Opinion

JENNIFER CALFAS

EDITOR IN CHIEF

AARICA MARSH 

and DEREK WOLFE 

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The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
4A — Monday, October 12, 2015

A missed opportunity

H

umans 
are 
essentially 

animals. About 2 million 
years ago, the original 

Homo 
moved 

about the Earth 
in 
search 
of 

food, water and 
sex as well as 
protection from 
predators 
and 

environmen-
tal disasters in 
order to survive. 
One can picture 
the 
proverbial 

“caveman” with 
a wooden club, 
making utterances in some inde-
cipherable language, roaming for 
necessities and warring for survival.

Of course, Homo exhibited traits 

outside of primal functioning, too 
— making fire, doing cave art, wear-
ing “jewelry” and creating more 
complex tools. These abilities distin-
guished humans as sociable learners 
who used symbols to help explain 
their relation to others and their 
own existence.

But from this cognitive develop-

ment, where did love evolve? Did 
the ability to love stem from our 
neurological complexity or from 
a selfish desire to survive through 
 

sexual reproduction?

To provide a framework for this 

question, we need to consider why we 
have sex. This isn’t such a straight-
forward answer — many organisms 
reproduce asexually. If we were to 
asexually reproduce, we’d pass on 
100 percent of our genes. As every 
biology and anthropology student 
and one Richard Dawkins knows, 
propagating genes is an organism’s 
No. 1 goal in life.

So why do we only pass on 50 per-

cent of our precious genetic materi-
al? Turns out, combining our genes 
with others creates more variability 
in the gene pool, thereby increasing 
an organism’s chances for survival. 
Much of this understanding rests on 
the “Red Queen Effect,” stating that 
sexually 
reproducing 
organisms 

constantly adapt to evade co-evolv-
ing microbes, parasites and envi-
ronmental changes. This is why you 
have to get the flu shot each year — 
there’s always a new evolving strain 
that we have yet to develop immuni-
ty to. Still, explaining why and how 
we pass on genetic material doesn’t 

explain the passion, intimacy and 
longing we feel in romantic love.

What’s going on cognitively, 

emotionally and physiologically to 
induce love? Why do we reach the 
most extreme version of care, devo-
tion and intimacy? And why does 
our world shatter when we lose it?

To begin, I must admit that love 

is complex; it initiates a swath of 
chemical reactions in several places 
of the brain. Nonetheless, there are 
regions that are activated more than 
others, particularly when it affects 
one’s motivation, attachment and 
holistic lifestyle.

According 
to 
anthropologist 

Helen Fisher, during intense peri-
ods of romantic love, activity in 
your ventral tegmental area and 
caudate nucleus illuminate. This 
part of your brain is associated with 
routine tasks (like muscle memory) 
but also one’s reward (or limbic) 
system. When romanticism exists, 
dopamine is triggered in this area, 
sparking prolonged desires, focused 
attention and exhilaration. But the 
caudate nucleus is associated with 
learning and memory, which means 
that this dopamine reaction perme-
ates all aspects of life.

This idea is corroborated in David 

Brooks’ book, “The Social Animal.” 
In it, Brooks discusses psychologist 
Arthur Aron’s idea of love, unlike 
happiness or sadness, as a moti-
vational state, leading to euphoria 
or misery. That is, depending on 
whether you’ve just had a first kiss 
or are mending a broken heart, your 
performance in a wide range of 
activities will be affected.

Additionally, that motivational 

state can often become an obsession. 
Psychologists like to call this feeling 
“limerence,” or the state of being 
involuntary infatuated with anoth-
er person, hoping for a reciprocal 
response. Neurologically, this phe-
nomenon also rests in one’s reward 
system. Cocaine is said to trigger the 
same responses as love.

