Episode 062 - The Perils of Romantic Love (Part 2)
Date: 03/15/21
Link: https://www.epicureanfriends.com/thread/1914-episode-sixty-two-the-perils-of-romantic-love-part-2/
Summary
Section titled “Summary”Book Four lines 1141–1208: Lucretius’s satirical catalog of how lovers rationalize their partners’ physical flaws, the “filthy smells” passage on women concealing their defects, and the closing argument that mutual sexual pleasure is real and common to both sexes. Martin reads. The panelists note possible translation issues in Brown’s 1743 text on the opening verse and compare Bailey and Munro, discuss the catalog’s colorism, debate whether Lucretius’s tone is sarcasm or personal grievance, and compare his technique to Buddhist aversive therapy and modern dating-coach advice against idealization.
The soul mate concept is traced to Plato’s Symposium and contrasted with Epicurean materialism. Elaine introduces the concept of love bombing and distinguishes infatuation from bonding, arguing that friendship is a more reliable basis for long-term relationships than Lucretius acknowledges. Charles connects the “catalog” passage to the modern internet concept of simping (deferred to a forum post). The episode closes with the When Harry Met Sally restaurant scene as commentary on the “women feigning desire” passage, and Dawkins’s selfish gene as context for why idealization persists despite causing misery.
Transcript
Section titled “Transcript”Cassius: Welcome to Episode 62 of Lucretius Today. I’m your host, Cassius, and together with my panelists from the EpicureanFriends.com Forum, we’ll walk you through the six books of Lucretius’ poem and discuss how Epicurean philosophy can apply to you today. We encourage you to study Epicurus for yourself, and we suggest the best place to start is the book Epicurus and His Philosophy by Canadian professor Norman DeWitt. For anyone who’s not familiar with our podcast, please check back to Episode 1 for a discussion of our goals and our ground rules. If you have any questions about those, please be sure to contact us at EpicureanFriends.com for more information. In this episode 62, we continue our discussion of the perils of romantic love. Our text comes from Latin lines 1141 through 1208 of Book 4, and today we have Martin reading the text. Let’s join the discussion now.
Martin: These are the misfortunes that attend a love ever so fortunate and constant, but the miseries of a wretched and disastrous love are innumerable, and obvious to everyone with his eyes open. You had better therefore be upon your guard beforehand, and observe the rules I have laid down to prevent you from being caught, for this is not so difficult to avoid being drawn into the snares of love as to disengage yourself from the net when you are taken, and to break through the strong knots which Venus ties close upon all her votaries. And though you are entangled and within the net, you may still avoid much of the evil unless you willfully set yourself against the remedy. First, then, you are to take no notice of any imperfections, either of mind or body. You find in the mistress you admire an entailing love. All lovers, blinded by their passion, observe this and attribute beauties to the fair to which they have no real pretense, and therefore the ugly and deformed we see have their several charms and secure sovereign power over their admirers. The lover that has such a forbidding dowdy for a mistress is laughed at by his companions, who advise him to appease Venus and render her propitious. Why, they think nothing of their greater misfortunes in placing their esteem upon others less lovely and less beautiful. The black seems brown, the nasty and rank is negligent, the owl-eyed is a Pallas, the sinewy with her dry skin is a little dove, the dwarf of the pygmy breed is one of the Graces, wit and spirit all over. The large and gigantic is surprising and full of majesty. If she is stemous and cannot speak, then she lisps, she is modest; if she is dumb, but the turbulence, the violent and the talkative is all fire. If she is worn away with the consumption, she is my slender love. If she is puffy with a cough, then she is dainty and delicate. The two-handed virago with her full bust is serious herself and full of Juno. The flat nose is my saline, a little satire. The pouting lip is a very kiss. It would be endless to say all that might be offered upon this subject.
