Making sense out of love 3

Could you possibly not feel attracted to someone? Can you choose what someone makes you feel?

Certainly, you can. We can. We can choose not to feel things for people. Choice is again an abstract quality and ability. We can choose not to feel attracted to someone, although the magic of nature is revealed by selectivity, that is, unawareness of a preexisting set of characteristics that we may like that become real or evident as someone we had no idea existed passes by; this is not a conscious thing, it’s entirely preprogrammed. Severely conditioned. Sort of. I think we can consciously stop liking someone, however, if our brain already finds someone attractive, we have to work things the hard way, almost against our will. Natural drive pushes us towards mating, through finding people attractive, and feeling like we may belong together, that we ought to be together, feeling that we are right. You may want to call it destiny, it’s not. It’s just your brain playing with you, and your set of choices. Why do some people feel attracted to long-haired men, or cheeky women?  Two people might find themselves in a conversation as ambiguous as this:

-“I think he is hot!”

-“What? No way, he is one nasty loser”

-“…his chest, those dimples, that mole by the nose”

-“Ha-ha… you are so out of your mind… his too thin, definitely looks weak, those dimples are by no means nice, and, that mole you see, looks more like he is growing a melanoma”

-“Anyway, I find him sexy and cool”

-“Whatever…”

What could we conclude out of this conversation? Is he hot? Or nasty? Does he reflect strength or weakness? Who is right? And who is wrong? Nothing, this is the perplexing result of millions of years of evolution, taste is one crazy-wild mystery. Taste is as complex for food as it is for physical attraction. No single person is absolutely correct. It might make no sense, but it does. The point of variability is that if by any chance two people that find each other attractive end up mating, the result might be a entirely new set of combined genes, a wider nose, grandma’s earlobes, daddy’s looks, the mother’s sense of clever itchy humor, out-of-nowhere personality… This is not the result of the imaginary work of some deity, it is the way things are. Because human beings are just another ape, we are animals. We are meant to literally grow, reproduce, give birth to offspring, grow old and die (Add money to the equation and we get society, a purpose). At the center of life there is reproduction. We were designed around it through evolution.This is an unstoppable cycle, and this is a shame. Reproduction is not a means, it is the end, our destiny as living organisms. But we can overcome it, we can be better and smarter than life as long as we stay alive, we are starting to, this is just the beginning. Rationality gave to life irrationality's worst enemy: once again, choice. We can choose to have sex, and avoid reproduction. We can choose to order dessert, and just have two bites. We can choose to listen to our irrational brain and fall for someone based on their looks, or we can select a smart working individual, who happens to be infertile. Love is an irrational feeling, it makes no sense because it follows the sense of life, which is reproduction. We are not forced to act accordingly, some of us just choose to do otherwise. Nature is very strong though. Some people who call themselves “in-love” might be troubled by trying to forget someone they love. I remember feeling hopelessness when being unable to end a relationship with someone I really liked, though wasn’t right. But I could, and so can you. I fought hard, and did it. We are rational, hence we are stronger than nature. It’s just a matter of time and will. Rationality is power.

So, what do we make out of this? Can we live by our laws forever against nature and be sane? Well, yes… but there is a set of rules that we need to follow. I have a preferred rule, but you might want to choose your own.

(Will continue in a third post)
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Making sense out of love 2

Things become even more complex when humans display associated symptoms to normal physiological functioning. For instance, hunger may be associated to a strong feeling of abdominal emptiness or pain, sometimes even nausea or headache. Some people may experience changes in blood pressure and heart rate, increased salivation and somehow the brain manages to tell you what you should eat based on your prior exposure to memorable meals, that is to say, you start wondering and brainstorming in the world of food cravings. Certainly, your entire body reminds you of a pattern to which you are very used to, a food frequency pattern that is deeply engrained into your brain. All of these "instinctive" behaviors not only are reminiscent of our animal evolutionary nature, they constitute the most crude downgrade for those who think they are special or different from the rest of the living organisms. We need food for survival on a daily basis, this is a punishment, not a blessing, we are sentenced to eat.
Indeed, it is not the fact that we are born programmed to feed ourselves every certain amount of hours that makes us unique. What makes us really interesting study subjects is choice. Choice lies at the top of human reasoning. It is our capacity to select what we want to eat, and how we want food to be prepared that makes us distinct from other organisms, some of which just eat what they find or hunt. As a consequence, an entirely different part of the brain takes over such irrational ideas as a strong desire for barbecue pork chops -who really needs them, right?-, for example, and transform appetite into a complex structure of thoughts: "I want pancakes for breakfast, no butter, lots of maple syrup; they ought to be spongy, not toasted, warm and slightly moist, perfectly round and thick". We can even add a certain flashback to our choice: "Just like my mom used to make them for me when I was a kid", and this even makes our choice even more specific..."exactly with these characteristics", most of which are based on good memories. Mostly memories of taste, smell and texture, but also joyful times, or significant moments, such as graduation nights, or dates with a loved one. As long as we have known Pavlov's principles of conditioning we understand why we start feeling all sorts of emotions when remembering a taste, a meal, a place. Things get even more complex from here on. Overweight  people tend to feel happier when they eat. This is not a statistical fact, but obese people are some of the joyous people I have met. And eating makes them almost ecstatic, usually due to intense reward mechanisms: "you've been good, you may go for the chocolate dessert with extra toppings, you deserve it".

