Is Love and Happiness an illusion? (Scientific Evidence?)

We know that chemicals such as Endorphine, Serotonine, Dopamine creates feels of Happiness; and we know that oxytocin creates feelings of appreciation, unity, and love. These chemicals are addictive like drugs. It is these chemicals that makes us want to be happy, have cravings, lust, and also have love and romance. Even though these chemicals feel good and are good for the body, it can make one very optimistic instead of realistic expectations and it will make one more trusting and less likely to be careful. People take drugs because it stimulates these chemicals in the brain and that is what makes the drug addictive.

If these chemicals are gone or low, and the individual is just experiencing reality without the influence of these chemicals, it will make people to be more careful, more realistic, care less for romance or bonding, and not crave and just live life moment to moment, with appreciation and desire also being gone.

So, what do you think? Doesn't this show that Love and Happiness is an illusion created by these influences?

reply to post by arpgme


First of all, I believe when it comes to both Love and Happiness, it depends on the individual him or herself as to what it is that makes them happy. Or to love.

We all have different views and expectations as to what we want or expect out of life and our partner, which in turn feeds our inner desires.

Is it an illusion? Maybe.

Some people derive happiness from money and material things where others are happy with their family, health, and stability. Religion gives people happiness and inspiration as well.
Once again, all this affects the internal happiness/love one achieves.

Love itself comes in different forms and varies from person to person.
Some Love is given freely.
While some Love has to be worked at.

And without those chemicals, I doubt we would be able to experience either.

But regardless, illusion or not, to have both is the greatest gift.

reply to post by snarky412


They are not gaining happiness "from". Happiness internal - inside of you. Can there be things that stimulate what is already inside of you? Sure. But the happiness is not coming "from". That is the biggest misconception.

Thanks for being honest though with your answer. Even if it is an illusion it is "fun" to some, just like drugs

Originally posted by arpgme
reply to post by snarky412

 

They are not gaining happiness "from". Happiness internal - inside of you. Can there be things that stimulate what is already inside of you? Sure. But the happiness is not coming "from". That is the biggest misconception.

Thanks for being honest though with your answer. Even if it is an illusion it is "fun" to some, just like drugs

Sadly, there are people that base happiness on material things, not internal bliss.

Me personally, I have that internal happiness and yes, there are days when out of the blue for no reason that I can fathom, I feel exuberant. It feels great!!
And Love, well I believe true love feeds the Happiness.
Or is it Happiness feeds the Love?

Either way, all I know is it's great to be able to have both!!!!!

I think what you are describing is a sociopath, no? One without care, can do some pretty awful stuff and not give a second thought about it. These chemicals that are responsible for our feelings of love and happiness are what makes us individually human, right?

A world full of drones with no real care for anything, now you are just describing what George Romero was getting at with his Living Dead series.

As far as it being an illusion, you could argue that life itself is just an illusion. Life is just a dream. We are all just individual thoughts and imaginations of a creator, somewhere. Or just imaginations of ourselves(shameless Bill Hicks references out the yin yang). So yes, it could be. Or it could not be. What was the question again?

reply to post by wondermost

As far as it being an illusion, you could argue that life itself is just an illusion. Life is just a dream. We are all just individual thoughts and imaginations of a creator, somewhere. Or just imaginations of ourselves(shameless Bill Hicks references out the yin yang). So yes, it could be. Or it could not be. What was the question again?

Uh oh, we're getting in deep here.

That is just the stuff at times my husband and I will talk about.
The "What If" scenario......

He usually says what if this is just a dream and then when we die, that's the reality?
Is this life just a test for what is to come?

But that may getting off topic.
Good thoughts though.....



ON TOPIC:
Maybe it's more along the lines that we have these chemical in us that help produce the emotions/feelings that we feel but the internal needs are fed by the person's desires as far as their wants and needs go.

People who are greedy and always wanting will never be happy or satisfied internally due to the fact they are never satisfied on the outside.
Same applies to the opposite.
Those who require less needy fulfillment will find happiness inside as well as outer happiness and will feel those chemicals kick in more often.
If that makes sense.

