Within Reason - #110 The Cultural Tutor - Why Modern Love Fails and How to Rescue It

Episode Date: July 1, 2025

Sheehan Quirke is The Cultural Tutor. A writer on history, art, and architecture with millions of followers, he is also the author of the forthcoming The Cultural Tutor: Forty-Nine Lessons You Wish You’d Learned at School, which is currently available for preorder here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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You were just on a panel for unheard, talking about whether modern romance is dead. Was that the topic? That was the title. How did it go? It was really good fun. I mean, personally speaking, it was great to be in a room. You know, I'm always, I guess I got here by writing online. I'm behind the laptop typing away, and it was nice to be in a room full of people talking, seeing their faces.

I guess you've said the same thing, like the best part of your job is speaking in rooms full of people. So it was good fun. And I think as far as the subject of the event goes, it was very, very good, very revealing, I think, about how things are. Was it, is modern romance dead? Or just is romance dead. Is romance dead? Because a lot of people talk about, like, romance in the modern world or, like, modern dating or, like, modern this, modern that. What do you think people are getting at when they say modern romance, modern dating?

I see. Well, I think it's when they say, I guess when they say modern romance, I mean romance. now as opposed to how it was 50, 100, 500 years ago, or at least as we think of it, right? So modern romance means dating apps primarily. I think that's the thrust of it. And then you add to that the kind of broader sort of socio-political quakings through the monosphere, toxic masculinity, and these issues are kind of, if you like, the icing on the cake. But I feel like the fundament is basically just what the internet has done and the online aspect.

say modern. Do you think it's actually changed anything about the way people love? I mean, we tend to romanticize romance, especially of the past. And it kind of feels like something's different, but do you think it's purely a mechanistic difference? Or do you think people are actually thinking differently about what romance is? So I think it's definitely changed. And I will say why, but I also want to caveat that by kind of giving the caveats I always give, which is at the closer you look at how things are now and how they were in the past, the more you realize how little things have changed. I mean, the overarching, the main impression I get from reading history is that nothing ever really changes. The things we complain about now, and the way we complain

about them are exactly the same as people have complained about them throughout all of history, even in terms of romance and love. I sort of think maybe all material progress is an illusion, And it makes us think things are changing when really human nature is unchanging, and we're at the center of this vortex of kind of material distractions. That being said, I do think from time to time certain systems, certain technologies come along that either emphasize or deemphasize bits of that unchanging human nature. So one way that online dating, I think, has fundamentally changed romance. I mean, there's a load of obvious ways, I guess,

but one thing I find particularly interesting is the nature of communication. All right, once upon a time, if you wanted to talk to someone who wasn't in the same room as you, you could call them, of course, I suppose. But it was a lot more common to write letters. If you look at any historical figure, anyone you admire from the past, you look at their biography, it's all letters, write as excerpts from a letter to their father, to the brother, to their agent, to their colleague, to their friend, to their professor, and, of course, to their lovers. And I don't know if you've read many love letters from the past,

but they're usually, I mean, some of them are pretty prurient, you know, there's some famous cases of that. But on the whole, they're a lot more heartfelt, meaningful and more detailed than the way we tend to text these days. And that's not to say people in the past were more considerate or sort of any better than us, but the technology forces you to do things differently. If you have to sit down in a room on your own with a piece of paper, right, and you're writing this to your, to your loved one, someone you're courting, let's say, right? It's you alone in a room with a pen and a bit of paper. You've got to actually look inside yourself a bit more in order to write something out, right? You don't have this instantaneous back and forth. You know, like, hi, hi, what are you doing?

How was your day? That immediacy has gone and I think that forces you to actually interrogate your feelings much deeper. No, I don't know how many people these days have actually sat down and try to write a paragraph about the person they love or think they love. And you learn far more by doing that, you know, writing is a kind of thinking. And having lost that aspect now with the way, not just dating, I suppose, but all messaging, I think the loss of letter writing as a whole, I'm not lamenting it for, you know, for this sort of the romantic image of, you know, following up the envelope and giving it to postman and all that crap.

No, it's just the purely, the purely technical side of how we interact with the technology. Letter writing, I think, has made us a lot less introspective. I guess we're more narcissistic than ever but we're not introspective. There's a difference between introspection and narcissism. There's a difference between looking at yourself, you know, curating this dating profile and

then always having images of of your own of yourself on your mind and trying to decide how you look. But there's a difference in that and sitting down and thinking, God, what do I think, what do I feel? So I think that's one way's changed. A friend of mine once said that he was on dating apps and then he sort of just gave them up or deleted them and said

that he realized that dating apps were more about who likes you than who you like. Sure. And it is very sort of self-centered in that respect. A lot of people will use dating apps for validation, essentially, just to check that they've still got it. Are people still swiping? The people still like me.

That's something which you can't really get in such an immediate way in the past. You could kind of walk down the street and see if people are looking at you, but there's no just immediate way to check. Do people currently find me attractive? Yeah, it's a shortcut. It's got to be doing a number of people's psychology. I think the letter writing is interesting in that when you write a letter, you have to create the entire message altogether. It's almost like having a conversation with somebody, but each person gets to speak for 10, 20 minutes at a time.

It changes the nature of what you're saying because in a conversation, including a text conversation, the other person dictates the direction of your thought. You say writing is a kind of thinking. and if the other person is constantly inputting and responsive to every single sentence, they are dictating the way that you're thinking. Conversations, I've sometimes compared them to being a little bit like a chess match. In that, basically every chess match starts pretty much the same. There are incredibly common openings that sometimes people do something a little bit strange, but it's pretty limited.

And once you get past the first four or five moves, then you start getting into new territory. and near the end of a chess game, you're in a position that probably no other chessboard has ever been in the history of mankind. And conversations work a bit like that. It's interesting how they all tend to start with the sort of, hey, how's it going? Or some variant of that, you know, do you push the king's pawn or the queen's form? Do you say hi?

Do you say good morning? And they go off in these directions. But of course, it's responsive to what the other player does. And writing a letter is a bit like taking out that other side of the board and just being able to to place the pieces on the chess board at the end game, wherever you want them straight away. And so it's much more of a considered and individual way of having a conversation. It allows you to sort of fully express everything that you wanted to say. Why don't people do there anymore? Well, because the way we have always lived is that we fought the lowest common

denominator or if you're like we fall to the most convenient denominator and whatever's easiest that is what we do right so it's easy to sit around here saying oh no what a shame that men don't wear suits anymore what a shame that you know we all drive rather than walking or taking you know cycling what a shame that we all text instead of writing letters um but it's easier right and we always just it's just in our nature to do what is easier i guess it's this it's sort of hundreds of millions of years of evolution um are very hard to override and just because it's easy like it is easier to text, right? I've never written you a letter.

I consider you a good friend. I've never written you a letter. You've never written me one, you know? But like, maybe I should have done. Probably I should have done, but look, I haven't. I hardly even respond to your text. That is true as well. Because it's convenient, right?

But this is really important. I think this touches on the broader thing about dating and dating apps is that they are as a whole, not just in terms of this writing thing we're talking about, which is quite narrow, but as a whole, they're just more convenient. and that is why they suck and why no one likes it because convenience we're drawn to it almost against our will kind of compelled by convenience right we just love that's why we all go to the supermarkets

once upon a time you would have had you know the green grocers and the florists and the butcher's and the guy selling nuts and the other one selling you know the cobbler and the shoe shan all these different things you go down a high street in some little village there's like 50 different places you have to go to get what you need these days

we just, you know, go to Tesco or, in your case, I suppose, waitros or something. I'm a Tesco's guy. Have you ever... But sorry, but you see my point. That, like, whatever's convenient we drawn to it, and dating apps are just so convenient, and therefore, they're also pretty boring. I think that's my biggest gripe with them, and I think people would agree, even those who use them a lot and maybe even had success.

