By Anthony Afum Awuah
Before I start I wish to establish the fact that I have been there before and I find nothing absolutely wrong with it. In fact it is part of the most important things that do get us through the difficult moments in life. I wish to however establish that it is more of a biological process than character or culture. The thing we call love as it is today
If we can agree that, the fact that you feel full doesn’t mean you don’t need food or the fact that you feel hungry doesn’t mean you need the food is not enough a principle to guide our lives then my case is justified.
Love as we know it is more of a biological process than a trait of good character or judgement. It is therefore the reserve of any human being that respires and metabolises and not necessarily a marital material. I know what you are thinking; ‘these bored science geeks’.
What establishes a bond between a mother and her baby is a hormone we call oxytocin. This hormone is secreted in breast milk even after delivery and helps the bonding process between a mother and a baby. The overwhelming sweep of emotions experienced by most mothers right after delivery that numbs their pain is associated with the influx of this hormone which serves a physiological function during labour by aiding contractions to deliver the baby from the uterus. Serotonins and beta endorphins also do play their role in this biological cascade of events.
Kofi sees Ama whom he finds attractive. He is impressed by her personality and passion. Ama has now become an external stimulus to which Kofi must respond to. These stimuli transmitted through sound and speech is transmitted to the brain. The pituitary gland in response stimulates the production of a cocktail of regulatory and effector hormones. The more time Kofi spends with Ama, the more of these hormones are released. At a point, the body responds to the secretions of these hormones in a cyclic way inducing what we call the feed forward mechanism. The more hormones are produced as a result of exposure, the more the body wants the exposure to the stimuli to induce more hormones.
By this time Kofi wants to see Ama every available minute of the day or in the least hear from her. The part of the brain responsible for expression of emotions which is not limited to love but passion, loyalty, jealousy hatred among others is overwhelmed. There is therefore a reduced activity of the logical centre of the brain. It goes without saying that those whose brains at this point in time function well are those who have trained themselves to do so just like training yourself not to pee in bed.
The body of Kofi will do all it takes to get him to the same physiological state we call ‘in love’. Kofi at this point is lenient, more accommodating, forgiving, and helpful. When Solomon in the book of proverbs documented this observation, it was based on an empirical data other than a philosophical one. One day Ama presents another stimulus that overrides the one inducing the love hormones. A consistent negative behaviour from Ama induces the production of stress hormones that includes some of the adrenocorticotropic hormones like cortisol. Because hormones have a short life span the current hormones overrides the afore-mentioned one and Kofi wants to call off the wedding because all of a sudden he has realised that he doesn’t really love Ama like he thought he did.
At this point it makes sense that though an important biological process like excretion, urination and digestion, ‘falling in love’ is a complex biological process devoid of human judgement or voluntary intervention. The point being; you can’t tell your body to stop producing urine but you can tell your body when to urinate if you have trained yourself to. That is why at some point we all did wet our bed but most of us do not do so again, well except in exceptional cases that you know very well.
So why then the fuss about something at level with ejection, excretion or even nausea? The state of being “in love” as it is now do not just have a biological basis but purely molecular biological process like anger and stress.
Solomon found this strange and fascinating and something he did not understand (we are talking about the world’s wisest that ever lived). I am sure that was the day that endocrinology as a branch of medicine was birthed. Jesus then advised that humans are too valuable for us to reduce each other to a biological process and that we should override that process.
So what then do we override it with? This is subtle but important information that has to be elucidated. He made it very simple by giving it to us. That would be the topic for another day’s article. If your trust is based on the fact that He or She loves you so much in the way we know it now, you have every right to take it back because as innocent, ambitious, passionate and meaningful as that is, it is just a biological process devoid by default of good judgement and character.
Before I start I wish to establish the fact that I have been there before and I find nothing absolutely wrong with it. In fact it is part of the most important things that do get us through the difficult moments in life. I wish to however establish that it is more of a biological process than character or culture. The thing we call love as it is today
If we can agree that, the fact that you feel full doesn’t mean you don’t need food or the fact that you feel hungry doesn’t mean you need the food is not enough a principle to guide our lives then my case is justified.
Love as we know it is more of a biological process than a trait of good character or judgement. It is therefore the reserve of any human being that respires and metabolises and not necessarily a marital material. I know what you are thinking; ‘these bored science geeks’.
What establishes a bond between a mother and her baby is a hormone we call oxytocin. This hormone is secreted in breast milk even after delivery and helps the bonding process between a mother and a baby. The overwhelming sweep of emotions experienced by most mothers right after delivery that numbs their pain is associated with the influx of this hormone which serves a physiological function during labour by aiding contractions to deliver the baby from the uterus. Serotonins and beta endorphins also do play their role in this biological cascade of events.
Kofi sees Ama whom he finds attractive. He is impressed by her personality and passion. Ama has now become an external stimulus to which Kofi must respond to. These stimuli transmitted through sound and speech is transmitted to the brain. The pituitary gland in response stimulates the production of a cocktail of regulatory and effector hormones. The more time Kofi spends with Ama, the more of these hormones are released. At a point, the body responds to the secretions of these hormones in a cyclic way inducing what we call the feed forward mechanism. The more hormones are produced as a result of exposure, the more the body wants the exposure to the stimuli to induce more hormones.
By this time Kofi wants to see Ama every available minute of the day or in the least hear from her. The part of the brain responsible for expression of emotions which is not limited to love but passion, loyalty, jealousy hatred among others is overwhelmed. There is therefore a reduced activity of the logical centre of the brain. It goes without saying that those whose brains at this point in time function well are those who have trained themselves to do so just like training yourself not to pee in bed.
The body of Kofi will do all it takes to get him to the same physiological state we call ‘in love’. Kofi at this point is lenient, more accommodating, forgiving, and helpful. When Solomon in the book of proverbs documented this observation, it was based on an empirical data other than a philosophical one. One day Ama presents another stimulus that overrides the one inducing the love hormones. A consistent negative behaviour from Ama induces the production of stress hormones that includes some of the adrenocorticotropic hormones like cortisol. Because hormones have a short life span the current hormones overrides the afore-mentioned one and Kofi wants to call off the wedding because all of a sudden he has realised that he doesn’t really love Ama like he thought he did.
At this point it makes sense that though an important biological process like excretion, urination and digestion, ‘falling in love’ is a complex biological process devoid of human judgement or voluntary intervention. The point being; you can’t tell your body to stop producing urine but you can tell your body when to urinate if you have trained yourself to. That is why at some point we all did wet our bed but most of us do not do so again, well except in exceptional cases that you know very well.
So why then the fuss about something at level with ejection, excretion or even nausea? The state of being “in love” as it is now do not just have a biological basis but purely molecular biological process like anger and stress.
Solomon found this strange and fascinating and something he did not understand (we are talking about the world’s wisest that ever lived). I am sure that was the day that endocrinology as a branch of medicine was birthed. Jesus then advised that humans are too valuable for us to reduce each other to a biological process and that we should override that process.So what then do we override it with? This is subtle but important information that has to be elucidated. He made it very simple by giving it to us. That would be the topic for another day’s article. If your trust is based on the fact that He or She loves you so much in the way we know it now, you have every right to take it back because as innocent, ambitious, passionate and meaningful as that is, it is just a biological process devoid by default of good judgement and character.
No comments:
Post a Comment