A purpose of life: The power of living things

This article by Dan Polansky investigates the following candidate purpose of life: "Maximize the power of living things over matter", or "the power of life" for short. It seems both inspiring and sinister.

The idea is not new. We can find nearly the same idea in the self-published 2003 book by David Hockey Developing A Universal Religion: "To my mind, the only viable option [for surrogate purpose] is to support life’s continual evolution and focus upon helping it to achieve an omnipotent ability." Arguably, life cannot be made omnipotent, but aiming at making all the living things as powerful as possible is a possible and realistic (in principle) ultimate or penultimate objective. Other similar ideas are presented in section Previous thought.

Evolution from amoeba to the man on the Moon

The idea of the power of life can be motivated using an implied trajectory in the evolution from single-cell amoeba to man on the Moon. When humans landed on the Moon, it was an example not only of the power of humankind but also the power of all the living things. Humans can be seen as part of a larger aggregate entity, life. When humans can do something, so can the aggregate of all the living things. One can describe the Moon-landing as a story of life's achievement: life had to invent humans to get to the Moon. This purpose-colored story is an as-if story: there is no true purpose in biological evolution unlike in man-made things and one can find objections to there being a direction in evolutionary processes in literature. Nonetheless, even if it is an as-if story, there is something compelling about it. One can argue that the power of life is one of the implied purposes or directions of evolution of life. It is not a true purpose and only an implied one, but that is the only kind of purpose we can hope to find in nature. From the point of view of all the living things, humans and their technology are a mixed blessing: on one hand, they contribute to mass destruction of life's creations, on the other hand, they achieve unique outcomes for life such as proliferation of new forms, shapes and functional objects, flight to the Moon and may theoretically one day achieve life's spread to another planet.

Life program

In the following, I will use the term "life program" to refer to candidate purposes of human life and similar objects that in effect tell a person what to do in life. The term is in analogy to computer programs but also to management programs. Personal mission statements can serve as life programs, and so can life philosophies. A life program can be in an imperative form, "do X", in a statement-of-purpose form, "The purpose of life is to do X", in an ultimate-objective form "The ultimate objective of human life is to do X", and in other forms.

Charms of the power of life

A charm of the power-of-life life program is that it assigns a larger purpose to one's life while not being speciesist, or humankind-chauvinistic. It does not arbitrarily pick humankind as the entity or species of focus; it allows any species to be the agent of the power of all the living things. Another charm may be that it provides an implied purpose of all life, not just human life.

Criticism of the power of life

There are multiple regards in which the power-of-life life program is sinister and problematic.

The points of criticism are partially summarized/outlined as follows:

• No or very little kindness
• Collectivism disregarding individuals and their well-being
• Under some interpretations, disregarding the Homo sapiens species
• No regard for preservation of what has already been created, e.g. species
• Unclear why power is more valuable than, say, diversity or richness of form
• Specifically human purposes possibly more important than all-life purposes
• No regard for joy, fun, leisure, music, dance, theater, arts and sports, in general, human well-being or flourishing
• Nominally useless things possibly most meaningful
• Power in all its varieties too dangerous and destructive
• Life incorrectly cast as a single agent
• Life program preferably accessible to a prehistoric human mind
• Possible unfeasibility of further biological or technological expansion beyond the Earth
• Human contribution to the power of living things not all that significant
• Mere appeal to evolved sensibilities or receptivities
• All life to be eventually destroyed, rendering all efforts futile

The above points are articulated in the following paragraphs.

One problem with the power of life is that it knows no or very little kindness. There is no obvious way of deriving sane ethics from it. A supporter could support killing of the disabled, medical experiments on prisoners, slavery and extermination of competing tribes. One can admit that in this regard it fares no worse than the power of humankind. And pursue-one's-happiness life program does not guarantee ethics either: a person can be so born as to find pleasure and happiness in what others find objectionable and telling that person they should take their own happiness as the sole and ultimate measure of good is a recipe for producing objectionable behavior. Fullfill-your-potential life program fares no better: potential for what? Potential for becoming a mass murderer or a cruel emperor?

