GiT Valentine's Day Special: Rousseau and Romance Past

Summary

I talk about a crush I had in Paris as a boy. Then Sep and I dig into Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Marcel Proust to explain what on earth was going on in my heart. Rousseau advises how to get from boner to bonheur. Proust explains why it’s easier to fall for someone you pass in a car than someone you actually have to talk to. We find out that the human heart is a liar that it's more fun to believe anyway.

References

Esther Perel Mating in Captivity

Marcel Proust In Search of Lost Time

Jean-Jacques Rousseau Emile

Rousseau song “J’ai perdu tout mon bonheur”

Transcript

Note: this is transcribed using an online transcription service so it’s probably going to have a lot of errors. We do don’t have time to go through these all carefully but still thought that it would be more helpful than having no transcript at all.

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

rousseau, paris, theory, imagination, tutor, people, women, romantic, proust, love, desire, education,

Clif Mark 00:14

Today, john Jacques Rousseau Marcel Proust young Clif, theory elf Sep, and why even though you can't be with the one you love, you still can't love the one you're with. I'm Clif Mark. And this is good in theory. Hi, Sup?

Sep 00:34

Hello, Cliff.

00:36

Happy Valentine's Day.

Sep 00:39

Happy Valentine's Day cliff. How're you? How are you this fine. February 14.

Clif Mark 00:46

I'm doing pretty well Sep, because I'm looking forward to spending this episode talking to you about theories of Love.

Sep 00:54

Love.

Clif Mark 00:56

Have you ever heard of a theory of love that says that love is about two souls, forming a connection and coming to know each other in their most intimate authenticity? and bonding to form a real union?

Sep 01:11

Yeah, yeah. mutual recognition. I see you true love, like in the in the movies.

Clif Mark 01:18

So do you think that the most important thing for love the most romantic thing to do is to share openly talk about your desires and needs and feelings and your inner thoughts so that you each know each other better than you know yourselves and to can become one?

Sep 01:36

Oh, yeah. I love that. That doesn't make me nauseous at all.

Clif Mark 01:42

You, you sound a little uncomfortable step.

01:45

Mm hmm. Sure.

Sep 01:49

Yeah, I can see why you asked me for this episode, say I'm so comfortable talking about intimacy?

Clif Mark 01:56

Well, not to worry. That is not what I want to talk about today, I think I want to talk about a different theory of love that is a little weirder, a little fresher, and a little less intimate. And I'm talking about the theories of love of Jacques Jacques Rousseau. And I'm gonna supplement it a little bit with another author Marcel Proust. Nice. But first, before we get to them, I want to tell you a little story. From my own life.

Sep 02:28

Go for it. I can't wait.

Clif Mark 02:45

I'm 20 years old. I had just finished a year of university in business school, and I thought it was done. So I quit, and then work to save up some money. So I could go check out Europe. I moved to Paris into a property that was actually in the suburbs of Paris. And it was a couple of houses with 40 odd people living there. Mostly students from all over the world, living together, away from home. And I don't know if you know what this is like, but I was rwb a provincial, I had never left North America. This was my first international flight. And everything in this place was kind of magical to me. The windows in houses the way they pave their streets, just going to the laundry to buy bread. It was all cool and exciting. To this day, when I smell diesel exhaust in the air. It makes me nostalgic for Paris because

Sep 03:43

of all the things

Clif Mark 03:45

I don't know. You know, it's just like why a tea soaked? Madeline? Why the smell of diesel it just it just so happened that way.

Sep 03:51

Hello.

Clif Mark 03:52

Have you ever had that when you get to a place and everything is just invested with extra significance because of where it is. was awkward like that when you got there?

Sep 04:04

That was awkward. Yeah, cuz it was just so weird and otherworldly. And so everything that I did there, I didn't have to, like try and make everything more magical, which I which is what I usually do. It was already it was already built into the architecture, let's say and that was Yeah, it was it kind of everything gets a little hazy. You know, everything gets like a little like a filter over it. So if that's what you mean,

Clif Mark 04:34

yes, that's exactly what I mean. Paris was like that for me at this time. I'm young. I'm away. I'm having the time of my life in this magical place. And that is where I meet a girl who I will call Anna. I remember when I met her I was playing. I was playing PlayStation with three other guys and For a guy who was visiting a cultural center for the first time in his life, I spent a lot of time playing PlayStation. And, and in walks this girl, big, dyed red hair, like light, light, light blue eyes, and like dark all of skin. She was visiting Paris from Sweden, but her background was Middle Eastern. I act normal. Hello, my name is Clif Nice to meet you. She leaves. And I turned to the other guys and say, Can we just take a moment to appreciate how gorgeous and is? And one of the guys says, Yeah, she's pretty, but you know, forget about her. She has got a fiance back home. He's very jealous. In a serious relationship, so. So don't even think about it. time goes on, we live in the same house, we cross each other's paths now. And again, we run into each other one time I remember on the subway in Paris, so I get to ride with her all the way back home. To chit chat, and that was really exciting for me. And one thing leads to another and we start having a kind of on again, off again, affair. We're supposed to be a secret. I am not to be seen with her in public because of her other relationship. But I'm still super excited to spend time with her. There's some romantic stuff. I think I got her a nice bracelet from somewhere in the songs at least a week when her her family came to visit. I remember climbing a wall and stealing some flowers to to give to her little sisters to impress her and her sisters. Stuff like that.

