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Jan. 18, 2015 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
26:38
2887 The Danger of Sexual Chemistry

Are “chemistry” and sexual attraction important ingredients when looking for a partner for a romantic relationship?

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Hi everybody, Stefan Molyneux from Freedom Main Radio.
Hope you're doing well.
Fine, fine question from, I can only assume, a lady's vagina.
She writes, In a potential mate, if he has all the fine, upstanding moral and mutual qualities, but I don't feel any chemistry for him, while not a deal-breaker, his attraction, an important ingredient, in a potential mate.
I appreciate the question.
It's a very important question.
You know, one of the most important questions around.
And I appreciate the candor.
And if I could strike chemistry from the equation of interaction, I would.
But, sadly, it's not up to me.
You know, Socrates, I think he was talking to Alcibiades, and he was talking quite a bit about how He welcomed the loss of sexual attraction or sexual drive that occurred for him in his old age.
He referred to it as being freed from a demon.
Again, I have no problem with sexual lust and desire and all the wonderful things in sex.
It's more than a compensation for taxes.
But...
It is important, when thinking in terms of sexuality, to remember what it's for.
What is it for?
It's for making babies.
It is not a mere recreational device, but a lever from which semen and eggs crank out the next generation.
So, I'm going to make the assumption that you are a woman of childbearing age.
Fertility!
Now!
And then the question is, who gets to choose your mate?
Does your chemistry get to choose your mate?
No.
No.
Because that's not what...
Sexuality is for.
Sexuality is for making babies.
And, you know, there's the bonding and all of that that happens, which is also really problematic for a lot of people, I think particularly men.
Men bond over sex in pretty significant ways.
I know women do, too.
I can't speak to that, but a man who has sex basically is drilling a hole to put his heart in.
And the degree of attachment that men have with regards to sex, and women, too, of course, is pretty significant.
And...
Wherever you throw your genitals, there will your heart in general, if you have one, follow.
And so be careful where you throw them.
And who gets to choose your mate?
Well, the key word is mate, right?
Mate is not for you.
Mate is for the children.
Mate is for the children.
So, to me, it's sort of like you go into a car dealership, right?
And let's say you have four children.
You go into a car dealership because you need a car.
You have four children.
Now, your chemistry says sports car, right?
I mean, right?
Little red Corvette being a substitute.
Yes!
Let us have it.
That's what you want to drive around in because it's more fun.
Nobody's chemistry says minivan for the win.
Minivan for the cool, for the lulz.
You name it, right?
And so who is choosing the car?
Well, the car is chosen.
It's for the children.
It's for the kids.
The children choose the car.
Likewise, where do you live?
Well, if you're a single guy and you've got any kind of money, you probably have a pretty tidy little condo or apartment somewhere downtown where the action is.
But if you have four children, who fundamentally chooses where you live?
Where do you live?
Yeah, where do you live?
Well, it's going to be in a place which is going to be more suitable for four children than a bachelor apartment.
Um...
Not quite as direct, but still fairly important.
Thank you.
You may not love your job always, right?
Happens to the best of us.
But why do you go to work if you have four kids?
Well, a lot of it has to do with the fact that you have four kids who probably are fairly big fans of food and shelter.
So, when you think, if you have kids, then your life decisions are dictated by...
Trust me, I'm telling you, your life decisions are dictated by your kids.
Now, you only have kids because you had a mate.
And so, you choose your mate based upon who do your children want.
I mean, my wife is like...
The greatest mom I could conceive of.
I mean, it's all the little things.
Like, when she's got to take my daughter somewhere, it's cold when it's winter in Canada.
Today, minus 20.
So, she takes a blanket and she puts it on a little heating vent so it warms up.
She puts the blanket on my daughter.
I mean, she's just...
Anyway, I could go on and on.
She's like, so my daughter, if my daughter could have chosen any one of my dates to be her mom, she would have chosen my wife.
And would have distinctly, would probably have chosen not to be born than some of the other women I went out with when I was younger.
You know, at some point, I'm actually just going to have to start saying young, not younger, because it's not like I'll be 49 this year.
I'm still middle-aged.
Okay, so when I was young, and she would have, without a doubt, chosen my wife.
