The Genesis of Love

[thirtysilver]

I have lots of questions. They are intended to be scientific questions. They all relate to a particularly painful issue in my life. Maybe I shouldn't ask them all at once here. If this thread's content is not appropriate for any reason, please let me know. All the questions here refer to romantic love.

Where does love come from? Are humans born with the ability to love, or is it learned like so many other things? How much of what we generally believe about romantic love is social and what role does biology play in love? Is it impossible to love more than one person at a time? Is it wrong to love two people at once, and, if so, why? We understand basic rules about how romantic love functions - there is a general consensus about what love should be and what it should not be and about how love itself manifests. How have we arrived at this consensus? Love must have Darwinian roots - what is the benefit of love to the species? Is monogamy natural in humans?

I'm not quite ready to go into detail about the aforementioned issue which has inspired me to ask these questions. For now, I just want to hear others' opinions about them.

(A note: I reference Evolution. I'm not interested in arguing Evolution VS Creationism here; I'm simply speaking from my point of view as a believer in Evolution.)

[Peter Pry]

I have lots of questions. They are intended to be scientific questions.

But only some of your questions are scientific.

Where does love come from? Are humans born with the ability to love, or is it learned like so many other things? How much of what we generally believe about romantic love is social and what role does biology play in love?

An ongoing area of research, I am sure, and one whose only methodology would be very slippery statistical arguments, I would think. The question is interesting, but I don't think anyone really knows the answer.

Is it impossible to love more than one person at a time?

I suspect that anyone who has ever actually been in love, as opposed to merely watching it in the movies, knows that it is not impossible. This is pretty much the only scientific question that is answerable by you yourself as an amateur. The arbiter of scientific discourse is observation. I have personally been in love with several people at once, and therefore I observe that it is not impossible for me. Please feel free to make similar observations of yourself.

Is it wrong to love two people at once, and, if so, why?

This is not a scientific question. You are now asking an ethical question, whose answer is going to depend on the axioms of your ethical system. My ethical system requires that in order to be wrong, it must be a deliberate or negligent action that results in the taking of unfair advantage of nonconsenting others. Love is an emotion, not an action, and therefore cannot be a wrong thing. That is not to say that it cannot lead you to commit wrong (and stupid) actions, of course.

We understand basic rules about how romantic love functions - there is a general consensus about what love should be and what it should not be and about how love itself manifests.

Screw that shite. Society's "basic rules" and "general consensus" have nothing to do with me, are observed to be factually incorrect by me, and to the extent that they easily lead to unfair advantage of nonconsenting others, I defy them.

How have we arrived at this consensus? Love must have Darwinian roots - what is the benefit of love to the species? Is monogamy natural in humans?

Largely, in the same way that other social consensuses have occurred: by murdering those who disagree with the consensus. In the case of modern western sexual mores, that would be the mass slaughter of the pagan populations by the Christians, followed much later by the the rather unbalanced and weirdly lingering influence of a single British Imperatrix. Not that it matters how social conventions are formed for purposes of making practical decisions.

There is no reason a priori to suspect that monogamy is natural in humans, given that it is not natural in any other species except for parakeets, and that an entire social institution is required to enforce it (if it were natural, that institution would be about as relevant as the Eating Food Institution), and even given the strict social enforcement, has never been more than about 60-70% practiced. For the record, there are a very many species that appear to have similar practical sexual behavior to humans (mainly or serially monogamous but with reasonably frequent extracurricular activities), and the evolutionary advantages are well known: for males, the spreading of the seed more widely; and for females, the protection of the strongest obtainable male while actually surreptitiously breeding with males of more desirable genes.

But listen, you're engaging in psychological deflection by asking whether monogamy/love/whatever is natural/social/right/whatever for humans, when what you should obviously be asking yourself is whether it's right for you.

[thirtysilver]

Thank you, Peter Pry, for your insightful answers! It seems as though you and I are of like mind on virtually everything under discussion here, and that's surprising and comforting. I've felt alone in my beliefs about love, and that's depressing.
Much thinking is needed if I'm to reconcile my feelings with my current situation. When I feel more comfortable, I will be far less vague about that.

Thanks again, Peter.

[shheadz]

Well.. What's the point of a man and a woman getting together? To have and raise children. Is raising children easy? I don't have any myself, but I do have friends that pull their hair out every day trying to deal with the little devils. So I'd say no.. raising children is not easy.

What does that have to do with love? Love may be evolutions way of keeping two people from killing each other while they go through the ups and downs of bearing and raising children. If we didn't have feelings of love, we'd be at each others throats all the time, or go our separate ways. Both of which are detrimental to raising healthy children -- at least from an evolutionary stand point.

[thirtysilver]

Well.. What's the point of a man and a woman getting together? To have and raise children. Is raising children easy? I don't have any myself, but I do have friends that pull their hair out every day trying to deal with the little devils. So I'd say no.. raising children is not easy.

What does that have to do with love? Love may be evolutions way of keeping two people from killing each other while they go through the ups and downs of bearing and raising children. If we didn't have feelings of love, we'd be at each others throats all the time, or go our separate ways. Both of which are detrimental to raising healthy children -- at least from an evolutionary stand point.

Love appears to be a fairly ineffective bonding agent, so to speak. Many couples do crack under the pressure of child-rearing, ending up at each other's throats or separating, and certainly some of these couples loved one another deeply at some point.

From an evolutionary standpoint, it may actually be more beneficial for humans to raise children communally rather than to have the burden of that certainly arduous task borne only by two people.

(I apologize if this reply sounds combative. It isn't meant to be at all! )