Slavoj Žižek – Against Tolerance - Think Again Podcast #72 | Big Think

Hey there! I'm Jason Gots, and you're listening to Think Again, a Big Think podcast. Since the early days of the public internet, Big Think has curated more than 10,000 surprising, brain-bending, significant ideas and shared them through video, text, and social media. On the Think Again podcast, we remix this formula, surprising me and my guests with conversation topics that we didn't necessarily come here prepared to discuss.

Today, I'm very excited to be here with Slavoj Žižek. He's a Hegelian philosopher, Lacanian psychoanalyst, and political activist. He's the international director of the Birkbeck Institute for the Humanities, global distinguished professor of German at New York University, and his newest book is "Refugees, Terror, and Other Troubles with the Neighbors: Against the Double Blackmail." Welcome to Think Again, Slavoj! I'm glad to be here again.

I'm so glad to have you today! While we're recording this—I mean, this will come out a week later—but we are voting in America. People are very emotional; they're very proud, they're posting to Facebook. I had my 9-year-old son with me in the polls today. But reading your book, you know, my sense is that you would view the election sort of—in a sense, whichever side you vote on—it's a broken system. The whole thing needs to be kind of redesigned.

Yeah, in my last text on the election, I ironically, of course, referred to a famous answer by Joseph Stalin, who, when asked in 1928, I think by some official newspaper, of course, which deviation is worse—the right-wing or the left-wing—said both are worse. Not both are equally bad, but both are worse. I think it's something like this here. On the one hand, Trump is worse. I mean, the ideas that he stands for, all the white supremacy people, blah blah blah, it's just much lower than at least the official ideology of the Democratic Party and all those LGBT+ groups and so on that stand behind it. So Trump is worse, but at the same time—as Trump stands, although a bad change, for some kind of political dynamics—right, Clinton is worse in the sense that she is simply for the status quo.

And that's my problem with Hillary Clinton. She reunited, in a masterful ideological operation, everyone who is Hillary Clinton—from Occupy Wall Street to Wall Street, from LGBT, Black Liberation, gay rights to Saudi Arabia money, whatever you want, and so on. The price for this was, of course, Bernie Sanders, who was at least the beginning of a true alternative. He had to be erased, had to disappear. And that's what worries me with—I'm sure she will win. Hillary's victory? Nothing will happen. It's the status quo, which means that probably in a couple of years, late, Trump will be again here.

What I was not—was misrepresented for Trump. I mean, it makes me throw.

And let me interrupt and comment and say that the—you know, the internet has been putting a lot of articles out saying that Slavoj here is pro-Trump when, in fact, what he said was exactly what you—you—you said is what you're saying now.

No, I'm just saying, as you said, I'm trying to involve you so that if I'm lynched, you will be lynched with me.

Yeah, yeah, we hang from the same tree.

Yeah, yeah, that—we should, without in any case, voting for Trump, we should just coldly appreciate this situation. Maybe I'm wrong; I can even be convinced here. But what if Hillary wins? Nothing changes, and even more dangerously, what worsens? All those big bang Cold War warriors, like Wolfowitz and so on, standing with her? I think she will be this horrible combination of some concessions to progressive sexual freedoms, blah blah, but part of the same package with aggressive foreign policy and so on, and so on. While with Trump—disgusting as he is—first, I think this fear that practically he will introduce fascism or what—he cannot do it. The United States is too complex a country, and you cannot apply to him this situation of 1933 where also many—let's say, it’s better Hitler that at least the front will be clear, and so on. No, no, Trump cannot do this. Trump is not simply a neo-fascist; he's a radical, often confused opportunist.

Sometimes he even said things that made sense. For example, you know, at a certain point, he said, "But we should show a little bit more opening for the Palestinian side," also to see it. Then in a typical Trump way, when there was a Jewish backlash, he said, "No, no, no, Jerusalem is the eternal capital of Israel," all that stuff. He's a radical opportunist. I mean, I think the concern that a lot of people have—myself included—is that he's unpredictable. We don't know what he will do.