Sep 06:42

Wow, that's so normally

Clif Mark 06:48

I know I was a hack, but I was 20 Come on.

Sep 06:52

Was she was she the same age? or was she older? Like because she wasn't gay? Yeah,

Clif Mark 06:56

I think she was like, a couple of years older than me, I guess. But I couldn't say I couldn't say with certainty. Anyway, that went on kind of on again off again for about two months. Eventually, one of us had to leave Paris. I can't even really remember who. And you know, I gave her a letter saying how great she made me feel. And that was it. And we we parted ways.

Sep 07:21

So if she was one of your big crushes, and it was on again, off again, were you like super miserable, and it was off again.

Clif Mark 07:28

You know, I wasn't all of my memories about this are pretty positive. Um, I didn't regard that we would ever, like have a future together because of you know, she had another relationship lived in a different country, etc, etc. I was just glad to be there. You know what I mean?

Sep 07:46

Okay, so when it was definitely over you weren't like, like, on a scale of one to young worth or how hard? Yeah,

Clif Mark 07:57

again, I don't think like I I was sad, but not I wasn't heartbroken. I was just that was that was great. You know?

Sep 08:04

Okay, so then, how did you know at the time that this was one of your big crushes of your life? Or is this something that because you've lived now and you've had stuff to compare it to now you, you know?

08:19

Well,

Clif Mark 08:21

both so I think like at the time, I was so young, that at that age, they all seem like big, important crushes. If you if you have a crush, right? Yeah. But, but this one, even as I as I got older, this one was important, I think for two reasons. One is that it was just like, really strong. Just like weird crushed like elation and excitement to see her that I had at that time is like scarcely been reproduced in my life, like we've come close, but it was strong. But the reason I keep coming back to this relationship, in my mind over the years, is because it posed a really sharp question, if the ideal of love that I described earlier, of of love as being about communication and transparency and this connection and union of souls, if that's true, and I believed it was true, and I still kind of hope that it's true. Then what was happening with Anna?

Sep 09:35

Yeah, you didn't particularly get married or anything? Yeah.

Clif Mark 09:40

Look at the facts. We didn't spend that much time together. She had another relationship. I didn't have any hope for the future. I was purely aside thing and it didn't bother me at all. And yet, I didn't see it as just a sexual hookup. I really got to enjoy all Those romantic feelings that that you get. And that is what we call in the biz a counterexample to the dominant theory.

Sep 10:12

Hmm, interesting. So You Think You think you can explain it now?

Clif Mark 10:18

Well, I don't know that you know, anyone can fully explain any important experience in their life. But I did get closer. And what brought me closer with the theories that I studied when I returned to Paris, four years after this relationship

Sep 10:36

every time

Clif Mark 10:37

Yes, it is theory time. After all that stuff with Anna, I dig around in Europe, some more, go back to Canada, switch into politics and philosophy and University finished my degree. And then three years later, I'm back in Paris doing research for a master's degree, this time on Jean Jacques Rousseau. And I think the fastest way to explain Rousseau is to start with the Enlightenment 18th century France, Voltaire De Niro trying to get rid of superstition and tradition and found a new social order, based on human reason. And science and freedom.

Sep 11:33

Yeah, yeah. Good Age of Reason.

Clif Mark 11:36

Exactly. And Rousseau is the opposite of that. His first big essay is about how progress in the arts and sciences actually brings about moral corruption. So he's against them. And his whole thing is that all this talk about reason and science, you're just showing off, you'd be better off being a simple peasant focused on virtue, and getting more acquainted with what really matters, which is the sentiments of nature, the sweet feelings of the human heart.

Sep 12:08

Yeah, he's angry at the enlightenment.

Clif Mark 12:11

Yes, definitely. He is angry at the enlightenment. And now we know him as the social contract guy as a political theorist. But that's not how we started out. Then he was doing all sorts of stuff. He was a musician, he wrote a really popular opera, then his biggest hit was a best selling romance novel that was so popular. Women were proposing marriage to him from all over Europe, and memoriam fan that was telling him about how much they cried,

Sep 12:37

wow, I have no idea.

Clif Mark 12:41

People don't see him that way at all. Now, he's a political theorist. But then he was like this pan European superstar intellectual with that expertise in the human heart. And if you want to know his theory of love, it's all over his writings. But the best place to look in the book that I want to talk about now is a meal.

Sep 13:03

Let's do it.

Clif Mark 13:04

Let's do it. So the meal is a treatise on education. And the question is, is it possible to raise a child so they won't be corrupted by society, because you remember how much Rousseau hates modern society? Right? But it's different from your normal treaties on education, because it's written in the first person, it reads like a novel, and Rousseau is the narrator. He's the tutor and he imagined someone's given him a baby boy, and he talks about all the things he would do to educate this boy to make sure he turns out to be a great guy who can survive in society.

Sep 13:41

Okay,

Clif Mark 13:42

the education is super intense. The tutor completely controls everything that happens to the boy, every game he plays, every person he talks to, everything he sees, is controlled by the tutor to teach him some kind of lesson. So the boys education is as immersive and intense as the education of the Guardians in the Republic, but it's all just done by one tutor instead of this totalitarian city. Right? So the tutor teaches him a trade and how to read and do math and all that stuff. But the most important part of his education comes in the last chapter, which is the longest chapter when the tutor has to find a meal, a wife

Sep 14:26

said, All in a day's work as a teacher.

