What is Life?
Extropy: the Energetic Will to Order and Joy
Life is Extropy
The Second Law of Thermodynamics (the Law of Entropy) says in any isolated system, the total entropy (disorder) will either increase or at best stay constant, but never decrease. For example, a battery will gradually lose its charge.
The Second Law is true, but in open systems extropy (order) will increase given a) sufficient energy input, and b) the correct combination of elements within the system.
i.e. Energy will move rapidly toward Order by arranging itself into higher and more complex Forms, and balancing its positive and negative polarity.
e.g. Two hydrogen atoms and one oxygen atom have the correct combination of electrons, and with heat will form an H20 compound. Energy was in disequilibrium (suffering in thirst!), and so it worked to find water, and achieved happiness ever after.
Define it The Law of Extropy: Energy, however it is organized, will tend toward Forms that can maintain an Equilibrium of the positive and negative elements in its System (Environment), given sufficient Energy input.
This law is not well-understood holistically. Chemists understand one aspect of it. Biologists understand another aspect: Homeostasis is “the tendency toward a relatively stable equilibrium between interdependent elements, especially as maintained by physiological processes.” But the law is all-powerful at any level of energetic ordering as far as we can tell: atomic, biological, psychic, societal.
Some considerable amount of time after the Big Bang, a primordial soup of elements formed on Earth. Then, lightning struck this soup, or volcanic heat cooked it low and slow, or a spiritual force beyond our ability to comprehend blew its breath of life into it. In any event, Energy entered an open system, and DNA formed. The building block of Biological Life Forms.
DNA is bound by the same laws as other elemental Energy Forms, so it began its struggle toward equilibrium, because Energy, no matter how it is organized, is compelled by the same Law. Just as Atoms organized into Elemental Forms, and as Elements organized into DNA Forms, so too DNA organized into Cellular Forms. Cells then organized into higher Organisms. Biological Life Forms evolved, ever seeking the same end: Equilibrium in their Systems, Extropy, Order.
In order to impose Order in an Environment (to achieve Equilibrium in Systems) Biological Life Forms must take Energy in, and then expend it via Work.
Power is a measure of a Form’s capacity to leverage Work into Equilibrium. If a Life Form is more Powerful, it either has access to more Energy, or it is more Energy-efficient when Working to impose Order on its environment.
Biological Life Forms organize (eg into packs, or herds, or tribes, or cities, or countries) to increase Power generation. They find ways to consume more energy when systemic constraints allow it, or to be more efficient with their energy expenditure. DNA is both an energy magnet, and an energy processor, all for the purposes of generating Extropy (Equilibrium in Systems).
Said otherwise: Life is the Will to Power.
The Biological Life Forms that generated enough Power to achieve Equilibrium went on, and those which could not dissolved back into soup and soil. This is Natural Selection. The Forms that survived went in different directions, evolving as necessary for ages untold, until finally they began to process invoices for forty hours a week to get resources to pay for rent, food, heating, and cooling, to get to that Equilibrium that the Law demands of it.
Life is the most-developed expression of the natural process of Extropy on the ball of energy named Earth.
Extropy is a Will which seeks Equilibrium
Life Energy has a goal-seeking quality, as if there is algorithm inherent to it. The algorithm seeks to arrange Energy into Forms that can achieve stability, balance, Order within its system, per the Law of Extropy.
At the atomic scale of Energy, this algorithm seeks Forms called elements.
At the biological scale of Energy, the algorithm seeks a Form with the Power to achieve balance with its physical environment.
Darwin’s theory of Evolution is technically true, but incomplete. Reproduction is not the animating principle of the process of evolution, nor is it the motivator of Life. There is something deeper here, of which reproduction is a side-effect.
To seek self-preservation merely, is the expression of a state of distress, or of limitation of the true, fundamental instinct of life, which aims at the extension of power, and with this in view often enough calls in question self-preservation and sacrifices it. It should be taken as symptomatic when individual philosophers, as for example, the consumptive Spinoza, have seen and have been obliged to see the principal feature of life precisely in the so-called self-preservative instinct: - they have just been men in states of distress. That our modern natural sciences have entangled themselves so much with Spinoza’s dogma (finally and most grossly in Darwinism, with its inconceivably one-sided doctrine of the “struggle for existence”), is probably owing to the origin of most of the inquirers into nature: they belong in this respect to the people, their forefathers have been poor and humble persons, who knew too well by immediate experience the difficulty of making a living. Over the whole of English Darwinism there hovers something of the suffocating air of over-crowded England, something of the odour of humble people in need and in straits. But as an investigator of nature, a person ought to emerge from his paltry human nook: and in nature the state of distress does not prevail, but superfluity, even prodigality to the extent of folly. The struggle for existence is only an exception, a temporary restriction of the will to live; the struggle, be it great or small, turns everywhere on predominance, on increase and expansion, on power, in conformity to the will to power, which is just the will to live.
Joyous Science 349 “The Origin of Scholars”
Physiologists should think carefully about setting up the drive to preserve the self as the cardinal drive in an organic being. Above everything else, something living wants to release its power — living itself is will to power. Self-preservation is only one of the indirect and most frequent consequences of that. In short, here as everywhere, beware of extraneous teleological principles! The drive for self-preservation is one such principle (we have Spinoza's inconsistency to thank for it). For the essential principle of economy must hold — that's what method demands.
Beyond Good and Evil 13
Lower forms of Life, such as yeast, will multiply indiscriminately until they reach a limit on the resources available in the environment, and this is a reliable method for such Forms of Life to achieve balance with their environments. But higher forms of Life, such as mammals, take a different path. They cannot breed indiscriminately, as this leads to surfeit and then chaos. And so, for higher and more complex forms of Life, the goal of the algorithm is to develop a Form that can be master of its environment. A buck who loses his sparring competition will not breed, but the alpha buck does. Young bucks will spar even before their horns have formed. They have an instinct in their blood which seeks to develop these inborn traits, and to what end? Mastery of Space. The Greeks called this “Liberty”.