Here, I respectfully disagree with you. I think he has a lot of this posturing and so on, but I think that basically, in his acts, he's just a very realistic opportunist, and I wouldn't even expect any big changes with him in power. What I do fear—I’m aware of the stuff first. I know that the very fact that he mobilized white supremacists is a dangerous point. If he nominates all the judges in the Supreme Court, it's a problem.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

But what I nonetheless think is that his victory—which will not happen—would have been such a shock that it would hopefully trigger a certain process which I think would more or less certainly bring out a certain revitalized—not communist left but let's say Bernie Sanders a step further. It would have been a great problem for the Republican Party, although people think that all these opportunistic different factions in the Republican Party— that in his victory, they would be united. I don't believe this.

Okay, I'll put it like this: now I will say something radical. See, those people—I detect in those mild leftist liberals who fell into this game: "Oh, Hillary is nonetheless the lesser evil"—desperately in this situation—that they secretly know that Trump means change. He is a voice of those enraged disappointment, which could be maybe redirected—that they are really horrified at change as such. They really—I quote in my new text which appeared digitally online with IN These Times two days ago; I quote a wonderful passage from George Orwell, who claims that today's radical progressives talk a lot about change, about the necessity of change, to make it sure that there will be no change, you know?

Okay, like I think that this—but are you saying that all change is good? I mean, like shooting a nuclear bomb at the US? I know it's a radical change, but it's not good.

No, but I'm nonetheless saying that this fear of—again, I repeat it—Trump is disgusting. But this fear of Trump—that it will mean new fascism—I don't share this fear. I think he's really a very opportunistic not—I think it means significant empowerment of some very, very ugly elements in American society, which I'm not saying are going to vanish when he's not elected. But at the same time, I think that the big problem of the United States from the very beginning—maybe the last time of a strong socialist party was, I think, in the years—not even decades after World War I. I think, no, yeah, 1930s—30 was L Down. I think there was some Socialist Workers party.

So I think that what would be wonderful news for the United States is to make a step over these radical eccentric circles and just this one-issue movements and so on, like—which are nice, LGBT gay rights, and so on—to make it into a serious, much, a little bit more radical political force. What, in European terms, would have been not too moderate but not too radical—but a serious, even social democratic force. And that's for me the tragedy of Hillary. Her greatest act will not be defeating Trump—that was easy to do—but defeating the threat of this alternative Bernie Sanders and so on.

Oh, I see. I see. So your issue, as I understand it from the book, is with this sort of tepid alliance of global capitalism, like that issues like LGBT rights and whatever get subsumed into this giant global octopus of global capitalism.

And it works in the sense of—that's the big problem I have with some feminists and so on—where I claim to put it in this bombastic Marxist terms. The predominant ideology of today's global capitalism in the developed Western countries is no longer patriarchy and so on—it's precisely this type of, let's call it, watered-down Judith Butler, you know?

Judith Butler? Okay.

But watered down in the sense of this common perception of let's not have a transfix identity; we need the freedom to redefine ourselves—to reinvent ourselves. And this is why also LGBT+ fits it perfectly, this idea of no fixed divisions—we always reconstruct ourselves, redefine ourselves, and so on.

And you argue that that's sort of easily...

Absolutely easily. Commodified.

And here, not so much commodified, but I'm saying even for—not only that it is easily appropriated, but that it is fundamentally the ideology of today's global capitalism.

I know now.

Oh, so identity politics equals global capitalism?

Wait, I—no, it's no, you know, in what sense equals? If you deprive identity politics of its social age, and that's the whole artistry of American mainstream politics, okay—to be for identity politics—to deprive it of its more radical social edge. So that, for example, that's why I criticize the notion of tolerance. Tolerance means instead of political struggle, which is intolerant, the problem becomes I am who I am, you are who you are; we should learn to tolerate each other, and so on and so on. This is not what even right-wing authentic politics is. Authentic politics is I have a global vision, which is different from yours. Let's fight, without killing each other, but let's fight radically to the end.

One really interesting thing in your book is the chapter on the stranger. And this brings me to the idea of the neighbor. The chapter is called "The Limits of Neighborhood," and you quote another writer and essentially say that creepiness is the modern definition or the modern sort of core of the neighbor. You say, you basically say we shouldn't try and—within this refugee crisis and other global issues—we shouldn't try to sentimentally sympathize or empathize with the pain of others, but we should recognize our alienation from them.

And I'm trying to say something else: bona politics means at least stupidities which appear as wisdom. I quote one—you may remember—which is "An enemy is someone to whose story we were not able or ready to listen to." Okay, it sounds deep, and it's understandable, like, you have your own vision; I don't care, I stigmatize you as the enemy, I don't want to hear your side of the story. Sorry, but this wisdom has great limitations. Would you also say, for example, that Hitler was our enemy because we were not ready to listen? No, there are real enemies. Okay? Where the more you listen to his story, the more you should hate him.