But why do we maintain love with 

just one person? Fisher discusses 
three chemicals — serotonin, dopa-
mine and norepinephrine — that 
become associated with one person 
in order to stir romantic passions. In 
comparison with lust, one’s sexual 
desire can be satiated from a broad-
er inclusion of people. In short, lov-
ing one person creates an emotional 

pull unlike any other.

Furthermore, one personal con-

nection becomes more salient in 
terms of attachment. An attach-
ment is driven by hormones like 
oxytocin, which creates feelings 
of peace, serenity and calmness. 
After months of a relationship, two 
people become enmeshed with 
one another, thereby developing 
 

deep attachments.

Dr. Fisher states that after you 

“feel deep attachment to an indi-
vidual … you feel intense energy, 
intense focus, intense motivation 
and the willingness to risk it all to 
win life’s greatest prize.”

Love induces addictive, with-

drawal and relapse qualities. In 
other words, it’s a drug.

Of course, as many drugs do, 

love maintains terrible lows that 
often accompany its highs — like in 
a breakup. It would be easy if you 
could forget and remove the feelings 
once held for the person you loved, 
but you can’t erase your memories. 
The limbic system doesn’t forget. 
Instead, after being dumped, the 
reward system for wanting, craving, 
motivation and focus become more 
active when you can’t get what you 
want most. 

Personally, as someone who’s 

fallen in love, dumped someone 
and been dumped, I’ve experienced 
love’s euphoria and misery. And, like 
many others, I’ve found myself in 
each situation all at once.

Yet, for the emotional intensity 

that is a first date, breakup or inti-
mate conversation, I believe we’re 
made better by our capacity to love. 
It’s deeply imbued with the pas-
sion that we personify as people, 
animating every aspect of our lives, 
whether we want it to or not. It also 
provides an incredible opportu-
nity for learning. What better way 
to learn more about yourself, your 
partner or other people around you 
than through deep vulnerability and 
effusive intimacy?

Still, I can’t say for sure why love 

has evolved in humans. Maybe it’s 
helped us propagate our genes, deter 
war, share resources or just break 
the mundane routine. Regardless, 
it’s arguably one of the most distin-
guishing qualities of our species.

— Sam Corey can be reached 

at samcorey@umich.edu.

Why do we love?

SAM
COREY

We want to begin by thanking 

University President Mark Schlis-
sel for taking faculty concerns 
around transparency and fairness 
seriously enough to commission a 
review of executive pay on campus.

The University hired Sibson, 

a private consulting company, to 
carry out that review and its report 
was released last week. The main 
finding of the report is that the Uni-
versity’s top administrators receive 
pay and other compensation that’s 
at the very top among peer public 
institutions and at the median of 
top private universities.

This contrasts sharply (some-

thing the report does not point out) 
with the salary and compensation 
for faculty and staff, which mir-
rors those prevailing at our public 
research university peers, such 
as the University of California, 
Berkeley; University of California, 
Los Angeles; and the University of 
Virginia. Moreover, unlike most 
of our public-university peers, but 
like most private universities, the 
University does not disclose the 
extent of the supplemental pay 
 

employees receive.

We would like to provide some 

historical context for this trend 
toward a widening gulf between 
compensation for the top layers of 
the administration and ordinary fac-
ulty and staff. In April 2014, a group 
of faculty published an open letter 
questioning the runaway growth of 
both base and supplemental execu-
tive pay (bonuses) at the University. 

This letter documented not only the 
discrepancy between executive pay 
and the salaries of ordinary faculty 
and staff, but also the disproportion-
ate growth in executive pay vis-à-vis 
staff pay over the previous decade.

Between 2005 and 2013, base 

executive pay (that is, without fac-
toring in bonuses) grew at almost 
twice the rate of that of faculty and 
staff. That disparity resulted in 
base compensations for top execu-
tives that by 2013 were between 30 
percent and 40 percent higher than 
at top public research universities 
such as UCLA, Berkeley, UVA, and 
the University of Texas at Austin.

