Could Love Actually Be a Net Negative for Humanity

Introduction

I am not one to complain about tests being too hard. In fact, generally speaking, the more difficult any given challenge, the more compelling I find it. Even for me however to "write a personal reflection that explores the complexities of love" is a challenge for which I must cry uncle. To find something interesting, and more importantly, something which has not been said a million times before, by a million other people a million times more talented than me, about a topic that may the most thought and written about in the history of humanity, is likely not possible for a person of my limited abilities. That said, since I am already sitting here at the computer and fully committed to writing something, and since I have also decided that no matter what the outcome I will submit it to the above referenced challenge, I must go on, and if you are a are a fan of intellectually stimulating run on filled ramblings, then I invite you to read on. What is to come will no doubt not exactly fit the criteria of the aforementioned challenge for which this piece is being penned. However, in the spirit of difficult challenges I challenge the judges and you the reader, to try and find a way to make it fit. If I am up to the challenge surely you can be too.

A Thought Experiment

Imagine a world exactly like our own planet earth down to the smallest detail. Now imagine that this world is inhabited by beings that are exactly like us in every single way, but for one. On this other identical earth, the beings are not capable of experiencing the emotion of love. They do not have love. They never evolved the capacity to love. A hardcore reductionist might say their brains are not capable of creating or reproducing the bio-neuro-chemical cognitive state in the brain that is love. A less scientifically minded person might say, the state of consciousness that is love cannot be felt by them or more simply that they cannot feel love. These people are not psychopaths, they can and do experience sympathy and empathy. There is an argument to be made that the ability to feel love is a requirement for the ability to experience sympathy and empathy. However, I find those arguments less then compelling. Moreover, this is my thought experiment, I set the rules and the conditions. If you want your own, go think it up yourself. Moreover, these no love capable beings can and do like things and other people. They can even like some things and people a lot and some things and people just a little, and they can and do lust for some things and people, but they cannot love them. They are identical in every other way, and can experience the full range of every other human emotion exactly as we can, they just cannot love another person or thing. If you are thinking that there must be documented cases of persons that have lost the ability to experience love either through injury or disease, or even of people who where born without that ability due to a genetic abnormality, then I congratulate you for paying attention and for being so smart. However, I can say with (almost) certainty that such people would also be deficient in the experience of at least one and probably many other related emotions. The people in my made up thought experiment are not deficient in any other emotions, it is love, and only love that they cannot experience. With all that in mind, the question I now ask you to consider is this, on this made up world, would these made up, loveless people be better or worse off than us? Would they have more or less war? More or less hatred? More or less poverty or disease? More or less kindness? and so on.

Evolution and Love

Without much reflection, the answer that immediately springs to mind is, of course not. If a loveless society were even possible, surely it would be a miserable place, full of lonely and angry people plagued with disease and death. Without love, those deaths would go largely unnoticed since the loss would not be felt. Those that remained alive would not shed a tear, nor feel any remorse. They would simply move on as if nothing had changed, going about their loveless lives until they also someday died an unremarked upon or mourned death. Sounds like a very terrible place and it would be, but is that really what a loveless society would look like? And, more importantly, would it be necessarily any more terrible than our currently existing real love capable society is? Before I dive into how it might be possible and what it might look like, it is important that you understand a little bit about evolution and that you accept the fact that love only exists because evolutionary pressures selected for it. As a consequence, while my above thought experiment is totally made up, it is in principle entirely possible that such a world, with such beings, could exist, and it could have even been our own, if things had been just a little different. It was only because of evolutionary pressures that those proto-humans and humans with the greatest capacity to love survived to reproduce and thus make more greater capacity for love humans, while those humans with less capacity to experience love slowly died off. More specifically, those humans with sets of gene(s) which, when expressed, resulted in a predisposition to experience love survived to pass on those genes, and those that did not, did not.

Why the ability to fall in love with another human being gave a survival advantage over those that did not have this ability is a matter for much debate and speculation. I can think of many possibilities. For example, love allows for greater attachments to others and thus a greater likelihood for working together with others to achieve common objectives. The ability to live and work in teams would be a major survival advantage over those who did not have this ability. Love also brings out our protective instincts. We want to protect those we love. Like attachments this would naturally stimulate the drive to work together to protect each other. Love would also increase the likelihood of mating and pair-bonding. By pair I do not mean necessarily one man and one woman, evolutionarily speaking any number of men and women could form families together. No doubt for early man and woman that was almost always the case. The one man one woman phenomenon that is so widespread today arose mostly due to religious and societal pressures, not because it conferred any survival advantage over those whose family structures were not rooted in one man one woman tradition. Without mating obviously the species cannot persist and pair bonding is what ultimately allows for family formation. Grouping into families gave major survival advantages and would thus be co-selected for along with love by evolutionary pressures.

