Interesting. I quite agree that love can be explained by evoltuion. But do u agree that there are considerable problems such as for example; homosexuality; the fact that some people stay with unproductive partners because they “love” them or the fact that there are people who just dont seem to fit the evolutionary idea: people who just dont care for their children or seem interested in the propogation of their genes. I apologise if u are an expert of something, this is just the musings of a layman.
It’s interesting how you actually associate the love for hallucinogens (?) with the love for another person. But I think you make a point. Further, you’re assessment that having a boyfriend/girlfriend–and I would add wife/husband, companion–is something that we relate to what we think who we are–our identity. But wouldn’t this make my love, say, for my boyfriend actually not special in any way? If I agree with your view on why WE KEEP PEOPLE for some function, then that makes it not the love we thought it to be. Not that I care about the difference, I try not to be too hung up with being with people.
Everything is a chemical reaction. Scientists are or soon will be able to trace nearly everything we do to a chemical reaction or impulse.
But the answer to what love is… I think that’s more based on what oyu believe in spiritually. No I don’t mean God or Buddha or whoever. I mean what do you believe will happen when you die.
Surprisingly enough, the existence of love, in my opinion, has alot to do with death. Let me explain:
If you believe that love is something more than merely chemical, that all humans’ feelings are on a higher level than just scientific evidence and proof, then you probably believe in ‘life’ after death.
If you believe that all we do when we die is what the doctors can prove- your heart stops, your brainwaves stop, and you begin to decay thanks to bacterium- then you probably won’t think love is anything more than a chemical response to something you were programed to find attractive, or stimulating.
Personally, I think that’s way too simple. I don’t have all the answers obviously, but that’s just silly. I think love is something more. There is something more to what I do than just perpetuating the balance of the earth (which humans are doing a terrible job of anyhow). I don’t beleive in God or anything other religious figurehead, but I don’t think that, with all the varying degrees and depth in human intelligences, that Love, what everyone seems to be searching for, is just so we’ll screw, have babies, and move on.
We need love for more than that, to evolve as a species. Technically speaking, we don’t need love to survive. All we need is a once-a-year session of going into heat, like every other animal, and we’d be fine.
Sow hat’s love for? I have no f*cking clue. 
love - A deep, tender, ineffable feeling of affection and solicitude toward a person, such as that arising from kinship, recognition of attractive qualities, or a sense of underlying oneness
No it is not just chemicals
We are ment to love one person at a time not many at once. Maybe you try many relationships in life but only one at a time
The feeling of love keeps you together and keeps you from wanting to loose that person
Yes we would care if we lost that person because each person is like a small part of us as we become connected to them. Feels like you are loosing a part of yourself but eventually you have to move on…
To believe that ‘love’ is something other than just a chemical reaction in your body does not mean that you believe in god or some higher being. It plainly means that you believe humans are intelligent enough to percieve such emotions, or like many others have said, it could well in fact just be an illusion, it gives us some sort of meaning though and that’s why it plays a big part in our lives. I think we have to have some kind of a meaning and ‘Love’ is what everybody seems to have chosen, hence the reason why we all have famalies, everybody grows up to get married and have kids, that i think is the main meaning for many people’s lives.
i think u was on the right lines when u say about it being for one person but i disagree when u say, chemicals, i think love is singular and its more to do with ur soul than it is than ur brain because its in ur soul what you want to do or love, and i think who or what u love is a kind of recog type thing u all ready now subconcesly (cant spell)but you could spend all your life looking for it but how can u know what love is if you never experince it therefore love is opinon never fact
I think it is very hard to understand ourselfs and what we really are. ‘Joey h’ you said that you think ‘love’ is to do with the soul and it’s nothing to with chemical reactions? Ask most ‘lovers’ whether or not they could have stopped themselfs falling in love with their partner? I gurantee that if the two people are ‘married’ madly in love or which ever then they will say no, they couldn’t really help themselfs. Meaning that they had no choice in who they fell in love with, narrowing it down to chemical reactions in your brain.
I am not a believer of a higher entity therefore i completley rule out fate and destiny.
I like what you said there. I think it’s a more interesting approach to say that rather than just the argument of “chemical or soul?”
I rather like to think that things are all just perspective, that nothing and everything is both what it seems and what it doesn’t.
But you said everyone chose love to be their illusion of choice. Don’t you think it’s a little more than coincidence that everyone is choosing the that works with evolution the best? The one that allows humans’ societies to grow as they have? Or do you suggest that if we chose a different emotion to focus on and strive for that, then our societies would change with it (i.e. it isn’t society that’s pushing the emotion but the emotion pushing society along)?
