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| "Reason and passion are inexorably linked." -Helen Fisher |
If you too crave clarity, read on. All will be made clear, I promise.
Part 1: The Meaning of "Love"
According to Wikipedia, love is "emotion", but in her [excellent] 2004 book Why We Love, the preeminent anthropologist and "love expert" Helen Fisher disagrees (she does so again in this one of her two TED talks), pointing out that love is actually more akin to thirst or hunger than it is to anger or happiness, in that it is more difficult to suppress; is not closely associated with a universally recognizable facial expression; and clamors for satiety via similar neurochemical pathways. I have to agree with Fisher that love is not a true emotion but a drive.
That is not to say that I see the "love drive" and the "sex drive" as being one and the same. After all, one can sometimes occur in the absence of the other; and, as Fisher notes, love denied is usually far more emotionally crushing than is sex denied. In fact she claims that romantic love is distinct from what she calls the lust and the attachment drives, each associated with a hormonal profile that has been seen to predominate the successive stages of most romantic relationships;
"Lust is associated primarily with the hormone testosterone in both men and women. Romantic love is linked with the natural stimulant dopamine and perhaps norepinephrine and serotonin. And feelings of male-female attachment are produced primarily by the hormones oxytosin and vasopressin."
While some may object to this reductionist approach to love, I would argue that an appreciation of its biochemical basis not only allows us to better appreciate what love is, and how and why it evolves, but also how sexual preference - and all variety of romantic dysfunction - can have an innocent and purely physical, as opposed to a psychological, explanation.
But there is value also in viewing love as being greater than the sum of its parts. After all, science has only a limited understanding of the amazing human body (those who wonder whether science ever could explain love might like this Rationally Speaking podcast on the subject). Plus, as Fisher says, romantic love is "deeply entwined" with lust and attachment; and it bears a close biochemical resemblance to the distinct brand of "love" we tend to feel for close relatives as well as that we reserve for friends, pets, and reputedly all-powerful supernatural beings (a phenomenon that has been shrewdly referred to as "political love"). Therefore I hope you will not mind, dear reader, if I henceforth use the word "love" to refer to the set of sensations that are characteristic of all three of these drives.
But if love is a drive, what is it driving us toward? The obvious answer, I think, is parenthood. That is not to say that successful reproduction is a necessary part of love, but merely it's ultimate goal from an evolutionary perspective. And if I have succeeded in arguing that love is a biological phenomenon then reproduction is unquestionably the primary reason for its existence. But this is only a partial answer, for although love is surely "meant" to facilitate this end, it does so by causing us to build families, often via some kind of "marriage". And because families are social- as well as parental units, how we build them is profoundly impacted not just by our nature but also society at large (maybe this is why people sometimes mistake romantic love for a purely social construct). Do these two forces pursue confluent or conflicting agendas?
Part 2: Love and Society
Most people today live in monogamous societies, and yet the statistical odds of having a "happily ever after" monogamous relationship are sobering. In the United States, divorce rates are now estimated to be as high as 40% (higher still for those who marry young), and cheating is a very common cause for divorce. Moreover not all trespasses are discovered: some studies suggest up to one in 25 "fathers" are unwittingly helping to raise another man's child.
Observations like these have caused me to seriously consider a career in milk delivery, but others reflect on them somewhat more deeply: the political right alleges that our society is too progressive, while the left suspects that society is pressing us to conform to an artificial conception of romantic love. This suspicion calls for an investigation of some alternatives to the nuclear family model, in case something else is better suited to us as a species. Matt Ridley dedicates a part of his [recommended] 1993 book The Red Queen: Sex and the Evolution of Human Nature to doing just that, observing: "that most people [today] live in monogamous societies ... may only tell us what democracy usually prescribes, not what human nature seeks."
Polygamy, for example, is fairly uncommon today but it is still widely tolerated, and was far more common in practice among earlier civilizations. Ridley describes the love lives of some of history's most powerful men:
"The Babylonian king Hammurabi had thousands of slave 'wives' at his command. The Egyptian pharaoh Akhenaten procured 317 concubines and 'droves' of consorts. The Aztec ruler Montezuma enjoyed 4,000 concubines. The Indian emperor Udayama preserved sixteen thousand consorts in apartments ringed by fire and guarded by eunuchs. The Chinese emperor Fei-ti had ten thousand women in his harem. The Inca Atahualpa... kept virgins on tap throughout [his] kingdom."He goes on to claim that these were nothing more than "extreme examples" of polygamy: that throughout history a man's power generally predicted the size of his harem. On the other hand, Polyandry (polygamy's inverse) has occurred only rarely, primarily in geographical regions in which men's ambitions were curbed by a scarcity of resources (the Arctic, Tibet).
