Love is as real as any of our other emotions. There are a lot of different types of love; romantic, friendship, familial, unrequited.
When we first fall in love there are a lot of chemicals swirling around our body which have similar effects to certain illegal drugs. These chemicals cause feelings of happiness and excitement, and decrease appetite and sleep. A similar things can happen when we first make exciting new friends, but usually not to the same extent.
Long-term attachment to a partner, or the interaction between a parent and child, releases a different set of chemicals which gives feelings of contentment and bonding.
Aside from the physiology (the functions of our body) there are also psychological effects of love (in the brain). Being in love can change the way you think and definitely affects your behaviour.
Scientifically, love probably helps out the human species. Being in love with someone increases the chances of you wanting to have a baby with them, thus helping out with survival of the species. It is also important that parents feel a bond with their children, and that people in a community feel a bond with each other so that they will work together and help each other survive.
To approach it scientifically, I imagine that there are very good biological and evolution-related reasons why these things help us to survive. We need to have kids to survive, as a species. It helps if we love our kids, so we protect them and pass on our genes. Love helps us get up at 5 in the morning to look after our crying baby, for example. Emotions can make us act with great strength and decisiveness.
You might say “why can’t we just be rational about everything?” We need to keep control of ourselves to plan things, and make sure we survive. We can’t always give into our emotions – sometimes we have to do things like go to supermarkets. We should get up and look after our baby because we know it’s important to do that.
Well, we humans don’t always think rationally, and our lives are a constant battle between emotion and reason. What the Greeks called Apollo and Dionysus. We’re still here, which means it’s working to some extent. But what we think and feel are certainly not always the same.
Maybe irrational things like love are a byproduct of our having big, complex brains that allow us to imagine stuff. We’re creative, which means we aren’t always rational. Whatever the reason, emotions can be both dangerous and powerful. They are caused by a combination of brain and chemicals in the body, to put it very simply.
Now if we step away from the science we can get back to enjoying the emotions instead of analysing them too much. 🙂 It’s like when you try to work out WHY a joke is funny – it usually stops being funny right there.
Yes, love is real. It is an emotional and psychological response, but is still real. The physical effects such as changes in brain patterns, hormonal response, etc can also be measured.
Love is as real as any of our other emotions. There are a lot of different types of love; romantic, friendship, familial, unrequited.
When we first fall in love there are a lot of chemicals swirling around our body which have similar effects to certain illegal drugs. These chemicals cause feelings of happiness and excitement, and decrease appetite and sleep. A similar things can happen when we first make exciting new friends, but usually not to the same extent.
Long-term attachment to a partner, or the interaction between a parent and child, releases a different set of chemicals which gives feelings of contentment and bonding.
Aside from the physiology (the functions of our body) there are also psychological effects of love (in the brain). Being in love can change the way you think and definitely affects your behaviour.
Scientifically, love probably helps out the human species. Being in love with someone increases the chances of you wanting to have a baby with them, thus helping out with survival of the species. It is also important that parents feel a bond with their children, and that people in a community feel a bond with each other so that they will work together and help each other survive.
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Oh, it’s real. Which is a good thing.
To approach it scientifically, I imagine that there are very good biological and evolution-related reasons why these things help us to survive. We need to have kids to survive, as a species. It helps if we love our kids, so we protect them and pass on our genes. Love helps us get up at 5 in the morning to look after our crying baby, for example. Emotions can make us act with great strength and decisiveness.
You might say “why can’t we just be rational about everything?” We need to keep control of ourselves to plan things, and make sure we survive. We can’t always give into our emotions – sometimes we have to do things like go to supermarkets. We should get up and look after our baby because we know it’s important to do that.
Well, we humans don’t always think rationally, and our lives are a constant battle between emotion and reason. What the Greeks called Apollo and Dionysus. We’re still here, which means it’s working to some extent. But what we think and feel are certainly not always the same.
Maybe irrational things like love are a byproduct of our having big, complex brains that allow us to imagine stuff. We’re creative, which means we aren’t always rational. Whatever the reason, emotions can be both dangerous and powerful. They are caused by a combination of brain and chemicals in the body, to put it very simply.
Now if we step away from the science we can get back to enjoying the emotions instead of analysing them too much. 🙂 It’s like when you try to work out WHY a joke is funny – it usually stops being funny right there.
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Yes, love is real. It is an emotional and psychological response, but is still real. The physical effects such as changes in brain patterns, hormonal response, etc can also be measured.
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