Another related problem with the power of life is that it is a collectivist life program, and these easily lend themselves as justifications for horrible mass crimes. History shows that people are capable of volumes of horrible crimes once they feel they are acting in the name of a larger collective purpose. That is the mixed blessing: once you pick a larger purpose that goes beyond one's individual existence, you get the considerable risk of abuse as part of the deal.

Another objection to the power of life is that, under certain interpretations of "life", it does not care about continued existence of humankind. If some part of life is better than humans in maximizing the power of life, what does the power of life care about humans? Under some analysis, some may even consider robots to be part of life, and be indifferent about whether robots take over the Earth and eliminate humanity. After all, definitions of life usually do not require that life be based on DNA. If one objects to that use of the word "life", modifications of the power-of-life life program are available: the power of life-like entities or power of cybernetic organisms, where cybernetic organisms include living things. These life programs can claim to avoid life-chauvinism: the broader the entity of focus, the better it avoids claims of chauvinism.

Another objection is that the power of life has no sense of preservation. It has no appreciation of biological diversity other than as a means to serve the power of life. The power of humankind fares no better. There is also no sense of preservation of non-biological nature: all it cares about is life, as if non-life's existence did not matter at all. For example, it does not seem to care about whether Jupiter's Great Red Spot or Earth's Grand Canyon could be destroyed.

Another objection is that, as long as we want to look at an implied purpose at all-the-living-things level, it is unclear why the power was chosen rather than something else. Rather than claiming that the power of life is the sole implied purpose of evolution, one can claim that the diversity of life is the implied purpose. Even though diversity does not increase monotonically over time, biological evolution is remarkable in its ability to produce diversity of form and function over time. Similarly, one may claim life created humans as a tool for multiplication of forms and patterns found in the universe, including musical patterns and literary patterns, to achieve even greater diversity of form than that produced by previous biological evolution. One may claim that the purpose is to reach and inhabit as many places and habitats as possible. One may pick the longevity of life as the ultimate purpose. One may creatively claim that life brought about humans specifically to produce music, bird song being an early attempt. One may claim the knowledge and representation capability of humans to be the purpose for which they were brought about. One may claim that problem solving is the ultimate objective of all life, implied in Karl Popper's book title All Life is Problem Solving.

Another objection may be that instead of looking at what is common to all the living things, we should look at what is unique to humans, that being more connected to the purpose of human life. Both humans and sentience fare better in this regard than all the living things as the entity of focus. A counter-objection may be that an implied purpose should better be extrapolative to some extent of what life was doing before humans and that a notion that only encompasses things unique to humans cannot be an implied purpose of the totality of all the living things. One may insist that all the living things are a better entity of focus than humankind only, in part since the processes that brought humans about were operational long before humans arrived.

Another objection is that the power of life knows no joy, fun, leisure, music, dance, theater, arts and sports, at least not directly and obviously. It does not seem to care about human well-being or flourishing; humans are mere instruments for it, slaves or robots as it were. It seems very arid and Spartan. It does not seem to value human freedom directly, although one may argue that human freedom tends to be instrumental to the power of humankind and thus of life.

A related objection may be that the true purpose is to be found in activities that are nominally useless, not subservient to the struggle for existence. Thus, art for art's sake, science for science's sake, sports and various hobbies are closer to the implied purpose than pursuits that are subservient to being here. One may argue that true ultimate purposes are not subservient to other purposes. A counter-argument may be that the only purposes that natural forces are guaranteed to bring into the world are those that are in some way subservient or conducive to the continued existence of the participants in those purposes since the requirement of the continued existence is the essence of the selective pressures by these forces. One may respond that these implied natural purposes are much less of true purposes than the artificial purposes that are not subservient. On a rhetorical note, pursuit of useless objectives to the exclusion of utilitarian aims may be scoffed at as decadent. Yet another angle is that the purpose of the nominally useless pursuits is to keep the population engaged in pursuits they find meaningful, preventing various undesirable things they could do otherwise out of despair or boredom. This does not explain how the tendency to engage in such pursuits came about but may help explain why various individuals and organizations including states support these pursuits. A related angle is that it is better for nations to try to compete and outperform each other in the arts, science and sports than to try to compete in destroying each other. Under these and similar angles, even things that appear nominally useless may turn out to be useful for something.

