Serialised book (with a progressively updated >>dashboard/ToC<< page). Part II: Philosophy of the Life Instinct

Book: Philosophy of Life Instinct: Chapter 14: Love and Friendship

Two beautiful powers

Much has been written about love through the ages, and a lot about friendship too. What more could we say? Yet, there is something more to see from the viewpoint of Life Instinct. It shows us how deep and powerful these feelings are, but still, a means to an end.

From our perspective, let us consider love with a detour to take in its ally in life, friendship.

Love

Love is a state of deep liking and emotional attachment to someone or something. It is a core capability of Life Instinct in humans. In Chapter 12 (Emotions), we saw it is one of the many emotions that help us survive, be healthy and reproduce.

Love comes in a broad spectrum, from the life-long pairing and family structures seen in several animals and birds to the complex bonds of humans. The more advanced a species' intelligence, the higher the variety and complexity we see in its love relationships.

We will survey the types of love, the goodness of love, what happens when love dies, the love-filled brain, and how we can love well.

Types of love

Romantic Love

In its combination of intensity and duration, love is the predominant emotion in our lives for most of us. And among its forms, romantic love is the strongest. Why is this so?

Most species have evolved to combine the genes of two sexual mates in their offspring to create genetic variation. Parents possess the instinct to ensure their young survive until they can live independently in the world. The complex brains in more intelligent species take more time to reach maturity from birth. The parents in such species need to take care of their young for longer. The Life Instinct also invests interest in both parents to favour the survival of their genetic material over others’. It means both parents end up with the protective and nurturing instinct for the children they have together.

It would be risky for Life Instinct in our case if we fell apart as sexual couples over trivial matters. We have the instinct to produce several children as quantity is an essential ingredient in increasing our genes' survival. But if we changed sexual partners after every child, the care from one or both parents would become divided and inadequate for each child. As parents, we need to remain together and cooperate for many years across several of our children.

Therefore, Life Instinct needed to evolve a solid bond to keep us together as reproducing couples. Further, it would be best to kick this off before the first child is born, so it lays the platform for procreation and faithfulness. Our brain should reward itself with pleasurable sensations for emotions and moves of sexual attraction, adoration, devotion, empathy, understanding, communication, material wealth, caring, etc. And underneath, it should make sure it ignores mundane shortcomings and glorifies everything sound as excellent in the prospective mate. Voila —the emergence of romantic love.

We know we love someone when their presence becomes intermingled with our consciousness. If they are away, we don’t need to remember them as they are always with us. Everything we do is informed by what they would feel or think. When we consider them in our mind, we see their face smiling at us, and we smile back tenderly. Any place with them is home for us. Their pain, joy and success are ours. A tiff with them is like fighting with ourselves. Jealousy is banished by the confidence that we always come first for them. We treasure their things. We feel all this because they feel it for us too. When true love happens, it is for life.

A romantic couple may not end up having children, but their deep bond can keep them together, taking pleasure from mutual validation, company, security, etc. The feeling of being soulmates, being one in mind and body, the yearning when apart, and the heartbreak of losing the other is evidence of the power of this human characteristic.

But whom we fall in love with and why are unpredictable, making it wonderful and risky. It is the ‘mixgenics’ of the Life Instinct to increase the variety of attempted genetic combinations and hasten the advancement of the species.

Even in its timing and progress, love is not linear. It can happen fast or develop gradually. Still, the initial excitement of falling in love usually settles down into a more composed yet deep and complete bond.

(Humanity also applied its intellectual mind and worked out a fallback to love for propagating the species — the institution of marriage. We will examine it in the next chapter.)

Family Love

From understanding the driver for romantic love, there is a natural progression to explaining family love. Starting with the parents, the family is the team of genetically close members who help each other survive and thrive.

Within a family, love’s intensity corresponds to its utility for its genetic strain’s preservation and well-being. So, in order of instinctive power, it goes roughly as below by shades, although there are exceptions and variations between families.

