Opinion JENNIFER CALFAS EDITOR IN CHIEF AARICA MARSH and DEREK WOLFE EDITORIAL PAGE EDITORS LEV FACHER MANAGING EDITOR 420 Maynard St. Ann Arbor, MI 48109 tothedaily@michigandaily.com Edited and managed by students at the University of Michigan since 1890. Unsigned editorials reflect the official position of the Daily’s editorial board. All other signed articles and illustrations represent solely the views of their authors. 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 CONTRIBUTE TO THE CONVERSATION Readers are encouraged to submit letters to the editor and viewpoints. Letters should be fewer than 300 words while viewpoints should be 550-850 words. Send the writer’s full name and University affiliation to tothedaily@michigandaily.com.