Clif Mark 14:29

Exactly. It's crazy. There's this long treaties on education and then at the end, Rousseau kind of just tacked on a romance novel. But this chapter of the book is the best place to go. If you want to find out how Rousseau thinks that love works. How does

Sep 14:47

he think love works?

Clif Mark 14:49

I'm so glad you asked. If you ever want to know how to make a man fall in love. This is what Rousseau thinks you have to know.

Sep 14:57

Thank god

Clif Mark 15:00

First thing you need to know is that seduction starts way before you even meet the people that you might be getting together with. Because everyone has these erotic imaginations and preconceived ideas of what's attractive, and what kind of person is worth going for. Maybe you model it on your parents, maybe you saw some hot music videos when you were a kid. Maybe you found some dirty magazines on the way home from school. But the point is, you already have an erotic imagination formed by experience. Does that make sense?

Sep 15:33

Yeah, that makes sense. Yeah, I suppose.

Clif Mark 15:37

So the tutor. He starts with a meals like getting to be a teenager and starting to get interested in girls and have the energy. They like stay up at night talking about the perfect woman. Like this is crazy. very awkward. Like this is not a this education method would probably not be ethical now. But anyway, they stay up. They're talking about like the perfect girl what she like, what does she look like? Oh, she's so virtuous. She's a bit shy. She's smart, but not too smart. Right? Like decent, not too vain. Good family. And so he's thinking of all these things. Rousseau, the tutor is trying to like, mold a meals erotic imagination. So it's like pointed towards the right kind of girl. Right? And they get really specific, which look like casual dress. They even give her a name. They say, hey, why not just call our fantasy girl? Sophie.

Sep 16:38

Okay.

Clif Mark 16:40

The energy source that Rousseau was going to use to build romantic love is sexual desire. But he thinks that desire when it starts is encoded, it's undefined. You're interested amela has desires but he doesn't really know what exactly he wants.

Sep 16:57

Yeah,

Clif Mark 16:58

it's like an ember that the tutor wants to blow on and grow and inflame till he can sublimate it into something more serious romantic love. And it works by this dialectic of you have a little bit of desire and that's it's your imagination going and then your imagination you think of what a great girl Sophie is. And that increases your desire, which increases your imagination. So it's this loop between desire and imagination that feeds back into itself and grows and grows until you get a serious romantic commitment. But one key to keeping this whole engine running is you can't know. Rousseau has got a meal on this program as soon as he is at the age for jacking off on him all the time. He never leaves him alone in a room. He makes him do lots of exercises in the days so he's too tired to check off at night. And then

Sep 17:59

some notorious masturbator

Clif Mark 18:01

Yes, Ruto. Rousseau was a notorious masturbator. He believed it was a serious problem for him. He called it

Sep 18:08

even it was an ideal, it was an ideal,

Clif Mark 18:11

right? Because he's like, all this energy I was wasting on myself. I could have been falling in love, you know? Instead, he was just like making up love stories and head and spanking it.

Sep 18:22

Okay, so he wants a better life for a meal.

Clif Mark 18:24

He wants a better nofap life for me. So once meals, imagination is prepared with this image of virtuous chased Sophie, and he's full of all this 20 year old desire that he doesn't really fully understand. That's when the tutor arranges a meet cute. He takes him out into the forest, they're on some whatever mission and it happens to get dark or raining and they take refuge in this family's house who's going to offer them hospitality and they just happen to have a daughter a meals a

Sep 19:03

wow.

Clif Mark 19:04

And that daughter's name just happens to be Sophie.

Sep 19:10

And then he's so weirded out, he runs away and never comes back. Exactly the opposite.

Clif Mark 19:16

Exactly the opposite. He hears her name is Sophie's like, Oh my god, it's her. It's my dream girl that we've been talking about all these years.

Sep 19:28

This is an idiot. But like in a smart way you you don't have

Clif Mark 19:34

to back up off of idiot This is a far fetched and crazy story and everything and I was like that but so is what happens next a meal and Sophie meet they have this little romance where they hang out a bit but then they can't stay they have to the tutor and you'll have to leave and come back and see Sophie but sometimes she doesn't say much she will talk about nature in the world but she won't talk about love. for herself very much. The tutor takes away a meal on some other education mission. So there's all these obstacles getting in their way in blocking Amelia intricate, it is very intricate. Every time he tries to talk about marriage or romance, she says, You can't talk about that to me. So, all of this stuff, all of these blockages are just inflaming his desires even more its desire, imagination, obstacle, desire, imagination, obstacle intil. He's in full blown romantic love and wants to do anything, give away his fortune, whatever he has to do, just to be with Sophie. And of course, what she wants him to do is what he wants to do, which is to be the most virtuous man possible. So he's got the perfect education. He's a virtuous man, and he's gonna keep being a virtuous man, because he's doing it for the love of a good woman. Sophie, they go away together, and that is the happy ending of Rousseau's treaties on education.

Sep 21:10

Yeah, okay. Yeah, he's pretty great. I'm joking. He's, he's pretty good.

Clif Mark 21:16

So what do you think of all that this book is not universally popular, so sweet, disgusting, creepy. What do you think?

Sep 21:25

All of those things. I mean, the idea of creating, like, thinking about how to create a lasting marriage, one that is actually really fueled by true affection and connection rather than, you know, pragmatic. considerations. I think that's some noble pursuits. Where then it gets a little weird. Because you can engineer this stuff, probably. Because it's theory. I like it, I you just have to not think about it too much in practical implication, I know as a theory, I like it. Me too.

