The History of Love
I recently attended a very interesting lecture about the evolution of love. It was refreshing to hear love discussed so calculative, and I thought I would write about the best parts.
Note: Graphic adapted from course material
The professor discussed the selective advantages and disadvantages (the course was Evolutionary Biology) to love and how it has changed over species and time. Like many other emotions and sensations, love today is a balance between the most efficient and most effective way to improve oneself. If you love too much, you risk being vulnerable to predators or expending too much energy. If you don’t love enough, you face the consequences of less interaction among kin and group members.
Is that all there is to love? Is it not something bigger, or does it not – at least – include something more powerful?
Alex
Dec 22, 01:38 PM
Be careful of lectures which attempt to deconstruct human experience into something that can be coldly plotted out and reduced to survival instinct. Love is not meant to be analysed and undestood but experienced.
Thame
Dec 23, 11:41 AM
That’s true, I just found it refreshing for exactly the reason you specified. Sometimes it can be productive to take a radical approach to something like love.
Tom Johnson
Dec 27, 01:15 AM
I find it very interesting that love is such a forbidden realm of analysis for some people. Philosophers, writers, songwriters and people of all walks of life have discussed love through their own subjective lens, providing us with some of the greatest works know to humanity. Yet, when love is put under the microscope like any other state of mind or feeling, people are up in arms about it. What exactly are we afraid of? Discovering what we truly are? Love should not be the only realm of human psychology that cannot be analyzed biologically, and should be studied from as many angles as possible. If something can be learned of the irrational behaviour love produces in us, then it will be worthwhile. Jealousy, hatred, lust, adultery. These are all products of love, and affect us every day, and therefore must be understood. The more we understand the beast within, the easier it will be to tame it.