Top-down from higher to lower generations, to ensure gene branch goes as far as possible:

• Love of the mother for her children (highest as the sustenance is direct and childbearing capacity is limited)
• Father for his children (high but lower than of mother as the care is less direct and capacity to father children is higher)
• Uncles and aunts for their nieces and nephews
• Grandparents for their grandchildren

Sideways to ensure the survival of the closest gene pool:

• Brothers and sisters for each other
• Brothers for each other
• Cousins for each other

Bottom-up, as the previous generation is helpful in many ways:

• Children for their mother
• Children for their father
• Nieces and nephews for their uncles and aunts
• Children for their grandparents

Love of friends

Next, in order of intensity and utility for Life Instinct, is the love of friends for each other. What it lacks in the intensity of romantic love and dependability of family love it makes up for in ease and breadth of benefits.

A deep and healthy friendship is not just liking and spending time with someone. It is about knowing each other’s strengths and faults intimately and accepting each other.

The benefits of having a good friend are many, for example— feeling valued, having pleasant times together that reduce stress and improve health, and overcoming traumatic incidents in life such as ill-health, breakups and bereavements. It also provides a sense of belonging and emotional support, and self-improvement through the frank exchange of thoughts and non-judgemental feedback,

We may feel the loss of a friend as tragically as losing a close family member or spouse.

Self Love

We are not talking of narcissism here, which is an extreme form of egoism and egotism. It is self-love when we acknowledge the good in us, know our faults, accept them, and forgive ourselves. It needs observing ourselves with interest but a detached and compassionate eye. Knowing we are imperfect beings with many things out of our control but doing our best is a part of it. Thinking we are worth improving and capable of it is crucial.

It is a necessary form of love, for if we don’t respect and like ourselves, we cannot make the best of our lives, nor love others with our best selves and uninhibitedly.

Love of Activities

I love reading; my son loves playing computer games; my daughter loves painting; my wife loves gardening; our friends love badminton and running. None of us is just calling a liking a love. Such attachments and the joy they give have many characteristics of more intense forms of love, such as romantic or familial. They are life-enhancing, and the rewards in the brain reinforce their pleasure and create a long-lasting attachment to them. It results from the release of hormones in the blood and neurotransmitters in the brain. One may call them mild forms of addiction, but the best type. As long as they are not overdone, they positively impact our well-being and our family and friends.

Love of Things

People declare they love food, coffee, pets, nature, cars, gardens, tools, etc. Like the love of activity, these deep likings are understandable for their life-enhancing function. They are also driven by the brain's pleasurable sensations when experiencing or interacting with such favourite things. Moderation is the key, here as everywhere.

Love of God

There are millions, perhaps billions, who will tell us about their love of God. What is this love? It is both about their love for God and God’s love for them. The former manifests as devotion, worship, recognition and glorying in God’s perfection and virtues, and faithfully following their God, irrespective of their worldly problems and sins. In most religious theology, God also loves us back, regardless of our virtues or faults, with variations on the need for repentance and atonement. The rewards of this spiritual love come close to that of romantic love for some believers. An example is the concept of Bhakti in Hinduism, being the devotee’s unquestioning love and surrender to a personal God.

The goodness of love

Survival and well-being

We know of plants and solitary animals that mate then part immediately. In Chapter 4 (Life and the Life Instinct), we saw how humans developed minds that make us aware of our separateness and the fragility of life. We also have the ability of free will — to choose our thoughts, beliefs and actions. It makes us feel even more insecure as we are responsible for our and genes’ survival and well-being. We depend on our partner, the people around us, the things in our world and our physical abilities. For these relationships to work well, we have to develop bonds of respect, intimacy and deep liking.

While the general enjoyment of company, physical activity, food and tools is a basic necessity, we can lift the feeling to a greater level for some and gain more. These higher forms of attachment are love. Love adds strands of steel to the family, the social fabric, our work and pastimes. The presence of love significantly enhances the success of our lives.

Reproduction

Love as a feature in humans has played a big part in its survival as a species. As we saw at the beginning of this chapter, sexual desire, lust, and mating are insufficient for humans. The love relationship between the mating pair and their family enhances survivability, health and the perpetuation of their genetic strain.

Art

As a massive bonus for humanity, love's expression and representation have given rise to great art. There are myriad poems, songs, stories, plays, movies and architecture inspired by love, from Shakespeare to the Taj Mahal. They enhance our lives in ways we explore in Chapter 21. Love can affect an entire country and people's lives, for example, the conquest of Egypt by Rome from Antony and Cleopatra's romance or the abdication of King Edward of Britain out of love for Wallis Simpson.