Out of all my girlfriends, she would have chosen my wife to be her mom.
Now, I would also submit that the qualities that go into being a great parent are also the qualities that go into being a great spouse.
You know, thoughtfulness, care, consideration, capacity for rational self-sacrifice, and so on.
Integrity, virtue, loyalty, all that kind of stuff.
I mean, so it's not like it's an either-or.
So let's say you don't want to have kids.
Well, then you can't really say, well, my future kids.
But you might change your mind.
Wanting to have kids is not something you usually do in isolation, right?
From other people.
I guess you can get a turkey baster and jack off a hobo, but nonetheless, it's mostly a collaborative process, right?
Wanting kids is like saying, I want to make a movie.
Well, you might need some other people to get behind that project.
Or sideways.
Anyway, there's lots of ways to do it.
So, when it comes to choosing a mate, you let your children do the choosing.
Your future children do the choosing.
Who's going to be the best dad?
Because I'm telling you, man, if you have kids, I mean, the degree to which you absolutely worship and adore your children, you know, they're looking for strong forces in nature, that's the one.
I mean...
I understand my own childhood even less now that I'm a dad, because I had it really rough as a kid.
And I find, thinking of my own family life when I was a child, I find it even more foreign, infinitely more foreign now than I did before I had a child.
I found it weird to be aggressive against children before I had a child.
Now I find it beyond incomprehensible.
Not just a different species, like an opposing species.
Almost literally.
I have more in common with a lion than people who are abusive to children.
A lion is not a sadist.
So...
You let your children do the choosing.
And even if you're not going to have kids or even if you are infertile or not going to adopt or even if you're too old for any of that, it's not a bad mental exercise.
What would this person be like around children?
So it is, I think, the way to go.
Look, particularly if you're young and fertile and want to have kids.
And or, I guess.
Because I can't imagine.
And, like, I've talked to people on this very show.
You know, we do these call-in shows Wednesday nights and Saturday nights at 8 p.m.
Eastern.
And we do these call-in shows and guys call in and they say, you know, I have problems with my ex-wife who's being mean to my children.
The degree to which a mentally healthy person loves children, his own children, her own children, and other children too, but the degree to which that occurs is so fundamental that if you see people harm your children, oh my god, I mean, it's volcanic, the reaction.
And so either...
You know, you're not going to be a good parent, in which case you're not listening to this probably, or you are going to be a good parent or aim in that direction, in which case it is more important to have a good father than a guy who's great with your clitoris.
Right?
Orgasm is relatively quick.
The pain of seeing someone mistreat or ignore or neglect your children or just be an emotionally disconnected parent.
That agony will last for the rest of your life.
That pain will last.
It's just not worth it.
It's not even close to working.
It's not even in the same race, let alone coming in a distant second.
And look...
There are two reproductive strategies, very broadly speaking.
And chemistry is about the reproductive strategy pretty much called the spray and pray, where you just have sex with a lot of people and you hope your kids grow up and get to reproduce as well.
But you don't really invest much time or energy into them.
Also known as the tadpole strategy or the Sea turtle egg laying.
Hundreds of eggs get laid and one or two make it to maturity.
But they don't sit there and guard them from predators.
This continuum occurs within mammals as well and can occur within the same species as in people.
And it has a lot to do with trauma.
And I've gone into this a number of times before, so I won't go into it again.
But chemistry is the short-term reproductive strategy kicking in.
And chemistry occurs when...
A specimen of fitness for brutality emerges in your sexual field of vision.
And you get a tingle because your body is responding to particular characteristics that show that person to be dominant and brutal.
So, I've been plowing my way through Fifty Shades of Grey, the book, for a review.
And one of the reasons why, I'm not saying this is easy to do, but one of the reasons why the book is so successful is that every conceivable male characteristic that would make women tingle is in the persona of the lead male character.
Rich, powerful, indifferent, contemptuous, random, moody, and so on.
Inscrutable, confusing, baffling.
And wildly sexually attracted to the heroine, which, you know, is her power.
Anyway, we'll do a full review of that at some point.
Get round to strip-mining the last respect I have for the English language to get through to the end.
So when you have chemistry, your body is pursuing a short-term reproductive strategy, and what you're looking for is arrogance, is physical beauty, is alpha status, and so on, right?