Both lower and higher Forms of Life seek Balance within their Energetic System. In Higher Forms, this means that Life seeks a Master of Space.
Life seeks a perfect specimen, an Extropy specialist, where Extropy is the reduction of chaos and increase in order in the environment. Nature seeks a Master. God seeks a King. Life seeks Power.
The Will is Intelligent
Darwin’s theory also says that randomness causes change to the organism’s Form, and then the environment selects that new Form if it better suited toward the goal of equilibrium.
The development of Life is not so cold, mechanistic, and random as this. Nor is the environment the prime mover driving the development.
No, Energy itself is driving at something. It has a Will of its own.
I’ve said that Energy is compelled by a Law. Let me instead now say that Energy is animated by a Force, or a Will, or a Spirit. This is saying the same thing, but the Force-Will-Spirit is a more accurate way to think about it. This Will, this animating principle, is something innate to Energy. They share the same nature. To say that a Law compels Energy seems to imply there is something outside the energy that is acting on it, when really, the Force is a property inherent to the Energy — or perhaps Energy (and therefore matter) is just a property of the Force, the Spirit, the Will? Who can say?
This Force / Will / Spirit of Extropy is Intelligent. Reflect on a bee hive. Here is a creature with a very basic nervous system, no brain or capacity for logic or mathematics, yet it builds something beautiful and complex and structurally robust. The bee of course lacks any conscious intellect that would allow it to comprehend the geometric nature of its own work, yet the geometry of a bee-hive cannot come from an unintelligence. The organism’s instinct animates it; this instinct comes from its basic energetic urge to Extropy; and anyone can recognize that this urge contains Intelligence by observing its Work.
Extropy is Immaterial. Consider the apple seed. That seeds reliably transform into trees and fruit is evidence of an Immaterial Intelligence at Work: no microscope can see the thing, the variable, the x compelling germination, and no utensil can touch it — but it is undeniably inside the seed, inside the DNA, indeed within the Energy which comprises the DNA. There is a language, a logic, an intelligent force which animates the Life Form. Understand what is happening here and you will understand all of nature. The Immaterial Intelligence is a fundamental trait of all Life, indeed all Energy.
Extropy is Creative, i.e. Generative. It creates via union of opposites. Positive atomic charges are married to negative, and higher, more stable elements are formed in the union. Male organisms mate with female, and create new life from the union.
We are hardly the first Knowledge-Seekers to realize that there is an Immaterial, Intelligent Will which Creates and Sustains all things by the Ordering of Opposites. The force which joins male to female, positive to negative, light to dark, into generative and procreative ends, has long been recognized as God, symbolized by the Yin Yang, the Star of David, and the Cross.
This force, this spirit, this Will to Power, this Spirit of Mastery, is the God of Life. Extropy is the Animator.
Man is the Ultimate Extropist
Man is the Extropy Specialist on Earth. He is the strongest Will of all, because He is most Intelligent, Creative, Ordering, Masterful. Or rather He is the most Intelligent, Creative, Ordering, and Masterful because his Will is strongest.
You are your Will. There are Good (Strong) Wills, and there are Bad (Weak) Wills.
Your Will has grown a Mind, a Psyche, a fruit on the tree of Life which now at last contains the seeds of Life within itself.
The Greek word for Soul is Psyche (ψυχή). As ‘Soul’ was ever used in the New Testament, it was in reference to the Mind. This a helpful way to think about Souls when we say that Men have them, and animals don’t.
“Man is made in the image of God.” This means either that God is a bipedal hominid, or that there is some other aspect about us which makes us like Him. The Great Mind of the Universe, that Intelligent Creative Will, has created an Intelligent Creative Will, a Mind as a reflection of itself.
The creator has created creators. Man has a portion of the power that God does. This is our link to Him, the psyche, the soul, the mind. In the Beginning was the Word, and Man is the one creature who can comprehend and speak the language, by virtue of his Mental organ.
This spark of the divine was always contained within the matter, just as the apple was always contained within the seed. Man’s Soul is the Fruit of the Tree of Life; the apotheosis of creation; the Eye atop a pyramid of inert bricks; a light from the True Light, shining from dim muddy matter.
Man’s Mind has enabled him to master all other biological life. Man is Nature’s Intelligence Compounder, where Intelligence is the capability to solve problems, and Nature’s Cocreator. Bears are bigger, but Man is smarter, and capable of creating tools, and so He is Master over the bear. The alligator has mastered its space, and lived as such since the time of dinosaurs, yet if Man wanted to speciocide the alligator, he could.
Man is the Master of Space, the Extropy Specialist, thanks to his Mind.
Increase in Extropy = Creation of Joy
Atomic Energy formed into Elemental Energy which formed into Biological Energy which formed into Psychic Energy, all per the Law of Extropy: given enough Energy input, Energy Forms arranged into higher and more complex Forms to pursue equilibrium in their systems.
Life is the most well-developed expression of the process of Extropy.
Man is the end of the process, a reflection of God (the Extropic force Himself).
Truer Joy is never more felt than when Power is increasing, when Extropy is being imposed. Your team wins a game, you get the girl, you get a raise — you acquire power!
“Happiness is the feeling that power increases — that resistance is being overcome.”
The Anti-Christ 2
True Joy is experiential knowledge of God. Joy is the sweetness of the Fruit of the Tree of Life.
The Joy Scientist is the Master of Psychic Space.
What? The purpose of Life is to create Joy by acquiring Power and imposing Extropy? Could it be so simple as making your bed every morning?