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Nadpis na youtube What Women Really Want-Orion Taraban, Psy.D.
Url https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ZUk_6pLqek
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Súhrn This text explores complex dynamics—from navigating communication and shifting gender roles to attraction, societal pressures, and even a potential future with AI impacting romantic relationships. It highlights personal growth and healing through therapy.
Bloky súhrnu
  • 00:00:00 - 00:05:00: The discussion explores the challenges of conveying insights to others, emphasizing the need for time and space for individuals to arrive at conclusions themselves. It also touches on societal shifts in gender dynamics and masculinity.
  • 00:05:00 - 00:10:00: This text explores a surprising strategy employed by women in a survival game: they allied with lower-status men to eliminate higher-status men, demonstrating a power play driven by competition and a desire for ascendancy. Ground News is also recommended to stay informed.
  • 00:10:00 - 00:15:00: The speaker suggests a strategy among women to redefine masculinity, deeming traditional traits undesirable to foster competition and diminish powerful men. This involves reshaping societal norms and influencing how boys are raised.
  • 00:15:00 - 00:20:00: This discussion explores the dynamics of attraction, suggesting that female desire stems from initial attraction rather than solely from kindness or loyalty. It also touches on a subculture advising men on attractiveness and perspectives from women transitioning to men, highlighting the biological and psychological differences in how men and women experience attraction.
  • 00:20:00 - 00:25:00: The speakers discuss potential biological and societal reasons for changing relationship dynamics, particularly focusing on men's efforts to understand women contrasted with a perceived lack of effort from women. They also touch on hormonal influences and historical shifts in power within romantic pursuits.
  • 00:25:00 - 00:30:00: The speaker observes a common shift in relationships where women often gain the dominant role, frequently dictating the relationship's direction. This power dynamic, coupled with a desire to conform to other women's preferences, influences female behavior and choices.
  • 00:30:00 - 00:35:00: The text explores how women's desires are influenced by observing other women, particularly through social media. It suggests women often feel pressured to emulate what they see, leading to anxiety and unhappiness as achieving "everything" is unrealistic for most.
  • 00:35:00 - 00:40:00: The speaker suggests social media pressures and the "fear of missing out" (FOMO) are causing women to delay life milestones like marriage and children, prioritizing experiences and opportunities first, potentially leading to later regrets.
  • 00:40:00 - 00:45:00: The speaker discusses the difficulty men face early on and the broader human tendency to prioritize personal dreams over relationships, even when faced with challenges like infertility. Nietzsche's philosophy highlights the discomfort of confronting harsh truths and the necessity of illusion for survival.
  • 00:45:00 - 00:50:00: The speaker reflects on relationships, suggesting excessive discussion can be unproductive. They discuss attraction, exploring biological and psychological factors like recreating past traumas and seeking resolution through partners, while also acknowledging the challenges of finding effective therapy.
  • 00:50:00 - 00:55:00: Therapy can help people consciously examine their life narratives and beliefs, ultimately allowing them to reshape personal stories and find empowering ways to connect past experiences to a hopeful future.
  • 00:55:00 - 01:00:00: The speaker argues that trauma isn't inherent in an event but arises from a "freeze" response – an internal shutdown preventing emotional growth. Releasing this freeze, and feeling the suppressed emotion, is essential for healing.
  • 01:00:00 - 01:05:00: Orion predicts a future where technology, particularly AI and robotics, could significantly decrease romantic relationships between men and women, resembling a dystopian vision similar to Aldous Huxley's *Brave New World*, characterized by state-controlled reproduction and pleasure. He also announced the release of a second Soft White Underbelly portrait book.
Prepis 00:00:01 - 00:00:14 01: I mean, how big an issue is people not understanding the things you say or being opposed to it? Because they're not as romantic maybe as people would like. Well, I don't mind if people
00:00:13 - 00:00:20 00: I don't mind if people are opposed to what I have to say, that's okay. Like sometimes it takes a while for people to realize that you're right.
00:00:15 - 00:00:15 01: Thank you.
00:00:20 - 00:00:22 01: Yeah, that's true. That's a good attitude.
00:00:23 - 00:00:27 01: Are we rolling? I am rolling. I can start out whenever you like.
00:00:24 - 00:00:26 00: I am rolling. I can see.
00:00:27 - 00:00:54 00: I mean, that's actually something that I've discovered as a therapist. Like, it's happened many times in conversation with a patient where I would give an insightful intervention, and it would just sort of get brushed off or shrugged off. But it's almost like it planted a seed. And then two or three months later, the person comes back to me and says, you know what? I was in the shower the other day, and I was thinking. And they say exactly the fucking thing that I said three months ago.
00:00:55 - 00:01:16 00: It's like it needed to come from them. They needed to have time to chew on it, to forget about it, to remember it, to have themselves be the source and origin of that insight. That's the only way that it really works. Yeah, when they think of it themselves. And it doesn't matter if it feels like it comes from me or if it comes from them. I don't need the credit.
00:01:16 - 00:01:40 00: But I do think that you need to give people time to realize that you're right sometimes because it can be somewhat embarrassing in the moment to acknowledge that another person might have a perspective that is closer to the truth or to reality than you or has a point. Like that is on some level difficult to save face for the individual.
00:01:40 - 00:01:54 00: And so when you work with people, you gotta always give them a chance to save face. It's really important to give people outs so that it doesn't escalate into conflict and resistance, which is at odds with what you wanna do anyway.
00:01:10 - 00:01:10 01: Yeah.
00:01:54 - 00:02:02 01: So many people like to spew these truths and tell you how it is and all that kind of stuff, and it just makes a lot of us back off.
00:02:02 - 00:02:05 00: Well, it can be too much for sure. Yeah. It's like drinking from a fire hose.
00:02:06 - 00:02:06 01: Yeah.
00:02:08 - 00:02:12 01: We were just talking about the feminization of men.
00:02:11 - 00:02:12 00:
00:02:13 - 00:02:23 01: What do you think of what's going on in our society? Women are much more empowered now and they're making more money, especially women under 30 are making more than men, I think.
00:02:24 - 00:02:33 00: Under 30, childless in urban context, yeah. It's not a statistically significant difference, but it's like 1% or 2% in New York and London, a couple of different places.
00:02:34 - 00:02:36 01: but I've also seen more
00:02:37 - 00:02:44 01: It seems like more and more women are unhappy and dealing with mental issues and anxiety and things like that.
00:02:45 - 00:03:01 00: Yeah, I have a couple of episodes that are coming out that touch on both of those things. There's kind of two issues. Why are women seemingly more unhappy given the fact that they have more advantages and power than they ever had historically?
00:03:01 - 00:03:25 00: And why are there so many like feminized beta males all over and even in positions of power and authority? Because that's sort of like a contradiction in terms. So if the alpha is supposed to be at the top of the status hierarchy, like by definition, why are so many leaders and politicians and celebrities and billionaires like still...
00:03:25 - 00:03:51 00: Why are they still so feminized? Where are the strong masculine alphas at the top of status hierarchies? And you don't even see that very often these days. There's definitely a swing back towards traditional masculinity as a positive because it's been seen as a negative for at least the last 10 or 15 years. That's right. In the last election cycle, but we'll see how that pans out. I have a few theories about it.
00:03:54 - 00:03:54 01: Thank you.
00:03:59 - 00:04:17 00: The theory about what's going on with men, the best analogy that I could come up with is from the TV show Survivor. Have you seen Survivor? I've never seen it. I've never really seen it either. I've seen just a couple episodes. I'm not a super fan, but you're familiar with The Prentice, right? Yes, yes I am. And it's almost at 50 seasons now.
