On the influence of philosophy on The Bachelor/Bachelorette
If you've ever watched reality shows like The Bachelor/Bachelorette or any one of half a dozen other programs, you will have noticed the bizarre language in which people express their thoughts on relationships and love.
Here's how it mostly works: In the initial stages of a relationship it's about "putting yourself out there", "opening up to possibilities" and "listening to your heart". As a relationship develops it becomes about "having feelings for" someone, about "getting to know the real you/me" and about "being in touch with your emotional side". Then when there is a relationship to speak of, we hear stuff like "having something real", about "seeing yourself with him/her", "sharing a bond/connection", about sparks, electricity, energy, attraction.
Sure, it's always the same cliched expressions, the same banal drivel, the usual pabulum. We can all see that. But that's just what is so extraordinary about those expressions and that kind of language, the fact that it has become so normal to speak in those terms, and the fact that they have become cliches at all. In fact we're so inured to that kind of language that we don't even really hear what is being said, as the expression just fits neatly into a background pattern where it has about as much meaning as the twitting of a bird or the sound of traffic. It's just a part of that whole experience, seemingly and inextricably intertwined with the TV screen, the program, the music, the graphics, the standard shots of beaches and sunsets, the kinds of big titted and waxed chested soap opera-type attention-mongers on those shows, the cheesy narration, and even with you, sitting there taking it all in between sarcastic remarks and bites of your microwave dinner. The whole interactive experience comes with those "normal" terms and expressions that we have come to take for granted, and we would only really notice if in fact all those expressions used in reality TV were not there rather than the fact that they are.
But what is said on those shows is actually anything but "normal" once they have been reflected on and been rediscovered, when they have once again been made to stand out as a problem. Once we have become conscious of these expressions that we take for granted, what is said reveals a really strange way of thinking about ourselves and others that seems to be at the root of everything wrong about the way we seem to understand our social world and how people relate to one another. Just summing it all up reveals how incredibly weird our way of thinking about human relationships really is.
Here is an interpretation of all those expressions in a nutshell:
We think of ourselves as autonomous agents who are "closed" to others until we "open" ourselves to them, in which we "have" (possess) feelings "for" another which we can "give" to them or "take" from them as a kind of trade, and we act and react upon each other through the exchange of feelings and affections that we possess as we navigate through the tug of influence "inside" us between our "real" selves and "social" selves, between our "hearts" and our "heads", between the "logical" and the "emotional", all the while expressing concern for how "genuine" this experience is for both parties.
That all sounds like complete hogwash, if not borderline derangement, but actually what is said in these reality programs is the result of centuries of influence from the greatest minds of philosophy whose legacy has survived till this day, so much so that these everyday expressions have become ingrained in each and every one of us, and we often cannot even find the language to describe all of this in any other way. These influences live on unconsciously in the discourse of The Bachelor/Bachelorette in three (admittedly mostly overlaid and overlapping) stages:
1. The Newtonian: Autonomous rational self-contained beings interacting as independent agents through Newtonian laws of action-reaction, give-take, force-counterforce, etc. Eg: "I'm getting that vibe from you that I need to let my guard down and be open to love so we can develop this strong connection that we have."
2. The Cartesian: Segmented and compartmentalized selves based on dichotomies of inside/outside, heart/head, emotions/reason, mind/body, self/other, etc. Eg: "My heart says one thing but my head says another."
3. The Lockean: Rational agents possess "properties" that are sought for. The lack of said properties -- or possession of undesirable ones -- results in a rational choice to either continue a relationship or break it off for the sake of "exploring" the properties of other eligible bachelors or bachelorettes. Eg: "I have feelings for her that are real."
The first thing that stands out is the assumption that we are autonomous self-contained agents in a world populated by other autonomous self-contained agents interacting according to Newtonian laws of give and take, action-counteraction, stimulus-response. We "open ourselves to" another person, and through that metaphoric "gap" we let flow in the love, electricity, feelings, emotions of others, as if these were streams of light or rays of essence. Then with these we form "connections" and "bonds" between two people. Furthermore, whenever you hear of "opening up", you almost always hear the term "vulnerability", as if there is a breach in a fort's defenses, as if something from "without" can now "enter within", kind of like how you would describe an invasion, or an infection. So there is a "before" when defenses are tight, and an "after" when defenses are vulnerable but desired affection, love, feelings, emotions can enter inside, at the risk of these hurting us -- like a virus might, or an invading army.
Conversely, from the "gap" we've opened in our defensive "outer shield", we can also give out those same vibes, electricity, energy, emotions, etc. like a ray gun from one autonomous self-contained being to another autonomous self-contained being! We too can "give" feelings to another and have them become "vulnerable" and "open" to our advances.
What kind of language is that to express how people live with each other in the world? It's basically a mix of military, sports and economics nomenclature. You'll hear expressions like "bringing my A-game" or "bringing my guard down" (sports) or "emotional investment" (economics). Of course, that comes from the format of these shows, which is that of a competition, so naturally people would relate their experiences to sports or war, but we know these expressions aren't just used on TV, and are still only possible because of that elemental belief that we are autonomous, self-contained agents acting freely in a world of other autonomous, self-contained agents all making independent rational choices, or if not, at least taking into consideration our separate inner "emotional" voices.