Look, I know couples who met on dating apps, and they're wonderful and they're happy, and they're very much in love. I'm not saying it's not possible, but I think that the bigger issue here is the convenience and the way it sort of systematizes romance. This was my big, that I spoke about on the panel. I don't know if you want to jump in, but maybe I'll just talk about this. Like, the way it turns love and romance into something that you can schedule, right? You know, people get home, okay, I'll go on the apps for half an hour.

I'll see what happens. Okay, yeah, great. I've got a date, you know, it's my third date in the past, in this month. It's been a good month then. Okay, and I'll put it in for your Thursday at 6pm. And I think the idea that you can schedule love or romance is very obviously not just wrong, but pretty sad and pretty tragic, I think, because it's denying people what romance and love should give you, which is something, I think, by definition, beyond the boundaries of ordinary life of being scheduled. Right. You know, I have this line, I say to my friends, sometimes it's not love if it's convenient.

you know if it's real love if it's real romance then that means you've got to sacrifice things it means you're going to miss meetings it means you're going to be up late and you're going to be waking up tired or whatever the hell it is it means you're going to have to you know drop out of something you said you're going to go to because you want to go and see this other person instead that's love that's romance it's not convenient but dating apps makes us think okay it's something that we can schedule and then the way we talk about it on the podcast on the shows online um all this dating advice it's pretty um pretty disgusting i think And it's a shame. Discussing is a strong word, but I mean, it's just a shame that people talk about romance and dating and give advice as if it's a game that can be played. It's a system which if you fine tune, just if you twist all the dials in the right way, then you're going to find. And obviously, usually it comes from the, all this advice is kind of men speaking to men. Men have been led to believe that if they, as I say, if they fine tune themselves and if they schedule everything correctly, then they'll, I don't know, find loves, I guess, but who believes that? I don't know. I don't know if anyone

really believes that. Optimizing, optimizing for the dating market. The dating market is a phrase that gets thrown around quite a lot. And think about that for a second. The dating market, it's the sort of a consumerist analogy for relationships. And from what you're saying, it sounds like love is not something to which a consumerist analogy could ever appropriately apply. Yeah, not love. I mean, it's funny mentioned, I guess we are literally, anyone who uses the apps, dating apps, we are customers if we're doing it. I mean, they are corporations, right, and we're using it, we get shan adverts. They have a system which I use to make money. So if you are using, you are literally, you are literally, not even speaking as an analogy, but you are literally a customer in the dating market.

That being said, of course, I'm sure you're very perceptive and well-read listeners will know. dating markets aren't exactly a new thing you know if you look i don't think in the 16th century there was much in the way of romance in the in these marriages are organized between the big aristocratic families you know it was purely or least chiefly about power and about um what was most expedient which is in a way even more uh even more what's the word even more materialistic or even even more consumerist you have now you know but that's why the love stories that are popular from these time periods and onwards tend to have this motif of something which isn't allowed. Exactly, exactly.

Not because it's like taboo, not because you're gay, but because it's out of line with the family organization and therefore it's real. And therefore it's real love. One of the most famous medieval romances, I'm sure you know, Tristan and is older. I don't. So I can remember this is one of these romances which has written again and again and again. and it's actually set in Britain, but I think the most famous version of it is a German epic written in the 13th century. Wagner made it into an opera, one of his most beautiful operas that changed music forever with the famous Tristan chord. Anyway, but that's about a knight who's sent by the king to go and escort his bride to be.

Right, but then, so he goes to escort this bride to be, and Tristan, and the bride is old, fall in love. And it all ends pretty tragically, I think. I can't remember exactly. maybe there were different endings. But the point being yes, right? That's good. It's literally, even in those days, people recognize that this dating market, this marriage market wasn't about love and therefore the stories they read about love were something forbidden, as they are today. I mean, every single song is about love, every single film is about love. Why do we go to cinema and watch these TV shows and films about love and listen to songs about love? You know, it's very rare that they're about people who met on dating apps, I guess. And when they are, it's usually comedy.

suppose. Because it can be quite funny. And also, sorry, on that point about historical parallels, that we're not talking about some sort of idealised, lost, lost, you know, way, society of love that we now, that we've now replaced with our dating apps. It was maybe no different in the past. Look at Henry VIII and his wives, the famous case of the portrait of Catherine of Aragon, I guess. She seems very beautiful. Henry meets her in person and he says, oh dear, you don't look quite like you did in the portrait, I saw a review. He was catfished. Yes, exactly. He was literally, and I suppose it was easier to do it in those days than it is now. So it's not like things were perfect in the past, and I really don't mean to say that at all. That doesn't

mean there are things that we've lost that we can learn from, or at least parallel to draw, which help us see most clearly what we're missing, because I think everyone would agree that we're missing something, right? How often do you hear somebody to say, you know what? Romance in the 21st century is great. I love the apps, you know, I love dating apps. I love the way we represent ourselves online, you know, all this, all this, all this stuff. No one, do people say that? I guess not. But has anyone ever said that?

The reason I'm asking about this concept of modern love is that we were just talking about how it used to be that these love stories were real because they were against the typical structure of families deciding who their children are going to marry. In those days, people wouldn't have said, oh, I love how our romantic system is set up, that everyone's, you know, marrying the proved. But, like, obviously it's a unique situation we're in. I think that, like, I understand when people say nothing ever changes and history repeats itself and human nature is still the same,

but I do think that there are some genuinely revolutionary moments to pinpoint in human history. One of them is the invention of the internet. And it's revolutionary effect on communication technology. And I think that might do something qualitative to, you know, you know, how we love each other. But it's, yeah, it's never been the case that people have looked around and gone, like, I'm really happy with how this is all going.

I'm really happy with the state of modern love. Yeah, exactly. I mean, no one's ever said that about anything. I mean, there's a line in my upcoming book, which is something like when you read history, you learn that nobody was ever happy because of their times. They were always happy despite, or at least notwithstanding their times. And I think that's as true now as it ever was. Yeah, I should mention the book that you've got coming out.

It will be available for pre-order probably at some point, maybe even right now. Hopefully by the time people listen to this, it will be available. However you're announced, the link will be in the description. Yeah, and we can flash a cover. That would be great. Over there, we can have it, you know, appearing now, as I say, these words somehow. It's just floating somewhere in between us. It's gorgeous, isn't it?

It's a beautiful looking cover that you've got there. Brilliant use of colour. um book club on monday gym on tuesday date night on wednesday out on the town on thursday quiet night in on friday it's good to have a routine

and it's good for your eyes too because with regular comprehensive eye exams at specksavers you'll know just how healthy they are visit specksavers.cavers.cai to book your next i exam Eye exams provided by independent optometrists. You were just speaking a moment ago about supermarkets, right, and the sort of convenience overcoming our desire for beauty. It is interesting how everybody simultaneously knows

that convenience is destructive of meaning, purpose, beauty, all of this kind of stuff, and yet choose it every single time. And it's the depressing thing about the sort of, swift tide of modernity is that it is irreversible. Like once cars have been invented, you just can't go back to a horse and carriage unless it's some kind of novelty with some

poor abused horse in New York City running around Central Park. You can't go back. How then do we regain what was so good about the love for the past now? Things like

the letter writing, you know? Things like Like, that feeling that absence makes the heart grow fonder. It's like if you spend so much time away, when you finally see each other, it's, it's beautiful and romantic. Whereas today, now it's like, I've got to text every single day and I've got to check my phone and I've got to, you know, and it sort of has a totally different kind of vibe. Yeah, absolutely. How do you, well, maybe we can actually talk about that convenience stuff as it applies more broadly to society, to heart, to architecture. Oh, yeah. Well, in fact, have you heard of the, have you heard of the fake clock towers on supermarkets in the UK?

