爱情的本质
阳光明媚,令人陶醉,几个光棍召开吃喝大会,说来说去,话题总是会拐到男女之情的老问题上去。
一,爱情的本质是什么?
爱情的本质是什么?
看穿了其实很简单,就是为了繁衍后代,由上帝或大自然所安排的一场游戏:让男人们像吸了毒、着了魔似的非要播种、以便把DNA发扬光大。
雄性与雌性,就是播种与受种的关系,一方总是力求多播种,另一方总是力求获得最好的种子。 你看那西门庆,那普希金,本末倒置,沉迷于抽抽插插的仪式当中,不是个笑话吗?
看看雄蜂,交配一场后外生殖器就留在雌蜂身上,然后雄蜂就死掉,就算完成了他一生的使命。 雄蜂不过是雌蜂的配种工具。
看看螳螂,交尾后雌螳螂会把雄螳螂吃掉,以利于生宝宝。
看看男人:年轻的时候为了求欢、为了获得播种的机会而甘当奴隶,有了儿女之后就是为了结发妻子和嗷嗷待哺的孩子们当牛做马,操劳一生,辛辛苦苦为谁忙? 男人的一生只不过是给妻儿当牛做马做奴隶,一辈子为妻子儿女打工,哪怕是行贿受贿贪赃枉法、杀人越货也都是为了让妻子儿女过上好生活,就像房奴一样,永远是为他人做嫁衣裳。
据说太医给寂寞宫女们开的一味良药就是一群精壮小伙儿,宫女们用过之后个个荣光焕发,而小伙儿们则变得骨瘦如柴萎靡不振,被称为“药渣”。
据说克隆技术发展以后,将来的发展趋势就是雄性动物全部死光光,雌性动物自己就可以完成社会生产与人类生产的任务。
二,为爱而成长
不同的女人给男人的感觉是不同的:有些女人你敬而远之;有些女人看上去你就想和她上床;有些女人你情不自禁就陷进去了,喜欢上了、爱上了,你会让自己的小弟弟暂时受一些委屈,你不忍也不愿上她,那是对她的亵渎,她是你心目中的女神。
小圆说,当一个男孩愿意为了爱情而成长的时候,每个女孩都会心动。
我说,其实哪个男孩不是如此呢?这样的男孩并不是少数,而是大多数。非世间无马,而是汝不识马也! 任何一个男人,只要他是真的爱上了,他都会愿意努力提高自己、完善自己。当然,他的这种心情对方是否了解、即便了解了又是否领情,则是另外一个问题。 往往,不领情,甚至把这当作犯贱的总是占多数。(其实女人才贱,你对她好她就拽,你对她不好她反而粘,所以尼采说,去女人那里的时候别忘了带上鞭子。)既然想拥抱,又怎能握着拳头? 一句话说得好:去恋爱吧,就像没受过伤一样。
罗素不是一个基督徒,不必为了上帝而活着。那他为什么活着?他自己说:“三种单纯然而极其强烈的激情支配着我的一生,那就是对于爱的渴望,对于知识的寻求,以及对于人类苦难痛彻肺腑的怜悯。”
对爱的渴求,是人生的动机之一。 正是这样,“才之一字,所以粉饰乾坤;情之一字,所以维系世界”(《幽梦影》)。
罗素当年几乎被视为圣人而后又为人所病垢的一个重要原因就是他的几次婚变。 不过,他的婚变是有开创性的,破除了中世纪封建礼教而追求个人幸福,而且据说他的每一次感情都是认真的,真诚的。 既然如此那么一切就都好解释了: 的确,一夫一妻制并非人类本能,爱情是有保质期的,一般是两年左右;在这样两三年一次的周期循环当中,每一次都是自我完善的机会; 罗素在每一次所认真对待的感情当中,都在努力提高自己、完善自己,都在为了爱情而成长,活到老爱到老,道行也越修炼越高。正是这样。
有人说,爱情从上半身开始,到下半身结束,一场恋爱下来的结果往往正是这样。清华的学生们说的更远:婚姻是爱情的坟墓,但假如没有婚姻,爱情将死无葬身之地。
一个人如果要是真的爱上了,他会暂时脱离“繁衍”的终极目的,而仅仅在意一种纯粹精神上的追求。不过,舍弃肉欲而仅仅追求精神的爱是高尚的,但也是靠不住的, 就如同在经济危机的乱世中不去囤积粮食而致力于收藏古玩字画一样。 有时候人对于精神爱恋的追求也会像毒瘾一样,无可救药,深陷其中,难以自拔。
三,情与欲
看完韩剧《色即是空》,有人写影评总结说:做爱容易相爱难!
