Love is deeply intertwined with humanity. It is at the core of our species, meticulously studied in ancient Greece and carved in imagery on cave walls, discussed in locker rooms and under covers, the root of devastation and great deeds; It’s the red string of human history. But what if love is not a grandiose soul connection, eternity written in the stars, but instead an evolution’s carefully orchestrated chemical illusion to keep humans bonded?
I present to you an option: Swallow the red pill, and delve into an exploration of what it means to see love for what it truly is with me, or swallow the blue pill and proceed with whichever perception you may have of love already. The central question is this: If love is a biological mechanism that mimics addiction, does that diminish its’ beauty or does it increase its’ gravity?
There are a few things that happen when a person first comes to love another. Levels of cortisol rise, which by definition is a form of stress response to the new fuzzy feelings, and also entails that levels of another hormone, serotonin, lower. Depleted serotonin levels can reduce our appetite and are linked with obsession. It “precipitates the intrusive, maddeningly preoccupying thoughts, hopes, terrors of early love”—the obsessive-compulsive behaviors associated with infatuation”, to quote Richard Schwartz, Harvard Medical School professor who studies love. Oxytocin and vasopressin are other chemicals at work, tuning the lovestruck into a calmer, more content, secure person and one with heightened territorial aggression and mating tendencies respectively. High levels of the hormone dopamine are released too, which is part of an intricate play of the body’s reward system. The hormone triggers a sense of euphoria and lust, making love a pleasurable experience. Love becomes a reward. We feel good, really good, lose sense of judgement and feel protective of the thing that provides us with that feeling. This chemical cocktail very much resembles the biological processes initiated by another action; doing drugs. Falling in love and getting high both hijack the brain’s reward system and lay out in front of us the prerequisites for addiction.
Looking to the media, love is not rarely depicted as a high in itself; We are shown how infatuation makes you feel more alive, more grateful, optimistic, unstoppable even. It is depicted as transcendent, a force majeure, the answer to any question, irresistible. This leads me to wonder if cultural conditioning might cause people to not seek love solely for the sake of connection, but for a chance to get a glimpse of the splendor. If it trap us in unrealistic expectations, or if it helps us find meaning and value in love? And does learning about the mechanisms that constitute love on a practical level ruin its magic, or enhance its power?
One might argue that this is a very aromantic approach to love, which does in fact ruin the magic of it all, turning love into a transactional act, something mechanical, a mere chemical process not unlike the immune system tackling a cold. But what if instead, we see how this makes love more human? The desire to love and be loved is a part of human programming. And to take it up a notch, the understanding of human biological responses to falling in love and its correlations with drug use has laid the foundation for a new field of research, on the potential in treating alcohol and drug abuse through meddling with oxytocin and dopamine systems. Choosing to understand love through biology is not mutually exclusive with the romance of it all, but can instead add another layer. In the dichotomy where viewing love as a biological mechanism can either make or break the meaning of love, we are faced with a choice, but no matter the backstory, love is a powerful thing. It is a muse to art, literature, culture, and societies.
Taking the red pill is not in any way about rejecting romance and magic, but instead about understanding love for the intricate interplay of biology and meaning, addiction and transcendence that it is. Perhaps love is not less grand because it is addictive, perhaps love is grand precisely because it is addictive, because it is human nature to love, and love is a wonderful thing.
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