00:04:08 - 00:04:09 01: I've never seen it.
00:04:13 - 00:04:14 01: Yes, right? Yes.
00:04:18 - 00:04:38 00: And in one of those 50 seasons, they decided to do a men versus women contest. So they put two teams of men over here and women over here, dropped them into some sort of difficult tropical environment, give them a bunch of challenges and see who was gonna survive. And the only people left at the end were women, which was...
00:04:39 - 00:05:09 00: I was surprised to hear that outcome, especially if you watch the first several weeks, the men were dominating every single competition. Like the women weren't even close. They lost every single time, no matter if it was a skill thing or a strategy thing, like they just could not beat the men. And how did they go from that situation to being the only ones left in winning the game? It was really interesting. Do you have any idea how they did that?
00:05:09 - 00:05:09 01: Hmm.
00:05:10 - 00:05:11 01: I don't.
00:05:11 - 00:05:12 00: So,
00:05:14 - 00:05:24 01: Soft White Underbelly is about giving people a space to tell their stories, even when these stories challenge what we think we know. Brown News shows us different perspectives in the media, which is why Ground News is a perfect sponsor for my channel.
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00:06:39 - 00:07:03 00: Basically, what the women realized is on some level that their days were numbered, that they couldn't beat the men. But they also understood that the victories on the other camp weren't evenly distributed. Like there were a few men, the alphas we could call them, at the top of the status hierarchy in the men's camp who were responsible for the disproportionate majority of their successes.
00:07:04 - 00:07:24 00: And so they came up with a plan. Basically, what the women did is they kind of cornered the lower status men in the men's camp and said basically, look, you got us. We're screwed. We're not going to beat us. We're not going to beat you.
00:07:25 - 00:07:33 00: Our days are numbered. We're going to get out of here soon. But just think about it, my guys. As soon as we're gone, who do you think is going to be next?
00:07:35 - 00:07:36 00: Like you can't beat the alpha dudes.
00:07:37 - 00:07:40 00: We can't beat them either, but you sure as fuck can't.
00:07:41 - 00:07:41 00: So,
00:07:42 - 00:07:44 00: Why don't we team up
00:07:45 - 00:07:51 00: against the high status, competent, accomplished men that neither one of us could beat individually.
00:07:53 - 00:08:19 00: They also threw in a few emotional enticements. I think that they damseled a little bit. The infrastructure of the men's camp was sound. They had shelters, they had fire, they were eating game. The women were basically cold and wet, huddling under rocks. Nothing was working in the men's camp. And so the men, seeing the women suffer, began to sneak them food, began to sneak them fire, even though they were in competition with them.
00:08:19 - 00:08:35 00: I think the women also suggested the possibility of a relationship with these lower status men if the higher status men were voted out. It's like, you know, there's going to be room in that camp after those guys leave. Wouldn't it be nicer to have some female presence there instead of some sweaty old dudes?
00:08:27 - 00:08:27 01: you know?
00:08:36 - 00:08:42 00: So through manipulating pity and desire and by playing on their fear,
00:08:44 - 00:08:51 00: their insecurity relative to the higher status men, the women and the lower status men formed a kind of a block.
00:08:52 - 00:08:54 00: And at first it was operating in secret,
00:08:56 - 00:09:01 00: and they began to sabotage the higher status men and got them voted out of the game.
00:09:03 - 00:09:22 00: And then as soon as those alpha guys were gone, then the women just broke with the lower status men and voted every single one of them out of the game. Like those lower status men, they were only useful as a kind of majority with the women in order to get rid of the highest status men.
00:09:22 - 00:09:47 00: Because remember, those lower status men weren't responsible for the vast majority of the men's successes. Like women can absolutely out-compete beta dudes and lower status men, but it's very hard to out-compete the alphas. Even other men can't do that. Like those guys are kind of unstoppable, which is what makes them scary, which is what makes them threatening, which is what makes them intimidating.
00:09:47 - 00:09:58 00: So I do think that the reason why we're kind of in this stage is I don't think this is the end goal. I think it's a step in the process. And it's a stage in the process towards...
00:09:59 - 00:10:27 00: women getting more power and ascendancy. I think this is a power play. And I think that women are in competition with men. And a lot of the competitions, especially for specific goods, are zero sum. Like for more women to be CEOs, there have to be fewer male CEOs. For the woman to be president, we can't have a man in that position, et cetera, et cetera. So I do think that
00:10:28 - 00:10:58 00: The women are kind of banding together with a block of men to be more aligned with their ideology and their interests and to kind of move against any kind of trait associated with traditional strong masculinity as morally reprehensible. That's the weapon that's been used for the last, I don't know, 15 years, 20 years or so, last generation, is that all of those principles of traditional masculinity, the stoicism, the strength,
00:10:58 - 00:11:20 00: the confidence, the power are toxic, at least when they come from men. As we were just discussing out there, those things aren't toxic when a woman manifests them, but they're scary and intimidating when a man manifests them. So the idea is to get rid of that so it's easier for women to compete.
00:11:21 - 00:11:30 00: It's gonna be very difficult for anyone to beat these really competent, powerful, high status men. So we gotta get rid of them.
00:11:31 - 00:11:55 00: And we get rid of them slowly over generations. How do we do that? Well, there's the falling apart of the nuclear family. More people are being raised by single mothers. There's a variety of reasons for that. Like 90% of kindergarten teachers are female. A sizable majority of elementary school teachers are women. It's like it's... And they're...
00:11:55 - 00:12:05 00: children, boys and girls are being instructed in what masculinity is by women for the initial part of their conscious lives.
00:12:07 - 00:12:12 00: Now there might not be anything inherently wrong with that, but if you ask a woman,
00:12:12 - 00:12:28 00: Whether she believes that the traditional definition of femininity, which historically was created by men and imposed upon women, was absolutely in women's best interests, I don't think that they would agree with that.
00:12:28 - 00:12:46 00: So I don't think that we can say that when women create definitions for manhood and masculinity, that it's absolutely in the boys' or the men's best interests. Like there might be some kind of gendered bias in the expression of the opposite archetype.
00:12:47 - 00:12:57 00: Right? On some level, maybe elements of traditional femininity that men created with respect to docility made them easier to kind of...
00:12:59 - 00:13:17 00: manipulate or make them easier to keep down, potentially, that's definitely a historical interpretation. And maybe there are elements in today's modern definitions of masculinity that women are creating that serve a similar purpose. Maybe not exactly the same, but a similar purpose.
00:13:17 - 00:13:17 01: Mm-hmm.
00:13:18 - 00:13:31 00: Like women are in competition with men. They no longer want the things that women have historically wanted. They want money. They want power. They want careers. They want status. They want fame. And why are they so unhappy?
00:13:33 - 00:13:52 00: That's an excellent question. That leads me to the second one, which has to do with what women want. So this is the age-old question. What do women want, Mark? Even Freud said that this was a mystery, an enigma that he had no answer to. I'm going to be hubristic and propose one. Do you have any idea? Yeah, I do.
00:13:42 - 00:13:42 01: Mmhmm.
00:13:51 - 00:14:13 01: I mean, yeah, I do. I think if you ask women what they want, they'll say they want, like in a man, they'll say they want somebody who's kind and compassionate and funny and supportive and nice to kittens and puppies. But they want those qualities in a guy who is dominant and a good leader and has a strong frame.
00:14:14 - 00:14:25 00: I talk about that in my episode, the part that women leave out. So that's not exactly what I'm getting at here, but let's take a little sidebar. Yeah, absolutely. I remember when I was in my 20s.
