Knowledge Fight Interactive Search Tool

All Episodes

Previous Next

Oct. 29, 2006 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux

02:14:59

481 Sunday Call In Show Oct 29 2006 - Love!

Large

Audio Only |

Scroll

Time	Text
	Thanks, everybody, for joining us.
	It's 4 p.m.
	Sunday, October the 29th, 2006, for those who are listening to this several hundred or thousand years in the future, so you can place us in the time continuum.
	This is Free Domain Radio chat show number 8 million, and we are going to talk today, or at least I'm going to talk today for a little bit of time at the beginning, about the fabulous topic of love.
	And we've had a question from a highly participatory board member, almost a board keystone, and about the question of love and individuation.
	Individuation is a slightly technical term.
	It comes out of Jungian psychology primarily, which is around letting go of illusions and habits and discovering your true self.
	Now, Jung primarily postulates that this is somehow being in a true self relationship with the collective unconscious and universal and sort of base of the brain kind of imagery, which of course I don't follow.
	Particularly for me, it's a little bit more simple that the true self is that which is in contact with reality, objective scientific external reality.
	And so we're going to sort of work from that standpoint to introduce some of the questions that have come up.
	And I've done a few podcasts on love recently and one highly exciting audio podcast on self-love.
	I'm kidding.
	And so there was a question that came up from a listener, so I'm going to read this post and then I'll give my thoughts on it.
	And then Christina will give you the truth and then we will take some feedback.
	The question sort of comes out, I wonder how it might be possible, writeth this listener, to actually love anyone in the sense of total immersion of the self, or some sort of altruistic abandonment of self, in short, in the romantic sense, and still cling to individualism.
	As much as I've been trying to stretch my understanding of self-interest, altruism, and happiness in recent days, I still can't seem to reconcile this question with my conception of freedom.
	Some months ago, I heard Steph describe, quote, love in a podcast as a complete sublimation of self to other that we ought to be willing to submit.
	And I've seen the same argument in other writings as well.
	Frankly, the hackles on the back of my porcupinish neck not only stand up straight at this notion, which is, of course, not what we're aiming to have stand up straight at this notion, they form ranks and start quick-step marching down my back.
	Visceral reactions, nonwithstanding, however, I think the criticism has merit.
	I cannot for the life of me come up with a description of love that doesn't begin to slip, on the other hand, into some sort of stark Randian cost-benefit calculation, or, on the other hand, into complete collapse of the notion of individual autonomy and self-worth.
	So, it seems to me we've been quietly skirting around a kind of innate contradiction or war of definitions in the claims we are trying to make about the worth of the individual relative to reality, as opposed to relative to each other, and the nature.
	of the rational estimation of value This question may seem self-evident to some of you and I freely admit to being an idiot on the subject but I think that if we can come up with a way to describe this phenomenon in a way that does not undermine the fundamental sovereignty of self yet simultaneously explains how it is not a purely selfish pursuit then We may have a serious kink in our armor,
	and it's interesting because kink and armor actually came up this week during a role-playing game between Christina and myself, because that's love.
	So, chain mail and baby oil.
	Anyway... The question of love and altruism, I'm just going to sort of briefly sketch some of the background for those of you who aren't up to speed on some of the, at least, objectivist or Ayn Randian approaches to this idea of love.
	is that on the one hand you do hear of love as being an immersion in the other as a kind of fusion of personalities as a sublimation of personal desires in a sort of big vat of romantic goo that everyone turns to a kind of liquid in and pours into and dissolves into and so on and you hear that spoken of not only in terms of romantic love but also in terms of people's mystical union with the universe and what some people experience through transcendental meditation And so on,
	that there is this feeling of orgiastic oneness without all the stains.
	So that's sort of this idea of unity, that individuality is a selfish barrier to romantic love or love of other kinds.
	And that you need to, in this approach, there is this great fear.
	It's like, so I'm an individual, and how is it that I can not be an individual and be in love?
	Because, as Ayn Rand says, the first and most important word in I love you is I, right?
	So if we say that we must abandon our identity and our personality and our self in order to be in love, It seems pretty contradictory, right?
	Because if I love Christina, but I want Christina to merge into some sort of third-party vat called love, where we both get to dissolve, then whatever drew me to her in the first place would seem to be sacrificed and undermined by that particular approach.
	On the other hand, and this is more on the objectivist or Randian side, there's the approach to love.
	That is around selfishness, i.e., if you give me pleasure, if you are a net positive to my life, and this is what this writer means by rational calculation, through some sort of emotional abacus or calculation,
	if you give me net positive or net plus in my life, then I'm going to be happy Happier to have you around and therefore I'm going to want to have you around and that is what is called love and Neither of those two are particularly satisfying to me, or at least work particularly well.
	The first one doesn't work because of the innate contradiction of saying, I love you, therefore we must both give up our identities.
	Therefore, you can think of it like a sandwich without any bread.
	The I is the bottom of the sandwich, the love is the meat in the middle, and the U is the piece of bread on the other side, and we're taken away.
	The two pieces of bread and calling it still a sandwich, right?
	So when you say I love you to someone, you have to have a self.
	You have to have an identity yourself to be able to say I love you, and the other person has to have a self, an identity as well.
	And an attempt to negate your identity for the pursuit of love is quite futile and will never work.
	So I think that that is not a valid way to approach it.
	Similarly, the kind of union with the universe that occurs in some transcendental philosophies and religions, I also find not valid or not rational, because we are conscious organic life forms, the rest of the universe, and not so much with the consciousness or the organicness.
	So, for us to feel that we have merged with the skies and the mountains and the clouds and the seas doesn't make any sense because there's a pretty big divide between our consciousness and inert, blind, material matter.
	And so, I mean, not that our consciousness is not made up of that, but it has language and self-reflection and depth and so on.
	And so merging with the universe and feeling at one with the universe to me is like trying to make a blended liquid out of oil and water.
	You do a heck of a lot of stirring, but the moment you stop, you separate again.
	So I don't find that to be particularly believable either.
	Now, on the Randian side, though, there is the grave danger, I think, that arises from this rational calculation.
	Of, you know, that I love you because, you know, you reflect my values.
	You are rational.
	You are this. You are that.
	And therefore, you and I, you know, we must love each other and so on.
	There is this problem of rational calculation, which doesn't have a lot to do with some of the basic mysteries of love, which I think are worth preserving to some degree.
	But also, there is a lack of loyalty.
	Towards this kind of idea of love, right?
	So if you find somebody who's more rational, then you have to love them more, right?
	So there's no permanence. There's no sort of intertwining of souls together in love in this way.
	And the moment then that somebody is irrational, then you can't love them, right?
	If you say that love is only composed of a calculated approach to the rationality of the other person.
	Then you do have this problem that if they acted in a rational manner, as we all do from time to time, then your love is a sort of series of fits and starts.
	You know, I love you because you're 100% rational, and now you're only 82% rational, so I'm going to love you 82%.
	In fact, maybe I'll only get up to 70% because I don't like the fact that you're less rational and so on.
	And so it seems like you kind of have a love that is like a bidding war on a stock exchange floor, right?
	So it's not something where you can really trust.
	And also, I think it becomes, frankly, a little bit paranoid to say that I'm only going to love you when you're rational seems like kind of hyper-conditional.
	Right? Up and down, black and white.
	Well, you're really rational, so it's good.
	You're not rational, so it's bad.
	I think that makes for a non-secure bond in the relationship.
	So I'm sort of going to propose door number three.
	This is sort of what I... Let's try and do.
	I pretty much have gotten to the point in life where I recognize or believe that all dichotomies are false, right?
	Because in science, it's not really...
	There are no real dichotomies.
	There's just truth and error. And so the way that I approach love, and the reason that I said that love was subjugation to the other, the way that I would sort of suggest that we look at the question of love, and this romantic or...
	Friendship-based or however it is that love shows up in your life.
	And to say that love is the feeling that is invoked in us involuntarily in the presence of virtue.
	That sort of would be the approach that I would take to love.
	So love is really about a commitment to a pursuit.
	So Christina strives, and magnificently and successfully, this is my wife for those who are coming in, not just my hand puppet, which was named Beth, but...
	Anyway, so...
	I threw myself off there.
	So, Christina strives to take me seriously in any stretch, shape, or form.
	This is not in any sort of way that is superior because I pursue the same sort of thing.
	Christina has a commitment to pursue truth, integrity, honor, virtue, and all those great and beautiful and wonderful things.
	And her commitment is unwavering, which means that her actions are inconsistent at times, just as my actions are inconsistent at times.
	And, you know, we all want to drive to San Francisco if that's what we want to do, but it doesn't mean we're going to drive there at a steady, you know, 70 miles an hour without stopping or turning, right?
	I mean, you stop to get gas, you make mistakes.
	I mean, the pursuit of virtue is a journey, not obviously a destination.
	And so the commitment to the pursuit of virtue, and of course its subsequent achievement, which is how you know that the commitment is real.
	If somebody just makes a commitment to, you know, I'm going to make a commitment to pay you back that hundred bucks I owe you, the way that you know whether somebody has that commitment and takes it seriously is if they pay you back either the hundred bucks or some steady increment of it and so on.
	And so the pursuit of virtue is what I love about Christina.
	And it's not a sort of, you know, like a oscilloscope or whatever it is that measures sound, right?
	Where, you know, a loud sound makes it go up, it makes it go up, and then a soft sound.
	So it's constantly going up and down.
	That's not the nature of my love for my wife.
	Because although we both act inconsistently at times, our love doesn't waver because our commitment is always to act in a rational and virtuous manner.
	And so the danger that's involved in the Randian approach of the sort of moment-by-moment calculation of the other person's rationality is that you're loving somebody for the effect and not the commitment.
	And that is a very shallow view of looking at something like love.
	Because we have very little control At all times over the effects of what it is that we build in our lives, right?
	So I have a commitment to virtue, but if I am in a bad mood and I've had a long drive in traffic and I've got a headache and, you know, something's gone wrong with my car or whatever, then I'm going to be a little surly.
	And does that mean that then Christina doesn't love me?
	No, it just means that she can remind me that our commitment is to be pleasant and wonderful to each other, and then I can tell her, don't talk to me because I've had a bad day.
	And then, you know, then her love is really put to the test, which I think is the fundamental.
	The love test should never end, for sure.
	So, the commitment to virtue and the pursuit of virtue, the goal of achieving virtue, is something that we do have control over, right?
	So, if I am acting in a manner that is not virtuous, then Christina can say, you're acting in a manner that's not virtuous, and if I say, oh, I'm sorry, let's fix that, then she can love that, right?
	She can love the fact that she can remind me that I'm not acting in a manner that's virtuous, and The fact that I will commit to listen to that and to change is what she can love about me and what I can love about her.
	Not each individual moment of acting virtuously.
	It is the desire, it is the goal, it is the pursuit of virtue that is the basis of love because that is constant and that is something we have control over, right?
	So you want to make sure that you love someone for something that they have control over, right?
	That's why you don't love someone who's, you know, just because they're pretty or just because they, I don't know, they've got a good singing voice or they're rich because they inherited money or something.
	I mean, those are things that people don't have control over.
	You don't love someone just for their intelligence because intelligence can be a force for good or for evil and is often, is mostly innate and doesn't have a much People don't have much control over it.
	Emotional intelligence is something that is not as innate and can be learned, and certainly we should respect and admire the people who make a commitment to move among others and to speak with others in a wise and benevolent and positive manner.
	I think that's a good thing.
	But I think it gets this sort of approach to love, that we love someone for their desire for and commitment to virtuous behavior, which means rational behavior and virtuous behavior in a way that is complicated.
	Virtuous behavior is very complicated.
	If it was easy, then everybody would be doing it.
	I wouldn't really have a show, so it's very complicated.
	Sometimes you have to know, and this is based on the Aristotelian mean, for those who've studied or read any of Aristotle's ethics, that sometimes it's important to be assertive, and sometimes even it's appropriate to be aggressive.
	Sometimes it's appropriate to be compassionate.
	It's a very complicated thing.
	To be a virtuous person and therefore judging somebody on the basis of moment-by-moment virtue and doling out or withdrawing love based on that presupposes an almost omniscient approach to virtue, that I know what the right thing is to do in every situation, not just for me, but for everybody else, and therefore I can judge everybody else in a moment-by-moment basis in terms of whether I should love them or not, based on their Virtuous actions.
	This was the danger that Ayn Rand fell into.
	And what occurred for her was that she got caught up in the megalomania of these sort of basic set of syllogisms.
	And the first was, we should love whoever is the most rational the most, right?
	The degree of rationality of someone should be directly correlated to the degree of our love for them.
	So, we should love whoever is most rational, said Ayn Rand.
	I am the most rational, and therefore everybody should love me the most, right?
	And thus is, you know, an intelligent and brilliant and logical woman sucked into the maw of megalomania and cult leadership status, and then she...
	Further went down this road where if you judge someone for their virtuous or non-virtuous actions in a moment-by-moment basis, then when somebody does something that is illogical or immoral, you can then condemn them, right?
