Is "love" a product of evolution? (page 2)

Big Dog

Okay, where's Tetra, I asked sort of this same question and he had some pretty interesting stuff to say and read regarding social evolution which rides piggyback on physical evolution. Basically the theory as I understood it was that our social behaviors evolved as our brains and culture evolved.

AlmostAtheist

In what way does "love" serve to perpetuate the existence of an individual being? After all, if evolution (without "divine" guidance and an ultimate purpose) is the source and meaning of life, then nothing, absolutely nothing, done for the benefit of other beings makes any sense

I can't quite agree. With natural selection, the ends are everything and the means is nothing. If my wonderful gushing love for my wife causes her to have equal love for me, the result of which is more children, then love served the purpose of perpetuating copies of my DNA. It's important to remember that there aren't any "rules" about evolution or natural selection, it just happens. Whoever has kids that live and have kids, wins.

Anything that eventually helps with that will get picked up by natural selection. Anything working against it will tend to get culled.

Dave

bebu

Anything that eventually helps with that will get picked up by natural selection. Anything working against it will tend to get culled.

I think this is oversimplifying things too much. We are way more complicated than this. We change our behaviors--or not--based on our own personal values, which themselves may change over time.

A bad father may come to value the person of his child, and then change his behavior towards the child. Is it evolution that helps us to really value our own species, to make changes in our interactions? Evolution that makes us change our values?

Evolution's goal is for us to survive; but there is something else in us that reaches for the higher thing of individual and social significance/worth/value. All of our laws (supposedly) reflect these values. We don't (at least not here, not right now) gather the destitute, terminally ill, the bums and unemployed and have mass executions of the unproductive drains on our society. The thought is repulsive, and we (supposedly) highly morally-evolved creatures would rather die fighting to allow a situation that works against utilitarian/evolutionary survival, than allow it as acceptable.

Where do these values come from? Especially if they seem to backfire on evolution?

I'm sorry if these thoughts are disjointed!

bebu

kid-A

I think to explain love as a by-product of evolution, we have to go back to the first person biologically programmed to love us, our mothers, now clearly this serves to promote the survival of the species, so I would imagine males evolved the capacity to love by modelling this behaviour from their earliest experiences with their mothers, and then translating this onto other females when it came time to find a mate. Of course, this theory is full of holes, but it may account for why females (who would be programmed to love their babies) tend to think more in emotional terms, especially in terms of sex, while men view sex as, well.....sex....with love happening later. Of course, these are horribly crude generalizations !!

Robdar

The feeling of love is a response to body chemicals and hormonal stimulus. It may not be a product of evolution (or it may be) but it helps us to survive and flourish. Similar hormones and chemicals are produced by other mammals also. Do they feel love too?

AlmostAtheist

Evolution's goal is for us to survive; but there is something else in us that reaches for the higher thing of individual and social significance/worth/value. All of our laws (supposedly) reflect these values. We don't (at least not here, not right now) gather the destitute, terminally ill, the bums and unemployed and have mass executions of the unproductive drains on our society. The thought is repulsive, and we (supposedly) highly morally-evolved creatures would rather die fighting to allow a situation that works against utilitarian/evolutionary survival, than allow it as acceptable.

Yeah, I buy what yer sayin'. I guess that's sort of where this thread is coming from. Evolution has slowly, painfully inserted base instincts into creatures that lead them in the direction of staying alive long enough to produce and raise offspring. But that isn't always in the individual's best interests.

So if "love" (at its base level, the triggering, before you come to know the person) is one of these evolutionary "get you to procreate" things, is it something we might be better off rising above? (shifting aside? sinking below?)

Am I as an individual better off to follow the path evolution laid before me (marry, have kids, raise them) or am I better off to choose my own path (which is....?)

Actually, this has little to do with me, since I've already bowed to evolution and accepted my fate as a procreator. I'm mulling this sort of stuff to figure out what I'm gonna put in front of my kids as they get older and their hormones start bugging them about spreading their DNA around. I'm going to always put college in front of them as the only reasonable course available. What about marriage? Kids? Am I going to present that as the normal course, almost expected? Something to be avoided? I don't know. I can't control them, of course, and I wouldn't want to if I could. But when it comes to a point when I have to either promote the idea of marriage/children, or suggest against it, I want something to say.

Dave

Robdar

I see where you are coming from regarding "procreation" love. I was referring to familial love. It helps us to live and flourish.

bebu

I'm going to always put college in front of them as the only reasonable course available. What about marriage? Kids? Am I going to present that as the normal course, almost expected? Something to be avoided?

Are you trying to figure out a value to guide this decision, or trying to figure out what is best as far as fitting in with evolution?

Are your kids just by-products of evolution to you? I'm sure they are not. But if so, you could tell them to spread it around somehow, I guess. Like buying as many lottery tickets as you can. Nature uses this method frequently, doesn't it?

But there is something in us that still rejects that we and our relationships are so base as to be so mechanical as that. It is very easy to do it when you think of humanity in general, perhaps, but when it gets close and personal, we reject it. If we don't reject it, we tend to do things that we, at this time, would label as merely animal/sub-human. I start to think that evolution is a bit like fate (no choices here really, in the end).

We really care about the people we actively love! Love is not merely a psychological condition, such as obsessive compulsive disorder, where we might take it apart and find causes and then change behavior. Love resists deserting the beloved even as it begins to be more aware of all the absurdities (non-logical, ironic situations) it brings..

Maybe because love unites hearts a bit (even if just in one's own mind), and it seems to be like a suicide to stop loving. Perhaps that is a link to evolution/survival (to prevent pain)?

I'd tell your kids to do and be whatever is best as they understand things. How can they regret that? Even if they changed points of view, as is likely, they still hold to doing what they think is best. And there, the "best", is a stubborn value which humans just can't seem to leave alone (is that related to evolution too?.. Ack!!). And acting stupidly isn't 'best', either for them or for society.

Now my head hurts!! Sorry if I've made no sense.

bebu

AlmostAtheist

Are you trying to figure out a value to guide this decision, or trying to figure out what is best as far as fitting in with evolution?

Bebu, your entire post was useful, so I hate grabbing one line out of it. But I'm gonna.

I am not so much trying to figure out a 'value to guide it', as I am trying to determine if there's any direction I can reasonably give my children in this regard. I'm not at all interested in them "fitting in with evolution", in fact it is the opposite that I want to nail down. Not that I want them to mechanically buck against every intuition, but I don't want them to blindly follow what seems like "love" into an early relationship that dooms their future happiness.

I know [well, "believe"] this happens much more among JW's than among the world in general, but it still happens far too frequently. Two 20-year-old's get married and ten years later they're standing over 2.4 kids wondering who the hell the other person has become.

I guess there's something in the back of my mind telling me that if I could show my kids that there is a natural, instinctive, powerful force that is trying to drag them into making decisions too early in life, that would somehow make the idea of waiting to get married (or forgoing it altogether) seem like a good idea. It's one thing if you're "in love" and you are truly in love, but it's a whole other thing if you're being drug along by instinctive desires that don't care a whit how happy you are.

(I can't escape the feeling that I am [once again] forging mountains from molehills... My kids will ignore any advice I give them anyway, and I'll probably change my mind seven times before I die.)

Dave

bebu

LOL Dave. You have big troubles ahead! There are no easy answers, so you have my sympathy.

Flip a coin to decide. ... chance is part of evolution too!

bebu

Is "love" a product of evolution?

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