It's funny, I read the quoted bit from Scott about "Is it possible to like someone so much that the positive emotion builds on itself" opposite from you--I thought he was terrified about marriage because it was so rare, not because it might happen.
As in, I read it and thought, of course you would want that to happen. That's what affection is. And ideally, it encourages you to act in such a way as to engender it in your spouse as well.
On the subject of the opposite, I always recall a Ray Bradbury story called "A touch of petulance" about a self-fulfilling prophecy. A man went back in time to warn himself not to kill his wife. "Why would I do that?" he responds, and is told that he began to see everything she did in a bad light until he came to hate her--see in everything the "touch of petulance." In the end, of course, he starts to see it because he was so primed. It shows the importance of attitude and interpretation and grace in building the virtuous cycle rather than the vicious.
I was confused enough about that section that I suspect I either misread it, it wasn't meant to be precisely read or it's aiming at a kind of messaging to a group I don't really understand. But I do know people who at least act like and behave consistently like they are worried to sort of throw themselves into the thing in a "give up on how you were for the sake of a chance at something great" way. So while this sort of talks to Scott, it's also just aimed generally at that - like, the way people end up being deliriously happy isn't mind control; it's the end of this whole, complex project based on working to build trust.
And I read it yet a different way: I focused on the "brain knobs and dials are not supposed to get turned up to 100%".
That's a really good general rule: things that "the more you have, the more you want more of them" have left a rather remarkable number of people badly damaged and very dysfunctional. I think--and I think Scott thinks--that marriage is an exception, but that if you pattern-match to fentanyl or meth, which have strongly self-reinforcing tendencies, you might be afraid of that dynamic.
One of the things that has struck me about marriage (8+ years now) is how much more fantastic it is than I was led to believe, even by people who advocated for getting married.
Did I miss the party where you explained what the sweet, sweet reward is?
Having been in several long term relationships that were, while evidently not quite measuring up to the hopes and dreams of both parties, certainly more functional than many marriages, it's not clear to me what the great reward I am missing out on might be by having so far not made a more formalised, legal commitment.
So believe it or not, the actual formalized, legal commitment isn't really a big part of what I'm talking about here. My religious-based conception of "being married" has more to do with having sex and an intentional joining of lives. I'm not expecting everyone to sign on to that, but at least I'm not telling people to go get a piece of paper and an expensive ceremony, if that's what you are getting out of it.
Oh, don't get me wrong: I think we very much agree on the benefits of partnership.
I was just wondering if there was some additional benefit of the piece of paper. I'm not necessarily opposed to the idea of permanence—but on the one hand the thought of realising somewhere down the road that I (or my then-spouse) have made a mistake does alarm me, while on the other I despair at the thought of how easily so many people seem to be able to walk away from a relationship the other partner thought they could rely on. It seems to me that, at least for those who are not intending to raise kids, taking a "we'll keep doing this for as long as it seems like a good idea" approach might be preferable to making promises one might not be able to keep.
(No idea what one ought to do if one does intend to raise kids, though. It seems pretty obviously preferable to have both parents in the family home if possible, and if making a promise to try to make it work no matter what helps make that happen then it's probably not a bad thing, at least from the children's point of view.)
"Having watched that, how much caution did any of those people approach their jumps with? The correct answer is “none”; every part of every motion is 100% optimized for jumping as far as they possibly can; there’s zero other considerations in play. The athletes consider jumping a long way worthwhile, so they do all the things that make them jump as far as possible and nothing else."
This paragraph is completely wrong, I think. Those people approach their jumps with years and years of caution - not just their own, but with the accumulated years of caution gifted to them by their coaches as well. Precisely because of all the caution, precisely because they only move in intensively pre-calculated ways, precisely because they have perfect trust in the organizers to have provided soft sand for them, and precisely because they have trained and learned to leap in a way that avoids injury, they are free at the moment of competition to focus all of their energy on jumping as far as possible.
I don't know if this applies to marriage as well. I guess it does: good marriage laws, supportive families, and shared visions of what marriage mean make for the right kind of environment where you can commit whole-heartedly to the leap.
I been pondering question of close relationships a while now. And I start leaning more heavily into blissfully relationship is a dangerous drug now
Man needs to be a bit hungry, a bit angry and amped up to go and accomplish things in the world.
In a good close relationship he mellows out.
