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Love Under a Microscope
smooth wombat writes "As today is one of the top five marketing-induced spending days, the obvious question is, what is love? Anthropologist Helen Fisher studied the brain's circuitry and found that the brain sees romantic love as a reward similar to chocolate, money or drugs. Does this mean that the mystery of love is less magical now that science has studied it under the microscope? According to Dr Fisher: 'You can know every ingredient in a piece of chocolate cake, and you still sit down and eat that chocolate cake and it's wonderful,' she said. 'In the same way, you can know all the ingredients of romantic love and still feel that passion.'"
From TFA:Since the odds of survival for a human child with two parents is (or at least was) much higher than the odds of a single-parent child, it shouldn't be surprising that humans have a strong drive to forge lasting relationships. Natural selection in action, and all that.
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~ |rip/\/\aster /\/\onkey
What if the secret ingredient in that cake is "love"? How do they explain that?
When asked to confirm the above findings by Dr. Haddaway, a pair of scientists dressed in bright purple and blue labcoats nodded furiously, in rhythm.
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Roses are red
Violets are blue
All of my base
Are belong to you
If thou see a fair woman pay court to her, for thus thou wilt obtain love
Love is like a box of chocolates. You sneak one or two before you decide to buy. Then eventually you do buy, take it home and eat them all in one sitting. Finally, your left with your body feeling sick, your wallet feeling light, and holding an empty box.
Demented But Determined.
It's like I knew I will get fired one day for reading Slashdot during office hours, I still read it.
It's like I knew the next story will only be out in 20 minutes, I still hit F5 every second.
It's like I knew a story is a dupe, I still "read more" and reply to it.
If this is not true love, what is?
Virtual Betting on Facebook for non-geeks.
We are a very loving nation apparently...
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they have all the answers. Condition a system so that any unknown variables are in a state of gimbal lock and they begin to think that the variables they observe changing are the only variables. Impose your own notions as to cause and effect, and behold! you have an experiment with repeatable outcomes with little insight as to the nature of reality.
The Greeks had four words for love: agape, phileo, eros, and storge. We English speakers seem to conflate everything around eros and thereby miss the point. Love is the act of the will whereby another individual is placed ahead of yourself. That's why Christians are commanded to "love their enemies" and why the Apostle Paul wrote that the greatest act of love was when God gave His Son as the sacrifice for the sins of the world.
No naturalistic scientist could ever write:
Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant
or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful;
it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth.
It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.
Love never ends.
1. the traditional romantic-type love, a crush. a person can't stop thinking about another person, many times a minute even, to the point of mental distress. this is very definitely like addiction
2. long-term love. this is when you operate on a day-to-day basis with the other person as if you were a unit, and you can finish each other's sentences and such. you don't think of the other person constantly, you just coexist with them fluidly (albeit with a certain level of conflict). if the person were to leave or die, you would experience great stress, as if you had lost a limb
i think evolution set this up pretty well. romantic love is the almost gravitational chemically-driven attachment you have with someone else that allows for the binding of two organisms together socially. then, as the chemicals subside, you are left with permanent neurogical patterns and structures in both organisms such that you function as a social unit
good design, i think, albeit with unavoidable failures such as:
1. chemically bonding with someone who does not like you (stalking, obsession), your classic unrequited love
2. ongoing long-term conflict that does not resolve, where you are bound to someone you have serious differences of opinion with. classic marriage counseling fodder and irreconiable differences divorce papers issues
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
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You are on the right track, young padiwan. Now you must get another person involved.
We were an unconventional, but very happy couple (I am 42, she was 61).
If romantic love is a reward, it's a reward for something deeper.
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
There are people who'd say things like that about their preferred batch of ingredients. We call them junkies, the chemical they use is called by many names -- not the least of which is junk. When a junkie is deprived of junk, they go through withdrawal. They experience physical pain, depression, and often behave irrationally or self-destructively in order to get their fix.
I think there's a very big difference between people who say they are willing to die for their partner and people who are willing to commit suicide as a result of rejection. Don't attempt to compare willing self-sacrifice to save another with irrational, self-destructive behavior. They aren't the same thing. One is driven out of care for another, the other out of care for oneself.
Dying for someone you care about is driven by of a sense of protection, and is a trait that has benefits for the survival of the species. Killing oneself because of being deprived of someone's love is driven by a selfish sense of want, and is a trait that just tends to Darwinianly reduce the gene pool..
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
You might feel like you're correct but there is no absolute right or wrong when a person alters their brain chemistry. If you're judging me from a moral basis, then I have no argument. You will always be right and I will always be wrong. But why are you wanting to pick a fight with people that have no problem altering their own conciousness? It's theirs, not yours. Do you make the same arguments with your friends (if you have any) that consciously and willfully alter their brain chemistry/nervous system when it's caffiene? or chocolate? Or maybe they have passion for bubble baths. You're arguing against a completely natural and healthy need for human beings to transcend the daily reality they live out. What you're doing is completely unhealthy and probably causes more brain damage to yourself than cannabis will ever do.
Now I'm sure you live a very healthy and productive life. You probably don't smoke, don't drink coffee, will never sky dive or eat chocolate and live a perfectly celibate life. I respect that, I never attacked what you make of your life did I?
For the rest of humanity, for the people that have not graduated with honours from their local high school DARE program like you have, we will continue to enjoy what life has to offer us. I have no problem with your personal choice, but please don't be so quick to judge people based on what you personally believe is a moral failing. Your morals are not mine.
Call me highly skeptical. Helen Fisher is a physical anthropologist. As in population geneticists, primatologists, and paleoanthropologists. This is a far cry from being an expert in studying the "circuitry" that underlies love. In her book, she hooked up with some doctors from SUNY to use MRI brain scanning to "look at what love looks like", but the book is really mostly just anthropology. In truth, we have no idea what the circuitry of love is (yet), but we have long understood the effect of endorphins (caused by chocolate, heroin, running fast, and love) on the human brain and their relationship to one another. Thus her claim is both simultaneously old hat and inexpert.