The Ecosystem of Life and Love

From time to time I’ve come across writings of scientists who study life, where they’ve expressed their continuing awe about what they’re studying. It seems, the more they study, the greater the awe: how does life manage to do it? How does it form? How is it that the deeper we probe, the greater the intricacy? The explanations that gave rise to Social Darwinism, touting a fierce and predatory competition for resources, give way to more nuanced views in which cooperation and a delicate balance of interdependence govern every aspect of life. As we’re ready to see it, we get to behold exquisite interlacings between and among species, amazing adaptations that require intimate relations with every other member.

I marvel at what a leap of trust is entailed in single celled organisms choosing to come together to be a more complex organism. Or for a fungus and a root to form a relationship that benefits them both. (I know some would dismiss the above as hopeless anthropomorphism; in my defense let me say I’m using the word “choose” in the sense that every action is a choice, whether it’s “conscious” or not, and that every action that depends on another entails trust, whether it’s reasoned or not.)

I remember in high school biology learning what were considered the properties that would make something qualify as life. They included growth, reproduction, metabolism, and adaptation. As a student of Whole Systems Design at Antioch University, I learned a few more: life is negentropic, cybernetic, autopoetic. I love these words. I sort of smugly love that I always have to define them to people:

Negentropic: working contrary to entropy. It is a law of thermodynamics that things always wear down – that they move from a greater level of complexity to a lesser one, that energy always moves to a less usable state. But life is negentropic – it always moves to a greater level of complexity, where more energy can be used. It creates conditions that make for more life, and not only within species. Trees make it possible for many more things to live – providing atmosphere, shelter, nutrition. I’ve read that in the early stages of evolution, the micro-organisms gave off gases that created an atmosphere wherein life forms such as ourselves could develop.

Cybernetic: equipped with a system for taking in information and, based on it, adapting behavior to optimize itself. In other words, it has a goal, a means of setting a course towards it, and a way of measuring its progress and using that information to steer its continued course towards that goal. Whether the mechanism for the system be a chemical one or a reasoned one, each living thing has this series of feedback loops which allow it to enhance and extend its life. Biologist Humberto Maturana made an eloquent case for intelligence to be redefined as present where goal seeking behavior is present.

Autopoetic: formed for its own purposes with a code contained within itself. Trees do not exist to be timber or even to be animal homes. They exist because of an imperative within themselves, and their being is for their own sake. This, of course, is also true for people, though we do seem to forget.

All of these properties have interesting implications for the understanding of life. Negentropy makes a compelling case for the existence of God, like this:

Clearly, life is a lot of work. Life is something that makes a lot of effort; in fact, you could say it defines effort. So the obvious question is, why does life bother? And the answer is, because it wants to. I am fond of quoting the biology teacher of one of my students, who said, “Even bacteria desire to live.” All the explanations for life’s continuance – the struggle for survival, the amazing efforts to procreate, the stunning adaptation – require as their engine life’s desire to be. Without that, there is no explanation for negentropy.

Well, desire is a property of love. The zest for life that gets us up in the morning is a kind of love. So is the absorbing interest that keeps us working hard at gaining a new skill even when the progress is slow. Though there is a predatory sense of the concept of desire, and though desire often filters into the dominant paradigm as something that keeps us from being present to the joy of the moment, in the simple sense of the desire of life to be, it doesn’t need to carry those connotations. Mary Baker Eddy says desire is prayer. This relates to the Biblical concept of being drawn by lovingkindness – being pulled forward by the power of a love that may feel to us to be our own.

The other thing I think is important is that desire can’t be expressed in material terms. Matter, by definition, can’t desire, as matter is defined as the inert building blocks from which things are made. Therefore desire is a spiritual property. What seems to me the obvious conclusion is that Spirit is a necessary component in the description of life.

And now I’ll stop pretending to be an authority on all this stuff. I’ll admit that I took a leap when I capitalized Spirit. I’ll admit that it could be another leap to say Spirit is God. And when I bring my faith into it and say God is Love, so Spirit is Love, and Love is the engine of Life, I have to abandon the voice of proof-through-argument. But these are things I hold to be true, and I find the contemplation of them deeply enlightening.

The cybernetic property of life gives evidence that Mind is Love, like this: Intelligence is defined by the presence and complexity of goal seeking behavior. The goal seeking behavior of life is always to make the best choice for itself. So intelligence is making the best choice. The act of always seeking the greatest good is a property of love, so Mind is Love. OK, that’s in shorthand, a little bit, but I find it interesting to think about it.

Autopoeisis is important to understand for the purpose of respect and the honoring of every living thing. Each thing has its own center. The center is the place of stillness around which things circulate. A tiny movement from the center can engender a great movement at the periphery. It takes much more effort to move something from the periphery, and there also is far less of a reference point for accuracy. It’s not surprising that each living thing would be designed to steer itself, from its center. Our society tends to operate on the assumption that it’s beneficial to have someone other than the individual determine what it will do. But the ecosystem of Life illustrates for us a better plan.

I think that whenever we study life with honesty and openness, we find great awe and inspiration. Similarly, when we explore our faith with honesty and openness, we approach truth. I find I do best in my inquiries when I’m not so much seeking to disprove other theories as to learn everything I can about the ecosystem of Life and Love. It seems to me that any explanation in words can only be a shadow – minus at least one dimension of the actual truth.