But is it fair to say that polygamy is better suited to our particular species than is monogamy? I think no: uncivilized men, as we can still see today, are rarely capable of securing the resources necessary to acquire, support, and protect multiple wives. Generally, such a feat requires pronounced social stratification; and therefore surely the more defensible position is that polygamy, not monogamy, is a product of civilized society. Also supporting this conclusion are my impressions that contemporary polygamy requires at least as much discipline and hard work as does strict monogamy; that even polygamous husbands usually have favorite wives; that it often seems to involve non-voluntary, "arranged" marriages; and is very often the product of religious conviction.
Polygamy is a hot topic here in British Columbia because as I write our supreme court is hearing a case in which the leaders of a polygamous, fundamentalist Mormon community called Bountiful are arguing against the very rarely enforced Canadian prohibition on taking multiple wives. The "latter-day saints" are arguing that the law is unconstitutional; the Crown, that striking it down would be socially destructive. Personally, I'm not entirely sure the law should be kept, mainly due to the impracticality of enforcing it, but my sympathies are with the Crown, because I think that polygamy not only feeds off inequality but also perpetuates and deepens it: men and women are conceived at remarkably equivalent rates.
Polyamory is a somewhat ambiguous system in which people take many different lovers, but generally it indicates a more egalitarian arrangement than polygamy or polyandry: it might refer to a kind of "open" marriage, for example. Polyamorists rebel against what a friend recently referred to as "the farce of sexual ownership"; and a popular guide to living a gratifying polyamorous lifestyle is entitled The Ethical Slut. They suggest that marriages are plagued not by extramarital sex but by the social taboo against it: love is beautiful and should be indulged, jealousy and dishonesty are repulsive and should be suppressed. The biologically-minded polyamorist might also mention that our closest living evolutionary relatives, chimpanzees (and especially bonobos), might well be considered polyamorous in their natural state - a fact that might seem to suggest it lurks in the depths of our evolutionary past; and thus also in human nature.
But I would disagree. It is difficult to claim that sexual infidelity is not, at least somewhat, 'in our nature": I simply maintain that so is sexual possessiveness, and that this latter tendency is usually the more difficult to suppress. In fact, it has been said that "he [or presumably she] who does not feel jealousy is not capable of loving", and with this I do agree - keeping in mind that this does not mean that jealousy is necessarily an integral part of love, but that love necessarily hands its subject the power to - potentially - make one feel jealous.
This is an uncomfortable point, because polyamorists in many ways are right to view jealousy as repulsive: for example, of the women murdered in the US each year, anywhere from one to two thirds die at the hands of a man with who they've been intimate. In The Red Queen, Ridley points to the famous story of the mutinous crew of the 18th century British navy vessel The Bounty - 15 men and 13 women - who landed on a deserted tropical island, now known as Pitcairn, to start a new life.
"When the colony was found eighteen years later, ten of the women had survived and only one of the men. Of the other men, one had committed suicide, one had died, and twelve had been murdered. The survivor was simply the last man standing in an orgy of violence motivated entirely by sexual competition."On the far-away Chatham Islands, also in the South Pacific, the inhabitants were moved to curb jealousy- inspired violence by practicing selective castration and idealizing non-violence. Unfortunately these peaceful peoples were almost entirely killed, enslaved, and consumed as soon as the relatively war-like native inhabitants of neighboring New Zealand caught wind of their existence from European sailors.
Jealousy may well be repulsive, but polyamory writ large would either have us, as a society, deny it or the love drive altogether. In Why We Love Fisher says "polyamory is utopian - and impractical"; and once again I agree with Fisher.
Homosexuality, of course, cannot directly lead to children. Because of this, it has often been stated (notably by those attempting to rationalize prejudice) that "homosexuality is unnatural". In response, it is common for those offended by this kind of nonsense to point out that homosexuality is frequently practiced by other species in the wild. But while true, this well-intended point only plays into a trap: for by this reasoning rape is also "natural", as it too occurs in the wild; devouring your mate following copulation is "natural". Moreover it implicitly accepts the lamentable fallacy that forms the core of this attempt to justify homophobia: the idea that "unnatural" somehow equals "bad", "wrong", or "immoral" - it doesn't.
Those on the political right might blame the existence of homosexuals on society. The left generally celebrates their on-going emancipation from it, but sometimes marvels at the existence of an allegedly heritable trait that in theory should be seldom propagated.
For example, a friend recently asked me out of curiosity if I knew of an "evolutionary explanation for homosexuality". Now that I've enjoyed some dwelling time I realize that the best way to explain the prevalence of homosexuality applies equally when considering all forms of human family structure: people are highly complex, adaptable, variable, and social animals, who engage in interactivity that is still more complex. And I honestly believe that that this answer is neither a cop-out, nor contradicts the notion of a typical human nature.
