A biological intoxicant producing imprinting and an expansion of identity to include more than oneself.
Self is pleasantly immersed in other - or some abstraction of otherness - metaphysical identification with an unknown all-encomassing, all-inclusive otherness.
Agape - rational affinity.
Eros - sexual affinity.
Love/Lust.
Agape lasts as long as rational reasons persist, e.g., shared values, objective, compatible personalities, shared genes/memes etc.
Lust, erotic love is fleeting, lasting long enough for reproduction to produce a offspring. Familiarity dissipates it.
Self-esteem factors into the process.
It evolves to deal with anxiety/fear to enable cooperative reproductive and then survival strategies to develop and stabilize.
As an antidote to anxiety/fear it has become the preferred intoxicant of nihilism - nihilism being the world-view - secular or spiritual - that copes with man's emerging self-consciuosness, exposing him to a new source of anxiety/fear.
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γνῶθι σεαυτόν
μηδέν άγαν
