h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Because they are fools. Equally those who are not fools fall in love because they are not fools. The object of the love is different - or not as the case may be.

i skimmed over most of the posts of this conversation. i like a couple of hasselfree's L-O-N-G posts

i think of LOVE as a combination of
1. the evolutionarily hard-wired sexual attraction between 2 mates + the survival advantage of the 2 of them sticking around to raise kids AND
2. the cognitive interpretations of all of this that come from our big neocortex and higher intellectual functioning.

i do NOT believe in LOVE at first sight. that is clearly LUST

LOVE is probably THE most powerful emotion because it is responsible for the most fundamental action in LIFE [procreation]
that is why it leads people to do foolish things

PeteY out!

i mean not oops

"i do NOT believe in LOVE at first sight. that is clearly LUST "

If I believe in reincarnation, then love at first sight, might just not be what you'd think it is.

Have you never experienced that wonderful feeling on meeting a person for the first time and thinking "I know this person". ?
sex in some instances can be about more than procreation, and Biological impulse (although this isn't a bad thing) it can be about wanting to become one.

you: Have you never experienced that wonderful feeling on meeting a person for the first time and thinking "I know this person". ?
me: nope. poor peteY

you: sex in some instances can be about more than procreation, and Biological impulse (although this isn't a bad thing) it can be about wanting to become one.
me: don't a lot of people feel that LOVE is when 2 people feel as if they are ONE?
hey, call me constrainted in my thinking but i tend to think that the "wanting to become one" comes from our age-old biological hard-wired drives being filtered through the higher cortical functioning by our big overdeveloped neocortex, which leads us to interpret these basic drives into other stuff, like wanting to become one. make any sense to ya

i've been accused of being too biological go figure

It's funny but it's difficult to talk about stuff that sounds like Hallmark wrote it.

Being one is more of a mental thing than a physical thing.
In other words can you also love someone, if you never get to have sex with them and I mean in the physcial manner of love, not the bonding of friend, or child thing.
I'm going to do more thinking.

agreed.

during copulation, a male and a female are kind of "one"
but, feeling like you and your mate comprise one complete whole IS mental, as you say. i think of it as the feeling that 2 people, who started off with rather similar ideas, after getting to know one another, adopt each others' ideas more and more, until their ideas meet in the middle and they think pretty much exactly alike.
dammit. why can't i sound all elegant and sophisticated like you?

I did some more thinking and this is what I came up with.
It's not in the physicality of attraction. It's not in the biological pull. It's not in the conversational tones.
It's all in the eyes.

Wonder what happened when you put your eyes on me.
Some kind of magic and it will not let me be.

Magic, the feeling that something extra ordinary can happen.
Found by most people when they experience the thing we call love.

YOU: I did some more thinking
ME: the number of synaptic connections in your brain is probably inconceivable.
thinking increases the complexity of the neural networks within your brain. the more one processes and manipulates information, the more sophisticated one's brain becomes to adapt to the mental "stress". it's totally cool.

YOU: and this is what I came up with.
It's not in the physicality of attraction. It's not in the biological pull. It's not in the conversational tones.
It's all in the eyes.
ME: are you serious?

YOU: Wonder what happened when you put your eyes on me.
Some kind of magic and it will not let me be.
ME: your poetry is attractive

YOU: Magic, the feeling that something extra ordinary can happen.
Found by most people when they experience the thing we call love.
ME: i can easily explain this "magical feeling" biologically. it is reproducible by drugs, i believe.

WHAT WOULD YOU SAY IF I TOLD YOU THAT "LOVE" HAS A DISTINCT NEUROBIOLOGICAL BASIS AND THAT THERE IS NOTHING MAGICAL ABOUT IT. OUR BRAINS JUST TRICK US BY CREATING THE ILLUSION THAT SOMETHING MAGICAL IS HAPPENING.

peteY out!

ps: i your poetry. you should do it for a living.

No I'm not joking.
That kind of magical love thing is in the eye contact.

"WHAT WOULD YOU SAY IF I TOLD YOU THAT "LOVE" HAS A DISTINCT NEUROBIOLOGICAL BASIS AND THAT THERE IS NOTHING MAGICAL ABOUT IT. OUR BRAINS JUST TRICK US BY CREATING THE ILLUSION THAT SOMETHING MAGICAL IS HAPPENING."

And what would you say if I replied.
Love is what I choose it to be.
What something feels like, is what it is.
EG.Fear is merely a release of adrenalin, (by confrontation with an outside stimulus) and yet you know it feels like something much more, and so humans generally run or fight but do not sit and anaylyse the chemical transactions when confronted with danger !

Life is an illusion, so make the illusion work for you not against you.
You have the freedom of choice.
this isn't really about smart, this is about lateral thinking.
thinking the other way.
Seeing the other picture.
Drugs give a synthetic feeling of love. This is why there are so many kids with addictions.
This is the only way they get to feel love, it's not the real thing but it's better than nothing.

ANNIE--No I'm not joking.
That kind of magical love thing is in the eye contact.

PETEY--i'll take your word for it. i have yet to experience "falling in love" personally and i agree with your belief that we can completely understand only those things that we've experienced personally.

ANNIE--
[PETEY, from before]--"WHAT WOULD YOU SAY IF I TOLD YOU THAT "LOVE" HAS A DISTINCT NEUROBIOLOGICAL BASIS AND THAT THERE IS NOTHING MAGICAL ABOUT IT. OUR BRAINS JUST TRICK US BY CREATING THE ILLUSION THAT SOMETHING MAGICAL IS HAPPENING."

