A key imperative for a species, if it is to survive, is reproduction. For mammals, reproduction requires sexual intercourse (or used to!): the mating of male and female to create offspring. If you are a biological determinist and you accept the thesis that it is the unconscious genes that drive human evolution, as Richard Dawkins postulated in his 1979 book The Selfish Gene, you might well agree with Tina Turner when she asks What's Love Got to Do with It? Yet the concept of love is perhaps the strongest subjective feeling a human can have and the question of love dominates most of our conscious and unconscious lives. It permeates every aspect of our existence, often driving our emotions, passions and behaviour.
The other evening I watched Adam Curtis' new documentary Can't Get You Out of My Head on BBC iPlayer. Like Curtis or dislike him, he makes you think and also makes you work to understand what is happening on the screen. He always has a message and his sprawling historical montage takes you on a journey across nations, across cultures, all political flavours, and looks into the lives of different 'significant' individuals. In many ways, his narrative is paradoxical: at the same time, it is both forceful but touching on the incoherent.
In Can't Get You Out of My Head Curtis contrasts the individual with the collective, the rational with the irrational. He argues that modern society has become extremely individualistic. It is our individual wishes and desires which drive our behaviour in modern global culture. The individualism he described made me think of the French philosopher Alain Badiou. Badiou believes that the individualism of the modern world is harming love. He sees love as a risky adventure which is a creative experience where we share our intimacy, open ourselves up to dependency and compromise the control over our lives. We subordinate our own ego through physical and emotional interaction with another.
Badiou argues that modern dating websites destroy risk, which he sees as an essential element of true love since every quality, characteristic and interest is revealed and documented beforehand as if it were "a business contract". He worries that the risk (magic) of meeting the unknown, the eyes across the room, and, I could add, the irrational attraction of opposites (the prince and the pauper) is lost by the attempts online to seek the perfect partner through thorough and careful selection. Risk is reduced as each box of likes and dislikes is ticked off.
For Badiou, love is a creative adventure - moving into the unknown, exploring the uncertain while conjuring the emotion of extreme excitement and happiness. He worries that people who give up on the risk of love will lead to uninteresting and unfulfilled lives, as they carry the burden of the disappointment of what might have been. On the other hand, maybe it is the modern zeitgeist not to risk having to compromise but lead an egotistical life where you never feel the need to satisfy another's desires or demands.
The reality seems to be that even if people fall out of love they will always believe there will be new love around the corner. Though it can be argued that love is a psychological state it is also a powerful characteristic of evolution that has created pair-bonding, so vital in the past for the survival of helpless human infants. Modern society has dramatically changed economic culture and attitudes towards child-raising but the evolution of love is embedded in hundreds of thousands of years, though it biological purpose may seem altered, I doubt if our 'individualistic world' will really damage love.