Love

What is love? This is an age old question.

Many, even in the posthuman, existentialist, atheist, or the religious, for that matter, believe that life ultimately comes down to love. But what kind of love? In my life, I have seen love as a pure mechanism. I have seen it as a means by which to view someone who has fullfilled a psychological need. A woman who loves a man because he is the father figure she never had. A cavewoman who loves her caveman because he brings home the kill every night. The bimbo who loves her boyfriend because all of her other girlfriends are jealous of her. The intelligent man who loves the girl who laughs just so because a kind nurse in the delivery room had the same laugh.

If it is a mechanism that fulfills a need. If it is a feeling that can be simulated by eating chocolate. Then, how can it be true love? But at the same time, if you love someone so much that you that believe nothing will change that love, and then you hit your head on the ground, knocking out the empathy center in your brain, and you no longer love them, then was it ever true love?

If you ever had girls who have told you "I love you," while in the back of your head knowing something is wrong, knowing that you just were toying with their emotions to get them into bed, and the tricks you used to spread her legs are also filling her head with attachment emotions and dopamine, then can you really believe she loves you?

It's a cynical path that this line of thinking goes down. And, ultimately, our neuroscience will mechanize all the emotions that give life meaning. At that point, our lives will be pointless. And then we will be posthuman.

Sounds like a lovely future, no?

There MUST be something else worth living for beyond the human emotions that define us today. I can't shut down future technologies thinking that they will remove meaning from our lives. I can't define the point of life based solely on our emotions today.