00:14:24 - 00:14:54 01: And before you start, a female's ability to manipulate and coerce or whatever, and those are negative words, but I don't mean them negatively. But a woman's ability to kind of get a guy to do what she wants is just the female equivalent of a guy who's dominant and maybe use the threat of violence or intimidation to get what he wants. So there are ugly qualities that are at the extremes of the male and female thing, but not all females and all males do that. Oh, absolutely.
00:14:26 - 00:14:26 00: Thank you.
00:14:53 - 00:15:14 00: Oh, absolutely. The ability to get other people to work towards your goals is power. And if I can serve, achieve my goals indirectly through other people, that's an even safer form of power. Because what if things go sideways? It's not going to be my head on the chopping block. So the ability to get your needs met through men is...
00:15:16 - 00:15:40 00: It's a secret form of feminine power that has existed for millennia. It's the Lady Macbeth archetype, is that behind many powerful men through history is a wife or a mistress who said, you could be greater than you are, sweetheart. Do me proud. And kind of through the traditional overt channels of power,
00:15:42 - 00:15:52 00: in the shadows, which is actually safer and more powerful, enacted their designs and desires. I think that there are pros and cons to being the
00:15:53 - 00:16:08 00: the agent of action. There are pros, there are cons, right? But to get back to your point about what women want in men, yeah, I remember in my 20s, I would ask a whole bunch of women, what are you looking for? Just tell me, because out of a good faith...
00:16:08 - 00:16:33 00: desire to just give a woman what she wanted. I thought that if I did that, it would increase my chances of getting into a fulfilling relationship with one. That's what I wanted. And I would get those, I like loyal men, I like kind men, I like to feel safe. And I was thinking, well, Jesus, I'm fucking those things. Like, why am I having such a problem? And I realized the part that women always leave out is they do want those qualities, but they want those qualities from men that they're already attracted to.
00:16:25 - 00:16:26 01: having such a problem.
00:16:34 - 00:16:50 00: It's like if they're not attracted to a man, him being kind and gentle and committed and loyal is not going to transform her indifference into desire. The attraction always has to come first.
00:16:50 - 00:17:10 00: And what's interesting is she can't possibly know if that attractive man is loyal or kind or gentle. So she has to interact with him and relate to him to figure out kind of those personality characteristics.
00:17:10 - 00:17:30 00: Factors go into determining female attraction. They don't have to do with what she says with her mouth, because on some level she's already decided I'm attracted to that guy. I sure hope that he's kind and loyal, et cetera. But the attraction comes first. And so that's why, and this is the part that women always leave out, which can kind of mislead men.
00:17:30 - 00:17:40 00: because it can make men think, well, I'll just be romantic, I'll be kind, I'll be patient, I'll help her. And they don't understand that these kinds of nice guy tendencies don't work to transform indifference into desire. They have to work on being attractive.
00:17:40 - 00:18:00 00: And there is a burgeoning subculture on the internet that is devoted to teaching men how to become more attractive. That information is now out there, and it's often disparaged, I think inappropriately, because it's like, why wouldn't we want to have more attractive men in the world? How is that bad for women?
00:18:00 - 00:18:00 00: Would have meant
00:18:00 - 00:18:10 01: Oh. See, our men's list is very short, I think.
00:18:10 - 00:18:20 01: We're not looking for so much kindness or compassion or intelligence or financial success or any of those things, really.
00:18:20 - 00:18:20 00: Some of us are. I was looking for all those things when I was younger. I've had to attenuate my list, especially when it comes to women.
00:18:20 - 00:18:30 01: I think most men are just looking for a sexy, attractive female.
00:18:30 - 00:18:50 00: That was certainly my highest criterion, if not my only criterion when I was younger. It's like the personality didn't matter. I mean, it's not very- That seems to drive a lot of men. Yeah. It's not nice to say, but it's true. And I'm glad that I don't feel that way anymore. It's like being possessed by a demon on some level. It is. Young men have it bad.
00:18:50 - 00:19:20 00: Another, if you're interested, great video series to watch, go on YouTube and search for F2M testosterone. And it's a series of interviews of women who are in the process of transitioning into becoming men, and they start taking testosterone for the first time. And they're sharing their experiences on T.
00:18:30 - 00:18:40 01: That seems to drive a lot of men.
00:18:50 - 00:18:50 01: on some level. It is. Young men have it bad.
00:19:20 - 00:19:20 00: And...
00:19:20 - 00:19:20 00: Almost universally, the response of these people are, oh my God.
00:19:20 - 00:19:40 00: I understand men now. I have so much more sympathy and compassion for them. It's like, I don't know what's wrong with me. I can't stop looking at asses. I can't stop looking at titties.
00:19:40 - 00:19:50 00: I don't know how to get rid of it, especially because these people are, they still have the biological substrate of a woman. Women don't have refractory periods like men do. Men think about sex, I think, a lot more than women do.
00:19:50 - 00:20:00 00: until they actually get to orgasm. And then for at least five minutes, 10 minutes, I don't know, an hour, they're like, oh, there's this blissful release from that.
00:20:00 - 00:20:10 00: hideous, unrelenting impulse.
00:20:10 - 00:20:20 00: Women don't have a refractory period. So these transitioning people, they're really horny. All they wanna do is fuck, but they get no relief from fucking.
00:20:20 - 00:20:20 00: They say it's like torture.
00:20:20 - 00:20:20 00: But why don't we start talking about this?
00:20:20 - 00:20:30 01: It's... You're asking about what... Oh, like...
00:20:30 - 00:20:40 00: Oh, like there's something in testosterone that I think just programs individuals to be very keyed towards sex, sexual opportunities, sexual characteristics in the desired sex, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
00:20:50 - 00:20:50 00: That could also be why there are fewer relationships. We know that global testosterone levels in men have dropped significantly over the last three decades. I don't know why.
00:21:00 - 00:21:00 00: Maybe there's something in the water, something in the air. Cell phones, plastic.
00:21:00 - 00:21:00 01: Thank you.
00:21:00 - 00:21:10 00: Who knows? It's gotta be something. It's probably a conflagration of things.
00:21:10 - 00:21:10 01: Yeah.
00:21:10 - 00:21:10 01: Fewer fathers around.
00:21:10 - 00:21:20 00: Yeah. I mean, I don't know. I don't think we can put our finger on any one factor and say this is what's responsible. But it's been a dramatic drop.
00:21:20 - 00:21:20 01: This is what's for sure.
00:21:20 - 00:21:50 01: It's interesting, and I'll probably ask this question again tomorrow when you're going to be sitting next to Sadia here. But to get her perspective would be interesting. But it seems like men have worked for decades to try to understand women. Millennia. They have studied. I mean, not decades, probably centuries, eons. But men have worked so hard to understand and be.
00:21:50 - 00:22:00 01: what women want. But women don't seem to have any ability to understand men. It's like they haven't even tried.
00:22:00 - 00:22:10 00: Hmm. I don't know if that's always been true. And I do think that there are some women who do care about... Oh, definitely there are some women who get it. And who do care about what men want. It's certainly as...
00:22:00 - 00:22:00 01: Oh, definitely, there are some women
00:22:10 - 00:22:20 01: I think they care about what men want, but they're just not putting in the effort. Whereas you see all the crazy lengths that men will go. Oh, sure. It's possible. From the, what do you call those groups of guys who are like trying to game girls? Like pickup artists? Pickup artists, yeah.
00:22:20 - 00:22:20 00: It's possible.
00:22:20 - 00:22:40 00: Oh yeah, those are applied psychologists. I mean, they make a art or a science out of how to increase attraction on the spot. So to improve their chances of having a sexual encounter.
