The average person spends two weeks kissing during his or her lifetime. The romantic or erotic kiss is a sensual genetic memory search for compatibility, whether on the lips or elsewhere, and is revealed to the brain through smell and taste. Kissing originated from prehistoric mothers breast-feeding, then chewing and pushing food into their infants’ mouths with their tongues. Sigmund Freud (1856-1939) described the kiss as “an unconscious repetition of infantile delight in feeding.”
Photograph by David Chief
Smell is the primary ingredient of the kissing ritual for some cultures, such as the Inuit, who believe that exhaled breath reveals a person’s soul. Exchanging breath in this sense is a spiritual union. This concept has parallel in Christian dogma (Genesis 2:7), which reveals that God infused the spirit of life into his creatures by breathing into them.
[Excerpt taken from Now You Know - The Big Book of Answers by Doug Lennox]
It’s not Christian dogma, it’s simply Jewish and Christian scriptures. A dogma is a doctrine or belief derived from a body of scripture/evidence. Where this is simply textual.
Hmm, as I recall, Dogma is defined as a doctrine or body of doctrines concerning faith or morals formally stated and authoritatively proclaimed by a church. Gee, that means that the above referenced scripture had to be proclaimed by Church to be put down as scripture but if Dogma derives from scripture as you claim and Genesis 2:7 is scripture, then isn’t the statement qualifying the scripture as Christian Dogma?
It does not seem likely that the reason humans kiss has anything to do with Judeo-Christian ideology. The bible seems to take for granted that people kiss in any case.
This article takes a great deal for granted. There IS evidence that humans might share a scent-based mate choice system with other mammals (perhaps based on dissimilarity of major histocompatibility alleles - Thornhill, Gangestad et al 2003), but these experiments were done with smelling t-shirts, not kissing. If we could do it by smelling at a distance then we wouldn’t need to kiss.
Citing Freud uncritically is profoundly unhelpful. What is needed is a careful cross-cultural comparison of kissing or similar practices. My contention is that it will be as culturally subjective as shaking hands or high-fiving.
Tom you are right. There are a lot of things to take into consideration. For the most part, this article is an excerpt taken from the book that really just touches the surface of this particular question (and other various questions) that come to mind.
The article doesn’t take into account kisses between family members (in greeting, or comfort), unless the point was to explore simply romantic kissing. In that case, as anyone who has experienced a kiss from a very special man or woman; senses heighten, the smell of that person is imprinted upon you (in a good way), and you relive the kiss until you get a chance to do it again. It’s a bonding issue that our primitive brains hope leads to more………
People kiss romantically because is pleasurable…Geez…. put down the Bible and makeout with someone.
Not dumping on Sigmund Freud but he did manage to prise Western thought out of that tiny box of hypocrisy respecting expressions of affection between the human genotypes, even if many of his ideas were irrational and illogical. Religion has little to do with human impulses, although it is true that we tend to be ‘ceremonial’ about most things we do, not unlike ‘the birds and the bees’. We style our hair, tie our shoelaces, pattern ourselves in accordance with what we think are approved practises. However, nothing substitutes for love and Romantic Kissing for the joy it invokes in the right couple, male and female. (Yes, I am ordinary normal and happy to be so.) As for smells, and there is a better way of terming it, “scents” are a naturally ocurrent feature of human anatomy for good reasons, to attract or repulse. Much has been said about these, some if it true. Romantic Kissing, is the step to ultimate discovery of intimacies which belong in a class of union that supercedes the hesitant barriers which separate us and does imprint its own bonding that tends to loyalty and everlasting respect one of the other, if we are sane. The Bible is a record book, NOT a testbook. Religions are idealisms, NOT Primers for human existence, which predates all Practises or concepts on record. Too much rubbish appears in print.
(Fumble fingers) Sorry, the word “testbook” should have read “textbook”
I like to go “primate” on my wife.
Chs. Darwin IV
People… this is a fluff article. It’s not actually meant to teach you anything. Its entire purpose of existence is to distract slow people from realizing that their lives are trite and meaningless by giving an anecdote that is trite and meaningless. All of us, myself included, have wasted too much time trying to analyze it.
