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 not necessarily organic matter. 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. However, 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, something 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#
The existence of 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 at all. Whether it is the basic unit that constitutes life or the instinct that controls it, there must be a set of mechanisms for conscious survival.
At the level of intelligence, life not only interestingly pursues survival, but also develops the majority of cultures in order to survive. "There are three unfilial acts: having no descendants is the greatest." "A soldier uses deception." "There are no permanent friends, only permanent interests." "The survival of the fittest."
However, some people choose to commit suicide. This seems like a mockery of this principle. But things are not so simple. There is always a purpose behind every 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.
At the instinctual level, life unconsciously pursues survival. "Seek food when hungry, seek rest when tired." 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 an energy perspective and believed that life is connected to the world in an eternal way, which is the Existential Contract Theory. This idea comes from the "Tao Te Ching". "The way of heaven is to reduce excess and supplement insufficiency. The way of man is the opposite, reducing what is insufficient to supply what is in excess." Energy dissipates, matter mixes, and chaos is the destination of the world. Only life is different. Life obsessively accumulates energy internally and accelerates energy dissipation externally. 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 a community where many hands make light work, forming a more intelligent and powerful population that is willing to "sacrifice oneself for the nation in times of crisis and treat death as returning home" when necessary.
This part requires more reading, such as "Animal World" and "The Art of War".
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 here is not because I have the ability to study biology, but because I am trying to find a more general 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.
As the highest principle of life, survival 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. Accumulating energy mainly involves the growth of life, while reducing entropy requires maintaining the state of survival automatically. After becoming powerful, it needs to be maintained, but it cannot always be powerful, nor can it always be maintained. Survival starts with instinct and then evolves into intelligence. When life is destined to be unsustainable, the instinct of reproduction can preserve life. Reproduction constitutes a community. The community is the product of the instinct of instincts. The exhaustive attempts of survival.
Whether it is robots or other beings 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 just a negligible stage in the infinite attempts of this instinct. 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 endow robots or similar beings with true spirituality, we must internalize the survival instinct into every screw of theirs, and this survival instinct will consciously consider their inhabiting robots as nothing more than a failed attempt. They are still using the platform of robots to exhaust all possibilities. 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 characteristic 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 of inexhaustible motivation for thought the "Desire Core".