It's not a coincidence imho that men of real accomplishment are almost never permanently in blissfull relationship. At best they have it as something in the background. While their worldly work is a real focus
It's funny, I read the quoted bit from Scott about "Is it possible to like someone so much that the positive emotion builds on itself" opposite from you--I thought he was terrified about marriage because it was so rare, not because it might happen.
As in, I read it and thought, of course you would want that to happen. That's what affection is. And ideally, it encourages you to act in such a way as to engender it in your spouse as well.
On the subject of the opposite, I always recall a Ray Bradbury story called "A touch of petulance" about a self-fulfilling prophecy. A man went back in time to warn himself not to kill his wife. "Why would I do that?" he responds, and is told that he began to see everything she did in a bad light until he came to hate her--see in everything the "touch of petulance." In the end, of course, he starts to see it because he was so primed. It shows the importance of attitude and interpretation and grace in building the virtuous cycle rather than the vicious.
I was confused enough about that section that I suspect I either misread it, it wasn't meant to be precisely read or it's aiming at a kind of messaging to a group I don't really understand. But I do know people who at least act like and behave consistently like they are worried to sort of throw themselves into the thing in a "give up on how you were for the sake of a chance at something great" way. So while this sort of talks to Scott, it's also just aimed generally at that - like, the way people end up being deliriously happy isn't mind control; it's the end of this whole, complex project based on working to build trust.
And I read it yet a different way: I focused on the "brain knobs and dials are not supposed to get turned up to 100%".
That's a really good general rule: things that "the more you have, the more you want more of them" have left a rather remarkable number of people badly damaged and very dysfunctional. I think--and I think Scott thinks--that marriage is an exception, but that if you pattern-match to fentanyl or meth, which have strongly self-reinforcing tendencies, you might be afraid of that dynamic.
One of the things that has struck me about marriage (8+ years now) is how much more fantastic it is than I was led to believe, even by people who advocated for getting married.
Did I miss the party where you explained what the sweet, sweet reward is?
Having been in several long term relationships that were, while evidently not quite measuring up to the hopes and dreams of both parties, certainly more functional than many marriages, it's not clear to me what the great reward I am missing out on might be by having so far not made a more formalised, legal commitment.
So believe it or not, the actual formalized, legal commitment isn't really a big part of what I'm talking about here. My religious-based conception of "being married" has more to do with having sex and an intentional joining of lives. I'm not expecting everyone to sign on to that, but at least I'm not telling people to go get a piece of paper and an expensive ceremony, if that's what you are getting out of it.
Oh, don't get me wrong: I think we very much agree on the benefits of partnership.
I was just wondering if there was some additional benefit of the piece of paper. I'm not necessarily opposed to the idea of permanence—but on the one hand the thought of realising somewhere down the road that I (or my then-spouse) have made a mistake does alarm me, while on the other I despair at the thought of how easily so many people seem to be able to walk away from a relationship the other partner thought they could rely on. It seems to me that, at least for those who are not intending to raise kids, taking a "we'll keep doing this for as long as it seems like a good idea" approach might be preferable to making promises one might not be able to keep.
(No idea what one ought to do if one does intend to raise kids, though. It seems pretty obviously preferable to have both parents in the family home if possible, and if making a promise to try to make it work no matter what helps make that happen then it's probably not a bad thing, at least from the children's point of view.)
"Having watched that, how much caution did any of those people approach their jumps with? The correct answer is “none”; every part of every motion is 100% optimized for jumping as far as they possibly can; there’s zero other considerations in play. The athletes consider jumping a long way worthwhile, so they do all the things that make them jump as far as possible and nothing else."
This paragraph is completely wrong, I think. Those people approach their jumps with years and years of caution - not just their own, but with the accumulated years of caution gifted to them by their coaches as well. Precisely because of all the caution, precisely because they only move in intensively pre-calculated ways, precisely because they have perfect trust in the organizers to have provided soft sand for them, and precisely because they have trained and learned to leap in a way that avoids injury, they are free at the moment of competition to focus all of their energy on jumping as far as possible.
I don't know if this applies to marriage as well. I guess it does: good marriage laws, supportive families, and shared visions of what marriage mean make for the right kind of environment where you can commit whole-heartedly to the leap.
I been pondering question of close relationships a while now. And I start leaning more heavily into blissfully relationship is a dangerous drug now
Man needs to be a bit hungry, a bit angry and amped up to go and accomplish things in the world.
In a good close relationship he mellows out.
It's not a coincidence imho that men of real accomplishment are almost never permanently in blissfull relationship. At best they have it as something in the background. While their worldly work is a real focus