Love, Sex, and the Meaning of Life

For Valentine’s Day, I’ve written a post about love and sex:

1. A Trilemma

Bryan Caplan recently posted on his blog a query from an anonymous reader:

How Not to Be an Incel or a Psychopath

TL;DR: The reader has a problem that he just wants to have casual sex with women, but women don’t want to do that. It appears that he therefore has to (a) give up sex, (b) make a long-term commitment to someone he isn’t really interested in other than for sex, or (c) pretend to be interested in a long-term relationship in order to get sex. What to do?

This is part of the broader problem I’ve discussed that men and women have very different desires relating to each other.

The same reader posed the same question to me. In fact, it seemingly was prompted by my remark in a previous post about the wrongness of lying to get sex.

The Ethics of Deception

Let’s start with the ethics of mating-related deception. The anonymous reader mentioned that women also engage in deception. (Aside: He mentioned wearing make-up, which doesn’t count. You see the makeup, it’s common, and few people actually lie about it. Calling this deception is similar to saying that I’m deceiving you about what I smell like by showering before I meet with you. But there are better examples.)

People of both sexes commonly engage in deception to secure dates. E.g., women understate their weight, age, and body count; men overstate their height and income. These are wrong, but not serious wrongs because you don’t yet know the other person and you aren’t securing a large sacrifice from them. It becomes more wrong if you continue to deceive the person after starting a relationship with them.

It is more serious to deceive someone about the character of your relationship or your long-term plans. This includes misleading implications as well as outright lies. It also includes lies of omission, or intentionally failing to mention something that you know is relevant and that would likely affect the other person’s desire to interact with you. Thus, it’s wrong to let someone believe that they’re going to get a long-term commitment from you when you know that is not the case; it’s similarly wrong to let someone think that they’re going to get sex when you know that isn’t the case.

This sort of wrong gets more serious the longer it goes on and the more the other person invests. If you’re interacting with someone, and you know that you’re never going to give the other person what they want, then you have to tell them that, because otherwise you may be preventing them from finding someone who will give them what they want. In extreme cases, someone might wind up never marrying because they wasted too much time dating people who were never going to satisfy their needs. This would be an extremely serious harm.

Analogy: Don’t tell someone that you have a job for them if you know you don’t, because that might prevent them from taking real job opportunities. For the same reason, don’t even allow someone to assume that you have a job for them when you know you don’t.

Once in a relationship, people of both sexes also often deceive each other (including by omission) about other things. E.g., having an affair and not telling the other person. This is serious because for many people, this would be a deal-breaker, so you’re violating the other person’s right to set the terms of their relationships with others.

(Btw, it’s not that starting a relationship gives you rights over your partner’s sexuality. It’s that you have a right to set terms on which you are willing to be in that relationship. The wrong of cheating is not about having more than one partner; it is about deception and/or promise-breaking.)

Retaliatory/preemptive Deception

Because women (/men) are often deceptive, does this make it permissible for you to be deceptive to them?

If you’re reading this, you probably know the answer (because my readers tend to be smart, individualistic people). There is no collective guilt. Women as a class are not blameworthy because some women—or even a great many women—act badly. It is thus impermissible to retaliate against women in general. Likewise, it is impermissible to retaliate against men in general because many men act badly.

Thus, when you meet a new person, you still have to treat them as if they’re acting in good faith until you have specific reasons to think otherwise.

Prostitution

Fortunately, the original trilemma has a solution; it’s the world’s oldest profession. Unfortunately, it is illegal. Fortunately, that law is rarely enforced. I believe escort services are basically prostitution businesses that operate openly.

I can’t personally vouch for this solution, but I assume it works well for people who genuinely just want sex. And as long as you have money, it continues to work, even if you’re annoying, ugly, and no fun to be around. (Not that any of my readers have those traits!)

Aside: Some people think prostitution is wrong. I don’t get it. It seems like the simplest solution to a serious, widespread problem. Like other market transactions, we should presume that it leaves both parties’ desires better satisfied (in the absence of fraud), since otherwise they would not accept the transaction.

Some would say that prostitution is exploitative, or the practice is “merely using” the prostitute. This makes no sense to me. Exploitation or using someone would be getting a benefit from them through trickery or force, or otherwise without their consent. Obtaining a benefit from someone by giving them something they want in return, and being completely up front about what you’re offering, is not using them; that’s the opposite of using them.

If it’s wrong to get benefits from others with their agreement, by giving them a benefit in return, then we have to shut down society. Of course, people only say this when the benefit is sex, because people suffer from ethical superstitions surrounding reproduction.

All of the above takes the OP’s goal of casual sex as given and as the whole story. But you need more than that, even if you don’t know that you do.

