Alain de Botton on Love etc.

[Pavel Mosko]

A fan thread for author and speaker Alain de Botton.


I somehow got to watching videos about marriage and relationships and eventually stumbled on this video. It's a funny but also thought provoking video from a obvious secular author and thinker on modern relationships. He spends the first half of the video talking about the fallacies we inherited from the Romantic movement, and then spends the other half talking about a "Curriculum of Love" that we should learn to help ourselves through when the marriage or relationship hits the rough patch.

A few quotes for folks that don't want to watch the video.


Rather than some notional idea of perfect complementarity, it is the capacity to tolerate dissimilarity that is the true marker of the 'right' person.
— Alain de Botton, The Course of Love: A Novel


You have to be quite heavily invested in someone to do them the honor of telling them you’re annoyed with them.
— Alain de Botton, Successful Parenting


Most of what makes a book 'good' is that we are reading it at the right moment for us.
— Alain de Botton, via twitter.com

 

[VMaeLove]

I may not find time to watch that video but I believe that first quote very much.

 

[MehGuy]

Been a while since I heard that name..

 

[Pavel Mosko]

Been a while since I heard that name..

yes he's new to me, but after watching various TED talks and the alike it looks like he has been talking on the humanities and the problems of human existence for a few decades.

 

[bèlla]

Interesting Points

Instinct guides us to some very troublesome carriages, and we don’t feel a special feeling until we’ve really locked horns with someone who can make us feel the kind of trouble that’s familiar. That is beautifully familiar.

This is especially true when you’re guided by your emotions rather than the qualities God prefers.

Love is an attraction to perfection, virtue, and accomplishment. We’re tolerant towards the bad, the imperfect, the fragile, the vulnerable. We tolerate and we’re kind to it. We don’t love it. We just put up with it.

Love accommodates discomfort in deference to the greater gain we receive.

When you love someone you are embarked on a process of mutual education. You’re trying to educate them and they’re trying to educate you.

Education isn’t a breach of love. It’s the beginning. He gets it.

Love Curriculum

1. Treat your partner like a child not an adult. We’re incredibly generous with our system of interpretation for children.

To truly love, means to be generous with the interpretation of the behavior of the other person.

2. Humor is a vital resource in a relationship. When you move from seeing your partner as an idiot to a lovable idiot.

3. Secrets are okay.

4. Loneliness doesn’t end with the birth of love.

Love Readiness Checklist

You are ready for love when:

You’ve gently understood that you’re crazy.
Your partner is crazy.
You don’t really understand yourself.
They don’t really understand themselves.
Your communication must be brought to a therapeutic level.
Love is accompanied by practical details. You won’t be on holiday or with the waterfalls all the time. Love is a practical adventure.
You will be unhappy a great deal of the time.

He raised some good points. The message boils down to grace and patience. There are no perfect companions. Just imperfect folks committed to one another.

~Bella

 

[public hermit]

I like Alain de Bottom simply because he has done a good bit to bring philosophy to the public's attention. Some professional philosophers seem to discount him, but I just think they're jealous they didn't figure out how to cash in on it.

Sorry philosophy snobs, you're wrong about Alain De Botton

 

[MehGuy]

yes he's new to me, but after watching various TED talks and the alike it looks like he has been talking on the humanities and the problems of human existence for a few decades.

Yeah, he has a view interesting outlooks. Believe he's an atheist too. Yet see's the value in religion.

 

[Pavel Mosko]

I like Alain de Bottom simply because he has done a good bit to bring philosophy to the public's attention. Some professional philosophers seem to discount him, but I just think they're jealous they didn't figure out how to cash in on it.

Sorry philosophy snobs, you're wrong about Alain De Botton

Watching some of his video talks reminds me of Spalding Gray monologues like "Swimming To Cambodia" etc.

But yeah Its kind of like Jordan Peterson popularizing various traditional western Judeo-Christian values better than official Christian Apologists (and getting some jealousy from that occasionally). when he even isn't really a Christian, but some kind of Jungian Agnostic (or at best a deist).

I would argue he is something better than just a philosopher he is like some kind of postmodern Joseph Campbell that can tie literature, religion, psychology etc. in together in some kind of interdisciplinary way.

 

[Pavel Mosko]

Yeah, he has a view interesting outlooks. Believe he's an atheist too. Yet see's the value in religion.

Yes I watched him 2 different times say that, but he is not like the trope defining "new atheists" of this era.

This actually touches on something I've actually wanted to do a thread on. Many of "Atheists 1.0" as he would describe them really haven't thought of the issues through. Basically they see their job as enlightening humanity about that their most likely isn't a divinity looking out for believers. Many would even see the belief in God as a defense mechanism of sorts.

But here is the thing, those two ideas are really at odds with each other. Especially if you believe religion is a defense mechanism. You actually get into areas like the Hippocratic oath something that was a model for me when I was studying for a career in mental health. If people are using a defense mechanism it means for some reason that they feel the need for it and there is something real psychologically speaking going on! So yes you end up breaking the spirit of that notion if you believe that. But there is also a plus side. For many Christians their Faith actually has a lot of dimensions of other kinds of philosophies especially Stoicism and Existentialism.


Now Botton and a few others, what I would call "good" atheists, like Sargon of Akkad, Sam Harris get that. But many of the others especially the Dawkins crowd don't.

 

[S.O.J.I.A.]

Rather than some notional idea of perfect complementarity, it is the capacity to tolerate dissimilarity that is the true marker of the 'right' person.

useful quote here.

 

[Albertine Retrouvee]

I cannot believe that Alain de Botton, who specialized in French philosophy in the Harvard graduate philosophy degree program, classifies himself as a "secular Jew." How can he have missed the logic of Pascal's Wager (possibly, after Descartes's "I think, therefore I am," the most famous part of French philosophy)? Why doesn't he believe in God? Why doesn't he at least start by WAGERING that God exists? Wagering that God does not exist can only bring one of two things: nothingness; or eternal woe. Wagering that God exists is the first step to eternal happiness. Note: Pascal's famous Wager is in Blaise Pascal, Pensees, Section III, Thought 233.

 

[( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)]

I cannot believe that Alain de Botton, who specialized in French philosophy in the Harvard graduate philosophy degree program, classifies himself as a "secular Jew." How can he have missed the logic of Pascal's Wager (possibly, after Descartes's "I think, therefore I am," the most famous part of French philosophy)? Why doesn't he believe in God? Why doesn't he at least start by WAGERING that God exists? Wagering that God does not exist can only bring one of two things: nothingness; or eternal woe. Wagering that God exists is the first step to eternal happiness. Note: Pascal's famous Wager is in Blaise Pascal, Pensees, Section III, Thought 233.

I've read your posts since you've registered here. I don't know how long you plan on posting here, but you're going to make a wonderful addition to CF if you choose to stick around.

 

[Albertine Retrouvee]

I've read your posts since you've registered here. I don't know how long you plan on posting here, but you're going to make a wonderful addition to CF if you choose to stick around.

My goodness! I haven't been so thoroughly complimented in I don't know how long! MERCI, MONSIEUR!