When love goes bad

Love is probably the most crucial feature of the Life Instinct in us, more vital than our intellectual intelligence. It is a complex and intense emotion and the most difficult to control. Our mental complexity, variety, and gender-specific differences combine with social pressures to undermine what we seek — steadfast love.

So love can go wrong easily, and when it does, it can be traumatic. Most of us eventually recover, but it may result in depression, hatred, suicide, violence, or murder in some cases. Any love could turn sour, but let us briefly look at the unfortunate varieties of romantic love. Further on, we will look at how we may avoid some of these states.

Unrequited love

Unrequited love is one of the most agonising feelings we can have in life, worse than many bodily pains. It is different from a one-sided infatuation, which derives an internal pleasure, whether the object of desire reciprocates or not. In unrequited love, we realise that the other person cannot love us back even they know we love them. The waiting and hoping from day to day, moment to moment, is an alloy of desire and frustration. It makes us question the very value of our being; for what more resounding rejection can we feel than that of love? And it may linger long after we have moved on. When we remember the time, there is a sense of nostalgia for what we felt, regret for what could have been, the relief we escaped a mistake, and foolishness in allowing ourselves to get into that state.

Unequal love

We may choose to ignore it, but we know when we love someone more than they love us. Our love keeps us going, accompanied by a feeling of hurt. We try to change ourselves or the other person to become valued equally, but it is not easy. All the effects may not be positive, whether we alter ourselves or force them on the other.

We also know when someone loves us more. We may not admit it openly, but our intellect and emotions realise it sooner or later. It can make us feel simultaneously gratified and guilty. If we are emotionally wise, we try to feel more love for the other person by thinking about their qualities, comparing them favourably with others, etc. But the chemistry of love often gets in the way.

Love that constricts

The power of loving someone or being loved is strong enough that we may become too controlling or controlled. It may not be the abusive relationship we review below. Still, we may expect our partner or ourselves to sacrifice even good aspects of our personality or our potential in the pursuit of synchronicity.

Unreasonable love

The intensity of joy experienced when we fall in love sets up high expectations from it and each other. We want the initial feelings and mutually pleasurable behaviour to continue unabated. But unfortunately, that is not how love works. In the section below on ‘Love and our brain’, we will see that the excitement eventually settles down into bonds of calm and holistic compassion, acceptance, and understanding for each other if the couple stays together. While the change is happening, we may get dismayed and seek reasons for the decline in excitement and ways to prevent it. It is natural for our mind to fix blame elsewhere, and it feels reasonable to demand more from the partner in attention, romantic gestures, vocal praise, sex, dressing up for us, spending time together and so on. When this does not happen, we get frustrated, impatient, and friction arises. Some couples do not manage to ride out this phase, which spells the end of a loving relationship.

Love that turns into hate

There are many sayings and aphorisms about love being the flip side of hate. It is natural, for the energy, time and very being that we invest in love means that when it turns, it needs the strength not to relapse, however justified the recoiling was. The only emotion strong enough to counter the pull of love is a mixture of anger, loathing, disdain, aversion, contempt, separateness, antagonism and disgust — which is hate, no less.

The experience that usually turns our love into hate is betrayal. It happens from being lied to, concealment, cheating, or ill-treatment of our child or close family member.

Love that dies

Love can fade away or evaporate in a moment. It happens when one of the partners outgrows the other or realises the partner's true nature with time, and it is like blinkers coming off. At least hatred is a form of acknowledgement, a connection. When love turns into indifference, it is a profound loss for one or both lovers, like a death. Gone are the highs of dopamine, the soothing warmth of oxytocin and vasopressin. After a while, all we feel is a hole, with nothing to fill it, not even anger or sadness.

It is one thing when it happens in both lovers, but if love dies in only one of them, it is gut-wrenching for the one who continues to love. They may become obsessive about rekindling the spark, as there is no hatred to stop them from trying, but it is like pounding on a coffin. If it works, there is a lot to learn, but more often than not, it won’t, for the mind well and truly drops the love and the object of love through and through. It is only wise to understand this and move on if that is indeed what the evidence shows.