00:22:40 - 00:22:50 01: Which is not the way to do anything productive in life, but it just shows you the extent that men will go to try to understand and get success.
00:22:50 - 00:23:10 00: I made an episode about that. It's called A PhD in Men. And it's like the lengths that men will go to attract and secure female attention are considerable. They'll spend thousands, tens of thousands of dollars. They'll spend years of their lives becoming something that a woman might be interested in. And it seems that some women are, maybe they'll take a weekend course at a community college on what men might want. And I think that's a stretch sometimes.
00:23:10 - 00:23:30 00: And I think that has to do with the power imbalance in the sexual marketplace right now. That wasn't always the case. I think that in most traditional literature, for example, you don't really see the trope of the man pursuing the woman. Like there's the Shakespeare play, All's Well That Ends Well, that I think...
00:23:40 - 00:24:00 00: embodies this idea which is there's this sort of like charming happy-go-lucky soldier he's a bachelor he's loving his life he's got his friends he goes out wenching but there's this one woman who just is like i want that guy and he blows her off and travels leaves the country to avoid her and she just keeps doggedly pursuing him
00:24:00 - 00:24:10 00: orchestrates some weird body swap on his wedding night with the woman that he thought that he was married it's like it's a comedy it's it's insane but the point is is that that was kind of how it is you've seen those old toppers on wedding cakes it's like the woman dragging the man to the altar like
00:24:10 - 00:24:40 00: That's kind of how it's been for a very long time. And for that to happen, the women had to use their wiles and figure out, well, what does it work to get man's or that particular man's attention? Because that's what I want. I want to lock down that guy. And that kind of worked because that man was kind of indifferent. He wasn't looking for it. He was soldiering. He was having fun with his buddies, et cetera, et cetera.
00:24:40 - 00:25:00 00: Nowadays, it's like the women are in the spotlight, the men are looking at them, the men are pursuing the women, and so it gives them an opportunity to become more indifferent, and the power imbalance has shifted considerably. It'll probably shift again, back and forth. These things are probably historical pendulum swings.
00:25:00 - 00:25:10 01: I found it interesting in one of your recent talks, you talked about how frame was so important in relationships. And initially, the man has the role of being the...
00:25:20 - 00:25:20 01: He pursues the woman and he's in charge.
00:25:20 - 00:25:30 01: initially, and then slowly but surely, that power dynamic flips around in the woman. You said in that talk, 99% of the relationships you see, the woman is in the power position. Yeah.
00:25:30 - 00:25:50 00: Yeah, it's not a hard and fast statistic. I'm just saying that I've seen personally and in my clinical practice thousands of marriages and relationships up close. And I do believe that in 99% of them, the woman is the more powerful person in that relationship. And it might not have started that way, but it became that way. I think part of that is that most guys don't really have relationship goals.
00:25:50 - 00:26:20 00: Like they probably never thought they were gonna get this far on some level. Their goal was maybe to get laid. But the woman had other designs. She's the one who says, okay, I have a timeline and after a certain amount of time, I wanna move in together. And then after a certain amount of time, I think you should propose to me. And then in another, have you thought about the wedding venue? Here are three that I researched. And she's like driving the relationship forward. And in most cases, the guy's like,
00:26:20 - 00:26:40 00: okay, I guess if that's what she wants, sure, I'm okay with that. Or she threatens to leave if she doesn't get what she wants, the marriage ultimatum. And then the guy out of scarcity mentality or fear or even love and attachment says, okay, you know, I'll give you what you want, even though it might not be a self-motivated desire on his part. And that over time,
00:26:40 - 00:26:50 00: the power shifts and she's the one on some level dictating the direction of the relationship and the operation of the relationship on a day-to-day level.
00:25:30 - 00:25:30 01: I'm just saying that like I've
00:26:50 - 00:27:00 00: It's to the point where the husbands are asking permission to leave the house.
00:27:00 - 00:27:10 00: which I think is just incredible. If the roles were reversed, we would think that that was incredibly oppressive of women. You can't tell me where I can go and what I can do, what I can wear, who I can relate to.
00:27:10 - 00:27:20 00: Who do you think you are?
00:27:20 - 00:27:20 00: They'd have a lot of righteous indignation about that.
00:27:20 - 00:27:30 00: But let's get back to, I guess, why women are so unhappy, according to the research, given the fact that they have all this power and status and opportunity and privilege these days.
00:27:30 - 00:27:40 00: So, what do women want? I've thought about it a lot, and I think the answer to the question is, women want what other women want.
00:27:40 - 00:27:50 00: That's the answer to the question. Women want what other women want. That's not very satisfying on the surface, but let's kind of get into it.
00:27:50 - 00:27:50 00:
00:27:50 - 00:28:00 00: Think about, how do I give this as an example?
00:27:50 - 00:27:50 01: Mm-hmm.
00:28:00 - 00:28:10 00: Female fashion is changing all the time. Like every six months, there's a new fad, right? Men's fashion more or less kind of stays the same over time.
00:28:10 - 00:28:20 00: But women's fashion is always changing. And yet, given the fact that it's always changing, in any given time and place, the vast majority of women are dressing alike.
00:28:20 - 00:28:30 00: Isn't that kind of strange? Especially given how quickly female fashion seems to switch?
00:28:30 - 00:28:50 00: I think that's because women are looking very closely at other women to give them signals as to where it's safest for them to be. So let's think about this for a while. So if we were to graph all kinds of things, like maybe intelligence or kindness or
00:28:50 - 00:28:50 00: Uh...
00:28:50 - 00:29:10 00: all sorts of personality traits, and we were to separate the graphs of men and women, the vast majority of the graphs are gonna overlap. Like, men and women have more differences than dissimilarities. But regardless of what the graphs are graphing,
00:29:10 - 00:29:40 00: There appears to be a consistent shape difference between men's graphs and women's graphs. Women's graphs tend to have what's called more kurtosis, which means they're kind of peakier. That means that more women are congregated around the mean. Men's graphs are a little shaped more like this, which means that there's actually more men on this side and on this side.
00:29:40 - 00:29:40 00: You put two and two together, it means that relative to men, more women are average.
00:29:40 - 00:29:50 00: And relative to women, more men are either abject failures or rampant successes.
00:29:50 - 00:30:10 00: So the fat part of the curve is the safest place to be. And there might be some evolutionary reasons for that. I think that on some level, women have kind of a flocking instinct. And the safest, it's like fish in a shoal.
00:30:10 - 00:30:30 00: they're going to be watching very carefully about where the movement of the shoal is going. Because if they guess wrong, they might find themselves a little fish on the outside, and that exposes them to all kinds of potential danger and risk. The safest place to be is in the middle of the shoal, right? And I think that women are constantly observing other women.
00:30:30 - 00:30:50 00: for signs and signals as to where that fattest part of the curve is. Where's the thickest center of the shoal, as it were. And that shoal is always changing and moving, just like the female fashion. But women are scanning very carefully because it's actually related to emotional, if not physical, survival.
00:30:50 - 00:30:50 00: So,
00:30:50 - 00:31:10 00: Let's think about that. So if women want what other women want, we therefore have to answer that question more specifically by examining what women are doing in a given time and in place, because that will reflect what their desires are. So 70 years ago,
00:31:10 - 00:31:20 00: we can answer the question, well, what did women want? Well, what were women doing? Well, when a woman looked at her sisters and her mothers and her girlfriends and her grandparents and her aunts, what were they doing?
00:31:20 - 00:31:30 00: They were getting married and having children. They were housewives. I mean, you go back to the yearbooks in the 1950s, and the most common career path that these senior girls wanted was to get married and to be a housewife.
