The power of being different
Competition produces a natural chaos in which the outcome is unpredictable. One can always find one’s equal or better. In a competitive environment crisis is a constant where species have to deal with. The duality of attraction and avoidance get species to grow apart and develop themselves around new and differentiated values. A new step is introduced into the evolutionary path and nature of life for survival and growth: the talent of being different.
Being different avoids the confrontation and develops a unique positioning that occupies a very specific spectrum of harmonic relationship with the environment. Instead of conflict the non-conflict is enhanced. In the world of insects this has resulted in a remarkable variety of species that can coincide peacefully in a small place. They are different in everything you can imagine: size, colors, walking, flying, digging, swimming abilities, type of food, sexuality, reproduction, habitat, etc etc. Being different gives better perspectives to survival than the law of the strongest.
Have a look at this short impression about butterflies .
The unique combination of growth, competition and differentiation gives rise to an impulse of new levels of awareness. Being different can contain an evolutionary element of chance of course when growth is suddenly enhanced at the time that a species finds no competition for some time. It can also develop through higher levels of awareness around competitive instruments that enlarge the chances of winning. One can become unique in predator abilities. Diversification can then again display many variations of “being different” as we can see around us nature. One can be different by escaping from confrontation (running or flying away, jumping, hiding, etc), avoiding it through divers techniques (camouflage, size, speed, poison, spikes, etc) or winning them (strength, teamwork, etc) through smartness. Our imagination can run freely to invent effective differentials of being unique. We can also look at nature around us to see millions of years of inspirational development and unique levels of innovational excellence. Life itself, with such interactive parameters as growth, competition and unique adaptiveness is the best living lab of inspiration available in the universe.
self awareness
The inevitable next step in evolution is self awareness. This is probably the most complex contribution to life’s consciousness. Self awareness is a logical consequence when competition, fear, multiple sensory experiences, crises, adaptiveness, growth, etc all form part of the complexity of a single living specimen. The step from intuitive reflection and action to waking up into self reflective awareness is then just a matter of time and opportunity.
The possibility to make yes/no choices is key for survival in a complex world of spontaneous and purpose driven interaction. The sum of reflective impulses from many different harmonic senses, that all interact simultaneously with the environment, gives rise to the development of powerful processing powers. The choices become increasingly complex. The diversity of the senses (s.a. smell, taste, vision, touch, sound and basic inner symphonies of harmonic molecular frequencies) each produce reactive impulses that can coincide but also be conflicting. The need to come to terms with multiple inner feelings is the basis for a new kind of decision making. When harmonic frequencies were external at first, coming to life through material interaction and bonding, now the quest for harmony is inside.
This is the key to spirituality, the inner quest for harmonic meaning, connecting us in awareness with the musical reality of the universe, inside with outside.
At certain points in life these decisions are made at a self conscious level. The most advanced species are also the most adaptive in a competitive world. Self awareness is just one more instrument for improved chances. A self aware species does not just react to the environment, it will also analyze its best options and make choices.
Self aware analysis introduce the inner conflict of right and wrong. This is an inner spiritual quest for meaning around the “why”. Food, safety, health, abundance, wellness and knowledge are the self aware essentials of harmonic continuity. Procreation and fear for death is added when death is a factor to be taken into account.
Death
Death gives room to new diversification and evolution and hence becomes an engine to life. Life in itself does not need death as we have seen from the musical appearance of life under the right circumstances. Death did not exist yet. Death still did not exist when growth developed the need for collapse and fractal divisions. It was a mere continuation and re confirmation of life itself. Death appears as a key element of the evolution of self awareness. Growth would not be possible without death as life would come to a hold when growth becomes impossible due to limitations of the environment. The quest for harmonic relationships introduced new conditions into life and one was the appearance of “disappearance” of the obsolete. Death is a kind of cleaning up of the redundant which gives rise to a new cycle of life in a new field of harmonic interaction. Life is always in search for balance by creating new harmonic relationships that upset the old harmonics. Death is a necessary part of that. Life came first and death was introduced to make life’s evolution possible. It was a natural consequence. Life always conquers death, the good always wins from evil because life made death possible and death makes life continue.
As we stated before “life = awareness”. But this equation is alive too. In its simples form at molecular levels it just represents the musical interaction of specific frequencies. Matter becomes aware of matter. In its most complex form at self aware level of multiple sensory interaction “awareness = life”, meaning that the level of interpretation of life induces new life. Awareness is hence a life science that needs to be leveraged to the utmost layers of rational interpretation in order to provide a new living chance of our human species.
We see today that our human population on the globe has expanded to such an extend that we have lost our harmonic relationship with our environment. We have organized our human life only from a growth and competitive perspective after we became self aware of our unique and dominant abilities to make our surroundings instrumental to our abundance. Only in recent decennia we realize that the evolutionary criteria that surround us also apply to us as a species. Our self aware dominance for over 250.000 years is at the same time our vulnerability. Time has come for an evolutionary step in human interaction with ourselves and our environment if we want to survive evolution itself.
This brings us to another evolutionary technique that is abundantly present in our natural environment and that we need to learn to apply too. The next blog lecture will deal with that.
