The essence of what I see

I see cars, sidewalks, trams, stores, flats, steps, asphalt, cloths, shoes, hats, gloves, steps, trees, roads, houses, flowers, banks, insurances, fast foods, tobacco, cafeterias, bars, casinos, bicycles, alcohol, steps, thoughts, worries, goals, wishes, sorrows, horizon, smiles, lips, hands, steps. I also see love.
I see all this things and I'm trying to catch the essence. The essence of what I see.

People pass through life wondering more or less what is their purpose. They try to find their path. Usually they model their decisions based on what the society presents them. They setup their goals and they go for them. Other might escape the reality and allow themselves to dream, to hope and to plan. Everyone is unique. Everyone thinks differently. Everyone has some concepts of the world. Sometimes, quite rarely I believe, someone stops for a second and looks; just looks around. That someone then starts asking himself questions and sometimes they are the right ones.

One question in particular popped up recently into my life: why are people choosing monogamy? For somebody a bit familiar with animal rituals, habituation and life the question is quite serious. It is unnatural he might think. Monogamy is unnatural from the zoological development, but yet... 75% of the globe lives by the impression or persuades the idea of monogamy. We can easily split the notion into 2 categories: social monogamy and sexual monogamy. I will not go into the details of the monogamy occurrences in the animal "world" but I will mention that social monogamy appears not necessarily rare and that sexual monogamy is truly a rare feature for the critters of our planet.

Social monogamy refers to 2 individuals (usually 1 male and 1 female) living together, feeding together, joining forces and resources. Sexual monogamy implies the sexual acts happening only between 2 such individuals. Okay - we got this covered and cleared.

People (as in humans) seem atypical from this point with the other beings in our world. We tend to choose monogamy. Men still have the impulse (or instinct) of inseminating as many women as possible as women have the impulse to search the best genetic partner for the her offspring and also to find the best provider man. Those instinctual traits of our specie are natural and are the reminiscence and proof of our evolution. Evolution towards monogamy or if you don't like the term evolution we can at least agree on transmutation.

Monogamy is celebrated and encouraged by many cultures often being identified with a union. I should add that (if I understood correctly) 50% of the cultures allow polygamy and in those cultures where polygamy is allowed the rate of monogamy is around 75-85%. Quite interesting outcome.

So how come people chose and are still choosing monogamy? I see, among many factors, two main reasons. One is the fact that our children development is a very long process comparing to other species. The other one is a strange process called love.

I call love a process because it is a chemically defined process of our bodies and I call it strange because this is how it is... love is strange. Nobody managed to comprehend its full manifestation. It is perhaps the most polemically debated allegory of all times. First off - love is of many kinds. Secondly, nobody is able to explain it to the full extent because we still haven't deciphered everything about our psychic and we only can guess or hypothesize how we actually think (I'll cover some of my reflections on this later on). Make no mistake, love and thinking are closely connected. Love can also be a huge polemic from the religious and spiritual point of view. But I will totally ignore this aspect since I consider religion and spirituality two very volatile and questionable aspects.

So what is love?

Biologically it is complex process. It is the mechanism in charge with perpetuation. We have many similar mechanisms in our body and this one can be split into 3 parts as they normally occur and perpetuate: lust, attraction, affection. On each stage, once triggered, different kind of peptides (some sort of short proteins) are manufactured and released in our body (with certain targets and purposes). If you want to read more about the specifics of this chemical processes you can appeal to wikipedia, my point being generic and within the vision of monogamy. The triggers can be the pheromones, the hormones and all many other external factors (it's not all chemicals, there are also ideals, connectivity etc.).

How is all this translated into what we see?
Lust (1-3 months?):
Boy and girl meet, they start connecting, they start a relationship (powerful sexual attraction in this stage).
Attraction (3-12 months?):
Relationship develops, they discover each other, they make plans, dream, hope, get used to each other, discover themselves as individuals and much more.
Affection:
This is your long lasting love to ever happiness and to better or worse thing. Children usually appear in this stage unless "some mistake".

Affection is what stimulates monogamy in our spicy... basically you have to blame love for your tendency towards monogamy and this brings us to "cheating". It is natural in my opinion for people in a relationship to be attracted "into the vortex of lies". Affection for one partner and lust or attraction for an other can coexist "happily" together and it all ends in choosing first affection or developing the second into affection. Good, bad, natural or unnatural... it is for you to decide what makes you happier. I for one consider fidelity (sexual monogamy) first of all as an ideal of respect to myself as an individual, and secondly as principle of trust and evolution.

So here we have the main component of monogamy -> love. Love's opposite is not hate in my belief... hate is also an emotion. I believe indifference is the one. If you want to know how much you love somebody you can figure out a list of things you actually love and which are indifferent. Put it in balance with things you dislike and that's how you find your answer.

The society I see around me it is built on love. It is built on monogamy as well (more or less). Love and passion is in everything that surrounds us. This is the essence of our human kind, our spicy. Perhaps... perhaps we should try to put more emphasis on it. Think about it!

In stead of an epilogue I choose to tell you an additional information: when you're "in love" with somebody (lust stage in particular and to smaller extent the attraction stage) some of the peptides released are affecting your neuronal patterns of your brain - parts of it are shutdown and others opened. It resembles (allot) with the patterns of a mentally disturbed person. This is the part where you are acting / doing most of the irrational things. I suggest you wait a while before thinking BIG things (but not too much).