Love

Here's another tangent away from games, from a discussion I had with a couple of friends. The science isn't spot-on, but it's close enough for what I want to do.

Love acts on the same part of your brain as heroin, so you're going to see a lot of the same issues of craving and painful loss. Even more, an addiction is never cured, just managed. The same goes for love. You can resist it, but you can't overcome it.

I like to treat love as almost an object, but one that is also an emotion. It usually isn't connected to anything external to it, though without some support it's going to get messy. But the feelings of "like" and "love" are independent emotions. Having the first makes the second much more manageable, but you don't need one in order to have the other.

The human brain didn't spring fully formed from the head of Zeus. It's the result of millions of years of tweaks and patches, with new elements usually added on top of the old ones, and very few things getting thrown out. You can actually break down the brain and say where in evolutionary history every part was added on, and what function it originally served.

Rationality is an artifact of the cerebrum, the top layer and the youngest layer. It can influence and regulate the actions of the other parts of your brain, but only to a very limited degree.

Almost everything you do or feel is a reflex.

When you see a fertile woman, you don't think about her at all. Your limbic system just releases dopamine in response to the stimulus, which you perceive as desire.

If that desire is fulfilled, your brain releases endorphin, which is the heroin-like substance, and more dopamine.

When you consummate, you also release vasopressin and oxytocin, which is basically the molecular embodiment of monogamy. In some animals this is a make-or-break chemical, if they have it they will never leave their partner's side, and if they don't, they have no connection whatsoever.

When you desire something, anything, dopamine is the primary agent responsible. There are varying degrees of desire, and love is on the stronger end of the spectrum. You can view it as a desire for the approval of another person. The thing is, the release of dopamine is not regulated by the cerebrum at all. Desire doesn't just transcend rationality, it short-circuits it.