Hungry for Content

Simply put, love is a biological addiction partly from the dopaminergic system, along with various of hormonal and chemical changes. There probably isn’t any logically conclusive reason you have to be with any one person right now in comparison so some other potential person highly suitable for mating out there.

The model essentially goes like this:

1) Mass amounts of dopamine and norepinephrine are sent to the prefrontal cortex allowing you to be addicted to another person stronger than you are from, in comparison, almost all drugs.

2) After the madly in love stage (usually coined “the honeymoon stage”), dopamine and norepinephrine die down (also serotonin is suppressed during this stage), the hormones oxytocin and vasopressin interfere with dopamine and norepinephrine pathway and are therefore, replacing the feeling “high” with attachment. The act of copulation triggers a massive release of vasopressin. Oxytocin is the parallel hormone, which has been coined at the mating hormone. It is released in large amounts after copulation also, but has shown to rise in a human’s level of trust more so than anything else.

We mate essentially because oxytocin and vasopressin responses are maximized by the other’s presence and therefore trigger cascades that inhibit later re-association of these triggers with other partners. That is how the vole’s lifelong pair-bonding works, at least it seems so.

This is not to mention the easy explanation for love: evolution. Those who stuck with a mate in raising children tended to have better chances of living and we developed toward that benefit. Of course, there is a lot more to do with it too, such as mammals are social, similar backgrounds (location, religion, et cetera), and so on.

One point I’m really going to end the scientific explanation for is this: Love is not something abstract. It isn’t this metaphysical, allusive thing that is floating through me and you and everyone we know and everywhere and what is making life enjoyable and what is making the world turn (Don’t get me started on how ludicrous the idea of soul mates are). Essentially, we have good headway into understanding how love transpires biologically, neurologically.

How do you know which of shakespeare’s meanings were intended?

You don’t. But if you read Shakespeare carefully and often enough, you will find that all meanings are equally valid throughout the course of his plays. Which leads to the inescapable conclusion that all were intended, even the evil ones.

Shakespeare died around 400 years ago, and credible, informed, and intelligent people are still arguing over whether he was a Catholic, a Protestant, an agnostic, or an atheist.

This is not a trivial question to Shakespeare’s life or writings: he lived in the thick of the back-and-forth aftermath of the “War of the Roses”, and wrote quite a lot of politically-charged plays on the Catholic-vs-Protestant wars and feuds, in a time when people were alternately being put to death for being of the wrong persuasion. The thing is, even now, people with multiple PhD’s are arguing over which side Shakespeare took, since he made some of the most compelling arguments for both, or neither, in the entire literature.

Most of his work was done under protestant rule, but there are historical reasons to suspect catholic sympathies. And plenty have read the conflicting and politicized ambiguities in his writings as evidence of atheism, agnosticism, or non-denominationalism.

Same with homosexuality, or monarchism, or liberalism, or marital fidelity, or the nobility of war, or pacifism, or anti-semitism, or racism, or anti-intellectualism, or blind loyalty, or romantic love, or feminism, or almost any other universal theme.

Shakespeare’s writings are mostly plays, and the characters in his plays tend to be exemplars of whatever their role is. They offer intelligent, articulate, and impassioned defenses of all conflicting motivations, ideas, and philosophies. Quoting “Shakespeare” is like quoting Darth Vader and attributing it to George Lucas.

Shakespeare, in his day, was not generally regarded as any special literary giant, he was instead seen as a popular entertainer, maybe like Stephen King. Nobody bothered to record his life and thoughts, nor to interview him. In fact, many people today think that Shakespeare (the actor) did not in fact write the plays and poems attributed to “Shakespeare” (the author), thinking that an otherwise unremarkable actor could not possibly have created the works that tower so much further above their art than any other artist or scientist towers over his field.

In any case, nobody has any record nor any idea what Shakespeare “really thought”. We do not even have a consensus on who he was. The “intended meanings” can only be divined, by inference, from his work, and people are still arguing about that 400 years later.

In my book, when the most-studied, most-translated, most-annotated, most-revered artist in the history of the world has made such compelling cases for so many points of view, such that, 400 years later, his words are still the best at bolstering opposing positions… those meanings were intended.

Shakespeare was not making a case for one side nor the other, he was making all possible cases, better than anyone has done since. He wasn’t trying to prove a point nor express his beliefs, he was an artist. He was depicting people proving their points, expressing their beliefs, following their motivations.

What makes him an almost supernatural genius of the first order is that his fictional characters were realer, smarter, more articulate and impassioned than most real people. Shakespeare’s villains were more admirable and sympathetic than many real-life heroes. Shakespeare did not include straw-men in his stories. He didn’t do the stuffed-shirt bad-guy.

In short, he meant it all.