But speaking as one of these liberals that you're sort of writing against in that section—because I think that's me—I think that's me...

Listen, I can tell you something, with all my friendship, when the people take over, you go to gulag, but you call me. I will arrange that you will get cigarettes and whiskey there. You will not suffer too much.

Okay, excellent, excellent. So it will be sort of an oligarchy in a way.

Okay, okay, good. But I am not saying we should not understand our neighbor and so on. I'm just saying there is a limit, and true tolerance is not this "I should absolutely understand you." True tolerance is I don't understand you because—as I put it cynically, I think in the book—who can say that I even understand myself? True tolerance for me is not I should understand all your needs and so on—through tolerance, we are in one of these big, around Washington Square, these high condominiums, and so on, and my ideal is to live there. Next apartment is an African American, next apartment an Indian, an Arab, hardline Jew, Latino American—and we have polite relations—maybe, maybe not. I become friendly with some of them, but we fully respect each other with all the differences. That's almost my ideal society.

I don't like this absolute pressure I must understand you to the end. No, the true—true even—the true love is this—the true love... Now I'm moving, but it's a good parallel. I think to personal level, I never like this idea of total love. We think like one and so on—that's horrible! In true love, you leave to your beloved a certain autonomy, you know? You cannot penetrate her—not sexually, but mentally, totally and so on. So why this obsession with understanding the other to the end? That's not the problem. The problem—sorry, just the problem is that even if we don't at this level of ways of life understand each other, we should build a common front. So my idea is, look, I always use this wonderful example. You remember Tahrir Square Egypt demonstrations?

Okay, till that point, it was always popular to say, but can we understand Egyptians? Are they immature for democracy? When that happened, all of a sudden, all those shitty problems of multiculturalism—do we understand them—disappeared. And we were not wrong. We knew now we are on the same side. This is our shared struggle.

I see. I like those moments. I don't think, as some liberal cynics would have said—bad liberals, not you—that this is just an illusion. No, it's not an illusion. This is authentic universality, which is always the universality of a struggle—not that UNESCO book universality where all world cultures are described as big contributions to world humanity. I believe in a struggling universality. We have problems, Indians have problems, Arabs have problems—can we form a united front?

Okay, so I totally get that on the political level. On the cultural level, I understand that we can't even understand ourselves, let alone understand another person fully.

I also understand something that you're saying, which I think is really interesting, which is that when we attempt to fully understand one another, what we essentially do is impress a set of assumptions that then—when they don't meet those assumptions—we get pissed off and we get angry or insulted or whatever. Typical with African Americans or, with Native Americans, for example. How often I've found my friends celebrating blacks, African Americans, as wonderful—oh, their music, blah blah blah—but then when you meet—as every social group has it—a more brutal side or whatever, they get in total panic. You know, all of a sudden, this understanding—you know, what's the problem?

If I may use my old metaphor: in the same way that in today's consumerism, we like to get a product without its rough elements, we like coffee without caffeine, beer without alcohol, sausage without fat. We like to get a neighbor, an ethnic other, without its dark side—a kind of a purified, decaffeinated neighbor, I call them. You know, but for me, true respect for the neighbor is that precisely you accept the neighbor—not as someone who should not be criticized—but you accept him precisely as someone with all his weaknesses, horrors—respectfully get engaged in a dialogue, not this patronizing respect which is false.

Well, so in some ways, I guess what I want to say, though, is that I think that there is a type of empathy and that there is a value of empathy which is not sentimental or patronizing and which is actually a willing—a desire at any rate to find some kind of common ground with other human beings. And I don't know if these terms are even meaningful anymore, but in a way, it seems like what you're describing is a very kind of, what I would think of or would have thought of at one time in history, as a very masculine perspective—a kind of like robust, like let us make fun of each other and go to battle together.