的确,这十几年来我们这个社会的做爱成本大幅度降低,而且不光是大陆,台湾南韩也是一样。 我曾经怀疑过: 在这个做爱成本大幅度降低的时代,琼瑶的爱情小说究竟还有多少人在看?
那是在爱情受到压抑的时代所写出的小说,那时的人们可以轻易相爱但却不能轻易做爱。 做爱的社会成本太高,风险太大,世俗的伦理道德如小脚侦缉队般死死盯住人们的肉体恋爱,但却并不禁锢人们的精神恋爱,于是满足人们YY的爱情小说才大有市场。
可是今天,做爱的成本已经大大降低,大陆十几岁的初中生只要互相喜欢就可以随便上床了,开明的家长们还会悄悄地在书包里放上几个套,,,
只要想做爱就可以随便地做爱,在这种环境下成长起来的年轻人,他们会理解过去那个时代对爱情的压抑吗? 而脱离了社会背景的琼瑶爱情小说,还会有几个人看?
香港的A片男优在电视节目上说,他生活中也有女朋友的,私下在一起的时候就是吃吃饭、做做爱,玩一玩,主持人问他既然你阅女无数,那又是怎么看待爱情的呢?他有点尴尬地回答说,其实自己还真不知道什么是爱情的滋味。这是一个做爱容易相爱难的时代。
在那个压抑的时代,肉欲之做爱如过街老鼠人人喊打,而精神的情爱则被美化,被戴上光环,被赞美得无以复加,甚至被神化。 于是那个时代成长起来的就有人对神圣的爱情充满了敬意和神往,甚至把爱情本身当作了理想。
哪一个好,是做爱容易相爱难好,还是相爱容易做爱难好? 这个不好说,也不能说现在就不好, 毕竟天理不该长期压抑人欲,什么三纲五常礼仪廉耻之类的人工发明多少有点狗屁庸人自扰的味道。 而且在我理解,罗素也是更多的把爱当作调剂而非目的本身。
四,爱情与宗教、毒品
据说,人体只不过是生理化学物质的奴隶,不管这些物质是人体自身分泌的吗啡还是从外界摄入的鸦片。
爱情这东西和毒品、宗教一样,都会令人产生狂热、虚幻,和安慰。而罗素对爱情所做的几个描述也不谋而合:-----爱情可以带来狂喜,可以排除寂寞,可以让人看见天堂,这几条完全符合毒品和宗教的特征。
可以相信,爱情与宗教体验、毒品体验一样,都是人体生理化学物质作用的产物,都是造物主为实现繁衍而导演的一出戏的道具。
五,幸福的敌人
幸福的最大敌人,是道德感和事业心。唐僧就是个好例子。 而当你抱着游戏人生的态度的时候,一切便手到擒来了。 有点儿悲哀。
- posted on 11/18/2008
I get a kick out of you
Feb 12th 2004
From The Economist print edition
Scientists are finding that, after all, love really is down to a chemical addiction between people
OVER the course of history it has been artists, poets and playwrights who have made the greatest progress in humanity's understanding of love. Romance has seemed as inexplicable as the beauty of a rainbow. But these days scientists are challenging that notion, and they have rather a lot to say about how and why people love each other.