Originally posted by arpgme
We know that chemicals such as Endorphine, Serotonine, Dopamine creates feels of Happiness; and we know that oxytocin creates feelings of appreciation, unity, and love. These chemicals are addictive like drugs. It is these chemicals that makes us want to be happy, have cravings, lust, and also have love and romance. Even though these chemicals feel good and are good for the body, it can make one very optimistic instead of realistic expectations and it will make one more trusting and less likely to be careful. People take drugs because it stimulates these chemicals in the brain and that is what makes the drug addictive.

If these chemicals are gone or low, and the individual is just experiencing reality without the influence of these chemicals, it will make people to be more careful, more realistic, care less for romance or bonding, and not crave and just live life moment to moment, with appreciation and desire also being gone.

So, what do you think? Doesn't this show that Love and Happiness is an illusion created by these influences?

No, we just know that when we feel chemicals (Endorphine, Serotonine, Dopamine)are released.

Desire is from a feeling/thought/idea of being incomplete its not from chemicals.
Its a misapplied feeling, you know you want something and your perverted mind tricks you and tells you its "a bigger house" "better car" more money etc when it is your very source, your being in the moment that you really need.
Its the thoughts you need to wipe if you want to live in the moment .
Thoughts with desire and fear create emotional reactions( chemicals in the brain)these create pathways which if you are habitual like most people turn you into a zombie always reacting with desire and fear .
Love is a state of being it is not caused by a chemical, you are always love but it gets covered up by fears, desires and ego.

You haven't connected or reduced Love to a chemical(oxytocin) to ask if it is an illusion. Science hasn't either.
Depressed people are given serotonine reuptake drugs and they are not "happy" with more serotonine as serotonine is not happiness. Love is not a drug or chemical that has been isolated.
The brain is fine for its purpose, its our fears and desires, our misuse of it that moves us out of the moment called now.

Originally posted by snarky412
reply to post by wondermost

 

As far as it being an illusion, you could argue that life itself is just an illusion. Life is just a dream. We are all just individual thoughts and imaginations of a creator, somewhere. Or just imaginations of ourselves(shameless Bill Hicks references out the yin yang). So yes, it could be. Or it could not be. What was the question again?

Uh oh, we're getting in deep here.

That is just the stuff at times my husband and I will talk about.
The "What If" scenario......

He usually says what if this is just a dream and then when we die, that's the reality?
Is this life just a test for what is to come?

But that may getting off topic.
Good thoughts though.....

Yes! I've often noticed that when I dream, certain dreams seem to last almost at real time, at the moment, but when I think back on them they are just around five seconds worth of material! What if that is what happens when we die, or wake up? Surely we will only recall the exciting or tragic parts of our dream when we wake up in our lives that are totally different than what we know here!

Most kids before adolescence do not have any interest in girls/boys as "boyfriends" / "girlfriends".

Yet when adolescence rolls around and girls suddenly have an interest in this whole "boyfriend" thing, they wrap the whole affair up in "romantic" illusions and conceptions of "love". Yet before they had any of these "feelings", they really had no interest in having "boyfriends". There is more to this and it seems to me that social behaviors are inherent in our being/physiology.

Arpgme: "If these chemicals are gone or low, and the individual is just experiencing reality without the influence of these chemicals"

If they are gone or low, then you probably feel depressed. I am not sure if anyone can escape "the chemicals", and view life independent from them; the system is inherent in your structure and being.

(Sounds like you are contemplating Buddhist ideas..)

Love and happiness are created by chemicals and neuro transmitters inside your brain.

Since what you see and hear are created in the same manner, you could claim that there is no such thing as an objective reality, and then you will pretty soon end up having a philosophical discussion about the very definition of reality itself.

Go read the works of Rene Decartes. People already wondered about this stuff hundreds of years ago to no avail.

reply to post by nOraKat

Originally posted by nOraKat
If they are gone or low, then you probably feel depressed. I am not sure if anyone can escape "the chemicals", and view life independent from them;

If the chemicals/addictions are gone and they are no longer influencing and "depressions" is the only thing that's there. Doesn't it mean happiness is an illusion created by the influences of these chemicals?

reply to post by arpgme


A few years back i had an experience that put me onto the new age path, you know with "alien" saviors and I got right into the feel good positive attitude. It took me a two weeks of following the bandwagon and practicing thought filtering techniques but i finally did enough with my subconscious that i was "blissed" out every day for three months.

