The Love Thread

[Dancer]

So in my googling of love and brain chemistry I came across this

Because they are independent, these three systems can work simultaneously — with dangerous results. As Dr Fisher explains, “you can feel deep attachment for a long-term spouse, while you feel romantic love for someone else, while you feel the sex drive in situations unrelated to either partner.” This independence means it is possible to love more than one person at a time, a situation that leads to jealousy, adultery and divorce — though also to the possibilities of promiscuity and polygamy, with the likelihood of extra children, and thus a bigger stake in the genetic future, that those behaviours bring. As Dr Fisher observes, “We were not built to be happy but to reproduce.”

and in the same article this

So love, in all its glory, is just, it seems, a chemical state with genetic roots and environmental influences. But all this work leads to other questions. If scientists can make a more sociable mouse, might it be possible to create a more sociable human? And what about a more loving one? A few people even think that “paradise-engineering”, dedicated to abolishing the “biological substrates of human suffering”, is rather a good idea.

To me I just see major subjectivity in the first quote and a contradiction in the next (if I've understood it correctly). From here http://www.oxytocin.org/oxytoc/love-science.html

Whilst we may have studied 'love' I would think it's a fraction of what we are capable of and still understand. I would absolutely disagree with the first quote which should not come as a suprise to anyone who has read other posts of mine. Whilst we can observe love and through brain chemistry and behaviour, love is a difficult thing to experiment with because it makes us think, act and react so strongly in various ways to different situations. It can make us feel jealous and fearful if anything was to potentially take that feeling away - of which I understand and I don't think is necessarily wrong either.

I think we are still at our infancy in understanding what we are capable of feeling, especially after reading yet another article suggesting that the only way of having any extension of monogomy is through polygamous relationships. It appears that by and large, we still limit ourselves a lot when it comes to our understanding and embracing of what love can afford and provide.

Very hard for me to understand clearly what I read in science though. I'm not a science person and so there's a fair chance that I intepret what I read all wrong!

[DanDare]

If you can "create" more of a feeling then by corollary you can also eliminate it. That's a disturbing thought.

On the other hand there are obviously alternate systems in the brain that combine to produce effects or act independently. For example what we call "moods" seem to be associated with chemical washes in the brain while other feelings are more closely associated with synaptic firing.

Unraveling the physical rainbow behind feelings is fascinating and troubling at the same time.

[Dancer]

Originally Posted by DanDare

If you can "create" more of a feeling then by corollary you can also eliminate it. That's a disturbing thought..

Why so?

Unraveling the physical rainbow behind feelings is fascinating and troubling at the same time.

Agreed....

[DanDare]

Originally Posted by Dancer

Why so?

If you can induce an emotion chemically then you can remove it chemically as well. This is scary because it allows for manipulation of people's consciousness bypassing their reason and self determination. That is one of the reasons cited by people with mental conditions who do not want to take medication to correct the condition, because it feels to them that it removes self determination (other reasons include nasty side effects which are a more common complaint).