplot we

19:20 give AOS far more attention than its humbler cousin and we

19:23 don't just see this reflected in art friendship itself is

19:26 on the decline with the number of us adults reporting having

19:29 10 close friends dropping from 33% in 1990 to 133%

19:34 in 2021 though of course the causes for this are multifaceted I

19:37 don't want to denigrate romantic love here it is a phenomenal

19:41 part of life and something well worth pursuing but at the same

19:44 time are we not perhaps putting more of our eggs

19:46 in one basket than is Wise by valuing AOS so much

19:50 more than felia we may be simultaneously putting too much

19:53 pressure on our romantic pairings and failing to appreciate the finer

19:57 sides of a good strong friendship emotionally friendship has a lot

20:02 to recommend it we tend to feel a lot less

20:04 possessive over our friends we are less interested in impressing them

20:07 we do not care if they're attracted to us we are

20:09 not so close that we drive one another insane at the same

20:13 time they tend to have lower expectations of us they

20:15 don't expect us to sweep them off their feet or thrill

20:18 them or show them special devotion while your average friendship does

20:21 not tend to be as close as your average romantic

20:24 partnership it still has great potential to Grant Comfort love understanding

20:28 and companionship and these are many of the things that people

20:31 look for in Romance anyway even as an atheist one

20:35 of my favorite parts of the Bible is the intense friendship

20:38 displayed between Jonathan and King David where the soul of Jonathan

20:42 was knit to the soul of David and Jonathan loved him

20:45 as himself friendship is not inherently less valuable than romance but we

20:49 treat it as if it is I have mentioned this before

20:52 but one of the most poignant parts of the Sorrows

20:54 of young verta is right at the end where a series

20:57 of characters that we have heard very little about start

21:00 to weep over Vera's death these are people who cared about

21:03 him deeply loved him and treasured him but he was too

21:06 blinded by his obsession with Charlotte to see it he had

21:10 become so consumed with Aeros that he had forgotten felia entirely

21:14 and I think it may be worth learning from his mistakes

21:17 so we don't fall into the same trap this also

21:21 links very closely with our previous point because friends help fulfill

21:25 so many of our desires for emotional connection understanding and more

21:29 if we begin to let them go or devalue them then

21:32 the expectations and pressures on our romantic relationships grow ever higher