I was having a great time, i was attracting things in my life, new people, new events and even waking up each morning with a spring in my step after having dreams of saving the world type sh!t. I figured there must be extra serotonin left over from the dream or something.

Anyway this went on for three months and then i started getting bored. It was like i had so much "bliss" i couldn't stand being Mr happy nice guy any longer. I started to question everything then and spiraled down to the other end of the scale where i got my good dose of fear and played around with those electrical and chemical reactions for a bit.

After actively using my own attitude to program my brain responses to a degree, i had better control of these electrical and chemical reactions. That was the point everything started to become clear about the nature of reality and the illusion of perception. I like to think of love as life, everything, all.

I don't really understand what "takes away" from such emotional experiences in knowing they are due to chemical reactions in the body? Just knowing that doesn't at all change them for me.

The question of our ability to be objective and "realistic" if we did not have these hormones, neurotransmitters, and such is basically the age old debate about the value of emotion in contrast to intellect.

We've seen too many cases of people who had brain damaging injuries that cut them off from emotional centers (like Phineas Gage) to wonder anymore about the value of emotions in decision making, memory, socialization, and physical survival.

Some look into the work of Antonio Damasio might be of interest to you in this topic.

I have found that having a better understanding of how my mind and body work together in the production of emotions has been positive, and a self-empowering experience.

reply to post by arpgme

So, what do you think? Doesn't this show that Love and Happiness is an illusion created by these influences?

Love is real in the sense of loyalty, kinship, friendship and roots. Beyond that its chemical.

Originally posted by arpgme
We know that chemicals such as Endorphine, Serotonine, Dopamine creates feels of Happiness; and we know that oxytocin creates feelings of appreciation, unity, and love.

I wouldn't say that those chemicals create the feelings of happiness. Rather, they are the transmitters of emotions. The feelings you experience are felt when chemicals are released in the brain and absorbed by receptors in reaction to stimulus. Stimulus is as important in creating emotion as neurotransmitters. When you're low on neurotransmitters, you will feel less; I've experienced this myself in the form of depression.

These chemicals are addictive like drugs. It is these chemicals that makes us want to be happy, have cravings, lust, and also have love and romance.

It's true that neurotransmitters are addictive. Then again food is also addictive. All the things we need to survive and thrive are addictive, its a biological mechanism to help motivate us to stay alive instead of wasting away in a hole somewhere because you just don't care.

Even though these chemicals feel good and are good for the body, it can make one very optimistic instead of realistic expectations and it will make one more trusting and less likely to be careful. People take drugs because it stimulates these chemicals in the brain and that is what makes the drug addictive.

That's not quite accurate. Lack of serotonin and dopamine reception doesn't make one think realistically. It can cause severe pessimism, the belief that nothing you can do is worth the effort. It wont make you careful, it'll make you not care.

I'm going to address the drug angle in a different post, so I wont lose my whole post in the event that the mods decide that it's inappropriate for me to discuss how drug addiction works as a part of my argument.

If these chemicals are gone or low, and the individual is just experiencing reality without the influence of these chemicals, it will make people to be more careful, more realistic, care less for romance or bonding, and not crave and just live life moment to moment, with appreciation and desire also being gone

Not true. I've suffered from depression, a condition characterized by a lack of serotonin in the system. Serotonin is not only responsible for mood regulation, but also appetite, sleep, learning and temperature regulation. Serotonin makes you feel good when you're eating and helps you learn by creating neural pathways through repetition of good-feeling actions.

On my low days, when I haven't been eating well or working myself too hard, I feel like a sack of crap incapable of doing anything. It's hard to even force myself to make toast so that I don't starve. I'm not careful, in fact I sometimes think about killing myself, that's the least careful action possible. I'm not realistic, I think everything is bullcrap and wish I was just done with it forever, completely forgetting that good things do still exist in the world. You're correct at least that appreciation and desire disappear with a lack of serotonin.