	This is one of the basis of totalitarianism and speaks, I think, a good deal to her Soviet heritage.
	She ended up later on in life having these sort of kangaroo courts where people who had transgressed against the objectivist ethic were put on trial, like literally put on trial.
	Evidence was brought, witnesses.
	I mean, really not very healthy stuff.
	And I actually found this quite frustrating when I first found out about it because I think that she was a genius and brought an enormous amount to bear on, enormous amount of intellectual energy and creativity to bear on the problems of ethics and politics and economics and then kind of blew it, right, and didn't notice that things were getting a little bit out of hand and stopped to wonder what was going on.
	And I think that this sort of third door of saying that we value somebody for their commitment to the pursuit of truth and virtue, that is an involuntary thing, right?
	The last thing I'll sort of say is that love cannot be created.
	Love cannot be evoked.
	You can never say to yourself, I should love this person.
	You can't will love Any more than you can will the answer to a question.
	Or you can will where you left your keys.
	I mean, to take some silly examples.
	You can't will love.
	Love is something that is evoked within you.
	It is not something that can be forced or commanded.
	Now, infatuation, lust, shallow desire, status symbols, you know, the women who want the tall guy and the guys who want the pretty girl and so on.
	All of that stuff, which is as far from love as anything can be, It's all stuff which is to some degree involuntary and also can't be sort of created magically.
	You can't look at someone and say, I'm going to sexually desire that person.
	You can't watch Driving Miss Daisy with a bottle of baby oil.
	And so it's something that we need to, I think, be humbled towards this idea of love, that it's not something we can control, that you can't ever aim at love.
	You can't ever aim to achieve love directly.
	You can't say, I'm going to go out and find me someone to love.
	And you can focus on your own virtue and you can focus on your own sensitivity to the comings and goings of virtue within others.
	And I think that's a beautiful thing to do.
	To become sensitive to every human being has a desire for virtue, and this is the desire which causes most human beings to get enslaved in these false arguments for morality that we've talked about for the last 11 months or so.
	So everybody wants to be good.
	People are very confused about how to be good because we live in a culture that obscures the truth and obscures virtue in sort of servitude and allegiance to power and so on.
	And so everybody wants to be good, and that's one of the most beautiful aspects, if not the most beautiful aspects of the human race.
	And I think that we need to recognize that we become virtuous by subjecting our will to the truth, right?
	I mean, there's no way to achieve virtue other than subjecting your will To the truth.
	And this is a very slavish thing that you have to do.
	And it's nothing new. This is nothing particularly unprecedented in this style of thought.
	It's exactly what scientists have to do, right?
	Scientists have to subject their thoughts and their opinions to empirical testable reality.
	Philosophers have to subject those thoughts and opinions to logic.
	Politicians have to subject...
	No, no. They don't have to subject themselves to anything.
	Sorry. The first two.
	Let's just work with the first two.
	A doctor, of course, has to subject his own opinions As to whether or not his cures are efficacious based on whether they are in fact making people better.
	So every discipline has an external standard.
	Every discipline that's viable or valid has an external standard that it needs to submit itself to.
	And so your own virtue you can only pursue by submitting your willpower to the dictates of reason and evidence and experimentation and empirical reality and so on.
	And last but not least, and this is sort of where the question started at the beginning, which is, what does it mean to subject yourself to someone else?
	Well, I can only talk about this in terms of marriage, and we're coming up on our fourth anniversary, so of course I'm an expert now, but...
	The only thing that I can say is that when you choose someone, and there is great power in the vows of marriage.
	There's great power in the vows of marriage.
	I used to be able to make decisions, now I don't.
	So I guess there's a great reduction of power.
	There's a power for one person.
	Anyway, we'll come back to that later.
	But there's great power in the vows of marriage because when you say that you're going to get married to someone, you're basically saying that your intention and my intention towards virtue are the same and there will be hiccups and backtracks and problems along the way.
	But I respect your commitment to virtue and to truth to such an enormous degree that we are now going to join our lives together And we are going to be as one in our pursuit of truth and of virtue, not in our daily momentary achievement of perfect virtue, whatever that may be, as elusive as perfect health and frankly as pointless as perfect health.
	I just want to be healthy enough to feel good.
	I don't care if I've got a tiny cold virus and some gunk in my intestines.
	I just want to feel good and healthy.
	And so there's great power in that.
	And for me, once you make that commitment to someone, you make that commitment based on your shared values and your shared, and not shared made up values, that's sort of the Dr.
	Phil side of things, but shared objective philosophical values that are true independent of your judgment.
	Once you make that vow to somebody, then You're saying that we are going to join together in this journey for the rest of our lives in the pursuit of truth and virtue, and that's the fundamentals of our love.
	And that means that you trust that person as you trust yourself, right?
	I trust Christina as greatly and sometimes more so in particular areas than I trust myself.
	And when you're a scientist, you have to subject not your judgment to reality.
	I mean, that was a shorthand way of saying it earlier.
	When you're a scientist, you don't subject your judgment to reality because reality has no judgment and doesn't care one little bit whether you make the right or wrong call as a scientist as far as your theory goes.
	You can say E equals MC squared or E equals MC cubed.
	The universe doesn't change at all.
	So when you're a scientist, you have to submit your theories to your own judgment vis-a-vis reality.
	And so when you are a human being, a philosopher in pursuit of virtue, you have to subject your own willpower to the dictates of reason and your processing of reason and your processing of empirical reality.
	And you have to not hold anything back in terms of trust to the other person, right?
	Whenever we hold back trust, whenever we hold back vulnerability in relationships, we are absolutely paralyzed.
	We become incredibly stuck and lethargic, and this is why I've always suggested to people if you have problems with your family to go out and talk to your family.
	And be vulnerable with them.
	And so I think, like, Christina can say anything to me, and I will take it with the same degree of trust that I take my own judgments, which is, of course, none at all.
	To the judgments of the board, let's say.
	So I think that subjugation to the other It's the result of a value, the value that you find in the other person, your judgment of their capacity to judge and their commitment to virtue.
	So to me, there's no real distinction between submitting to my own judgment and submitting to Christina's judgment.
	Both are equally valid.
	It doesn't mean that I won't disagree with her if I feel that's the case, but that, of course, has yet to happen.
	So that's sort of my basic take on it.
	That's hopefully not too complicated a way of putting it.
	Way back, what, 40 minutes back or 50?
	One sec. All right, Greg, polygamy.
	No, I don't think that's it. Oh, so then you wouldn't have the same feeling in the presence of anyone who presented the same attributes.
	What differentiates one person from another if their virtue is the same?
	Is it pure accident? Well, I don't think that...
	One's commitment to virtue is a necessary but not sufficient requirement for love, in my humble opinion.
	You may find a 70-year-old man in your neighborhood who has the same capacity or desire for virtue that you do, but it's unlikely that you're going to be sexually attracted to that person.
	And so there's other things.
	I'm just talking about romantic love, but certainly you will feel love.
	And it's not as long as your own values are in order, right?
	I mean, if your values are completely corrupted, then you're going to feel irritation and frustration in the presence of somebody who is truly virtuous, as I was talking about in podcast 479.
	But if your own virtues and values are in order, if they correlate with reality and reason, then...
	You will feel love involuntarily towards those who are in the pursuit of virtue, in the goal of virtue, and also who have values that correspond with rationality and reality.
	So you will feel love involuntarily, but there are other factors, of course, that will occur.
	Obviously, you know, whichever gender you prefer, whichever age group you prefer, there may be other things like you want to have kids, but unfortunately the woman is 50.
	There may be things like that which occur, which doesn't mean that you would love that person any less, but you probably would not make a lifelong commitment to them for a romantic relationship.
	But other things as well which may occur is that you may just not speak the same language.
	I mean, she could be from Croatia or something, which is going, you know, you may then get a vague sense that she's a virtuous person based on her demeanor and her level of eye contact and, I don't know, perfume or something, but the odds of relationship there are not high.
	There could be different levels of disparities in intelligence, right?
	So a lot of the virtues that it takes a very intelligent person to win can be transmitted through a good home environment when that person is growing up.
	And therefore, you may end up with the same commitment to virtue as somebody else, but because they're not as intelligent, you may not have that much In common, right?
	There could be a variety of other things, and there does have to be some compatibility of lifestyles, right?
	Like if she wants to live in Iceland and you want to live in Greece, there may be some problems there.
	If you like to do nothing but play sports and she likes to sit in a dark room and read, then there could be some compatibilities there.
	Those are a little bit more on sort of, you may love the job, but if it's in Russia, you might not take it, right?
	So there's a certain amount of Things that have to be compatible from that standpoint.
	Those don't really affect love, but they affect the degree to which you will execute on the feeling of love.
	You see how I worked love and execution in there, isn't it?
	It's beautiful, isn't it?
	It's a hallmark card of the making.
	Let me just write that down. My fortune is to be made with that phrase.
	All right.
	Well, I'm going to open up the boards.
	Sorry, I did a horrendous class called Muscle Plus yesterday, which is Muscle Plus, significant pain if you're 40 or above.
	So I'm going to open up.
	Does anybody have anything that they'd like to ask right away?
	I think, does Nate have a question that I should read?
	You want to read it?
	All right, so if I don't feel attracted romantically, then there must be some boundary between great friends and great lovers.
	I'm still trying to figure that out, too, because if I do find someone of great virtue, then I think I could find them attractive, sure.
	But what if I don't find that I'm romantically in love and want to commit?
	What then? Well, this is something Christina and I have talked about from time to time, that when Christina and I met, we felt no romantic or sexual attraction to each other.
	No romantic or sexual attraction to each other whatsoever.
	I was in a burqa, and Christina was in a Wonder Woman outfit, and I've always been more for aqua woman.
	And so it wasn't until we got to know each other that all of that began to flow.
	I don't want to sound all Calvinist and medieval, but I have a great degree of suspicion for sexual attraction.
	I have a great degree of suspicion for sexual attraction.
	And I'm not going to claim that there's any great way to quantify that for me, but I think that sexual attraction is generally used as an excuse to act out childhood trauma, frankly.
	I mean, because people say, well, I'm just not that attracted to her, so I'm not going to go out with her.
	But I don't think that that is a valid approach to take, right?
	I think that you need to be a little bit more disciplined because we were all raised pretty badly, right?
	We're all involved or immersed in a culture that's fairly corrupt.
	So I don't think that we want to say, well, I'm just not that attracted to the person and so I'm not going to go out with her.
	Certainly every guy in the universe who's not a monk It's been in the friend zone, right?
	It's been in that situation where they just can't get a woman attracted to him in a romantic or potentially romantic way because, you know, she's crying about how bad guys are, crying on your shoulder and then goes back out and dates some jerk and you're like, why couldn't I be the one for you?
	And the answer is like, oh, I just don't think of you that way, right?
	Because you're not a bad, nasty guy and I'm into bad, nasty guys or something.
	Well, there's a woman who's saying, well, I'm sorry, but I'm just not sexually attracted to you and therefore I can't go out with you.
	Whereas you know for a fact that you'd be treating her about a billion times better than the jerks she's going out with.
	So I have... A great degree of suspicion for purely sexual attraction.
	Certainly in my own history, my purely sexual attraction to myself has caused quite a number of public arrests.
	What was the last count?
	I can't even recall. My purely sexual attraction to women has caused problems and wasted time and wasted resources.
	So I have a great degree of suspicion towards sexual attraction and I think that we should try and take nature's brute force reproductive mechanism, so to speak, and refine it just a little bit and turn it in pursuit of virtue.
	So I'm just, I'm not going to come down in some sort of, every time you feel sexual attraction it's Satan or anything like that, but I do find that it's a bit of a dead-ender as far as getting people to understand the relationship between You know, the body and the soul, so to speak, or the pursuit of virtue and the pursuit of orifices.
	And, you know, because people say, you say, well, that's not, you know, that guy's really good.
	You say to some girl, but that guy's really good.
	He's a really nice guy and so on.
	And the answer is always, yeah, but I'm just not attracted to him.
	So it's like, boom, booyah, there you are.
	Just not attracted to him. Whereas I think that we should be open.
	Certainly if I had said that to Christina, or Christina had said that to me, then we never would have ended up getting married and so on.
	So I just think it's easy to jump to conclusions based on hormones and habit and cultural programming and so on.
	Rather than to sort of evaluate things in a more rational way and be open to things which may not be entirely sort of habitual from that standpoint.
	So let me just open up the boards to people who are joining us.
	Welcome to the new people.
	This is Free Domain Radio, a show of philosophy and psychology and relationships.
	I'm here with my lovely wife, Christina, who is...
	Flashing up some cards saying, please let other people talk, and one more joke about touching yourself, and I'm going to leave the room with that, I think.
	Okay, if you would like to speak, let me just...
	I think that everyone's open now.
	You could just raise your voice.
	If you can also tell me your handle, then I can unmute.
	Hello? Hello? Hello.
	Hello. This is Nathan.
	All right, one second.
	Let me just...
	Okay, go ahead.
