One of the definitions of love that has always made sense to me is by M. Scot Peck. “Love is the free exercise of choice. Two people love each other only when they are quite capable of living without each other but choose to live with each other.” In my great big love affair that lasted forty plus years, this was the driving force right from the word go, as all my readers know.
I am also quite cynical about the very haphazard use of the word and keep looking for weird uses and some such uses have also been written about by me in some of my earlier posts. Like, I love hot dogs, or I love to smoke etc.
So, when the topic of love handled by a Biological Anthropologist, Helen Fisher came to my notice, I sat up and listened. In a fascinating lecture with TED, she takes one on a journey of discovery. Some of the statements that she makes might just tickle your curiosity enough to want to listen to her are given below.
“Love is not an emotion, it is a mechanical drive in the brain.”
“Human beings have learnt to tolerate the other individual long enough to reproduce.”
“Women entering the job market is going back to ancient times. 80% of the food for the day was brought home by the women in the times long past..We are simply moving forward to the past.”
“There are significant gender differences in the brains of men and women. Women and men are like two feet, needing each other to move.”
“There are more male geniuses in the world, but there are also more male idiots in the world.”
“Lust, romantic love and attachment can go together and/or exist simultaneously with others. In other words, one can love more than one person at the same time.”
“We are not animals made to be happy but to reproduce but we can develop serious attachments.”
Her considerable worry about the increasing use of antidepressants is worth listening to by itself. She concludes that particular subject with, “a world without love is a deadly place”.
I hope that I have primed you enough. Let me not keep you waiting. You can listen to her at TED.