21:36 because they have to fill an Ever deeper hole I can't

21:39 see a reason why love and platonic friendship need to be

21:42 opposed in this way ideally they are the perfect complement

21:46 in a balanced life and yet we have tried to make

21:48 one the denigrated younger brother of the other with disastrous results

21:53 but next I want to return to this idea of compatibility

21:56 in order to display an unfortunate but liberating truth about

22:00 both ourselves and our lovers four the mysteries of compatibility there

22:06 are few buzzword that are thrown around more in dating

22:10 than compatible one of the most common complaints I have heard

22:13 from various people both in person and online is I

22:17 cannot find anyone who is compatible with me and this is

22:20 a totally understandable concern because you want to be with someone

22:23 who you mesh with someone who slots into you and you

22:26 slot into them uh you know what I mean this wish

22:30 is only intensified by the first component of the one

22:34 that we just looked at effortless compatibility we are constantly shown

22:38 narratives where two people are not just compatible but are so without

22:42 the slightest hint of struggle or strain often times the reason

22:45 that lovers are kept apart in these stories is not

22:48 to do with them they would be perfect it is just

22:51 some pesky external circumstance or misunderstanding

22:54 in Disney's Aladdin Jasmine and Aladdin

22:57 are already compatible the beginning of the film and it

22:59 is the overcoming of social obstacles to their love that occupies

23:03 the bulk of the runtime the overall message is that the old

23:06 original Aladdin was right all along and he did not

23:09 need to change in Rossini's The Barber of Seville the count

23:12 and Rosen are already smitten with one another from the start

23:16 and the entire plot Works around how they rescue our anenu

23:19 from the clutches of her guardian in Cinderella The Prince

23:23 and our aonomus heroin face no issues of compatibility regarding

23:26 their personality it is just the pesky matter of Cinderella's poverty

23:30 and shame that keeps them apart all of this reinforces the message

23:34 that total compatibility comes naturally and to return to a general

23:38 theme so far in the video at the start it

23:41 often seems to when you first meet someone you just don't

23:44 know very much about them and they don't know very much

23:46 about you Additionally you are both trying your hardest to put

23:50 your best foot forward displaying all of your Charming characteristics

23:53 and hiding all of the ones they might not like you

23:56 are unlikely to reveal your unhealthy healthy obsession with Legos

23:59 or your fear of spiders or the fact that you haven't changed

24:02 your bed sheets in an embarrassingly long time and the beautiful

24:04 person sat across from you will also be concealing the way

24:07 that their last relationship damaged their sense of trust or how

24:11 they really hate that twe jacket you have inexplicably decided

24:14 to wear the trouble is that eventually our lovers will do

24:17 something that deeply irritates us or even hurts us we will

24:21 discover that at some level our personalities or characters conflict today

24:25 this is often called by the monosyllabic Monica it that feeling

24:29 we get when our beloved does something that turns us

24:32 off and puts a dent in our idealized view of them

24:35 the thing that strikes me and many other people about

24:38 the modern I in dating is just how small and seemingly arbitrary

24:42 they can be they range from wearing a coat when it's

24:45 cold to dancing with a friend in a light-hearted and silly

24:48 fashion I think the reason that the ick hits the person

24:51 feeling it so hard is because when we meet someone new

24:54 and we find them attractive we do an incredible Gap

24:57 filling exercise about every part of them we don't already know

25:00 about in effect we become Masters at self-deception and storytelling

25:04 our own personal ESOP crafting fables about our lover sure we haven't

25:09 experienced what our newly minted beloved would be like in a crisis

25:13 but we feel assured that they would somehow remain unflappable

25:16 we don't yet see our lover for who they are

25:19 but create an image of a sort of super romantic whose every

25:22 undiscovered attribute will be somehow irresistible to us as franois de

25:27 Ros Fuko put it sometimes it is ignorance just as much

25:30 as knowledge that keeps love alive this issue also goes

25:34 both ways if relationships are meant to be totally or mostly

25:37 compatible right from the get-go then there is only one thing

25:40 to conclude if our partner criticizes us or mentions that they

25:43 are upset about something they are about to leave despite

25:47 all your love and devotion they are going to abandon you

25:50 because of your fundamental incompatibility

25:52 it means every problem can potentially

25:54 trigger an intense fear response because each minor issue is not

25:58 just something to deal with as a pair but instead

26:01 a symbol of your ultimate failure to live up to the Romantic

26:04 ideal the issue here is not so much the problems

26:07 themselves but again our Strange

26:09 expectations our habit of imaginatively idealizing

26:12 our romantic Partners in the early stages does have certain

26:15 strengths it can encourage us to take a leap of faith

26:18 and commit to someone make them seem uniquely endearing and reinvigorate

26:22 our hope if we have been burned one too many times

26:25 but by the same token it sets us up for failure

26:28 in the long term because we all have incompatibilities with one

26:32 another idiosyncrasies that will get on our Lover's nerves and Neurosis

26:36 that make us temporarily incomprehensible to the people around us

26:40 this is not a sign that we are broken or unlovable

26:42 it is part of Being Human the trouble with the idea

26:45 of easy compatibility is that our immediate conclusion upon encountering

26:49 a problem is to suspect that the whole relationship is doomed

26:52 and that one or both parties must be deficient in some

26:55 way they must not have been the one for us after

26:58 after all we leap from one extreme to the other

27:00 from they are perfect to we are done for put a pin

27:04 in this idea as it's going to come up later

27:06 in the video this pattern idealization

27:08 disillusionment and abandonment seems to be

27:11 the cause of a lot of the dissatisfaction with the current

27:13 dating Market people understandably Tire of living the same cfan

27:18 cycle of rolling their Boulder to a first date only

27:21 to have it come crashing back down the hill just a few

27:23 months later the truth is the moment we threw ourselves wholeheartedly

27:27 into idealization we also unwittingly signed ourselves up for the latter

27:31 two stages the game was rigged from the start but there

27:34 is another side to this that I want to explore

27:37 and to do so I'll be drawing from the work

27:39 of an old favorite of the channel the Danish heartthrob himself sain

27:43 ker guard five the aesthetic stage of love one of the most

27:49 common issues people seem to be facing in Modern Love

27:52 is a general lack of commitment I've heard people refer

27:55 to our age as the situationship era and while the majority

27:59 of both men and women seem to want roughly the same

28:01 thing a life partner to settle down with this seems to paradoxically

28:06 be eluding both parties normally when two people want the same

28:10 thing achieving that thing becomes a hell of a lot

28:12 easier so a mystery emerges what is happening here to prevent

28:17 this well I would argue that part of the problem is

28:20 that we are experiencing a despair of possibility this is

28:24 a concept I talk about all the time and it comes

28:26 from KAG guard's book The sickness unto death it essentially describes

28:30 a situation where there are too many possibilities and paths to take

28:34 and as a result commitment to a single path becomes

28:36 more and more difficult to do until you find that you

28:39 have wasted all that precious time and now have nothing

28:42 to show for it at first it feels very strange to think

28:45 about having too many choices as a bad thing we

28:48 come from a very freedom-loving culture and if theorists like John

28:51 Stuart Miller to be believed more freedom and a greater number

28:54 of options tends to breed more happiness so surely the Technologies

28:58 which increase the number of romantic options someone has access

29:01 to will make them happier in love but if kard is

29:05 to be believed this is unlikely to be the case

29:08 for him an essential component of fulfillment in any Endeavor is commitment