Clif Mark 22:04

And the reason I brought up this theory specifically is because you remember right at the beginning, I was talking about the theory of love, where it's all about communication and getting to know each other and connection. Well, I think Rousseau's theory is the exact opposite of that. Because Amelia and Sophie, they don't really connect. It's all happening in the meals imagination. Imagination is prepped ahead of time by the tutor, and then it's fueled by all his young guys sexual energy. And Sophie is kind of just there as a projection screen for his own fantasy, right? Okay. She stays chaste. She doesn't say too much. And he has this whole sexual psychodrama in his own head, and is never really really connecting with Sophia. At least that's how I read it. Let me read you a quote. It's like a nice quote, which summarizes his his thoughts.

Sep 23:00

Yes, I'm covered cover.

Clif Mark 23:04

Quote. And what is true love itself. If it is not Kamera lie and illusion. We love the image we make for ourselves far more than we love the object to which we apply it. If we saw what we love exactly as it is, there would be no more love on Earth. When we stopped loving, the person we loved remains the same as before. But we no longer see her in the same way. The Magic field drops, and love disappears.

Sep 23:32

harsh, but kind of cool. Like it. It's kind of cool, like the idea. It's a fantasy and you fall in love with your own fantasy. It also makes sense. Like you shouldn't text back too soon, you know, available, right? Like all that stuff, right?

Clif Mark 23:51

Yeah, well, that's kind of a funny thing about Rousseau because he's an old timey sexist. And all of his ideas are politically repellent right now. But a lot of those same ideas still get circulated as everyday dating advice.

Sep 24:09

Can I ask one more thing? So as I understand that, there's also so it's not just when a guy sees a girl and his imagination and all that stuff? It's also the other way around. So So things that that's also how it goes for women?

24:24

Kind of

Clif Mark 24:26

for Sophie, yes, Sophie has a very strong imagination. And she falls for a meal partly because he reminds her of a character in a book she used to read when she was a kid, okay. But in general, when you start talking about gender in Rousseau, this is getting into the political implications of his ideas of love, which is one of the big reasons that feminists hate him.

Sep 24:50

So then why, why are the political ramifications so

Clif Mark 24:56

well, to start, he advocates really Strong gender differentiation wants women to be women and chaste and modest and kind of manipulative. And good at arithmetic, but not geometry, a lot of weird stuff. And men should be a bit dumb socially, but independent and free and virtuous. Whoa,

Sep 25:19

right.

Clif Mark 25:21

And another big reason that feminists or any modern person tends to hate Rousseau is that he is strongly in favor of sex segregated societies. He likes Ancient Greece, where the women and children had to live in a separate part of the house from men and weren't allowed in public very much. He likes Geneva where men and women live together in their family home, but they're separate a lot men hang out in their clubs to drink and play cards and women stay in the house and gossip. Rousseau thinks that men and women should come together sometimes, but most of their life should be separate.

Sep 26:01

Right? So he wants Sharia law?

Clif Mark 26:06

Yeah, well, I mean, basically,

Sep 26:09

appropriation man. No, I'm kidding. I am. I bring it up. I think we'll be honest, and there's not I'm originally from Iran. And there, you have laws against sort of men and women mingling too much in public it is it's purposefully set up to be like the sex segregated society, but it's not, I think, to develop sort of romantic love or create that in people. It's, it's more based on Islamic law. And it's, it's about like, creating a family unit that is lasting. So it's really about the structure of the family and sort of an end and, and family honor. So all the extended family is involved in stuff and it's more about that it's about strengthening those bonds, rather than or is that also the case for like, the ultimate end? is okay, the family unit? Or is it really about creating romantic emotions and people? Okay,

Clif Mark 27:23

so it's all of them. Love politics, the family are all connected, because to have good politics, you need citizens to have citizens, you need families, children need fathers. And the only way children are going to have fathers is if the men are in love enough with the women to actually want to stick around. And the only way to stay deeply in love with them. Leave them alone for most of the day.

Sep 27:53

Oh, wow. Okay. Yeah, yes. I guess I could work.

Clif Mark 27:59

I mean, yeah, it's, it's one way to do it. But it's like, this is why Rousseau is really tough, right? Because what are his solutions are either find yourself a tutor who will manipulate your entire life since birth? Or, or remake society, image of ancient Sparta where men and women never meet?

Sep 28:26

Good, good options. I can see why you'd call him a romantic and not pragmatic.

28:36

Exactly.

Clif Mark 28:39

He has like these really interesting contrasts that he makes with usually with Paris. Okay. So there's two kinds of society. There's this like noble good sex segregated society where like, men are men and women are women and they're chasing everything. And then there's Paris, in Paris is like men and women, they're hanging out together, they're in the salons. They're flirting with each other. They're almost on like a footing of equals. They're kind of the same kind of person. And we're so just thinks this is the worst. This is not only this is bad for so many reasons. But one of them is that you can't you don't have enough distance to fall in love. It's unromantic, even if it's flirtatious.

Sep 29:23

Yeah, so you don't have that yet. So in order to project on someone, they have to be far away enough. Yeah, put up a message to

Clif Mark 29:33

write. And also, it's like, I think that maybe Rousseau thinks that at bottom men and women are pretty similar. And if we hang out too much, like we'll figure that out,

Sep 29:45

is actually really gender egalitarian. But well, yeah, it's a bad thing.