And what would you say if I replied.
Love is what I choose it to be.
What something feels like, is what it is.

PETEY-- VERY PROFOUND WORDS. I THIS IDEA.
YOUR IDEAS MAKE ME THINK IN DIFFERENT WAYS THAN I AM USED TO.
EXCELLENT.
WHAT YOU JUST WROTE MAKES SENSE TO ME.
"REALITY" *CAN* BE CONSIDERED WHATEVER YOU MAKE IT TO BE.
ONE CAN CONSIDER LOVE TO BE AN "ILLUSION" CREATED BY NEUROCHEMICALS, BUT ONE CAN ALSO CONSIDER LOVE TO BE LOVE AND NOT THINK OF IT AS AN ILLUSION BUT RATHER AS SIMPLY BEING CORRELATED WITH CERTAIN NEUROCHEMICAL CHANGES [THIS PHYSICAL CORRELATE SIMPLY BEING *THAT*, A CORRELATING PHENOMENON. NOT A SOURCE OF ILLUSION.]

AS SUBJECTIVE BEINGS WHO EXPERIENCE, OUR PERCEPTIONS DETERMINE OUR REALITY AND THAT CAN BE THOUGHT OF AS THE MOST "TRUE" REALITY.
FOR EX, ALL THE OBJECTS WE SEE AROUND US WOULD SEEM MUCH DIFFERENT AT AN ATOMIC LEVEL [MOSTLY EMPTY SPACE, ETC], BUT THE SOLIDITY OF A DESK IS REAL TO US.

annie--Life is an illusion, so make the illusion work for you not against you.
You have the freedom of choice.
this isn't really about smart, this is about lateral thinking.
thinking the other way.
Seeing the other picture.

peteY-- MORE PROFOUND THOUGHTS.
I MUST THANK YOU FOR SHARING YOUR LATERAL THINKING WITH ME
THIS WILL MAKE DO A LOT MORE

peteY out!

Now you're thinking
i THINK.

Another word for a fool* is a jester, a joker in the pack.
Be the joker!


*As in why do fools fall in love!

hasselfree,
i showed some of your posts to my dear friend, susan, and she adores your lateral thinking. she thinks along the same lines.
here's part of an e-mail she recently sent to me

I have chosen to participate in the illusions of this world and have choosen my own rights/wrongs, goods/bads - and these "values" lend to how I "feel" about my own self-worth. I do the same with "love." I can "love" someone...yes, as I define and understand love. I would be miserable if I, like you, dwelled on the chemical/biological/physical world w/o participating in this illusion - my perceptions are all I really have. Hmmm..I'm wandering away from the point, aren't I? Do you see where I'm going/coming from here? I enjoy my perceived world and I'm going to participate in it like mad until I cease to exist. I live for my perceptions, particularly the pleasant ones. I enjoy the illusion of love. I actively participate in the lie of altruism. To me, it is "right" - as defined by me

she sounds like you, huh?

peteY out!

Yes she does sound like me.
So we must be the majority here.
So get with the majority

Actually I'd say she was better balanced than I am and her words need more than I can say here and now to perfectly state how wonderful they are.
Talk to this person more often !

i'm glad you liked her ideas.
but, you're probably wrong about being a lot like you 2.
i think you 2 are in a very small % of the population. one of the relative few who actually THINKS about life instead of being zombies.
i do, too, and i can understand the way you 2 think.
it's just that my personal experiences have led me to become super cynical and biologically based. this is probably because i haven't experienced the pleasurable illusions of life to appreciate them and to become immersed in them and in doing so to become immersed in the experience/illusion of life.
poor peteY

Essentially, as loads of people have already said here, it's all about the pro-cree-AY-shun, baybay!! The only beauty in it is the way it makes us feel (ecstatic, wistful, ponderous etc...) and any search for a deeper more universal meaning is ultimately fruitless. We're slaves to our subconscious, animalistic instincts and so on because, as is clearly obvious from the fact that we are alive and have warm blood pumping through our veins, we're animals - just like everything else on the planet (apart from plants. And rocks).

iTHINK
My life hasn't been a bed of
I could choose to be cynical.

Gaffer
You poor thing.
I love animals too, got lots of them, they are simple and uncomplicated, I wouldn't hurt a fly, but I know that they aren't operating on the same level as a human.
They don't make atom bombs or write poetry.
and they don't have to have this thing called lurve to procreate, so why do we?

Maybe they do have love - a weird animal kind of love that we can't see. We can't understand how they communicate or even how they feel inside (if they feel anything at all) so how can we make judgements on their motives for getting it on?

I can communicate with animals on a basic level. And they with me.
I think they can be very telepathic.
Ride a horse that you know well and you'll get the idea.

I know what different barks mean in dogs, plus their facial expressions and physical changes, such as hair standing on end.
i know when a dog feels agressive or submissive by it's body movements and their tails are great signaling devices

Look into the average cows eyes and you'll see that they experience a whole world of misery after they get past the leaping about for the hell of it stage.

Dolphins have a reputation for intelligence, but after I swam with one it became clear to me that they are dog like in their desires , needs, playfulness and loyalty. and most of those attributes, like domestic pets are driven by survival needs to be fed and feel secure.