… and the level after that.


Taking it to the next level, and the level after that.

Only a pretentious, pompous, self-satisfied ego-maniac would ever claim to live life by such a maxim. I certainly make no effort to engage in life so extraordinarily: I seldom even behave as if the notion of passionate engagement had ever even crossed my mind. But that is still somehow what I believe the purpose of life is.

I don’t think I could prove that life has meaning, but it seems to want to. I don’t give much credit to most people’s effort to comprehend or find meaning in life, but I still seek out my own meaning. I definitely spend more time trying to figure out what might be the true way to live right but seldom make any effort actually testing out or enjoying any of these theories with my limited remaining time on earth.

But here’s what I’ve figured out so far:

There are infinite levels of complexity in the universe. Each level is built upon and beyond the previous, in an accelerating ascension of increased detail and what appears to be a growth towards life, beauty, and further creation. The way the details of the solar system relate to the galaxy and to each planet is one example. The way blood flows through the patterns of veins, and the route rivers run into the sea, and the paths animals wear across savannas are all different detail levels of the same underlying structures of the universe we live in. (I should illustrate this point with some images…)

Order and systems are created out of the chaotic, independent agents of the simpler system, which itself of course contains unending complex systems tied together intricately. No system can fully describe or contain the actors of its component layers and their sometimes frantic thrashes-about are what create growth, variety, novelty, and fractal expansion of the systems to ever higher organic achievements. Rocks, heat, collisions, gas, and more raw elements eventually turned into single and multicellular organisms that became plants and animals and grew and covered the earth and turned more complicated and sophisticated all the while until humans came along with our insane brains and our ability to form language and communicate amazingly sophisticatedly and  develop complicated plans and theories and invent and plan so many never before possible levels of group cooperation and achievement. Most planets don’t even appear to get any life on them at all, it seems.

Given this, how can we not feel compelled to act up to our potential – which is that of the most sophisticated, intelligent, and capable life form yet created in the universe (so far as we know). We are the next level, and we alone as a species have the level of mental intelligence to take it to the level after that.

Which is why I’m so disappointed in myself and all of us.

 

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