But allow your mistress all the advantages of beauty in her face, that charms of love arise from every limb, yet there are others as lovely as she, and time was when you lived without her, and we know she plays the same game that homelier women can do as well. And then she perfumes rank as she is with filthy smells, that her maids cannot come near her but make a jest of her when they are not seen. But when the lover is shut out, and all in tears crowns the gates with flowers and garlands, and pours ointments upon the stately pillars, and the wretch warms the very doors with his kisses, yet when he is admitted and one blast from her armpits strikes full upon him as he enters, he presently seeks for a plausible reason to be gone, and all his long-labored speeches of complaint are forgotten, and he condemns himself awfully for raising such ideas of her beauty which no mortal could claim to. This secret is well known to women of the town, and they act cunningly behind the scenes as it were, and conceal their failings from those whose loves they would secure, fixed and lasting to themselves. But all to no purpose, for you may easily imagine how things are and discover all and prevent their utmost endeavors to deceive you, and if your mistress be of an open temper and not sullen and reserved, she will not so much as hide her defects, but hope he will allow for imperfections that are common to the whole sex.
Nor does the woman always breathe with feigned desire when joined in strict embrace with him she loves, when she holds him close, and on his pressed lips imprints her kisses. For she often does it heartily, and strives to share the common joy, and runs the heat with vigor to the goal. Nor for any other reason would birds and herds and wild bees and cattle and mares bear the weight of the male if they did not burn with equal heat, and so receive his joy. Don’t you observe how those whose mutual pleasure has bound fast are tortured as it were in common bonds? How dogs in the street are striving to untie their knot and pull with all their might a different way, yet they stick fast in the long ties of love. This they would never do if they were not engaged in mutual joys which cheat them with delight and hold them fast. The pleasure then is common to them both.
Cassius: Thank you, Martin. That one was a good passage to read in a German accent that doesn’t convey some of the sarcasm that might be there. Anybody who says that Lucretius doesn’t have a sense of humor — it’s definitely not super serious, all of it. Who wants to start with this passage today? Well, starting with the very first paragraph — when I was preparing this one today, it struck me how almost modern that first paragraph is written, and what’s being said is very clear. He’s just finished last week talking about misfortunes that can happen from love. And then he says these are the misfortunes that attend a love ever so fortunate and constant, but the miseries of a wretched and disastrous love are innumerable and obvious to everyone with his eyes open. You’d better therefore be on your guard beforehand and observe the rules I’ve laid down to prevent your being caught, which is not so difficult to avoid being drawn into the snares of love as to disengage yourself from the net when you’re taken. We were talking last week about how he seems to get carried away. I think either he’s been burned himself, or —
Martin: Apparently, apparently.
Elaine: Oh my goodness. I would love to hear more of those details.
Cassius: Well, that probably explains a lot. It’s been a long time since we talked about Lucretius personally, but there’s one recorded alleged event of his life — that supposedly he committed suicide under the influence of a love potion, which I think is probably not true but that’s what’s recorded by one of the church fathers. Charles, do you remember which one? That’s the only biographical detail that’s out there about Lucretius. But I would suspect that somebody reading all this material through here would probably come up with something like that, because people observe that there’s no way some lunatic composed this poem — he’s not mad, he’s brilliant — but about love he certainly has strong opinions.
Cassius: So first he says just better to avoid getting caught, but then if you get caught, the second half tells you what to do. And I think we have to take the second sentence sarcastically — “First, then, you are to take no notice of any imperfections.” Now he’s not saying that literally.
Martin: Well, then he would stay caught. Yeah, that’s what it says in the 1743 edition — take no notice. But that seems counterintuitive. It seems like he’s telling you that you should take notice of these.
Cassius: Right, right. And so when you read and compare what Munro and Bailey say, I think you don’t see it constructed quite the same way. In fact, I don’t see that at all — it’s not even in there that way in Bailey and Munro. And in fact, I think I’ve read in other places that this section tends to be homogenized — this is such a delicate series of discussions that it’s hard to say whether the translators have been faithful to the original Latin, and whether the original was really as graphic as some translations suggest. Here in Bailey it says: “and yet even when trampled and fettered you might escape the snare unless you still stand in your own way, and at the first overlook all the blemishes of mind and body in her whom you seek and woo.” That’s much more clearly saying don’t overlook the problems. I haven’t gone back to the Latin to figure out whether Bailey and Munro are correcting it or whether 1743 is just wrong, but this might be a position where the 1743 is just not as good a translation on that sentence. So go ahead, Martin.