It can be argued that the most important function of love for human beings is its ability to bring us happiness. Love makes us happy and fulfills us in a way no other emotion can, and that is why we spend our lives seeking it out. As people we love being in love. All that aside, love is not required for survival, and when it comes to evolution, emotions are no more or less valuable than any other trait. Evolution does not care about love nor hate, nor does it care about anything, for it is not capable of caring. It is an eternal, all powerful force that cannot be argued with or fought against or slowed down or sped up. It has exactly one objective and that objective has not changed, nor will it ever change, and that is to ensure that life continues. If love will help it achieve that objective, then love will go on. However, do not mistake that as an endorsement of love over anything else. Evolution would just as likely select for hatred or lust or anger or any other emotion. Exactly as it would for any physical trait, emotions that ensure the continuation of life will go on, any others will eventually be eliminated. You may find that thought disturbing, I find it comforting, but exactly like everything else, evolution does not care how, what, or if you think about it. If you thinking about evolution helps you survive than you will eventually think about it, if it does not, then you won't, but it will always be there lurking in the background doing what it has always done and will always do. It just continues.

Evolutionary Advantages are Not Required for Survival

It seems obvious that there are many survival advantages that the ability to love would give to early humans over those who did not have this ability. But just because something gives an advantage, does not mean it is required to survive and thrive. Other advantages may compensate, or the advantage given may be necessary to survive within your own species, but not at all important in survival against all other species with which yours competes. For example, what if our own earth had been like my hypothetical loveless earth clone? What if we had been biochemically incapable of experiencing the emotion of love? Would the lack of that ability have doomed our species to the dustbin of history? Would we have never made it out of the stone age to become the people we are today? Would we have simply died out, killed off by other species who were stronger, or faster, or better then our own in some other way? Essentially I am asking you to consider if you think the ability to love was a requirement for the survival of our species? That without that ability we would have long ago died off. When you consider the question that way, at least to me, it seems silly to think that without love we could not have survived as a species. Our intellect would be unaffected, a thing which still today greatly separates us from most animals (and all machines) currently living or existing on the planet. Our cleverness and intelligence as a species was much more important in our long term survival than our ability to feel love, or any other emotion.

The Argument Against Love

It is one thing to argue that we could be as dominant a species without the ability to love as we are with that ability, and quite another to argue that we would actually be better off without it. That love is actually a net negative both evolutionarily in the long run, and practically in the day to day. How could this possibly be the case? Consider these other mostly non controversial and non arguable facts about love. Love makes people behave irrationally and illogically. It causes them to make terrible decisions. Love makes people jealous and possessive. Love makes people afraid. People in love feel fear for the safety/well being of the ones they love much more easily then those they do not love. Jealousy and possessiveness ultimately leads to conflict, and conflict eventually can lead to war. How many wars in the course of humanity have been primarily or partially started or continued because of love? Either love of a person or thing that was taken from a person or group of persons, or a person or persons that were killed in the fighting. When someone we love is killed our drive for revenge is ignited. We call it seeking justice, but really it is about getting back at the people that took what we love from us. I am not arguing this is somehow wrong, though it is possible to argue that, but I am arguing that this is a negative feature of the emotion of love. Exactly like hate, love causes us to feel strongly that we have been wronged and to try and do something about that feeling, up to and including killing those people we believe wronged us. Losing the ones we love also causes us great sadness which can lead to depression and fear of losing the ones we love causes great anxiety. Anxiety and depression can lead to a host of negative consequences.

Summary and the final verdict

Since we are still here, and can experience the emotion of love, it is clear that evolutionary pressures selected for the ability to love in pre-humans because it conferred several advantages over other people, and perhaps even other species that did not have this ability. However, it is possible that the ability to love was not a requirement for the survival of the human species. It is entirely plausible that we would be exactly as dominant a species on earth today without the ability to love as we are with that ability. A loveless human was a possibility as our intellect was much more important in terms of our long term survival as a species than our abilities to experience any emotion, including love. There are clearly many negative aspects and negative outcomes associated with the emotion of love. It is not possible to answer the question if the benefits outweigh the negatives, however we can say for sure that this personal reflection explored at least some of the complexities of love and thus qualifies as an entry in the Vocal challenge as described. We cannot say if it was any good or not, only you can say that. So, what say you?