By
Syed Ibrahim Rizvi
What is the purpose of life? Humans have long debated this philosophical question. While the answer to this question depends heavily on one’s inclination towards religious thought, biologically the answer is that the purpose of life is to reproduce. Every living creature on this earth finds a reason to reproduce and this is how life has sustained on this blue planet for the last 3.5 billion years.
In the huge timescale of 3.5 billion years, life has undergone almost infinite changes following Charles Darwin’s natural selection resulting in the huge diversity of life forms that we now see on earth. It is during this process which the biologists call ‘evolution’ that all the traits of living organisms have developed.
Of all the fascinating beauty of life, humans have also been blessed with a blissful emotion of romantic love. Indeed, our life would have been bland, resembling animals, if we did not have the emotion of romantic love. Although certain animals show the instinct of love but it is confined to affection, caring and protection of other individual mostly the progeny. Romantic love is unique to humans as a species.
Again, dwelling on the question about the purpose of life, the emotion of romantic love, which is perhaps the most universal emotion, has a strong association with the act of procreation. Perhaps it was nature’s design to provide humans with an emotion which would be so overwhelmingly beautiful that it would ensure continuity of life despite odds.
While evolution was playing its process of natural selection leading to creation of homo sapiens, an interesting thing was happening alongside. Humans started evolving as a species with a higher intelligence, much more than any other animal. However, for intelligence to evolve it became necessary that the size of the brain must also increase. Thus, now we find that of all the animals on this planet, humans have the largest brain size when compared to total body size.
As the size of the brain increased, it created an impediment in childbirth. Thus, as a protective mechanism humans started giving birth to premature babies. Newborns of all animals are not required to be taught to eat, walk or swim. The human newborn child is unique amongst all animals that it requires several years of parental care and protection.
It was in these difficult moments that the emotion of romantic love happened for humans. The bond of love became an important tool to bind two unrelated humans of two sexes. Love created an association between two unrelated individuals to come together and be selfless in providing care and affection. This type of bond which developed between two individuals helped to provide support to the newborn infant which needed care during infancy.
By making this emotion of ‘romantic love’ so attractive, nature through the process of natural selection, ensured that two individuals started living together without any obvious reason. Thousands of years would have passed in the life of Homo sapiens while they formed attractive association within themselves living together in undefined bonds where the only force of attraction was ‘romantic love’.
As time passed and humans acquired more intelligence. Societal pressure and evolving social norms dictated that the bonds which were formed due to ‘romantic love’ became formalized. It was this societal pressure which started the institution of marriage.
It is thus no surprise that humans link the emotion of ‘romantic love’ to the process of marriage. Isn’t it strange that two people from two different backgrounds would come together and take wows to live together ‘till death do us part’.
The concept of marriage is unique to humans. The act of marriage whereby two individuals commit to live together voluntarily also made humans become predominantly monogamous. Since this change has happened relatively recently in evolutionary time scale, probably within two lac years, inherently humans still carry the basic animal instinct of polygamy. This is probably the reason why despite cultural stigma extra marital affairs still happen with impunity.
(The author is Professor of Biochemistry at University of Allahabad )
An excellent article by dr rizvi. However it is my firm belief that extinction is a reality anf evolution is a myth. Monogamy is to avoid extinction.