Love is on my mind because on Tuesday my lecture in class was about the evolved function of emotions, and I focused on a few in particular, including love.
To motivate the discussion, I began by trying to persuade my students that, many-splendored thing it might be, love presents something a puzzle. Consider some apparently epically poor decisions from literature. Paris might be forgiven for falling for Helen, but was his next best option so much worse that it was worth starting a war? Could Lancelot and Guinevere not put their love aside, set against their loyalties to Arthur, King and husband? And when Romeo and Juliet believed the other to be dead, was suicide preferable to searching for another, though doubtless less compelling, mate?
While the fitness consequences of such decisions seem to speak for themselves, those who have fallen in love might be inclined toward not just answering each of these with a yes, but shouting its obvious truth with ebullient, confident enthusiasm. Who among us with the least poetry in our souls has not felt the unanswerably sublime pull of another, whose virtues so ensorcel that we feel as though we might fight, kill and, yes, die that we might be together?
And so, an evolutionary puzzle. If emotions function to guide us toward adaptive behavior, not the least of which entails making good tradeoffs in decision-making, what is this thing called love, and why does it torment us so? No one seems immune, as even the rich and powerful seem ready to make sacrifices at the altar of love, as cases from Edward VIII to John Edwards illustrate. We all dance to love’s tune and obey the pull of her strings.
To motivate the discussion, I began by trying to persuade my students that, many-splendored thing it might be, love presents something a puzzle. Consider some apparently epically poor decisions from literature. Paris might be forgiven for falling for Helen, but was his next best option so much worse that it was worth starting a war? Could Lancelot and Guinevere not put their love aside, set against their loyalties to Arthur, King and husband? And when Romeo and Juliet believed the other to be dead, was suicide preferable to searching for another, though doubtless less compelling, mate?While the fitness consequences of such decisions seem to speak for themselves, those who have fallen in love might be inclined toward not just answering each of these with a yes, but shouting its obvious truth with ebullient, confident enthusiasm. Who among us with the least poetry in our souls has not felt the unanswerably sublime pull of another, whose virtues so ensorcel that we feel as though we might fight, kill and, yes, die that we might be together?
And so, an evolutionary puzzle. If emotions function to guide us toward adaptive behavior, not the least of which entails making good tradeoffs in decision-making, what is this thing called love, and why does it torment us so? No one seems immune, as even the rich and powerful seem ready to make sacrifices at the altar of love, as cases from Edward VIII to John Edwards illustrate. We all dance to love’s tune and obey the pull of her strings.
by Robert Kurzban, Evolutionary Psychology | Read more:
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