Clif Mark 29:51

You know, he thinks descriptively men and women can be very similar, but normatively, they should be different. So therefore, we should keep men and women separate. Like, accentuate their differences. He thinks he thinks in the city. women become more Manish, they go out, they start like writing books and stuff. I know. And then they become womanish fuckboys, who like become like really charming. They know how to like, be agreeable to women and flirt and say everything that they need to say. But they never, they never fall in love with them.

Sep 30:29

So no one is like shy and big lish.

Clif Mark 30:33

No, he has, he has this, he has this other passage, I'm gonna try and quote it from memory. So it may be a little bit wrong, but it's describing life in Paris, okay for women. He says, in Paris, every woman gathers around her a harem of men more womanish than she. And these like agreeable flops. They know how to please her. And they know how to be agreeable, but they, they can't give her the one thing she really needs, which is love. So yeah, that's his attitude is that it turns like hanging out with women too much actually makes guys more gives them better manners and makes them nice to hang out with, but they become fuck boys who can't really commit.

Sep 31:18

Okay, I know. That's a little hard to understand. I do understand sort of the appeal of someone who's mysterious, right? So you can't really talk to them. That's where all these like little romance novels are based on like, the stable boy doesn't say much when he has muscles or whatever. Like, he is like, is that what he wants? Like? For Yeah, for us to be able to project masculinity on someone. But then if we get to know them, all that all that sort of all those stereotypes of what a guy should be those disappear, you get to know guy himself. And that's actually like more, more of a normal human being closer to you than this. This mysterious otter? Yeah, yeah. draws you in.

Clif Mark 32:10

Yeah, that's a really good way of putting it the noble and mute muscley stableboy.

Sep 32:18

Okay, so I get that. But what about us? I mean, we live in a society cliff, and we're around each other all the time. So would Rousseau and say that there is no hope for us of ever finding will true romantic love like that? Because we know each other too? Well?

32:36

Yeah.

Clif Mark 32:38

Rousseau probably would, because he's tremendously pessimistic about modernity and about the way the world is going. And he is into hyperbole. He exaggerates, he presents the most extreme possible case. And that's like, why his writing is pretty.

Sep 32:55

Yeah, sure.

Clif Mark 32:56

So so he would say, there's no hope for us and we live in like a moral abyss. But But I think that we know that people, like, still catch feelings in gender mix societies, even in Paris. Even they're even there. I mean, in my, in my own life I have. And to see more how that works. That's why I wanted to bring in a second author today. And that's, uh, that's Marcel Proust. And the reason I felt like the reason he's like, part of the story for me, biographically is that when I was doing all this research on Rousseau, at night, I was like, kinda, I was reading Proust long novel, in search of lost time, which is like, insane seven volume thing. And yeah, amazing.

33:46

I've heard of it.

Clif Mark 33:49

You know, I think would make a good audio book because it's just like having like, the most interesting smartest guy you've ever met just whisper you to sleep every night talking about flowers, I don't know, everything. jealousy.

Sep 34:06

Nice.

Clif Mark 34:07

And in any way. The reason I bring him up is because I think he has a Rousseau in theory of love. He seems to think that like desire, imagination and everything work in the same way, they're linked up in the same way. But he's not telling us to like go back to Sparta.

Sep 34:27

Okay. So he's telling us how we can maybe still achieve this kind of fantastical romantic state but in, in modern society, okay. Well,

Clif Mark 34:42

well, hold on a minute. He's um, when I say he has the same psychology is received the same theory of love. He thinks that desire and love work the same way. And so he describes how that operates in modern gender mixed society. It doesn't have all this really like sexist political baggage that Rousseau has because he's not a moralist. He's not a political theorist. He's just trying to, like describe his experience. So it's less preachy that way. But, you know, you asked whether he's showing us how to achieve true let inside and he's, he's as pessimistic as

Sep 35:22

I'm glad he brought him up.

Clif Mark 35:25

He he illustrates how romance imagination work, but he also illustrates like how quickly it can fall apart for the same reasons, Rousseau thinks but let me read you. Let me read you a quote to illustrate both of those, this point, okay. All right. In this passage, Proust is describing how our imagination wants what it can't have in that can make passing strangers very interesting to us. Quote, if our imagination is setting going by the desire for what we cannot possess, its flight is not limited by reality perceived in these casual encounters, in which the charms of the passing stranger are generally in direct ratio, to the swiftness of our passage. If Knight is falling, and the carriage is moving fast, whether in town or country, there's not a single torso, disfigured like an antique marble, by the speed that tears us away in the desk that blurs it, that does not aim at our heart, from every crossing, from the lighted interior of every shop, the arrows of beauty, and quote, so he's basically saying, it's a direct ratio, the faster we pass by someone, the more likely we are to like them.

Sep 36:41

Ah, he's French. How do they get such a reputation for being romantic?

Clif Mark 36:50

Well, wait till you hear the second part of the quote, where he talks about how quickly these arrows of love can lose their edge. Quote, had I been free to get down from the carriage and to speak to the girl whom we were passing, I might perhaps have been disillusioned by some blemish on her skin, which from which from the carriage I had not distinguished, where upon any attempt to penetrate into her life would have seen suddenly impossible for beauty is a sequence of hypotheses which ugliness cut short, when it borrows the way that we can already see opening into the unknown. Perhaps a single word which she might have uttered, or a smile would have furnished me with an unexpected key or clue with which to read the expression on her face to interpret her bearing, which would have immediately become commonplace. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. to strip our pleasures of imagination is to reduce them to their own dimensions. That is to say, nothing.