Is this useful? The scientists think so. For a start, understanding the neurochemical pathways that regulate social attachments may help to deal with defects in people's ability to form relationships. All relationships, whether they are those of parents with their children, spouses with their partners, or workers with their colleagues, rely on an ability to create and maintain social ties. Defects can be disabling, and become apparent as disorders such as autism and schizophrenia—and, indeed, as the serious depression that can result from rejection in love. Research is also shedding light on some of the more extreme forms of sexual behaviour. And, controversially, some utopian fringe groups see such work as the doorway to a future where love is guaranteed because it will be provided chemically, or even genetically engineered from conception.
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The Journal of Comparative Neurology publishes an abstract of Dr Young's article on prairie voles. Northern State University has a profile of the prairie vole. Test how loved-up you are with Economist.com's love quiz.
The scientific tale of love begins innocently enough, with voles. The prairie vole is a sociable creature, one of the only 3% of mammal species that appear to form monogamous relationships. Mating between prairie voles is a tremendous 24-hour effort. After this, they bond for life. They prefer to spend time with each other, groom each other for hours on end and nest together. They avoid meeting other potential mates. The male becomes an aggressive guard of the female. And when their pups are born, they become affectionate and attentive parents. However, another vole, a close relative called the montane vole, has no interest in partnership beyond one-night-stand sex. What is intriguing is that these vast differences in behaviour are the result of a mere handful of genes. The two vole species are more than 99% alike, genetically.
Why do voles fall in love?
The details of what is going on—the vole story, as it were—is a fascinating one. When prairie voles have sex, two hormones called oxytocin and vasopressin are released. If the release of these hormones is blocked, prairie-voles' sex becomes a fleeting affair, like that normally enjoyed by their rakish montane cousins. Conversely, if prairie voles are given an injection of the hormones, but prevented from having sex, they will still form a preference for their chosen partner. In other words, researchers can make prairie voles fall in love—or whatever the vole equivalent of this is—with an injection.
A clue to what is happening—and how these results might bear on the human condition—was found when this magic juice was given to the montane vole: it made no difference. It turns out that the faithful prairie vole has receptors for oxytocin and vasopressin in brain regions associated with reward and reinforcement, whereas the montane vole does not. The question is, do humans (another species in the 3% of allegedly monogamous mammals) have brains similar to prairie voles?
To answer that question you need to dig a little deeper. As Larry Young, a researcher into social attachment at Emory University, in Atlanta, Georgia, explains, the brain has a reward system designed to make voles (and people and other animals) do what they ought to. Without it, they might forget to eat, drink and have sex—with disastrous results. That animals continue to do these things is because they make them feel good. And they feel good because of the release of a chemical called dopamine into the brain. Sure enough, when a female prairie vole mates, there is a 50% increase in the level of dopamine in the reward centre of her brain.
Similarly, when a male rat has sex it feels good to him because of the dopamine. He learns that sex is enjoyable, and seeks out more of it based on how it happened the first time. But, in contrast to the prairie vole, at no time do rats learn to associate sex with a particular female. Rats are not monogamous.
This is where the vasopressin and oxytocin come in. They are involved in parts of the brain that help to pick out the salient features used to identify individuals. If the gene for oxytocin is knocked out of a mouse before birth, that mouse will become a social amnesiac and have no memory of the other mice it meets. The same is true if the vasopressin gene is knocked out.
The salient feature in this case is odour. Rats, mice and voles recognise each other by smell. Christie Fowler and her colleagues at Florida State University have found that exposure to the opposite sex generates new nerve cells in the brains of prairie voles—in particular in areas important to olfactory memory. Could it be that prairie voles form an olfactory “image” of their partners—the rodent equivalent of remembering a personality—and this becomes linked with pleasure?
Dr Young and his colleagues suggest this idea in an article published last month in the Journal of Comparative Neurology. They argue that prairie voles become addicted to each other through a process of sexual imprinting mediated by odour. Furthermore, they suggest that the reward mechanism involved in this addiction has probably evolved in a similar way in other monogamous animals, humans included, to regulate pair-bonding in them as well.