29:12 and commitment is much easier if our options are any golden

29:15 mean between too many and too few much of KAG guard's

29:19 work is run through with his three stages of human life

29:22 the aesthetic the ethical and the religious more generally the aesthetic

29:26 is characterized by ISM a general lack of commitment and an unattached

29:30 exploration of one's options so an aesthetic approach to ideas

29:34 would be to read widely but to remain uncommitted to any

29:37 idea in particular taking pleasure in the process of Simply

29:41 learning the ethical approach broadens our moral Universe to include

29:45 duties and responsibilities it imates Us in communities and asks what

29:49 others require of us then the final religious stage of Life

29:53 involves an unconditional commitment to a higher power which for kard

29:57 is God obvious obvously his full views are much more

29:59 complicated than this and I cannot go into detail on them

30:02 now but I want to focus on the commitment portion

30:04 of the stages the aesthetic has little to no commitment the ethicist

30:09 has some commitments they take responsibility for other people

30:11 and the religious person is incredibly

30:14 and almost unconditionally committed to something

30:17 that they wholeheartedly believe in in other works like the present

30:20 age kard bemon how excessive options can leave us in the aesthetic

30:24 stage of life in a given Pursuit there he talks

30:27 about how too much information and too many ideas can dull

30:30 our passion for anyone in particular and we will cease

30:33 to care about the quality of ideas at all there is

30:36 a definite link between his despair of possibility and the lack

30:40 of commitment found in an aesthetic life and in today's romantic

30:43 context we have at least the illusion of lots of choice

30:47 dating apps will promise US that there are hundreds of people

30:50 just waiting for us at the other end of the line

30:52 our cultural Legends of Love are filled with handsome strangers chance

30:57 encounters romance around every corner even when someone is in a committed

31:01 relationship the image of interrupting the wedding ceremony and asking

31:05 them to be with you instead has become so cliche

31:08 it is now just a joke all around us we get

31:11 the message that if someone is not perfect we can safely

31:13 drop them or to quote a popular online piece of advice

31:17 if they won't then find someone who will there is

31:21 not nothing in this idea total commitments to another person comes

31:24 with numerous dangers and very few people would want to encourage

31:27 enourage others to stay in situations that are making them profoundly

31:31 unhappy it is just that this General attitude has a philosophical

31:34 trade-off it encourages us to see love through the lens

31:38 of the aesthetic for kicker guard strong commitment is always

31:41 a little bit irrational and to a certain extent I think that's

31:44 true Faith plays a huge role in his philosophy because he

31:47 thinks it is a vital component in getting us to do

31:50 something that seems irrational in the short term but is

31:53 incredibly helpful in the long run it's a bit like how

31:56 believing you will make a jump across AAP will increase

31:58 your chances of doing so at any given moment committing

32:01 to a particular thing can seem sort of insane because

32:04 of the opportunity cost of missing out on all of the other possibilities

32:07 but if we never commit then we will end up

32:09 missing out on all of the deeper Joys that lie

32:12 on the other side of this commitment not least of which

32:15 is being freed from the question of where the two commit I

32:18 think this idea of despairing at possibility was best expressed

32:22 by Sylvia Plath when she said her existence felt like sitting under

32:25 a fig tree each of the figs hanging from the branches

32:28 represented a possible life she could live a direction she could

32:32 take she felt she was unable to choose any particular

32:35 one and watched as they eventually fell down to the ground

32:39 dead and rotten if there were only a few options

32:42 her decision would have felt that much easier and she probably would

32:45 have chosen a fig this is a bit like how

32:48 kard would describe living your entire life in the aesthetic stage

32:52 and when it comes to love that is a disaster because

32:54 it bars us off from the treasures that lie on the other

32:57 side of commitment in our constant worrying about whether we

33:00 have chosen the ripest best fig we eventually starve to death

33:04 surrounded by the corpses of what might have been but of course

33:08 this is only one side of the equation the problems

33:11 of excess are balanced by the problems of deprivation and there

33:14 are a great many who feel like they are deeply

33:17 underappreciated in Modern Love principally because of their appearance so let's

