What is love (2022-)
///identity.conceptual.research
R: How did you get into this?
E: My friend, she gave me someone to work with, you know, like an easy one.
R: What do you mean?
E: Like, he’s low maintenance, I just text him once a day. It doesn’t even matter what I say...
R: Does he ever want more?
E: No, I think he’s just lonely. It was just one to learn on, you know my friend had so many and she just gave him to me to look after... he doesn’t want to lose it so he doesn’t do anything weird
R: Does he pay?
E: He pays my rent now
R: One text a day? Nothing in person?
E: Yeah, he loves me
Exploration of Modern Perspectives and Judgment of Love Relationships
Humans are driven by feelings.
They complete actions that can be simple or complex and may be taken in relation to the self, others, or the environment.
Humans estimate the value of actions partly by observing others performing those actions.
Humans often copy the actions of others with the expectation of achieving similar benefits.
They also repeat actions that have previously rewarded them.
Human identities form around optimizing both their environment and their routines to facilitate these actions.
All actions compete with one another to provide emotional regulation.
Actions are weighed against each other by their expected reward—governed by the secretion of dopamine, serotonin, and oxytocin in the brain—relative to the associated costs (i.e., risk‑weighted energy expenditure).
The combination of energy expenditure and the order and intensity of neurotransmitter release before, during, and after a given action determines the likelihood and intensity of future actions.
Humans become proficient in the action loops they perform regularly, especially in environments optimized for these loops.
Over time, people grow dependent on a smaller set of these loops for emotional regulation.
Changes in the environment or in the reward derived from these action loops can disrupt a person’s emotional balance.
Visual stimuli—including displays of emotion, another person’s status, desire, and perceived changes of state—can also affect human behavior and emotional regulation.
Excerpt from Interview, 2023. Research interview exploring perception and prejudices around the relevancy and value of love in the modern world
What is it?
We’re stuck with this feeling—every bit of it.
The highs, the lows, the messy process of figuring it out, the joy of letting it take over, and the pain of its crushing blows.
Some will say it doesn’t exist—that it’s just a chemical reaction distracting us from purpose and development.
Others will insist it’s the very source of life, that our purpose derives from experiencing it.
So, what can we agree on?
So far, at least, we agree it’s potent.
Real or not, you’ll be asked to define your relationship to it: how you experience it, what it means to you, and how you use it.
You didn’t choose the way you first learned about it—that was shaped by your upbringing. You inherited everything your environment and genetics had already figured out.
If you’re reading this, maybe you’ve realized you can change it.
Or maybe you don’t want to.
There are countless schools of thought for the many ways the human condition confronts its deepest fear: isolation.
We’ve been telling each other how to handle this since sentient beings first realized their power.
We’re born with an innate desire for companionship, needing the perspective of another to help us justify the pain of existence.
Maybe we share it so we can keep dreaming together, unburdened by the knowledge that one day it all stops.
Using each other as living totems, we wrap ourselves in the beauty of the present.
Why, then, do we crave agreement? Some need it more than others—those who dwell on future plans or past regrets become vulnerable to love’s power.
Those who master it can subdue those who see it as life’s only reality.
And others simply simulate love, crafting environments that resemble the real thing if you squint hard enough.
Our children and our creations will use the tools we leave them to figure out life.
Should love be one of those tools?
If so, what do we write in the instruction manual?
Or is the mystery behind it precisely the point?
I know what I like, but maybe it’s better if we let everyone else decide.