2. Love and Meaning

When I was in my last year of high school, my English teacher once quoted Sigmund Freud saying that he still didn’t know what women wanted. The teacher then proposed to find out what people want (both men and women). She went around the room asking people what they want.

One kid (who happened to be the class president) answered, “Power.” (I expected him to become a politician, but he became a lawyer instead.) Another kid (who was a friend of mine) answered “I guess a wide range of knowledge and experiences.” (She later became an English professor.) When it got to me, I answered “Love.” In fact, I said that I thought this was what everyone wanted.

I would later realize that I was wrong; some people really do value power, or experiential variety, or money, or fame, above love. Those people, in my opinion, are foolish and are destined to have low-quality lives. (Especially the power-mongers.)

A related question people sometimes ask after learning that I’m a philosophy professor: What is the meaning of life? These two questions are connected, because one of the central things you should want is a meaningful, fulfilling life. When you come to the end of your life, you should be able to look back and know that it wasn’t wasted. “What is the meaning of life?” might mean: What will make it so that my life is meaningful and not wasted?

Perhaps there are many things that contribute to that. But there are two central things: love, and morality. If you form intimate, loving relationships with others, and you act with integrity and moral character, then your life will be well spent and fulfilling, even if you don’t receive wealth, power, fame, or the other benefits people say they want in life. Wealth, power, and fame can be enjoyable, but none of them make life meaningful. Love does. You may not believe this now, but if you find love, you will believe it.

Aside: The Christians have gotten a lot of things wrong, but there is one central thing that is good about Christianity. That is that their God (at least, in a certain key thread of the religion) is a God of love. Not, like the chief gods in other mythologies, a god of thunder, or power, or the sun, but of love. To serve God is to serve love.

3. Finding Love

Is it real?

I’ve heard that people sometimes wonder whether love (or “true love”) is real. I never wondered that, but some people do. If you’re wondering that, the answer is yes. However, I don’t get to observe couples (other than me and Iskra) interacting privately, so I don’t know how common it is for couples to have deep and completely committed love. (Sometimes you think two people have a great relationship, and then they get divorced.) I know of our case, so it has probably happened to many other people, but I don’t know what percentage of people. (Anyone have ideas about that?)

Is there someone for everyone?

I don’t think so. We want there to be someone out there for everyone*, but that doesn’t give us any reason to believe that that is actually true.

[ *That is, we’d prefer that (for every x, there is someone out there for x); not that (for some x, x is out there for everyone). ]

You can’t love just anyone. Perhaps God can, but humans cannot. If you’re straight and normal (e.g., non-psychopathic), you can probably love a member of the opposite sex in a deeper and more total way than you could ever love a member of your own sex, no matter how otherwise lovable that member of your own sex might be. (If you’re gay, swap “your own” and “the opposite”.)

So that’s one restriction that almost all humans have: the person has to be of the right sex. (Though there are a small number of bisexual people.) If you accept that, then it is a small step to suppose that, even within “the right sex,” there are other requirements for you to deeply love someone, which most people don’t satisfy. For example, perhaps the person has to meet some threshold level of physical attractiveness, of intelligence, of moral decency. Perhaps they can’t have too many annoying habits. There are going to be some requirements like this that are extremely widespread.

There are also going to be some people who score very low on multiple dimensions that are of widespread importance. In other words, some people are just unlovable. We don’t want to admit that this is true, but we wouldn’t have the words “lovable” and “unlovable” if they didn’t describe something that we observe. As a result, some people will never find love no matter what they do.

That being said, that is probably only a minority of people. If you’re a basically normal person, there probably is someone out there for you. (And since you’re reading Fake Nous, you’re probably an unusually interesting and discerning person.)

How to find Mr. or Mrs. Right

How can you find the right person?

I don’t know. I only found Iskra by accident, fairly late in life. When I met Iskra, I wasn’t looking for anyone. I also did not try to impress her; I just said whatever I felt like saying. (Is that in general the right thing to do? I don’t know.) Probably no one should take advice from me on how to find a partner.

But there is another question that people much more rarely ask that they should ask: “How can I be the right person?” Because even if you find the perfect partner, it doesn’t matter unless you are also a suitable partner for them. When you fail to find someone, there’s a tendency to blame the market, to say there aren’t enough good men/women out there; but it’s equally likely that the problem is you.

So, for example, be in good shape; if you’re overweight, lose weight. Wear good-looking clothes all the time. Have them tailored to fit you. When you find a (potential) partner, interact with them in good faith. Don’t manipulate, or deceive, or withhold information. Don’t mistrust them for no reason. Don’t complain about small things or try to control them. Don’t start arguments. Don’t assume that the thing you want is just the normal thing that everyone should be expected to do. Try to give them what they want, not what you want. Once you’re together, treat their interests like your interests.

Everyone is born selfish, so you have to learn these things.