Love that is not love

Sometimes a person may claim to be in love or act like it. In contrast, an objective observer may say it is not loving but an infatuation, dependency or abusive relationship.

Infatuation is an immature and inwardly directed feeling when one objectifies someone as perfect and derives a blind, addictive and uncontrolled pleasure from being in that state. It is frequently one-sided. When two people are infatuated with one other, it can sometimes turn into love. Still, one often wakes up and begins to see the other person’s faults or the mutual incompatibility. Excellent and stable love is mature, where the lovers know each other’s shortcomings yet accept them and remain devoted to each other.

Many a pair stay together out of dependency or duty rather than a deep mutual liking. It can be financial, physical or social needs that keep them together. In many cases, it is for their children. Such couples' shared mental life can be one of quiet desperation, or at best helpless acceptance.

Sometimes, the mind misleads us into the feeling that any attention is good, leading to abusive relationships being not just tolerated but mistaken for love. The relationship may start well but gradually become one of emotional or physical abuse, or both. But the victim is unable to get out of it and may even make excuses for the abuser and defend them. The signs of such mental abuse are —contempt, frequent shouting, regimentation, fault finding, threatening, withholding communication, isolation from others, etc.

(We will consider monogamy versus polyamory and polygamy in the next chapter.)

Love and our brain

Our explorations in Chapters 5, 9 and 12 showed us how the Life Instinct operates in our brains. Let us briefly look at its workings in love, specifically romantic love, as the most potent variety.

Love is a complex feeling involving several areas of the brain, from the autonomous to the thoughtful. There are two fundamental mechanisms underlying love: the increase of positive emotions and the decrease of negative emotions. They cause love, and love causes them.

As we saw in Chapter 7 (Science and the Life Instinct), neurotransmitters in specific brain regions are responsible for our mental states and actions. The increase of cortisol, dopamine, oxytocin, and vasopressin, combined with a decrease in serotonin, are most involved in love. Testosterone, which is present in both men and women, is the hormone involved, although in a surprising way, as seen below. The Caudate Nucleus and Ventral Tegmental Segment are the brain areas associated with positive emotions and rewards, while the Amygdala, Hippocampus and PFC take part in reduced negative emotions.

The neurotransmitters

Dopamine is called the ‘happy hormone’ (although it is a neurotransmitter) and is the primary pleasure neurotransmitter for the brain’s reward system. It plays an essential role in sexual arousal and romantic feelings. Sex is pleasurable for the mind, but dopamine also floods our brain when we think of or interact with our beloved.

Oxytocin is called the ‘love hormone’ (although it is a neurotransmitter). It is released when lovers hug and during orgasm. It is also vital for long term romantic and maternal attachment. Oxytocin release causes a sense of trust and makes us miss our partners. It is also active during childbirth and breastfeeding. Vasopressin is involved in monogamous behaviour and bonding.

The hormones

Cortisol, known as the ‘stress hormone’, increases during the first, exciting stage of falling in love, accompanied by a fall in serotonin. The fall in serotonin reduces emotional control and causes the obsession with the object of love that we call infatuation. The cortisol and serotonin levels settle down in a few months or years. The levels of oxytocin and vasopressin increase, and the couple settles into a long-term state of calm, compassionate love.

Surprisingly, although testosterone is the male hormone released into the bloodstream during sex, it reduces in men in love. It is also present in women and increases when they are in love. Likely, Life Instinct has preferentially evolved men and women to reduce their difference and feel as alike as possible, so they will fall in love and bind for the long term rather than just indulge in the short term pleasure of sex.

The brain areas

The hypothalamus appears to have evolved as the master of ceremonies in the grand progress of love. At the correct juncture, it releases dopamine, oxytocin and vasopressin, the neurotransmitters responsible for short and long term attraction for the mate.

The caudate nucleus and ventral tegmental segment are part of the lower brain’s reward system—their activity increases due to dopamine release when we focus on the loved one.

The amygdala deals with fear and anger, as we saw in Chapter 12 (Emotions). In the state of love, its activity decreases as we feel secure in our loved one’s presence or arms and during sex. Simultaneously, the hypothalamus proactively reduces the amygdala’s activity, reduces negative emotions, and increases trust for the potential mates' initial attraction and bonding.