Martin: Actually I like this translation because it makes sense, and when you read the next sentence — because he says it’s a way so that you don’t take notice, and then you really fall deeply into this love. He’s saying what not to do in this translation — he’s not meaning that seriously. So this is how you get into trouble.
Cassius: Yeah, he could be there transitioning and just describing how it is — you willfully set yourself against the remedy. It could be just a transition issue between those phrases. Because surely he is being sarcastic — whether it’s humorous or whatever, he’s drilling home very emphatically, by using all of these examples of types of people. And you know, that’s where I was joking at the beginning about Martin’s delivery being very even — you can certainly work up some humor in this if you were so inclined. So this actually reminds me — and even though I do not agree with people who think that Buddhism and Epicurean philosophy are very closely related — this is similar to some of the exercises in Buddhism to cure painful desire by imagining this person you’ve fallen in love with decaying, dying and rotting.
Elaine: Yeah, dying and rotting and having maggots eat them and stuff. So it’s like aversive therapy — or it’s like some of what hypnotists do for people who are on a diet. They’ll have them imagine all sorts of garbagey gross stuff about food they don’t want to eat anymore so that it seems disgusting to them and they’re no longer interested. It’s like A Clockwork Orange. And it’s still advice given by modern dating coaches for people who have a tendency to get infatuated. They’ve gone out on a date or two with somebody and they’re planning their wedding — doodling stuff about putting their names together. So the coaches say things like: you really don’t know if this person is a serial killer; you don’t know anything about them; imagine all the things that could be wrong with this person that you don’t know anything about. And thinking about that will help you back off from idealizing them and instead take time to get to know who they really are before you make any kind of mental commitment.
Cassius: It’s good advice. And you’ve used the key word there when you said “idealize.” We discussed that last week when you brought that up. This is prescription so that you don’t idealize somebody — that’s the key here.
Martin: On the other hand, I somewhat disagree with him. A couple of these properties which he puts up as something negative — I don’t think they are negative. It’s just: okay, this is a feature of her. No, it’s not a bug, it’s a feature, and it’s okay. So I don’t idealize it, but it’s part of her, and this is fine. Most of the lists here I would actually say — so what?
Cassius: Don’t you think that’s a little different from infatuation, though? Because you actually know her. That’s more like “beauty is in the eye of the beholder” — if this brings you pleasure then it’s beautiful, there’s no absolute definition of beauty. I think if you don’t have the whole context of the philosophy you could almost read this and think he’s giving examples of things which are definitely absolutely ugly or definitely absolutely beautiful — which can’t be right because we’re not Platonic; we don’t believe in these ideals of beauty. So I don’t think he’s saying that. I think he’s saying: these are things that you don’t think are beautiful, but you’re ignoring them because of infatuation, idealizing and not seeing what you would normally respond to.
Charles: I guess it’s tricky, because we do see our friends and loved ones differently, and I don’t think he’s arguing against that. Getting with the line of thought that Lucretius is speaking from personal experience here or that he gets carried away — I think that some of the negative things he says here we shouldn’t take quite at face value or as some sort of universal statement. I think that’s his own personal take.
Elaine: Yeah, I am kind of surprised to see the colorism in here about the black and brown — I didn’t know that that was as much of a thing back then, but it appears to be.
Cassius: Well, we’re pretty close to North Africa. But I think this was not racist in the modern sense — it was really just on the color appearance.
Elaine: That’s why I said colorism. And to classify darker skin as less desirable — that’s colorism, and it’s still a problem today. I didn’t know that would have been the thing back then.
Martin: I just found another of the negatives that I think is absolutely not negative. I’m not really sure what it means to be owl-eyed is negative. I guess big eyes?
Cassius: No, no — shrewd. “Palace” in the text — that’s “Pallas.” Pallas was the name associated with Athena, who was called “glaukopis” — owl-eyed — so by Pallas he’s referring to Athena. So somebody like a woman who has an Athena-like wise aspect. But that’s a good thing, right? To be wise?