Another objection is that some forms of power are better not attained, for their destructive capabilities. A prohibition of nuclear tests is an attempt to limit the spread of certain capabilities and thus to limit power. A prohibition of certain dangerous virus experiments is also a limitation of power. One may want to accept such limitations of power and capability.

Another objection is that the phrase "power of life" implies that life is a single agent, which is rather dubious. Individual humans are agents, the collective humankind less so, all the living things even less. It appears to be a desperate attempt of runaway human cognitive faculties to misapply the notion of purpose, and in the process of doing so try to identify the agent that created humankind, which would enable the identification of the purpose of humankind with the purpose the agent had in mind when creating humankind. The misapplication results in a story in which the agent called life or evolution created humans to get to the Moon. The cognitive faculties desperately try to use the only tools at their disposal to solve the problem at hand, refusing to accept the fundamental indeterminacy of human purpose. As a response, there is no denying of the apparent open-endedness of human purpose. But even if we grant that evolution of humans has no true purpose and even if we grant that there is no single direction of evolution, there certainly are evolutionary paths that lead to complete functional objects such as human eyes or insect wings. The claim that evolution has no direction seems much less plausible than that it has multiple directions. The evolution produced humans, and evolution of humans favors maximization of power of humans in so far as it provides better defenses against other humans; thus, increases in power and capabilities in humans tend to form at least a partial evolutionary direction. One may counter that the power so evolved is so destructive as to be liable to erase any temporary progress achieved along the direction, but that does not seem necessary. The notion that the evolutionary processes are random is misleading; they do involve chance in the multiple available variation mechanisms, but they also involve what is termed natural selection, which has the power to form such organs as eyes, even if different kinds of eyes are discovered or invented along different evolutionary pathways and many paths do without eyes or wings altogether. Evolution does not resemble a generic random walk in the design space; it is a forking walk that includes randomness but also progress along various paths in the design space. Even if the resulting designs could more properly be called designoid (Dawkins), their striking design-like appearance is hard to deny. One may point out multiple directions or tendencies of evolution such as the propensity to create functional objects grouped to form larger functional subsystems and systems, and the propensity to form increasingly more deeply branching trees of taxa of life. The evolution seems to have an unfailing tendency to discover or invent ever-more-complex functional designs or designoids such as nervous systems. It seems to have a tendency to maximize various characteristics and capabilities along various axes such as the height of trees up to a point and the speed of antelopes up to a point. One may refuse to consider the designoid and purposoid tendencies of evolution in search for a life program, but to claim there are no such tendencies does not seem valid. And it seems implausible that the notions of function and purpose are wholly misapplied in reference to biological objects such as organs. To describe the function of human heart as to maximize the genetic success of the organism is to fail to provide adequate functional description that differentiates heart from lungs; an adequate functional description is that the function of the heart is to pump blood along the body. While we may accept that we should better differentiate purposes of human artifacts from purposoids of biological objects, the cognitive tool at our disposal, the notion of purpose, seems not wholly unfit to describe biological objects. If we refer not only to living things but also to all life processes using the shorthand of "life", we may point out the increasing capability of life to force shape on matter and make it do various feats: life forces matter into the shapes of biological bodies and makes them perform various feats such as jumping or flight. One may still argue that the only purpose in all this is the copying of the genes, but one may counter that this is not a purpose but a purposoid and perhaps not even that: it is debatable whether the differential replication of genes is an implied purpose or whether it is much more of a mechanism for search in the design space. The gene-copying implied purpose does not describe the functionally creative tendency of evolution. A response to that may be that on the whole-body level, the adequate functional description is to maximize genetic success and that no other adequate functional description exists; it is on the level of particular organs and organ systems that more specific functions or purposes can be identified, subservient to the overall purpose of gene-copy-maximization. However, we can still note the tendency of the implied overall purpose to support the creation of part-purposes embodied in organs and organ systems, and to support the feats organisms can perform. One may thus come up with the implied meta-purpose of the overall purpose being to bring about the variety of part-purposes we can observe. One may object that purpose-production is merely what the implied overall body-level purpose does, and that it is not its purpose, not even an implied one. But one may similarly claim that making gene copies is merely what bodies do, and that this is not their purpose, not even an implied one. To repeat a point already made, we must stay in the realm of implied purposes or quasi-purposes rather than true ones, but that is what we have to accept if we are to extract anything resembling purpose at all. These disagreements could possibly be resolved by inquiring into what exactly do we mean when we say "implied" or "quasi" in relation to purpose. That seems like a challenging task.

