Why have we evolved something as useless and seemingly destructive as a propensity for carrying on an unanswered romantic obsession? How exactly was prolonged unrequited love useful in our hunter-gatherer days? If romantic obsession is reciprocated, there is a clear evolutionary advantage for both parties: the two partners will stay together long enough to create some kids and likely raise them to a point of relative self-sustinence. However, if romantic obsession is unanswered, it clearly does not pay in the evolutionary terms. But romantic obsession does not simply go away, as would make sense for our survival and reproductive success. It only gets amplified! Much energy is subsequently wasted on fruitless pursuits by the affected person. There is clearly no advantage for anyone to exhibit this phenomenon in today's world (at least, the world I live in). Unrequited love results in all sorts of bad things ranging from months and years of depression all the way up to restraining orders, suicides and violent crimes. So what kind of nature's trick is this? What exactly was so different back then that created this mechanism of obsession and actually encouraged it to flourish even if it was unanswered?

I think that this is because relationships today are different from the ones we had in our hunter-gatherer days in one very important way. Most of our personal relationships in the civilized world today have very little to do with our physical survival. Sure, we have friends and lovers, but our relationships with them, for the most part, do not affect how we obtain food, shelter and protection from enemies. Instead, we get our food and shelter through an institution that we collectively call "work." We get our protection from enemies from our governments, from our laws and law enforcement agencies, not from our friends. I imagine that things were very different in the past.

Imagine a world in which you have to dig around for food in a forest or out in the savannah and your partners in this business are all your friends and potential lovers. Imagine that while foraging you have encountered a scary neighboring tribe that speaks a different language, has a different culture, and wants to throw rocks at you. Imagine that somehow, through a virtue of one of your friends or potential lovers, you were rescued from this situation. Imagine that you were hungry and weak for days, and then suddenly one of your potential lovers encounters food and shares it with you. Those are all very simple and generic examples, but they illustrate my point: in the past people's relationships have had more opportunities to develop in surprising ways because survival was mixed into them. I am going to guess that people had more reasons to bond together than they do today, for reasons of survival. Obsessive romantic behavior probably had a very different meaning in the world of our past.

When you are obsessed with someone romantically, you naturally wish to strengthen your relationship with them. You wish to help them, to make them happy, to somehow bond with them. In the world of our past there would have been plenty of opportunities to do this. You could give them food, or you could tell them the location of a secret source of food. You could entertain them with a story. You could protect them from an attack of a neighboring tribe. You could spot and kill a poisonous bug that was crawling up to them. You could cure them from disease (all that would have mattered is that they thought so).

But what opportunities do you have for such benevolent actions toward the object of your affection today? Well, you have very few. Usually, they already have everything they need for their survival and much more. They have a job and supermarkets to give them an uninterrupted supply of food. You can still try to entertain them with a story, but there are fewer opportunities to do so since they now have gazillions of books, movies and TV shows to choose from that stimulate their imagination and take care of all their entertainment needs. You can no longer protect them from an attack of a neighboring tribe. That's what police is for. And besides, there are no neighboring tribes to speak of. You can't protect them from a poisonous bug, because there aren't any in our homes (for the most part). You cannot cure them from disease either. That's what modern doctors do (and that is because they do a much better job at it than your average obsessed lover would). Again, those are all rough and somewhat cliche examples, but I hope that you get my point. Unrequited love today is useless, because you cannot give the object of your affection anything that they truly need, be it in a physical or emotional sense, in order to strengthen your relationship with them and make them like you. But this was not always so.

I believe that there was a time in our history when unrequited love might have actually been considered something other than an annoyance and a disease of the mind that it is today. There was a time when a propensity to develop unrequited love was an evolutionary advantage, due to the circumstances of human life, but that is clearly no longer so. Does this mean that people who fall in love deeply will be outbred? Does this mean that romantic love as we know will eventually die, disappear from human consciousness and human experience? Sadly, it may be so.

Added April 15 2008: It also could be that unrequited love is so ineffective today, at least from the men's point of view, due to how feminism and mass media have affected our culture in the last few decades. I talk about this in my post Mass Media + Feminism = Lonely and Depressing Life for Men? .

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How To Fix U.S. Healthcare
Monday, February 11, 2008

I have heard some people express concern about the U.S. medical technology field losing its competitive edge if some sort of universal healthcare plan is implemented in the country. Presumably, the fact that citizens pay only for their own healthcare (whether directly or indirectly), increases competition between care providers and stimulates innovation, quality, etc. What do I think of all this? Well, I have had some extensive encounters with American healthcare in the last few years, and I disagree. American healthcare providers are not that competitive.

Why are they not that competitive? Because they get paid no matter what the outcome of the treatment is. Whether their treatments works well or does not work at all, they expect to get paid just the same. How exactly is this supposed to stimulate competition and innovation? When it comes to innovation and quality, I do not think that the fundamental question asked should be whether the health care plans are individual-based or universal. Either way, most people will work and end up paying for all the healthcare they receive collectively in the end. Competition and quality in health care could be stimulated by performance-based compensation, regardless of whether coverage is universal or individually-based.

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20th Century Music
Friday, January 25, 2008

I am beginning to appreciate 20th century music. Before, it seemed evil. But now that I can get used to the idea of hearing two melodies in two different keys at the same time that interchange every few seconds, I am beginning to grow fonder of it. However, I pay attention to the emotions that it brings onto me. I must say, to me, a catchy tune brings more happiness than a complicated piece, over the long run. I am beginning to think that maybe, just maybe, what is really happening is that there is a group of musicians who are making music sadder and deeper, more and more emotional and personal, and there is also another opposing group of musicians who insist that music remain simpler, more natural, more live, more accessible, playing with basic and primitive frequencies. And each of the two groups considers "their" music to be more worthy of being studied, cherished, explored and appreciated.

I am listening to Charles Ives' "Hawthorne" and it sounds like kid's play. Except it's a kid who hits his arpeggios, thirds, fourths, fifths with immaculate precision. But that's only in the fast ones. Slow one make me feel moody. Happy changes to sad in seconds. But it doesn't stop. It rips your heart out. You hear some nice major notes, and you want them to keep going, but no... it jumps right back into the abyss. The abyss of my life. The abyss of my past and the abyss of my dreams.

It seems to me that it would take chimpanzee-like strength to play Charles Ives's music (they are five times stronger than us). At least, maybe those are the players I'm listening to (whoever I can find playing it in Napster, which I pay for).

I don't know what to do with it or where to put it. It has very beautiful moments. But they bend around each other and distort each other. And then suddenly something you heard three seconds ago is not even at all seemingly related to what you are hearing right now. I still want these beautiful moments to last.

Well, I am sure that this is not all there is to it. Probably I just have to train my ears some more.

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