And in a state of chaos, like in a society where there's aggression and war and want and starvation and win-lose situations, you need a brutal, cold, aggressive male and female to survive in that environment.
Good men die like dogs in the land of brutality.
And so, if you mate with a milker toast in a time of war, if you mate with a wimp in a time of brutality, your children aren't going to work out very well.
They're just not.
They're going to be enslaved, exploited, and so on.
So, for instance, one of the characteristics of the alpha male for female tingling is arrogance.
Hyper-confidence and so on, right?
And a lot of the pickup artists try and mimic that.
But why is that attractive?
Because arrogance or a lack of fear, fearlessness, indicates a lack of empathy and a lack of capacity to think through consequences and so on, right?
All of which, you know, a lack of fear in a time of war and a desire to dominate others, that's who's going to get resources for the babies, right?
You want to mate with the Alpha so that the Alpha enslaves the Betas and the Omegas and the Zetas and all that and then can give you and your children all the resources you need.
Whereas if you...
If it's a win-lose environment, it's not a trade-based environment.
This is why capitalism is so good for sexual virtue.
We'll get to that in a sec.
So when you're in a win-lose biological environment or social environment, it's better to say the biological follows from that.
When you're in a win-lose, you want to date with the winner, which means you want to date with someone who's not overly burdened with empathy or sympathy for the loser.
I mean, of course, there will be women who date with the losers, but that's regretful resignation to this is all the value they can command in that environment.
So, the characteristics that make you tingle, the characteristics that give you that physiological or physical response, which is lust, is lust.
Thank you.
It's by its very nature attempting to overwhelm your long-term thinking and planning for short-term gratification.
But the short-term gratification or the lack of empathy for your future self or a failure to think through consequences and so on, that is the short-term reproductive strategy in a nutshell.
And that is the result of the short-term reproductive strategy.
And so you want fearless, arrogant, physically beautiful alphas Because that's most successful.
Now, in a situation of trade, in a situation of peace where there's relative harmony among people, then what happens is, you may,
you will, of course, we always have the latent capacity for the short-term reproductive strategies, but you will end up, in general, You will end up focusing on that which is going to give you the most resources, which will be a guy who's steady, who's secure, who's good-natured, who looks for win-win situations, who has assertiveness without aggression and all these kinds of things, who has empathy, right?
In war, empathy is a handicap.
In the free market, empathy has significant positives, right?
So...
Because the relations are voluntary.
So in the free market, having empathy for the needs of your customers is very important.
In wartime, having empathy for the needs of your enemies, which is to kill you and not get killed themselves, is crippling, right?
It will get you killed.
And this is why people who are brutal constantly want to disrupt the free market, because win-lose aggressors in a free society generally end up in jail, Whereas in a violent society, they generally end up owning the better-natured people, or controlling them at least.
Each personality type, each reproductive strategy is constantly striving to recreate society in its own image.
We are always constantly trying to create an environment wherein our personality structures will succeed.
I do it, you do it, everyone does it, usually at an unconscious level.
Now, there are personality structures...
Which, if they succeed, other people succeed as well.
I mean, if I get my way and, you know, reason and evidence hold sway and superstition and culture are diminished or eliminated, well, yeah.
I don't even know how successful I'd be in a completely, completely free society.
It doesn't really matter because I'll never get there.
But at least I will get there personally.
We'll get there as a species eventually, I hope.
But I was raised in such a brutal environment where I'd be in a completely free society.
I don't know.
Anyway, I'd certainly be happier and better off in a more rational world.
So, my personality structure, which tends towards reason and evidence, and principles, yeah, I want to recreate that.
So...
When you recognize that people around you are constantly trying to recreate a social environment wherein their personality structures will be dominant, I think it's important to recognize that the degree to which, this is very important,
the degree to which people attempt to tweak your personality What you call chemistry, to tweak your hormonal reaction, is the degree to which they are trying to recreate a society which their personalities would dominate.
This is quite complex.
I hope that makes reasonable sense.
The win-win personality wishes to create a free society.
The win-lose personality wishes to create a dictatorial society.
Dictatorial, by nature, is win-lose, and trade societies, by definition, are win-win.