Another objection may be that the preferable life program should better be accessible to a human mind before the advent of modern evolutionary theory and modern feats of human technology. Prehistorical humans did almost nothing to contribute to the power of life and would probably have a hard time coming up with the power of life as a philosophy of purpose. By contrast, they did contribute to their own genetic reproductive success, which is why we are here. As a response to that, it does not seem necessary that the preferable purpose be accessible to prehistoric humans; purposes would not be accessible to non-human ancestors of humans without sufficient reflective cognitive capability. As an aside, as for prehistoric humans, they would at least be able to note the power of cultural elements to exterminate a tribe or keep it alive and prosperous: it is easy to note that a successfully enforced prohibition on having children would lead to a cessation of a tribe, and almost no biological knowledge is required for the observation. Thus, the minimum requirement of viability of cultural elements and life programs seems easy to discover. What may be harder to discover is the combination of variation and elimination of cultural elements as a creative force. One may note that the descriptive portion of cultural elements does not need to be true to support the continuing existence of the host population. Paradoxically, switching from a false to true account could have a detrimental effect on the host tribe viability: the belief in afterlife rewards for behaviors that benefit the tribe more than the individual's close family could contribute to the tribe viability. This seems also fairly easy to discover by prehistoric humans.

Another objection is that the promise of human power helping life live on another planet may be impossible to realize. That is a fair point, but the prospect of some forms of earthly life living on Mars are not entirely hopeless. Life forms flourishing in extreme conditions can be the case in point. These life forms would need humans to get to Mars.

Another objection is that in fact the contribution of humans to the aggregate of all living things is not all that significant. As a counter-objection, one may hardly deny the contribution of humankind to the increase of diversity of form and function in some directions, at the cost of considerable loss of previously achieved diversity of life. Arts and technology have brought a variety of form and function far beyond what was previously produced by all the living things. Even if humans will be unable to inhabit other planets, setting a foot on the Moon was a significant expansion of what all the living things were previously able to do. Even if one admits that the feats of biological evolution are more fundamental and grandiose than the feats of humankind, that does not diminish humankind's contribution to the aggregate creative performance. Humans have created the ultimate form-creation machine: the computer. One may combine the desire to create with the desire to limit destruction.

Another objection is that the power of humankind in service of the power of life is achieved by creative feats, which is a mere appeal to an evolved desire in some to show off. A response is that, well yes, all appeals to something as being intuitively worthwhile (power, longevity, creation, non-destruction, diversity, love, ethics) must hope to attach themselves to some evolved receptivity to such appeals; that in itself is no devastating criticism of such appeals. An alternative is to try to reject all appeals and return to the original purpose of making gene copies, except that this may be objected to on similar grounds as a rhetorical appeal to originality and purity, again trying to attach to evolved receptivities to some appeals. A value-neutral analysis of life programs may be hard to execute. The invocation of "value-neutral" itself can be scoffed at as a mere appeal to an evolved receptivity. One may wonder whether there are any value words and value assumptions that would not be scoffed at by one or the other; even the good old search for truth has been ridiculed. One has to find some value-laden words and the corresponding notions appealing.

Another objection is that all life will eventually be destroyed and that therefore all ultimate aims are futile, whether of humans or all the living things. I find it unconvincing: an ultimate aim can be pursued in a time frame, and pursuits of aims in time frames are all the pursuits that we find in the world. An aim that is attainable in a time frame is by definition not futile.

Previous thought

The power-of-life idea is not inaugurated in this article.

In the book Developing A Universal Religion by David Hockey, 2003, available online in Wikibooks, we read the following: "Given that there is no detectable purpose pre-designed into life or the universe, then, if we must have one, we must adopt a surrogate. To my mind, the only viable option is to support life’s continual evolution and focus upon helping it to achieve an omnipotent ability. Such a purpose is universal and rational; it is a purpose that will last as long as life itself lasts. It accommodates the whole of life, and shows that we care about more than just our own well-being. It declares that we value life for its own sake and think little about the death that must follow, taking it simply as the price to be paid for living." David Hockey does not seem to be aware of the grave ethical objections documented in the present article.