So, what do you think? Doesn't this show that Love and Happiness is an illusion created by these influences?

No, actually. I think it shows that love and happiness are just as real as everything else in existence. You can actually point to a physical chemical, a real concrete thing that corresponds with these emotions, proving rather decisively that they actually exist.

Originally posted by arpgme
These chemicals are addictive like drugs...

People take drugs because it stimulates these chemicals in the brain and that is what makes the drug addictive.

And now, the drug angle.

People take drugs because it stimulates these chemicals in the brain...not entirely accurate. Different drugs have different effects.

Alcohol for example dumps serotonin from pre-synaptic neurons into the brain, overstimulating the synapses. This helps generate that initial pleasant feeling that you get when you drink. You quickly become numb to the peak serotonin level that you've reached, and as the serotonin is reabsorbed into the pre-synaptic neuron (leaving the receptor site) your feelings begin to decline. Your synapses need time to adjust to lower serotonin levels, which is part of why you feel hung-over after drinking too much. Alcohol isn't extremely addictive, people can fall into patterns of alcohol abuse to get that rush of feeling that they crave but recovery is often a simple process mostly dependent on your ability to avoid the temptation of drinking.

Cocaine, on the other hand, induces a dopamine release and also blocks the re-uptake of dopamine into the pre-synaptic neuron. Dopamine is your "special reward" neurotransmitter, it is not released all the time and is much more potent so this creates a more intense emotional effect than alcohol, and also a more debilitating crash when it wears off, which happens rather quickly. It can be considered more addictive than alcohol, since users will often abuse it for days on end to keep their dopamine level up and avoid the crash. Returning to normal neural function typically doesn't take long (a day or so) except in the case of chronic abuse, which can cause mood disorders due to severe desensitization of the synapses.

The addiction is initiated by the craving for neurotransmitters, but is sustained by the inability or unwillingness to cope with readjusting to normal neurotransmitter levels. In many cases this craving for excessive neurotransmitter levels is preceded by a massive deficit in neurotransmitters; people who feel so crappy on a regular basis who want to feel good are the most likely candidates for drug use.

As a side note, not all drugs are addictive in this manner. Psilocybin is converted into Psilocin by the body, which is similar in chemical structure to serotonin and thus is able to act on serotonin receptors. It creates a euphoric feeling and causes a distorted perception of reality and leaves without any withdrawal like effects. The only way it could be considered addictive is if one becomes obsessed with altering their perception of reality.

reply to post by arpgme


I like your thinking here, arpgme.

So, what do you think? Doesn't this show that Love and Happiness is an illusion created by these influences?

I would say no. The chemical reaction is a reaction to something, namely, what naturally occurs, the environment, bodily arousal, drugs, etc. The body reacts to stimulus—this is not an illusion, the stimulus is not an illusion, although the emotions and thoughts derived from these experiences may be if one allows it.

I'm a rational person who is very is very influenced by science. To me I agree emotions like love are chemical reactions. I don't know how to explain it. But it's more in tune with nature; our nature, that we should all understand about ourselves.

reply to post by TheomExperience

Originally posted by TheomExperience
A few years back i had an experience that put me onto the new age path, you know with "alien" saviors and I got right into the feel good positive attitude. It took me a two weeks of following the bandwagon and practicing thought filtering techniques but i finally did enough with my subconscious that i was "blissed" out every day for three months...

...[A]nyway this went on for three months and then i started getting bored. It was like i had so much "bliss" i couldn't stand being Mr happy nice guy any longer. I started to question everything then and spiraled down to the other end of the scale where i got my good dose of fear and played around with those electrical and chemical reactions for a bit.

The same thing happened to me, except, instead of "alien saviors" it was "source energy" and "source energy" was anything thought, emotion, and action that felt like pure joy and appreciation to me.

I stopped because later on someone convinced me that I "had" to look at negativity or I was "suppressing" my self, but if feel good while it lasted.

