Pelican – “Experiments that show plants do better when spoken to or played music may not mean 'love' as we know it. Perhaps it is a cosmic energy thing “. Sure it may not mean love – but as we can’t seem to be able to define actually what love is, it could well be that it is. Maybe you’re right that it is a cosmic energy thing in which case it would have an external, not an internal source. Which, in turn, would mean that that “warm fuzzy” feeling was part of its physical manifestation: just as some forms of energy manifest physically.

If this was true all those crazy, tree hugging, off-with-the-fairies people who come in for so much scorn could actually be the only ones who have actually understood the nature of love! This could also, it follows, explain why humans throughout history have always believed in gods or supernatural beings: perhaps these beliefs are merely a way of explaining love?

Yabby, you said that “My conclusion was that since love is based on how somebody makes YOU feel, clearly it is based on self interest…” Hmmm. But I don’t think loved is based on that actually. As I said initially, love can be a very painful experience indeed – and no-one in their right mind would choose to love someone who didn’t love them back. Yet this is not uncommon.

You also suggest that the yearning of childless mothers is an evolutionary manifestation of the desire to “have and love” their own children. I am not sure I agree with this. I think these yearnings are far more complex and are also societally constructed rather than genetically implanted. If this is so then these yearnings may indeed by assuaged by the birth of a child but do not necessarily equate with love.

Nature Lover: The Greek word agape refers to spiritual love of any kind: some believe it is the purest form of love of which humans are capable. It is not confined only to godhead.

Ah Romany, what a LOVEly topic. I always start off warm and fuzzy, then I start thinking, then I get confused. After that it only takes my relationship with my wife and kids to bring me back to warm and fuzzy, I’m very lucky.

All I can offer is some research I did on related humanity subjects that may provide some context for you post. My comments may cause offence to creationists, for that I apologize in advance; it is not my intention, I offer just one of the possible answers.

About 1.8 million years ago we started to develop“awareness”, rudimentary intelligence. We began to socialize and to try to explain our environment, of which we were starting to become aware. Nature was revered because it sustained us with rain, sun and seasons, providing the opportunity to hunt and gather. Our needs were at the top of Maslow’s Hierarchy, food, water and shelter. Emotions were fight or flight plus the instinctive drive to propagate.

The development of our cognitive skills has resulted in ever increasing interpretations of our environment and our basic desires of Fame, Love, Affluence and Power. Over the millennia, our societies have also developed “rules” by which we can attempt to maintain social, political, economic, religious and ecological order. We can measure our IQ, the key enabler to academic development. We can measure our EQ, emotional and social intelligence (just Google emotional intelligence) and we can understand our own personality types (Helen Palmer, Director, Centre for Enneagram Studies, “Enneagram in Love and Work” Harper Collins, www.harpercollins.org).

The Ennegram defines three personality types with three sub-types making nine in all. Enneagram is Greek for “nine profiles”. Each of us has one of the basic personality types. Heart, Head or Body. Once we understand our personality type, we can each examine and interrogate our motives for love and the interaction we need from it. Basically, the Enneagram defines nine motives for everything we humans do, including love.

To learn our own motivation and expectations in love, we need first to know who we are.

Yes, Romany, that's what I meant.

>>When you said "Love resists definition, being purely an emotion." did you mean that, because it is an emotion it resists definition?<<

But I disagree with your corollary.

>>Yet other emotions - hate, jealousy, anxiety etc. - are quite able to be defined, aren't they?<<

I would suggest that while these emotions may exhibit external signals that we can recognize, they are equally difficult to quantify.

Hate is an emotion that some possess and display easily and frequently, while to others it is a completely alien concept. It is quite possible that hate - and possibly jealousy - is an evolutionary-based response, that we "learned" in order to justify actions that were otherwise outside our normal behaviour pattern.

It might for example have been necessary to develop a hate response to neighbouring tribes, in order to justify belting them over the head with a club whenever they came near our women.

There was a fascinating Economist article that touched upon this peripherally in its analysis of "why music".

http://www.economist.com/science/displaystory.cfm?story_id=12795510

"[Darwin's] 'The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex' suggested that the need to find a mate being the pressing requirement that it is, a lot of the features of any given animal have come about not to aid its survival, but to aid its courtship. The most famous example is the tail of the peacock. But Darwin suggested human features, too, might be sexually selected in this way—and one of those he lit on was music."

Love may well fall into this category - a learned response that assists with our basic need to reproduce.

Think of it this way. The average person meets some thousands of people during a lifetime, and falls in love with one, or a small subset, of those thousands.

But there are another six billion that he or she never met...

In order to justify the selection of "the one" ("the few"?!) over the remaining six billion, it might have been necessary to invent the concept of love.

Hence - yes, by definition it is entirely selfish.

*Hmmm. But I don’t think loved is based on that actually. As I said initially, love can be a very painful experience indeed *

Two points on that one Romany. First, it depends on what kind of love
and situation. You might have friends that you love and don't just
like. Clearly they make you feel good to be around.

Second point, when it comes to attraction. There is a reason, even
if not concious or logical. We know from experiments for instance,
that women can tell you which males they are attracted to, by
smelling a whole lot of sweaty t-shirts. It turns out that differing
dna is involved. Those olifactory bulbs are busy, if we are aware
of it or not. So you love that person as you are attracted to that
person and highly likely want to bonk them :)

*I think these yearnings are far more complex and are also societally constructed rather than genetically implanted*

Yet in mammals, mothers bond with their babies when oodles of
oxytocin are released. Mothers do refer to loving their babies
and clearly that huge dose of hormones plays a role. So genes
are involved, not just learning.

So another question arises. Is grieving based on self interest?

Yabby asks:

>>So another question arises. Is grieving based on self interest?<<

I would go further, and suggest that all human emotions are based upon some form of evolved self-interest.

Grieving would seem to be a classic example, since the object of the grief clearly cannot possibly benefit from it.

It would therefore seem reasonable to suggest that grieving is either an essential component of personal healing, or an important external display to ensure social inclusion. The first is much favoured by psychologists, while the second is simply a defence mechanism against potential rejection by one's peer group.

Either way, the individual is the only beneficiary of their own emotions.

The problem with these evolution-based theories is that they run counter to the views of folk who insist that we have some kind of "soul", that is entirely independent of our bodies and brains, and that exerts a level of influence over the way we love, hate, grieve etc.

While this is a nice warm and mushy concept, in my view it sits in exactly the same basket of self-serving emotions as the rest. As human beings, we really try very hard to convince ourselves that we are not simply an advanced product of evolution, but possess some extra spark that cannot be explained by these natural processes.

This, too, is a manifestation of our eternal self-absorption, our determination to invent stuff that makes us feel important.