Meanwhile, faculty salaries at 

the University were almost perfect-
ly aligned with those institutions. 
Compounding the already high 
level of administrative pay was (and 
is) a culture of bonuses common 
among the highest layers of the 
administration. The letter focused 
on four main categories of supple-
mental pay and found that those 
categories had more than quadru-
pled between 2004 and 2013. These 
bonuses were not reserved for top 
executives, but they were granted 
much more generously in some 
offices than in others. The conclu-
sion of that letter was not to request 
an increase in faculty compensa-
tion, but rather to call for greater 
transparency and more sensible 
management of the executive pay 
scale in times of escalating tuition 
costs and shrinking state support.

It is thus with great regret that 

we have learned that Schlissel 
had decided to accept Sibson’s 
recommendation to preserve the 
status quo. We acknowledge that 
the University remains at the same 
crossroads as many other top public 
institutions, which are also facing 
pressures toward the adoption of 
corporate practices in the name 
of competition. Nonetheless, we 
hoped that our school would claim 
its place as a leader in forming a new 
future in public higher education.

In that spirit, we continue to ask 

that the University to disclose the 
full extent of executive pay as a ges-
ture of good faith. By the report’s 
own reckoning, 50 percent of the 
public universities with which Sib-
son Consulting compared the Uni-
veristy disclose both base pay and 
bonuses. Another 15 percent dis-
close the total pay, not differentiat-
ing between base and supplemental 
compensation. The University is 
therefore with the remaining 35 
percent of peer public institutions 
that do neither and disclose only 
the base pay.

We should be leading in the pro-

cess of the renewal of public higher 
education. Increasing pay transpar-
ency is a small gesture, but small 
gestures can send powerful signals.

John Carson, Associate Professor, 

Department of History. Dario Gaggio, 

P rofessor, Department of History. 

Anthony Mora, Associate 

Professor, Department of 

American Culture and History.

I

t’s all but impossible to calculate the 
finite value of an education. At my mid-
dle-class high school in Michigan, one 

of the biggest pitches that 
teachers and administra-
tors made to try and con-
vince more of my peers to 
attend college relied purely 
on economics.

“College 
grads 
make 

more,” they said.

While that may typical-

ly be true, the fluctuating 
economy and subsequent 
job market doesn’t make 
attending a four-year uni-
versity a sure bet. Laying 
thousands of dollars on the table just to get a 
job can even seem paradoxical. Borrow money 
to pay for school, get a job, profit. Then pay the 
money back.

But universities shouldn’t be seen as manu-

facturers of employees. Students shouldn’t 
look back after graduation and weigh the cost 
of a college against the job prospects they were 
able to line up by their first month as an alum.

Education benefits society as a whole. No 

one’s chances of finding a job would improve if 
everyone in America held a bachelor’s degree, 
but the way our country would operate cul-
turally and politically would transform and 
for the better.

For example, Pamela Brandwein, a politi-

cal science professor here at the University, 
wrote a book on reinterpreting Reconstruc-
tion-era politics and history after the Civil 
War. Some of her work has been especially 
relevant this year.

After the Charleston church shooting in 

June, the nation entered a discussion about 
the Confederate flag. South Carolina law-
makers, and the nation, debated the flag’s 
meaning; one side claiming it as a symbol of 
Southern heritage, while others passionately 
bemoaned against the state’s use of a flag that 
stood for a nation founded upon acute racism 
and slavery.

In a resoundingly American fashion, we 

couldn’t even agree on what the ol’ stars and 
bars represent. The Civil War has been over 
for nearly one and a half centuries, but we 
haven’t been able to reach a consensus on 
what it was about. 

I remember being taught (shout out public 

school) that the Civil War was about slavery. I 
also remember being taught that this was too 
simple of a summation, that slavery was the 
big issue, but really state’s rights were what 
was on the line for the Confederacy.

