Why Love?

stormblaze (62)in #science • 8 years ago

Love, it is the emotion that binds two like minded beings together. It is one of the most written topics in human history. But why do we feel this intense emotion? In this post we will discuss possible reasons for the phenomena we call love.

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What is love?

As mentioned above love is a emotion that we humans can experience. It is typically caused by a hormone cocktail. The ingredients of this hormone cocktail consists of the following key ingredients : Testosterone, Oestrogen, Adrenaline, Dopamine, Oxytocin, Vasopressin and Serotonin. But it is important to note that love is not a cocktail served in one shot, oh no, the drink is brewed in our bodies by a series of phases.

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Usually the first phase is attraction. This is our first step to the downwards spiral fall of love. It consist of the potent kick of adrenaline to get the heart rushing and the nice after taste of dopamine and serotonin. This is the part of the drink that gets us hooked, almost like the free sample drug dealers gives to a poor unexpected soul to get them hooked.

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The last phase is the part that really keeps us hooked. This is mainly caused by Oxytocin (A.K.A the love hormone) and Vasopressin. These hormones cause a commitment feeling in the human brain. This commitment feeling is essentially what we call love. It makes humans want to live with their better half and (more importantly) raise a family.

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"O no! it is an ever-fixed mark"

a quote from William Shakespeare's poem sonnet 116 which is his opinion about love.

But why love?

This is the real reason for this post: To discuss the possible reasons for feeling love. So the first reason if of coarse to mate. We would have no possible desire to mate without our symptoms of love. That would explain why there are little people with no symptoms of love, their genes simply did not get passed on. But of coarse in our modern era we see people with no desire to mate, but that is due to slight mutations in the genome.

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Most animals and species experience the first phase of the love hormone, attraction. To say that all phases of our love experience is needed to reproduce is not completely right. Insects for example feel the urge to mate due to a similar type of attraction like ours. But usually in the end the female eat the male. They do not have that long lasting love experience like we humans do. But the death of the male is not in vein, it serves a crucial part of their survival as a species. The nutrients of the male insect can help the female to survive and have the energy to fight of predators and of coarse to hunt.

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Prayin Mantis male's head gets munched off after mating. Image Credit

The love and bond we get from love is important for our species survival, just like female insects eat the male insect after mating important for their species to survive. It is possible that we have evolved to love to protect our loved one and off spring. This mentality have helped us to survive threats and reproduce for thousands of years. The human ancestor that did not share the same trait's off spring did not probably survive, and the genes got lost through out the years.

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But there are also much more possible explanation for why we love. We all know by this time that there are different types of love, like love for other siblings and family, love for friends and just common "love"for other humans that lives live with us. This helped us to stay strong and help each other. This types of love helped us rather not to see strength as something an individual posses but as something that is gained through unity.

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Our species is so successful in terms of survival, that old threats no longer phase us. Our perception of Love is changing, just like our technology. it is no longer needed to stay with our offspring for survival. It would makes sense on a economic scale to stay with our loved one and off spring, but for sheer survival.... well not anymore.

What do you think? Why do we love? Share your thoughts down below! Don't forget to Upvote and follow me if you liked what you read! Please Resteem as well!