PlaceboEffect, i am not too sure, it does seem a coinidence that ‘all’ have chosen to strive for ‘Love’. But i don’t think of it as coincidence but rather ‘follow along the trend’. Life is very very materialistic and that’s why i think so many people fall in love, i don’t think it’s really anything to do with Evolution, other than the fact that Evolution has made us intelligent enough to understand these feelings and use them.
Existence is not materialistic but i think ‘Existence’ and ‘Life’ are two very different things. Life is what the goverment shows to us, we are born, we are called ‘babies’ we go to play school, school, parent hood, pension etc. The manin aim in life is to ‘love’ sombody else, so it seems in this materialistic life. Society pushes people to love because they know no different, not everybody sits down ad looks up at the sky wondering and gazing ‘how’. So what else to do but fall in love and make a family? Let’s assume emotion pushed society along, don’t u think society would be a little different ot what it is now? Wars are for power, not love and peace.
I am not one for asking ‘why’ nature is the way it is but ‘how’. I believe there is no reason to everything, the world stops when one stops thinking about it (death).
How is love materialistic? You think there wasn’t love in ancient tribes? And I mean any love, nor just between a man and a woman, although I’m sure that was present too. They weren’t materialistic. Their lives revolved around survival, but love was still there. It’s not like love is soemthing the media made up (althought hey massacre it to death with telling us what it should be like and that we should all have it).
More people in modern times don’t get married and don’t have kids than ever before, how does that support the fact that love is made from our society?
And you said emotion doesn’t push society along because there wouldn’t be wars. What do you think wars are? there’s no hate, greed or ambition present there? That further supports the point that emotion DOES push society. It has to. It’s human nature.
PlaceboEffect, War is drivev by the love of power, not the power of love itself. What you are talking about is a different thing PlaceboEffect, i was talking about the ‘Love’ between male/female species. Not the love for power, greed etc. Irecognise your point and agree with u that a different type of Love does push society, but if that is the case, then it isn’t pushing society in a good way.
I never said anything of love for power, etc. and war. I just said emotion is involved with war.
And obviously war isn’t pushing society in a good way. I never said war was.
I just mean that the presence of love does change people in good ways, whether or not anyone notices anymore. And the way it does change people pushes society towards better things. So it’s not a different kind of love that pushes society. It’s still the love between a man and a woman that can change things.
I think the Love that pushes societies is the love i mentioned before, the love that you have for something that makes you feel good. It’s a love that is for yourself, greed and power. You want it because it will make you feel good.
How can this type of Love every change things in a good way? It can only effect the beholder themselfs in a good way, not society.
That’s not true, though. If you’ve ever loved someone of the opposite sex, and been in a deep relationship with them, you’d know it changes you. And most of the time for the better, unless they break up with you and you get depressed and kill yourself, haha. But it does change you. It makes you more calm, more accepting for the most part, and both of those are good things for a society to have in it’s people.
I can’t believe you don’t think love for other people doesn’t help society. What about people who volunteer for orphans or something? that’s a love for other people. Yes, the love you mentioned does change it for the bad. But there are so many ways that other kinds of love, unselfish kinds, help the world.
I don’t mean to be all “love and peace and happiness for everyone!” here, but it’s true. No one wants to admit it because of war and greed and crooked politicians, but things are better than they were a thousand years ago, even a hundred years ago, and that’s because people have learned to be nicer (somewhat), and that is in a way, a fom of love.
But whatever, I’m done fighting because it’s obvious we won’t agree on this.
I have never been in love, most people my age (18years old) go out with many people throughout their teens but i don’t feel the need to. Most people in my college feel the need to ‘‘chat’’ girls up but i fail to.
Well I hope for your sake it comes soon. It’s an overwhelming feeling, only in a good way 
I think Love is different for each person. An obsessive person loves obsessively, a mad person loves madly, an evil person loves evilly. That is why Love is so difficult to define, for it is as unique as each snowflake, uniquely dependant on who you are.
that’s true, but I personally wouldn’t classify those types of attention as love, per se. An obsessive person is hindered by whatever internal problem that makes them obsessive, be it low self esteem, etc. I don’t think someone who who is obssessed with someone else is capable and selfless enough to realize what love really is (or, in my personal definition of love. I realize it’s a rather strict definition, heh).
The same goes for your other examples, I think.
Also, there are many varying degrees of affection, so it’s hard to pinpoint which of those levels is “love”.
Like so many things in life, I think it’s best to just know that you will realize when it’s love. If you’re questioning it, it probably isn’t love.