Well, speaking of love, its a very good emotion and a pretty handy one that helps us go through many things in our brief period of existence. Today I wont be discussing the wonders of love or any kind of unrealistic love stories e.t.c. What I am going to do today is discuss with you some facts about love and what drives us to endless..... something.
When a photon bounces off of a surface and hits our eye's cone cells it propagates through to the brain at the speeds of approximately 90 m/s. That is, it would take around .0005 seconds or .05 milliseconds in order for the visual signal to reach the brain and and get processed. In other words you could say that the world you now see is the past world, just by a little but past. In order for your brain to overcome this time lapse, it starts predicting the future. You can check out a great TED talk on how the brain predicts the future here.
Now leaving all that behind lets get back to our lovely topic.
So speaking of seeing, when we see (or visually perceive) someone we know, certain parts of our brain flares up with activity. This activity is different for different individuals because we dont generally feel the same about every other person we meet. Some we even tend to forget due to what we like calling priming. But we all know this that there is that one special face that we never tend to forget. That face lingers in our background and never tends to go away. That face is that of the one we love or what teens nowadays say to have "crush" on. The brain generates immense amounts of stimulus. Your heart rate increases, you start to sweat profusely, you become somewhat dumb e.t.c. These were just few of the endless things that happen to us.
Now lets ramp it up, when we love someone, our brain generally goes into an over protective mode towards our spouse. This was an evolutionary necessity. Similar to how a male lion protects his pride (group) from other male lions. In order for safe passage of our genes into the next generations we males are hard wired evolutionarily in such a way that we are possessive. Similar to primate males we males also tend to have the tendency to spread our seeds to as many females as possible in order to ensure a safe passage of our genes to the future generations (this explains why people say boys tend to cheat more). This type of tendency can be seen in many species.
Similarly for females, they are built in a way that the need the best companion, who would protect them and look after their needs. This is also evident on a primal level with birds. The male bird in many cases is very flashy e.g. peacock. The male peacock needs to be flashy in order to attract the best mate and ensure safe passage of his genes. In humans, females generally go for the more flashy i.e. guys with muscles, better health, better social status, who stands out of the crowd e.t.c this is done so that the female gets the optimum genes for her offspring (note: none of this happens at a conscious level). The females need to be choosy because they just have one egg a month.
Love is a special case tho. When a person loves, he or she not only searches for a social or financial security, but also searches for stability in life. We humans are obsessed with stability and order. That's the reason why we are superstitious. Never mind superstition it is for another post.
Love, is a sign that we humans are a highly evolved species. We are different from other species because of our ability to dedicate a huge amount of our mental energy to an emotion called love.
Well, first lets discuss what happens when we "love".Our brain is a wonder machine(biological). each of our thoughts, emotions, sensations are nothing but the children of our wonder machine (brain). Now lets discuss what happens when you see something.
When a photon bounces off of a surface and hits our eye's cone cells it propagates through to the brain at the speeds of approximately 90 m/s. That is, it would take around .0005 seconds or .05 milliseconds in order for the visual signal to reach the brain and and get processed. In other words you could say that the world you now see is the past world, just by a little but past. In order for your brain to overcome this time lapse, it starts predicting the future. You can check out a great TED talk on how the brain predicts the future here.
Now leaving all that behind lets get back to our lovely topic.
So speaking of seeing, when we see (or visually perceive) someone we know, certain parts of our brain flares up with activity. This activity is different for different individuals because we dont generally feel the same about every other person we meet. Some we even tend to forget due to what we like calling priming. But we all know this that there is that one special face that we never tend to forget. That face lingers in our background and never tends to go away. That face is that of the one we love or what teens nowadays say to have "crush" on. The brain generates immense amounts of stimulus. Your heart rate increases, you start to sweat profusely, you become somewhat dumb e.t.c. These were just few of the endless things that happen to us.