Martin: Yeah, so the point of the text is that it’s both — things aren’t as negative as he’s saying, and you are also accentuating certain traits. It really should translate to “gleaming-eyed” or “keen-eyed.” I think all of these, Charles, are things where the first part of the phrase is a negative in every case — so I wouldn’t think this one is an exception stuck in the middle.
Cassius: He’s talking about — what about the two-handed virago with her full bust? Well, I think he’s saying maybe he feels like you could have a very large frame for his taste. But we can’t put our current commercial influences on body preferences — maybe we don’t know what was popular back then. That’s why we have to say these are his preferences.
Martin: Oh, yeah, yeah, definitely.
Cassius: I do think it’s hard to argue with the one that lists the spiteful gossip as a burning torch. That was hard to defend.
Elaine: The spiteful gossip — oh no, oh no, no. Cassius — if you don’t have anything nice to say about anybody, come sit by me.
Cassius: It just depends. I don’t know if there’s much more about that paragraph that would be useful to say without getting us in trouble. But I wonder if he’s caricaturing — he’s not necessarily — I mean I really do see this. You can sort of take it really seriously and say these are his prejudices, and that’s no doubt true. But it’s really more of a caricature. And it’s definitely written for men — there’s no equivalent description of male features for female readers.
Charles: So it’d be so funny to read today though.
Cassius: Yeah, but the next paragraph sort of applies back and forth between the sexes. The next paragraph about the smelling and so forth is pretty well across the board. And you know, bad body smell was much more of a problem back then. Although — wouldn’t they have had the Roman bath? But maybe the bath was something for the men and not for the women.
Martin: I’m not sure. But sure, if this was around the time of Caesar, that huge aqueduct wouldn’t have been built yet. But the Roman bath architecture goes back pretty far. And actually, bad smell is really more associated with men than with women. My wife complained often about that, whereas I had never —
Cassius: Okay, yeah. Okay. Well, the one sentence that sticks out as being maybe slightly different to me is the one about “surely there are others too, surely we have lived without her before” — the “plenty of fish in the sea” argument. That’s a slightly different argument than just picturing the imperfections.
Martin: Yeah, “there are others as lovely as she, and time was when you lived without her.” That’s a slightly different argument. And I think this argument is also not really valid, because I remember before — I felt lonely. And of course, then you finally find someone and you’re happy. And then you feel lonely no more.
Cassius: That isn’t really addressed, is it, Martin — the issue of whether you have one true soul mate or whether there are many people that you could be happy with? Because this excerpt seems to address that directly. The issue of whether there are multiple people we could be married to or in love with bothers a lot of people. There are some who think there’s one soul mate and if you miss that soul mate, you’re out of luck for the rest of your life.
Martin: No, I don’t mean that — I just fell in love very often with women but I never got that much feedback. So the first one where I really got good feedback —
Cassius: Yeah, there are probably fewer relationships that would be mutual, versus the potential ones. Any one person has many potential connections but fewer mutual ones.
Martin: Yes, that’s right.
Cassius: And also, I don’t think he’s saying that everyone is interchangeable, because that wouldn’t go along with materiality — there are differences and we respond to people based on their specifics. So I don’t think he’s saying you lost your wife, just go get anybody. You couldn’t replace an individual person. But you still have many options — it’s not like you’ve got this one other half of you and you’ve got to find that one person out of all the billions of people in the world or all is lost.
Charles: A lot of the soul mate stuff comes from a religious perspective, wouldn’t you say — that God made this person for you?
Cassius: Oh, I thought it preceded that. I thought this was Plato — the soul mate material. I think it started with Plato — this idealism of matches. The whole issue of predestination and whether everything has been set in motion by the prime mover would be related to Plato and Aristotle. And there’s Plato’s Symposium story of the gods creating humans with two sets of everything — four hands, four feet — and then they were a threat to the gods, and so they were divided in two, and you’d have to go around trying to find your other part. That’s very similar to what people think about soul mates today.
Elaine: The Hindu concept is not so much about soul mates but that you are designed to meet a certain person. And this one definitely predates Plato.
