Expository Essay: What is love?
Introduction
Love is seen as a highly spiritual and emotional state, and where emotion may be part of romantic love, it is certainly not where it ends. Love may in fact be a facilitator for procreation, and the effects of love may help to keep families together long enough to rear a child to an age where in the wild (back in prehistoric times) it would stand a chance on its own.
Thesis
In this essay I will show how love is not just an emotional and spiritual thing. I will show how it has a chemical basis and how it makes up part of our base instincts/ our animal nature.
Point 1 – Love has a chemical basis
Love has been shown to be the product of chemicals that last for as long as two years. After two years scientists have found that the chemical that causes what is known as love is gone.
Support
The chemical basis of love has been found to be evident in people that claim they are in love. They are not found in people that are not in love apart from in very specific circumstances. There is a point where you may eat enough chocolate that it starts to become toxic. The toxicity would not kill you, in fact if you were eating milk chocolate then diabetes would probably kill you before any form of chocolate poisoning.
Still, one the consumption of enough chocolate has occurred then the toxicity evokes the same chemicals as the feeling of love. Eating dark chocolate will evoke the chemical feelings of love faster than eating milk or white chocolate.
Point 2 – Love is biologically programmed into us
There is the idea that we as humans are genetically coded to seek out partners. The trouble is that according to the research done by the writers of “Sperm Wars” it seems that our biological impulses are based on our reproductive organs. A woman has a limited number of eggs and so treats them with care and respect, ergo she is more selective about her mate. Men on the other hand may produce a new batch of sperm very quickly and may turn over a new batch every three days if the load is not expelled in the meantime.
This suggests that they look for multiple partners in order to spread their seed to as many females as possible. Love may play a part in this as it may help bond partners so that they look after their young until their young are old enough to survive alone, which in biological terms would be at the age of four years old.
Support
Exclusive mating is not uncommon in the animal kingdom, nor it the idea of a monogamous female and a polygamous male. For example, in the cat world a female will mate with just one alpha cat, but that same cat will have a harem of females that he mates with.
Conclusion
As humans we are at the whim of chemicals when it comes to love.
We are also at the mercy of our animal instincts. These are players in the field of love, but since we are humans and conscious of our thoughts and actions, we are able to master the effects of our base instincts and chemicals/ bodily hormones. Some people are even able to master their emotions too.