Now lets ramp it up, when we love someone, our brain generally goes into an over protective mode towards our spouse. This was an evolutionary necessity. Similar to how a male lion protects his pride (group) from other male lions. In order for safe passage of our genes into the next generations we males are hard wired evolutionarily in such a way that we are possessive. Similar to primate males we males also tend to have the tendency to spread our seeds to as many females as possible in order to ensure a safe passage of our genes to the future generations (this explains why people say boys tend to cheat more). This type of tendency can be seen in many species.
Similarly for females, they are built in a way that the need the best companion, who would protect them and look after their needs. This is also evident on a primal level with birds. The male bird in many cases is very flashy e.g. peacock. The male peacock needs to be flashy in order to attract the best mate and ensure safe passage of his genes. In humans, females generally go for the more flashy i.e. guys with muscles, better health, better social status, who stands out of the crowd e.t.c this is done so that the female gets the optimum genes for her offspring (note: none of this happens at a conscious level). The females need to be choosy because they just have one egg a month.
Love is a special case tho. When a person loves, he or she not only searches for a social or financial security, but also searches for stability in life. We humans are obsessed with stability and order. That's the reason why we are superstitious. Never mind superstition it is for another post.
Love, is a sign that we humans are a highly evolved species. We are different from other species because of our ability to dedicate a huge amount of our mental energy to an emotion called love.
Why do we need love?The answer is simple and short, for the survival of our race. Nowadays survival is not an issue for us. We, over the course of time have become the most abundant and flourishing species on our planet. But that's relatively recent. We have been living on this planet for over 2.5 million years i.e. palaeolithic age, for almost over half that time we needed to survive the wild. due too our long lineage we inherited some basic instincts which are dominant till date.
Benefits of such an affectionLove has many benefits:
- In today's date where survival is not our prime target, Love helps us bond with each others. Not just one single person but with those people who comfort you, care for you, around who you feel the safest.
- Love provides stability. When we love or feel for someone we instinctively tend to be protective towards them, we tend to look after them helping them flourish. This is beneficial for both the persons because, while we do this act of protection the person protecting gets a sense of self satisfaction and the person being protected gets support and better chance of survival.
- Love also helps spread our ideas. Why I am saying this is because, you generally tend to listen to a person close to you and not some stranger you interact with. Hence you can deduce from this fact that why big companies use a form of love in order to communicate their products. It is evident in places like Japan. There is you release an ad which says the conventional "buy my products to reap the benefits", then that add is said to be bogus and the market for the product falls. Hence whenever a company plans on marketing in those regions, they have to keep this in mind and create an ad that would create a positive sense and in some cases love of the company for their customer and hence help market their product. For example this video here is a perfect example that how the advertising there takes place. Its is similar here in India but not to such an extent.
- Love pushes us to human limits. Whenever you love doing something, the sky becomes the limit. You become so obsessed with what you do that there seems no boundaries to your ability. I am not only mentioning to love for a person, what I mean to say is what people like calling "passion". This is a very good example or how people can be awesome.
Just to sum it up guys. Love is not just two people having feelings for one another. It is just a part of it. Love is a trigger, a button that will make you stronger, a better human being. Love enables us to do many seemingly impossible tasks, and at the same time gives us that boost, that rush you feel, that sense of happiness and satisfaction. My final suggestion to you would be, stop fretting over issues, Life is small to do such mundane things, rather try following your passion, your love, do what you love doing, only then you will be able to achieve wonders. I have found my love, Learning. Mention what is your passion, or in other words love, in the comments. Cmon guys speak up, you might be thinking that it might be too late for you to do something in life, but friends if a 80 year old person can be this. your argument becomes invalid (Same as mine too). Don't succumb to peer pressure friends, just let it out. Your first step to perfection as a human would be knowing what you are good at, if you cant decide now, no problem. Just sit back and think. Give yourself some time off of your phone (if you constantly use one) and think what you love. And if you are a teenager then hats off to you, you guys are in a stage where you can easily mould yourself into becoming something great, a good example would be this.
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