I've not, I mean, I've seen them. You know what I'm talking about. Yeah, you know, my Morrisons, I remember where I grew up and there was the Scunthot, but there was the Morrisons. I remember every time you drove into town, you'd be a clock tower. So they've got these like, they're quite beautiful. They look like village churches or something. And they've got a clock tower and it's like a Tesco. It's like a supermarket, it's like the equivalent of like, I guess, like a Walmart or something in the old target in the US.

Have you ever noticed those clocks don't work? Never noticed. Those clocks, like, they basically never tell the correct time because they're not actually clock towers. What happened was in the 1970s, a town in Essex, I pulled it up here, called South Woodham Ferris was being laid out in Essex. And there were like strict rules about what you're allowed to do because it's a nice little town. kind of, I don't know the exact rules, it kind of had to look a bit like a barn, it had to use a particular brickwork, it had to be in keeping with the style of the town. And when Tesco come along, I want to build a supermarket, supermarkets are known for being these horrible

utilitarian buildings. And they said, no, you're not allowed. You have to make it fit in. So they basically faked this like beautiful looking building. It looks like a barn with a clock tower. And because they didn't actually care for keeping the time, most of those clocks just don't even work anymore. I'm not even sure if they worked in the first place. That's why, if If you ever drive past one of these supermarkets, see if the clock actually works, because half the time they're not even there. And this is an example of somebody sticking their foot down and saying, I know supermarkets are more convenient, but recognizing the trade-off that that has brought. One trade-off is, of course, you don't go to the market and your individual salesman. And obviously, that would be a massive pain if you actually need to get your shopping down.

But there was something probably romantic about walking around saying hello to your local butcher, you know. But another thing that has been lost is the fact that because it's so utilitarian, it's just like one big building and it's a conglomerate that doesn't care about beauty. And so this is one example of how knowing that, you can fight against it by saying, okay, you can build a Tesco, but you have to make it look like a clock tower. And the clock doesn't even need to bloody work. I don't care. Just make it look beautiful. Is there something like that that we could do to bring back love, man, letter writing, all of that kind of good stuff? I guess that's a wonderful example

I know the kind of thing we should probably do more often I mean I think this conversation is so I really overdone you know every single time you open your web browser or go on whatever BBC News as an article about how dating apps are causing all this harm and sending everyone

crazy and stuff so again we all know it's a problem how do you solve it well I think in a way the good news is that it's not that hard right I mean things are now also better than have ever been before in so many different ways. And in many ways, all you have to do is just not use one, right? You just don't use the apps and that forces you to actually live in the real world. Same with the supermarket thing. Like, I can sit here moaning about supermarkets, but if I

really wanted to, there are still butchers. I could go to the butcher to get my sausages rather than going to Tesco, whatever it is. Same with dating. You refuse to use the apps, right? It's scary. You've got to be bold. You've got to be courageous. You've got to live in the real world and take chances and see what the hell happens. But it can be done and it works. And we all know people who've met their partners in real life, which is, again, it's such a strange phrase to use, right, the idea that you have to specify, oh, yeah, we met in real life. My partner and I have a very, very old thing that we can now say in 2025. And I don't think it's any more complicated. I mean, there are maybe some issues further down the line. And at the panel I did, there was some

really interesting discussions where there were some men in the audience who, I was kind of saying this, you know, like I just, just forget the apps, go out there into real world and live and see what happens and be willing to embrace the inconvenience of romance. And then some men in the audience were like, well, we feel uncomfortable approaching women and that sort of thing. And then we got into the whole, I mean, that kind of took the discussion in a different direction. I guess it's not really the kind of thing you normally talk about on your channel, although it's adjacent, I suppose, issues of masculinity and toxic masculinity and the relationship between men and women. And I don't know if you want to talk about that.

It's certainly a very interesting, but it's very depressing. What do you think is going on? I mean, you mentioned earlier this. You said, disgusting when you described. I can't remember exactly what you were describing, but it was something about the way that... It was about how, when dating has been turned into something that you schedule. Yeah, and like...

It's the whole sort of podcast to form to the bed of way. I realize that's low-hanging fruit, so that. But the sort of mentality of like, you wake about this. time and you do this and then you do this and the whole the whole spectrum of productivity which on the whole on the whole I guess has been good for people but the whole the whole productivity the whole productivity way of being and thinking which I guess has taken over the world or at least the West I guess in the last 10 years has pushed out and I think that's what I when I used all disgusting I meant the

way romance has been turned into something you can schedule what what's so resonant for so many people then like with things like the manosphere and in the dating market and the optimizing for approaching women and all of this kind of stuff. Like, why is that exciting to people if the thing that used to excite people were stories about people sneaking off in the night to elope with their lover? Sure. I mean, those stories still do excite people. I mean, just look at what's on in the cinema, the kind of things people watch

when they're home on Amazon Prime or whatever it is, wherever we get our TV these days. The romantic stuff hasn't changed much, I don't think, in the last. basically last 3,000 years since since the dawn of storytelling, romance stories have been more or less more or less the same. Why do they find it exciting? Why does it appeal? The kind of the manosphere way of being, I think, gosh, where to begin? I think one is that the alternative probably hasn't been presented. Like this stuff is kind of about education. Like I'm not saying I'm exactly a paragon of romantic love and sort of a different kind of masculinity. That's what I'm saying at all. But I definitely have a different view to a lot of people my age or a lot of young

gentlemen our age. And that's probably just because when I was a young boy, I spent most of my time in secondhand bookshops, like reading these old books. And I think through them, I got a kind of education, like unwittingly, but I got a different kind of education than I would have got had I spent all those formative years watching sitcoms or as, young people do now, just scrolling Instagram. I think without meaning to I stumble into a slightly different, slightly more old-fashioned, but I think fundamentally timeless way of thinking about things. Again, I don't uphold all these values, and I'm not even saying that it's about values, but it's just ways of thinking about the world and ways of being. So I think it's to do with education.

If people haven't ever seen anything different, how could they know that there is anything different? So who writes well on love? Oh, gosh. Okay. Now we're talking. Well, I remember one of the first things I read that really moved me on love was Dante, so The Divine Comedy, you all know it, which I think is always kind of misunderstood. I mean, so Dante from Florence, born in 1265, he falls in love with the young Beatrice Portonari. He's absolutely devoted to her. She dies very, very young.

Dante later marries a woman called Gemma, I think, and has children. We only know about Gemma because of the historical records. never mentions her once in all his writings. It's Beatrice he loves. And the whole of, as far as I can tell, the whole of the divine comedy is basically his attempt to reshape Christian theology around his love for Beatrice to justify the fact that he seems to see God through her. You know, it's remarkable. But something else he wrote first, I think when he was 25. Well, no, he was 27. He wrote something called La Vita Nuova, the New Life. And it's kind of a poetical treatise. It was partly written to introduce a new style of poetry

that him and his friends were coming up with in Florence in the 13th century. This kind of vernacular Italian style of poetry which was then pretty revolutionary. He was partly to justify that but it was also about his love for Beatrice and he was writing about

and there's this one sort of funny scene in La Vita Nuevo when he describes going to a party, I think of some sort of the 13th century Florentine equivalent and Beatrice is there with her friends and he's nearby and they all look at him

and they're kind of whispering and they start laughing and he just bursts into tears and leaves the party and throws himself on his bed and I know I mean this is a bit of a tangent but I thought that particularly

a little scene was beautiful because it kind of made me realise hold on this is the kind of thing that happens now you know we haven't changed that much people still get so ashamed and they overthink things and they worry

when they see the person they like they're kind of laughing and God of them must be laughing at me anyway forget a lot I think Dante Wright is a very very beautiful on love. And he wrote about it with such a tenderness and a gravity and a weight, which I think

we're kind of losing now. I mean, that's what's missing from all of this manosphere crap is like the tenderness, which is supposed to be about love. Because I suppose tenderness is like soft and mushy and feminine and does not optimize you for, you know, competing for the top 20% of women on the Tinder app or whatever. And there is something to be said for the fact that like if you just like try to be, if you try to like do the romantic thing, if you're like, no, I'm not like these other guys. I'm tender and I'm so then it is actually just a bit mushy and unattractive.