Sustainocracy, the new democracy 
‘Death’ is also unclear in at least two ways. First, the concept of life is not entirely clear. For example, suppose we could construct a machine, the HAL 1.01, with (nearly) all of the psychological attributes of persons: would HAL 1.01 be alive? To the extent that we are puzzled about what life entails, we will be puzzled about what is entailed by the ending of life, that is, death. (For accounts of life, see Van Inwagen 1990 or Luper 2009.) Second, it seems somewhat indeterminate whether a temporary ending of life suffices for death, or whether death entails a permanent loss of life. Usually, whenever a creature’s life stops, the condition is permanent; so ‘death’, as commonly used, need not be sensitive to the distinction between the temporary and permanent ending of life. Yet life may stop temporarily: a life might be suspended then revived. Or it might be restored. Life in the case of seeds and spores is suspended indefinitely. Freezing frogs and human embryos suspends their lives, too. Suppose that I were frozen and later revived: it is tempting to say that my life stops while I am frozen —I am in a state of suspended animation. But I am not dead. Now imagine a futuristic device, the Disassembler-Reassembler, that reduces me to small cubes, or individual cells, or disconnected atoms, which it stores and later reassembles just as they were before. Many of us will say that I would survive—my life would continue—after Reassembly, but it is quite clear that I would not live during intervals when my atoms are stacked in storage. I would not even exist during such intervals; Disassembly kills me. After I cease to exist, presumably I cannot be revived; nor can my vital processes be revived. If I can be Reassembled, my life would be restored, not revived. Restoration, not revival, is a way of bringing a creature back from the dead.
The meaning of the dream was at once apparent to me. It was about life and death, birth and rebirth. For life disappears and reappears under diverse disguises. It reveals itself for a single flashing, startling instant before returning to the impenetrable darkness from which it came. But through all its many manifestations, there endures something worthy of our wonder and awe.
[…] Secretes of Life 9: The power of being different, phase 3 and higher self awareness […]
“Death” is an essential component of the evolution of life. Without death evolution would not be possible within a finite material environment like planet Earth. As mentioned in the blog series “life” appears through the harmonic union of material elements. Just like matter can come alive by uniting in a harmonic way it can fall apart when this harmony is disturbed. This we call death, simply because life ceases to continue and molecules break apart into their normal free behavior. Within this freedom these molecules can of course be reassembled by chance into a new living species. That is part of their natural characteristics.
The more complex a living structure becomes the more delicate also the union and interaction of its atomic structure to stay together. Life has a purpose (growth) through its harmonic nature. If it cannot grow anymore or meets competition, it can either adapt, win or die. Death in this sense creates room for renewal of life, through life forms that have not reached their point yet of conflict. I refer to a great speech of the late Steve Jobs at Stanford in 2005 when he refers to death as the great innovator http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UF8uR6Z6KLc
A self aware human being fears death because we wonder what happens with the “I” that evolved around our consciousness. It is difficult for us to accept the idea that at one point we cease to exist as an individual. Many religions make promises about our eternal existence if we behave in a certain way or show loyalty to some system that helps us accept and overcome our fear. From a molecular point of view we will indeed always exist. Eternity is already inside us through the mere reuse of molecules over and over again. The entire evolution of life into humankind happens over and over again when our coded genes unite and start a harmonic process of growth of a fetus all the way up to birth and beyond. When our purpose of life is disturbed we die and fall apart. That does not happen straight away. As mentioned in the blogs we consist of billions of microscopic living beings that interact with us in a symbiotic way. We are a small living universe all by our single selves. Sometimes we become brain dead for a while for a reason but the billions of symbiotic partners are still active. Our brain may be dead temporarily but we are not. The common misconception is that our brain perceives our surroundings. That is not true. Our brain processes all information which we experience as rational, cognitive self awareness. Brain death only means that our processor is down. The perception continues (largely, as eyes, ears are down too) as long as the symbiosis remains functioning. When we get the processor (brain) function again and it happens to be undamaged the people experience the processing of a back log of information from the billions of creatures again. We experience a Near Death Experience, as if they were aware while dead. We are not alone as an individual and that is maybe one of the most important things to understand. Still, when our brain remains dead we have no single means to process our perception and we die entirely. We will not process anymore and our cognitive awareness ends. Finally the symbiosis ends and we start to decompose.
The big incognito is whether the awareness that we gathered throughout a life time is still present in the universe after our physical death? From the theory that I present there are various instruments of life that make our life last longer than our physical presence.
1. Our own life affects our genetic coding that we pass on to our children. They also code their genes through new modifications in the early part of their lives when influenced by the parents, family, culture and surroundings. Once you have had children the genetic coding continues yet is not passed on. Our mature wisdom is hence key for the genetic development of our children and grand children, justifying the key importance of family and community life. Through them we achieve our eternal presence.
2. Our body is interacting in a harmonic vibration with our surroundings. This vibration synchronizes with the harmonics of the universe and our surroundings. Even when we physically disappear our harmonic vibrations that were emitted during our lifetime will continue for ever. This harmonic vibration is coded with our awareness and can be perceived even many years after we have died. Our signals are of course part of “everything” that has ever occurred in the eternal presence of harmonics.
3. During our life time we influence our surroundings (people nature, environment, etc) through our purpose driven harmonics and interaction. This has a lasting effect on the evolution of our species and others around is.
Uniting those three elements we indeed can make best use of our awareness through behavior to enjoy an eternal existence. This is however different than the romantic thought that we remain consciously there ourselves through a permanent self aware experience. The re-assembly of molecules will always bring about a new unique living being with a new contribution to the evolution of life. It will have parts of you and everyone else but it will not be you, nor me.