* * *
Ridley concludes that the evidence overwhelmingly suggests that the typical human mating scheme is one of heterosexual monogamy that is riddled with adultery. Comparative anatomists point out that males of species that are, on average, slightly taller and more muscular than females as a rule actively and continuously compete for mates; and species whose males penis-to-body size ratio rivals our own as a rule include females that display a limited but significant degree of interest in promiscuity. Evidence of the male capacity for promiscuity is found in the history of polygamy, but geneticists point out that men possess a gene known to be associated with monogamy among male voles, and which, when transplanted, can lead to mice forming more monogamous partnerships.
So love, it seems, does not always pull us in a single, coherent direction; moreover it can conflict with the evolving demands of society. Luckily, most humans are not enslaved by their average body-to-penis size, but can use reason to navigate this sea of influences. Indeed, the evidence suggests that we do just this: new research from Sweden indicates that couples live together for "purely rational", rather than "traditional or romantic reasons."
Most on the left probably don't question monogamy, but marriage: a recent poll conducted for Time magazine showed that 40% of American think that "marriage is obsolete". Presumably this remarkable result is due to statistics like the divorce and adultery rates previously mentioned, or that single parents - mostly women - apparently outnumber their coupled counterparts; but also by the increasingly obvious fact that marriage in the ceremonial sense is not a prerequisite of a "happily ever after". But I think that the essence of marriage is a promise to be faithful despite temptation; and because the wandering eye is a part of human nature, vows of fidelity will always have meaning. Moreover, because "'till we tire of each other do us part" will always lack adequate profundity, these vows will never cease to be ostensibly life-long. That they are often temporary is somewhat beside the point.
That many of them are life-long, however, is remarkable. Scientists claimed to have "discovered true love" when it was revealed only 10% of long-term couples still experience the biochemical reactions usually associated with newer couples. For the rest of us though, love evolves, and sometimes runs out of "gas" entirely. This oft-lamented fact makes sense when we accept that love is prompting us toward parenthood - a goal that it need not be necessarily permanent to accomplish, especially considering the artificially extended human lifespan. But it becomes increasingly confusing when we approach the notion of "soul-mates", a reprehensible idea for which there is wide-spread sympathy, despite the fact that it implies the existence of a soul, as well as a "guiding hand" that might allow these souls to find each other among Earth's over 6 billion people; raises false hopes of a faultless union when in fact any long-term relationships is likely to require vast effort to maintain; might help convince people to maintain destructive or abusive relationships; and can exacerbate the turmoil of a love denied.
By convention, rationality is seen as dispassionate, and passion irrational. But I think the bonds we forge of them are strongest when alloyed.
So love, it seems, does not always pull us in a single, coherent direction; moreover it can conflict with the evolving demands of society. Luckily, most humans are not enslaved by their average body-to-penis size, but can use reason to navigate this sea of influences. Indeed, the evidence suggests that we do just this: new research from Sweden indicates that couples live together for "purely rational", rather than "traditional or romantic reasons."
Most on the left probably don't question monogamy, but marriage: a recent poll conducted for Time magazine showed that 40% of American think that "marriage is obsolete". Presumably this remarkable result is due to statistics like the divorce and adultery rates previously mentioned, or that single parents - mostly women - apparently outnumber their coupled counterparts; but also by the increasingly obvious fact that marriage in the ceremonial sense is not a prerequisite of a "happily ever after". But I think that the essence of marriage is a promise to be faithful despite temptation; and because the wandering eye is a part of human nature, vows of fidelity will always have meaning. Moreover, because "'till we tire of each other do us part" will always lack adequate profundity, these vows will never cease to be ostensibly life-long. That they are often temporary is somewhat beside the point.
That many of them are life-long, however, is remarkable. Scientists claimed to have "discovered true love" when it was revealed only 10% of long-term couples still experience the biochemical reactions usually associated with newer couples. For the rest of us though, love evolves, and sometimes runs out of "gas" entirely. This oft-lamented fact makes sense when we accept that love is prompting us toward parenthood - a goal that it need not be necessarily permanent to accomplish, especially considering the artificially extended human lifespan. But it becomes increasingly confusing when we approach the notion of "soul-mates", a reprehensible idea for which there is wide-spread sympathy, despite the fact that it implies the existence of a soul, as well as a "guiding hand" that might allow these souls to find each other among Earth's over 6 billion people; raises false hopes of a faultless union when in fact any long-term relationships is likely to require vast effort to maintain; might help convince people to maintain destructive or abusive relationships; and can exacerbate the turmoil of a love denied.
By convention, rationality is seen as dispassionate, and passion irrational. But I think the bonds we forge of them are strongest when alloyed.
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