	Alright. As far as the physical attractiveness goes, I feel it can go sometimes in reverse, like you were talking about with Christina, and I'm not going to just overlook that if it happens, you know. But I'm also not...
	I would feel like I was...
	Have you ever been to Houston?
	I actually have been to Houston.
	The women here are mostly, as you say, just if they are, you know, just overwhelmingly attractive physically, then there's a lot of corruption typically.
	And that's been the case almost every girl I've talked to.
	I see a lot of...
	I mean, they'll say something, they just won't even realize they're saying it.
	Is this similar to the woman that you were chatting with on the boards recently?
	The one that joined us?
	No, the one who had problems with her friends and cut her friends.
	Oh yeah, Holly, yes.
	Right. Right, yes.
	Well, yeah, she's one of those.
	I don't know. I can't really say that.
	She had potential, I guess.
	The more I talked to her, the more I realized, okay, I'm wasting my time there.
	When I walk up to someone, if I'm attracted to them, then I'm going to find out if, well, am I really attracted to them just physically?
	I'll find out who they are and then Are they still attractive after I just found out who they really are and what they're like?
	It doesn't take much talking to them, like you say, maybe 15 minutes at the most.
	If you start asking questions, they'll start talking.
	They'll talk your ear off and they'll tell you their whole life if you seem interested.
	They have no problem talking about themselves.
	I think you're trying to say something about me and I'm trying to figure out what that is.
	Sorry, go ahead. Yeah, so they don't seem to have a problem talking about themselves.
	It's not hard to find out who they are fairly quickly and then I can know, well, should I waste any more time talking to this person or not?
	And being single just...
	It really sucks. It certainly does.
	It certainly does. Now, I've had the advantage of...
	I accidentally, when I was a single, hit on Nate when we were in a chat session.
	I was Candy Girl 666.
	And he did send me a picture of himself, unfortunately not the nude one I'd requested.
	So I do have the ability or the insight to know that Nate is a very good-looking fellow, in my opinion.
	And I would sort of, I guess, ask you, when it comes to sort of looking for women, first of all, online sucks, right?
	I mean, meeting women online is not a good idea, and this is something that Christina has talked about as well, because she didn't have any luck meeting cute women online either, but that's a story for another time.
	But online is not good, for sure.
	But I wonder at the degree to which, I mean, if you say that I'll know if I'm, you know if you see someone physically, whether you're attracted to them, right?
	If they have, you know, the butt or the boobs or the hair or whatever it is that you find, the packages that you find appealing, whatever that configuration is for you, then you sort of will be attracted to that person and then you will find out if that person is a good person.
	Is that a fair way of characterizing it?
	Pretty much. And as far as the online thing goes, I don't know.
	I've gotten a lot of feedback from different people saying, well, that's good, that's bad, and my own therapist thinks it's a great idea because you can really, you can talk first and, you know, see later.
	It's just kind of a reverse thing so that it almost prevents, you can see their picture, but you can't, You can't really ever tell from somebody's picture what they really look like or what they really like in person, body language and all that stuff.
	So you can at least get an idea of, well, right off the bat, you know, from what they've said in their profile that they're, you know, you can pretty much tell, well, I'm not going to talk to this person because they're the exact opposite of what I'm looking for.
	And I can tell exactly what they're looking for.
	There's this one girl with a child who messaged me And I messaged her back, noting on her profile that the only thing there that she demanded for a match, and she didn't type anything or do anything, it just said, must make a certain amount of money and must have a bachelor's degree.
	Now, is that money expressed in hourly rates?
	No, just salary rates.
	Right, because she made money for a certain sum per hour, that's sort of all I'm talking about.
	Right. So you knew exactly what she was looking for.
	She was looking for somebody to support her and her kids.
	And I called her on it and I said, oh, well, that's interesting.
	Is there some kind of message behind this demand?
	And then she never messaged me back, of course, and I didn't expect her to.
	I wasn't even rude about it.
	I just asked her a question.
	Well, if she got your real name, she might have run a credit report and so on, so it may not have even been your question.
	Oh, of course, yeah.
	I don't know what's the best way to meet, because I can't just meet somebody in my house.
	Did you not get a maid service or something?
	They're not just going to fall in my lap.
	Send yourself a candy gram, for God's sakes.
	Yeah, that would be even...
	Less likely. Look, I mean, it's a big question that you're asking, and certainly the question of where is the best pen for libertarian breeding is a significant one.
	And you're certainly not alone in this.
	So, I mean, I think it's important because, goddammit, we need to breed.
	Not just to bring new subscribers to Freedom Aid Radio, but also because we're being outbred by the Muslims, something fierce, right?
	So, definitely demographics, we need to get them on our side.
	So we need to get out there and start pumping out Libertopian babies by the truckload.
	So I do think it's an enormously important issue and a very central issue.
	And so I'm glad that you brought it up because, you know, sort of how to meet women is quite a challenge.
	And of course, for the female listeners out there, how to meet men, if you're interested in ideas of freedom or whatever, and you had, Christina, you did have some ideas about this that we were talking about the other day, if you wanted to, you know, about how we didn't talk about ideas to begin with and so on.
	Well, I'll start it and then you can see if you can chime in.
	Sorry?
	Oh, let me just un...
	Can you just test it?
	I'm still muted.
	Okay, great.
	Hi everyone, it's Christina. So, we were talking the other day about sort of meeting people.
	One of the things I think that's important, and I think that libertarians go a little bit too fast.
	You know, there's a phrase, premature ejaculation, that occurs with sexual dysfunction.
	And I think that libertarians are prone to a little bit of premature elaboration.
	And what I mean by that is it's like, hi, you're cute.
	Will you stand with me against the IRS? Or something like that.
	You know, hi, you're cute.
	Join me in Libertopia and let's raise some rational babies.
	There can be a little bit of a desire to apply the libertarian litmus test to potential partners.
	I think a little bit before one has established personal credibility with that person.
	So can you remember, we didn't talk about ideas for...
	We talked about my book.
	We talked about your book.
	You were interested in the fact that I practiced psychology.
	I was interested in the fact that you wrote a book, and we had a very charming evening.
	When we first got together, there was a lot of energy in our conversation, and that was what I found extremely interesting.
	I mean, the energy, the interaction between us, the conversation, this is something that I hadn't been able to find with anybody else prior to you.
	Right, so it wasn't, join me on the ramparts of freedom, and here's why the Fed was founded by a bunch of corrupt people.
	And I'm not characterizing anybody on this call.
	I'm just sort of saying that for a lot of people who are into philosophy, this problem of premature elaboration can be somewhat significant.
	I think one of the things that helped with Christina was she saw that I was...
	I was, yeah, hate the state, want to be my mate?
	Hey, I think we're starting out with a rap song, brothers.
	And, yeah, sorry, Greg has also said, it's more than just a libertarian litmus.
	You said yourself, the pursuit of virtue, right?
	Absolutely, absolutely.
	But the pursuit of virtue is not something that you can establish with reference to it the first time or two times or three times or even ten times that you meet someone.
	That's something that you kind of get a feel for, and it's usually better to...
	You can identify virtue through people's actions, through the choices that they've made in their life, through the relationships they have with other people.
	I mean, that's what virtue is all about.
	It's our actions. Can you tell people then maybe why, not because anybody cares about this in regards to me, but just for other people, how was it that you felt that I wasn't insane when I started bringing up values?
	Am I assuming something too much there?
	Alright, let's take the assumption that you didn't think I was completely insane when I brought up values.
	You know what, I'm going to have to edit this part out and have Christina just smoothly go into, I knew you weren't insane because you took the clown nose off after a couple of dates and started putting pants on.
	So your question is, how did I know that you weren't insane?
	So I start bringing up all this stuff about, you know, I don't know, I can't remember exactly when in our relationship, but it certainly wasn't that early on.
	Well, first of all, we had the conversation, as you know, my mother is insane, a sociopath, and my brother is deranged, and my father is insane.
	Hey, let's merge gene pools, what do you say?
	Yeah. Right, so there was that aspect of things, but then there was also, there was that, when you started asking me, and I knew, of course, as a psychologist, you were asking me about my own family history, not just for conversation's sake, but to get a mental map of the kind of clan you were marrying into, and the freefall madness of my clan, I'm sure it didn't strike you as particularly benevolent, but you kept going anyway, right?
	Mostly because I'd spiked your drink, but...
	There was also the aspect where you began learning a little bit more, this was later on, about my philosophy, by which time I think I already had your cat kidnapped, so there was a certain amount of come-back-to-it-ness around that.
	Well, I think, first of all, one of the things that I found very intriguing and very interesting, I'd never run across it before, was the fact that you seemed completely undefended.
	And I used that term sort of in psychological ways.
	I didn't get a sense from you that you had a lot of defense mechanisms that were playing out in this relationship or in any of your other relationships.
	You were pretty much what you said you were and I didn't get any sense that you were manipulating.
	I didn't get any sense that you were minimizing or exaggerating or generalizing or any of these lovely things that people tend to do to win other people over.
	You were who you were and you were very I also read your book.
	Don't forget I read Revolution, so I had an idea about your philosophy before we actually really started talking about philosophy.
	Oh, that's right. That's right.
	And, you know, the thing that was important about you was that you didn't have these defense mechanisms.
	What would they look like, though, just for people who are sort of out there?
	What would those defense mechanisms look like if you were interested in someone?
	How would they sort of show up as warning signals?
	Because whether you're a psychologist and get them consciously or get them just sort of unconsciously as anybody else, I think that they're important and relevant to meeting somebody, to getting involved with somebody.
	Oh, people tell us pretty much a lot about themselves through their physical presentation, mannerisms, their speech patterns, if they skirt around issues...
	Eye contact. Eye contact, if they skirt around issues, if they say one thing and you find out that they behave in a completely different way through observation.
	Right, so when I said, I have naturally sweaty palms and I always keep a ferret in my pants, that was something that you felt, because it did turn out to be true, that it was not a defended position.
	Is that right? Stumped again with the idiocy.
	Trying to keep a straight face in this marriage.
	Thanks. There are worse things.
	Now, Nate was talking about online stuff, and he said that his therapist...
	Now, we want therapist combat, and I'm picturing the other therapist being sort of like Elle McPherson, and I've also got a whole mud wrestling thing going here, but what are your thoughts on this?
	I personally have never found it...
	I've never taken a liking to it.
	I don't think that it's a great way to meet people, but then I'm from probably a different era, and I know that it is It's fast becoming or it has become the means by which people meet each other these days.
	It is there, so we can't deny it.
	People are using it. All kinds of people.
	People who may have been hesitant in the past are now using it.
	It's there. It's out there.
	I don't know that I would ever use it, but it's there and people are using it, to repeat myself.
	An excellent non-answer.
	Thank you very much. The reason I don't like it is because I think there's a real opportunity for misrepresentation.
	Right, like the Candy Girl 666 thing that I was talking about earlier.
	Right, right. Well, there is, and there is a great deal of chance to...
	I think there's additional chances for manipulation when you're email or texting.
	You don't get a chance to see the back-and-forth rhythmic flow of conversation with people, and so that, I think, can be a problem as well.
	I think it's obviously important to meet people face-to-face and so on, Essentially, I think if you're going to use the internet, it's okay to sort of start a conversation with someone.
	I think what happens for a lot of people, and I know this to be the case for at least a couple of people, where they've developed feelings for someone that they've never laid eyes on.
	And in one case, they ended up marrying, and he turned out to be a spousal abuser.
	Right, right. I mean, a doctor and an outwardly nice guy, they met online, they got together, they married fairly rapidly, was that right?
	Within a year.
	Yeah. They met each other essentially in the summer and had a civil marriage in the winter and then I guess a religious ceremony the following summer.
	Right. So I think, I mean, we all have heard these kind of horror stories and maybe there are other kinds of stories out there wherein people have met people online.
	I would say though, I mean, you really have to sort of look at, you're never going to get everything that you want in a partner.
	Because I've got her. But I think that you need to figure out what's important for you and what's not important for you, right?
	So for me, I'm very interested in psychology, of course.
	So for me, the fact that Christina was a psychologist was an immediate plus.
	Now, she'd never studied philosophy, and of course, would I have sort of magically preferred that she had studied philosophy?
	Oh, God, no, because then she would have been able to disprove everything I was saying.
	So the fact that she hadn't, also another huge and massive plus.
	She likes to read, but she's not really fascinated with the kind of ancient literature that I am, or 19th century literature.
	So, you know, there's pluses and there's minuses, right?
	And I would say that what you need to figure out for the libertarian dating planet is you need to figure out what's important to you, right?
	For instance, kindness is very important, and sometimes it's not always co-joined with philosophical rigor.
	But personally, I think that kindness is highly underrated in libertarian circles, which seem to get a little punchy and, frankly, a little bitchy from time to time.
	I think kindness is very important.
	Christina has a wonderfully kind spirit, a very gentle personality.
	Now, you can be virtuous without being...
	You know, kind and gentle, right?
	I mean, there's certain kinds of more assertive virtues that are out there.