The frontal cortex usually analyses and critically judges other people, and its activity reduces to allow us to fall in love with the object of our affection. It explains the common expression, ‘love is blind’.

Finally, our infatuation is associated with a decrease in the functioning of the brain areas associated with distinction between the self and the other — the prefrontal cortex, parieto-temporal junction, and the temporal poles. Their deactivation engenders the feeling of unity and oneness the lovers seek.

How to love well

In Chapter 12 (Emotions), we noted that love is one of several valuable emotions. Chapters 9 (The Power of our Intellect) and 13 (Emotional Wisdom) saw how our highest ‘philosophical’ mind could get the best out of us intellectually and emotionally. So, can we apply our most sophisticated mind in the highest parts of our brain to love better? The answer is a qualified yes because, unlike the other emotions such as fear or anger, love has a depth, complexity, and longevity that makes it a real challenge for the intellect.

An uneducated or unlearned person feels love just like a savant or intellectual. We cannot correlate the differences in love's depth, dimensions, and success to variations in ordinary human minds. Being intellectually intelligent or philosophically sophisticated is no assurance we will not be foolish in matters of love. Neither is the opposite true that an unsophisticated person will make a better lover.

So what should we do if we want to be loved more and love more? We don’t want to make it artificial, for it would take away something essential from it. Trust is the bedrock of love, and any feeling that it’s not genuinely felt brings its reality into question. If we observe the mistakes we make in love and correct them, isn’t artifice the result?

We don’t want to break the powerful natural force of love, but still, we must be able to do better with it, as we do with almost everything else to do with us. All around us, we see literature, movies, songs, and more, about improving our love lives. It means we take it as a worthwhile and feasible endeavour. So let us respect this encouragement from the Life Instinct and consider some ways and means.

As always, with the philosophical mind, giving it the time to do its best is the key. If we observe ourselves honestly, know what is happening and reflect on it, we will reach certain conclusions that will shape our further actions. Then the more openly and honestly we act with the other person, the more likely it will make our love even better or avoid disappointment for both. Wisdom is always a balancing act between impulse and thought. Let’s see what we should consider thoughtfully in three possible phases of love — before, during and after.

Before we are totally in love

Whether it is love at first sight, one that steals over us, or an arranged match turning into closeness, we need to put our head out of the powerful current of the river of love to see if we are heading for Eden, a crash on the rocks or a waterfall. We can decide if we should let it carry us, grab a tree trunk on the bank or swim for shore. If we can overcome the effects of the neurotransmitters we saw earlier, we should spot these signs or lack of them.

• Emotional, physical and intellectual compatibility
• How much both care for any potential family issues or social angst
• Wanting similar things in the long term

During love

Once love settles down into a long term relationship, here are a few tricks the intellect should apply to keep the love not just alive but kicking. Others have already written much on this subject, so consider this list as a pointer in the right direction. (In the context of marriage, there is more in the next chapter.)

• Take time out to be alone romantically.
• Do something nice for your beloved spontaneously.
• Get rid of your three known worst habits, or at least one.
• Say nice things in private and public about your partner.
• Allow each other some space and harmless secrets.
• Make time and opportunity for physical intimacy and sex.
• Support and encourage healthy interests that make your partner happy.

After love ends

If we get the ‘before’ and ‘during’ right, we may not have to deal with an ‘after’. But the situation is common enough, so if love ends for any reason:

• We need to allow ourselves a period to mourn, as the mind needs time to accept losing a higher state of being.
• Unburden ourselves to a close and wise family member or friend of the same gender.
• Once sufficient time has passed, from days to years, we should release anger, hatred, and grief.
• We need to look back upon the time spent with the lost lover as a gift if we came out of it mostly intact.
• Be wise enough to see and accept our part in what happened.
• Rebound love will usually be our imperfect mind showing itself, know it.

We are then ready to start being normal and looking forward to romantic love again if we are still young enough, and the rest of our life deserves love. The Life Instinct will aid this process; just let it do its work.

A segue into Friendship

(As it is a well-understood and less complicated area of human life, we will only briefly examine the trait of friendship, limiting ourselves to its benefits and a particular type, before we return to the central theme of love.)