Now I have the ultimate surprise for you, which is not to say only but now as a good feminist, I would tell you which notion of masculinity, femininity you have here—these roles are historical and change. For example, now comes the big... I think that the very couple Trump-Clinton tells us a lot. Till now we have a certain notion of masculinity, which was predominant. It was—I follow here my good friend Alain, who develops this in his new book—which was defined by a certain rite of maturity, okay? Like in traditional societies, but this man, till 30-40 years ago, you become really a man after some initiation. Either in Europe, it was typical after you serve the army— that was the initiation—or after you find a permanent job or after you get married or even after you finish your studies. Now, this symbolic moment of initiation is disappearing. No longer. They no longer have weight.

Right. Men are more and more—this is a tendency, but a profound one—defined by their, let's call it a prolonged adolescence, right? You are never mature. Even when you are an adult, you remain an adolescent, right? And then women—very interestingly—are to a large extent treated as prematurely mature. Already girls are treated as women, responsible for them. So what is happening in our social space is that because of this lack of moment of initiation, which provides you with a certain identity, men then look for aids in half-illegal gangs and so on—all that stuff, violence and so on. While women are emerging as something much more interesting—there is a new figure of power today, which mobilizes certain traditional features of femininity—not just brutality, but comprehending, understanding, which fits, let's call it, post-authoritarian functioning of power even better.

But you quoted a wonderful example. He says, "Look at typical French courts for young delinquents." The typical scene is a young immigrant, working-class boy, non-socialized, immature, part of a gang, right? Treated for him by facing of power, which are for him predominantly feminine judges, feminine judges, psychiatrists, and so on. So I think that this new duality—man is immature, irrationally aggressive, exploding, not controlling himself. On the other hand, woman is more compassionate and so on, but at the same time...

First, let me make it clear: I'm not saying these are women. I'm here—I'm totally pro-feminist. I'm just saying this is one position which is of power—that is today offered to women.

Okay, my point is this one: not an ideal example of this couple—Donald Trump and Hillary. Donald Trump is the ultimate... isn't he? A perpetual adolescent? What he does—he just explodes; says this. Well, Hillary is this ultimate manipulative woman. And even—I've heard some rumors, who knows if they are true—that even this is how their true personal relationship works. It's who—I mean Hillary and Bill—and Bill, it's Bill who is now more weakened, so weakened. And Hillary, already in the Lewinsky affair, she was not that, oh crying, "What are you doing?" but totally in control—strategic.

Yeah, she was okay. Go to play with Monica, but I'll do the serious plot.

So in other words, I like to see this couple, Hillary and Trump, as a new version of sexual difference, of gender roles emerging in late capitalism. And they are not only bad for the men but also bad for the women. It allows women more power, but only if you obey these brutal, commercialized, commodified rules of feminine manipulation and so on. This worries me.

No, no, no. It's not only here! Look, I even—in a certain way, I even admire this. Did you notice that in the last—if you want—really tough job done, Margaret Thatcher, Indira Gandhi, you need a woman. And I like that! Even in Germany, Angela Merkel was a nice... but I understand what you're saying. I understand what you're saying. Now, I'm not saying that this is an argument against women's power.

You know, it's just that we have women demands for power. I totally agree with them. And then, in a tricky way, it offers you—okay, you women want power? Here you have it. This is how you have to perform it, you know, or whatever. And this is a very sad tendency.

Yes, I can totally buy that. I guess—no, no, no, again going back to what we were saying before. I think you propose a dichotomy, which may exist, but that the sole binary in that dichotomy doesn't have to be between sentimental, insultingly, superior kind of pity for the other and on the other hand, this sort of distance and solidarity. I don't think those are the only—like I think that there is—there are visions of coming to understanding. True understanding is a very painful, long process, which goes well beyond any kind of sentiment.

You know, in what sense? You know, I will tell you how you will probably not agree with it. I think it was the only moment I come to an understanding with my Chinese friends. I was there at a philosophical conference and, okay, we just talked. Obviously, we talked empty. And then somebody attacked me, and another guy attacked me, but they attacked me in a totally different way. And they ended up attacking each other, and I was able to identify with that struggle. All of a sudden, there were no problems. I was fighting for one against the other. You know, to understand a culture is ultimately to understand their problem, their antagonism. That would be my—I don't—otherwise you mystify the other into this—you know, they live some organic meaningful life.

They know we are all in the same shit. I don't believe in this.

Some people there like this—or even with revolutionary activists.

