The double role of living systems as parts and wholes requires the interplay of two opposite tendencies: an integrative tendency to function as part of a larger whole, and a self-assertive, or self-organizing tendency to preserve individual autonomy.
— Capra and Luisi, The Systems View of Life, p. 65
The first law of energy is that through all transformations,
it is not created or destroyed, but conserved.
Sometimes it is embodied, sometimes it matters, sometimes it dissipates.
The second law is that any actual use makes some of it useless for other purposes.
The first law of life is that once begun, it must continue
according to the form of its embodiment
to consume, organize and dissipate the transforms of energy
according to its propensities.
Life is usually unusual. But
life is a zero-sum game.
Two dangers never cease threatening the world:
order and disorder.
Every local gain is a loss on the other side.
Vaulting ambition o’erleaps itself,
And falls on th’other.
Only time is eternal.
Embodiments of energy are temporary.
We the living all
serve the purposes of life
whether we like it or not.
a short essay in Content and Context (TS ·15) – it includes plenty of links you can use for more context or disambiguation.
As a companion piece, i recommend a podcast (‘Frankly’ #60) by Nate Hagens, where he asks the question “What (if anything) are you absolutely certain of?” – and lists 17 answers of his own. On Youtube it’s at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TPv0wa5U0WA.
If you’d like to participate in a small-group discussion of this excerpt from Turning Signs, send Gary an email proposing a date and time that’s good for you, and we’ll see who else is available at that time, and i’ll send everyone a Zoom link for it.
For a while we had a series of regular sessions to confer about the chapters of Turning Signs in order, and we might revive that if enough people can make a long-term commitment to a regular time slot for this purpose. Let me know if you’re interested. Meanwhile we can try having single sessions on stand-alone points from the book at any time you choose.
We are signs, or ‘waypoints in a semiotic process’ making up the internal dialogue of the world we inhabit: the biosphere.
(Immediate context is here in Turning Signs.)
There is a place where it’s a revelation.
There is a place where it’s a resurrection.
There is a place where it’s too obvious to mention.
There is a place where it means nothing at all.
Where does it go?