	But I think if you sort of look at what it is that you want from somebody, what's the most important sort of two or three things that they have to have, right?
	Well, they have to be honest, for sure.
	You can't have a relationship with somebody who's not honest.
	They have to be committed to self-improvement, I think, because, I mean, libertarians are as a whole interested in that kind of thing.
	They have to be able to think.
	They have to be able to speak. And, you know, you can't just end up with some non-entity who's going to agree with everything you say or some aggressive person who's going to disagree with everything you say.
	But I think if you kind of rank, and these aren't all objective, right?
	Rank things that you want in a partner, and then you can narrow down about how to go about finding that person, right?
	So if you want somebody who's really into literature, then join a book club.
	If you want somebody who's a homebody, take a cooking class.
	If you want somebody who's kind, take a...
	Kindness class, or I don't know, where would be a good place?
	Volleyball, no, where would be a good place to go?
	And if you want someone sporty, go join a sports team, you know, a co-ed or mixed-gender sports team.
	Or I think for at least three listeners, a transgender sports team.
	But if, you know, so if you sort of figure out the non-essentials in terms of virtues taken for granted, you have to get that, but you can't go and find that by looking at any particular category.
	If you want somebody artistic, then take a drawing class or a painting class or whatever.
	Show up as a nude model. Trust me, you don't even have to have an appointment.
	I used to do that when I was a student.
	So mostly for Picasso-like modern art stuff, man, that cubic stuff is hard to hold the pose.
	But there's lots of different things that you can do to figure out what style of personality you want and then go to those kinds of places.
	And I would say then, just talk about your life.
	I wouldn't bring up philosophy right up front.
	What do you think? No, I don't think so.
	I think you want to get to know the person's personality.
	And again, you will find out whether that person is virtuous through their actions and through their behaviors.
	The one thing I want to say, though, is if you want someone to be something, be prepared to be that yourself.
	So if I want you to look good in a bikini...
	Yes, darling.
	Yes. You know, if she wasn't censoring herself for fear of using her license, you would get a censor for a wicked wit.
	But clearly, she's afraid that the CPA is listening.
	Right, so, I mean, I should have waxed, is what you're saying.
	Nice little Free Domain Radio Brazilian thing going on, right?
	That's the approach that I should have taken.
	Because I did, just my forehead.
	And the unibrow.
	Go on. Right. I mean, you need to have common interests and common beliefs.
	I would assume many of the Freedom Aid listeners are atheists or non-religious.
	So if you're dating someone who is religious, I mean, you're going to have a problem.
	And if you like to live in the bush and you meet someone who you really like, who really likes city life, I mean, there's a problem there already.
	Make sure that your values are consistent.
	Those are different values.
	Those aren't quite the same as values, right?
	Your interests. Make sure that your interests are consistent.
	Find these things out.
	You can find these things out pretty quickly in a relationship.
	Right, and some of those are going to be deal breakers, right, as we talked about before, even if you have more in common with people at an abstract and philosophical level.
	Some of that stuff, they're going to be deal breakers anyway.
	So you can meet somebody and chat with them and find out what their personality is like before you ever have to get into talking about the evils of fiat currency or whatever.
	And so I would just have a little bit more of a relaxed, kind of curious, exploratory kind of meetings with people.
	And certainly there have been some people who posted on the boards about text chats that they've been involved in where they're challenging people's ethics and ethical approaches and taking a Socratic dialogue approach to them online before they've actually even met in person.
	And I think that's premature elaboration, if that sort of makes sense.
	I would agree. I think getting to know people for, you know, for what their interests are and their histories and their backgrounds and that sort of thing, I think that's important.
	I mean, you and I talked a lot about those things.
	And, of course, philosophy and politics and ethics and morality are very important to you.
	And they weren't necessarily the things that were up there for me in terms of my own interests, but they don't have to be.
	That's, I guess, what I'm saying. They don't have to be Your potential partner's primary interest as long as they show that they might be able to develop an interest in these things or care about these things because you do.
	Right. I mean, one of the things that you get when you're involved with someone for a long period of time and you love each other very much is their interests become your interests.
	And the interests that you don't even have to share those things.
	They don't even have to be in your top ten when you first meet.
	I mean, Christina wasn't interested in politics or philosophy or any of these kinds of things.
	And I, frankly, in personal hygiene.
	I mean, there were lots of differences between the two of us when we first met, which have grown together over time.
	But what we both were very...
	We had some similar histories in our childhoods of both younger siblings, both intellectuals in semi-resolutely unintellectual environments and so on.
	But we both were very interested in learning more about the world, learning more about ourselves, both very interested in introspection and ideas and so on.
	So those things began to grow together for us.
	I wasn't listening. For instance, only one of us is interested in listening to me, so we have these disparate values that don't always join immediately.
	But I hope that over time, Christina will get interested in listening to me.
	And, of course, the interesting thing is that when she does become interested in listening to me, my desire to talk to the planet may diminish somewhat.
	But we don't know about that just yet.
	We'll see. What's reading the board?
	Well, what was going on? Tell us.
	Greg says, go for the jugular and save yourself a month of wasted idle chat.
	What does he mean by jugular there?
	What does he mean by what?
	Oh, he means like, get them up against the wall and find out their opinion about the gold standard before idle chitchat goes on.
	I don't think that we're talking about idle chitchat.
	I think we're talking about highly observational I certainly wasn't thinking about idle chitchat, because that would be an enormous waste of time.
	And it's unusual for Greg to come up with two extremes, because normally he's such an even-tempered fellow.
	But there is something between Empty, useless, idle chit-chat and getting someone up against the wall and a half Nelson to ask them about demands that they explain themselves from a moral, philosophical, psychological, economic standpoint.
	I think that the middle ground is something like you talk easily and naturally about the topics of conversation, but you're very observant about what that person is putting out, how they're framing questions, how they're responding, as you say.
	Are they being evasive? Do you get a sense of manipulation?
	Are they avoiding eye contact?
	Are they laughing inappropriately?
	Are they whatever, right? How do they treat the waitress?
	Do they talk about sexualized items early on in the relationship or early on even in the meeting or the chat, right?
	Because then there's a kind of hypersexuality about them that probably indicates bad boundaries.
	I would say that that's true.
	I can't tell you the number of people who...
	Who have talked about that, the hypersexuality.
	Oh, that's all he's interested in.
	Oh, that's all she's interested in.
	And that's highly inappropriate.
	It's highly, highly, highly inappropriate.
	And dangerous. Dangerous. You don't know these people online and so on, right?
	No, and frankly, I mean, with respect to sex, I think it's essential that people get to know each other first before they jump into bed.
	It is very, very difficult to separate the emotional from the sexual once the sexual has already taken place.
	I mean, people feel that there are some, particularly women, I'm not going to exclude men from this, but...
	For a lot of women, it's hard to have just a sexual relationship.
	What about this whole showerhead thing that I've heard about?
	The whole what? Showerhead thing for women.
	Because that's not particularly a deep relationship, but it seems to be quite an intense one at times.
	If you can only see the eye, the look that I'm getting.
	Wow, just lost another scrap of hair.
	Bummer, the lasers. Can you explain a little bit more about that?
	I think that men sometimes, because we're different and so on, that that may be something worth explaining a little bit more about how clingy, independent women get after a good sex battle.
	No, just your sort of approach to that.
	I just think that it's important to get to know the person before you can have Not before you can.
	I mean, you can have sex at any time.
	I just think that it's important to...
	The show will now end, and we will be commencing in about 90 seconds.
	Okay, go. I'll just be over here smoking.
	Thanks. You can have sex whenever you want, but you have to get to know the person.
	I won't interrupt again with another stupid joke.
	I completely lost my train of thought now.
	No, no, no. I was saying... Okay, okay, okay.
	Let me help. So I was saying that...
	I will help this time.
	So I was sort of asking you to explain sort of about the non-separation of the emotional and the sexual for women.
	And you were saying you sort of have to get to know the person.
	You can have sex whenever you want, but for women it's tougher to separate the emotional from the physical.
	And that's what you were sort of leading into talking.
	I was just asking a bit more about your perspectives on that.
	Yeah, I just think that sex clouds things.
	I mean, sex is something that makes you feel really good.
	So you get it on with someone, you feel really good, you think you really like that person, but really you're just all mixed up because it's sexual and it has nothing to do with their personality or with their character.
	So I would say get to know someone's character before you jump into bed because that way you'll be clearer about why you're jumping into bed with them.
	Right. Do you think that, because obviously you know more from the female side of things, do you think that men don't feel...
	Sorry? Do you think...
	Did you see? I just want everyone to understand that she interrupted me.
	Because that never happens the other way around.
	And so I just wanted to point out that obviously she's feeling a little better.
	That's good. But do you think that...
	I've often wondered this. Do you think that it is the case that men don't feel that level of emotional attachment through sexuality?
	Or do you think we're just sort of not supposed to feel that or supposed to be like serial monogamous or Don Wands or whatever and not get that same kind of attachment through sexual...
	I think men absolutely do get that kind of sexual attachment from sexual behavior, and I've had at least several male clients who've had the same sort of reaction where they will have sex with someone prematurely, And then be confused about the relationship as well.
	So I'm not saying, this is why I said I don't want to just limit this to women, and this goes both ways.
	I know that women are prone to it, not to say that men aren't.
	I think it's more prominent in women than it is in men.
	By prominent, you mean it's being processed on both sides, but that women feel it more acutely, whereas men, it's more unconscious, and counter to some of the stereotypical masculine sexualization approaches.
	Yes. Excellent.
	Okay. Well, good.
	That's answered that for me. Now, I want to just open up the boards again.
	Certainly, Nate, if we have not answered anything or even remotely come close to answering anything, you can let us know.
	But the boards will open up now to any topics that anybody else wants to chat about.
	I have more if people are in a listening kind of mood.
	But if you have questions or comments, issues, problems, and so on, Speak, my friends.
	Thank God I can talk.
	Geezo, you talk a lot, man.
	For God's sake, yeah.
	Is that our Scottish friend?
	Yeah. Yeah?
	Who's this? Davy.
	Oh, right. It's Davy, man.
	Yeah, me. Alright, what's on your mind?
	I don't really know. I was listening to what you were talking about earlier.
	I just want to hear something.
	Do you know what I'm saying? It's not that good to have an intimate girlfriend.
	All my relationships are just pretend.
	All your relationships are just pretend?
	Oh, I think we may have lost him.
	I think I heard, just as you said, all my relationships are pretend.
	I think I heard a deflating sound.
	Something like that. Do you think that may have been...
	Was that just me? Okay.
	Everybody is unmuted again.
	Unfortunately, our Scottish friend wasn't able to stay and contribute.
	If anybody else has any questions or issues, please feel free.
	Did we really explain it that well, do you think, that everybody has totally understood what it is that we're talking about?
	That doesn't seem quite right. I think I heard something, other than just the typing.
	Sorry? Oh, hi.
	All right. Let me just...
	With the muting, and...
	Where is he?
	Somewhere down here. Right, I knew that when I said, unless you're a monk, I was going to hear from you.
	Go ahead. Okay, you say that you have a suspicion of sexual attraction, but then at the same time you say that it's a necessary component along with other components.
	Well, for romantic love, yes, for sure.
	Of love, right.
	Of romantic love. Right.
	So, how do you reconcile that?
	Well, I think it sort of ties into what Christina was saying, because I find if I do try and tie into what Christina says, I get some later.
	But what I think I would say is that sexuality is an effect of values, right?
	I mean, in its highest and purest form, right?
	Sexuality arises in a glorious way through it being a result of Of commitments to virtue and all of that kind of stuff as well.
	And I'm not going to discount, you know, that there are certain body types that people prefer and so on.
	I mean, those things I think are important, but not central.
	So sexuality is an important thing that occurs within a romantic relationship, but sexual attraction is an effect that Of virtue.
	Because, of course, we all get old and wrinkled, right?
	I mean, we all get old, wrinkled, and pudgy, and we get liver spots.
	And, you know, I don't think people, the moment they stop being classically physically attractive, just stop having sex.
	So there must be something about sexuality that is not based on simple sort of body types and looks and youth and all that kind of stuff.
	So I would say sexuality is essential.
	I mean, it is the definition of a romantic relationship versus other relationships.
	It is the sole difference between romantic and other relationships.
	But I would say that sexuality, if you put the cart before the horse and say, well, I'm not attracted to that person, so I'm not going to pursue getting to know them with that kind of intent, I think that's a great mistake.
	Because I've known a number of men and women who've thrown themselves off a cliff, so to speak, for the sake of sexual desire.
	And then they get embedded in these relationships with these people.
	And I've been there myself, which was sparked initially by sexual desire, which then dries up.
	And this is a story as old as philosophy, right, that sexual desire is a very bad criteria by which to make partnership decisions.
	But the mind, to some degree, follows the heart, which is what, sorry, the mind, to some degree, follows the sexual organs, or the heart does, so that when you sleep with someone, your heart and soul will follow that to some degree, and it'll sort of throw things off.