You might as well face it...
Sex stimulates the release of vasopressin and oxytocin in people, as well as voles, though the role of these hormones in the human brain is not yet well understood. But while it is unlikely that people have a mental, smell-based map of their partners in the way that voles do, there are strong hints that the hormone pair have something to reveal about the nature of human love: among those of Man's fellow primates that have been studied, monogamous marmosets have higher levels of vasopressin bound in the reward centres of their brains than do non-monogamous rhesus macaques.
Other approaches are also shedding light on the question. In 2000, Andreas Bartels and Semir Zeki of University College, London, located the areas of the brain activated by romantic love. They took students who said they were madly in love, put them into a brain scanner, and looked at their patterns of brain activity.
The results were surprising. For a start, a relatively small area of the human brain is active in love, compared with that involved in, say, ordinary friendship. “It is fascinating to reflect”, the pair conclude, “that the face that launched a thousand ships should have done so through such a limited expanse of cortex.” The second surprise was that the brain areas active in love are different from the areas activated in other emotional states, such as fear and anger. Parts of the brain that are love-bitten include the one responsible for gut feelings, and the ones which generate the euphoria induced by drugs such as cocaine. So the brains of people deeply in love do not look like those of people experiencing strong emotions, but instead like those of people snorting coke. Love, in other words, uses the neural mechanisms that are activated during the process of addiction. “We are literally addicted to love,” Dr Young observes. Like the prairie voles.
It seems possible, then, that animals which form strong social bonds do so because of the location of their receptors for vasopressin and oxytocin. Evolution acts on the distribution of these receptors to generate social or non-social versions of a vole. The more receptors located in regions associated with reward, the more rewarding social interactions become. Social groups, and society itself, rely ultimately on these receptors. But for evolution to be able to act, there must be individual variation between mice, and between men. And this has interesting implications.
Last year, Steven Phelps, who works at Emory with Dr Young, found great diversity in the distribution of vasopressin receptors between individual prairie voles. He suggests that this variation contributes to individual differences in social behaviour—in other words, some voles will be more faithful than others. Meanwhile, Dr Young says that he and his colleagues have found a lot of variation in the vasopressin-receptor gene in humans. “We may be able to do things like look at their gene sequence, look at their promoter sequence, to genotype people and correlate that with their fidelity,” he muses.
It has already proved possible to tinker with this genetic inheritance, with startling results. Scientists can increase the expression of the relevant receptors in prairie voles, and thus strengthen the animals' ability to attach to partners. And in 1999, Dr Young led a team that took the prairie-vole receptor gene and inserted it into an ordinary (and therefore promiscuous) mouse. The transgenic mouse thus created was much more sociable to its mate.
Love, love me do
Scanning the brains of people in love is also helping to refine science's grasp of love's various forms. Helen Fisher, a researcher at Rutgers University, and the author of a new book on love*, suggests it comes in three flavours: lust, romantic love and long-term attachment. There is some overlap but, in essence, these are separate phenomena, with their own emotional and motivational systems, and accompanying chemicals. These systems have evolved to enable, respectively, mating, pair-bonding and parenting.
Lust, of course, involves a craving for sex. Jim Pfaus, a psychologist at Concordia University, in Montreal, says the aftermath of lustful sex is similar to the state induced by taking opiates. A heady mix of chemical changes occurs, including increases in the levels of serotonin, oxytocin, vasopressin and endogenous opioids (the body's natural equivalent of heroin). “This may serve many functions, to relax the body, induce pleasure and satiety, and perhaps induce bonding to the very features that one has just experienced all this with”, says Dr Pfaus.
Then there is attraction, or the state of being in love (what is sometimes known as romantic or obsessive love). This is a refinement of mere lust that allows people to home in on a particular mate. This state is characterised by feelings of exhilaration, and intrusive, obsessive thoughts about the object of one's affection. Some researchers suggest this mental state might share neurochemical characteristics with the manic phase of manic depression. Dr Fisher's work, however, suggests that the actual behavioural patterns of those in love—such as attempting to evoke reciprocal responses in one's loved one—resemble obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD).
