Why promiscuity is bad for us — Jordan Peterson — Transcript

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1. 0:01Please give your perspective on why
2. 0:02polyamory is bad for the individual and
3. 0:04society.
4. 0:14Well, I think the fundamental reason is
5. 0:17there's a bunch of reasons. I mean, the
6. 0:18first is
7. 0:20society seem to function better, that is
8. 0:22less violently,
9. 0:24let's say,
10. 0:25when there's
11. 0:27one woman per man.
12. 0:29If there's
13. 0:31many women per man,
14. 0:34there aren't many women for every man.
15. 0:37There are a handful of men, let's say, a
16. 0:40minority of men, a Pareto distribution
17. 0:43of men
18. 0:46who have
19. 0:47a disproportionate number of women,
20. 0:50and
21. 0:52a lot of men
22. 0:54who have none, and those aren't happy
23. 0:56men, let's put it that way.
24. 0:58Uh they're men who are very likely to
25. 1:00get up to no good very rapidly. So,
26. 1:03there's that.
27. 1:04Then, I would say
28. 1:07the women who let's say a man has many
29. 1:09women,
30. 1:11and let's say he's a desirable man for
31. 1:13that matter,
32. 1:15just for the sake of argument,
33. 1:17if he has a variety of women, then those
34. 1:19women don't have much of him.
35. 1:22So, they don't get to establish real
36. 1:23individual relationship with him cuz
37. 1:25it's going to be fragmentary.
38. 1:29And I don't believe that
39. 1:32that's satisfying for people. I think
40. 1:33that what you want, as much as you
41. 1:35possibly can,
42. 1:37is to have people around you with whom
43. 1:40you can weave your life together over
44. 1:43the
45. 1:44short-term, medium-term, and long-term.
46. 1:47It adds depth to your life in a way that
47. 1:48almost nothing else can.
48. 1:51And so,
49. 1:53what you do, and so, I've been speaking
50. 1:56more about permanent polyamorous
51. 1:58relationships. You might ask, "Well,
52. 2:00what about sequential ones where
53. 2:02you know, you're which is in some ways
54. 2:04indiscriminate indiscriminate
55. 2:06indiscriminable from uh
56. 2:09um well, from just casual sleeping
57. 2:11around.
58. 2:13Um
59. 2:14I think the problem with that is that
60. 2:17to sleep around casually is to imply
61. 2:19that sex is casual.
62. 2:21To imply that sex is casual is to assume
63. 2:23implicitly that it can be divorced from
64. 2:26the rest of life, emotional life,
65. 2:28motivational life, values, all of that.
66. 2:31And
67. 2:32you can divorce it, but you pay a big
68. 2:34price for that. I I think the price you
69. 2:36pay is like the virtual
70. 2:39It's it it
71. 2:41Well, the word psychopathic keeps
72. 2:44leaking leaping to mind. Leaking to
73. 2:46mind.
74. 2:48Yeah, good old Freud. Um
75. 2:54You have to reduce a person to the
76. 2:56casual pleasure of a
77. 3:01transient sexual interaction in order to
78. 3:07sleep around casually. And I think that
79. 3:10once you establish that as a habit
80. 3:12with sex, which is
81. 3:14a deep
82. 3:17a deep experience.
83. 3:19If you'll If you'll do that with sex,
84. 3:21which is a deep experience, then and you
85. 3:23learn how, then what makes you think
86. 3:25that won't transfer to everything else
87. 3:27that you do?
88. 3:28I don't see how it can fail to.
89. 3:31So,
90. 3:33you know, you could say, "Well, monogamy
91. 3:34isn't a very good solution." It's like,
92. 3:36well,
93. 3:37life is a fatal sex fatal What is it?
94. 3:40Sexually transmitted disease with a 100%
95. 3:43fatality rate, too.
96. 3:45You know, there's lots of really complex
97. 3:47problems for which we only have
98. 3:51the best answer we can come up with,
99. 3:53which is
100. 3:54not a utopian answer, but I would say
101. 4:00and I think the evidence supports this
102. 4:01as well, that stable monogamy is the
103. 4:03best solution that we know of and it's
104. 4:06also
105. 4:08the minimum necessary requirement for
106. 4:10the stability of children.
107. 4:12So
108. 4:15polyandry, it's wrong.
109. 4:17It's wrong, it makes men violent.
110. 4:21It increases inequality.
111. 4:23In in in the manner that makes things
112. 4:25dangerous, it
113. 4:27makes it impossible for women to have a
114. 4:29deep relationship with men.
115. 4:31It makes it
116. 4:33it facilitates the
117. 4:35uh what would you call it? The
118. 4:37transformation of sex into something
119. 4:39casual and then that spills out into the
120. 4:42into the rest of the world.
121. 4:44Um it deprives the people who engage in
122. 4:47it of the opportunity of establishing a
123. 4:50stable long-term
124. 4:54long-term
125. 4:55mutually
126. 4:57uh
127. 4:58mutually satisfying. It's more than
128. 5:00that. Mutually beneficial relationship,
129. 5:02you know, cuz a good a good marriage the
130. 5:04people in it gain more than
131. 5:08they're more than twice as good, right?
132. 5:10It It the the the benefits aren't
133. 5:13precisely linear. So you lose that. It
134. 5:16destabilizes the situation for children.
135. 5:19There you go, man. That's a lot of
136. 5:21things that aren't about it that aren't
137. 5:22good. That's for sure.