My days with the book "A General Theory of Love"

It was informative, lovely, enthralling, entertaining, motivational, sadness-inducing, and wonderful. Its poetic artsy language was highly engaging. The amount of knowledge within it is a gem that can’t be easily found, put in such a way. Understanding our neurology and how our brain is formed makes one realize a lot. It gave me the capacity to analyze older notions on psychology including the theory of psychoanalysis, whether the way it was concocted by Freud or Lacan. It made me understand the notions of Victor Frankl, with more depth, as I was reading the book “Man’s search for meaning” in the same days. 

Understanding how meaning could be willfully formulated by our neocortex, but just remain a detached notion, until it sinks into our limbic brain that we feel the meaning and that is by repetition and deep introspection. If we are able to create some form of synchronicity between the two parts, we would have better experiences of what is around us, and dissonance would diminish. At times we find ideas to be a threat because they find way into our neocortex, that deals with facts from a detached perspective, but when these ideas try to find way deep inside, our limbic brain cringes.

Our brains function differently but they are all wired together. Cogitation is exclusive for our neocortex and understanding a fact and explaining it to someone is done by the functions of our neocortex. Experiencing life and feeling something towards life is done by the function of our limbic system. Experiencing life and expressing it in words is a delicate play between the two brains. “Remove the neocortex, and most mammals shall raise their young, do a limbectomy and see how nonchalant they become”. We also have our reptilian part which is exclusive for bodily physiological functions.

The emphasis on how our limbic brain has its role upon our relations was a mind-opening notion, since emotions are cruelly bashed by our current world. We are creatures that depend upon each other since our emotions resonate and get amplified by other fellow humans who are closely connected to us. We shall remain so as long as we have our limbic system within us. We shall fall in love. We shall experience the divinely inner alterations and glorify the person we love, and we shall feel badly bruised when we break up. With a limbic system, we yearn to attach and we cry when we get detached from an existence that was attached to us.

Establishing a healthy limbic brain which is done by the presence of deeply supportive parents, especially mothers, shall create a mind that is healthy and more resistant towards stress and many other disruptions within the psyche. Infants get their neural network designed by their initial environment. The blueprints are laid down by the people whom have the power within his brain, mostly its parents, specifically the mother.

Many studies support the idea that great amount of support towards a dependent small creature makes it armored with a greater capacity to be independent in its later life, and carrying a baby that is crying is not in any way a path of spoiling it.

Understanding that our current racing culture has lost meaningful attachment due to many reasons. We have been taught to consume and change everything. We have been taught that what doesn’t sparkle has no use anymore. Due to this, we took this notion into the realm of our relations and we today think that if the frenzy electrical feeling fades within our romantic relations then we are not loving anymore. A great differentiation between being “in love” and “loving” has been made. The former similar to infatuation, the later similar to deeply connected love. Who wants a perpetual electrical feeling that is built upon superficial matters should in no way seek a long-term relation. Sadly some people have no stable limbic structures that want a long-term relation. Some have severed connections making them get entertained by severed connections being so unstable. 

Our current world functions upon the neocortex allowing little for the limbic brain and this has many disadvantages but I think there are some advantages as well. If we would live by our dispositions, we would be pushed to commit heinous crimes at times due to our beliefs, but suspending the power of our limbic system does allow objectivity to come in, but our limbic brains can never be suspended, so we can never by fully objective beings. Our limbic brain is there for millions of years compared to the neocortex which is there for hundreds of thousands of years and that makes the power of the limbic brain become stickier within us. 

The book implicitly shades light upon the notion that some things could exist that are serving and deceiving us at the same time. Notions could serve us but they deceive us and because we are emotional beings we would get attached to what serves us and not pay too much attention if it is deceiving us as long as we feel that it has fulfilled our need.

The beautiful ending, "While we can not alter the nature of love, we can choose to defy its dictates or thrive within its walls. Those with the wisdom to do so will heed their hearts and draw strength from their relatedness, and they will raise their children to do likewise."