I would imagine the same is true for the book that this article credits.
Years ago an explanation was given that it was a carryover from animals who were in need of salt. Perhaps the pleasurable part began there too, for even dogs still do it. At any rate at some point humans forgot all about salt.
There are rock-firm sciences which give us reason to believe discoveries of past propensities in people from archaic time. There also are recoveries of soundbytes from history which can be reproduced electronically by transcending the time-gap the separates us from the actual occurrence. This space is not large enough for us to discuss the the phenomenal experience of Kissing in all its aspects, but I will say that I have serious doubts of such cavalier, strident declarations of sucking for salt as the reason that first inspired the act of kissing. It is an uninspiring nostrum that the desire for emotional attachment or identification with one’s love object is the shortage of salt or any such element. Kissing exchanges many confraternal desires and substances that are emotionsl, physical and spiritual, or am I to believe that we are still too primitive to understand the meaning of the ultimate experience between mates in life?
Sweet picture of the young couple. I think kissing indicates mutual acceptance.
Well I believe that humans kiss because we do. It’s just like the question “Why are we alive?” There is no right or wrong answer, the answer is actually just an opinion. I may believe that we are Alive because God created us, yet you may believe that we are alive because we have evolved from another species. I could believe that we needed salt, or that it is a bonding moment or something else, but it makes no difference. We all have differing viewpoints, therefore, no one can answer the question “Why do people kiss?” or the question “Why are we alive?” It is all a viewpoint that we must respect and fully understand. Furthermore, there is infinite answers, yet none are right or wrong.
This is really going to make me think twice before kissing someone again. I kinda wish I hadn’t read it.
Huh!? I guess I have just gotten so *used to* being able to read a quality article on-line, that I was highly disappointed in seeing this interesting topic not even *scratched* with the <500 words in this essay.
There is far more info in the comments than the article. Shame! Even as an advertisement, it is dismally lacking in substance.
E.g., kissing cannot have anything to do with any one religion’s or culture’s beliefs. Kissing is universal among humans. Heck! Many animals do their equivalent: dogs lick & sniff, primates sniff & nit-pick, etc. These are always actions either indicating affection or passion. So, what corollary is there between kissing & further sensual or sexual actions? This article misses the point, despite the suggestive title.
Nick: You are horribly mistaken that varied opinions cannot be right or wrong. The fact is that if the Bible is true (or, for that matter any other book) its claims are exclusive. That is, the Bible claims to be the only truth and way of life. If the Bible is true, all other ways must be false.
Even your reasoning cannot depart from exclusivity. By claiming that there are no right or wrong answers, you use the word “none” which is exclusive. Thus, your claim that there are no rights or wrongs is in itself an answer that claims exclusivity. We as humans cannot get away from reason which God has put into us.
Having said all of that, without speculating why we kiss, there is something romantic about using all of our senses in that act. I look forward to kissing my wife in 50 days when we get married.
Nick,
While I agree with your notion that everyone has their own viewpoint on events in life, I believe that the original posting (being an extract of a larger volume) was actually attempting to ascertain the origin of the kiss using standard scientific procedures.
All that we know of our own past, not to include what has been written in religious documents as they are, for the most part, held above scientific scrutiny, has been discovered through the use of scientific research. Such research is held to the highest standards due to the constant review process provided by fellow scientists.
That being said, I think you’re shortchanging all of the research that goes into studying human behavior by writing if off as everyone has their own viewpoint, and each one is just as valid as the next.
Sorry, got to get petty here but, Nick; If there are an infinite number of answers then it’s not possible to say that none of them are right. The majority would indeed be wrong but there’s always a chance that one of them is right. Where we tend to go wrong is in accepting any of those answers as right without sufficient proof. I do like a bit of kissy face though and I’m going to go out on a limb and say there’s nothing wrong with that.
On a related note; my dog likes the cat next door and that’s not to be sniffed at.