Similar ideas are discussed in the article "Is this the meaning of life?" by John Stewart, 2010, guardian.com. The article discusses a trajectory of evolution, including evolution of ever larger cooperating groups. It says "Extrapolating the trajectory further would see the continued expansion of the scale of cooperative organisation out into the solar system and beyond." and further "If the trajectory continued in this way, the scale of cooperative organisation would expand throughout the universe, comprised of living processes and intelligence from multiple origins. As it increased in intelligence and scale, its command over matter, energy and other resources would also expand, as would its power to achieve whatever objectives it chose." That sounds very much like the power of life. As an aside, the alleged expansion beyond the solar system and throughout the universe is unattainable science fiction given our current state of knowledge; we may well be effectively confined to our planet, and we would do well to keep it habitable for humans. The Guardian article comment section has some interesting responses.

Somewhat related ideas are found in Kevin Kelly's Out of Control: "Life is the substrate for evolution. Life provides the raw material of organisms and species which allows evolution to evolve further. Without a parade of complexifying organisms, evolution cannot evolve more evolvability. So evolution generates complexity and diversity and millions of beings and thereby gives itself room to evolve into a more powerful evolver. [...] What does the universe gain by tolerating this relentless evolution accumulating ever more evolvability? [...] Possibilities, as far as I can see. [...] And, possibilities suit me fine as a destination." Possibilities are not exactly the same as power, but there is a connection. And the possibilities are those of evolution of life, and since Kelly writes about "vivisystems" in the book, possibly the possibilities involved are of something beyond living things.

Back in 1620, Francis Bacon talked about "the power and dominion of the human race itself over the universe", which we can abbreviate as "power of humankind". A fuller quotation from Wikiquote: Francis Bacon is this: "Further, it will not be amiss to distinguish the three kinds and, as it were, grades of ambition in mankind. The first is of those who desire to extend their own power in their native country, a vulgar and degenerate kind. The second is of those who labor to extend the power and dominion of their country among men. This certainly has more dignity, though not less covetousness. But if a man endeavor to establish and extend the power and dominion of the human race itself over the universe, his ambition (if ambition it can be called) is without doubt both a more wholesome and a more noble thing than the other two. Now the empire of man over things depends wholly on the arts and sciences. For we cannot command nature except by obeying her." The difference between Bacon's power of humankind over the universe and the power of all the living things over matter is mainly in broadening the focus beyond humankind to different kinds of life or sentience. Nonetheless, it seems noteworthy that Bacon does not restrain the power as being over the Earth but extends it to being over the "universe". Bacon's "knowledge is power" is a mainstay in Google Ngram Viewer, high-ranking among phrases found via "knowledge is *".

Friedrich Nietzsche exalted the principle of power, not to be feared or be circumspect about but rather to be seen as one of the ultimates. He also spoke of the superman, pointing in the direction beyond humankind. One suggestive quotation is this: "There is nothing to life that has value, except the degree of power—assuming that life itself is the will to power." per Wikiquote:Friedrich Nietzsche.

Relation to religion

The idea of the power of living things seems related to the Christian God being omnipotent and omniscient. The power to know would be subsumed under power in general. However, the Christian God is one of love, and there is no obviously derived love in the power of life.

While the power of living things is no God, the idea may have a psychological appeal that may be akin to the appeal of religions. One may feel aligned with a force acting on a cosmic scale. The appeal may be such that one loses a properly critical or skeptical attitude, becoming satisfied with half-baked arguments and explanations. On the other hand, prayer to the power of living things (as if it were a listening agent) is not expected to produce any desirable outcomes.

Closing remarks

This article is intended to expand the readers' horizons. It does not uncritically recommend the power of living things unconstrained; given all the criticism, it cannot do so in good conscience. Nonetheless, the power of livings things emerges as one idea or landmark, under whichever name, in the present intellectual landscape, impacting minds and aspirations.

Further reading

• Wikibooks: Developing A Universal Religion by David Hockey, 2003
• "Is this the meaning of life?" by John Stewart, 2010, guardian.com