Originally posted by arpgme

We know that chemicals such as Endorphine, Serotonine, Dopamine creates feels of Happiness; and we know that oxytocin creates feelings of appreciation, unity, and love. These chemicals are addictive like drugs. It is these chemicals that makes us want to be happy, have cravings, lust, and also have love and romance. Even though these chemicals feel good and are good for the body, it can make one very optimistic instead of realistic expectations and it will make one more trusting and less likely to be careful. People take drugs because it stimulates these chemicals in the brain and that is what makes the drug addictive.

Yes there is scientific proof that these chemicals mentioned do indeed insist in the good feelings the PHYSICAL Humanoid-Soul/Spirit/Internal Energy carried(experiences here in this ... environment suit EA*RTH based w/ consciousness) arpgme.

And yes these chemicals/drugs can assist in the -(attachment D.S.E somewhat like wave to matter manifest exchange??? from observe occurring)?

or the illusion,
to the perspective of a perhaps another observer(s)- to the designed/manifested MATTER aspects of the Objective TRUTH related to EXISTENCE of the HUMAN matter body & metaphysical ??? SOULS-SPIRITS-INTERNAL ENERGIES here... Experiencing observing ,manifesting here in physical ... LIFE

(think of the double slit experiment-) as the electrons are ejected/moving/EXISTING they are observed perhaps in actual form by advanced observer(s) (t)here...
they are observed as particle matter by matter form body & physical eye here,
as they enter 1 slit but when another slit is added the individual WHOLE or 1 electron seems to go from particle to wave form...
visualize it the electron like a sphere within sphere within spheres within spheres and here in physical form the physical observers are seeing only a percentage of the entire atomic structure of the electron, for there is SPACE that ALSO makes up the atom the ELECTRON EXIST upon or WITH... That SPACE not understood here is IMPORTANT... especially if observe points from the space area of atoms are related to here observes points of the matter.

OT Sorry arpgme but yes SOME of the physical feelings from LOVE and HAPPINESS associated with the chemicals mentioned in the OP can assist in Designing a illusive undetected experience for observer(s)... And in theory following your thread premise if the chemical compound within the human matter body was decreased or lowered somehow it would cause humanity to SEE things more different less emotional attached/driven less decision's making from emotions, potentially freeing up more conscious space to perhaps use the mind for more advancements or developments, depending... Still following the thread premise making a human less emotional but upgrading their perceptions on danger and survival and WHAT IS NEEDED potentially strengthening them.

If a more advanced observer(s) had the opportunity to SEE experience this hypothetical solution to some of humanities emotional issues play out with the chemical lowering to assist and then gather data from past hypothesis/experiments showing IMPROVEMENTS with past humanities being chemically balanced. Then it seems your Logic with the chemical matter adjusting/balancing within the human experiences would be efficient in advancing the new species, again if past data was shown to of worked and not caused issues down the line with. Issues that granted may be related with emotions associated with a species growing up maturing, because THEY HAVE TOO...

Personally speaking arpgme acknowledging my attachment observed emotions as well, LOVE and Happiness do not have to be associated only with these chemicals.

Yes there are good physical - mental physical chemical driven feelings emotions when LOVE is shared but what about, using 1 for example my LOVE for ALL* and HOPE for ALL* CREATOR Creations. This is not addiction related nor if/only chemical related. Its more related to me sensing many energies EXISTING WITHIN THIS EXISTENCE (that some may not) and keeping HOPE that "WE" can CO-Exist together and not WAR/DESTROY... and find PEACE understanding clarity so maybe emotional outrages or holdbacks species immaturity no longer govern reality.

There are many who LOVE and FIND HAPPINESS seeing others doing well arpgme, emotions associated acknowledged but they do do it and 1 does not feel its always for addiction purposes. for example in disaster conditions LOVE shines thru and brings many together emotionally making them stronger as the issue is tackled together as 1 and overcame as 1 with LOVE assisting every motivated step to overcome.

1 can see your OP points arpgme of the emotions & chemicals associated with them and human behavior and if as 1 shared there were past TRUTHS that it works then...

NAMASTE*******