The Greeks called romantic love the "madness of the Gods." It is madness in a way but it serves an important function at every age. In children, like play, it is practice in courtship (from courtly love) and how to flirt and how to select a worthy partner. In teenagers it get a little more complicated since they have so much stuff going on and a madhouse of chemicals in their brains. This is where one probably makes ones first choices for good or ill. There are those who "went steady" and those who didn't and I think that that pretty much separates the world. I didn't, I had the madness of the God's crushes though and was bitterly unhappy when I wasn't "in LOVE. The most important question you can ask anyone is if they liked High School.
What's interesting to me is that romantic love is timeless. Young adults marry, etc but older people who have no plans to reproduce (one thinks of poor Sarah in the bible having Isaac at 60 or so, good God, But I digress) Romantic love, according to my sister's favorite anthropologist, Helen Fischer, sees the purpose of Romantic Love (my caps) as a "way of weeding out unsuitable mates,(or selecting inappropriate ones) focusing ones attention and forming a socially visible pair-bond".... that presumably will last a lifetime. Love among the ruins no doubt had an adaptive function in the olden days. If nothing else it energized them(us) and makes them happy and keeps them in a healthy relationship with their children, ie distracted but filled with love. Emotional support is good too and can make backaches and other infirmities more tolerable.
What gets us in trouble as a culture, I am sure you would agree, is that nemesis of all good taste and morals - Hollywood. What they have done for violence in this country they are doing for love as well. Making it casual, gratuitous, ubiquitous and unrestrained thus just another sport or form of entertainment.
What's interesting to me is that romantic love is timeless. Young adults marry, etc but older people who have no plans to reproduce (one thinks of poor Sarah in the bible having Isaac at 60 or so, good God, But I digress) Romantic love, according to my sister's favorite anthropologist, Helen Fischer, sees the purpose of Romantic Love (my caps) as a "way of weeding out unsuitable mates,(or selecting inappropriate ones) focusing ones attention and forming a socially visible pair-bond".... that presumably will last a lifetime. Love among the ruins no doubt had an adaptive function in the olden days. If nothing else it energized them(us) and makes them happy and keeps them in a healthy relationship with their children, ie distracted but filled with love. Emotional support is good too and can make backaches and other infirmities more tolerable.
What gets us in trouble as a culture, I am sure you would agree, is that nemesis of all good taste and morals - Hollywood. What they have done for violence in this country they are doing for love as well. Making it casual, gratuitous, ubiquitous and unrestrained thus just another sport or form of entertainment.
Labels: The Madness of the Gods
posted by Anne Coe | 5:00 AM
4 Comments:
I do fear that you keep blending and then separating out erotica from romance, lust from love. Function is a word I use for something produced by natural selection, not a cultural artifact around only since yesterday -- when the troubadors and knights and ladies of long ago spoke sweet words and probably acted most often like beasts of the field -- the vast majority of the world's population being left out of the equation, of course, for them there was no courtly love, they were too busy. That behavior does not have what we refer to function in my sense of the word. That behavior is a cultural artifact -- an artifice.
When marriages are arranged, by loving families I must add, they tend to start as strangers and end up with fondness and love. That sounds pretty good to me, as our "romances" start out with passion and often end with divorce. Marriage can be a tough job. Most days it is not about lust or romance, at least after the first few years.
Why is all this coming out now, not around Valentine's day?
Who is Helen Fisher? I think she argues that she sees that COURTSHIP allows time for evaluation. I would be surprised if she used the word function, as it implies the trait is ancient, and up until quite recently most marriages have been arranged, not a product of romantic love. The couple met only on their wedding day.
Just because marriages were arranged doesn't mean that romantic love, a form of lust I think, didn't exist. Why would there be infidelity? Why would people want to have sex if there was no reward for it. If there was no powerful mix of oxytocin, nor-epinephrine, saratonin, and dopamine why bother? We weren't given estrogen and testosterone for the fun of it. Then again maybe we were. Oxytocin is what helps the mother bond with the infant. It also allows normal loving couples to bond. That didn't just happen in the last 200 years. And I have read those ribald books written more than 200 years ago and the common man was include,not to mention the Bible and the Songs of Soloman (sic). What else do we have to go on but our literature and art? As a foot note the research on the Bonobo(sic) ape suggests that they enjoy sex. In fact there is strong evidence that many animals do. That is not a cultural construct.
An interesting side to this, that might agree with you is the making of the Beowolf story into a movie. Hollywood, the bad people, turned it into a love story about a he-man, not the story of a HERO, which was what Beowolf was. And I am sure it didn't hurt his sex life. Maybe on men had choices but I don't think so. Men and women are attracted to each other. Remember the birds and the bees?
Romance is erotica, they are inseparable, often restrained but nonetheless, there. It is the spark that causes it all. It is electron and the positron. It is electro-magnatism. It is the big band (no pun). Our culture may have enhance it to the point of absurdity but that doesn't mean it is not in the very core of our being.
As nearly always happens, you have about 50 ideas thrown into what could be one simple argument.
(1) I am not arguing, as you seem to think, that the sex drive is not important. The problem may be that you use words like lust, which seems to imply an unrestrained sexual drive:
Main Entry: 1lust
Function: noun
Etymology: Middle English, from Old English; akin to Old High German lust pleasure and perhaps to Latin lascivus wanton
Date: before 12th century
(2) The whole idea of courtly love was about restraint of the sex drive.
(3) Biologically, the "reward" of the sex drive is not, as you seem to argue, an orgasm, it is reproduction.
(4) Lust may have nothing ever to do with love. When this discussion started, I argued that lust -- obsessive sex drive (and an unwillingness to restrain it, as in the case of Helen of Troy) is not about love. It is selfish. Love, fundamentally, is unselfish. The problem is that we extend the term love endlessless, metaphorically. The definition seems to imply this selflessness, even when the sex drive is involved:
Main Entry: 1love
Function: noun
Etymology: Middle English, from Old English lufu; akin to Old High German luba love, Old English lēof dear, Latin lubēre, libēre to please
Date: before 12th century
1 a (1): strong affection for another arising out of kinship or personal ties (2): attraction based on sexual desire : affection and tenderness felt by lovers (3): affection based on admiration, benevolence, or common interests love for his old schoolmates b: an assurance of love give her my love
2: warm attachment, enthusiasm, or devotion love of the sea
3 a: the object of attachment, devotion, or admiration baseball was his first love b (1): a beloved person : darling often used as a term of endearment (2)British —used as an informal term of address
4 a: unselfish loyal and benevolent concern for the good of another: as a mother loves a child (1): the fatherly concern of God for humankind (2): brotherly concern for others b: a person's adoration of God
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