So it's kind of... No, I agree. It's going to be authentic. It's sort of a difficult thing to... But I think this romantic stuff is a calling it is authentic. But the point is it's an authentic access to a way of thinking. in a way of loving and a way of feeling that the current manosphere system doesn't give you access to it if you're a man. It's not that you're doing it for the sake of it. The point is these romantic gestures, I mean, letters and like flowers and I mean, these are all very,

very sort of stereotypical examples, you know, sort of contrasting that with the whole, you know, there were plenty of stereotypes from either side. But anyway, these grand romantic gestures aren't about doing it for the sake of doing it in order to be romantic. The point of them is that they're kind of symbols of deeper feelings, which are harder to give voice to, which are harder to explain, right? That doesn't the meaning of any of these things that we do. But at that point, you can kind of talk about the whole meaning of symbols and tradition and even beauty, which will lose across society. This is the rule of modernity and the rule of convenience, is that you lose everything. And I guess that's the value of these romantic gestures, is that they would allow

mentor to that yeah the tenderness thing is so interesting um who else then writes well on love because i love everything you just said about dante i think the way what is it you said that like he seems to sort of reorient christian theology he reshaped christian theology um around his love for bed he said something about how he like saw god through her or something which is just such well what happens he goes through hell yeah goes to pergatory who meets him the top of purgatory, right? Virgil says, you know, farewell, Dante, I can't help you anymore. Here's Beatrice, your great love. And she's going to take you to heaven. I mean, imagine that the magnitude of that passion, you know, the word passion. I think this is funny. Like, words are so interesting

in this whole, the dating app, dating app, dating advice, dating market, culture, all these books about them, all these podcasts about them. Like, think of the words that we use. I don't think words, I don't know, I guess I don't listen to it to a lot of this, I'm not, maybe you do, I'm not sure, but words like passion or adventure. I don't know if they're used very often, but I watch, you know, how to pick up women videos every single evening and I don't think I've heard those words use ones. Tenderness and sweetness and gentleness. But these are parts of the human condition also, and I think they're a major part of masculinity. I mean, there's this wonderful I was talking to somebody about it the other day it seems like the kind of conversation I would have had with you but I don't think it was maybe it was David anyway

if you take this sort of the ideal modern man as he's if you sort of took AI and said you know please a person could do it of course I guess but listen to all these podcasts watch all these videos and like create the ideal modern man what would he be like how do you act and how would he behave

then you take that and compare it to the medieval ideal of a knight. And again, I know we're talking in ideals here, and I recognize that not all medieval knights were like this, but at least in terms of what they said they wanted to be like, right? And sort of humility and modesty and gentleness were major parts of the code of chivalry, right? You know, when you read these romances, these knights were, in some sense, hypermasculum, because they walked around with swords wearing armour, literally fighting to the death with other men and going to war. But at the same time, in the presence of, of, of, of, you know,

of women and even in the presence of other men. They could be very tender and they were supposed to be, you know, that they're expected to be able to compose poetry and write songs. And that element of gentleness and tenderness, which is present in the medieval ideal of masculinity, has kind of disappeared now. And I mean, I don't... But people famously find artsy people attractive,

especially like stereotypically women find men who like can write poetry play the guitar like have these kinds of artistic types of skills i mean they also find people attractive who are like good at sports and stuff that's probably more like manospherey like dominance and physical fitness and kind of stuff but there's also that sort of soft attractiveness to the to the person who does art and there's something that seems to be tying together like the arts and romance and I wonder if like

you think that being in touch with art and music and poetry and stuff makes you more like able to access this kind of love that you're talking about or if it's like the other way around being in love makes you appreciate the arts

the things you consume like completely change who you are right and like I mean God this is not very hard to imagine the difference But let's say, you know, you're a young man and your view of women has been shaped by, you know, films, TV shows, Instagram. And probably if you're a young man by pornography, okay, that's how you've come to understand women before you've probably ever really spoken to one in real life in any serious way. Now imagine if instead of those things, your view of them have been shaped by, and maybe it sounds strange to people that this could even be possible. and maybe it sounds strange or pathetic, but it's true. Imagine your view had been shaped by poetry and by the great novels and by art as well.

Imagine the difference, I mean, look, plenty of art is pretty pornographic, and I think a lot of 19th, 18th century art, it was sort of the closest they could get to it before it was possible. But that being said, if your view of women has been shaped by pornography or paintings, I mean, look at some of the great pre-Ratholite painters. we're here in Oxford in the Oxford Union, just through there, in the old library, you've got the great murals by a bunch of pre-Rath-like painters. Look at Rosetti's

painting of women, Dante Gabriel Rosetti, look at his paintings of his beloved Lizzie Siddell, you know, he loved her, and she died. And just the sheer I'll use as well, again, the magnitude of passion and devotion in his paintings of her. It can't fail to move

you if you've got a heart. And if you're a young man and you've, and the way you've been taught by the things you've consumed to shape women, if that's Rosetti's paintings of Elizabeth Siddell or it's pornography, right? That's going to affect how you act, how you think, what you even believe is possible, what you know to be possible. What you desire. Well, yeah, what you desire. I think so. What you think you desire. But I think what you think you desire, because I, yeah, these are all, these are aberrations, but I think

that aberrations. And you can come back to the true course. And I think, um, I think men may be Deep down, know this. They are deeply dissatisfied. Pornography is worse for you than smoking. It's just about the worst thing there is, I think, for a man. I think it's terrible. And how to, so going back to the original question of, I guess, how to, is how to find this alternative way. Not to mention how bad it is for women as well.

It's, that's another thing that kind of, I think, gets lost in the discussion, in the sort of manosphere discussion. Pornography comes up a lot and how utterly harmful it is. Well, why is it so harmful? well, you know, it gives you a rectile dysfunction and it ruins your interactions with women and it makes you, you know, naturally less able to approach. It's like, have we also just forgotten that it is also just this hub of trafficking of women? I think like the badness for women often gets left out of that conversation. And that's the main thing. That's the main thing, sure.

But you're right that that must have an effect. I mean, there's a lot of discussion about how pornography and our sort of cultural addiction to it, has affected the way people have sex. It changes what people expect, you know, women report men choking them and just expecting that that's just the normal thing to do and not even asking first or this kind of stuff. And that's new. That has to be pornography. But I don't think I really hear discussed how it might affect, like, love, you know? Do you think that the topic of sex is as attached to the topic of romance

historically as it is today seems like we've got less of a taboo about talking about sex and so maybe not so much in the past or if so kind of implicitly it's less to be now but it's always been there implicitly always always always and all the art and maybe the beauty of

that art and literature is a way of thinking about it is that you know taboos serve a very powerful purpose right sometimes in a good way sometimes in a bad bike You know, look at, of course, the thing where you don't say Voldemort's name, you know, makes him more scarier. But sometimes taboos, I think, help you because some things kind of shouldn't be said or can't be said. Nietzsche had those great lines, although translated apparently inaccurately, but very lovingly by Harold Bloom.