33:21 turn to hear this perspective six the terror of beauty there

33:27 is a sort of elephant in the room when it

33:29 comes to romance especially in the modern day and that is

33:31 that looks are unfortunately supremely important trust me I was

33:36 an incredibly weird-looking teenager and I

33:37 am a slightly less weird-looking adult

33:39 and it is a night and day experience I have many

33:42 friends both male and female who say exactly the same thing

33:46 I imagine it has always been harder to date if you

33:48 are not blessed in the department of looks but as the way

33:51 people meet one another becomes increasingly image-based turning to dating

33:54 apps and social media there is the general perception that things

33:58 have got much more difficult philosophically this makes a certain

34:01 degree of sense even as far back as Plato philosophers recognize

34:05 that love often began with the admiration of someone's physical

34:08 Beauty these characteristics have always been acknowledged as the starting point

34:12 of a lot of people's affections though obviously not all however

34:16 while very few people historically argue that looks do not matter

34:19 there is a rich philosophical history of pointing out how

34:22 an overemphasis on beauty can lead to a mountain of suffering

34:25 when it comes to love in that very same book

34:28 where Plato talks about the origins of love in Beauty he

34:31 also mentions that the higher stages of love should aim

34:34 to outgrow this physical infatuation while he thinks we begin by appreciating

34:39 physical Beauty we should aim to develop into treasuring the beauty

34:42 of ideas again Plato's particular reasoning for this is idiosyncratic

34:46 but the general thrust of this concept has definitely persisted Beyond

34:50 him cognitively we tend to know that as long as some

34:53 attraction exists looks are not highly correlative with where the someone

34:57 will be a fulfilling partner for us in the long term

34:59 we have endless cautionary tales about the seductive yet dangerous

35:03 Allure of sensual Beauty from the Trojan War to the sirens

35:07 to T Grant's character in Bridget Jones Diary the message is

35:10 screamed from all Corners if you are LED on by physical Aesthetics

35:14 alone disaster awaits the trouble is that people like beautiful things

35:19 and as far as I can tell this isn't going away

35:22 if it were that easy to overcome we wouldn't have been

35:24 telling ourselves the same warning for over 2,000 years and yet

35:28 still be deceived by a winning smile however you already know

35:32 all of that so I'm not going to dwell on it

35:33 here I instead want to point out that there is

35:36 a tension between how Beauty functions in society and how we

35:39 treat the desire to be beautiful or the complaint that one

35:42 is not sufficiently so on the one hand the evidence

35:45 that Aesthetics are important is all around us but on the other

35:49 we judge the wish to become beautiful as in some

35:52 way shallow from mocking people who work out for aesthetic reasons

35:56 to decrying makeup is the the domain of the insecure there

35:59 is this underlying contempt often shown for people attempting to improve

36:03 their looks or placing any importance on the at all it

36:06 is often seen as vapid or indicative of some personal

36:09 defect if they were truly a great mind or a substantial

36:13 personality then surely they would not concern themselves with such things

36:17 I think this is an incredibly cruel societal message to put

36:20 out while Beauty still clearly matters immensely for people achieving what

36:24 they would like both out of life and Out of Love

36:27 this is the first example of a themee that will

36:30 become more and more important later in the video the way

36:32 that we approach love is mired in contradictions and internal

36:36 tensions For Better or Worse it seems that physical attractiveness is

36:39 a large component of romantic success but we don't like

36:42 to acknowledge that it forces us to confront quite an uncomfortable

36:45 part of ourselves that we are all failing to live

36:48 up to the ethical standards set by our culture we are

36:51 all taught not just that looks do not matter but that they

36:54 should not matter from there it is a short step

36:57 to to if you care about looks your own

36:59 or those of others then you are ethically deficient in some way

37:03 this then creates a significant philosophical incentive to engage in a sort

