Human Iterations

(#2: The biosphere is not inherently good or superior, just very dynamic.)

An Anti-Primitivist Essay

Between the solar wind and its molten iron core, the Earth has a thin layer of water and nitrogen. Around 3.5 billion years ago, after the planet finished aggregating, this layer of fluid locked into a sort of homeostasis around the solid mantel. The various elements caught up in this turbulent process were forced into far closer interaction than they'd seen as dust between the stars. Due to the nature of the planetary formation much of the surface experienced large and decidedly uneven outbursts of energy. Unusually extended molecules were formed and destroyed as fundamental particles followed entropy to lower energy states all while pressed up against uncountable trillions of their fellows.

Eventually the most violent energy outbursts died down and the resulting elemental muck settled into more efficient and locally sustainable patterns of relational structure. The free-floating O2 molecule became a quite popular pattern of arrangement as erosive molecular aggregates liberated it from the surface's iron-ish rocks. Another popular arrangement that stood the test of all those trillions of interacting particles and molecules was the amino acid. Of course, this was a far broader generalization of inter-atomic structure and, unlike the simplistic O2, its existence depended on a much higher degree of interaction with the surrounding muck. Such increased interaction, in fact, that, as entropy played out the Earth's ocean/atmosphere, it emerged primarily in close conjunction with much larger agglomerations of closely interdependent molecules. In the background of all this an almost unnoticeable mass of sugars rolled themselves out and transmitted structural information to their surrounding proteins.

The planet cooled and these sluggish uber-massive molecular arrangements gained ground against the more fiery radical arrangements of yester-eon.

Today about two trillion tons of matter on the surface of the earth is intimately associated with these deoxyribonucleic acids. And the sum total of these fluidly interrelating positional structures of matter is today referred to as the Biosphere.

There are many cosmically descriptive attributes that could be applied to this planet's scummy outer film (carbon bindings play a large role!) but the most important is by far its core nature as a discrete concept. It's dynamic.

Neither an expansive vacuum of distant, weak and slow interactions nor a positionally locked, brittle over-structure. The Earth is coated in fluid change. That is to say interrelating forces are translated into significantly speeded change of relative positions. Of course that's not to ascribe to it the properties of some perfectly dynamic super-fluid. Rather, the Earth is simply dynamic enough to buffer the mobile propagation of rough, low-density emergent information structures. Like us.

Our Biosphere is organized in stratified layers of fluidity. From particles to molecules to cells to organisms. Given any arbitrarily limited system and the intention to convey information in the form of spatial relations able to withstand externalities, some fluid behavior is crucial. Those arrangements which survive and flourish in such dynamic systems do so though grassroots propagation. And the resulting landscapes are characterized by redundancy. By coalescing into autonomous actors they achieve a sort of distributed adaptability that morph around blunt obstacles and seep into their surroundings.

Compared to a rock, a puddle of water is very dynamic. A maple tree's probably going to be a whole lot less dynamic than the puddle of water. But the rock's not going to do much at all. The information structure contained within the arrangement of its particles isn't really going to apply itself to the surrounding world as be applied upon.

The rock, of course, can store quite a bit of positional information. These days we, as a society, spend quite a lot of time saving porn and MP3s to rocks. Because, it's worth pointing out, the structures in the rock generally don't spontaneously flow apart. At the same time, however, such brittle frozen structures are incredibly unstable in the face applied contact and motion. But that's okay because though dynamic systems erode entrenched structure, there are still ways to convey and apply positional information.

The maple tree's DNA, for example, in proportion to its total resulting weight, may not pack away an impressive number of gigs per cubic inch. But it preserves and applies such informational structures in such a way that an iPod, abandoned on mountainside, would be hard pressed to match.

Through dynamic engagement with environmental complexities, structure can be rooted with more survivability and consequence than a less dynamic one would find. The structure of a hunk of concrete is not very dynamic, and a brittle hunk of concrete embedded in a far more dynamic system will not last very long.

The positional structure of say, concrete overpasses, doesn't have as strong a history of dynamic participation in the Earth's scummy outer film as say, humanity. And, as the human body is an emergent structure highly interconnected and participant within a rather dynamic system, our own structures are somewhat colossally interdependent with all the other watery stuff whirling around us.

From our vantage point as homo sapiens (forgive my crude acquiescence to taxonomy, you get what I mean), the Earth's dynamic system looks great! But let's remember that there are no huge metaphysical engines driving the whole thing just to sustain the crude information structure of 'humanishly' arranged deoxyribonucleic acids bumping about in scummy water sacks. That would as cosmologically preposterous and suicidally negligent as to assume that God prefers English and sends non-South Park watchers to Hell.

The Earth wasn't made for human bodies. Human bodies were made for the Earth.

And all that means is that our template survived two million years of stabbing rabbits to death and picking strawberries. It does not mean that going back to stabbing and strawberries would still cut it for us in another thousand years (even if we had never taken up our new dastardly practice of planting carrots and wheeling around carts). Who knows? Fact of the matter is some dynamic turbulence in the Biosphere could spontaneously wipe us out any day. Following our original position within the greater biosphere (even with some mild evolution) guarantees nothing. It is simply an informed shot in the dark. Good chances but a rather hands off abandonment to fate.

Yet, at the same time, it should be so obvious as to go without saying that suddenly slapping concrete over 1/10th of the Earth's surface will almost certainly effect a non-human-friendly result. No matter how many of your summer homes you make out of cob.