Try to compare eating to having passionate sex: there is a feeling of need and avidity, there is happiness, and delight; there is taste, smell and texture, there is and intense climax during mastication and swallowing, there is resolution of hunger, followed by a feeling of satiety, peace and satisfaction.

On the other hand, people seeking gym bodies, who feel they have a suboptimal physique get anxious around food, feel guilt or remorse after eating, get depressed or experience many types of worries: "this many calories mean this many minutes in a spinning machine", "I am severely violating my strict diet", or even worse "this meal is going straight to my butt!". Food may well be a foe, not a friend. Nutrition has taught us that some comestibles can be very harmful to humans, some foods can kill us. However we are always led by our choices, whether they are good or bad, preferences make us unique. You can always choose to eat a dessert when you go to a restaurant. You are not forced to eat the whole dish. You may skip the soup or the vegetables and go straight for whatever drives your appetite into turbo mode. And of course, you can even choose not to eat. In fact, choosing to avoid eating, especially when you are supposed to according to your habits, which may sound more like a caprice or a perversity towards your own health, is one very rational solution. You may want to think of it as rational in the sense that it goes beyond the irrationality of hunger and food desire, it opposes your wishes of mere natural behavior, and even takes you on a totally new direction. Almost unexpectedly can we tell our brain and body: "no, I am not eating, I choose to ignore this urge". And we do. And it doesn't kill you. It may not make you any stronger, but it doesn't kill you. Nonetheless, the entirely opposite scenario is also plausible, in which you may be full and you choose to have a couple more bites of an extra dish.

It turns out that people induce all kinds of feelings on us, just like food. Some people drool when they see someone sexy and attractive, some may slightly bite their lips and roll their eyeballs. Some may get so "happy" to see a significant other, their genitalia get engorged. Some of these feelings are so irrational that really make no sense whatsoever. Who has not felt the butterflies on their tummies when they are surprised by an unexpected look or touch, or even by the presence of someone appealing. Falling in love is accompanied by an unusual state of emotions. I like to think of if as a psychiatric condition: a delirium.

Have you ever wondered if you can choose not to fall for someone you really, really like? It sounds kind of easy to answer. Can you choose not to feel the erratic butterflies? Can you avoid the rush of emotions, the heart beating at a maximum, the sweaty hands and feet, the weak knees and the troubled speech? Can you? Can I? I understand that you may avoid eating your favorite fruit de mer, even if just thinking of it reminds you of its taste, and you start craving for it. Could you possibly not feel attracted to someone? Can you choose what someone makes you feel?

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Making sense out of love 1

Love Delirium: acute confusional state which resides only in the mind of whoever is swayed by a set of delusional feelings, some of which are perpetuated through self-conditioning in an individual of questionable volition.

Dr. Erick Lagos-Sanchez

Don't you LOVE pizza?

Perhaps one of the most intriguing issues in love is the capacity -somewhat better stated, the lack of it- to control this feeling consciously, judiciously, sanely. Love is such an admixture of emotions that it is worth seeking simpler analogies to ease our understanding of whatever it eventually turns into: a delirium. For instance, I like to consider appetite as an example of humans' rationality. We could at least say that appetite is driven by a set a physiological events that reasonably seek the individual's well being through energy disposal and accumulation. So, try to understand hunger as an irrational feeling in the sense that it is quite unusual that the average-income person can succumb to energy deprivation: rarely (i.e. only under extreme circumstances) does someone starve to death. Instead, seek to understand that energy levels and deposits are a must for human beings, hence the rationality behind hunger is the need to maintain a safe level of energy in terms of caloric intake for consumption along variable amounts of time, put simply, not everything you eat is used up immediately, it is mostly saved for later. Now, if you believe you can set feelings apart from needs, you can successfully control your so-called "animal-behavior". Thus, in our example, if you understand that you need energy to live, you can focus on how much you actually need for survival and then concentrate on other more important aspects of our current life, such as earning a living. In this way, people could focus not on taste, an irrational sense not linked to caloric meaningfulness, but on energy and vitamin content, a rational, fully conscious and smarter surrogate of food and its essentiality. What about the emotions linking food to behavior? Well, this is where things got a step higher in evolutionary thinking. People can choose from a large spectrum of options. On one extreme of this spectrum there is absolute energy deprivation after starvation which leads to death, and on the other there is frank obesity and overindulging. But there are also less extreme conditions such as long-term/short-term/ or overnight fasting, there is nourishing and pampering, there is binging and there is also early satiety, there is abstaining and there are intense and very specific food cravings. There are such complex behaviors towards eating, like bulimia or anorexia, or compulsive munching and gluttony. How can there be such a variety regarding something as simple as nutrition? And how is it related to love?

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