Sep 37:54

Nice.

Clif Mark 37:56

I love this, because a lot of it is familiar. Right?

Sep 38:01

knows what he's doing. You know?

38:04

I've never read.

Sep 38:07

But I'm not too fussed about God.

Clif Mark 38:11

Yeah, he's good. One of the best, I would say. But I want to ask you about this passage, because I kind of think that I see it happening a lot in life, this idea that a single word or phrase or gesture, can make completely understand a person think they're commonplace, and therefore lose attraction for them completely.

Sep 38:35

Absolutely, absolutely. Like, it's, uh, oh, you're one of those people.

Clif Mark 38:41

One of those?

Sep 38:42

Yeah. And I, ah, yeah, just wanted to say, I was just thinking, is this a male gaze thing? You know, like, women should be pretty and so men can admire them. But then I thought, No, because no, no, if you've ever seen Sex in the City, but that's a show that's basically just about that moment of disillusion, you know, so they, they all meet a promising guy. And then in the third act, then second, it does something weird, they're like, and then the third just gets weirder. And then they have to get the fuck out of there. And it's and it's on although, so did this illusion all have their own cute little characters.

Clif Mark 39:27

So it's like, it's about constructing these fantasy, these illusions and then having them like, progressively through the episode just smashed up against reality

Sep 39:36

just stripped away. Yeah. So it's actually really cynical. Um, but yeah, I think that happens to men as much as it happens to women. So I don't Yeah, I don't think that women project less somehow, then. They don't. But yeah,

Clif Mark 39:56

it's it's you know, it's for everyone. His his same theory. I noticed this online, right people like, will use very small details about people like reduce them to a type like, I don't know, like, Guys who like Rick and Morty, or like,

Sep 40:12

Yeah, definitely.

Clif Mark 40:13

Yeah. You know, if a woman says like, Oh, you know, I believe everything happens for a reason, or they mentioned like their star sign. People might like, make assumptions about.

Sep 40:23

Yeah, exactly. Anything like some, like someone says something about free speech, and you've decided that that's racist or something and then immediately become a libertarian kind of nightmare person. Happens all the time.

Clif Mark 40:39

All the time.

Sep 40:40

Yeah, it's true, we should, we can help do that. Maybe. So let me ask you this, before you told me about all this, you know, French, French theory of love. I would have thought that maybe if you got to know a person, maybe when they were younger, or through, I don't know, your family, or your you know, use a brother's friend or whatever, you, you got to know them in a different context. And so when they say something, it's harder to reduce them to a type, you know what I'm saying? Yeah. So then it's actually the, the lack of exposure to someone that makes you reduce them to a type, not the overexposure.

Clif Mark 41:28

Right. Okay, so yeah, I can see, I can definitely see how that works. But what's interesting is that reducing people to a type can make them commonplace and boring. But it also is kind of works the other way, right? Because when he talks about people he likes, it's usually because they're a type. And there's something that like, evokes something in, like a country girl from the seaside. And to be with her is like to be with all of the associations of like that seaside town and vacation and this kind of life.

Sep 42:04

I mean, as a, as a woman with a Middle Eastern background, I have on occasion from Yeah, people, you know, projecting a certain type on you, you know, going just, I mean, I know, sometimes it's really annoying. But other times, it just saves the trouble of having to be attractive in any other way. You know, that fantasy is, you know, that happens a lot, actually. And when I figured it out, I started doing it on purpose, because it's, you know, a certain point, you're just done.

42:42

You're offering a taste of the origin. Yeah, exactly.

Sep 42:45

Exactly. And so I mean, I, I get what they're talking about, like, it's it's a delicate balance, but sometimes, it's also a hack, right? Sometimes.

Clif Mark 42:55

Yeah, I don't know, if it's a really a hack. I don't look exotic. But I used to be an academic and sometimes people would find what you do for a living, they say, oh, you're your prof and you can see the wheels of their erotic imagination start to turn. And sometimes they'd asked to come to lecture sometimes even request to come to office hours

Sep 43:21

Oh,

Clif Mark 43:22

a lot of times I'm sure people are just being supportive or interested but there were times when I was pretty sure there was more going on and other male friends of mine with other jobs like doctor or whatever, have told me the same thing so it's definitely a thing.

Sep 43:40

Oh right. Yeah, yeah, this is the Indiana Jones fantasy right you're like if you don't you don't you're not around you know tweed clad you know, stuffy academics a lot then that's that is exotic you know, and interesting or whatever. Yeah, and then yeah, it's time Exactly. But then if you have been around a lot then you really want the other Indiana Jones you know, the grave robbing? What is it like a leather jacket and whip with wielding, adventurer guy? So yeah. Types give me hot. I agree.

Clif Mark 44:20

Yeah, so. So that's basically like a Rousseau's and Proust's theory of love. You fall in love with your own imagination. Getting to know other people is kind of going to break it. And I don't know what do you what do you think about that?

Sep 44:41

I mean, I like I like the theory because it's an interesting theory that is not usually when we talk about we talk about love. But it sounds really lonely though. Like if that is really, if it's nice to contemplate, but if that is the idea Love you're walking around with, I don't see how you can even really take any relationship you're in seriously, right. So like, if you know that, like if you already know, oh, this is just my Fantasyland will be fleeting. And you know, once I know I'd get to know this person, then Aren't you always going to end up? Not with someone? Because,

Clif Mark 45:29

yeah, you, you can never be with the one you love. Because it's impossible to love the one you're with.