That raises the question of whether it is possible to “treat” this romantic state clinically, as can be done with OCD. The parents of any love-besotted teenager might want to know the answer to that. Dr Fisher suggests it might, indeed, be possible to inhibit feelings of romantic love, but only at its early stages. OCD is characterised by low levels of a chemical called serotonin. Drugs such as Prozac work by keeping serotonin hanging around in the brain for longer than normal, so they might stave off romantic feelings. (This also means that people taking anti-depressants may be jeopardising their ability to fall in love.) But once romantic love begins in earnest, it is one of the strongest drives on Earth. Dr Fisher says it seems to be more powerful than hunger. A little serotonin would be unlikely to stifle it.
Wonderful though it is, romantic love is unstable—not a good basis for child-rearing. But the final stage of love, long-term attachment, allows parents to co-operate in raising children. This state, says Dr Fisher, is characterised by feelings of calm, security, social comfort and emotional union.
Because they are independent, these three systems can work simultaneously—with dangerous results. As Dr Fisher explains, “you can feel deep attachment for a long-term spouse, while you feel romantic love for someone else, while you feel the sex drive in situations unrelated to either partner.” This independence means it is possible to love more than one person at a time, a situation that leads to jealousy, adultery and divorce—though also to the possibilities of promiscuity and polygamy, with the likelihood of extra children, and thus a bigger stake in the genetic future, that those behaviours bring. As Dr Fisher observes, “We were not built to be happy but to reproduce.”
The stages of love vary somewhat between the sexes. Lust, for example, is aroused more easily in men by visual stimuli than is the case for women. This is probably why visual pornography is more popular with men. And although both men and women express romantic love with the same intensity, and are attracted to partners who are dependable, kind, healthy, smart and educated, there are some notable differences in their choices. Men are more attracted to youth and beauty, while women are more attracted to money, education and position. When an older, ugly man is seen walking down the road arm-in-arm with a young and beautiful woman, most people assume the man is rich or powerful.
These foolish things
Of course, love is about more than just genes. Cultural and social factors, and learning, play big roles. Who and how a person has loved in the past are important determinants of his (or her) capacity to fall in love at any given moment in the future. This is because animals—people included—learn from their sexual and social experiences. Arousal comes naturally. But long-term success in mating requires a change from being naive about this state to knowing the precise factors that lead from arousal to the rewards of sex, love and attachment. For some humans, this may involve flowers, chocolate and sweet words. But these things are learnt.
If humans become conditioned by their experiences, this may be the reason why some people tend to date the same “type” of partner over and over again. Researchers think humans develop a “love map” as they grow up—a blueprint that contains the many things that they have learnt are attractive. This inner scorecard is something that people use to rate the suitability of mates. Yet the idea that humans are actually born with a particular type of “soul mate” wired into their desires is wrong. Research on the choices of partner made by identical twins suggests that the development of love maps takes time, and has a strong random component.
Work on rats is leading researchers such as Dr Pfaus to wonder whether the template of features found attractive by an individual is formed during a critical period of sexual-behaviour development. He says that even in animals that are not supposed to pair-bond, such as rats, these features may get fixed with the experience of sexual reward. Rats can be conditioned to prefer particular types of partner—for example by pairing sexual reward with some kind of cue, such as lemon-scented members of the opposite sex. This work may help the understanding of unusual sexual preferences. Human fetishes, for example, develop early, and are almost impossible to change. The fetishist connects objects such as feet, shoes, stuffed toys and even balloons, that have a visual association with childhood sexual experiences, to sexual gratification.
So love, in all its glory, is just, it seems, a chemical state with genetic roots and environmental influences. But all this work leads to other questions. If scientists can make a more sociable mouse, might it be possible to create a more sociable human? And what about a more loving one? A few people even think that “paradise-engineering”, dedicated to abolishing the “biological substrates of human suffering”, is rather a good idea.