Something like, what is it, is it something like as soon as you speak, then the feeling that those words are giving voices. to is already dead. Something along those lines. Like, if you say something, it's already dead within you. To be able to say it means it's gone. And it's kind of like, it's slightly troubling idea, but there's some truth to that. And I think some things you, you know, ellipsis is so powerful, it's such a powerful rhetorical and illiterary tool.

So like, you know, imagine there's a shot of you on Friday night, like just leaving work. There's a film about Alex O'Connor shot Friday leaves work, shot Monday morning. You're like flat out on the sofa, you know, in a mess. like, okay, he's had a wild weekend. You know, you understand that just like that. You don't need to show it all. And in a way, it's actually more effective just to show the two shots. They call that ellipsis? I think that's called ellipsis. Yeah, I've noticed that in, um, one area, I keep seeing that kind of thing. And I think this is how to avoid cheesiness in films.

I realize, this might be a bit of a detour, but like, I was thinking about how to write scenes that involve, like, quite dramatic moments of culmination, either telling someone that their child has died at war, or finally saying, I love you, or asking somebody out or something like that. And it's very difficult not to make it cheesy and clunky, because in real life, those moments are cheesy and clunky. I don't know if you've ever had to tell someone that someone they know has died. There's no, like, proper formal way to do it. It is just a bit, sort of like, But it's, ah, well, a bit of a bug at this, really. It's clunky and it makes for difficult viewing.

And so unless you're just going to own that, the easiest way to do it is to show the car coming up the driveway and, you know, the woman whose husband has been at war looking and looking shocked. And then immediately it just cuts to her crying because you sort of, you sort of know what it means. I can't remember exactly who I was talking to recently about how this is really well done in the UK office. when Tim asks Dawn out and you know they've got like microphones on and he finally builds up the confidence he walks in he says come into this room and they just take off the microphones

and then he just like walks out and just sort of looks at the camera and goes like she said no you know by the way and then walks off and it's so much more powerful because you don't have to try to invent what would be this quite clunky because words aren't actually the same thing

as the thing we're feeling but they're not the same thing as the great, you know, ancient Greek philosopher, Pratilus knew. He thought he thought he just famously waggled his fingers, and he refused to talk. Yeah, and the thing that makes for good TV is conveying the feeling, which in a real situation like that, where somebody is, you know, asking somebody out or something, the only person who's feeling that thing is going to be them, and the words will never actually be a proper representation of the feeling. And so if you try to represent it on TV with the words, you get something

kind of clunky and inaccurate. It's not just clunky. I think it's always disappointing. It's always unfulfilling. It's like, well, yeah, like, fulfillment is such an interesting concept, I guess, in art and in real life. Yeah, so it's always, it's always disappointing to show it, I think, which is why going back to where we started, which is why ellipsis is so powerful, sorry, which is why taboos around, like, you know, even when you read the Victorian stuff, the famously prudish society, and, you know, I guess we're kind of still raised in that anti-Victorian mindset, which has dominated this country for the past 100 years, where

was sort of raised to view them as very hypocritical. Because on the service, they had this morality where they refused to, you know, like, for example, when they translated the ancient Romans from Latin into English, the Romans were very filthy in everything they wrote, right? When the Victorians translated them, they sanitised the language, the poetry of Catalyst, whatever. When planning for life's most important moments, sometimes the hardest part is simply knowing where to start. That's why we're here to help. When you pre-plan and prepay a celebration of life with us, every detail will be handled with simplicity and professionalism, giving you the peace of mind that you've done all you can today to remove any burden from your loved ones tomorrow.

We are your local Dignity Memorial provider. Find us at Dignitym memorial.ca. The Dignity Memorial brand name is used to identify a network of licensed funeral cremation and cemetery providers owned and operated by affiliates of Service Corporation International. But even when you're with the Victorian stuff, it's very evident, like if you actually use your brain a little bit, you can see when they're referencing things that are taboo like sex. And I think it in a way is what makes that historical art maybe more powerful and more meaningful and more exciting. Look at like Wagner, again, to mention him, his operas, especially the ring cycle, they're punctuated by moments that are very, very, I guess, erotic. You know, like in the end.

of, I think it's, I guess, Siegfried when he goes to the mountaintop and walks through the flames and he's united with Brunhilde, right? You don't see them making love on stage. Knowing each other in the biblical sense. Yeah, exactly. But it's implied. But then the kind of mythical setting of it and the way they sing about their feelings and the nature of the union is like, is really impactful. And I think more ultimately moving impactful than if in the 21st century, of course, you know, if we make a TV show or a film, where we just show everything. Really, we like our, we're very, very prurient now. I mean, we like the details with these things.

And I guess it's just disappointing. And worst of all, I think it's, it's a bit boring, you know. It's boring to just put the thing down as it is. It's the beauty of ellipsis, and it's the beauty of all these older forms of art where there's always something more you can't quite see, you can't quite say, and I think that elevates romance and love

and certainly what we like now is in 21st century I don't think we were raised to talk about in these terms and culturally there's very little belief in the transcendental power of love I think now which is a shame because it's there and I think people know this as well people know it's there but we're not we're not we don't talk about it I mean it's hard to talk about

but you think you can direct people towards it or away from it and I think to take everything we've just been talking about and return to dating apps, it's just a little bit, a little bit boring. You know, when you just talked about this censorship in translations by the Victorians, it made me think of, I just spoke to Dermot McCulloch, the historian of the church, and in his recent book about a history of sex in Christianity, he points out that there's this verse in the book of Ezekiel, which it says something like

she lusted after her lovers whose genitalia were like donkeys and whose omissions were like those of a horse. It's like this very explicit sort of donkey language describing genitalia. And when Thomas Kramner puts together the Book of Common Prayer, he systematizes a way of

getting through the Bible day by day, but he omits a few parts and he omits this verse from Ezekiel and says, I quote, that it is, he emits those parts which are the least edifying and might best be spared and therefore are left unread. It just made me think of that interesting sort of tidbit of censorship history. My brain was just thinking about the fact that, yeah, okay, in the same way that it's really easy to get up and say like dating apps and marketplace and come on, everyone. just go to the gym and women will like you, it's just as easy to say, oh, that's all so stupid.

Oh, and the manosphere doesn't have a good, you know, relationship to love and all of this kind of stuff. And I don't want to make this too cheap because, like, there is some truth in it, right? Absolutely. Men who go to the gym are stereotypically, maybe even just typically more attractive, all other things being equal to women. You know, some women say, actually, I prefer a dad bod. I prefer this. That's certainly true.

But, like, there's got to be something to it. It's got to be something to the fact that if you are a more like confident person and you, you know, watch classes and how to become more charismatic to the extent that they might actually work, which a lot of the time they probably don't, that must actually do something. That it's not like it's this completely like baseless movement of people who are totally confused. Like it does work in in some respect. At the very least, the people who a lot of young men are looking up to for advice, even if the advice is kind of. like dead or silly the qualities that they are admiring in that person will not be their tenderness and their ability to quote long passages of Dante but their biceps and their confidence right so there's got to be something in it yeah i mean i will i first will say that i i agree that i don't

want to make it seem like i'm just just crapping on the whole thing and saying it's all worth us That's obviously not the case. I think maybe sometimes I speak a little bit strongly because it is so dominant and I think it's important to represent not even a mutually exclusive alternative, but a at least partially exclusive and certainly alternative way of being

that is underrepresented. Sure, yeah, of course there's value in it and I mean, how many, the highest level, how many lives have been saved by this sort of thing? I'd have thought a lot, how many lives have been improved a lot. I mean, it's just better to be healthier and going to the gym as part of that and all this other associated stuff.

