We've just barely touched on the question of responsibility when brain chemicals are influencing you, but there's quite a bot about it in the book. And there's also the question of whether knowing about the science of love and arousal might take away some of the sense of passion and mystery. I particularly liked this answer:

"When I ask Cristina what she thinks about peering into the brain for the secrets of how love works, she says that the more we unlock the mechanics of love, the more compelling and mystical love becomes—especially (and she has a heck of a point here) since we don’t know what unleashes the chemicals.

“To speak of dopamine is not functionally different to me than speaking of Cupid. It’s simply a different cultural lingo. To talk about serotonin is not more deflating than to talk of a love potion, Midsummer Night’s Dream style. I don’t think it diminishes the romance; I think it increases the mystery.”

She’s right about not knowing what unleashes the chemistry—you can’t strap someone into an fMRI machine and push them to the beach or to the disco to see exactly what happens the moment their neurotransmitters acquire their target.

And yet chemistry must be the basis for that erotic-romantic-spirit ual experience: everything we do starts with a signal from the brain. It tells us to breathe, to reach for a wineglass, to say “I love you.” We often think of our physical being as an impediment to the divine—but it is also the conduit through which those transcendent feel-ings of love come to us, so it must also be a channel to the divine, or the source of what we experience as the divine." less

There's nothing that says we have to stop talking at 10; most folks will probably need to leave, but we sometimes keep on for a while. I keep checking back every now and then for an hour or so. The whole discussion will be available to read until the next one comes along, and even then it will be available as an archive. less