Now, the win-lose personalities, which wish to create a win-lose society, because they'll win, the win-lose personalities win in a win-lose society, and they lose in a win-win society.
The win-win personalities lose in a win-lose society, but win in a win-win society.
And a sort of failure to distinguish between these two very broadly painted personality structures is why the win-losers tend to keep winning.
And so if somebody gives you a really overt sexual display, they're attempting to provoke your hormones into getting you to have sex with them, have babies with them, And then since you won't stick around, or they won't stick around, they have sown the seeds for win-lose.
Because I think the most fundamental way that we get a win-lose society is fatherlessness.
And I think there's fairly obvious reasons for that.
If the men aren't sticking around, there's not an investment, which means the women are focusing on short-term sexual gains rather than long-term parental investment, and the men are not around because they're all fighting or doing something else and so on, right?
So the best way, the most certain way to create a win-lose society, to create an increasingly dictatorial society, is...
Through fatherlessness, and all that which contributes to fatherlessness contributes to totalitarianism.
Because it simply skews reproductive cues, reproductive stimuli.
So...
From that standpoint, not only, you know, your vagina or your penis is not necessarily a surf to the future happiness of mankind.
I think it's pretty clear from all of this, if you accept sort of the arguments that I'm putting forward, which I understand are tendencies and not syllogistical and so on.
But, you know, I think there's good evidence, good reasons I'm putting forward for all of this.
And you can look up the R&K reproductive strategies.
They're well worth understanding.
I mean, the short-term reproductive strategy translates into debt.
National debt is a short-term strategy.
And the length of our vision for the consequences of our actions is only tertiarily to do with economics and is fundamentally to do with reproductive strategies.
So, if you understand all of this, then succumbing to chemistry...
It's destroying the world.
See?
I told you I wasn't going to escalate it.
But succumbing to chemistry is...
If you succumb to chemistry and you have sex or, heaven forbid, have babies with somebody merely based on chemistry who's not going to be a good father or is not going to be around...
Always going to be around but absent, if that makes any sense, right?
The present but absent or the technically married but always traveling guy.
Then you are having children who will be far more susceptible to and enthusiastic for totalitarianism.
Because totalitarianism is hierarchical alpha win-lose hierarchy.
And if you have children with a father who's not around, then you are setting up the win-lose paradigm.
And this is why single motherhood fuels dictatorship.
I know, sounds like a stretch, but listen to this again.
I make a pretty step-by-step case.
I hope that you will, if it's not clear to you.
Now, clear doesn't mean that I'm right.
Clear just means it doesn't sound absurd and you get the argument.
Um...
So, yeah, it is absolutely essential.
And this is why I focus on relationships.
One of the reasons why I focus on relationships so much in the show and nag women to choose better men.
Because I don't want my daughter growing up in fascism.
I don't want my daughter growing up in communism or totalitarianism of whatever flavor.
I want my daughter to have a free life.
And that means that women have to reject the clitoris and go for the heart and mind.
Again, I'm telling you, virtue will give you better sex than lust ever will.
But that's why I'm constantly nagging women.
And this is why I'm saying it's not a good idea to date single moms.
because you're fueling our drive and tendency towards dictatorship.
It's inescapable.
And this is why the family, the two-parent nuclear family, is the best protection we have against the ever-growing power of the state.
And this is why, for me, reminding women of their sexual responsibility for themselves, for their children, for the very future of the species is really, really important.
Men have been nagged forever to make sacrifices for the sake of king and country and war and work and stress and blah, blah, blah.
But now it's women's turn.
Sorry, ladies, but this is a fact.
You've got to choose wisely.
Because when you choose based on chemistry, when you choose based on brutishness, when you choose based on alpha characteristics...
When you choose brutes, you brutalize the whole wide world.
Thank you everyone so much for listening and supporting and donating the show.
Oh, do we need you.
Freedomainradio.com slash donate.
Please, please, please help us out, my friends.
And do our part to help spread virtue and wisdom in the world.
I'm more enthusiastic now about the show than ever before because we passed 100 million downloads.
We're moving the needle.
We are moving the compass.
We are changing the world.
So now I'm even more enthusiastic because we have more of a chance to win than we ever did before.
But it's up to you and it's up to me.
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