Life is enduring patterns. Self-perpetuating meaning, encoding1 a way to rebirth itself. A pattern striving to build itself again and again. A web of self preservation, reproduction and altruism.2 Cells working together to build organs, working together to build organisms, working tother to build biomes, working together to build our earth. Your existence is the result of a pattern of competition and cooperation, millions of years of replication and sun, sex and coincidence.3 If information is the medium of the pattern, then life is so miraculous4 because it has discovered this trick: information that replicates itself! Chemical, biological, electrical information repeating itself for the sake of staying real. Meaning, copying itself, fighting to endure. All life, including our mind and it’s technology,5 replicates and evolves.6 Memetics working to the same ends as genetics. 7 in the act of understanding itself.7 Life and technology perpetuating the pattern, even if growing it in new ways. All that we do is natural, bound by nature’s laws. Everything we are is part of the web of life.8 Whether we harm9 or support it, we are it. Those that aid life, helping patterns further their existence, could be called good.10 Life’s growth, expression and diversity11 a boon to ourselves and others. Life’s joy is perpetuating its pattern.
1 Deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) is a molecule that encodes the genetic instructions used in the development and functioning of all known living organisms.
2 The Price equation is a covariance equation which is a mathematical description of evolution.
3 “Coincidence is what you have left over after you apply a bad theory” - P. W. Bridgeman
4 Miracle here meaning an extremely low probability or unpredictable event which brings very welcome consequences.
5 “[Technology] is the pursuit of life by means other than life” - La technique et le temps, Bernard Steiger
6 Ideas mutate and reproduce and are subject to selection pressures.
7 “What is the purpose of life?...To be the eyes and ears and conscience of the Creator of the Universe, you fool!” - Breakfast of Champions, Kurt Vonnegut
8 Humanity and its tools are not separate from nature, and cannot violate its laws. We, too, are life. If we bring an end to life on earth, it will be suicide.
9 Avoiding harm is impossible, but attempting to do so is the foundation of ethics.
10 “I profess my Faith. For me, the existence of all this complexity and awareness and intent and beauty, and my ability to apprehend it, serves as the ultimate meaning and the ultimate value. The continuation of life requires no purpose other than that the continuation continue.” - The Sacred Depths of Nature, Ursula Goodenough
11 We share this planet with over 9 million species.
1,
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4.21,
5.2,
5.3,
5.11,
6.1,
6.11,
6.27,
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7.x.y.1
