On this day, the Day of Love, I am drawn to questions of chemistry. Love, after all, is a chemical reaction in the brain. It is measurable. We can even influence it. We can make you fall in love. We can make you fall out of love. Chemistry.
Last night, my favorite Arthurian myth, Tristan, was on the TV. I really liked Tristan + Ysolde because it treated the characters fairly. It didn’t duck any punches. And afterward, I got to explain the whole thing from a Midieval point of view. True love was a new idea to the West. Hell, it was a new idea to the whole world. We put that idea on stories like The Odyssey and see Odysseus as trying to get home to the wife he loves. Fuck that. He was trying to get back to the shit he owned. Like his dog and his wife. Probably in that order.
Needless to say, when it was first discussed, true love was considered magical. It was a miracle, given by God. At least, that’s what some people claimed. Others said it came from the Devil. Either way, it was magical . No way to study it. No way to observe it. No way to say anything objectively true about love. It was a mystery. Unsolvable, unapproachable.
Now, we know different. We know exactly where love comes from. We can shut it off. We can boost it. We can tell you what it does to your body. We can even replicate it with external stimuli.
Some may see this as tragic. Remove the mystery of love and… well, you remove the mystery.
I do not. I see it as wonderful. The more we know about the way our brains work, the better. I will always yell “Hooray!” when science beats superstition and we learn more about the world around us. Especially when it comes to the brain.
Especially these days.
