-Cady
They say that Math is the purest form of science, and next to math is Physics, Chemistry, Biology, and all the other applied sciences. Now... Let's talk about love. Let's talk about love from a Biological perspective. To go one step lower or more basic would be to talk about love from a chemical perspective, and I guess that would be too technical for most of us, aside from it being beyond my current scientific knowledge capacity/capabilities.
Why do we love? Or: Why do we live? Answer: To pass on our genes. A different yet still correct answer: to love. Here's a thought: What if they're the same thing?
-Miguel J. Villanueva
Think about it: Do animals have the same problems concerning love/romance as us? No. Why is that? It's because they don't have to think about it. When they want to breed, they just breed. Dogs just go around sniffing each others' butts, then if they like what they smell, then it's ON. Things aren't so simple for us humans. (Sadly)
I think the problem is that there are so many possible combinations of criteria that we have for choosing our future mates that it just becomes so overwhelming. And I'm just talking about having sex; I still haven't started considering having babies and eventually a family into this equation! But wait, you might say; aren't those two things, people we want to have sex with and people we eventually want to marry the same thing? Wouldn't their Venn diagram (oh yeah math terms) be that of a single circle?
Well... not necessarily; and I think this is because of the existence of numerous social constructs such as marriage and propriety which makes everything so complicated. That is the burden of being human, after all; being on top of the food chain gives us time to screw everything up just by over thinking things now that we've been freed from worrying about where our next meal will come from or if we're going to be something else's next meal. It's like ecology's version of the meme "First World Problems". As humans, we have "Top of the Food Chain Problems".
Dogs and other mammals just have to worry about finding somebody with a compatible smell, because as we all know (I hope), our scents carry sexual advertisements called pheromones which display our favorable genetic traits such as the strength of our immune system to potential mates, then they can just copulate then walk away and then that's that. Things are so, so hard with us humans because aside from genetic traits, there are social traits that we also have to consider, like career, family life, religious and philosophical views, and the whole gamut of human quirks and idiosyncrasies.
Things become so hard and distorted because while we can be very sexually attracted to somebody because of their bodies or how we respond to their pheromones, we may not be attracted to them for the long run because of their personality. While an argument can be made about how our personalities are determines by our brain chemistry which is hard coded by our genes, the whole nurture versus nature thing comes in with its theories and postulates about epigenetics so in the end let's just all agree that not everything about our personality is based on our genes. Look at identical twins; they don't have identical personalities. And that's that.
"For you I'd wait, til kingdom come... Until my day, my day is done."
-Coldplay
The whole monogamy thing sometimes confuses me. Disclaimer: In my relationships I practice monogamy and I believe in monogamy, but on a Biological level, it confuses me. The steady rate of divorce rates throughout the entire world makes me sad. What happened to 'til death do us part? I guess it was much easier to stand by the commitment of eternal monogamy in the olden times when the average life expectancy was something like 30-40 even if by the age of 35 you wanted a divorce it would already be too late, coz' who would want you romantically now that you were just 5 years away from death? Why bother?
Well, now that we have life expectancies of 80 years old and above thanks to Medical Science, people have started bothering. I sometimes wonder if as the lifespans and lifestyles of human beings evolved, should it also follow that our ideas on what true commitments are also change? I know that there are a lot of couples that reach old age still married and in love with the sweethearts of their youth, but they seem to be the exceptions, not the rule. Have you ever stopped to think what would happen if Medical Science were to develop to the point that humans were practically immortal? What would 'til death do us part mean then? What happens to when our days are never done, when we have unending life?
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