All of the above cliches point to this absurd, childish and bizarre way of thinking of ourselves and how we live with each other. But they also point to something else, namely the way we think of ourselves as segmented and compartmentalized individuals with "one part of us" that thinks and "another part of us" that feels. That's the Cartesian influence. You'll notice that all these contestants are always negotiating through those dichotomies with every decision and every experience: inside/outside, heart/head, emotional/rational, real me/(fake me?). There is assumed to be a clear-cut delineation between the "soul" and its emotions and feelings and desires, and the "mind", with its rational and logical capacity. That same Newtonian tug between people in the world is also assumed to exist in a Cartesian sense inside each person, so that "logical us" desires one thing whereas "emotional us" desires another. We have of course been used to thinking in these terms since Descartes, for whom the mind/body duality was of the essence in his quest to prove that we really exist (which, for him, was very important and not something to be taken for granted, which itself is very weird, although others might consider that good philosophy).
Then there is the "possession" of certain properties: wit, humor, intelligence, fortitude, family values, loyalty, etc. We apply a Lockean sense of ownership and property to that which is a "part" of our personality, and through the program, the Bachelor/Bachelorette compares what is possessed among the contestants and decides to continue with some and break it off with others.
When we actually put those banal reality TV expressions into some kind of (admittedly simplistic) etymological perspective, we see that they are not just stupid crap. They are actually based on smart crap that has a lot of intelligent lineage behind it, although it's in the hands of those who can't see that lineage and have to use it because that's the only way they know how to express themselves and the only tools at their disposal for doing so, since they are forced to describe things we perhaps would otherwise not feel the need to describe. That's why these shows are fascinating, because people on them are forced to describe the experiences they're going through for the sake of our entertainment and viewing pleasure. They're forced to describe things we never have to, and that of course reveals just how poorly we understand ourselves and how we interact (I just used the term "interact" because it comes naturally, meaning none of us are immune to the way the dominant discourse makes us see things). If we were in their place we probably wouldn't do any better.
But maybe if we had an alternative view we would be able to understand each other and make relationships work a lot better, even on TV. So instead of all this claptrap, why don't we just accept that we are:
1)... inextricably intertwined with others, that what we think we "really" are on the "inside" is molded and formed and always constantly reformed by our interaction with others on the "outside", and that it isn't really something of the "essence", something "incorruptible", something "pure", something "within", like the latter day remnant of that old superstition of the "soul", but is rather fundamentally and singly who we are and how we are and is always indexed to others' opinions of us, and our experiences and interactions (there's that word again) with them. The unity of within and without through the unity of self and other(s). That means...
2)... relationships are no longer about "opening up" or "letting defenses down" or showing "vulnerability", they are a natural extension of human relationships and the sharing of one's feeling and emotions and thoughts and affection is just a natural, ongoing, everyday occurrence merely taken to a quantitatively greater degree between two people who may want to advance their relationship further. That way the pressure people feel from that sense of "vulnerability", "opening up" and other horribly pejorative terms for the sharing of love and affection can finally be done away with, and the whole experience need no longer take on the same metaphoric significance of "military weakness" or "viral infection" that it has now. That will be good because...
3)... we will no longer see feelings and emotions as things belonging to us which we trade and transport through gaps in egotistic defenses, and in fact not as "things" at all, let alone things "given" and "taken", nor "possessed". We will understand that feelings and emotions and moods are actually constantly affected, shaped, reshaped and reformed by the feelings and emotions and moods of others, and that in fact nobody "has" any of these "inside", as if independent of others, springing purely from one's own self, but that all of us live in them, always shaping and reshaping them, and being shaped and reshaped by them, even as we're unaware of it happening. That is a great step forward because then...
4)... that whole compartmentalized self, that "us" comprised of inner/outer, real/social (fake?), head/heart, mind/body, emotion/logic will naturally crumble by the wayside and this schizophrenized, disunited self that is always alienated in the face of itself can finally see that as complex as we are, there are no neat separate realms within or without us, but that moods, emotions, thoughts, memories and all our other attributes are all constantly involved with each other, always intertwined, never independent of each other, always affected by each other, that there is no such thing as a body apart from the mind, nor even a self apart from others, nor a "logical" apart from an "emotional", because both are always suffused with the other, and to every thought there is a mood and to every emotion there is some kind of logic. That means...
5)... all those hang ups that everyone talks about on that show, all those issues, all those expressions are nothing. The Newtonian world of bumping egos lazering feelings from inside them to those willing to let down their defenses to accept those feelings and give them back in return while both try to balance their hearts and their heads to find the right balance of reason and feelings to create a bond that links two people and makes something real out of an inside connection... all of that falls by the wayside. People would stop being exposed to that garbage.
Instead we would have a refreshing new view of who we are, how we are, and what it is to love, and we would spare ourselves and others the waste of time of wading through a world that has been misrepresented by a 2500-year philosophic tradition going back to Plato that seems just plain wrong.
Of course, that would also be the end of The Bachelor/Bachelorette and other shows that merely reduce human relationships to mechanically construed competitive interactions for the sake of commercial profit, but would that be a bad thing?