37:07 of double think on the surface we say that beauty does

37:10 not matter while secretly acknowledging that it absolutely does but if

37:14 we tell people that looks do not matter then there is

37:17 only one thing to conclude from romantic troubles it is something

37:20 to do with our character again it's not that this is

37:23 never true I'm a massive fan of Aristotle so you'll

37:25 very rarely catch me saying we shouldn't work on our characters

37:28 but it is a bit like telling someone struggling with poverty

37:31 that they are just not working hard enough as an explanatory

37:34 hypothesis it seems to miss a huge component of the causal

37:37 variables at play it also takes something multifaceted and complex

37:42 and tells someone that it can all be boiled down

37:44 to one fundamental fact you are not good enough not just descriptively

37:50 but ethically as well again I think this is a problem

37:53 of idealization we want to believe that love is selfless

37:56 and kind and caring about looks is sort of selfish and sort

38:00 of not that kind so we reconcile the contradiction by saying

38:04 that love must not care about looks but rather than

38:06 this being a soothing balb to someone's romantic issues it is

38:10 instead a cruel kind of optimism rather than recognizing that we

38:14 are all partly at the mercy of causal chains that existed

38:17 long before us and that we will never have full

38:19 control over any aspect of Our Lives including our love lives

38:23 we reserve every inch of fault for the person suffering

38:26 essentially we transform romantic failures

38:29 from unfortunate circumstances to moral deficiencies

38:33 with this comes a whole host of additional baggage like guilt

38:36 shame and a feeling of personal inadequacy but none of this needs

38:40 to be there it is an artifact of our idealized picture

38:43 of love it comes from the same simplistic philosophy that brought

38:47 you everything that happens in your life is your fault

38:49 and you can do anything you set your mind to to borrow

38:52 a thoughts from buun chhan if we can do anything

38:55 then the only reason we haven't is because we are not

38:57 good enough far from being a compassionate message to send

39:01 to someone struggling with loneliness this strikes me as almost painfully unkind

39:07 this is the source of thought that sounds friendly on the surface

39:10 but conceals a whole host of philosophical sins that knowingly

39:14 or not only increases the sufferer's hardship to continue this point

39:18 further I want to explore the relationship between the love

39:21 of others and self-love and how we may have introduced quite

39:25 a destructive and deceptive principle into our received philosophy of romance

39:30 seven the expectation of self-love as I was doing research

39:35 for this video there was one phrase I came across over

39:38 and over again regarding dating if you can't love yourself how

39:42 can you expect others to love you this was often said

39:45 as if it was ending the discussion a sort of mic

39:47 drop moment before the enlightened purveyor of this aphoristic Amorous

39:51 advice strolled into the sunset and I don't want to be

39:54 unfair here because as we shall see there is not nothing

39:57 in this but at the same time buried within this phrase

40:00 is a picture of love that I think both demands

40:03 far too much of us and obscures its genuinely helpful aspects

40:07 my primary issue with this piece of advice is that it

40:09 treats our self-esteem and our identity formation as something

40:13 that happens in isolation it paints a picture where we Retreat

40:16 to our cave for a little while learn to love ourselves

40:19 and then emerge back into the public sphere with Ironclad self-confidence ready

40:22 to take Tinder by storm but I don't think this is

40:26 a realistic expectation to have of people over the course

40:29 of the late 19th and 20th centuries more and more thinkers

40:32 came to believe that identity formation is only partly something we do

40:36 individually and is ultimately Inseparable from how we are perceived

40:40 by others jacqu Lan and Jean Paul satra both talked about

40:44 how we form our self-conceptions by seeing how others react

40:47 to us and adjusting accordingly I can say I'm a fantastic football

40:51 player but I can't fully believe it until there is

40:53 solid evidence and other people to confirm this position when I

40:57 stroll onto a field and immediately slip over trying to kick

41:00 the ball not only will other people be unable to believe

41:03 that I am good at football but I will also

41:04 struggle to believe it myself this is part of why

41:07 a lot of child psychologists Place such an emphasis on the messages

41:11 parents send to Children through their behavior it forms part

41:14 of the child's later self-concept whether they see themselves as worthy

41:18 lovable and safe partly depends on how they are treated

41:21 by their parents but then this raises a question how on Earth

41:25 are we meant to fully love our our elves and be confident

41:28 in ourselves before other people do I'm not suggesting that it's

41:31 impossible but I do think it is a lot more

41:34 difficult than it's given credit for this view of Love also

41:36 stands in stark contrast to earlier conceptions such as that given

41:40 by Dante algeri in The Divine Comedy his love beus ascends

41:44 through Paradise with Dante and eventually Dante even sees the glory

41:48 of God reflected in the eyes of his beloved this picture

41:52 implies that love is not simply a matter of two

41:54 people coming together already complete and self-sufficient but rather a process

