It's quite easy to explain, in evolutionary terms, why it 'should' be like that. But I don't think this is the "should" that you are asking about. And the problem is, there are no other "should"s, no other "why"s.

In asking for a transcendent "why", you are negating the intrinsic "legitimacy" of our most basic instincts. You emphasize the "feel" in "feel happy" as if there was anything to happiness beyond the feeling of it.

Trying to submit instincts to reason doesn't make any more sense to me than trying to submit axioms to inference rules.

You may argue romance is kinda obsolescent now that culture is overriding genetics as the main driver of adaptation. But by the same radically disembodied reasoning, you shouldn't take romantic pain so seriously.

We just are what we are. Play to win; life is too short for anything else.

You can only play to win if you have some control over your life. If you do, then you aren't just what you are now.

If you want to win, I don't see how life strategies known for causing lots of pain and misery are wise. Couldn't we say that life is too short to to waste time with love and sex instead of working on something important (like, say, life-extension research)?

Happiness, and success are a perspective, not an objective reality. Importance is synthetic. Freedom is just a macroscopic view of determinism.

If you can find a way to be happy with or without relationships, you win. People seem to have succeeded and failed with both strategies.

Edit: Oh, and if you're actually interested in wasting some time on a little literature you might enjoy some Alain de Botton; he's a logical ninny that's written some good stuff on relationships in a weird way of combining a novel with light philosophy. On Love is probably better than The Romantic Movement; though the latter paints a prettier picture of romance.

>

> You can only play to win if you have some control

> over your life. If you do, then you aren't just what

> you are now.

Yes, for all practical purposes I assume you have much control over your life, not because I'm totally convinced, but because there's no value, for practical matters, in entertaining the alternative.

I didn't mean that we can't change what we are. We definitely have power to make changes in the cultural (and chemical) part of ourselves, which is a big part of what we are. But where does the motivation to do so come from? It ultimately boils down to the same old pulsions.

Now here's a similar, but subtly more puzzling question: imagine some day science enables us to meaningfully overwrite our genetic conditionings so we can control all we feel and desire, from hypothalamus to cortex. Our psyche could become something totally alien to humanity.

Now, what would drive our desire to reflash our EPROM in this way?

I can think of a couple motivations similar to the ones that lead people to experiment with drugs: escapism and curiosity. Or, from a rationalist perspective, we might choose to get rid of inconvenient desires so we could more wholeheartedly pursue whatever ideals have emerged in our consciousness. For example, we might renounce sex and love without regret, and feel, say, the pleasure of acquisition of knowledge with the same intense visceral passion.

So it's plausible that even sane, already happy people see this transformation as desirable.

But this brings an interesting bootstrapping question. What we are doing is changing the "coordinate system" that we use to evaluate the desirability of stuff. According to what "desirability coordinate system" do we compare the old (genetic) one with the new (reflashed) one? Obviously, it has to be according to the old one, since that is what we have at the time the change is considered.

What does it even mean that one value basis favors substituting itself by a different one?? It recalls Nietzschean thoughts: that our minds, societies and cultures are battlefields for the struggle between competing values/ideas/memes, and that our very nature is aiming to become something else.

My initial point was that there was no absolute coordinate system that allowed different coordinate systems to be compared for desirability. I still believe this, but I no longer have such a nihilistic reaction to it.

Back to the point, I think for most people going against the grain of their instincts will be more a cause of suffering (even if it's more evenly distributed through their lifetime) and deathbed regrets than any particular pain endured in the pursuit of love. Therefore, I think pain avoidance is a weak reason to avoid romance.

Then again, I can believe there are people who are genuinely disinterested in romance/sex (Da Vinci and Warhol come to mind). Also, I can understand that some people choose to focus their energy on other things. What I don't believe is that such things are intrinsically more "important". It's just how you choose to redefine your game.