	So my objection to sexual attraction is simply that it is a bad way to get a relationship going.
	And I think that it's a bad criteria by which to judge who it is that you're going to talk to.
	But you say that it arises from a recognition of virtue.
	So doesn't that seem contradictory?
	MR.
	Yes, and I would say that sexuality, I mean, sorry, there's love sexuality and then there's lust sexuality, right?
	I mean, that's, again, that's not sort of a particularly original distinction that goes all the way back to, oh lord, the pre-Socratics, but...
	There is, you know, there's haute cuisine and there's McDonald's, right?
	And there's nothing wrong with eating a meal at McDonald's, I guess, but if you could have the choice, right, why not have haute cuisine?
	But you can definitely, people get attracted to, men get attracted to women and will pursue them and this and that.
	And I think that's a very bad thing, because there's also a huge power disparity, right?
	When you're attracted to someone and pursuing them, it all becomes, a little bit becomes about the hunt, and it's not, you know, just can I get this person to go out with me or whatever, and it's not really an independent evaluation.
	You're already being driven by your hormones.
	So I would say that healthy sexuality arises from virtue and love and so on, And sexuality that is sparked and acted on before an evaluation of the person's spirituality and virtue and so on is something to be resisted, right? I mean, there are certainly instincts which we should resist, right?
	I mean, if you get really angry at someone, it doesn't mean we should go pop them one, right?
	And so there is sexual attraction.
	There's nothing wrong with it, but I don't think that it's a very good criterion by which to make decisions because it's not around virtue, right?
	It's about a particular body shape and youth and so on, hair, whatever it is that turns you on.
	It's got nothing to do with virtue, which means that it's something to be resisted.
	And, you know, it doesn't mean that you can't act on it, but I find that most people choose only to act So, to draw an analogy then, it would be like the distinction between food and nutrition.
	Every time you're hungry, you don't run out and get a Big Mac.
	Right. I mean, that would be, yeah, certainly that would be sort of, that would sort of be dysfunctional.
	You just want to, I mean, philosophy as in science is all about determining cause from effect, right?
	So, like the true sexuality is about, I mean, sort of if you look at the biological standpoint, all right, I'll just do this very, very quickly because this ties back to something we talked about two weeks ago.
	Biologically, human beings can go one of two ways, right, in terms of reproducing themselves.
	And we have to be pretty blunt about sexuality that it's all about making little philosophers.
	Human beings have two reproductive strategies, right?
	The first reproductive strategy is for the man to simply have sex with as many women as possible in a voluntary and non-voluntary manner.
	We're not talking about the ethics.
	We're just talking about the biology, and this is common in the animal kingdom as well.
	The one reproductive strategy is like the sperm spray, right?
	We just have as many sex with as many women as possible and just hope to God that some of your kids make it to adulthood, but you don't sort of stick around to provide.
	And that's the sort of war situation.
	We talked about this before.
	The second reproductive strategy is to heavily invest in your own children, which tends to be what happens in a situation of peace or plenty.
	That's how sexuality arose within us.
	Sexuality has two functions.
	The one is lust, which is about you just having sex with as many women as possible.
	In the hopes that you sort of scatter your seed widely and, you know, some of them are going to find room to grow and some nutrition and so on.
	And the second is when you have more control of your environment and when things are a little bit more peaceful, then you say, okay, well, I'm going to find the woman, we're going to settle down, we're going to, you know, raise her children together and so on.
	I would say that, again, just from a purely amoral standpoint, that the first reproductive strategy doesn't work anymore, right, for two reasons.
	One is that women have birth control, so this sort of semen spray doesn't work as far as the reproductive strategy goes.
	So it's inappropriate now, although we still have the vestigial desires.
	And secondly, of course, by and large, we're in a situation of peace where it's certainly possible to raise a family with two sort of dedicated parents and so on.
	Now, if you...
	I don't mean you, but if one understands that we're no longer in a situation where that is not a viable or positive strategy, And so we need to have the second aspect of sexuality, which is the bond that unites two parents in the raising of children in a long-term relationship.
	And so that sexuality arises.
	I mean, you don't want to have some hot chick raising your children, right?
	I mean, that's the only criteria that she has, right?
	She's hot, you know, and so I want her to raise my children.
	I'm going to spend the next 40 years with her.
	I can't remember who some film director said, you know, the weird thing about beauty is after it's been around your house for three days, you barely even notice it anymore, right?
	Then you start to notice the person themselves, and beauty wears off, physical beauty or whatever is sexually attractive to you, wears off very, very quickly, which is the whole point of that kind of lust-based reproductive strategy.
	Now that we're in a situation as a culture that we can have these long-term relationships, if you're going to spend 40 years with someone, you have to have a more solid criteria to hang around with them than she was really cute 40 years ago, right?
	Because that's obviously unstable, and if she's with you because you're cute, then she's going to find some other cuter guy, and then when she's no longer cute or if she's a bad person, or God forbid she's raising your children and doing a bad or mean job of it, None of that stuff's going to last.
	So given that we do have reproductive strategies in the modern Western world around long-term pair bonding, just going to get to know someone with the idea of a romantic relationship just because they're hot and not doing it with people.
	Who are not sort of hot in the way that you prefer, I think is just irrational just from a purely biological standpoint.
	Who wants to spend 40 years with some hot chick who can't talk or doesn't have ideas or whatever?
	It's not mutually exclusive, but certainly I think it's a bad approach to take.
	And there also seems to be some biological basis for the second form you were talking about, too.
	So I guess the implication is that human beings then are equipped with both forms of biological desire, both the short-term and the long-term.
	Sure, yeah. And again, I think it was about a month ago we talked about how...
	I mean, to me, there's never been any particular reason why children who were abused when they were young should grow up to be more aggressive.
	I mean, why wouldn't it be the other way around?
	So human beings have intergenerational evolutionary capacities, which is a fancy-schmancy way of saying that our personalities will alter based on our immediate surroundings.
	And it's not just us as well.
	Like, if you beat a dog, the dog will be more aggressive as well.
	But the most advanced life forms, i.e.
	human beings, If we are treated in a bad way when we're children, then the likelihood of us being more aggressive and not being able to form permanent bonds and so on is more likely, and that's perfectly legitimate from a biological and evolutionary standpoint.
	If you're being treated badly when you're a kid, It seems likely that resources are scarce, and so you're going to have to be pretty punchy, right?
	Because if you're real nice and deferential, you're going to die of starvation, right?
	So you're going to have to be more aggressive.
	And I think the same thing is true, that we have both the capacity for long-term pair bonding and also short-term, you know, rape and run reproductive strategies.
	And I think one of the things that occurs is that children who come from harsher home climates have a higher propensity towards promiscuity, right?
	That is absolutely the case, right?
	So where children are badly treated in the home life when they're growing up, they have a higher tendency towards promiscuity.
	This is even more particularly true of people who have been sexually abused, that they have enormously high propensities towards either abstinence or promiscuity.
	And that would seem to fall within the same kind of pattern, right?
	Because if society is so chaotic and disorganized, and if parenting is so bad, That children are being sexually abused, then of course reproductive long-term pair bonding strategies would not seem to be a good idea because society would be too disorganized for that to work.
	So then it's really not so much a principle as it is just a fact of biology.
	It is a fact of biology, but certainly if human beings want to be happy, then, you know, we would all choose to be born into a more stable society where we could have long-term pair bonding and so on, right?
	Those are better, right? Nobody wants to be the twitchy, hyper-aggressive or hyper-deferential, promiscuous, highly prone to addiction kind of traumatized child, you know, who grows up to be a real mess as an adult.
	We wouldn't want that. It's just it's a valid strategy if you're in a situation of want to be aggressive and promiscuous in that situation, right?
	So one of the mismatches that occurs is that those of us who come from bad or brutalized backgrounds end up with this particular approach to life that doesn't really work in the modern world, right?
	I mean, tend to run afoul of the law or, you know, they don't really breed happiness.
	Of the two... I think most of us would choose a long-term pair-bond relationship to raise children rather than just, you know, banging some chick in the club and hoping she raises the kid or something, right?
	That's not really going to make you very happy.
	So the two are equally viable depending on the circumstances from a biological standpoint.
	But in terms of human happiness, I think that we would choose love and intimacy with a virtuous partner rather than sort of random anonymous sex in, you know, to whatever degree we could get a hold of it.
	But only because of the kind of society that we live in.
	So, in other words, it's not so much a universal as it is a requirement of the way we've organized society up to this point.
	Well, it is a universal insofar as you'll be happier with a longer-term pair bond than you will with sort of anonymous sex.
	But certainly, biological strategies don't have...
	I mean, they're universally adaptive in just sort of evolutionary standpoint to reproduce the genes as much as possible.
	So there's no ethics involved in that.
	But given that we do have a peaceful society and human beings are more happy when they have these sort of longer-term reproductive strategies, then I would say that if you want to be happy, then putting sexual desire first and foremost in your pursuit of a mate is definitely not going to get it for you.
	But you're just speaking in general.
	You're not being...
	I mean, in general that might be true.
	But supposing... There was somebody who happened to be perfectly happy with absolute promiscuity.
	How do you tell that person then, oh, well, you know, you're not really happy.
	You just think you are.
	And see, if I was a single man, I'd have asked her her number, but instead I'll turn it over to Christina.
	Oh, I'm so sorry. I will turn it over to Christina, but she is muted because I muted everybody.
	I'm sorry. Go ahead. Right now?
	Hello? Okay.
	Hi. I think if you do meet someone who is absolutely happy with promiscuity, I mean, I don't, you know, I mean, and you said to them, you said, well, how do I tell them that they're not really happy?
	You can't. That's what they think and that's what they believe.
	But they're, yeah, but they're not happy and why do you feel the need to tell them that they're not happy?
	Oh, no, I don't. I'm just suggesting that as a, and I realize it's an absurd example, but, I mean, logically it's possible, right?
	No, I don't think it's logically possible to be both highly promiscuous and happy.
	I mean, when I talk about a viable reproductive strategy, I just mean that in a state of pure chaos, that it can be more viable for a human being to simply plant his seed wherever he can.
	But that doesn't mean that that makes him happy, because people don't like to be in a situation of war and starvation and want and chaos.
	It's just that if you are, it's a decent reproductive strategy, but it certainly would not make you happy.
	Certainly people will claim that it makes them happy, right?
	But they tend to be a little bit on the sociopathic side.
	You know, it sounds almost like people with sex addictions.
	And these people are not happy.
	Right. So highly promiscuous people then are sort of handing around their bodies like candy, and they are putting themselves in very vulnerable positions, particularly women, right?
	Dating some guy, going to bed with him.
	You don't even know him. You don't know his history.
	But you do know that he's a guy who's capable of just going out with some girl, picking her up in a bar, and going to have sex with her.
	So he's obviously not a very healthy guy, right?
	Obviously he has his own issues with continuity, and he's on this sort of short-fused biological situation himself, and who knows what other risks there are involved.
	Not just STDs and so on, but the possibility of violence, the possibility of stalking, of obsession, of whatever.
	Yeah, this goes both ways. I mean, this could be a guy who picks up a girl at a bar and they go home and sort of get it on.
	I mean, what does it say about her?
	And what information don't you know about her as well?
	And she could turn into a stalker.
	She could turn into a thief.
	She could be... Who knows, right?
	It's a very, very risky situation when people are willing to put the entire power of human sexuality on sort of whim-based pleasure circuits.
	I think that's very, very risky behavior.
	Right, they could just be pleasure seekers, which doesn't necessarily entail danger.
	I mean, if both people agree to engage in the activity and they get what they want out of it, how is that a negative?
	Well, there's a difference between, obviously, rape, we all agree, is pure evil, but there's also irresponsible behavior, right?
	So if you're a father, you have two kids, and you suddenly wake up one day and say, hey, I'm just going to start sleeping around, well, you don't get that choice anymore.
	You become a father, right?
	So you sort of have responsibilities over and above yourself.
	If two people just decide to go and have sex, yeah, I mean, nobody's going to lose any sleep, so to speak, over it.
	Because it's two people who want to go and do it for themselves.
	But if anyone who was doing that came to a sort of reasonable and compassionate person and said, I am going and having anonymous sex with strangers.
	I think that the person who had some compassion would say, that's a bad thing to do, even if you never experience any physical harm or sexually transmitted disease or anything like that, that it's going to It's Rupert Everett who actually said this once.
	He's a British actor and model.
	And he said, you know, when you're young and you have sex with a lot of people, it just smashes you up inside.
	And you don't even notice this until you get older and try and have like a more mature relationship.
	But it does seem to be, you know, when people are promiscuous, it seems to, at its root, there seems to be a great deal of spiritual agony at the root of it.
	Because instead of using their sexuality to further cement a long-term loving pair-bond relationship with a virtuous equal, they're just using it for sort of immediate pleasure.
	And I think for women in particular, though it may be true for a man as well, that is followed by a certain sense of humiliation that follows that.
	So then if we say that promiscuity is a very important thing, It's not logically possible to derive happiness from promiscuity, and it's not materially possible to derive it from long-term pair bonding, at least in a large percentage of cases.
