As an engineer when I'm solving problems or building solutions I need to define the scope and requirements of what I'm trying to do. I normally use a divide and conquer approach that allows me to make practical progress in achieving my goals. When trying to solve mundane problems or finding answers to existential questions I tend to use the same approach.
So, what is love?
Well the first thing my mind wants me to do is to come up with a simple definition of what it might be.
Love: NOUN - An intense feeling of deep affection. - Bing
I can work with that. Although being a very simple definition it gives several hints that allows me to go deeper in searching an answer for it.
The parts that really matter from the definition is feeling and affection. Feeling and affection are both a disposition or state of mind towards a subject. Very interesting - how does my mind know that I need to change my current state and engage in a disposition of some sort?
Well, as you can see my mind is constantly trying to find causality for everything. This kind of disposition or state of mind is definitely something that isn't genetically coded. So I definitely didn't born with it.
The only possible way that my mind would know that the current disposition needs to change is if it had experienced it before.
A-ha! I have a lead!
If a previous experience is required it means that there's a learning process involved. So my mind learned that when certain sensory inputs are processed by my brain my state of mind and body needs to change.
Searching for causality requires a vigilant mind and as such I'm constantly testing and proving my hypothesis. One could ask how about babies? How come they have deep feelings for their mothers? Well it is a fair question and right now I'm asking that same question myself.
It might be easy to forget that when a baby is in the womb, it is already experiencing the world through different experiences. The baby can hear, feel, smell and taste the surrounding environment. The baby is constantly learning, through experience, that certain sensory inputs kick-start certain mental and body dispositions.
I believe it is obvious now that Love is an induced state of mind and body caused by learned experiences throughout the life.
But wait a second! A deeper question remains.
what inputs causes intense feelings of Deep affection?
Depending on the individual different inputs can cause different outputs. So a generalization isn't immediately possible.
Is it possible that an aesthetically pleasing input would cause affection? Well it can definitely cause affection under certain parameters - assuming that a cute puppy is an aesthetically pleasing input, statistically speaking it would cause some sort of affection.
However that kind of affection seems different than the affection that pretends to represent Love - "... intense feeling of deep affection!"
Aesthetically pleasing might not be a strong participant in creating Love with intense feeling of deep affection.
Something else is causing that state of mind and body.
Let me try to get out of this dead end following an example that is very close to me.
I have intense feelings of deep affection for my wife
When I first met my wife I didn't have intense feelings of deep affection for her. It definitely grew on me throughout the 11 years we have been together.
It was definitely a learning process - which I already concluded.
What I have learned was that my wife is the person that:
- Makes me laugh
- When we are together our eyes sparkles
- During tough times she never gives up
- Dreams with me
- Travels with me
- Cooks with me
- She cares what is best for us
- Sleeps with me
- Makes love with me
and I'm still learning everyday - growing my intense feelings of deep affection.
So there's no definitive list of inputs that causes intense feelings of deep affection. The list is personal and unique for everyone.
What remains the same is that Love is a learning process that never ends...