After love, friendship is the most joyful relationship we have in our lives. It is a strong relationship of affection between two people. It is of much greater importance to Life Instinct than mere social association and acquaintance (it can also be between a person and a pet, with many of the same characteristics, but we will focus on human friendship here). There is a wide variety of combinations possible in friendship across age groups, genders, social circles, professions, etc.

Friendship is founded on positive interpersonal connections such as having common interests, complementary or similar personalities (depends on what we value more instinctively), enjoying each other’s company, attractiveness, and admiration. It further includes affection, trust, acceptance, sharing ideas, thoughts and feelings, and shared morality and ethics.

Once a friendship is established, other behaviours typically strengthen it: honesty, kindness, compassion, sympathy, empathy, assistance, generosity, loyalty, and forgiveness.

The closest friendships are a form of love, just a step below romantic love in their depth and effects.

The benefits of friendship

As we saw in the section above on the love between friends, the social nature of humans makes friendship crucial in our lives. Some of the benefits of friendship are below. The reader may also lookup the abundant literature on the subject.

• Lower stress
• Higher immunity and better health
• Happiness
• Support through difficult or traumatic times
• Greater self-confidence
• Self-knowledge and growth

Circles of friends

A small group of good friends adds many dimensions to personal friendship by increasing the breadth of interactions and perspectives that make us happy and improve us.

Friendship between a man and a woman

Like views about pineapple on pizza, the world seems divided on this one. Can a heterosexual man and woman be ‘just’ friends without underlying romantic or sexual feelings? An examination through the lens of Life Instinct of the constitution of human brains and bodies makes the answer clear — a genuine opposite-sex friendship is rarely possible.

Adult humans have the innate urge to find a mate and reproduce. The sight of a prospective romantic partner and sexual mate causes the release of hormones and neurotransmitters that create interest and attraction. This romantic feeling is approximately equal in men and women who perceive each other as single and available. However, this response is muted in a woman for a man she knows is already attached to another woman. In men, it does not diminish much, even if the woman is already in a relationship. His mind still looks for opportunities for a romantic connection or interaction with her.

Another crucial difference is in how the perception of friendship differs between a man and a woman. Most men in such situations assume the women friends reciprocate their romantic interest, but the women are likely to have a genuinely non-romantic interest. A woman is likely to think of it as just friendship and the man as potentially more. This male ‘blind spot’ can cause problems.

Many platonic opposite-sex friendships exist at work and in social circles (and most men and women will say romantic attachments are harmful in such situations). But the platonic nature may be a facade on the man’s part and authentic from the woman's side, although there will be exceptions.

It is not sexist or wrong in an absolute sense. It is just the way the species has developed. We need to know it and work with it wisely.

Wrapup on friendship

We need friends. If we are short of friends and have no bosom friends, we live deficient lives and need to do something about it. It is guaranteed to pay off for both.

Conclusions on love

We have seen that, however much it may feel like something with absolute meaning and beauty, love is a means to the ends of the Life Instinct in more advanced life forms. The regular dispassionate observation of love enables us to do better with it as its subjects and objects. Otherwise, the Life Instinct would have hidden its workings from our philosophical mind. (And there is not much evidence that philosophers are loveless or evolution is weeding them out.)

As with other aspects of our lives, we can choose to accept it and let it play its part fully once we understand it. At its healthy best, love softens us, makes us emotionally mature, builds nurturing relationships, contributes immensely to joy, health, living longer, and realising our potential.

A person without love is a poor creature. To be the object of someone’s love is beautiful. Lovers and friends are the witnesses we want for our lives. They validate our tiny and transient existence. But to love someone else and possess that feeling for a long time in life is truly magical. When we love another, we gain the advantages of being vulnerable, emotionally open, humble, and selfless. It frees our minds from the intensity of many negative emotions.

We get love due to what we make of ourselves, attractive genes, or inheriting the material wealth of life. Irrespective, when it goes right, love is the quintessence of a fulfilled life, giving us the meaning and motivation to sail through our existence in the best way there is — hand-in-hand together.

© 2020 Shashidhar Sastry. All rights reserved.

(As each chapter of the book is published, its link is updated in the ToC below.)

Table of Contents

Part I Metaphysics of The Life Instinct

Part II Philosophy of The Life Instinct

Part III The Life Instinct and The Future

Published By Shashidhar Sastry

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