	Sorry, I'm just a little confused about that second one.
	It's not logically possible to derive sexual pleasure from long-term pair bonding?
	I just got a little lost on that.
	No, no, no. Happiness, right?
	So you were talking about So you were talking about deriving happiness from the two forms of biological reproduction strategies, right?
	Yeah, and I would say you can only get happiness from one.
	Right, and so it's logically possible to from the second one, but materially it's not...
	In a large percentage of cases, right?
	You mean like most people get divorced and the divorce rate is like 58% or something?
	Absolutely, for sure. But that's because it can only follow virtue and most people aren't virtuous.
	Right. So then...
	Oh, I lost my train of thought on that one.
	Do you need a moment? We'll chat among ourselves.
	How's it going, baby? So the point is, I guess, with the only goal to be reproduction, really, and happiness a possible side effect of that, then I guess you really have to want to reproduce, right?
	Well, and that's why the sexual drive is so intense, right?
	And that's where people do sort of get off on it, so to speak.
	My sort of understanding, and Christina can correct me if I'm wrong, but people who go through that kind of promiscuity do it specifically with the unconscious desire for self-humiliation.
	So there's a woman, I remember reading a case study many years ago of a woman who had been molested when she was a child, and it got to the point where with her own self-esteem, and she associated sexual acts with humiliation because, of course, that was the aspect that was inflicted on her as a child.
	You know, she said something like this.
	She said, you know, well, you know, before I got treatment, I would just go to the scuzziest bar in town, I'd pick up the most disgusting guy I could find, and I'd go home and have sex with him.
	But that's not an act that celebrates joy or pleasure or happiness or anything like that.
	That is a scar tissue acting its way out from somebody who's been raped as a child, right?
	That's not an expression of joy, and I'm sure that she would never express that, and she certainly didn't after she got treatment, express that as Well, that was, hey, good times.
	You know, back then, boy, when I was trolling the scuzz bars for the lowlifes, those were good times, right?
	That's just what happens when people don't get themselves treated for this kind of abuse, that this goes on.
	I don't think that there's any real pursuit of happiness in it at all.
	And you mentioned trust, and that sort of implies a willingness to assuage risk in and that sort of implies a willingness to assuage risk in the face of some calculated right? Go on.
	So, the point being there, aren't you really just making the same kind of Rational calculation that Rand talked about, even though you want to cloak it in some kind of mutuality.
	If you could just explain that a bit more.
	I think you may have jumped a few steps that I can't follow you on yet, so if you could just tell me a little bit more about what you mean.
	Right, so the pursuit of virtue is what we're after, right?
	Yes, I would certainly say that's an essential prerequisite for love.
	And you said that that entails...
	My notes here.
	That entails...
	Oh, are you actually taking notes?
	You've really got to tell me that then beforehand.
	Oh, man. Okay, go ahead.
	Let's hope you don't get accidentally cut off.
	But... Well, it's the same thing that would occur in science, right?
	I mean, if you want to pursue knowledge in science, you have to have a kind of objective rational methodology, you have to have evidence, you have all these kinds of things, right?
	But a good scientist makes many more bad predictions than good predictions, and a good scientist makes many more errors So a good scientist just has to have the sort of relentless pursuit of truth using the scientific method.
	But every single theory they come up with doesn't have to be perfectly rational.
	They just have to have the capacity to validate their theories and discard the bad ones, right?
	Just like everybody who writes doesn't have every word that comes out, doesn't have to be glowingly perfect, but they have to at least have the discipline to discard the bad ones, right?
	That's the same thing with the pursuit of virtue, right?
	I mean, you don't have to be perfectly virtuous anymore than a scientist has to have theories be correct all the time, but you have to constantly allow yourself to be corrected according to logic and truth and reality and so on.
	Sorry, I tried to keep that as short as possible, but that was the recap I was trying to get at.
	Right, so then at what point do you decide that pursuing one line of Pursuing one particular theory has become too costly and you have to abandon it and adopt another theory.
	Is that entirely subjective or what?
	Tricky. So you're saying that, if I can understand the analogy, so in the same way that a scientist who is attempting to pursue a theory at some point has to go, well, this is no longer working and I'm no longer going to go out with this theory, to sort of break up with this theory and move on to another theory?
	Is that sort of the idea? Yeah.
	I mean, all scientists have to do that, right?
	They're looking to pursue a particular goal, like, I don't know, a Time travel or whatever.
	And they have a range of different theories that they're looking at and they're saying, okay, these three look the most plausible.
	They pick one to pursue, right, based on, you know, the funding dollars they have and whatnot.
	They pursue it and then after a year or two they're going, oh, well, you know, this isn't getting up anywhere.
	Let's try one of the other two.
	You know, where's... By what criteria do you do that in the realm of virtue then?
	Right. I think that I'm going to have to answer that by unpacking the conflation, I think, of two metaphors.
	I'm saying that we as scientists sort of have a methodology for truth and so on.
	We don't always achieve it perfectly, but we can always be corrected according to that standard, right?
	Now, that's how we pursue particular theories as far as virtue and good behavior or scientific truth or whatever goes.
	But you're then saying that we could also use that metaphor to approach how we judge potential relationships, potential life partners.
	I would say, though, that that's not a valid extension of the metaphor, and I'll try reworking what you're saying, and you can let me know if you think that's fair, what it is that I'm saying.
	What I think would be a valid extension of the metaphor is you say, okay, I have a club of excellent physicists, which is actually quite true.
	We just call them philosophers in Free Domain Radio, but I have a club of excellent physicists.
	To what degree do we allow witch doctors and astrologers into the club?
	Because they're going with a completely non-rational subjective methodology for determining, quote, truth from, quote, falsehood, which is Exploitive and destructive or whatever, right?
	So if you are judging your scientific theories according to objective reality, that's not the same as judging irrational people according to objective philosophy or virtue.
	So I think it would be more valid to say...
	Since nobody can be perfectly virtuous, in other words, nobody can be perfectly rational and scientists can never be perfectly correct at all times, to what degree do we let irrational people in to our expert philosophy club or our expert club of physics or whatever?
	And I think, to me, it would always be the degree, not based on their initial knowledge or not based on how often they're right or wrong, because people can be accidentally right in sequence just through randomness, But I think it would be the degree to which people are willing to be corrected by reason and reality.
	That's the basic criteria for any discipline of the human mind associated with truth or virtue or anything like that, scientific or moral, philosophical or whatever.
	To what degree are people willing to be corrected According to reason and evidence.
	To what degree do people submit their judgments to reason and evidence?
	Now, if they don't do that, we'd never let them into our physics club anyway, right?
	And if they do do that, then even if they're not currently great physicists, we might let them in if they were sort of willing to learn and maintain that.
	So I think that would be perhaps a closer way of approximating it.
	And if that is the case, then...
	It would be something that you could determine pretty quickly with somebody, right?
	If they make a mistake, to what degree are they willing to correct their thinking according, not to your opinion or my opinion, but according to reason and evidence.
	And if somebody is not willing to do that, which we've seen posted on the boards, I think Nate posted a couple of his conversations with people in chat rooms, wherein he would sort of ask, they would make a statement which had a moral base to it, and then he would question How they came about determining that in an ethical way, and they would simply just back away and not talk and so on.
	Well, that's somebody who doesn't get let into the physicist club, right?
	Because they're not willing to subject their opinions to reason and evidence.
	Does that sort of make any sense?
	Well, sure. Sure it does.
	So, to carry it one step further then, it really doesn't matter who they are in terms of letting them into the club as long as They conform to the methodology.
	Well, as long as they conform to reality, sure.
	Sure, I mean, there's the basic club called sanity, which is also one's ability to interact with reality, right?
	We just sort of go to conceptual sanity, which is philosophy, where people have to conform to reality, right?
	Because if they can't conform to reality, I mean, it's not that we're trying to be horribly exclusionary or anything, but if they can't correspond to reality, if they can't conform to reality, then there's no possibility of any conversation with them anyway, because they're just going to wish away anything they don't want.
	So it's just so we won't waste our time, don't waste their time.
	But it's not that we keep them out of the club of philosophy or in romance.
	We reject women from their capacity to nestle within our hearts or whatever.
	It's just that if somebody's not into reality, then it'll never be possible to have any kind of relationship with them.
	So we're just not pretending, I guess.
	Right. And so then at what point do fingerprints matter?
	To clarify...
	I'm sorry, did we move to a romantic situation where there are bodies now?
	I just wanted to understand.
	At what point does an alibi matter in dating?
	Sorry, go ahead. No, the point is that if all that matters is that rational virtue, then the particular person really doesn't matter.
	So, I mean...
	How could it not be possible for someone to, say, be perfectly happy with a harem instead of just one person?
	I can't, I'm just trying to think, and I certainly am just trying to not sort of conform anything to any sort of my beliefs, just sort of try and reason it through.
	I think it would be more valid to say to what degree would a harem be satisfied with one man.
	Let's just use the traditional sort of King Sultan of porno fantasy land or something.
	It's not something... Let's just say that it's possible that a sultan has a harem of perfectly rational women, but of course, their happiness, if they loved him, then they would not want to share him with a whole bunch of other people, right?
	Why wouldn't they?
	Sorry? Why wouldn't they?
	Well, because I take a great deal of pleasure spending time with Christina, and if she's then going out to spend time with a bunch of other guys, I'm not going to spend as much time with her, right?
	So, I mean, that would be negative for me.
	I wouldn't want to do that, right?
	Right, but taking it back to the metaphor, if this harem of women determined that they're That their patriarch is this incredible paragraph of virtue.
	Why wouldn't they want to parade him around as the ideal?
	Oh, because, I mean, that sort of stuff is not for parading, right?
	I mean, that's just, that's for a one-on-one interaction.
	That's how you get that stuff, right?
	And if you, from one-on-one interaction, which is really all that relationships ever come down to is one-on-one interaction, because you can't have a relationship with a crowd, then if for the woman, the one-on-one interactions would be severely diminished by the competition and presence of all these other women, right?
	So they wouldn't be that special, and they wouldn't get to spend that much time with the man one-on-one, and so if they did love him, then they would not be happy having to share him.
	Okay, let me take this in a linear way then.
	Supposing it was Jane Doe on that sports team and not Christina.
	Do you see what I'm saying?
	And supposing she had the exact same configuration, well not exact same, but nearly precisely the same configuration of values and virtues.
	Right. Then it wouldn't matter, right?
	No, absolutely not. I mean, if she was the same age, more or less, as Christina, and, I don't know, wasn't a leper or something, right?
	Which, you know, I'm more into measles.
	But then, sure, absolutely.
	You know, it is not Christina.
	Right? But Christina's virtue, that is the source of my attraction for her.
	And if somebody else had possessed the exact same virtues as Christina and been on that team, then I would have loved her instead, right?
	So, for sure, it is...
	I mean, it's reproducible. Because if it wasn't reproducible, and if it wasn't objective, and if it wasn't definable, then love would simply be a mysterious cosmic lottery that, you know, some won and most lost, right?
	I mean, that... I think?
	You know, if we're in this sort of fantasy horror movie of science fiction magic, then, yeah, then it would be the other woman, right?
	Because it's not...
	It is the virtue, and the virtue is available to other people.
	Otherwise, also, and that's the Randian fallacy, right?
	Then Christina would be the only person to love in the whole world, and that's just simply not the case.
	There's me, too. Okay, then...
	Hang on here.
	So, then, it's...
	Does this mean that Once you've identified that collection of values and virtues in a single person, does that somehow truncate or dampen the desire for those values and virtues or to seek out those in others?
	Try me once more?
	In other words, once you've gotten your Big Mac, are you satisfied?
	You don't want another Big Mac ever again?
	Does that mean sort of like if you find the woman that you love, do you then want to find other women to love?
	Right. So the point is that if we're focused on identifying values and virtues of a certain kind in people, then what I'm suggesting here is that it's possible that you could, at some point, Stumble on somebody else very much like Christina and actually love that person too.
	Sure, absolutely.
	Absolutely, but not in a romantic way.
	I mean, it's not to say that Christina and I are going to spend the rest of our lives never being sexually attracted to any other human being.
	Of course, that's not going to be the case.
	It certainly is for Christina. But we did catch that laugh there.
	Hey, you laughed. But anyway, we'll talk about that after the show.
	That'll be the post-show. But yes, I mean, if Christina and I come across, and of course, you know, great affection for the people on the board, yourself included, right?
	So if we find people who are curious and intelligent and virtuous and interested in the same pursuit of rational virtue that we're in, absolutely, yeah, great affection sort of flies forward.
	But the idea that...
	Because, you know, history is also important to love as well, right?
	Love is not just a sort of moment-by-moment thing, right?
	So Christina and I have now known each other for five years.
	We have a deeply embedded set of inside jokes, which really seems to be the basis of a productive relationship, just as we have here in Freedom in Radio.
	But there's an enormous amount of history that sort of twines together, right?
	Two trees growing together, stronger than each alone, that sort of stuff.