41:59 of mutual development this is echoed in the works of someone

42:02 like St Thomas aquinus who described loving yourself loving others

42:06 and loving God as all part of one shared project this is

42:09 a far less individualistic picture of both love and self-esteem instead

42:14 of self-love being something that you learn by yourself and then

42:17 bring into the world it is something that you

42:19 and your beloveds support one another in doing by willing the good

42:23 of the other for the sake of the other we

42:25 learn both that we are love able and how to love

42:28 others thereby creating the conditions for self-love to emerge or at least

42:33 this is how I interpret this idea for dooi it

42:36 is often the love and care of another person that can

42:38 spur someone onto their own sort of self-love when aliosha displays

42:42 his spiritual love to grushenka this is the first step towards

42:46 her learning to find her personal dignity and when Sonia loves

42:50 raskolnikov it is the very thing he needs to embark

42:53 on the long road to abandoning his self-hatred and making amends

42:56 for his deed in these Works love is presented as much

43:00 more of a communal effort and there is no pretense that anyone

43:03 can wake up one morning and decide to love themselves

43:06 it is rather that we and by we I mean all

43:09 of us must help one another to see our lovable aspects

43:12 or to again draw from Christian theology to see someone Through

43:16 The Eyes of an all loving God you don't need

43:18 to be religious to appreciate that there might be some value

43:21 in this message it's also worth noting that the love

43:23 in question need not be romantic in nature and this commun task

43:27 is pretty vital because the valuable part of the idea

43:30 that self- Lov is a prerequisite for the love of another is

43:33 that a poor self-image can lead to all sorts of self-destructive

43:37 behaviors that make perfect sense to the self-hating lover but baffle

43:41 everyone around them including their beloved this is explored in great

43:45 detail by Debon in various talks books and lectures he

43:49 concurs with other thinkers like J and Lan that a need

43:52 to be loved often but not always begins from some feeling

43:56 of inadequacy we see in someone else both the qualities we

43:59 wish we had ourselves and someone whose admiration would help complete

44:03 our self-image as a lovable person it is a bit like

44:06 how a chef might desire a good review from a particularly

44:09 harsh critic to serve as the ultimate test of their skill

44:12 however debaton says that this is often a catch 22

44:16 because when our self-concept is truly in the gutter someone liking

44:19 us does not become evidence that we were not that bad

44:22 after all but rather one of two unfortunate things happen

44:26 we either St to like that person Less on the basis

44:29 that we do not want to be a part of any

44:31 club which would have us as a member or we begin

44:33 to feel incredibly dishonest we suspect that the only reason

44:37 that they have not abandoned us is because they are yet

44:40 to discover our fatal flaw we conceive of ourselves

44:43 as in some way metaphysically tainted they only like me we say

44:47 to ourselves because they haven't discovered that I am secretly

44:50 an ugly repulsive Goblin this can turn the experience of being loved

44:55 into a source of guilt we feel like we are conning

44:58 our beloved because if they still love us then we must

45:00 be playing some sort of trick on them we exist

45:02 with the permanent anxiety of being discovered either way we are

45:07 apt to run from the very person we most desire

45:10 but therein lies the Fatal tension it is hard to convince yourself

45:14 you are lovable without love but at the same time

45:16 it is hard to believe that you are loved if you

45:18 hold the Deep seated to belief that you are unlovable I

45:21 certainly don't have a complete solution here but I will refer

45:24 you back to the previous section of the video where

45:26 I talked about the importance of friendship friends can help us

45:29 see our lovability at a much lower Stakes level

45:32 and as a result can be vital pillars in building our self-esteem yet

45:35 another reason to reinstate the value of friendship in our society

45:40 but now I want to move on to what I think

45:42 is the root philosophical cause of a great many troubles about

45:46 love and it's going to be a tricky one to untangle

45:48 because I think that fundamentally the way we conceive of Love

45:52 suffers from truly Dee rooted internal tensions that make finding

45:56 and maintaining love less like discovering a treasure and more

46:00 like keeping 18 plates spinning at once and that our failure

46:04 to acknowledge this sets us up for future cynicism eight

46:08 dissonance and Harmony a brilliant song about love is Bo burnhams

46:13 lower your expectations I will spare you my rendition of it

46:16 but essentially it goes through a series of qualities people desire

46:19 in a partner and suggest that they are unlikely to find

46:22 them all at once my favorite line however is you want

46:25 a good boy a bad boy a good bad boy

46:28 a half good half bad half boy I love this because I

46:32 think Burnham here gets to the Crux of the issue

46:35 in love we don't just want something special we often want

46:38 a connection where various contradictory properties are kept in perfect tension

46:42 a great psychoanalyst who touches upon this point is Esther Perell she

46:46 has written extensively on how to keep romance alive within long-term

46:50 relationships and she talks constantly about the two properties of closeness

46:54 and distance according to her too much has a tendency

46:58 to kill desire we forget that our partner is another person

47:01 that they are independent and that they are not simply

47:03 an extension of ourselves it is hard to feel intense attraction

47:06 for someone who you view as analogist to your arm

47:09 but on the other hand too much distance and this can create

47:13 distress anxiety and damage the very foundations of the relationship

47:17 in her therapeutic experience it is only when we simultaneously feel

47:21 safe and secure with someone but also recognize that they are

47:24 separate from us that attraction blossoms and blooms over the years

47:28 this meshes quite well with what a lot of different philosophers

47:31 and thinkers have said about love in the Bible the togetherness

47:35 aspect is represented by the two lovers becoming one flesh

47:38 and the separateness aspect is found in the analogy of the married

47:41 couple being like Christ and his church two separate entities

47:45 for Aristophanes it was the existence of a destined other

47:48 half versus the fact that they have been cleaved in Twain

47:51 for Tolstoy it was the illicit availability of count vonsky

47:54 and the tragedy of Anna's pre-existing marriage for DH Lawrence it

47:58 is the intense passion that exists between lady chatly and her lover

48:01 coupled with her unhappy marriage and their class divide

48:05 for from it is the wish to meld with another person coupled

48:08 with the recognition that they are not you this tension

48:11 between self and other togetherness and distance makes love inherently unstable

