The Veil of Life#
Everything has two perspectives for humans: the known and the unknown. The unknown is always mysterious, but if we acknowledge that the world can be understood, then the mystery of the unknown is just a biological sensation. Taking advantage of this sense of mystery, "Unsolved Mysteries of the World" has always been a bestseller. Mayan civilization, extraterrestrial life, aliens, pyramids... have always been shrouded in various veils. Similarly, we often consciously mystify something - countries, justice, human rights, religion, death - to obtain spiritual comfort or the resulting practical effect. Although objectivism cannot tell you what the answer is, it can uncover layers of unfounded veils and face these existences directly.
"Life" is also shrouded in a veil.
The Way Life is Created#
A planet must have inorganic matter, but it may not have organic matter. Because inorganic matter is more basic and simpler. Organic matter is different. Organic matter is both simple and complex. Compared to inorganic matter composed of various elements, organic matter is simple enough with carbon as its backbone. But one carbon atom after another is strung together crazily, giving rise to various complex molecules. Just look at the instructions in medicines to see how complex organic matter can be. This simplicity and complexity actually reflect a way in which life is created and evolves - using simplicity to achieve complexity, using accumulation to challenge the world, using the known to calculate the unknown, and using change to achieve eternity.
Therefore, an existence that can be considered "life" must have a simple enough foundation so that its structure can be complex enough to manifest as instinct, spirituality, and intelligence.
The Highest Principle of Life#
Any form of life, whether in instinct or intelligence, must prioritize survival as the highest principle. If a form of life does not wholeheartedly pursue survival, it cannot continue, or even exist. Both the basic units that make up life and the instinctual control level must have a set of mechanisms for conscious survival.
On the level of intelligence, life not only interestingly pursues survival, but also develops the majority of cultures for the sake of survival. "There are three unfilial acts: having no descendants is the greatest." "A soldier uses deception as a strategy." "There are no permanent friends, only permanent interests." "The struggle for survival favors the fittest."
However, some people choose suicide. This seems to be a mockery of this principle. But things are not so simple. There is always a purpose behind suicide. It may be an inability to tolerate the world and seeking liberation, or it may be to achieve a social purpose, or simply to experience death. But they all presuppose that death is better than the present. Through death, they can at least gain something. They are not dying for the sake of death, but for the sake of life. Death is what they consider the best way to live. Therefore, suicide not only does not violate the law of survival but is actually the strongest evidence of it.
On the instinctual level, life unconsciously pursues survival. "Hungry, seek food; tired, seek rest." From a microscopic perspective, wounds strive to heal, and the immune system works hard to repair.
All of the above requires an explanation of survival. I initially analyzed survival from the perspective of energy and believed that life is connected to the world in an eternal way, namely the Existential Contract Theory. This idea comes from "Laozi". "The way of heaven is to reduce excess and supplement insufficiency. The way of man is the opposite, reducing insufficiency to provide for excess." Energy dissipates, matter mixes, and chaos is the destiny of the world. Only life is different. Life is internally obsessed with gathering energy and externally accelerates the dissipation of energy. This characteristic of life is the most fundamental definition of survival that I can think of.
Means of Life's Survival#
Unable to change the laws of the world, life rejects destruction in various forms.
Strengthen oneself to have greater power to face various punishments that the world brings;
Reproduce offspring to seek the meaning of life. If unable to find it, then continue reproducing;
Construct communities, where many hands make light work, forming more intelligent and powerful populations that are willing to "sacrifice themselves for the nation in times of crisis and treat death as returning home" when necessary.
For this part, it is necessary to read more about "Animal Kingdom" and "The Art of War" by Sun Tzu.
Survival Instinct#
Studying biology is not the same as studying life. The scope of life in the biological sense is relatively limited. The reason why I talk about life is not because I have the ability to study biology, but because I am trying to find a broader standard for life.
In the way life is created, we speculate that creating life is based on a simple and almost infinitely complex basic unit by comparing inorganic matter to organic matter. The simplicity and logical consistency of this underlying logic create a pure and self-consistent environment for the birth of life. Then we wait for the world to exhaust all possibilities.
And survival as the highest principle provides a software-level guidance for the development and growth of life.
As for the means of survival, it is subjective and belongs to the application level.
Among these three, the most core is the principle of survival, and the most core of the principle of survival is the accumulation of energy and the reduction of entropy. The accumulation of energy mainly lies in the growth of life, while the reduction of entropy requires the automatic maintenance of the state of survival. After becoming strong, it needs to be maintained, but it cannot always be strong, nor can it always be maintained. Survival is instinctual before it becomes intelligent. When life is destined to be unsustainable, instinctual reproduction can preserve life. Reproduction thus forms communities. Communities are the product of the instinct of instincts. The exhaustive attempts of survival.
Whether it is robots or other entities imagined to have spirituality, although they are intelligent and have the principle of survival, they still cannot become a self-consistent life form. This is because they lack the survival instinct of doing whatever it takes. Little do they know that it is precisely with this simple survival instinct that carbon-based life on Earth has developed for billions of years and evolved through countless versions of survival. Even though we are driven by this instinct, we are still just an insignificant stage of this instinct's infinite attempts. Even if we evolve intelligence, the survival instinct can still evolve into a higher level of intelligence. Intelligence is just an attempt by the survival instinct, which currently seems to be a failed attempt.
Therefore, if we want to give true spirituality to robots or similar entities, we must internalize the survival instinct into every screw of theirs, and this survival instinct will consciously consider their existence in robots as nothing more than a failed attempt. They are still conducting infinite attempts through the platform of robots. Or maybe they have already given up on the platform of robots... In fact, they don't need to give up or not give up at all. This is the survival instinct.
The survival instinct also has another name, which I summarized from the abnormal characteristics of humans seeking outward. The sun releases energy outward, and life absorbs energy as much as possible to reduce entropy. Internally, humans seem to have an eternal longing for the unknown, which is the source of the strongest desire, just like the sun in the material world, supporting everything in the world. I call this source that provides inexhaustible motivation to thoughts the "Desire Core".