Cassius: And Elaine, you haven’t really said too much about this other than pointing out — correctly, I think — that he’s not saying people are interchangeable. But I think for people listening to the podcast, it probably is a common issue: how much emphasis do we put on pursuing one particular person to the exclusion of others? Even outside the religious context, an Epicurean isn’t going to be concerned that God created a perfect person for you — but just in general terms, whether there are soul mates and so forth, what do you think Epicurus or Lucretius would say about that?
Elaine: Well, I think there’s no material basis for such a thing being possible. But in reality, we are compatible with some people and not with others, and with some we kind of instantly hit it off and make a connection. I’m sure probably all of us here have had an experience of meeting somebody for the first time and just feeling like, man, I feel like I’ve known this person forever — we can have conversations and we hit it off in surprising ways. And you know, maybe some of those people are still your friends — a friend you met in high school and you’re still friends with because you just hit it off right away. I don’t think they would argue against that, because that’s a clearly observable real-life phenomenon, which is different from an idea of someone who was created to be with you.
Cassius: You know, that strikes me — he’s really not talking about friendship here in these passages much at all. He’s treating this subject separately, as if the issue of whether you’re friends with your lover is very separate from just the physical relationship part of it.
Elaine: And that’s partly my bias, because I used to get infatuated with people when I was a teenager, but as an adult I just don’t really do that anymore. So maybe I’ve already taken the actions he’s describing. I try to actually pay attention to the real person in front of me, and I am much more interested in whether I can be a friend, because — once you’ve been married for 33 years, whether or not the person can be a friend to you is one of the most important parts of the relationship. So in dating I tend to focus on that as a priority. And he doesn’t talk about that. That may just be more modern.
Cassius: And another aspect: there’s that recorded passage of Epicurus’s advice to a young man about not getting too carried away — it’s almost as if this material here is an extension and much more elaboration of what Epicurus would have been talking about. Because right here — “when she perfumes rank as she is with filthy smells, that her maids cannot come near her but make a jest of her” — that’s almost like juvenile humor. It’s almost like he’s talking to a young guy who finds the humor in thinking about things like that and giggles about it.
Elaine: Yes. And he’s focusing on the physical, as if there’s such a thing as perfections and imperfections physically — which I don’t think is true. How can there be? There’s no absolute standard. But the important things in a relationship he never talks about: are they honest, are they reliable, trustworthy, kind? Whether they have a flat nose or not is to me one of the least critical aspects of whether a relationship is going to be a source of pleasure as you go on. And yet he’s focusing on all these characteristics as if they’re the main things. Is that a male perspective?
Cassius: I believe it may be. What do you think, Charles?
Charles: It could be from back then or even now from people who still have a more traditional viewpoint. When I read this passage about the young man who’s all in tears outside the gates of the house, warming the doors with kisses and bringing flowers and then gets struck by one blast from her armpits — I’m thinking that a lot of this is targeted towards a young male, because that’s the classic example of people who get carried away. I know women do that too, but — is it totally wrong to say that young men can get caught up in this kind of idealization with greater frequency than young women? Or is it about the same? Elaine, you tell me.
Elaine: I don’t know. I am so atypical, I think, at least in what’s presented in pop culture. I do find that it is difficult — I would like it if people would get their infatuation tendencies under control, because I don’t like dating people who do that. It’s really unpleasant to be the subject or target of idealization. Because you know what’s going to happen next — eventually that wears off, and then they’re like “who the hell are you?” Or worse, if they keep up that idealization, when things don’t line up it becomes a bitter rejection. Yeah, I think that’s the source of a lot of what people call love bombing — it’s not necessarily a planned thing on the part of the love bomber. It’s just infatuation, and then it wears off, and they’re like “who are you? Go away.” That is a red flag for me.
Cassius: Cassius, you talked about how maybe Ellie and I should do a dating thing. Yeah — here is my piece of advice, to kind of complement what Lucretius is saying: watch out for people who idealize you early on. I just don’t think it’s a good sign. To me it’s not reliable. You have no idea what that person is going to think about you further on if they do that.