48:16 by this I don't mean that it is always chaotic but rather

48:19 that it does not rest in a single state it is

48:21 a bit like shopen how's Will endlessly raging onward never stopping

48:25 never waiting requiring endless work and struggle luckily there is little

48:29 that is more meaningful to struggle over and this is only

48:33 the start of the in attentions in our concept of Love

48:36 on the one hand we are taught that love is

48:38 in some way frivolous a thing for children we proclaim the virtues

48:41 of total self-sufficiency that is what is required to succeed

48:45 in this world a hard exterior and the unwillingness to rely

48:49 on anyone else from the men going their own way

48:52 to the boss babes The Cult of individualism buries its clause

48:56 deep but on the other hand we tell people that love

48:59 is a supreme virtue that it is ennobling kind generous patient

49:04 that all you need is love and that a life

49:06 without love is simply meaningless we tell people that love is

49:11 one of the most important human Pursuits and then denigrate them

49:14 for wanting it is it any Wonder we end up miserable

49:16 and Confused to take another example we are often told

49:20 that love is selfless but on the other hand we're often attracted

49:23 to someone who wants us in a slightly selfish fashion we

49:26 are present presented with a sanitized idea of love that is

49:29 purely good incredibly chased and stable and then we reach

49:33 adulthood and a whole chunk of us find that this is

49:35 not all we want we also want excitement and for our lover

49:39 to sometimes desire us as an object at the same

49:42 time we want to be respected and cherished yet also be

49:45 on the receiving end of someone's occasional selfishness we want them

49:49 to want the best for us but avariciously we want excitement

49:53 and comfort risk and security stability and a rocking boat we

49:58 want sweetness Vitality gentleness ferocity

50:01 tenderness Instinct Independence and possession

50:04 we want our lover to be both our best friend

50:06 and a beautiful stranger to know them better than we know

50:09 ourselves and yet for them to remain full of mystery the contradictions

50:13 abound the tensions are endless and even if not everyone is

50:17 instantiated in every individual person some of them normally are love

50:21 as experienced by real existent people is the desire for a Harmony

50:25 of a whole series of qualities that are at war

50:28 with one another and when we are at our most

50:30 unguarded say when writing or reading romantic fiction we often admit

50:35 this I say all of this to bring one idea to the Forefront on almost any

50:40 plausible philosophical analysis love is difficult

50:43 and only gets more difficult over time there is something

50:46 in the image of being hit by an arrow or of Romeo's

50:49 sweet sorrow at parting from Juliet or of hadway following

50:53 the phrase what is love with baby don't hurt me perhaps

50:57 this is the biggest myth we tell about love of all

51:00 that it is meant to be easy straightforward instinctive and low

51:04 effort this perhaps sets us up for failure more than

51:07 anything else and it is an Insidious thing to tell people

51:10 struggling with love surely it is more realistic to see

51:14 love as the well- one reward of years of toil growth

51:17 and development as we learn to integrate a whole another person

51:21 into our lives and us into theirs as we slowly develop

51:24 the skill of loving someone how they wish to be

51:27 loved and teaching them to do the same for us Aristotle

51:30 used to say that for many skills and virtues there was

51:33 no other way to learn them but by personal practice contemplation

51:37 and habituation he recognized that almost any personal quality worth

51:41 having was not going to be a simple matter of knowledge

51:44 that we can reason out in an academy rather we will

51:47 have to investigate the world for ourselves with the approach that we

51:50 are learning a skill developing practical wisdom and improving little

51:54 by little at our chosen Pursuit I would gently suggest that we

51:58 start to think of love a bit more like this it

52:01 has numerous strengths whether alone or with our lovers we

52:05 can start to look at our romantic failings hiccups or difficulties

52:08 not as evidence of our fundamental unlovability but of our status

52:13 as students at Cupid's feet we can follow in the experimental

52:17 attitude of John Dewey and see this aspect of Our Lives

52:20 as not simply a goal to be achieved but rather

52:23 a series of Trials to be slowly refined over time when

52:27 we inevitably mess up in love we can view it

52:30 like we've just knocked over our paintbrushes or written a cliche

52:33 in our notebook it no longer supports the hypothesis that we

52:37 are broken but rather that we are learning a lifelong

52:40 skill and one we won't be finished with when we close

52:43 our eyes for the final time hopefully with a heart bursting

52:47 with love I can hear people already saying that this idea

52:51 of Love requiring constant effort and learning and skill

52:55 and development has robbed it of much of its luster so

52:58 allow me to say why I don't think that is true

53:01 and in any case that it is far better than

