Love
responds to the interests of Genes, but also to
Intelligence, Conscience and
Values
Love is mysterious, beautiful, divine. That’s a current
view.
But this is not the position of modern evolutionist
psychology and biology. To these scientists, love is largely
an illusion. Behind the spontaneity of love are genetic
mechanisms. Or rather: there are genes defending their
interests, switching on and off some chemicals; parental
love, for instance, is the way created by genes to make
parents defend the copies of their genes, present in their
children’s bodies. Parents are being manipulated by genes.
A terrible and negative vision? We shouldn’t precipitate.
There is another way of seeing this same reality.
Look: it’s not novelty that love has a genetic ground. It
comes from our inside, from our deepest I. It’s what we have
always said. In a way scientists aren’t adding much. They
are just focusing things in terms of genes (genes are our
inner side).
Secondly: genes’ power isn’t boundless; genes may be
defending their interests when switching on some passions or
ways of loving. But we aren’t their handcuffed prisoners. In
reality we are opposing them whenever we oppose instincts
(related to love, or sex, or in other areas).
We are opposing genes when we restrict the number of our
children (the blind interest of genes would be that we had
as many sons as possible). We are opposing them when we
practise sex out of its original function: the reproductive
one. We are opposing them when we love beyond what is the
genetic propensity (brotherly love is a good illustration).
In other words: our love has not to be seen as a mere
emanation of genes and their interests. Why should we
consider the mother’s love or lyrical love as a mere genetic
and mechanical reflex of the interests of the genes?
Our intelligence, our conscience, our society, and our
values can overlay the genetic impulses. Our brain isn’t a
mere puppet in the genes’ power game. In evolutionary terms,
it appeared and developed to solve multiple problems, and
evolved in a way that largely surpasses the demands of
genetic reproduction. Our genes aren’t diabolic forces,
enslaving us. And our loves must not be seen as a mechanical
resulting of the interests of genes.
It’s a reason to say as Tocqueville has said, though in
another context: «It is true that around every man a fatal
circle is traced, beyond which he cannot pass; but within
the wide verge of that circle he is powerful and free».
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