I think there is, there's virtue there. But certainly in as much as it relates to dating, I think one of the problems with this conversation, with most conversations of this nature is that we're constantly trying to provide catch-all solutions or catch-all, you know, this is. what this is what men are like, this is what women are like, this is what men want, this is what women want, this is obviously, I mean, this is very obviously not true, that it's basically impossible to speak in those general, in such sweep in terms. I think you can like statistically generalize.

Oh, don't give me statistics, that's, I think that's part of the problem, though. But it's maybe just like an unhelpful way to think about it, even if it's true. You know, there are some, there are some things which like, like statistics might point in a particular direction and it might involve a kind of self-deception. Maybe that's just what love needs, man. Like, sometimes it's just not a helpful, like, framework by which to

think about things. So what isn't, sorry? Like, if there are statistical facts about things that people are attracted to or things like, yeah, I see, I see. Like, I don't know, if there was some statistic about, you know, body shape or something. Like, it may just be true that there is a statistically

preferable body shape for women. Okay, true, but irrelevant. That's what I mean. Yeah, it's like, it's like, so what? Like, who cares about what this is, carry on, I feel like. What I was just thinking is that, like, in the way I'm saying, well, there's, there's got to be some truth in this. There's also some truth in, like, the medieval way of setting up marriage. Like, you want, like, the medieval red pill. It's like, son, I know that you think you're in love, but this is a fleeting emotion, which is a terrible thing to build a relationship on.

Like, have you got any money? Has she got any money? Because if you don't, you're going to have these arguments. Are your values aligned? Like, think about how people might talk today. It's like, I'm going to be real with you here, you know, like, you've got to have a conversation about whether you, whether, you know, is she a feminist and you're a conservative, like Red Pill, bro, like, down the line that's going to cause you trouble. Because when you raise some children, you know, you've got to be, it's all very sort of like practical wisdom. And in a way that has more in common with the way that people would have viewed marriage before in saying, like, okay, there's like this happy go lucky love stuff.

which, like, great, that's very fun and all. But, like, switch your brain on for a second and you'll realize this is a better way of doing things. But the romantic says it's just not a better way of doing things, even if it's true. Even if it's true that I'm not going to have any money and that I'm going to have trouble raising my kids. It's like...

That is all the romantic. And I think it's really important what you mentioned there, right, because this love stuff, romance, it's not necessarily good. Yeah, but that's it, right? That's the point. If you want to say, like, well, all of this kind of, you know, properly organizing marriages around like what makes sense familiarly and in terms of money and this dating market stuff about statistics and you know making yourself a more viable person

and increasing your sperm count that's not what love is all about some people might go like okay then well then love is a fool's errand and we should be focusing on the other stuff but it's kind of the astute but i think as actually you've got to have to have truly like it as i said it's not convenient right like true love just completely upends your your life like all the things you thought you believed in something like I don't know if I do and things are supposed to care about you don't know if you do care about care about them anymore and it keeps you awake at night you worry you get stressed and you get really sad but then also you're related in a way you never have been before no this is so

important like yeah I don't people think they want love but I think maybe they don't maybe they do just want something more um stable and unsuccessful which is this isn't about better or worse but that's also to be praised but yeah I think we've got to recognize that Yes, remember the true love of Paris and Helen of Troy launched a thousand ships. Well, that wasn't true love. I think because Paris gave, you know, the wedding of, who was it, Achilles' mother and whoever it was. Paris, you know, Estrife gives the golden apple and says, this belongs to the fairest. The goddesses go to Paris. He picks Aphrodite. I think Athena promises him like political dominion and the common one promises him. And then Aphrodite promises him the most

beautiful woman in the world if he chooses her for the apple he gives her the apple so he gets helen she doesn't even like that's a funny thing about the iliad helen is just constantly moaning about how much of a coward and how much of paris is um and then it's a funny funny book that really funny but paris loves helen yeah he seems to love her and he seemed relatively willing and look why hey look man we got a big war look what we got a bloody good book from it a load of great poetry that's true you know it's like awesome wells says in the third man. He's seen the third man? No.

Yeah, I didn't think so. Great film, directed by Carol Reid, written by Graham Green. I think it was once voted the best British film ever made. He said in Vienna in 1947, it's an amazing, amazing film. Anyway, there's a line in it where Orson Wells, his character, he says, and his friend is kind of having to go with him

because he's indulging in a life of crime. And he's like, you look, in Italy, in the 15th century, under the 16th century under the Medici and the Borgers and all these warring families and there was all the strife chaos conquering plague all of this right despite all of the political chaos and strife you got the renaissance and then in he says in Switzerland you know 500 years of peace and brotherly love and what do you get the cuckoo clock basically um it's a nice nice way of thinking about the difference between peace and and and war so should we okay

That's one hell of a tangent, but I think it might bring us back around. Should we be going after love then? Yeah, exactly. I don't know. The way that you've just described it, like if you were talking to a robot who had no feeling of love, and they said, oh, what is this love thing? You said, well, love completely upends your life, it's inconvenient, it rubs against the grain, it sometimes involves self-deception, it involves abandoning your family and betraying

your friends, and it can launch wars, and the robot's like, so what? What's the, I don't get it, what are you doing this for? And you're just like, it just feels good, man. Like, is that a good enough justification? Maybe not. But it's the most alive you can ever feel. The most alive, I think. Most like burningly and deeply alive and away.

It's transcendental. And it's funny, you mention the thing you've got to experience it. I guess it's like any sort of argument from experiences. It's like meditating, you know? people, I mean, I've never tried it, but people talk about meditating from the Hindu or Buddhist tradition. It's like, you can't actually understand it just by reading about it. But once you've meditated and you've connected to the universal one, then you'll understand it. Or if you're a propagandist for drugs, I guess it's like, you know, trying to convince someone who should take psychedelics.

It's like, you know, you won't know until you've done it and then you'll see it. I guess ultimately love is the same thing. It's just that we have this like this wealth of material going back to the beginning of humor civilization about how good it is. Because it feels great, but yeah, it is destructive. I don't know. I don't know. You're obsessed with drugs, aren't you? You're just obsessed.

Well, love is a drug, they say, which is, I think, true, but kind of is a bit of a boring cliche. I think it's probably easier to imagine when you think about the love that a parent has for a child, in that it's a different kind of love, of course, one hopes. But when you say things like, yeah, like it's really impractical, and you've, You've got to quit your job if you want to provide and you've got to, you know, like give up your pastimes to work a second job to raise money so your kid can go to college or whatever. And I think there's kind of no question about whether that's the right thing to do for most people because even if you haven't experienced the love of a child, people understand that it is just one of the most powerful psychological, biological drives that exists. But you have to sacrifice a lot for a child, right? Exactly. That's what I mean.