53:04 the alternative nine romantic nihilism in all my research for this video

53:10 I still did not come across a singular term to describe

53:13 the general malays that many people feel about the concept of Love

53:16 at the moment and I would like to propose one romantic

53:19 nihilism in my favorite analysis

53:22 of philosophical nihilism John Stewart identifies

53:25 that nihilism begins a reaction to broken promises for hundreds

53:29 of years we were told that there was a God and afterlife

53:32 and our lives had inherent meaning and gradually people started

53:35 to view these as false and more than that as lies

53:39 with nothing to fill the void they became cynical and pessimistic

53:43 in a moment of empathy ner describes how these nihilists had

53:47 put their entire trust and faith into a set of ideas

53:50 only to discover that they were wrong all along now

53:53 they feel foolish forever believing them they display the same sort

53:57 of General undifferentiated skepticism towards the world that many who leave

54:01 a cult describe in effect they leap from one extreme

54:04 to the other from optimists and idealists to pessimists and cynics and I

54:09 think nature is really on to something here about the dangers

54:12 of idealization in any sphere we like to think that if

54:16 we present a Rosy and optimistic view of the world

54:18 or of key Concepts then that will protect us and if

54:21 they turn out to be false well then we'll just adjust

54:24 our views accordingly but this is not necessarily the case if

54:28 nature is right then once the ideal Falls away we just

54:31 as often collapse into total despair we reject wholeheartedly the thing

54:35 that we used to desire recognizing that it is unachievable

54:39 in the way we wanted we fall into resentment and Scorn

54:42 we view the object of our wishes as childish and we

54:46 declare that it is dead this analysis fits almost uncannily

54:51 well with how many of our attitudes to romance have shifted

54:54 strangely it is easier to go from from Love is Everything

54:57 To Love doesn't exist without our philosophies ever resting in the Middle

55:01 Ground the promises of love we were fed as children

55:04 are being broken and we are reacting in a classically

55:07 19th century fashion straight from the frying pan of the ideal

55:11 to the fire of the cynic if love is not

55:13 to be effortless endlessly glorious and solve every one of our existential

55:18 problems then we don't want it anymore and I think

55:21 this is a real shame because at heart I am a total

55:24 romantic I firmly believe in the powerful things love can do

55:28 be it romantic platonic or familiar I think that it can

55:31 stand alone free from its mythical adornments it can bring us

55:35 someone to commit to someone to know us and for us

55:37 to know them it does have the potential to make

55:40 us Kinder and more caring it is a natural way

55:43 to infuse life with felt value it can bring out

55:46 our selfless and generous Natures it can truly be patient kind non-judgmental

55:51 and non-transactional we can learn to love someone in a way

55:55 that makes them feel truly fulfilled and teach them how

55:58 to do that to us it is not that love will

56:01 be the cure to every one of our ills but we have

56:03 every reason to think that it can be a real

56:06 pillar of our meaning but we also have to recognize

56:08 that it will come with struggle and strife endless effort tension

56:12 and contradiction however if we continue to think that love must

56:16 be easy that it is endlessly Pleasant without trouble

56:19 or conflict that our partners must be Gods rather than men

56:23 and that the ability to love is innate rather than taught

56:26 then I fear the greater sides of love may be forever out

56:29 of our reach so if there is one idea you

56:32 consider from this video I hope it is this much like

56:35 a lover love itself is neither Angel nor demon it starts

56:39 out seeming faultless then shows its flaws and then finally we learn

56:44 to love those flaws too but this is not our god-given

56:47 gift but rather the end result of long protracted efforts

56:51 to learn how to love to see our lovers as humans

56:55 damaged and battered by by the world fractured and faulty in ways

56:58 that will drive us insane but when all is said

57:02 and done we see them as they are and we care

57:05 for them all the same safe in the knowledge that they

57:07 are looking at our broken bruised and slightly mad psyches

57:12 and thinking the exact same thing the more false promises we

57:17 sell people now the more future nihilists we will create when

57:21 the scales finally fall from their eyes and they wonder what

57:25 else we have lied about but as always I encourage you

57:29 to think about each one of these ideas critically there

57:32 was a lot in this video to take in and every

57:34 single part is open to further discussion criticism and development I

57:38 hope this acts more as a pump for your own ideas

57:41 than as a lecture and if you want a totally

57:43 different perspective on love then click here to watch my take

57:46 on dov's radical and revolutionary philosophy about love and care in all

57:51 its forms thank you for watching and have a wonderful day