00:31:40 - 00:31:40 00: So we could also argue, well, there weren't a lot of,
00:31:40 - 00:31:40 00: paths open to women at that time. It's like, okay, fair enough.
00:31:40 - 00:31:50 00: But we also have to say, well,
00:31:50 - 00:32:00 00: Is it true that women are just like biologically predisposed to thrive in domestic environments?
00:32:00 - 00:32:00 00: Is there a biological argument here or
00:32:00 - 00:32:00 00: Did women do that all the time because other women were doing it all the time, et cetera, whatever.
00:32:00 - 00:32:30 00: Okay, so what do women want today in 2025? Well, to answer that question, we have to look at what are women doing in 2025? And how are women looking at other women in 2025? On the whole, they're looking at other women in 2025 through social media, which is already problematic because social media, especially things like Instagram, are really highlight reels. They're very edited, they're very curated peepholes into...
00:32:30 - 00:32:30 00: lives into the successful, attractive corners of people's lives, right?
00:32:40 - 00:32:40 00: And then looking through that peephole, what do women see other women doing?
00:32:40 - 00:33:00 00: Well, some of them are getting married for sure, but maybe later on in life. They are getting master's degrees. They're starting businesses. They are traveling to the Seychelles. They are eating in Michelin star restaurants. They are going to skydiving. They are scuba diving in the Caribbean.
00:33:00 - 00:33:10 00: They're with their girlfriends in Cabo, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. So what women see other women doing,
00:33:10 - 00:33:10 00: is everything.
00:33:10 - 00:33:20 00: Women want everything because that's what they see other women doing, especially through social media.
00:33:20 - 00:33:40 00: So what the signal is coming to women in 2025, where the fattest part of the curve is, the safest part of the curve, is I have to be a woman who does everything. I need to have a career, I need to have a family, I need to have girlfriends, I need to look fit and hot, I need to do this, this, this, that, and the other. Because that's what apparently all the other women are doing.
00:33:50 - 00:34:00 00: Okay, and I think this is connected to why so many more women these days are depressed, are anxious, are on psychiatric medication, because it's not fucking possible to do everything. It's not.
00:34:00 - 00:34:10 00: Like that's for a vanishingly small amount of women and they are usually extremely wealthy and incredibly attractive.
00:34:10 - 00:34:20 00: For the vast majority of women and vast majority of men, it's just not possible. You have to make choices about how to spend your limited time and you have to prioritize certain things, right?
00:34:20 - 00:34:40 00: But what that means is that these women are not measuring up to what they see other women doing, which means that they're getting this constant signal that they're no longer in the fattest part of the curve, because the fattest part of the curve, the center of the shoal, are women doing everything. And they're looking at their own lives and their own selves saying, I'm not doing everything.
00:34:40 - 00:35:00 00: And so that's giving them a signal that they're drifting out of the center of the shoal, which exposes them to risk. And so they're constant. I think there's a lot of unnecessary suffering that's going on in women these days because they're getting a signal that they're not measuring up to other women, which is like a threat signal because when they're not in line with that, they're drifting out of safety and security.
00:35:00 - 00:35:10 00: And so I do think that we've, we, I don't know, like women are setting themselves up to fail on some level.
00:35:10 - 00:35:10 01: But that's only the women that are on social media.
00:35:10 - 00:35:10 00: It's true.
00:35:10 - 00:35:20 00: Which is a lot of them, though. Which is 99%. I don't know the statistics, but it's a rare woman who doesn't have any social media presence.
00:35:10 - 00:35:10 01: Which is $99.
00:35:20 - 00:35:20 01: Or at least is on Instagram and TikTok and all that stuff.
00:35:20 - 00:35:50 00: Yeah, some of them don't post, but they still watch. That's what I'm saying. Yeah. And so I think that's part of the reason is that women feel like they're not measuring up to other women and they have this constant pressure to have everything. And I don't think that women want everything in a material sense. There are some women who do, but most of them, I think they want everything in the sense of I want to have every relational, emotional experience that a person can have.
00:35:50 - 00:36:00 00: Like I want to have, I want to feel that. I want to have that experience.
00:36:00 - 00:36:10 00: And so I think what drives a lot of female behavior these days is FOMO, the fear of missing out.
00:36:10 - 00:36:40 00: If she's doing it over there, well, I want that too. Why is it fair that she gets that and I don't get that? And there's also the safety signal that I was discussing. But that's interesting because if you're trying to do everything, then one of the questions that you always have to ask yourself before you make a decision, consciously or not, is will doing this thing close off my ability to do that thing?
00:36:40 - 00:36:40 00: Right?
00:36:40 - 00:37:00 00: And if so, I should do this thing first before I do that thing, right? Which I think is a big part of why we're seeing women get married and have children less frequently and later on in life. Because they realistically see that if they're at home with two little kids, they're probably not gonna be going to Cancun with the girls.
00:37:00 - 00:37:20 00: are gonna be 30 under 30 in Forbes. You know what I'm saying? Like, for better or for worse, I'm sure there's lots of joys and meaning that come out of raising children, but it will close off other opportunities and experiences that they see other women having. And so they think, huh, well, I still wanna have the kids in the marriage. Yeah, yeah, because that's an experience I don't wanna miss out on.
00:37:20 - 00:37:30 00: But I'll do that later after I go to Cancun and after I start my business and get my master's degree, et cetera, et cetera.
00:37:30 - 00:37:40 00: And so they kind of kick that can down the road, which leads to suboptimal outcomes because of their declining section marketplace value, et cetera, et cetera.
00:37:40 - 00:38:00 01: Men and women both have it hard, but in very different ways, don't they? Oh, sure. It's hard to be a human being. Was it Chris Rock who said that women, children, and dogs are loved unconditionally, but men, they're loved based on what they can provide?
00:37:40 - 00:37:50 00: Oh, sure. It's hard to be a human being.
00:38:00 - 00:38:10 01: Something like that? Yeah, yeah. I was talking to a woman the other day. But then women peak out in their youth, and then they fade. They're...
00:38:00 - 00:38:00 00: Yeah.
00:38:00 - 00:38:00 00: the other day.
00:38:10 - 00:38:10 01: marketability or whatever word you want to call it, desirability fades as they get older.
00:38:10 - 00:38:40 00: Oh, yeah. That's generally why the people who are most opposed to my idea of sexual marketplace value or the sexual marketplace entirely are generally middle-aged women. And that's because most women have to go through a process of accommodation to the loss of power that comes from the loss of youth and attractiveness.
00:38:20 - 00:38:20 01: are generally-
00:38:40 - 00:38:50 00: No young women who are generally more privileged in the sexual marketplace really have an issue with what I'm saying, because I'm saying you're way more powerful. You're punching in a higher weight class than all the other guys your age.
00:38:50 - 00:38:50 01: Everyone loves hearing that.
00:38:50 - 00:39:20 00: Yeah, they don't have a problem with that. And usually by the time they get into their 60s, most women have kind of accepted, I'm in a new stage of life and those days are behind me and they can see that what I'm saying might have some truth to it. But the women in the middle are sometimes actively in the process of feeling the power slipping away. And that's a very hard position for any human being to be in. No one willingly surrenders power.
00:39:20 - 00:39:50 00: It's stripped, whether it's through a coup or through a takeover, or in this case, through time. And sometimes people go gracefully, but usually they fight to retain what power they can for as long as they can. But men and women do have it hard in different ways, for sure. I was talking to a woman the other day. I went to acting school with her, so I've known her for a very long time. She revealed to me that
00:39:50 - 00:40:20 00: You know, when she was broke as a young actress and she needed headshots, she just took her clothes off. And the photographer was willing to give her headshots for free. And I was like, yeah, yeah. And of course, she's on some level upset that she'd have to objectify herself. She had to sexualize herself in order to get her needs met. And like, that's the complaint that especially young women tend to have. It's like, I don't want to be objectified. I don't want to be sexualized against my will. I get it. It's uncomfortable.