But what about the psychological experience of being a person and like having a kid? And for example, let me give you an example really quick and then let's move on to the next thing after I hear your response. You know, there's this guy—he works in the parking garage where we park our car. Oh, he's a real guy. He's a guy. A few days ago, like I'm like, "How are you doing?" You know, I didn't know anything. The guy is from the Dominican Republic. I see him when I park my car. I said, "How are you doing?" And he's like, "Not so good." And I'm like, "What's going on?" And it turns out his daughter, who's like 30, is in a coma. And I had a moment, like she just fell into a coma. And like I had a moment where I stared across the abyss between of culture and everything else that divides me and this guy, and I just like hugged the man. I don't know him.

You know, I totally believe in such moments! Yeah, but you saw that it was a moment of pain, of an abyss. And it had to be this, I think. But that is a common human experience. I have lost people. I am not—his experience is not my experience, but there's some resonance there. Otherwise, we couldn't have done—

Wait a minute, I don't have any problem, although some multiculturalists will again complicate the game, telling you, but how do you know that the loss of a child means the same thing? I don't know intellectually. I don't. But there was a thing, you know? That's what I mean. I think that you were right; this was a universal—a genuine universal moment. And I don't believe in this intellectual complication, but how do I know that mourning means the same thing to you as to him? No, I believe in these magic moments of sharing intimacy. I totally believe in them. They are genuinely universal.

All right, I wanted to ask you about that after reading your book, and then this happened. So let's get to the second part of the show.

Huh? Where—the terror with surprise?

Yeah, the terror will, or these are these video I suppose.

Fuck you. You already had them there; they sent them to me. I've not watched them.

I swear to you, no, I'm not so bad. I am bad, but not so bad.

All right, so the first one is Scott Barry Kaufman, who is the director of something called the Imagination Institute. I'm an idiot; I don't know anything.

I don't know what that is either. I'm also an idiot on that score.

And it's called "There is a way to unlock human potential, but it's not standardized testing." The idea of what we should be testing is a very hotly debated, because there’s a certain objectivity that we think we have once we standardize things and we give it the same test to everyone. And there is some truth to that—that the more you standardize a test, the more you kind of give everyone the same opportunity to perform on that test. So there is some argument to be made towards standardization. But we don't have standardized minds. I mean, no one has a standardized mind. There's no such thing as an average mind.

So every one of us, every unique individual, is a dynamic system of not just cognitive processes but motivational processes, dreams, desires. I formulated a theory called the theory of personal intelligence because I argued—I wanted to shift our focus of analysis from comparing, taking one aspect, saying, "Well, this is—we've decided as a society that's our measure of intelligence," and then we compare everyone to each other on that one metric. So when it comes to testing, I'm not necessarily against testing. I'm not necessarily against using standardized tests as a way of measuring learning outcomes, but as a way of measuring human potential, I'm not down with that.

[Music]

It sounds nice, but I'm a little bit suspicious about it.

I thought you would be! You know why? Because I don't like this focus on individuals. Because this can ultimately also mean there are no idiots. Because each of us has individual standards and so on. Of course, this is, even in a banal way, true. But there is nonetheless something in between these universal tests and your unique individual composure.

My God! We are not born as individuals. We are raised through internalizing certain standards of our way of life and so on. We live in communities, we live in cultures, and these communities precisely always involve a certain balance between intellectual, emotional, organizational capacities and so on, and so on.

So yes, we should demystify tests. They don't measure an objective property of yours and so on, but they can well measure how do you stand with regard to what your community expects from a successful or bright or whatever human being. And here things get for me complicated.

Because I was, yeah, if you don't fit this model, it's not as simple as to say, "But maybe you have your own standards." Yes, you have your own standards, but you know like 10 out of 99 people, this your own standards mean you are a dropout.

Right, and every 100, even less, makes out of this distance something creative, and you explode. And I think it's too cheap to say, "Yeah, creativity in everyone," and so on. Again, creativity is a very problematic term. What do you mean by creativity?

I mean, creativity is, again, a term which I would return to him to this guy, his own argumentation, and say what does he mean by creativity? Different cultures appreciate creativity in different ways. For example, in some cultures, it's a creative way—what ironically we refer to as the—how do you call them?—as the "Liberal Actor Studio"?

Yeah, that creativity means you openly bring out—express your—I'm horrified! There's a famous—do you know this famous? Allegedly, there was a conversation between, um, Laurence Olivier and Dustin Hoffman on the set of "Marathon Man." Are you familiar with it?

Totally! This is my favorite Dustin movie! I'm totally on the side of Laurence Olivier.