And I think it's easier to accept that because in a way, once you have a child, it's your child. and there's this feeling of like, there's like no choice in the matter. The reason it feels more like a choice you have to make, whether it's worth making that sacrifice for romantic love, is because you could love this person or not. You could cut them out of your life, and they would have nothing to do with you. And there's no connection, they're not biologically related,

there's nothing, and you get to make that choice. But if you've decided or found out that you do love them as powerfully as, you know, you might love a child or something, people trivially would do all kinds of things for their son or their daughter and I guess that's probably the way that people treat romantic love too but it is irrational I think yes it may be a nice way to kind of just just not put a lid on that exactly but to kind of summarise I think what this conversation is driving towards it's not so much even directing people towards that thing entirely but it's at least recognizing that it does exist and it is possible and laying it down as an auction that may be worth pursuing and saying that even 21st century in 2025 this overwhelming transcendental love can still be achieved and is what I think maybe I do have to say and I do think it is worth aiming at and I do think it is better than the alternatives I mean I certainly hope that if anybody is

still listening and wonders if it is possible and worth pursuing I think it is and it's risky but what is worth having that isn't risky in the pursuit of it. You know, you obviously have to sacrifice things and you may have to lose things. But that's true. That's true of all in life that's worth having. And there's a really interesting kind of parallel here between religious language, I think, and the language we're used to talk about love. They're very similar.

And even in this practical sense, I mean, if you were to follow Christian scripture to the word, you would have to like, you tell me if I'm wrong, Alex, you're an expert, but you'd have to give up all your possess. You have to stop pursuing any sort of material career in life and go and live among the poor and the sickly. And if I told my mother I wanted to quit my job, not that I really have a real job, but stop doing whatever the hell I'm doing, give away everything I have and go and live with like the sick and the poor, she should be more upset than if I said I wanted to run away, you know, elope with someone I love, I think. Anyway, that's just something that occurred to me there and this interesting parallel between a true embrace of religion and of love.

But this is also reminded me of something else. Just something else I can go back to on, just maybe a quite interesting point, I think, about why this kind of love is, we don't talk about it as much, we find it harder maybe to achieve, perhaps. Something you mentioned earlier, I think you've got to be willing to die for it.

And I think most people would accept I'd like to think, at least notionally, that they would be willing to die for their child. But I don't know how often people would be willing to die for much else in the modern world. I think everything in the 21st century, we sort of live as if the point of life is to live for as long as possible. Like the end game of life is to keep living is how we treat it. It's like everything we do is fine-tuned towards making us safer and unhealthy, which is obviously good up to a point, but you can go too far. There are so many different examples of this. And one of the most interesting is with like fire safety.

We don't want our buildings to burn down because it's just, it's awful. It's awful. But equally, if you make a building as fire safe as possible, it's not a building you would want to live in, right? And I think that's true of life more generally. And I think we're really heading towards a society that prioritises life itself too highly and you know

the juvenile has this great line I wish I could quote it in Latin but I can't but it's something like what is it for the sake of living to throw away the reasons for living or something like that

and I think that's what we're doing and that weirdly enough connects to to love I don't think we really believe in jeopardy and risk and death anymore and I think if you're not willing to die for it then maybe it's not it's not romance

you know that's maybe that probably sounds silly to some people and maybe I've just made it sounds a bit romantic sounds a bit romantic sure I've maybe I've read too many books and maybe you know who knows if I really believe I guess we'll see if ever if everyone put to the test we'll see if I do believe it but I'd like to think I I do um if you know your your friend Cammy what did he say

the the meaning of life is whatever stopping you from killing yourself. Is that what Camus said? Camus did say that. At least it's attributed to him. Sometimes that does happen, doesn't it? Very often happens. The meaning of life being literally whatever is soft of you from kill. My counterpoint, not in a literal sense, my take on that is the meaning of life is whatever

you're willing to die for. And I think that applies in some strange way to love. Anyway, we're probably getting a little bit high in the clouds now. And socrates and all the rest. I think what you're saying is true, and it can sound a bit lofty, but then romance is lofty. Yeah. I think when I was talking to Rabbi David Walpy on the show, I think it was him who said something like, something like the idea that friendship is just injustice, like by definition. That's just like what friendship is.

It's like being willing to basically unjustly prioritize the desires of one person over another. And I guess that's a form of sacrifice. In that case, you're sacrificing ethics. There's a sense in which you want to say if two people are drowning, there should be no reason to save one over the other because they're both equally valuable, but most people would save their friend over a stranger. And that makes sense to people.

And I think a lot of people listening wouldn't even think that would be the wrong thing to do. But it does seem, in a sort of, stripped back literal sense, unjust. and if you're Peter Singer, perhaps, irrational. And maybe, yeah, that is kind of what love is and has to be. And then you've got to make a choice as to whether you want to throw yourself in with the romantics or with the people who will have stable lives and incomes and, you know, I think we should try to make a case for the fact that these aren't mutually exclusive. And I mean, love is really interesting.

I mean, you know, you're, I guess I didn't realize until not so much. many years ago how much love was discussed in philosophy, right? Because I, as I probably shows, steered clearer of philosophy as much as I can for most of my life. But, and it's surprising, what is philosophy, Sheehan? Fine, sure, sure. Yeah, I mean, as in, you know, capital F. Love. Okay, if you go to foils and it's in the philosophy section, that kind of stuff, I guess. Yeah, love of wisdom. But I didn't realize how much, like, romantic love, the love of French. I didn't realize how much that stuff is discussed in both, I guess, in theology and philosophy. I've always approached it thinking, okay, you know, philosophy is about abstract concepts,

theology is about God, and then art. That's where you find love, you know, in paintings and music and literature and films. But it turns out philosophy, people talk about love constantly, right? And they're always trying to figure out what it is, what its role is, and so on and so forth. It's the two places philosophy and theology go wrong. Philosophy goes wrong when it becomes so coldly analytical that it basically doesn't have any content anymore, and it's just a bunch of P's and Cues and symbols. And theology goes wrong when it forgets that the thing that's supposed to,

to be under discussion, certainly in Christian theology is God. And what is God? He is literally love itself. And so Christian theology, at least proper, is about love. And philosophy, maybe not so straightforwardly about love, but shouldn't abandon the personal. Some people, you know, swear by that and die on that hill. They say that, like, I mean, that's the reason analytic philosophy is invented as a way to try to mathematicize this quite sort of airy-fairy all over the place, philosophical ideas. Has it been good for the world? There's no systematization of it. Has it been good for the world? Yes, but it might not have been good for the philosophers. Because it's really useful as a perspective. If you want to see, can this view be formalized and proven? And analytic philosophy

is certainly useful in disproving ideas. If you formalize something and it's a contradiction, then you know it must be false. But there's a reason why, broadly speaking, people see two traditions of philosophy, and they see them as separate, the analytical and the so-called continental. And the continental strand is the narrative, the artsy, that contains something indispensable, such that it's not like philosophy just became analytical and improved in that sense, in the way that science, mathematicized,

Science became something that started to be about maths and proof and systems. It didn't keep the prior stuff. Astronomy didn't like branch off from astrology and both are kind of both considered sciences to the same degree by the academic discipline of like a science department and a university. But in philosophy, they couldn't abandon that stuff. like the mathematicization and syllogization was not a development or an improvement it was a detour or a nook to to dive into but it can never be philosophy in its totality and that's what i think a lot of people's surprise as you are to realize like when you look at philosophy and what people care about as a whole it's it's got a lot more to do with that than yeah an awful about love what it means what exactly it is

I think so. And like I say, it's easy to, it's easy to sort of wax lyrical, not only about how great love is, but also how the modern world has wholly like messed it up and everything. Yeah, yeah, exactly. And I think it's sort of, Karen, care. Though I just mean to say that I'm hoping that

speaking with you like this, I think it's interesting. It's not, it's not just as simple as that. Yeah, it's not as simple as, and it's important, it's so, so easy to take swings at modernity. As I say, it's all people have ever done through history. The one constant is that all they do is moan about how things are. And there was even this, this guy called William Harrison in the 1570s, he was part of this project to write a kind of a history of the world, basically. But his job in this smaller job, which was just to write an account of contemporary England.