As time goes by
Progress in predicting the outcome of relationships, and information about the genetic roots of fidelity, might also make proposing marriage more like a job application—with associated medical, genetic and psychological checks. If it were reliable enough, would insurers cover you for divorce? And as brain scanners become cheaper and more widely available, they might go from being research tools to something that anyone could use to find out how well they were loved. Will the future bring answers to questions such as: Does your partner really love you? Is your husband lusting after the au pair?
And then there are drugs. Despite Dr Fisher's reservations, might they also help people to fall in love, or perhaps fix broken relationships? Probably not. Dr Pfaus says that drugs may enhance portions of the “love experience” but fall short of doing the whole job because of their specificity. And if a couple fall out of love, drugs are unlikely to help either. Dr Fisher does not believe that the brain could overlook distaste for someone—even if a couple in trouble could inject themselves with huge amounts of dopamine.
However, she does think that administering serotonin can help someone get over a bad love affair faster. She also suggests it is possible to trick the brain into feeling romantic love in a long-term relationship by doing novel things with your partner. Any arousing activity drives up the level of dopamine and can therefore trigger feelings of romance as a side effect. This is why holidays can rekindle passion. Romantics, of course, have always known that love is a special sort of chemistry. Scientists are now beginning to show how true this is.
* “Why We Love: The Nature and Chemistry of Romantic Love”, by Helen Fisher. Henry Holt and Company, New York.
- Re: 爱情的本质posted on 11/18/2008
lucy wrote:
I get a kick out of you
Feb 12th 2004
From The Economist print edition
谢lucy,
用google看了一下,强文!
很难说多大程度上人的感觉和感情是生理化学物质作用的结果,
要是能有人把它翻译成中文的,估计会流传起来的,呵呵,,,,
- Re: 爱情的本质posted on 11/18/2008
lucy这篇以前咖啡也登过/提过.只是关于化学物质是蛋还是鸡还是不大清楚.
爱的反面是惧,爱可说就是无畏无惧,老A在另一条线说要随时对A太说教,说否则A太想太多,还是怕. - Re: 爱情的本质posted on 11/18/2008
想起中学的政治课,物质运动的基本形态从简单到复杂,计有机械运动、物理运动、化学运动、生物运动和社会运动。从最新的科学研究看来,爱情起始于化学运动,终结于机械运动,所以大致等同于物理运动的范畴。
- Re: 爱情的本质posted on 11/19/2008
rzp wrote:
化学物质是蛋还是鸡还是不大清楚.
正是如此,这个问题我也不清楚,只能说倾向于蛋;
爱的反面是惧,爱可说就是无畏无惧,
金庸透过觉远之口说过 “由爱故生忧,由爱故生怖;若离于爱者,无忧亦无怖。”
要说爱的反面,我觉得“冷漠”更合适。 - posted on 01/09/2009
《爱情的本质》补遗:
《一夫一妻制并非人类本能》讲的很有道理。
从生理的角度讲,男性并不适合多做爱,但几乎所有的男性却都竭力追求多做爱,孜孜不倦地播种、乐此不疲地寻找更多的对象,以求将自己的DNA发扬光大;
而女性则比男性更适合多做爱(妓女或慰安妇可以证明这一点),但女性一般却较少追求多做爱,而倾向于宁可选择一个最优秀的种马来受种,选择最优秀的男人来相伴一生。
恩格斯说,婚姻是合法的卖淫,而“一夫一妻制”则以通奸和卖淫嫖娼作为补充,导师到底是导师,见解相当的深刻。
男人多花心,女人较专一,其实,这都是与生性而来的先天优势背道而驰的,都是在扬“短”避“长”。
所以,从顺从天理的角度讲,男性应该更主动地侧重专一,而女性则应当响应木子美的号召:木子美呼吁女性多给男性机会;木子美呼吁该取消妓女。
这才是两性各自扬长避短、共建和谐社会的根本之法。
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(c) 2010 Maya Chilam Foundation