	So the sort of accumulated history would be a pretty strong bond, more strong than any sort of external influence could create.
	But the best thing to do to protect yourself against falling in love with somebody else after you are in a relationship is to work on your virtue and your partner's virtue as greatly as possible so that Any sort of sexual attraction you have outside the marriage is simply going to be a sort of, wow, that person is sexy kind of thing, but it's not going to be something which fundamentally threatens any kind of bond.
	Are you implying from that then that if somebody of a greater virtue came along, that you would consider it?
	No, it would be irrational for me to consider it.
	Let's just say that somebody of greater virtue came along than Christina, then that person would not be interested in me because Christina and I have the same amount of virtue.
	So if there was some perfect being out there...
	Sorry, that sounds a little bit vain.
	It's like, well, if they're more virtuous than me, they must be perfect, right?
	But if somebody out there was like twice as virtuous as I was, then they would be looking for somebody of an equal level of virtue.
	They certainly wouldn't be looking for me, so it wouldn't really matter, and I would be perfectly aware of that, right?
	That it wouldn't be a relationship that could work, because I wouldn't meet that woman's high standards, right?
	And there'd be no value in jumping ship or someone of identical virtue?
	No. I mean, again, I know we're back on the calculation side, but no, for sure, because there's a lot of history.
	Christina and I have worked out the individual kinks within our relationship and continue to do those when they come up.
	So there is no such thing as equal value to somebody.
	Like when you've been with somebody day and night, as Christina and I have been for five years, You know, we've worked out an enormous amount of things in our relationship.
	Somebody of equal virtue, I'd still have to go and do all of that with them, and they would have to do that with me based on some of the less sort of basic virtuous things in relationships, like, you know, when do you like to do the dishes, when do you like to get up, all of that kind of stuff, right?
	So it would not be a productive use of resources to simply go out and do all that again with somebody who was new, right?
	They'd have to be so incredibly virtuous that then they would have no interest in me.
	So, you know, does that sort of make sense?
	Yeah, it makes perfect sense.
	And I didn't mean to drag it into that whole kind of calculus, but the point of it...
	Oh, I enjoyed the harem thing, so maybe we can go back to that later.
	The point of it is, though, that you may be defining it in a more negative sense.
	I don't mean that in a bad negative, but you're defining in the negative that the individual actually does matter.
	Do you see what I'm saying? That it's not just an anonymous collection of values organized in a specific way, that the specific person in which those rest actually matters to you.
	Do I have the mic?
	Yeah, you know, I think that's exactly what he's saying.
	I think that there are specific qualities about stuff that make him stuff, and there are things about me that make me who I am and things about you that make you who you are.
	And that doesn't mean that each of us can't be virtuous, but there are personality traits, there are interests, there are original thoughts and ideas that make each person an individual that are also enormously important in attraction.
	Well, I mean, to take a simple example, and that's not because it's a simple question, it's just that I think it's more illustrated with a simple example, a sense of humor, right?
	A sense of humor is obviously not a prerequisite for morality.
	Certainly not in my case.
	Sorry? Certainly not in my case.
	Right. So a sense of humor is not required.
	Obviously, Christina needs an extraordinarily highly developed sense of humor to live with me.
	Tolerance. Tolerance.
	Absolutely. I mean, if Christina didn't have a good sense of humor, or maybe you would not argue that it's a good sense of humor, if she didn't have a sense of humor that was compatible with my antics, so to speak, then she would simply go mental trying to live with me, right? Because I'm a jokey kind of fellow.
	And so...
	That's not an example of virtue and the pursuit of virtue and so on.
	I happen to think that moralists who don't have a sense of humor are kind of unbearable, right?
	I find them kind of claustrophobic and so on, right?
	I mean, there's sort of Kantian duty and all that on honor and country and Semper Fi.
	I find that kind of ethics all kind of stultifying because it forgets that ethics is about happiness, not subservience to the ruling class, but we don't have to get into that right now.
	But a sense of humor is not required for virtue.
	But it is, I think, having compatible senses of humor or sense of humor versus non-sense of humor would not be compatible.
	You need that in a relationship for it to really sort of work in a fluid kind of way.
	I think that if somebody's a workaholic and somebody's really laid back, I think that could not work as well, even if both people are sort of committed to virtue and so on.
	So there's a certain amount of aesthetics or style within personalities that need to be compatible, but...
	So it's a necessary but not sufficient requirement for the pursuit of virtue to be front and center in somebody's value structure or somebody's priorities.
	But it's certainly not...
	It's not enough for...
	It's not like everybody whose virtue is interchangeable, right?
	There's a lot of other stuff that has to fit.
	And so externalities actually can play a role then.
	I mean, beyond just physical attraction...
	Yeah, relationship to money and so on.
	And this all comes back to the question which we certainly won't have time to answer now, but it is a question to the degree to which if everybody believed in a rational philosophy, to what degree would our personalities be the same?
	I don't know. But certainly things like...
	A high and low sex drive, we would not associate with ethics in particular, but if one person has a high sex drive, another person has a low sex drive, that might cause conflicts within a relationship, relationships to money and so on.
	Some people like to spend, some people like to save.
	Those things can be important.
	Leisure activities. Right.
	Leisure activities, certain aspects of child raising.
	There's lots of different things that are required.
	And people don't ask, they don't get involved in those kinds of questions early on in their relationships, right?
	Which is why relationships end up being such a mess for so many people is that they don't basically talk.
	I mean, people can actually get married and have children before they talk about how we're going to raise them.
	People can actually get married before they talk about how do you like to manage money, right?
	I mean, those things are absolutely essential to talk about right up front.
	Like Christina, the second date we were on, boom, she said to me, I'm not looking for a player.
	Clearly, you're not one of them.
	I've seen you in shorts. But no, I said, I'm not looking for a player.
	I'm looking to get settled down.
	It doesn't mean we've got to do it tomorrow.
	But, you know, I'm in my early 30s, and I do want to get sorted out.
	Oh, did we just lose everything?
	We just had a power failure here.
	Can everyone still hear me?
	Oh, you're still on?
	Oh, okay, good. Interesting.
	Oh, we're back. Oh, it's just a screensaver.
	Oh, sorry. So, what was I saying?
	Oh, yeah, so Christina was very up front with what she wanted from the relationship.
	And, you know, she wanted to settle down.
	She wanted to have kids. She was right up front.
	And, of course, you know, I was attracted to her, so I said, sure.
	So dealing with the important things.
	Oh, absolutely.
	Absolutely. People could just save an enormous amount of time and energy.
	And these are not things about, like, do you believe that Aristotle was the greatest philosopher of all time or anything like that.
	These are just basic aesthetic of life issues, right?
	I mean, you don't want to date someone for, you know, three months and then find out that they never want to have kids if you do, right?
	I mean, you know, there are deal breakers up front, which is around how it is that you want to spend your time on the planet.
	Yeah. And it's really important to get that kind of stuff dealt with up front.
	You know, if you make jokes and she never laughs, that's sort of important, right?
	There's an old line from Fawlty Towers, which if you've never seen it, it's a hilarious British show.
	And he says to his wife, who he has a really bad relationship, right?
	He says, you ever seen how she makes toast?
	Because she's like a fire-breathing dragon.
	But he says, you know, remember when we were first married and we used to laugh and laugh and laugh?
	And she says, yes, but never at the same time.
	And he's like, yeah, I guess that was a bit of a warning right there, wasn't it?
	And these kinds of things are important.
	So, yeah, absolutely very important to figure these things out.
	I'll give you one sort of minor example just before I turn it back to you.
	Sorry, go ahead. Okay, well, I was just going to say then things like identifying...
	An affinity for rationalism versus mysticism, for individualism versus collectivism.
	All of these things would matter as well, wouldn't they?
	Oh, crucially. Crucially.
	And I would say that those things matter even before those other things matter, because those things have to be in place.
	For instance, if somebody's a total mystic and you're a rationalist, then, you know, to take this sort of standard male-female thing, then she would be whim-based and unable to be correctable with reference to reality or logic.
	Which means that... And you're a philosopher, right?
	To whatever degree you follow this sort of logical reasoning.
	So basically then you're saying, well, I'm starting a school for physicists and the first person I'm going to let in who's going to be the chairperson is a witch doctor.
	It's like, well, you can't have that, right?
	And of course you can't have a relationship with a mystic, right?
	Because their primary relationship is with nothing, right?
	With fantasy. And so another human being can never compete with that.
	It's like the complaint that some men have who have dated Christian women that you can just never...
	You can never compete with Jesus Christ, right?
	Because he's always perfect and always forgiving and always wonderful, and you're just an ordinary mortal and you can't compete.
	So you can't have a relationship with a mystic anyway.
	They're fundamentally isolated and lonely people.
	So, yeah, for sure, that would be the first question that you would ask, right?
	So one of the first questions I asked Christina was, what school of philosophy do you follow?
	And she's like, cognitive emotional therapy and all that stuff that I knew about.
	That meant that she was very much into empiricism.
	She was very much into...
	You know, validated and verified scientific methodologies, and so, you know, it's like, boom, you know, fantastic.
	If she said, I'm into taking peyote and reading Jung, then it probably might not have gone quite as successfully.
	So let me ask you this, then.
	If it's not ridiculous to ask a girl, what school of philosophy do you subscribe to, then why would it be ridiculous to ask, what do you think of the gold standard?
	I think Steph made a mistake.
	I think he didn't say, what school of philosophy do I belong to?
	Because I really didn't know very much about philosophy at the time.
	He said, what school of psychology?
	I'm sorry, I meant school of psychology.
	I was asking sort of the professional questions because I was able then to figure out What approach she took to problem solving at an abstract level when I asked her what school of psychology she belonged to and given that there are very many highly irrational schools of psychology and she happened to be rooted in the most rational school of psychology That helped a lot in terms of helping me to understand where she was coming from.
	I was just asking her questions about herself without an agenda of my own, like without any sort of attempt to convert her, whereas I think some of the stuff that Nate's been doing when he talks with people on the boards is he's sort of trying to do the Socratic cross-examination rather than just asking questions to find out where that person is and accepting the answers without trying to modify them because you can't change people, of course. Okay, yeah, that clarifies things.
	Thanks, baby. Save me for myself.
	Pointing out your errors. Hey, everybody's got a reason to get up in the morning.
	Alright, I'm going to just open up for...
	We're now at two hours, and I think because everybody's now...
	I've seen a number of criticisms that I did not follow the Eastern Standard Time thing.
	Actually, my computer certainly did change, and I don't know if Skype didn't seem to do it as much.
	I do believe that everything's open.
	If anyone else has anything to add, any questions, comments, additionals, feel free to throw them in now.
	Well, I missed a lot of it, so I don't know if you went over this or not.
	What did you mean by Socratically asking a question to try and change them versus asking where they stand?
	What do you mean by that?
	Could you just tell me who it is who's talking?
	That's me, Nathan.
	Oh, right. Sorry, the Scottish accent threw me off.
	Well, the first thing that I would say is that...
	If you're asking somebody, let's say you're in a car, and you pull up at an intersection, and if you're like me and your wife's not with you, then you're lost.
	And you say to somebody, do you know where the library is?
	Right? Then I don't know where the library is, and I'm not going to argue with them about where the library is.
	They're just going to say the library is up the street, turn left, turn right, turn left, and then I'll get lost again and come see them again in a few minutes and ask them if I can call my wife.
	So that's sort of an example of just asking somebody a question, not being invested in the answer to simply get a piece of information, right?
	But if you say to somebody, you know, if you're in a sort of rational philosophy, as you are, of course, and you say, do you believe that reason or mysticism is the best approach to determining the truth, that's not a question like saying, do you know where the library is, right?
	I mean, that's a question where you're invested in the answer and you want to correct that person.
	Now, if Christina had said to me upon our first conversation, I'm really into smoking peyote and reading Jung, and what I do is I take my female patients into the, you know, feminist man-haters club drum cookout and we tell ourselves how evil men are, I don't think I would have stuck around to say, you know, I don't think that's the right approach to healing people, right?
	Because I would have just gone, okay, well, I guess it's good to know, before I actually start getting attracted to you, that this is sort of where you're coming from.
	So, whereas I think some of the stuff that you've done has been, like when somebody says to you, I'm a nice person, right?
	And you say, well, what is your definition of nice?
	That's more like you're going in there to try and sort of correct, not correct their thinking, but it's definitely a...
	You have a stake in the outcome.
	Whereas if you're just asking someone where the library is, of course you hope that they know, but you don't exactly have a stake in the outcome, if that makes any sense.
	Well then how would you ask that question by not having a stake in the outcome?
	You mean ask the question like if a woman says to you, I'm very nice, right?
	So the question where you say, how do you define nice, that kind of thing?
	Is that what you mean? Right.
	I mean, how else would you...
	Well, I wouldn't, but I wouldn't, I mean, I wouldn't ask that question up front.
	I wouldn't ask that question because, you know, if somebody is nice, then it's going to come across pretty quickly, and if they're not nice, they're not going to tell you the truth anyway, right?
