I think it’s about time that I get this off my mind. This might make me sound cold and inhumane, but either way, you should read it. My question to you folks is, “What exactly is love?” Science dictates (this is a VERY condensed explanation, trust me, I am a Biology/Pre-Med major) that everything we feel is controlled by sequential electrical firings in our brain. So with that said, I have come to an outlandish but sensible hypothesis, which I’m sure one of you has thought once before. Alright, let me try to explain this as clearly as possible…
We all have come to observe that EVERY animal has an inborn, primitive drive to reproduce and persist their species. With the exception of our ability to reason, every one of us has the same primitive sexual drive that our dogs to, excuse the contrast. Could love be nothing more than a clever trick that our brain has evolved to make certain that we will reproduce? If you think about it, if you confess your ‘love’ to someone, it rationalizes our need to give into our sexual desires. What I am trying to say is, what if ‘love’ was a word that was titled to our intense, sexual-emotional needs as animals?
Don’t get me wrong, I am a helpless romantic that buys into the ‘love can conquer all’ bullshit, as much as I hate it. However, MY logic ordains that ‘love’ is nothing more than a word that makes us not feel so guilty about our truly self-motivated sexual and emotional needs. Now please, I’m not asking for a riot to be conceived from this, but rather INTELLECTUAL arguments. Whenever I have posed this point in the past, people have always become flustered and angry and have refused to logically look at my argument. I figure this was the best place!
the problem with that view (which was the leading paradigm of physical antropology a good while) is that it would deem anything other than your average couple an abberation. gays, lesbians, fetishists, scatophiles, women on the pill, all would simply be dumped in the “not natural/abherant” cathegory.
this has ultimately proven itself an inadequate way to describe human emotions and relations. not because the gays/scatophiles etc have rights as any other humans etc. that is a legal matter, to be discussed when discvussing arrest and imprisonment and such. but because if your really honestly interested to understand people you eventually notice you need better cathegories.
Can there be love without sex? If you say yes, then your hypothesis of love being a rationalisation or intellectual excuse for sex is refuted.
And also there can be sex without love. In your hypothesis this is just being honest to our animal nature, but then it is again not consistent with the part of your hypothesis with implies that sex is for procreation and propagation of species, for humans have sex for the fun of it.
So both counts, namely that we can love without sex, and can have sex for pure fun and pleasure, refute your hypothesis.
The connection between mind and body has not been studied or understood well enough to purport that as a fact. How do you know that the electrical firings aren’t a result of our feelings? or that both work upon each other? The Animatrix isn’t proof my friend… Don’t be so gullible to beleive everything your professors spoonfeed you… a century ago those same professors would have given you a whole course on how and why blacks are inferior to whites. They would studied the bumps on your head and shown you pictures of skulls to “prove” their point… Be a BIT more discerning… If common sense conflicts with what you’re taught, common sense trumps…
It would be nice if that were true! What does your “common sense” tell you about top quarks? Or thermodynamics? Or hydraulics? Does commons sense explain how a black hole can exist, or how matter can sublimate out of one even though light can’t escape?
Things like phrenology were never really held as useful by mainstream science, and indeed were held in higher esteem by the people of 2000 years ago. And I’ve never read any old texts that purport that any race is superior to another. While it’s true that a particular scientist could be racist or bigoted, since humans can have those failings, science itself isn’t racist. I certainly will put my trust in measured phenomenon and repeatable tests instead of “common sense.”
Anyway, doesn’t common sense say if we were meant to fly we’d have wings? Nearly every technology we have today is the result of someone defying the common sense ideas of his or her day.
Common experience says wings. But humans can transcends mere experience and common sense via logic and reasons (which however at its fundamentals are still rooted in common sense) to say that all you need to fly is anti-gravity.
The thing is, our feelings are totally shaped and conditioned from OUR brain. When you were a child, you were most likely oblivious to the feeling of ‘love’. Though, as you got older, you observed people ‘loving’ and that shaped your view of ‘love’. Correct? So, essentially, your ideal feeling of ‘love’ is nothing more than what circumstances you have been dealt and what you have learned from them. Why do many cultures, aside from the US, put much stress on not indulging in sexual desires and learning to tame your love, so to speak? In us all, we all have a basic need to feel wanted and provide for OURSELVES first. Society has taught us otherwise though.
Sex can be a very intimate trade of affection between two lovers or it can be the ultimate act of sexual pleasure for ourselves, excuse the frankness. So, to me atleast, it seems like love would be a way to rationalize the latter use for sex. But, arguing on your side of the spectrum, I can see why many people believe in ‘love’ (as do I). But think of it this way…You have grown so attached and happy with a girl that your brain is accustomed to constantly sending electrical signals to your cingulate gyrus (pleasure center of the brain). Therefore, you mistake this unbelievably new, perfect feeling as ‘love’ when really it is your brain’s way of keeping you with this girl, ensuring your reproductive chances. Hmm???
Wait, do you think that our emotions are shaped and conditioned by the brain alone or shaped and conditioned by experience? As far as experience goes most people are born into a situation of love. Most babies are loved, just because they exist. An infant that is denied love will wither and die. As infants we each completely depend on the loving attention of our caregiver(s). We are born into a social situation. No infant could survive alone.
Infants and small children are very aware of the loving attention they get from others. If a child is healthy then he or she will not be oblivious to the feelings of others.
You might want to investigate the child research done by John Bowlby for a different perspective on the origins of love (and hate).
However, MY logic ordains that ‘love’ is nothing more than a word that makes us not feel so guilty about our truly self-motivated sexual and emotional needs. Now please, I’m not asking for a riot to be conceived from this, but rather INTELLECTUAL arguments. Whenever I have posed this point in the past, people have always become flustered and angry and have refused to logically look at my argument. I figure this was the best place!
What does your “common sense” tell you about top quarks? Or thermodynamics? Or hydraulics? Does commons sense explain how a black hole can exist, or how matter can sublimate out of one even though light can’t escape?