Yeah, so for the audience, Hoffman has been—he comes, shows up on set, he's been up all night, he's exhausted—in order to try to get into the character using the method. And he's too exhausted to act. And Olivier allegedly said to him, "My dear man, why don't you just try acting?"

And you see, for me, although it was less of this creativity-imagination, it was much more intelligent—this typically British restraint, Laurence Olivier. You know, even we don't even agree how we measure creativity and then we—so I am here more on the side of this—although it may appear almost ironic—the way I shout all the time—but I'm intimately more sympathetic with this British or conservative Japanese approach where they claim true creativity is not in this explosion of emot ideas. True creativity should appear as modest, invisible. You apparently do nothing, nothing big, but all of a sudden, you appear that everything is different, everything changed.

You know, so it's much more—even more complex than he imagines, and that's why I think he's not totally right.

Well, so I want to introduce another kind of complexity. So you know, what you're saying on the one hand is that cultures have different values and different definitions of intelligence, creativity, etc. And what you described was really a cultural or personal preference for one style over another—you personally are sort of allergic to the kind of emotion-based, explosion-based form of creativity.

Yeah, but I will give you another example—sorry, very funny. Now remember— you know Sam Goldwyn, the producer? Who was well-known for his so-called Goldwyn-isms—apparent nonsenses but well thought out. So once—okay, actually, you know what, I'm sorry. Could you briefly explain what Goldwyn-isms are?

Sam Goldwyn was the big Metro producer who was well known for apparently making stupid mistakes, but which are very intelligent, which—so one of the stories of him is that he read in a newspaper the complaint that in the scenarios of the films he is making, right, there are too many old clichés.

And he wrote a memo to his screenplay scenario department: "We urgently need more new, original clichés!" He was deeply right! True creativity is not to break out of clichés but to install new clichés!

I see, I see. That's for me true creativity! Every idiot can be creative in the sense of "I'm out of clichés," and so on. The truly difficult thing is to propose a new niche.

I think that that second kind that you're talking about is also more sustainable! Like if you're—if you're the sort of expressionist, exploding creative, that can only last so long before—that can only last so long before...

Why, you can imagine this.

I hate Jackson Pollock! My hero of abstract expression is Mark Rothko!

Not Jackson Pollock?

Ah, interesting!

Okay, so but what I was going to say also, though, is that the problem—going back to standardized testing—one of the problems is that I don't know that societies know what they value. What I'm trying to say is that I'm not sure that standardized tests always actually or accurately represent anything like the values of the...

Absolutely, obvious!

But—but why even expect this from standardized tests and so on? What I'm, on the other hand, not against is that, let's be very brutal—you have a certain opening for a job, right? And you don't care about creativity, blah blah, you want people who are well at doing something, right? And I think you should have the right to test them.

And you don't pretend like, "You test me and I can then claim, 'Oh, but you missed all my other creativities.'" And you can say, "Screw you! I'm not buying you as a whole person. I need you for this, and I need you to have these properties." I don't find there anything alienated and so on. Like if you are hired for a professor of mathematics, you should have certain abilities, and I don't give a fuck if you have emotional abilities.

Right, right, right, right! Well, it gets even slipperier, though—like, you know, for a professor of mathematics, that's one thing. That's, well, I won't call it concrete, but it's a little more concrete in some ways than what is needed in, say, a middle manager in a corporation.

I agree with you. There are many myths there. They don't know, and it's very confusing, and they have no idea what—like when they hire people, they don't know what they're doing.

I totally agree with you! I even—for example, my good friend Varoufakis, Yanis, the Greek—yeah, he told me before he became Varoufakis well-known—no, he asked me, "Why don't we write a book on political economy? On economy together?"

I said, "But I don't have any idea what economists do!" He told me, "Neither do economists!" You know! Like, economists are a great science of magic—like astrology, superstition, and so on!

So this is a very deep thing, what you said—especially people who pretend to understand others—psychological advisers and so on.

Even psychoanalysts—it shocks me again and again how, for example, psychoanalysts, whom you would expect to have a refined nose for subtle nuances, I met so many—not just stupid, but brutally insensitive psychoanalysts who, like much more than an average person, don't get the point! Like somebody can be making a tragic appeal; they dismiss this as just empty aggressivity or whatever.