Sep 45:37

Yeah, exactly. So then, like marriage is out of the question. moving in together is out of the question. Like me,

Clif Mark 45:46

I don't know, you could definitely move in the Proust protagonist, he moves in with his girlfriend and gets really bored of her. And there's this absolutely wild anecdote about so that I want to tell you, so I want to hear it. You know, he didn't really get along very well, and society. Towards the end of his life, he had alienated most of his friends. And he started writing these loneliness solitude themed autobiographical books. And he's just like talking about, you know, being alone, he writes, one called the reveries of a solitary Walker. And so he's just like walking through the forest, doing botany looking at plants. And just saying, you know, I'm all alone. There's, there's no one left to talk to, everyone's betrayed me. I'm just here, by myself, me and Rousseau, and even writes a set of dialogues between john Jacques and Rousseau of just him talking. And that whole time, he's talking about being completely all by himself alone. He's actually with his partner of like, decades. who bore him five children that he sent to all to an orphanage.

Sep 47:00

No. Yeah. Such a bastard. But yeah, look, I get this kind of, cuz like, the same qualities that make him such a good critic of the modern age. It's also the same color and make him like a horrible boyfriend, right? Because like, he can't live in this world, he's it's unbearable to him and all that, like, I can't live with this energy he, like, compulsively puts into his writing, right puts into his imagination. And so he's always constructing alternative versions, or just thinking about how if this is not right, it's not supposed to be like this. Right. And I think being with someone requires a little bit of a acceptance of

Clif Mark 47:59

the real world willingness to cope with reality.

Sep 48:02

Yeah, some, like a little bit of reality would be nice. And I think he just doesn't want it like, he's just he'd rather

Clif Mark 48:11

make up a girl and write a 700 page novel about her,

Sep 48:14

then then actually date a girl. Yeah, exactly. Yeah,

Clif Mark 48:18

exactly. Rousseau was like, by all accounts, a bastard. But I don't think this theory is necessarily a theory for bastards. Because Proust, he was he had a lot of friends. He got along, he had romantic relationships. He was not a social disaster in the way Russell was. And, and you still see something like this, you know, coming out in relationship advice today, like really? popular stuff. Do you know do you know Esther Perel?

48:55

Right. Yeah, I

Sep 48:56

think so the woman who wrote about sometimes you should have an affair to spice up your relationship.

49:01

Yeah.

Clif Mark 49:02

Well, not exactly that. But fair summary. She's a really big podcast called how she'll begin. She's written two best selling books, a popular Relationship Advice lady. And her thesis, she quotes Proust, you know, her thesis is basically that there's a crisis in modern marriage. And the reason is exactly because modern spouses have become too familiar with each other. Because they want their partners to be like, romantic partners, but also their partners in buying a house and taking care of the children and washing the toilet. And, and you spend so much time together, that you lose that romantic Spark. It's hard to feel it despite a lot of romantic comedies. It's hard to feel it for your best friend. Well, they're still being your best friend. Right. And also, one of the First published pieces I ever wrote, had kind of the same theory in it.

Sep 50:05

Really, really.

Clif Mark 50:24

After I was finished this trip to Paris was reading all this. So I went back to Montreal, and my friend had started a magazine, and I wrote a piece on it called speaking in tongues. And it was basically about love in a second language. I had, I had just been to Europe, right as being in Paris, and I met all these couples who are from different countries who didn't share a first language. And so yeah, exactly, Erasmus couples. And so I wrote this jokey article, with the idea that, you know, everyone always tells us that communication is the key to a good relationship. But actually, what these international romances demonstrate is that more communication is not necessarily better. And that sometimes, your relationship breaks up not because you've said too little, but because you've said too much.

Sep 51:23

You see, I see.

Clif Mark 51:26

Right? So it was it was a kind of cynical, jokey article that I wrote, when, you know, I was I was much younger. And it was supposed to be that way. And I was laughing at these couples, but I was also, I was also laughing at my own expense. Because and it comes back into the story. During that second trip to Paris, I, I met up with a mutual friend of ours, who was who is her roommate, when when we lived in Paris the first time and we had lunch, we caught up and this friend of ours said, and I got your email, I had sent her an email at some point in the past four years, you know, just how are you doing whatever. And she thought it was really sweet. And she wanted to answer, but her English isn't strong enough. And so I start laughing in the cafe. I am cracking up and our friend EDA is like, What are you laughing at? And I was laughing because that was the first time like, I had forgotten that this person who had such a huge crush on like, did not even speak English. I liked her so much that I forgot she she didn't share a language with me.

Sep 52:55

Oh, this is so much more romantic. Someone I don't know why.

53:01

Go on. Why? Why tell me?

Sep 53:06

I don't know. This is such an intense crush. I guess just part of me even now we've gone through all of the theory. Just kind of assumed that. It wouldn't be because of that. But

53:21

I don't know. What Look,

Clif Mark 53:23

I mean, at the time. She had a little bit of French I my French was okay. And also we had this third person around who would translate for us. Right. And so, yeah, we I had this big crush an affair with a woman that I now on reflection realize I'd never had a real conversation with

Sep 53:54

Oh, God, I just Okay, so this is why I think it's really romantic because I'm just imagining that the sex must have been so hard for you to not even notice. But now I just feel guilty because you were 29 only one thing

Clif Mark 54:07

I was I was pretty excited about it.