So we just went around England looking at maps and speaking to people to create an account of contemporary. life in Elizabethan England. And it's so interesting how much of the stuff sounds like it could have been written today. The most obvious example being he's talking to these old guys and they're just complaining about the fact that rent is going up year after year after year after year and all the landlords. All they care about is ringing as much as they can out of these poor tenants. I mean, that was in the 1570s and obviously you could be saying that now in 2025. So my point being to just taking swings in modernity is so easy. I don't think we're sitting here saying

well we used to have it good now we've messed up now it's crap it's more like okay we know that there are things we're dissatisfied with things that we're missing out on is there anything from the past that could help us figure out how to get to that thing it's not about good versus bad or something about better versus worse it's just about whether or not the past can help us find a better route through the uh thorny future that we kind of see dimly ahead of us And for me, it is probably this implicit assumption in the history of romantic thought that love is supposed to be sometimes a bit foolish. It's supposed to rub against the grain.

It's supposed to be something irrational. I think that's what we need. Are you saying that's what we need now? I think probably, or at least a recognition of that. It might still not be a risk you think is worth taking, but it's worth reminding yourself that if that's what you do want, if love is what you're after, that's probably where you're going to find it. I think so. I would agree. I think that is something that we can point to and say, look, the modern world needs a bit of that because it is becoming increasingly stale.

But I mean, I've got to say, in recent months, the world has become a bit more interesting. And I do sometimes wonder if all the political developments of recent times or products of boredom on the part of people who are just in a kind of a state of life that's as far to advance. I wouldn't be surprised if that's true. But, yeah, I think now things are notwithstanding the political stuff day-to-day. It's just, it's convenient. It's ever more convenient, but it's bought. Like, who likes getting deliveroo?

Like, you know, it's like, oh, man, this is, my living 20, 25, I can just get freaking burritos delivered to my door whenever I want. It's cool when you think about it. It's cool to. Yeah, if we sit down to, oh, well, isn't it? You don't do that. And I don't think anyone likes this convenient life we're living. I mean, if you deprived us of these conveniences, maybe we would appreciate them more. But I don't even know if that's true.

Like, if you force someone to live without a car for a year, they'd probably get used to them and think, you know what, why the hell did I, it's like quitting smoking, right? like or drinking these things when you're doing them are great and it's hard to stop but when you manage to do it you're like actually why if you if you can manage to do it you think why did I ever do that in the first place I didn't need it. The problem is with stuff like the car or social media whatever it's not just you that needs to stop it's society you need to get everyone else to stop and that's the problem too when you said earlier that you can just like oh you can just not use Tinder it's like it's not just the effect that something like Tinder would have on you it's the effect that Tinder has on everybody you can be the person who doesn't use dating

apps and you walk into the bar but everyone's mindset about dating has been already has shifted and been reshaped same thing with pornography it totally it doesn't it's it's it you can give up pornography and you can reorient yourself to true romance but people that you're surrounded by might not have managed to do that and so it's a little bit harder in that regard which is why I think it's something we need to remember on a more no I was literally just thinking as you were talking that we have been we have been kind of in the in the in the cloud a little bit and If anybody is listing what might interest more than anything is, okay, that's all well and good. Like, we're convinced that romance is beautiful and worth pursuing.

We're like, fine, then how the hell do you do it in 2025? Sure. But I think, I mean, there's got so much to unpack there. The first thing, though, is there is hope, right? We aren't living in this sort of end game where everyone is in the Matrix. It hasn't happened yet. Like, plenty of people either don't use dating apps or use them a little bit. And use them and are still fine.

It's not like if you use them once, you just. brain is poisoned forever. It's very easy to be to be hyperbolic about this stuff. I think it's funny literally it's actually almost the opposite is true that things are actually pretty good and it's just that little half percent of opening your eyes a little bit wider or looking in a slightly different place. Suddenly it's like actually everything is great and I think there are plenty of there are plenty of people out there who you could let's say meet who haven't been sort of had their brains and hearts and souls completely eviscerated by the modern world. I think there were very few people, if anybody who's reached that level of sort of spiritual and emotional

psychological degradation. It's not as bad as it seems. Maybe the motif of history is it's always better than it was before, but always feels like it's probably worse. Yeah. And would have been better in the post. Always, always, always. Without, without, like golden age is always in the past, aren't they? Yes. And people forget about the smell. People forget about the piece. It's a bloody how they do. Yeah. Um, yeah, looking to the future, I guess, I don't know, maybe. one day we will just have to ban the internet, I don't know. Like it sounds crazy, but strange things have happened, right? We've

managed to, we're slowly but surely winning the war on smoking, as vaping has appeared, but when it comes to something like, the internet and social media and dating apps, like, we suffer from them now, but in 50 years, that's a long time, these things can go. I think banning pornography is probably the more practical step. Sure, sure, sure. No, I agree,

banning the internet was a little bit... That's a complicated matter because, like, a lot of people want to claim a sort of performative free speech when it comes to pornography. That might be legally difficult, but certainly the idea of regulating it, not just the industry of production, but consumption to the extent that no child should ever be watching it. Absolutely, without doubt. But I think to maybe, I guess, come full circle, although there are broader social changes that need to take place. And we force kids to read Dante as well. Well, yeah, well, the thing is, when you force them to read it's not as good, you've got to kind of come across.

by choice, right? You've got to stumble upon Dante and fall in love with him. But the point being that despite these broader social changes, that may need to happen to reach this utopia that will never reach. That crap almost doesn't matter. Like, when does society ever change in ways that we really want it to without further repercussions that we didn't foresee? That's just, we can be going forever. But in your life day to day, year by year, month by month,

minute by minute, there are small things that you can do to, I think, to embrace a slightly different way of living. And one of them could be not using dating apps, a little bit boring. One of them might be reading Dante. Okay, that's quite exciting. One of them, you know, might be learning just to bloody look up every once in a while. And I look at the sky and think, bloody hell, the sky is blue. Like, that's just, how?

How is this, it's just, you know, almost if you want to cry. It's miraculous. There's a blue sky out there. It's a big blue thing that are there. And you learn to embrace these little wonders and suddenly life, and despite everything else isn't so bad. And you don't need to rely on politicians to do it for you. and nor do you need to rely on podcasters or pseudo-intellectuals like you or me.

You can just go out and, you know, there's plenty of beauty and love in the flowers and the trees. God, that sounds a little bit wishy-washy, but it's true. There's a reason we've been saying it for all of history. Anyway, there's a reason so much poetry has been dedicated to that cause. Yeah. And it's always time. That's the other thing. It's always timeless.

Read a poem from however long ago, if it's not about society, if it's about nature or about love, it's timeless, immediately timeless. So you can understand, notwithstanding the language barrier. There's no context. There's nothing you need to learn. If I gave you down to his love poetry now, you wouldn't need to know anything about the politics of 13th century Italy. You would just get it, right?

Whereas it's funny, then think about the podcasts we're all doing now, the Manusphere stuff, in a hundred years, it will probably be completely, it'll be gibberish because so much of it is fine-tuned towards society we're living in now. Which isn't like, that's fair enough,

that's why it works, but it's an interesting metric for looking at stuff. Like, will it make sense to people, 500 years from now or 100 years from now, if it doesn't, then maybe it's not as worth your time as it seems. Yeah, there we go. Might even be gibberish right now, that remains to be seen. She and Quirk, thanks for coming back on. Alice O'Connor, always a pleasure.

And of course, do you consider buying my book? Oh yeah, the book, bloody hell, it's in the description. It's in the description. It's in the description. I've written it. I've written a book. Let's not milk it. They know that it's down there.

Okay.