It makes you very pessimist to see how even the specialists don't get it, because the people—whoever is gatekeeping in those fields does—they can't agree upon what constitutes a good psychoanalyst.

Evidently!

But the problem is that, you know, this is the law of bureaucracy and all institutions—you don't really want to solve a problem; you want to guarantee your reproduction.

And so you're mitigating risk mostly? Like, yeah, yeah, yeah. Shall we see what the next one is?

Please! Sure! That my wife will not kill me!

Oh, I don't want your wife to kill you! That would be terrible! We'll do one more. Okay, and this will be Daniel Bergner, who is an author and a journalist, saying neuroplasticity explains why women may be less monogamous than...

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...men.

There's some pretty stark research out there now that just talk about one study. This was done by a German scientist, looked at 2,500 committed couples—so no small number. The results are probably no fluke, and he measured their desire progressively over time. The desire starts at right about the same point for the men and for the women. So again, debunking this idea that somehow male desire, male libido, is far stronger innately than female libido.

But what happens, interestingly, is that male desire declines gradually over time. Female desire dives much more dramatically than male desire within those committed relationships. I think two things are worth saying. First, again, at the very least, this calls into question this idea that somehow women are comparatively better suited to monogamy than men.

But second, it has to do with cultural lessons and their effects on the brain. So I think most of us have heard this phrase, or at least are familiar with the concept of brain plasticity—that is, the brain is shifting neurologically in response to what we do with it. Well, what happens to the brain if we're taught very different lessons about sexuality from early on? Boys are, of course, taught right from the playground really that being a little bit of a Romeo is all to the good. Girls are taught a very different and more constrained lesson—even in our seemingly unconstrained society.

Can you help me?

But you can use—I didn't quite get it.

The point is, I know how with women, it's declined earlier.

No, he's saying, yeah, in committed relationships.

But wait a minute! Did he mean—when he spoke about how women's desire, right, declines much faster—did he mean generally the erotic desire of women or concretely the desire to your partner?

The latter desire.

But it was not clear from his—how my understand.

Well, okay, my understanding of what he was saying was that he's proposing that women may be less inclined to monogamy than men because—yeah, that it's strange because it's like society conditions them not to be sexual beings, and therefore sexual drops off faster in relationships.

But then why wouldn't it—why wouldn't it drop off at another problem? Aren't nonetheless women, in spite of gains of feminism and so on, still more sexualized?

Even I'll give you one measure. It's still considered normal—and I'm happy to enjoy this—to be married to a 30 years younger woman. Okay? Some people are a little bit ironic, but no problems, right? If I were to be 30 years younger, being married to a 30 years older woman, right? Then it's—in spite of all changes brought by feminism, it would cause much greater animosity, ironic remarks at least, and so on and so on.

So I think that I'm not actually—not sure I agree with that.

No?

Okay, maybe not! Honestly, I think there are a lot of people in the United States who would view the, like, older man, younger woman relationship and make snide, snotty remarks and say, "Oh, look at him, fishing for the young," you know? And the other way around, I guess it would engender some ridicule, but I think it would engender in America more bafflement. I think people would be like confused. They'd be like, "True!"

Yeah, no, it would be very nice to ask what does he see in her—not in an ironic way but genuinely, like why is that woman so attractive and so on?

But okay, then I will put it in this way: wouldn't it be more logical, in an abstract way from this decline of desire, to claim—but in the marriage, we have this gap, right? Like when you are married 15 years, your wife's desire declines, so you should be the one looking for it elsewhere, then I don't.

Right, right!

This—I didn't get it.

Well, that makes sense.

Well, I think what I agree with—sorry—is plasticity—that, you know, the way our brain is all permanently restructuring itself matters a lot and so on and so on.

Also, again, we have to be so precise here. I think that, with men, this is traditional identity! I know, but it's—if anything—till recently, it was much more considered normal for women to be more exclusively mothers—to stay at home, right? And men is the one who goes outside, travels, does the job and so on.

Now, the truly interesting thing would be this one: if we are passing—I hope we are—from this to this post-patriarchal family where woman is also expected to make a career and so on, how does this shift affect the permanence of sexual excitement of desire? Like what did their relative at least emancipation—and this is a great gain for women—that it's considered normal—you're not a pathological, frigid woman—to want to make a career.

How does this affect women's desire? Does it diminish it or does it really strengthen?