00:40:20 - 00:40:40 00: But what's interesting is she also admitted, it's like, yeah, it must have been hard for you too. And I was like, oh, I mean, it was, but why do you think so? And she says, well, you couldn't do anything to get the headshots. Like you couldn't take your clothes off to get the headshots and you didn't have the money. So you just had to figure out something.
00:40:40 - 00:41:00 00: I was like, yeah, nobody was willing to help me. That's for sure. And that's the plight of most men, young men. They're useless to other guys because they don't have any skills or experience or networks. And most women don't want them because they don't have anything yet that most women look for, especially in a long-term partner. If you're cute and you're a young man, you can get laid. But that's, most guys are not that good looking.
00:41:00 - 00:41:00 01: Hmm.
00:41:10 - 00:41:30 01: There's a great Nietzsche quote that says, sometimes people don't want to hear the truth because they don't want their illusions destroyed. And that kind of sums up what you're saying. Yeah. It's hard for us to accept some of these truths that we'd rather look around. Well, you can't dispel with illusion.
00:41:20 - 00:41:20 00: Yeah, it's just hard.
00:41:20 - 00:41:50 00: Well, you can't dispel with illusion entirely. Straight truth is like looking straight at the sun. It's blinding and very uncomfortable, and I don't think we could survive. We all need illusion to some degree, in my experience. Maybe that's from Thus Spake Zarathustra. It feels like it might be.
00:41:50 - 00:42:10 00: And in that character, he lives alone in the crisp, clean air of the mountain, but it's a rugged individual existence and very few people could survive up there. So I think that Nietzsche kind of prided himself on dispelling as many of those unnecessary illusions as possible, but very few people can live that way. And I'm sure that there were even some
00:42:10 - 00:42:20 00: illusions that Nietzsche was loath to dispense with.
00:42:20 - 00:42:20 01: It's always been hard for men and it's also always been hard for women, just in different ways.
00:42:20 - 00:42:30 00: I would say that I've noticed that, it's kind of shitty to say, but people often put their dreams ahead of their partners.
00:42:30 - 00:43:00 00: Like I've dealt with a number of couples that have been married for quite some time. Seems like the relationship is good, but then they have difficulty conceiving, and they both want children. And maybe they find out that the man's sperm isn't working, or maybe they find out that the woman's eggs are problematic or something. Sometimes it's like the biological problem is in one partner, not the other.
00:43:00 - 00:43:00 00: And you might think, okay, well,
00:43:00 - 00:43:10 00: We still have this dream of having a family, but we can adopt. We can get a donor or a surrogate.
00:43:10 - 00:43:20 00: But what so often happens in that circumstance is they get divorced and they break up because they basically say, yeah, that's changing my dream too much.
00:43:20 - 00:43:30 00: I want my own children. I have always dreamed of having my own biological children.
00:43:30 - 00:43:50 00: And I love you, and I know you're my partner, but I don't want to give up on my dream, even if it means changing my dream a little bit. And very often that relationship falls apart, when really just adjusting the dream could keep that relationship together and create a happy family. But people are very loath to dispense with their relationship dreams.
00:43:50 - 00:44:00 00: and they absolutely tend to put them ahead of the individual that they tend to be relating to. On some level, both men and women see that other person as a means to the fulfillment of their own dream.
00:44:00 - 00:44:00 01: dream.
00:44:00 - 00:44:10 00: And it's a rare individual who says, I love you more than I love my dream.
00:44:10 - 00:44:10 00: And if you are lucky enough to find that person, you should do your best to keep them around.
00:44:10 - 00:44:10 01: Hmm.
00:44:20 - 00:44:30 00: Do opposites attract? Sure. They just don't stay together. Is that right? I think so. I mean, there's something very exotic, mysterious, other, unknown.
00:44:30 - 00:44:30 00:
00:44:30 - 00:44:40 01: But then when you get to know the person, you realize there are some deep differences.
00:44:30 - 00:44:30 00: Sometimes.
00:44:40 - 00:44:40 00: Yeah, and differences can be navigated, but
00:44:40 - 00:45:00 00: you know, the greater the differences, the more numerous the differences, the more work and patience is required to kind of overcome them. And that's an expense. Like if you have to spend time getting on the same page with your partner, that's time that's not spent accomplishing whatever the relationship was designed to accomplish.
00:45:00 - 00:45:30 00: i think that the more i've been in some relationships when i was younger like we spent more time talking about the relationship than relating you know what i'm saying and i i think that's a waste of time that's like a you're you're working for a company and you're just in meetings all day it's like well what what are we actually doing here are we creating a good are we providing a service all i'm doing is talking about the good and the service this is a waste in my opinion so this is why sometimes when you date
00:45:30 - 00:45:30 01:
00:45:40 - 00:45:50 00: within your culture, it tends to be a little easier because it's not always justified, but you can make reasonable assumptions that I kind of know
00:45:50 - 00:45:50 00: what the relationship should or supposed to look like and you have kind of the same idea.
00:45:50 - 00:45:50 01: Yeah.
00:45:50 - 00:46:00 00: It's not always the case. That's a mistake that many straight people make. But...
00:46:00 - 00:46:00 01: The attraction is not as strong, though, when you have that opposite as compared to when you have an opposite.
00:46:00 - 00:46:20 00: Well, yeah. I mean, there's also some probably, definitely some biological components to that. They call it sexual dimorphism. It's like there's, it's not an accident that men tend to be taller than women and that men tend to be more muscular than women and men grow hair in certain places and women don't. So there's all of these biological signals that say,
00:46:20 - 00:46:40 00: this is this gender, this sex, and you could actually reproduce with that person. And so we're biologically programmed to look for specific signs that say it's not my sex, it's not my gender, so I can do something with that person if I so choose.
00:46:10 - 00:46:10 01: Mm hmm.
00:46:40 - 00:46:40 01: um,
00:46:40 - 00:46:40 00: So I do think that there's a biological component to opposites attract.
00:46:40 - 00:46:50 01: Are we?
00:46:50 - 00:46:50 01: Just trying to recreate the...
00:46:50 - 00:47:00 01: Let's say you had a traumatic or we all probably have some form of a traumatic relationship with at least one parent. Are we looking for partners to kind of revisit that and heal it?
00:47:00 - 00:47:10 00: That's what Freud said. He basically said that we can either repeat or we can remember.
00:47:10 - 00:47:10 01: What's your take on that?
00:47:10 - 00:47:10 00: I think that there's some truth to that, for sure.
00:47:10 - 00:47:10 00: Because the greatest victory is
00:47:20 - 00:47:20 00: to achieve a different outcome.
00:47:20 - 00:47:50 00: in a problematic relationship from our past. So let's say that we had a father who was very withholding and he never told us that he loved us and never gave us a hug and was kind of mean or absent. Then we unconsciously or not might get in relationship with cold, aloof, withholding men.
00:47:50 - 00:48:00 00: In therapy, we call that a reenactment. So we're kind of creating a psychodrama by casting a new actor in the same role.
00:48:00 - 00:48:10 00: Now, why would you do that? Well, because there's this desire that I'm gonna set up the scene exactly as I remember it on some level, but...
