Meditation on Love
Mari has been thinking, maybe some of our most powerful emotions are simply chemical reactions in our brains. Mari knows that eventually we’ll know what the corresponding chemical releases in our brains are to our behavior, but Mari has been specifically meditating on love, the most powerful human emotion.
Mari may be a skeptic, but what if love is just the dopamine being released in our brains to try to get us to reproduce? Would it cheapen the overpowering experience of being in love if scientists were to someday prove that?
Mari knows humans love to think of emotions as part of what separates us from other species, because we’re special. We’re the only ones that use this type of advanced thought. But what if we’re not really that special? What if we’re just big, complex biological robots that can’t tell the difference between urges induced by chemicals in our brain and an actual good match with our significant others?
Mari would be absolutely delighted to believe and know that love is really something that connects some mysterious entity inside us called a soul with the soul of another person. Mari really would. Mari’s just obviously not in love, so Mari can think about things so complex as our own emotions entirely too scientifically.
It’s not like Mari doesn’t remember being in love and how powerful and all-consuming that emotion is. It’s just that Mari can now recognize all the strange behavioral patterns she displayed at those times that indicate that she was under the influence of a chemical being released steadily in her brain. Mari’s just been testing this theory in her mind to try to work out why sometimes we feel truly in love with the completely wrong person for us.
Are you currently in love?
Would you like to argue the point that love isn’t just a chemical reaction in our brains?
Is Mari just a heartless robot? =D
*MaribotShutdownSequence*
Question for You 
2 February 2008, 23:52
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Love is a connection, and sure it releases some kind of hormones and chemicals in our brains to make us feel good. But the key is the feelings only happen with a select individual, not all people, so it’s not just about reproduction like in the animal world.
Love is not what makes us great.
It’s what makes us weak.
Do you think that if dolphins or sharks felt and experienced love.
If they experienced love do you really think there’d be so many?
No.
can you imagine it:
ms dolphin: “Garry, where have you been?”
mr dolphin: “Oh you know betty, out and about with the guys”
ms dolphin: “YOU WERE WITH THAT HARPY SANDRA AGAIN, WEREN’T YOU?!”
mr dolphin: “I er, I don’t know what you mean”
ms dolphin: “oh bullshit *beats up garry and commits suicide*”
see there is living proof that love just makes us weak.
or maybe it was just a rather long ramble about nothing.
YOU DECIDE!
To say that we are the only beings that experience love wouldn’t be agreeable to me.
As for the chemicals, that’s true, but only certain people will cause those chemicals to surface. Love (just like other emotions) are very complex and it takes a combination of things to feel it.
It’s just like fear. It can be inspired by darkness, bugs, a big mean-looking person, whatever…and it causes adrenaline to rush to your brain…and that causes you to either put up your defenses or run away/hide.
I believe that the chemicals will help us choose our mates and whatnot, but essentially, it’s what we end up feeling at the end of the day, when the mate is not around. Love is a lasting feeling, or at least it should be. Love doesn’t always have to be an in-the-moment feeling; people love their husbands, wives, significant others even if they’ve passed away for years later. People can even love their living ex-boyfriends and ex-girlfriends for years and months later.
So I get what you’re thinking about; is love a biological thing that we can’t control or is there something more than that?
There’s something more than that.
It true. Everything we do is our “programming” in our brains. Love may not technically be real, but what is? So, you might as well make the most of the chemical release just like all the others.
Hope I’m making sense- though I doubt it.
Yes, Mari is a heartless robot.
KIDDING! lol.
Anyways, yes, I’m in love. Getting married actually, but you already know that.
Maybe we are robots, but I really don’t think so.
Other than that, I don’t really have a comment. The thought of that is too big for my little brain. :/
@Julie
True. Love only happens with a special person. And it’s true that there may be more than one special person, but it’s not like we fall in love with every single person we’re attracted to.
Thanks for being one of the happy commentors! You brightened Mari’s day.
@Robert
Actually, Mari hypothesizes that animals do experience the same dopamine or “happy” reward for courting and performing reproductive acts, which would technically be called love. They probably feel just as giddy and “floaty” as we humans do when given this reward by their brains.
However, Mari likes your pessimism and disillusioned attitude. Also, lmao, cute and weird explanation with the dolphins.
Love can make us weak, indeed. People literally do more dangerous things and engage in riskier behaviors all due to an influx of a happy drug in our brains. However, Mari hypothesizes that most people who agree with the statement that “love makes us weak,” have had a bad experience with love (who hasn’t, but Mari’s talking about a character-defining bad experience, not just typical middle school rejection), and can see how their behavior was thusly altered and they acted weakly or stupidly.
@Anya
Again, it’s true that you don’t just fall in love with every single person you find attractive.
And we’re probably not the only species to experience this, you’re right.
Interesting comparison: love and fear.
@Maria
True, love’s corresponding release of dopamine isn’t just a short-term brain response. It’s a long-term thing. Which raises the question in Mari’s mind, what if our initial brain response turns us into dopamine junkies, so we trick ourselves into staying with that person?
Mari’s probably just a heartless robot on this one, because Mari’s thoughts on the subject seem to cheapen love to the point where Mari is nearly calling everyone in love “junkies”.
What has Mari thinking that there’s something more than just the biological dopamine response is the fact that widows and widowers can literally die of broken hearts after their spouse passes. There has to be something that science can’t prove about that.
@Saya
True. Even if Mari’s heartless explanation of love is true, then how do we define what is real? Mari just watched the Matrix again, so Mari’s thinking along those lines.
Mari supposes we all have to think about our emotions and decide if they feel real to us. Isn’t that what we have our senses (sight, hearing, touch, smell, taste) for? To determine what’s real?
There’s definitely more than the dopamine, but I’m assuming it does play a part. Here’s a snippet from the National Geographic article:
“In the right proportions, dopamine creates intense energy, exhilaration, focused attention, and motivation to win rewards. It is why, when you are newly in love, you can stay up all night, watch the sun rise, run a race, ski fast down a slop ordinarily too steep for our skill. Love makes you bold, makes you bright, makes you run real risks, which you sometimes survive, and sometimes you don’t.”
And this is a quote from an anthropologist, Helen Fisher:
“A woman unconsciously uses orgasms as a way of deciding whether or not a man is good for her. If he’s impatient and rough, and she doesn’t have the orgasm, she may instinctively feel he’s less likely to be a good husband and father. Scientists think the fickle female orgasm may have evolved to help women distinguish Mr. Right from Mr. Wrong.”
Interesting, no?
@Becca
Maribot: Affirmative. XD
Yeah, Mari was hoping you’d respond to this post. It’s always fun to get the ideas and thoughts of people who are actually married or getting married when the post is concerning love.
Yeah, Mari thinks up some weird stuff.