Sep 54:13

Love this. This is something so wait, did did you like I don't know hold each other's hand and walk around along the sand or something?

Clif Mark 54:28

Oh, no, we couldn't. Because we were a secret.

54:31

Okay, all right,

Clif Mark 54:32

because of her other thing.

Sep 54:34

So when did you have moment and like, were you just sleep like when you saw each other? Was it just you were sleeping together? Or did you also have like these couple moments, you know?

Clif Mark 54:47

No, actually because she had another guy. I was a secret. We couldn't spend that much time together in total and we weren't even supposed to be seen in public or like together. by other people in our house, so yeah, no, no, no hand holding incense rolling for us.

Sep 55:08

So then, why is why is it still such a? such an intense memory? Because I'll tell you I've had maybe like, brief but like intense sort of physical sexual sort of connections with people. Um, but I don't really remember them afterwards that was, you know, there is no there isn't that kind of procyon? rumination,

Clif Mark 55:38

like nostalgic romance. Yeah, filter.

Sep 55:40

Yeah.

Clif Mark 55:42

It's not like ever pined for Anna. Right. This is not. I'm not like, nostalgic about it in that in that way. But it's really interesting to me for two reasons. One is just at the time, it was really intense, right, I really did like her. And that was cool. It was exciting. You know, I was 20. Great place. And the other is just like What a weird puzzle. And and counterexample to let me explain this way. The theory of love. We're talking about the beginning were like two people get to know each other, and they connect, and they communicate a lot. Yeah, right. Like, I want that. I mean, I was brought up, I don't know, that's what I think relationships are supposed to be about. And that was like my working theory of like, this is why I want to fall for someone. Yeah, I have this example of a girl that I definitely had these feelings for. I definitely did not have any kind of communicative connection. Like we hardly knew each other. So I want to believe the one thing right, but then, but then like, I read Rousseau, and I'm like, oh, Rousseau's theory of love is so dark. Everything I'm the same age is like when a meal went to Paris, there's obstacles. There's other people in the way, and it worked. So you

Sep 57:15

think that I mean, that's the lesson here. The lesson is, we want the soulmate theory to be right. But actually, if we go through our experiences, maybe you so Rousseau's lonely, lonely theory of projecting fantasies on someone until you die, is actually more accurate. Is that what you're saying?

Clif Mark 57:42

I think there's something to that.

Sep 57:43

I do. That's depressing.

Clif Mark 57:46

I still I don't want it to be totally true. But I do. I do think that they both are so improved, we're onto something about desire, and imagination.

Sep 57:58

Okay. But if you know that, if you not know now that you know, now that you've convinced yourself or resource convinced you, though, the data has convinced you that this is the case? are you ever gonna be able to? Like, if you have, you know, romantic relations with someone whose language you do speak? Are you gonna like, not trust that anymore? Is that? Is that what you're saying?

Clif Mark 58:34

Okay, so the dark way, the dark way of putting insight, right, is that a lot of people say trust your heart. trust your gut. But what what my experience with Anna, backed by the theoretical apparatus of Rousseau has taught me is that my guts, a liar. And it's trying to set me up with people that I really don't belong with. And that I should be deeply suspicious of everything it tries to tell me because

Sep 59:06

oh, my God,

Clif Mark 59:08

it's it's operating on very different principles than my reflective idea of love as a connection.

Sep 59:18

This is your this is so you today, take this beautiful memory of an amazing affair you had in Paris, and it's all very pretty and procyon and then say, never again.

Clif Mark 59:37

I'm not saying never again, let's put it try to say it in the less aggressively dark way. I, I'm not saying never again, I'm not saying don't listen to your heart. I listened to it. It was great. It was a very positive memory. Okay. And I'm not saying don't try to build a long term intimate connection with someone that you know, and connect with. I'm just saying that those two different things don't necessarily go together and may there may actually be trade offs between the, between the two. Right? And I'm not the only one who thinks so. Right? That's like the premise of pirellis whole thing is that, you know, too much too much changing diapers together is gonna you know, you're just not gonna want to fuck

Sep 1:00:25

yeah, yes, that's very sensible and growing up, and I'm gonna say, I'll remember that, but I'm just gonna forget that. I'm sorry.

Clif Mark 1:00:33

And that's that's the other good news. Is that your hearts such a good liar, that you don't have to worry about this, like theory being a bummer, but you will forget it.

Sep 1:00:43

Yeah, that's true theories. Basically. In most cases, it's irrelevant.

Clif Mark 1:00:48

So you can't do philosophy and politics at the same time. And you can't do philosophy and love at the same time. And don't worry, because you won't want to, like if you have the feelings, you're not gonna, you're not gonna talk yourself out of it using my idiotic argument

Sep 1:01:03

for a lot of people. Okay, well, that makes me feel a little better. I'm happy Valentine's Day.

Clif Mark 1:01:12

Happy Valentine's Day Sep. Thanks for coming on the show. Thank you, Ellie for editing advice. Thank you, Anna for a fun and puzzling affair. And thanks enough for getting on the phone with me to reminisce about Paris in 2001 under the pretense of research, and thanks for listening. If you liked the show, let us know you're out there, follow us on social email us. Let us know that you are not just a projection of my own imagination. We'll be back soon with scripted episodes about the Republic and a new series on thought experiments with Paul Sager. Look out for it on your feed.