The science of love: what fools these mortals be
The NY Times reports on researchers’ attempts to discover the chemical mediators of that complex emotion we call love. Some of this research has been done with prairie voles, who seem to share humans’ ability to be monogamous—although I doubt they share a whole lot more than that:
When a female prairie vole’s brain is artificially infused with oxytocin, a hormone that produces some of the same neural rewards as nicotine and cocaine, she’ll quickly become attached to the nearest male. A related hormone, vasopressin, creates urges for bonding and nesting when it is injected in male voles (or naturally activated by sex).
The Times article quotes scientist Larry Young concerning the possible development of an anti-love vaccine, as well as its opposite, a love-facilitator. The first involves the blocking of oxytocin, the second the administration of the same substance.
My guess is that it will be quite a while (if ever) before either is even remotely effective. But literature and art (popular and otherwise) have dreamed of such things for a long time.
A few random examples from popular music. To start, here’s love as a drug-substitute:
Some get a kick from cocaine.
I’m sure that if I took even one sniff
That would bore me terrific’ly too
Yet I get a kick out of you.
Next, we have the yearning to be free of the burdens of love:
What do you get when you fall in love?
A guy with a pin to burst your bubble
That’s what you get for all your trouble
I’ll never fall in love again
I’ll never fall in love again
What do you get when you kiss a girl
You get enough germs to catch pneumonia
After you do, she’ll never phone you
I’ll never fall in love again
I’ll never fall in love again
Note, however, how even in the above song, the resolve weakens fairly quickly. In the final lines of the final verse, we hear:
So for at least until tomorrow
I’ll never fall in love again.
But the greatest of all ruminations on the subject might just be Shakespeare’s “A Midsummer Night’s Dream.” Oddly, although the author of the Times article makes what I consider an oblique reference to the play (“we might reverse-engineer an anti-love potion, a vaccine preventing you from making an infatuated ass of yourself”), he never mentions the work at all.
A little personal note is in order: in my extreme youth, I owned the Classic Comic version of “A Midsummer Night’s Dream.” I read it again and again, entranced (that’s the proper word, I think).
The wondrous mystery of it all! The magic flower with its juices which, squeezed into the eye of the sleeper, would make him/her fall in love with the first creature that met the eye on awakening. The havoc that was wreaked, including the spectacle of the majestic Queen of the Fairies falling in love with a half-man half-ass, doting on him and weaving garlands of flowers to adorn the bizarre object of her affection.
And then, after maximum messiness had been achieved, the satisfying ending in which each person is made to fall in love with the mate who is exactly right for him/her. In the play, this is accomplished by means very similar to those described in the Times piece: a love antidote is applied to eradicate the misplaced affections of several characters, and then a corrective is applied at prescisely the right time, guaranteeing that the new love object will lead to happily-ever-aftering.
The mischievous Puck, on watching the complications ensuing from his initial applications of the love potion, famously declares, “Lord, what fools these mortals be!” And indeed, love can make a person seem foolish when misplaced, and/or can lead to some of the deepest sorrow and pain we are able to feel. But when it works out (and it sometimes does), there’s hardly anything more wonderful. There are some hefty compensations for being mortal (as Starman discovered when he ate a piece of apple pie, and then again when he fell in love with Karen Allen. But I digress.)
In closing, some more music:
Puts me in mind of a little known Sandra bullock movie called ‘Love Potion Number Nine” (good small roll by Ann Bancroft). what’s the difference between something like that and Ruffies? I mean with both of them reality sets in after the drug wears off. Where are the ethics?
Also as I have been listening to Danny O’Keefe lately I think of songs like “Just Jones” that would have never been created without lost love – and we would all be poorer for that.
I remember the book by Allan Watts – “the Wisdom of Insecurity”. One of the things I took away from it was that if you are never sad you will never know what it is like to be happy.
On another note (sorry for the pun) – when we did “anything Goes” in College we did the lyric exactly as porter wrote it and you quoted but on the Sinatra recording from the 60s instead of “took even one sniff” the reference is to jazz and says “heard even one riff” – interesting comment on the times (probably couldn’t have gotten by the censors) but a clever re-write.
Indeed, we should take love and distill it down to some little chemical imbalances. Take all the mystery from life.
Where pray tell, is Leonard Cohen’s observation on the topic:
All the rocket ships are climbing through the sky
The holy books are open wide
The doctors working day and night
But they’ll never ever find that cure for love
There ain’t no drink no drug
(Ah tell them, angels)
There’s nothing pure enough to be a cure for love
There Ain’t No Cure For Love – Leonard Cohen
Indeed, we should take love and distill it down to some little chemical imbalances. Take all the mystery from life.
