Getting High On Love

What is love? It’s a question that has plagued philosophers, poets and writers for millennia. In fact, it’s been a near impossible question to answer ever since we humans have had the ability to think about the things we do.

According to the various wisdoms, love is an emotion, or a whole bunch of emotions. It’s an instinctive reaction to a particular situation. It’s an evolutionary response to ensure the survival of the human race. It’s… Well, take your pick, but now there’s another choice available.

Dr. Larry Young who is a neurobiologist at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia in the USA thinks he has the answer. According to his findings, love is not something esoteric. It is not the poetically blissful sensation of walking on air. It is not the many splendoured thing that songs assure us of. It is not the result of a moon in June with champagne, oysters and candlelight. So, what is it?

Love, according to Dr. Young, is a drug.

To be more precise, Larry Young believes, through his observation, that he has discovered a chemical called oxytocin, which is pivotal in brain signalling where bonding and emotions of closeness are involved. In other words, if you feel that someone is really special to you, and you would like to spend the rest of your life with that person, then there’s nothing more going on than an outpouring of certain chemicals in particular parts of your brain. You are simply a machine reacting to a mechanistic input.

Whoa! Hold on there! Are we going to let science get away with this? Are we going to dumbly sit around and accept that we are nothing more than collections of chemicals that unwittingly respond to whatever input a scientist chooses to deliver? Are all the dating and relationship agencies to be reduced to dispensers of viagraesque pills that switch on love at will?

I think not!

Ah! But the evidence… What evidence? Dr. Larry Young has observed that a particular chemical seems to be involved when male and female prairie voles – yes, voles, not humans – bond together. Surely that’s a far cry from declaring that love emotions can be manipulated by drugs.

Dr. Young further says, “…my belief is that our emotions have evolved from behaviours and emotions that are in the animal kingdom.” In other words, he appears to believe that we have little say in the matter. As soon as a particular chemical is released into our brains, we act zombie-like in whatever way we are programmed to, eternal slaves to the God evolution.

All this behaviourism in science has long since gone too far. Living creatures, yes, all living creatures, are special beings. Does a mother cat care for her kittens only because a chemical switch determines it to be so? Or is it because we all have individual minds, as well as our physical brains, that can hold emotions?

Thankfully, at least one scientist has urged caution. Professor Nick Bostrom of Oxford University says, “We shouldn’t think that this perspective on its own provides a full understanding of what love is.”

Of course it doesn’t! Go with the poets, the philosophers, the writers and the visionaries. They offer a view of love that is more in keeping with love itself. Don’t let science destroy something that is truly wonderful and beautiful. Fall in love knowing full well that we will probably never fully understand what is really going on, and that is how it should be.

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