00:48:10 - 00:48:40 00: I'm gonna get him to love me this time. I'm gonna get him to recognize me, to acknowledge me, and to have a happily ever after. And that new ending, people believe, will resolve the trauma associated with the previous relationship. Does that ever work? Generally not. And it's pretty easy to understand why, is because the person who sets up the psychodrama only has experience with the bad ending. They might not know how to have a different ending.
00:48:40 - 00:48:40 00: This is what they've lived. This is what they've learned. This is what they've rehearsed.
00:48:40 - 00:48:50 01: almost reject the person then when they've gotten them. Sure, that's possible. I can see that.
00:48:50 - 00:49:10 00: People break up with and turn down folks who might otherwise be very good partners for them and they could have very loving, stable relationships with all the time. People are very complicated. It's good to be simple as much as you can and to resolve some of that complexity. Complexity for its own sake is not a good thing.
00:49:10 - 00:49:10 01: Does therapy even work?
00:49:10 - 00:49:10 00: You can, it's worked for me. But I had to find, I mean,
00:49:10 - 00:49:10 01: Yeah.
00:49:20 - 00:49:30 00: I've worked with two therapists in my life that I think have really helped me, but I've worked with maybe a dozen therapists. So what's that, like two out of 12? Maybe a 16, 17% success rate. It's not terrible, but it's not great. It's hard to find a good one.
00:49:40 - 00:50:00 00: Yeah, it's hard to find a good mechanic. Just like any other profession, the vast majority of people are going to be kind of mediocre. Some people are going to be just bad faith actors. It's going to fuck up your car. And there's going to be a few people that are just incredible, exceptional professionals at what they do.
00:50:00 - 00:50:10 00: I've had some therapists, after a year or two, I didn't feel any better or worse than when I started. I think one or two, I did feel worse. So maybe some of the bad mechanics, right? And there were two that really, really helped me.
00:49:30 - 00:49:30 01: Thank you.
00:50:10 - 00:50:20 01: Sometimes you're just becoming aware of your tendencies or what your behaviors are, right? And it's up to you to decide to act differently.
00:50:10 - 00:50:10 00: Thank you.
00:50:20 - 00:50:40 00: Well, sure, insight is not enough. You actually have to start living in a different way outside the therapist's office. That's where the magic happens. But it can be useful to prepare for that with the therapist. Another good use of therapy is
00:50:40 - 00:51:00 00: to really examine the scripts and narratives that might be detrimentally affecting your health and happiness. And we all are running scripts and stories in our minds. I don't think it's possible to live without them. Which goes back to the illusion quote from before. It's like all stories
00:51:00 - 00:51:20 00: are more or less false. Like some stories are more true than others, but they're all stories at the end of the day. And I don't think we can dispense with stories and storytelling entirely. Like the story of my life, who I believe myself to be, how I order certain memories, why I block others.
00:51:20 - 00:51:40 00: I'm crafting an autobiography in my mind, generally unconsciously. And on some level, that autobiography is designed to support how I choose to live in the present moment and where I'm going to go into the future. And some people have really shitty autobiographies. They have terrible stories that they're telling themselves that aren't useful in the sense that they're not helping them make good, happy decisions today.
00:51:40 - 00:51:50 00: but they're also not really true because no story is objectively true.
00:51:50 - 00:51:50 00: So the way I think about this,
00:51:50 - 00:52:00 00: has to do with like the constellations in the sky. You know what a constellation is, right Mark? So it's like Orion is a constellation. It's like there's a group of stars and we draw the lines and we say, that's the hunter.
00:52:00 - 00:52:00 01: it's like
00:52:00 - 00:52:20 00: Have you gone someplace really dark without any light pollution and just seen the vast, isn't it? It's beautiful. It's beautiful. Do you know anything about astronomy and the constellations? Not much. Apparently, according to the astronomers, there are 88 constellations in the sky.
00:52:10 - 00:52:10 01: the vast, isn't it?
00:52:10 - 00:52:10 01: Yeah.
00:52:20 - 00:52:50 00: the vast majority of them don't look anything like the stars in the sky. Like the fact that you could look at those stars and see a scorpion or over here a half goat, half fish entity, it's like those people, I don't know what they were smoking, but I don't think that we have that anymore. The point is, is most of the constellations do not look like the figures that we project on them.
00:52:50 - 00:53:00 00: So what's the point here? The point is that there are certain things that happen to us in our lives. Those are facts. We can't deny them. We can't ignore them. We can't pretend they didn't happen. They are like the stars in the sky. They are fixed. They are movable. They are bright. They're not going anywhere.
00:53:00 - 00:53:30 00: However, we can choose how to connect the dots, how to draw the lines between the stars and what constellations are actually going to exist in the heavens. And we could just as easily take that set of stars and draw a bull or draw a hero or draw a victim or draw a starfish. It doesn't matter. We can take the same set of dots and with enough creativity,
00:53:30 - 00:53:40 00: have it represent any figure that we want. And that's really our fundamental powers. On so many levels, we can't control what happens to us, but we can control.
00:53:50 - 00:53:50 00: the meaning that we make from that.
00:53:50 - 00:54:00 00: And so a great part of therapy is to really consciously examine the scripts, the beliefs, and the stories that people are running in their minds and to say, okay,
00:54:00 - 00:54:10 00: Which part of that is true? Which part of that is useful? And is there another way that we can draw the lines between those stars, those things that happened in your life that we can't ignore?
00:54:10 - 00:54:30 00: And I think it's certainly possible to take the same set of facts and to create a different story that actually empowers someone, that heals someone, that encourages them, and gives them hope about their ability to be happy and healthy moving forward. And I do think that's one of the best uses of therapy in a traditional sense.
00:54:30 - 00:54:40 01: Why is it that some people
00:54:40 - 00:54:40 01: seem to
00:54:40 - 00:54:50 01: be resilient enough to recover from their traumatic childhoods, whatever they went through as kids. And others...
00:54:40 - 00:54:50 00: Oh.
00:54:50 - 00:55:00 01: escape with drugs or other kind of vices. What is it that separates those that thrive from those that suffer?
00:55:00 - 00:55:00 00: Yeah, we use the term resilient, and it's been studied to a certain extent, but I don't know if anybody truly knows.
00:55:10 - 00:55:30 00: I will say that I've really tried not to use the language traumatic experience for that precise reason, which is that it seems that experiences cannot be traumatic. That isn't to say that bad and evil and catastrophic things don't happen.
00:55:30 - 00:55:40 00: But two different people can go through the exact same experience, and one will be traumatized and the other will not. If the experience itself was traumatic, that shouldn't be possible. Poison is poison to everybody on some level.
00:55:40 - 00:56:10 00: So I think that trauma doesn't exist in the experience. Trauma is the act of being frozen internally. It's as soon as we clench and stop growing, that's the trauma. And it's, we're like frozen at a stage of emotional development because we've been terrified on some level. It's the fight, flight or freeze response and trauma is the freeze.
00:56:10 - 00:56:20 00: And that's in the service of survival. Like it's a very interesting way to respond to threats. The fight, the aggressiveness.
00:56:20 - 00:56:20 00: We need to believe on some level that we can win.
00:56:30 - 00:56:50 00: and that it's safe on some level for us to aggress. This is why you have the violent protests in the Bay Area, but not in North Korea. It's like it's not safe to go out on the street and protest there, and so people keep it under wraps. I don't think they're all happy there, but it's like the safer people feel, the more likely they're going to express aggression and anger. It's paradoxical.
00:56:50 - 00:57:00 00: If I don't feel like I can master the threat
00:57:00 - 00:57:00 00: but I still think there's a chance for me to escape or to avoid it, I'll run.
