I enjoyed watching Helen Fischer's speech depicting her studies on the brain and love. Although love is thought to be abstract and artistic, I found it quite refreshing to listen to a scientific approach on love. For those who believe love to be a myth can indeed be proven wrong, for some sort of passion is definitely apparent amongst most living creatures. Love is one aspect of humanity (and animality, as Fischer continues to explain) that haunts us, for we have never been able to pinpoint exactly what it is or why it does the things it does. I was struck by the fact that Fischer called love a homeostatic imbalance, for this seems to be the most basic and evolutionary explanation; however, it also takes into account the needs and urges one faces when faced with romantic love. The universe, as biologists and scientists explain, is eternally on path of reaching homeostasis. If love is considered to be a homeostatic imbalance, then what is homeostatic balance? Is finding your 'romantic love' or 'true soul mate' the only way to satisfy the general tendency of the universe? Although I do not like this explanation, perhaps it is true that it is one's biological destination to find a mate, hence the obsession that is encountered with romantic love. Another aspect of Fischer's speech that I found interesting was the fact that she said love lied beneath emotion. For ages, love has been classified as an emotion; however, Fischer's explanation is that love is much more than that. Although anger and sadness have an overwhelming opinion upon a human being, romantic love in itself is so much worse, for it lies deeper than human emotion. I feel that this is partly because romantic love is the incorporation of so many core human emotions, including anger and depression, hence it runs so much deeper than any of those. Romantic love has proven chemical effects on the body, and as Fischer said, the effects of a romantic love high is similar to the effects of a cocaine high. This again suggests the extensive effects of romantic love, which are far worse than any emotion. Although Fischer did not provide very compelling arguments, her speech certainly made me think. It wasn't her scientific evidence that provoked thought, but it was the information she proposed that one would be unable to deny, despite the fact that she has no 'evidence'. One may not be able to prove that love exists, nor that it is addictive, but one cannot deny either, the existence of the everlasting conundrum that humanity faces with the issue of love.