Elaine: And that kind of goes along with what he says here: “if your mistress be of an open temper and not sullen and reserved, she will not so much hide her defects, but hope you will allow for imperfections that are common to the whole sex.” And I’d like to rephrase that as: there’s no such thing as imperfection or perfection anyway. There are just features that are variable, that you’ll like and dislike, and no one person is going to have all the features you prefer.
Cassius: Yeah, that sentence begins to kind of moderate this viewpoint, and the next paragraph becomes even more accommodating. Am I the only person who’s never heard of the term “love bombing”?
Martin: I haven’t heard of it, for real.
Elaine: That may be more common with women — it’s often used to describe people who have a narcissistic pattern in relationships, where they will lure you in with over-the-top romantic gestures early on, just honed in on you, send you flowers all the time, put you up on a pedestal. And then once they’ve got you, they devalue you because you’re no longer a challenge. It’s a kind of crushing experience for the person who’s the target of it. But I don’t think it’s strictly something narcissists do — I think it’s because of infatuation a lot of times, and then the infatuation wears off.
Cassius: Like I said, a column or show by Ellie and Elaine would be so informative and so popular.
Charles: I don’t know if I should say this, but my girlfriend’s a bit on the infatuation side, and before we were together she ran into that issue where she just sort of gave up and reached a depressive, cynical viewpoint that nothing would hold up to or seem to resemble that ideal. But even before we were together, we were good friends for a while, and we would talk about different viewpoints of love and romance. I talked about Lucretius and the Epicurean perspective quite a bit. It’s a little ironic now, but it’s totally applicable — if you apply some ideal standard, you’re going to face the hard truth eventually that people aren’t like that.
Elaine: Yeah, and I think you can learn not to do that. People aren’t doomed to approaching relationships that way. And they can use tricks like these — not holding people up to some commercial standard of beauty, but really thinking: I don’t know this person yet, let me get to know this person before I decide if we’re compatible. Wait a little bit. Find out about them. What are they like when they get angry? Are they honest? I would focus more on those things. That’s a much better alternative than Lucretius’s advice of “just take another woman.”
Cassius: Well, he’s giving lots of different advice — it’s not saying that’s the only thing to do.
Elaine: Yeah, and actually, Charles, I think it can help people who tend to get infatuated to date more than one person at a time, because that helps keep them from putting so much weight on one possibility. Give yourself time to get to know somebody, and maybe one of the relationships will become clear — okay, this person I really do like, I want a longer-term relationship with them — rather than jumping in and getting attached before you know what you’re doing.
Cassius: Charles, I detect in your voice it’s kind of easy to go too far in the other direction here. He’s talking about how you can avoid the hazards of love by having more than one romantic partner over time, but that doesn’t mean you should just wipe out the idea of having romantic love. Part of having multiple experiences would be to get better at your ability to implement that activity in life. He’s not saying totally run from all relationships — he’s saying just don’t idealize them, be realistic about them. And you know, the more I think about this, this is so deeply philosophical, because what is Platonism — what is all this virtue stuff — other than idealization of something that doesn’t really exist? Lucretius and Epicurus are telling people to be realistic about the nature of things and the way things really are, and not to over-idealize. He’s certainly not telling you to fall back into total nihilism and despair — he’s far from doing that — but the whole issue of idealization of the good in life: that’s what romantic love is, where people make that mistake as much as anywhere else. It’s a practical example of the error and the pain that comes from idealizing things that don’t exist.
Elaine: And I would say this brings up that idealization is not just strictly something we learn from Plato — it’s not just a philosophical deviation. It’s something that regular humans tend to do, which can cause them unhappiness. It may have persisted as an evolved feature of humans because it led to successful reproduction, but that does not mean it will lead to your overall pleasure. You have your own self-interest, which can be different from — as Dawkins put it — the selfish gene. So you have a chance to think about this: do you want to just say “that’s the way I was born to be, I was evolved to idealize people”? Or can you use your also-evolved ability to think, notice consequences, and say “this has not led to pleasure for me, and I have the option to do it differently”?