00:57:00 - 00:57:20 00: But if I don't feel like I can master the threat and I can't get away, I'm just going to freeze. I'm going to play dead. And that's a very deep survival instinct. It's one of the best things to do against a bear if it actually starts to attack you is to not run away, to not fight back.
00:57:20 - 00:57:40 00: And the predatory instinct sometimes loses interest in this seemingly dead carcass. They're not scavengers, right? They're predators. So that's a way to escape predation is playing dead. And on some level, the trauma, the freeze response is like an emotional playing dead.
00:57:40 - 00:58:10 00: And so time passes, the body matures, chronological events happen, but the person is still emotionally frozen in that state. And that creates difficulties for people because emotions are one of the major ways that we navigate through reality. We get our information through our senses. We have our memories and our experiences and our beliefs and heuristics, but we also have our emotional reactions to what's happening to us.
00:58:10 - 00:58:20 00: But if we're frozen, then whatever emotion, we might not feel any emotion at all, so it's like we've had that limb more or less amputated, we've been blinded, we don't have access to that sense anymore.
00:58:20 - 00:58:40 00: Or it's firing bad signals, like it's telling us that we're not safe when we are because that's the last thing that happened in that emotional moment before it got frozen. So it's either our emotions are sending us no signal, which is problematic, or it's sending us bad signal, incorrect signal, which is potentially even worse.
00:58:40 - 00:58:50 00: So the work of therapy on some level is to unfreeze that emotion, which is terrifying because we're basically saying,
00:58:50 - 00:59:00 00: I mean, it frozen because I can't deal with this, we'll kick the can down the road on some level. And the unfreezing,
00:59:00 - 00:59:10 00: On some level, I don't think it's avoidable. You have to experience the emotion
00:59:10 - 00:59:30 00: that the trauma response was trying to protect you from, which is fucking scary, man. It's really hard. But I do think that there's some truth to that old therapeutic adage, you have to feel it to heal it. And I think the feeling of that emotion is the experience of that emotion finally leaving you. And until you feel the emotion, it's like frozen somewhere in your body.
00:59:30 - 01:00:00 00: I don't know if that's very scientific. I think that's basically the argument in The Body Keeps the Score, which is a book about trauma. I think the author makes the argument that it's somatized, it's put in the body. I don't know how. Maybe he does. But it's the feeling that is the signal that the emotion is finally getting expelled. And once you feel it sufficiently, it's been thawed.
01:00:00 - 01:00:30 00: the river of emotion starts to flow again and eventually you get out of that emotional debt and your emotions are now reacting to the here and now. And so now you have like a sight, you have a sense that you didn't have before or since you've been traumatized. Imagine getting a cochlear implant after being deaf for 40 years or like being able to see if you were born blind. Like what an amazing...
01:00:30 - 01:00:50 00: experience that might be sometimes when i'm feeling sad and i need to pick me up i'll watch that on youtube man you can just google like cochlear implants if you want to just feel good and have a nice like faith in their hearing yeah and they haven't heard ever and they start to hear and they're just like they just start to cry and i start to cry it's like the joy of just being able to hear which is something that you and i and most people just take for granted right
01:00:50 - 01:01:00 00: It's a beautiful, pure expression of joy. So sometimes I watch those videos when I'm feeling down.
00:59:40 - 00:59:40 01: Mm-hmm.
01:00:40 - 01:00:40 01: faith in human beings.
01:00:50 - 01:01:00 01: Thank you.
01:01:00 - 01:01:00 01: Mm-hmm.
01:01:00 - 01:01:00 01: That's great.
01:01:00 - 01:01:10 01: What do you see for the future of romantic relationships with AI and with technology?
01:01:10 - 01:01:40 00: Oh, you know, it's going to be a brave new world, Mark. Jesus. I was just talking to Eric Hsu the other day. He's an acquaintance of mine. He has a YouTube channel as well. He's really knowledgeable about AI, and he's saying that a new thing is coming out not every week. It's like every day. You can't keep up. There's a new AI company launched every day of the week that's offering some other new incredible technology.
01:01:40 - 01:01:40 00: product and service. And we're still in the earliest infancies of this.
01:01:50 - 01:01:50 00: I mean, I think that it's going to
01:01:50 - 01:01:50 00: lead to fewer relationships between men and women.
01:01:50 - 01:02:00 01: Already has, it seems.
01:02:00 - 01:02:30 00: It has, not because of AI, but for other reasons. No, because of technology. Yeah, and the technology is just going to improve that. Like if you think that porn is somehow responsible for some of the decline in relationships from the withdrawal of a sector of men from the sexual marketplace, because they're not going after women anymore, they're just looking at women online. Well, imagine if we couple that with AI and robotics and virtual reality. It's like, that's in 10 years max?
01:02:30 - 01:02:30 00: It's a brave new world, man. Like Aldous Huxley's the book. He actually...
01:02:00 - 01:02:00 01: Because of technology.
01:02:30 - 01:02:30 01: Brave new world, man. Yeah.
01:02:30 - 01:03:00 00: predicts that, where there is no marriage anymore. People aren't born vaginally. They're born in jars through state-sponsored embryo reproduction plants. There is no marriage. Everyone belongs to everybody else. There's mandated orgies to get rid of the sexual tension that people might experience.
01:03:00 - 01:03:10 00: People go to feelies, which are basically like sensory-enhanced pornography films where they're hooked up to all these different devices and they get to experience whatever's going on on the screens.
01:03:10 - 01:03:20 00: They don't get paid in money anymore. They get paid in soma, which is a perfect drug.
01:03:20 - 01:03:30 00: You take a little bit and it's just a pleasant intoxication. You take a bit more and you got a three day holiday. There's no hangovers, no side effects. People don't need to work.
01:03:30 - 01:03:40 00: And behind the scenes, there's a few world controllers who are making sure that everybody is docile and happy.
01:03:40 - 01:03:50 00: So I think that the future is probably some combination of Brave New World in 1984, which is a bleaker, more totalitarian vision of the future. Brave New World's future is totalitarian. It's just the softer side of totalitarianism, which if...
01:03:50 - 01:04:00 00: dictators are smart.
01:04:00 - 01:04:10 00: That's how you achieve that end. If you're too forthright, people will rise up and resist. The dictators of the future will come with smiles.
01:04:10 - 01:04:10 00: they'll look completely innocuous and harmless.
01:04:20 - 01:04:20 00: That's my prediction.
01:04:20 - 01:04:20 01: Hmm.
01:04:20 - 01:04:30 01: All right, Orion, thank you so much for coming in again. I hope it went well. Thanks for having me, Mark. You're always great. Thank you so much.
01:04:20 - 01:04:20 00: Thanks for having me.
01:04:30 - 01:04:40 01: When I was designing the first Soft White Underbelly book, I realized that there were so many great portraits that weren't going to make it into that book.
01:04:40 - 01:04:40 01: They just wouldn't fit.
01:04:40 - 01:04:50 01: And once I saw how well that first book sold, I knew I'd have to design a second book.
01:04:50 - 01:05:00 01: this second book is finally ready to ship. Like the first one, this book has a collection of some of the best portraits from Soft White Underbelly, accompanied by a quote from that person's interview.
01:05:00 - 01:05:30 01: This book features another group of Rebecca portraits, as well as a collection of color images of the Whitaker family and plenty of others. You can order yours for $125 or $150 for a signed copy at softwhiteunderbelly.org. Again, like the first book, once this book is sold out, I will not be printing more of them. The portraits are what Soft White Underbelly is all about, and these two books contain the best of all that work. Thank you for watching.
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Vytvorené 2025-06-26 11:41:48
Spracované 2025-06-26 11:59:53