	So just for those who haven't read this thing on the board, and I apologize for paraphrasing here, and I apologize even more if it puts you in any kind of unflattery light, because I certainly do respect that you're trying to find a woman that is going to sort of be worthy of you.
	I mean, it's very important, right? But the woman said, you know, I'm very nice.
	And then Nate would say, well, what's your definition of nice?
	And she was like, I don't know, sugar and spice and no puppy dog tails or something like that.
	To which he said, well, that's not very rational and so on.
	But I don't think that...
	If the person is intelligent, right, I mean, if you're just having a conversation with them about something, right, anything, and they come across as intelligent, and they come across as curious, and they come across as verbal, and they're quick, or, you know, whatever it is, all the things that you have, all of the strengths that you have in your character, that's going to come across pretty quickly, and you don't need to cross-examine them on the nature and definition of niceness, which is a very hard question, which, I mean, I would certainly not be able to answer very easily at all.
	Because nice is one of these very complicated words which can mean anything from deference to evil to beating people up because you want to save someone else.
	I would say it's just a matter of a simple conversational back and forth to get a sense of the person.
	You don't need to get into the definitions of who they are, but rather you can look at their actions And like, for instance, if somebody said, I'm really nice, and here's an example, I'd just say, well, tell me about that, right?
	Tell me about, oh, well, you know, my friend was mean to me, and this, and I tried this, and I tried that, and then in the end I did that.
	I mean, that sort of tells you their operational definition of nice, if that makes any sense.
	Whereas their verbal definition of nice doesn't really mean anything.
	Okay, that makes a load of sense.
	Yeah. Well, I was flailing a bit there, but I think I managed to sort of pull out of the...
	I found the parachute about 30 feet from the ground, so my back's acting up a little, but I think I'm okay.
	Yeah, I think that makes some sense.
	I can see how that would be.
	I'm not sure how I've gone about it.
	I've probably gone about it with more intent to see if I could change...
	Yeah, I should probably take that.
	That would be a better approach to take, I think.
	Yeah, everybody's going to tell you.
	I mean, she's going to tell you about her definition of nice in reality by what she does in terms of her telling you the story and this and that, right?
	And that's what you want to judge people by, what they do, not what they say, except me, where words are obviously the only important thing.
	But you want to judge people by what they do, not by what they say, right?
	That's the basis of the scientific methods, is you judge things empirically, not by what people say, right?
	So some physicist says, my theory is true.
	You say, well, that's very nice, but where's the data, right?
	So just sort of the scientific approach that we're taking is just to judge what is in reality, not what is spoken in preference.
	And so I would just ask and work empirically from what people say.
	But you already got this, so I don't need to repeat it.
	Do you have any other questions?
	Or should I open things back up?
	Well, earlier you said that internet dating was bad or wasn't the best way to go about it.
	But nowadays, as busy as people are, I'm not in school.
	I'm at work.
	Most of the people at work are a lot...
	I would say the majority of the people I work with are a lot older than me.
	And most of them are I rarely encounter women unless I'm in a bar, and that's typically about it.
	I don't have to go out to a bar or something or a restaurant or what have you.
	The types of people you meet there, it's hard to say if I'm going to meet someone.
	If I'm at a bar, then that kind of says something.
	Well, if I'm at a bar, that means I could meet someone like me at a bar because I'm at a bar.
	Right, so you could meet someone like you who doesn't want to meet someone at a bar.
	Right, exactly. Right, it's a challenge.
	Now, let me ask you this.
	Do you have the capacity, and I'm not sure if it's necessarily a good or a bad thing, but do you have the capacity, like if you just, you're sitting down, I don't know, like at a food court at a mall or you're sitting at a restaurant, maybe you're eating alone or whatever, and you see a woman that, for whatever reason, right, and it could be a physical attraction or it could just be she's animated or she's laughing or she's got a gleam in her eye.
	Or something like that, do you have the capacity to get up and go over and to introduce yourself?
	Not always. That's the Super Bowl of dating, and I've only been able to do it a couple of times successfully in my life, a fair number of times pretty unsuccessfully, and once with Mason, a security guard, but that definitely is the Super Bowl of dating, right? But I would certainly say that It's something that you should try to steel yourself to do.
	Like if you see somebody and you have...
	I mean, truly, this is like the Olympics of dating.
	So I recognize that it's a ridiculous thing to talk about, but it surely does open up your possibilities, right?
	So if you see somebody that you find attractive in whatever sense, right?
	And assuming that they don't have three bodyguards and a diamond ring on their hand, Then sort of go up and talk to them.
	That's going to give you, I mean, I know it's scary and, you know, we all know that's like the ultimate nightmare, but it's still less than the ultimate nightmare of not meeting the woman who could be the perfect woman for you.
	But that really raises your odds quite a lot.
	And frankly, you know, rejection, who cares, right?
	I mean, do you want to sort of go through the rest of your life being afraid of people saying no when they don't even know you, right?
	And it's a great way of eliminating things, and it does get easier, right?
	Because when Christina had to start her own business, she had to go and talk to doctors and get them to try and send them patients her way.
	It's horrible, right? But it gets easier, right, as you go along.
	So I think that would certainly raise your odds, that if you're in a public place and you see a woman, you just go over and introduce yourself.
	And you say, I mean, I remember when I was a single guy, seeing a woman in a restaurant who was eating alone.
	I was eating alone, and I said...
	I don't know, some stupid thing about, you know, hi, looks like we're both eating alone.
	Do you want to eat alone together? It was something ridiculous like that, right?
	I remember when I was a teenager, very young, I wanted to impress this McDonald's cashier who I was keen on because, you know, there's nothing like a little polyester to put the shape on a woman.
	And I went up to her and I said, hi, I'd like a Sunday so big I can't see Monday.
	And that was my big line, and it, you know, got a laugh, I guess, or whatever, right?
	And it's awful, and I never liked doing it, but to me the alternative of feeling like I could have had something and didn't, right?
	The sting of rejection is always less bad than the sting of what could have been, I think, over the long run, so I would definitely give that a shot.
	You're a good-looking enough guy that you could definitely pull that off, and that's not to say that you have to be, but it certainly does make it a little bit easier.
	Right. Well, I've tried.
	I have a lot of anxiety when I try and do that, and so I'm trying to deal with that.
	Yeah, it's absolutely horrible.
	I totally understand it, but I wouldn't put that off the table as far as possibilities go, because what it does is it evens the odds and it gives you a lot more control in the situation, right?
	So, I mean, if you're frustrated about it, I know that you want to meet a woman and you want to settle down, and I totally respect that, totally understand that, and, of course, it is a joyful and wonderful thing.
	But, I mean, if Christina hadn't had the courage to show up for topless Thursday volleyball, I don't know what would have happened.
	But, I mean, it puts a lot more control, because I know you feel frustrated, right?
	You feel frustrated, and so you're talking online, and you can get a little bit punchy sometimes with the conversations that you're having, and that is because you feel helpless to achieve what it is that you want to achieve, right?
	And there's nothing wrong with the helplessness and the frustration, but I would like to sort of direct it in a way that is going to get you what you want.
	And trust me, the only kinds of women who are going to be upset by an attractive guy coming up and introduce themselves are like the people you'd never want to have anything to do with anyway, right?
	Exactly. I should keep that in mind every time.
	I have this friend, a really close friend, a female friend actually, who's helped me a lot with my networking for my It's a side business, but at the same time, we could be standing in line pretty much anywhere, you know, for food or what have you, and she will start a conversation with anyone in line.
	It's immediate.
	She introduces me and then gets me in on the conversation.
	He's kind of like a wingman, I guess.
	So in that sense, we've had, I don't know.
	I kind of...
	In a sense, it's a bad thing because she tends to be kind of like, you know, what you would call a cock-bucker because she's female.
	But at the same time, she'll let it on with the girls in the line that she's with somebody else and she's not with me.
	So... Oh, hang on.
	Sorry, I know what happens is I'm, Christina's got something to say, but let me just unmute her.
	Sorry, sweetie, the thing is that I mute everyone and then unmute the person that I'm talking to and that everyone includes you.
	Let me just find, as I keep chatting away, let me just find, unmute, you live, baby.
	Nathan, I think what Seth's talking about, walking up to a woman and introducing yourself, I think that does take a lot of courage and And I think, as a woman, I think it would be very flattering if somebody were to do that.
	Again, I appreciate, and I think most women would appreciate the amount of courage that that would take and would really respect it.
	A sensitive woman would be nice about it.
	An insensitive woman might shoot you down, but it's like, what you do is that you get to figure out that you were attracted to somebody who was kind of cruel and evil.
	Right, right. And so, I mean, again, it takes a lot of time and patience to be able to develop that kind of courage and to just actually go out and do it.
	But if you're interested in meeting someone who shares your interests and your ideas, I'd say join a club.
	You know, take a class.
	Take a philosophy class.
	Take a politics class.
	Join a sports league.
	A hiking club or whatever it is that you're interested in doing and find someone that you share some basic common interests with and go from there.
	Right. The hiking club in Houston, that would...
	Oh, oh. Right.
	An oil digging class.
	Right. Well, philosophy class, that's definitely...
	Yeah, that's a very good idea.
	You want to make sure you don't go for, you know, like a friend of mine, he's in the same boat, he's trying to meet a woman, and what is he into?
	He's into, like, kung fu cards and, like, other things, like, just women aren't around, right?
	So, philosophy, certainly, you know, you might want to take the class, but to not sound overly stereotypical, you might have a little bit more lack on, like, a literature class or something where...
	Psychology class. Psychology class, absolutely.
	Absolutely. And the other thing, too, you know, the sort of going up to talk to women, it certainly gives them a good story.
	It makes them feel good.
	And also, they're absolutely going to be intrigued because you're either really confident or dangerously insane.
	But either way, you've got their attention.
	And really, that's the first step.
	Well, that really is helpful.
	I think I'm going to put that into...
	Well, the next time I'm actually out of the house.
	So, like, a couple of months from now, Christmas season, shopping.
	The other thing is, if you have any friends that you really like, ask them if they know anyone.
	I know that it's that old, you know, blind date kind of thing, but you'd be surprised at how many...
	If you like your friends and you respect your friends, then trust that they are going to know people that are like them.
	Plus, I think this attractive communist just joined the Freedom Aid radio boards.
	Yeah, the Communists.
	Better Red in Bed, is that how it goes?
	I can't remember exactly. Right.
	I hope that that's helpful, but you really want to try and take the control back in terms of dating.
	There's just no way to do that other than to be more assertive in a positive way.
	As I mentioned before, it's a great way to experiment on whether you're attracted to virtue or whether you're attracted to looks.
	If you approach some girl and she just turns out to be some cold witch who shoots you down, Then obviously she's not at all sensitive, right?
	Like a sensitive human being, even if they're not attracted to you and haven't listened to this podcast to realize how shallow that is, then they're at least going to let you down in a nice way, right?
	It's, you know, sorry, but I'm engaged and my ring is in the shop or something like that, right?
	And then chat with you for a few minutes.
	Then you know you're attracted to somebody who's, you know, positive and kind and so on.
	But if every woman that you go up to is like, get lost, loser, you know, throws a drink in your face or whatever, and you're not thirsty, then obviously you're not being attracted to very virtuous people and you kind of need to look at your own, you know, what's going on for you from that standpoint, right?
	So it can be a very positive thing to start to whittle things down as well.
	Do we have a comment? Well, he says that he's a man, maybe.
	Jeremy says that he's a man, baby.
	And we're elevating, baby.
	That's the Muddy Water song, right?
	All right. I'm going to unmute everyone for the one last go-round.
	It's been a while since we've had a good old chat with the Libertarian Love Doctor and Dr.
	S. So hopefully this will satisfy people's desire for a rendition of that.
	And we need to go out, as I mentioned, and do the Libertarian Breeding Fest.
	The board mics are open.
	open if there's anything else that you wanted to add or or uh to comments or questions no all right well listen thank you so much everyone for listening Oh, my God, we're actually going to stop a little bit early.
	It's only been two hours and 20 minutes.
	Fantastic. Shocking.
	Shocking. Absolutely. Thank you so much, everyone.
	It's a very, very important topic.
	I mean, for all of the stuff that we talk about with the state and economics, all of that is very important as well.
	But in the realm of love and in the realm of fulfillment in relationships, that, I think, is where the real joys are, and that's where we can really have an effect in our lives and not necessarily be always subject to the whims of political masters and so on.
	Thank you so much, everyone, for listening in.
	I really appreciate it. We'll be on next Sunday.
	Next Saturday, I'm actually going to be giving a speech at the Libertarian Party Convention in Canada here, so I'll try and tape that so that you can see somebody actually being run out of town on a pitchfork live, which should be very interesting because, of course, I'm not going to be all positive about their efforts to try and change the state.
	But certainly we'll give them some fodder to think with and we'll give a good use for the pitchforks and flaming brands that they may have handy.
	So thanks everyone so much for listening.
	We will talk to you next week. I appreciate it.

▲