Having the blueprints for a cathedral doesn’t make the results any less majestic.
I kept waiting for the “Love Potion Number Nine” song to come about – IMO one of the songs that will most likely hold it’s appeal for quite a while (and note, being 34 I’m not one that has nostalgic feelings on it). It is a song that strikes a great balance between taking itself seriously and being totally frivolous. Not to mention that the words are just *fun* to sing (IIRC, it has been many years and the terms are from memory, the alliteration is such that we humans enjoy saying the phrases).
As our brains are slowly more and more understood I think one of two things will come about – either we will be more and more mystified or we will find it to be algorithmically. In fact I, personally, think that we will come to understand a large portion to a high degree and there will always by some small part that makes us what we are.
I come back to the idea of “life”, I do not think we will ever be able to understand why perfectly viable cells die and why some that are decrepit to an extreme go on living. I think we will be able to quantify how to tell if something is living to a MUCH greater extent than we do now, yet never truly know what “life” really is.
For instance – why do some perfectly viable healthy living things just die yet something that by all our standard should die keeps on living? What is the essential thing that leaves – especially when we think about that instant where life leaves any complex living thing – we call all recognize when it happens even in life forms that are quite different from us (often we can do so better than out machines). I do not think we will ever know, I do not think we can *ever* know.
As someone who mostly believes in in the sanctity of human lives I think it will become more mystical. As someone who sees the world as a great computer that I can manipulate (to note, I’m a software engineer) I think much will also be mechanical/algorithmically. I think that the mystical part will become both a smaller part, yet also become the more essential part that we can not duplicate or control.
Heck, I think there is such a thing as “random” (do not talk to number theory guys if you believe this) and I think there is something of that in all of us. I think we are too complex to be simply pushed by chemicals. though they do certainly play a large part (or, rather, when we are truly pushed by them we end up addicts, degrade, and die quickly as it is only making one part of the whole so strong that the rest atrophy and we need the rest).
Michael Crichton nailed this whole issue in his speech on chaos and complexity theory. Where he points out the mistaken human knee jerk assumption of linearity in a non linear world.
The human mind may boil down to mathematics. But it is a mathematics where you can never rerun the same equation or get the same answer twice.
A flop with chicks since 1956? You may want to pursue other hobbies at this time.
I’ve found, through intense research, that alcohol is an important ingredient.
great song: lyrics & 2 interpretations:
Music: Maury Yeston
Lyrics: Maury Yeston
In a very unusual way
One time I needed you
Ina very unusual way
You were my friend
Maybe it lasted a day
Maybe it lasted an hour
But somehow it will never end
In a very unusual way
I think I’m in love with you
In a very unusual way
I want to cry
Something inside me goes weak
Something inside me surrenders
And you’re the reason why, you’re the reason why You don’t know what you do to me
You don’t have a clue
You can’t tell what it’s like to be me looking at you
It scares me so that I can hardly speak
In a very unusual way
I owe what I am to you
Thought at times it appears I won’t stay
How could I ever forget you
Once you had touched my soul
In a very unusual way
You made me whole
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2LBzC8ho5Ko&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lQ39eiEzpHQ
with corrections, mea culpa:
Music & Lyrics: Maury Yeston
UNUSUAL WAY (from the musical “Nine”)
In a very unusual way, one time I needed you.
In a very unusual way, you were my friend.
Maybe it lasted a day,
Maybe it lasted an hour,
But somehow it will never end.
In a very unusual way, I think I’m in love with you.
In a very unusual way, I want to cry.
Something inside me goes weak,
Something inside me surrenders,
And you’re the reason why,
You’re the reason why.
You don’t know what you do to me.
You don’t have a clue.
You can’t tell what it’s like to be me
Looking at you.
It scares me so that I can hardly speak.
In a very unusual way, I owe what I am to you.
Though at times it appears I won’t stay, I never go.
Special to me in my life,
Since the first day that I met you.
How could I ever forget you
Once you had touched my soul?
In a very unusual way, you’ve made me whole.
Neo,
Thou art as wise as thou art beautiful…
😉
Jamie Irons
Brings to mind Huey Lewis and the News, “I Want A New Drug”:
I want a new drug
One that wont make me sick
One that wont make me crash my car
Or make me feel three feet thick
I want a new drug
One that wont hurt my head
One that wont make my mouth too dry
Or make my eyes too red
One that wont make me nervous
Wondering what to do
One that makes me feel like I feel when I’m with you
When I’m alone with you
I want a new drug
One that wont spill
One that don’t cost too much
Or come in a pill
I want a new drug
One that wont go away
One that wont keep me up all night
One that wont make me sleep all day
Now what words rhyme with “vole” …