What is love? (intro)

Ok, so I've tried and failed about 15-20 times to upload my documents to Docstoc and nothing I do is working... I'll keep on trying but in the meantime, here is my intro for my BQ.

Hannah Hosking

Dr. Preston

AP English 4

January 29, 2012

What is love?

  It is one of the questions that has puzzled the mind for centuries and doesn’t have a one size fits all answer.  It consists of such subjects as psychology (CBSNews) (Kendra Cherry) (Lisa HW), biology (Helen Fisher) (Janice Ericson), religion (Dy), genetics (Clara Moskowitz), and even the culture and environment in which a person is raised.  Topics such as biology, genetics, and psychology explain what is going on in our brain when we fall in love. They help us understand what traits and physical aspects we find attractive in a mate when we’re not even thinking about it. Traits like height, symmetry of face and body, and even things you don’t even realize you notice. Biology make you think about a person’s scent and ability to fight off disease or infection.  Religion, and culture and environment all contribute to the values, ideas, and beliefs that we find attractive. Do you believe in God? What’s your opinion on the new education system? Are you a democrat or a republican? These generally vary from person to person based on how they were raised. For example, a person raised in a strict Christian environment with firm beliefs is most likely to seek a mate who was raised in the same environment with similar beliefs.

Love has been around even longer than human beings have.  While observed most easily in Homo sapiens, love is not strictly a human emotion.  Some animals such as penguins, whales, and Canadian Geese mate for life. When a mate dies, the remaining mate has been observed to experience feelings of grief and remorse.  When a whale calf dies unexpectedly, a grieving mother whale has been known to keep pushing the carcass up to the surface of the water in attempts to force the deceased calf to breathe. The love from the mother will sometimes cause her to devote all of her energy to her baby and result in her starvation and eventually her own death (Discovery Channel: Blue Planet). When humans finally evolved, love seemed to evolve with us.  In Neolithic ‘new sone age’ culture, a farmer with a better harvest would have a better chance of survival and be considered “more attractive to women” (Nick Gilbert).  Love, or feelings like love, has been present in many different cultures for thousands of years.  While the traditions for expressing it may be different, the biological and genetic basics have stayed the same.  (Popular Ethnic and Religious Wedding Traditions) (Helen Fisher).  Everyone still subconsciously looks for a mate that will provide the best mix of desirable genes for an offspring. 

While traditions are expected to vary from culture to culture, it would make sense for “love” to stay the same within those cultures.  Why is it then that the idea of love, at least in American culture, has shifted so drastically within the past 50 years?  It’s not something that’s hard to spot.  It was tradition for a young man to court a young woman before they got serious. Before getting married, you had to ask the father’s permission, and don’t even think about getting a divorce.  Now, girls are showing increasingly more skin, boys who want an honest, long lasting, relationship are increasingly harder to find, and half of all marriages now end in divorce.   The main focus of love and marriage has switched from values and beliefs to sex and physical attraction.  Is it even still love, or is it just an elevated form of physical attraction that is thought of as love? When it really comes down to it, what is love?