That's a great question! And I think one thing I wanted to say or that I thought of while watching this video is how mysterious sexuality remains! And maybe that's a good thing!

Going back to what we were saying before about experts—like nobody is the expert on it! It's this very scary realm. People don't talk about it in much—I mean, they do among friends or whatever but as a society, the data exists, but not in any consistent or robust way.

So people can come along and claim this or that maybe the case about women's sexuality to recapitulate—the problem for me with this is that probably the guy has more behind it. But from this clip, it simply appears to me—but I don't blame him, because I didn't get enough background data.

Right! It wasn't clear! I see so many other options to interpret this! Like when he said, "We follow 250 couples, or whatever, a representative example." Well, I would like it—what I would be much more interested in, if we were to compare one group of couples which remain married all the time and others which got divorced and so on—women and men—other partners—and how does this affect your desire, and so on?

There are so many other venues here that I simply cannot—

Fair enough!

But going back to one thing, I think—and then we can wind it up. Have you seen the film "Harold and Maude"?

Do you know the film?

Harold and Maude?

I know, but I totally forgot about it! Maybe I've seen it 30 years ago!

Yeah, it's a Hal Ashby film and, like, Maude is an older lady, and Harold is discontent in his life, and he falls in love with her.

That's the only film I mean! I thought of it because of what you said—it’s the only film I know of—and it’s the only piece of L—like—we all know "Lolita," right? Which diss—us on the other hand, because we're like, "We can't believe the intensity of this somewhat likable narrator's affection for this young girl!"

With "Harold and Maude," it's trying to show, you know, she—she—Maude must be 80 and Harold is maybe 20—so radical! Yeah, and he falls in love with her!

What is it? Sexual love or no, it's love! Love! She opens his world! He's in a very, very constrained family environment! His mom is rich; she's constantly trying to give him presents, like a Jaguar, which he converts into a hearse! He would enjoy this film; I think.

But, but no! I must tell you at least something else! That it must be an interesting movie because one of my absolute favored Hollywood movies is, did you see also Hal Ashby's "Being There"?

Yeah, yeah! That's the ultimate movie about transference! How a complete idiot, if you find yourself at the right place, produces magic and so on! I like this how then the guy says total platitudes, and they are over-interpreted as wise instruction into politics and so on and so on!

That's the reality of our lives! I think it's one of the most radical, wonderful movies! It's incredible!

Yeah, it's, uh, Peter Sellers is in it. It's based on a book by an Eastern European—

Yeah, yeah! And then there is another role, I think Shirley MacLaine and so on—yeah. And he's just—he's a gardener with limited mental capacity. And then—everyone thinks he's a genius because he speaks in sort of Zen Koans, which are not, but...

No, the C is that they are common-sense statements, but because he occupies the position of a genius, they are interpreted as wise!

And you feel that that defines much of our intellectual life!

Absolutely! Of course, maybe not in such an extreme way, but so much depends on how you are interpreted.

I often notice this when people take me seriously as a philosopher! I say something vulgar, they look something from it!

Right! From other people I can develop what I think is, well, a nice line of thought; they dismiss it as meaningless and so on! So much depends on this horizon of expectation, how you approach it, how...

Yeah, how do you feel about this weird, like, I keep seeing this—the Elvis of philosophy—that seems incredibly insulting, sticks to me again and again! I protest to my publishers, "Please don't do this!" And it just sticks—

To dismissive of what is obviously a serious body of work?

Yeah, yeah!

Ah, but that's why when people tell me, "How does it feel? You are a star of philosophy?" I claim, "No! Being called star of philosophy, popular, is a refined way to attack me! It's a way to say, 'Oh, you are a funny guy, but not too serious.'"

And so, I stop to care!

You have to, right?

How could you?

[Music]

And that wraps up this week's very spirited episode of Think Again! I hope that you enjoyed that half as much as I did! It was pretty amazing on this election day to have that rapid-fire, intense conversation.

And now let me head off—you’re going to be hearing this, I guess, about a week after the election—but I'm going to go head off now and sit with my family in a bar somewhere in Queens and watch the election results with my fingers crossed and my breath held!

We have tons of interesting episodes coming up for you! I'm not going to let the cat out of the bag! If you haven't rated or reviewed the show—if you like the show and you haven't rated it and reviewed it on one of your favorite platforms that you listen to it on, I would really, really personally appreciate if you could do that!

Hope to have you back next week! Take care!