Cassius: Yeah. I was just going to say I don’t know where to move on from there. I’m just very impressed with the idea that this is probably the best way to communicate Epicurean philosophy to new people — to put up a show on Epicurean philosophy through romantic counseling with Elaine and Ellie, and our experts on Lucretius. I do see parallels that ordinary people who aren’t into philosophy would see — the connection between what’s important to be realistic and not idealistic. This is to some degree a thing that humans do — humans who have never heard of Plato. That could explain some of the difficulty convincing people not to idealize, because it is something humans do, and that makes it sticky. So we really need to focus on observations of the bad outcomes of doing that — how it’s really not in your interest as a pleasurable life to idealize anything. I think that’s going to be a big key to spreading the philosophy. Not just saying “Plato is wrong,” but every time you idealize something — what is the consequence? What does that do to you? How does it clash with actual reality and guide you to make choices that are not consistent with reality? And you know, romantic affairs are really right up there in intensity with issues like gods and life after death. People who get consumed in romance — you can ruin your life or really do well for yourself in this department. This is more intense for people in many cases than worrying about life after death or gods or anything like that. This is not a low-level issue.
Charles: Oh, I think you’re absolutely right. Yeah, that’s a good point. This last section reminds me of When Harry Met Sally — “nor does the woman always breathe with feigned desire.”
Cassius: Oh yeah. Let’s look at Munro — “nor does the woman sigh always with feigned passion when she locks in her embrace and joins with her body.” And Bailey is basically the same.
Elaine: It just reminds me of the fake orgasm. I was going to say — is there any particular part of When Harry Met Sally that you’re talking about? Or when they’re sitting in the restaurant and she’s having the orgasm, showing him that women can fake it. Of course. You know, it’s easier for women to get away with that.
Cassius: Charles, has that scene passed the common understanding of people in their twenties and thirties? Do you know what she’s talking about?
Martin: They’re in the diner. Right? Yeah, okay. I know. It’s a pretty persistent cultural meme now.
Cassius: And so he says she doesn’t always breathe with feigned desire, so he is aware that sometimes she does. That’s apparently not a new thing — that’s something that has been around. But the limit of the cultural meme may be that it may not have hit Germany or Thailand, Martin — do you know?
Elaine: Martin, his wife is yelling at him.
Martin: I was talking into the YouTube microphone. Okay, no, I think I know what you mean — it was a movie scene. I forgot the name — the actress — isn’t it Meg Ryan? Yeah, yeah, exactly. This one also became viral in Germany, yeah. That was a long time ago actually. It’s pretty timeless.
Elaine: I saw a French commercial, I guess made after that, where a woman was testing an apartment to rent — what response would she get when she made the same noise? Then there was some neighbor knocking. So she didn’t take that apartment.
Cassius: Oh, that’s great. So she doesn’t always have a fake orgasm, but sometimes it’s real — she’s not just lying back thinking of England and making fake noises. We could just pass over the issue of the dogs in the street and then get to the last sentence here. And so they would not do that if they weren’t engaged in mutual joys which cheat them with delight and hold them fast. The pleasure then is common to them both. It helps to think of their passion like a wild animal — it’s not a cultural made-up thing, it’s biological and it’s based in pleasure. The species wouldn’t have made it without that pleasure incentive. And he’s not saying don’t engage in it — he’s saying there are ways to engage in it that aren’t so damaging.
Elaine: Well, it’s interesting to me that by saying that sometimes women are enjoying sex, it’s almost like there was some confusion on that point. He never says “oh guess what, men enjoy sex” because that’s obvious. But he has to actually lay out a case for women enjoying sex — by referring to dogs in the street. Like we can tell they enjoy it because dogs in the street enjoy it.
Cassius: Oh my goodness. Yeah, that is kind of fascinating that he needs to do that. I wonder — I hope it’s clear to men today that women also enjoy sex.
Martin: Yeah, I mean it becomes a duty otherwise — so then the man knows the woman wants it. But also, I think “nor does the woman always breathe with feigned desire” is maybe just a counterpoint, because in the paragraph before it’s shown that women play tricks not to trap the man, and now he says they really can feel love. So to me it refers more to the cheating before — it means that they do not always cheat.