And then I entered Brandwein’s class, and 

I re-learned two things. First, yes the Civil 
War was indeed fought over slavery, period. 
The prevailing sentiment in the South was 
that slavery was an institution of the utmost 
importance because the unlimited source 
of free labor was supposed to be the corner-
stone upon which a Southern utopia (for white 
folks) was built.

Secondly, political forces have the power to 

reshape history and affect our cultural under-
standing of it for decades and generations to 
come. After the Civil War, the loudest and 
most boisterous pro-slavery guys recognized 
a sinking ship when they were standing on it 
and began the line of rhetoric about states’ 

rights as the cause for the war. Unfortunately, 
they were successful, and this incorrect inter-
pretation of history still exists around high 
school classrooms and water coolers today.

Thanks, professor, for clearing that up.
Brandwein isn’t the first scholar, historian 

or journalist to pin down the truth about slav-
ery and the Civil War. But in the public, we 
still see its significance as something that’s up 
for debate. To drive a point home, anyone who 
believes the Civil War wasn’t a war about slav-
ery is wrong. But the truth, though made rela-
tively accessible to undergraduates here and at 
other universities, isn’t as easy to come across 
in the real world.

Society has entered full-force into the infor-

mation age, and everyone is surrounded by 
accessible data. While there’s a lot of good that 
comes from this, there are now more channels 
than ever to launch a marketing campaign to 
sway public opinion. The ability of self-inter-
ested actors to control what story gets told in 
the newspapers and on TV has made it incred-
ibly difficult to find out what is really going on.

Pick an issue: Black Lives Matter, Occupy 

Wall Street, Detroit’s bankruptcy — it doesn’t 
matter. Each person and each news outlet 
frames things differently. And there have 
been countless cases where powerful people 
have lied to the public with their own motives 
in mind. 

“I am not a crook,” said Richard Nixon.
Even with the brightest minds examining 

an event, like with the Civil War example, lies 
and political spin can slip past American com-
mon sense and become, for better or, more 
often, worse, part of what we accept as fact. 
We then carry on with an incorrect under-
standing of what is true and what happened.

Knowing this, the high volume of lies and 

political pandering should cause anyone 
from Portland, Maine, to Portland, Ore., to 
think more critically about the information 
 

they consume.

In an educated society, we would all have 

the skills to at least do this. Making more 
people college graduates benefits the greater 
good. A college education exposes each person 
to perspectives, ideas and concepts they oth-
erwise may not have stumbled upon. Students 
absorb all of this information and take it with 
them to parties, coffee shops and, eventually, 
society in some form or another.

In a time where privilege is defined by 

access to opportunity, being educated turns 
over a blank page for new ideas and ways of 
thinking. If more people had access to educa-
tion, it could aid in turning the echo cham-
ber of social media unoriginality, bias and 
uninformed public opinion into something 
more symphonic. And more importantly, it 
undercuts the ability of politicians and billion-
aires to sell their own versions of history and 
manipulate the masses into acting or believing 
certain ways.

Above all else, receiving an education may 

not get you a job, but it can provide some 
direction amid all the chaos and half the pro-
duction of lemmings (the video game people, 
not the animals). Because as the late, great 
Yogi Berra said, “If you don’t know where you 
are going, you’ll wind up someplace else.”

— Tyler Scott can be reached 

at tylscott@umich.edu.

The value of an education

TYLER
SCOTT

Claire Bryan, Regan Detwiler, Ben Keller, Payton Luokkala, 

Aarica Marsh, Adam Morton, Victoria Noble, Anna Polumbo-Levy, 

Melissa Scholke, Michael Schramm, Stephanie Trierweiler, 

Mary Kate Winn, Derek Wolfe

EDITORIAL BOARD MEMBERS

JOHN CARSON, DARIO GAGGIO, ANTHONY MORA | VIEWPOINT

E-mail in Chan at tokg@umiCh.Edu
IN CHAN LEE

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