Cassius: Yeah, but he doesn’t apply that line of reasoning to men. He doesn’t talk about men fooling women. He is pretty one-sided — he has to establish “the pleasure then is common to them both” as if it requires evidence.
Elaine: And then today, because women are able to choose, there can be some element of deceptiveness in men attracting a partner — saying things about their work or their age. On the dating apps, men will lie about their age sometimes. There’s content behavior in courtship where the man tries to give a good impression, but then once they are married, so to say, then he sometimes decommits from what he said.
Martin: Oh yeah, I see what you’re saying. And even for the man, this courting behavior — he means it honestly; it’s not that he’s cheating. He really believes it. His love is so strong that he will do that. But then in reality, how it works out is that it’s no more as strongly motivated as he was before.
Elaine: Oh yeah, and that goes along with infatuation. That’s why I would advise both sides to give it enough time for that part to wear off. If they’re going to stop doing those things for you or for the relationship, you probably want to find out before you’re financially entangled, at least.
Charles: Yeah, I was going to mention how this predated a lot of notions of chivalry and male courtship, but then I remembered the story of the Odyssey and all of Penelope’s suitors — and how none of that was mentioned here.
Cassius: Well, maybe there wasn’t time to mention everything he would have wanted to mention. And that would apply to us today, because we are probably about to run long and need to think about concluding the episode. Is there some more of this next time? You know, it’s amazing how next time turns to something again in your department, Elaine — because he talks about how you can choose the sex of your child by who is on top, or something like that, if I recall correctly. Right, Charles?
Charles: Oh yeah. Okay, it’s very — I hope I haven’t misstated the topic. But he continues on, and we may have two more episodes on love and sex before the end of Book 4. But for today, closing thoughts from Martin?
Martin: Okay, I have no closing thoughts.
Cassius: Okay, Charles.
Charles: There is this video I saw quite a few months back about Lucretius, and this is going to require a lot of background information, so it’s going to be better for a forum post. But between the character passage here and what’s known today culturally as simping — there’s more to this section that we can talk about later.
Cassius: We can’t leave it quite there, Charles, because we probably ought to briefly define what simping means.
Charles: Oh god, that’s why I didn’t want to — that’s why I wanted to leave it for the forums.
Cassius: Elaine, do you know what that term means?
Elaine: No.
Cassius: Okay. It’s more along the idealization discussion — I’ve seen the word used on Twitter, but I don’t know exactly what it means.
Charles: Okay, when I make the thread I’ll link it into the discussion.
Cassius: Yeah, as a general rule it would be great for anybody who has comments and extensions of what we’re talking about to post on the forum in the thread for this episode or any episode. Elaine?
Elaine: Well, I would just say I think these are seriously important things to think about for almost every human. Most of us care about sex and relationships to some degree, and there’s a lot of potential for misery, but also potential for pleasure, if you think about what you’re doing.
Cassius: Yeah, to follow up on that — I’ve tended to think about this section over the years as being something that’s kind of amusing and practical but maybe less significant in the philosophy to worry about compared to some of the more purely philosophical material. But the more I think about it, I do see that — as Elaine has just said — this is an area of life where people experience intense emotions, and it is extremely important to them. It’s almost as important as an issue like life or death and whether a god is telling you how to live, and in fact for people who are caught up in it, it’s far more important than whether they’re going to live or die tomorrow or whether there’s a god in heaven. People caught up in romantic love are consumed by this topic. And so that’s probably a very good illustration of how important it is to avoid idealism, to avoid an inaccurate view of the world, because the danger and the pain that can arise if you approach this subject with the wrong premises is incredible. So it’s worth the attention that he gives it here and maybe is worth a lot more of our attention in working with Epicurean philosophy today. Okay, any final thoughts from anybody? Otherwise we’ll begin to close.
Cassius: Okay, well we’ll have another interesting episode next week, and hopefully we can get some commentary from people who post on the internet when they hear the podcast. So thanks everybody — we’ll come back in another week.