BASIC BACKGROUND

The first thing you need for a good life is a life. You have to be living. Alive. Better than this is the ability to function in the world in order to maintain your life. Your ability to keep living. Better still is the ability to improve your functioning, so that you can improve on your ability to maintain your life. To increase the odds that you continue to live.

You have to understand the world in order to function in it. Some of the following is very basic, but I want everyone to be able to follow regardless of their background. So, quickly, but importantly...

We know that things exist. We can detect them with our senses to easily verify this. Things are made up of matter and energy. Matter exists in different forms. Energy exists in different forms.

Location exists. One place is different from another. Things exists in a location. Every thing exists in a relationship to everything else.

Energy and matter exist in relationship to each other. Energy causes changes in matter. Matter causes changes in energy.

Changing matter and energy can change forms and locations. Relationships of matter and energy change.

Cause and effect. Something happens, causing something else to happen.

Change is inevitable. Things are not static, they change over time.

Time exists. There was a past, there is a now, there will be a future. The future will be determined by matter and energies interacting and changing relationships.

All matter and energies in their relationships make up reality. What is real. The here and now.

Non-living things exist. They can change, but not on their own.

Life was created from, or evolved from, non-living at some point. Life exists. Life absorbs, or creates, energy and uses it to change matter and energy relationships. Life is the independent ability to actively use energy to make changes in reality. Life has an impact on cause and effect relationships with it’s environment. If life changes reality so that it can keep living, it’s existence is maintained.

Matter, time and energy can be called resources. Because the living use them to keep living. Resources are finite, which means limited. Life needs resources to continue living. To continue to exist over time.

Life exists in a narrow band of available resources. If needed resources are depleted too far, life ceases. Death results. If harmful resources accumulate too much, death results. Too little energy input, or too much, also results in death.

Life adapts to the availability of resources. Those most successful at living in the environment continue to live on. Excess of resources can make it more probable that life continues. Less struggle. Makes living easier.

Nothing lives forever. Every living thing dies. So your time living is your most important resource, because it is not replaceable. Living things can progress forward in time past their natural death by reproducing. More resources means you can reproduce more.

You can trade one resource for another. You trade your time for what you can do with it. You can trade with yourself, or with others.

You can get resources by finding them, trading for them with others living things, or you can take them from other living things. We take the life of every living thing that we consume to maintain our life.

Life continues as a competition for the resources. Life is like a game. You must get adequate resources to continue. There are winners and losers. Loosing means death.

First there were single cells of life. They consume resources to maintain their life. Competition of individuals for resources was limiting. Cells were limited to what only an individual could accomplish.

Cells that learned to sense their environment better survived better. They had a better understanding of reality. They developed sensing skills of avoiding resources that were bad for them and finding what was good for them.

Other life was in competition with them, so sensing other life was an advantage. Cells take in substances and give off others. Absorb something, use it, change it, and excrete something different. Cells learned to sense other cells from the substances or chemicals given off.

Cells adapted to the presence of other cells. Essentially living in cooperation. They adapted to the extent that they only survived when cooperating. They became a single organism with specialized cells. Different specialized tissues. Cooperation was an advantage, so survival probabilities were increased.

Each cell type could detect the others. This chemical signaling became the first communication. Communication could be used for competition or for cooperation. Chemical signaling evolved. Better communication, better cooperation, better survival for all.

Some cells evolved for external sensing. Some for internal sensing. Some for specific actions and reactions.We had to find what was good for us and be able to avoid what was bad.

A nervous system evolved to more quickly transmit communication signals. We were able to react more quickly to our external environment and to changes within us. Quicker reactions increased probability that life continued.

All systems become more capable because the less capable were selected out by death. We evolved better senses to determine internal conditions and external environment. We evolved better reactions to conditions.

If we couldn't adapt to it, we had to avoid it, or change it. We evolved immune systems to protect us from the dangerous.

There were different adaptations that were better for different environments. Different adaptations produced different branches of life. This became the tree of life. Adaptation increased likelihood of survival.

Each adaptation was a change, or an addition, to existing life. Additions are systems added onto existing systems. Each addition makes life more complex. One system built on another. With complexity, there are more interacting parts. The interactions are more complex and dependent on each other. Complexity and interdependence makes the cooperation more complicated.

Some complex systems evolve to dead ends. They cease adaptation, or die off. Your existence means you are the offspring of a winner. You can trace your ancestry back from winner to winner until you get to that first life. The currently living are evidence of successful resource gathering and usage over time. The number of individuals on your branch doesn't necessarily mean success.

Similar individuals means they need similar resources. There has to be a balance between the resources available and the life trying to get them. Homeostasis is being in a balance with the resources. In harmony with the environment. Long term homeostasis is something that can last. Sustainabile. Continued life combined with continuing favorable conditions for life. You cannot maintain a balance if another life is out competing you for resources to the point that you don't have enough. Resources are depleted and waste products accumulate.

Death is the result of inability to adapt to the conditions. If you die before reproducing, your branch of the family tree ends. If resources are changed(either too little or too much) too quickly, death of a large number occurs at once, it can jeopardize the species. With slow changes, death can be over a longer period, the stronger can survive. Survival of the fittest. Evolution is the adaptation to be a winner at the game of life.

Life is trial and error. Successful traits are passed on to the next generation. There are branches in the tree of life that are all still living and some that have ended/died. If your entire species dies, your branch on the tree of life ends. Extinction.

Sovereignty is the capacity to maintain your existence. Capacity to gather good resources and avoid the harmful. Evolution generally increases sovereignty. Better capacity to maintain life means better probability that it continues.

We are on the branch that evolved: Animal, Vertebrates, Mammals, Primates, and then to Humans. We followed a path of evolution to get to where we are now. Increasing our sovereignty as we progressed. Chemical signaling and nervous systems became more and more complex and capable.

It is possible to adapt well to current environment, only to die when conditions change. Adaptability to changing environments is an advantage. The more adaptable you are the more probable that you continue to live.

Good for our survival is valuable to us. We value it. This is the basis for our values. Everything is motivated by what is good or bad for our survival. Your entire sensation and reaction process system are evolved around what is good or bad for your continued existence.

Sensations that were good for us are defined as pleasure and bad for us as pain. These sensations determined our actions. These actions became automated for quicker responses. Reflexes to quickly avoid what is bad for us and be attracted to good.

Memory developed to remember what was good or bad.

We have many complex sensations of good and bad all going on at the same time. You could be getting a signal for hunger at the same time you are getting one for danger nearby. Our values are complex. We evolved complex chemical signaling that combined in cooperation with our nervous system. One system could affect the other to more easily handle the complexity of our survival.

Emotions are combinations of chemical signaling and nervous system programs that function to evaluate whether something was good or bad for us. Good for us became desires. Bad for us became fears.

Fears and desires are the sensations that the emotions produce to motivate us. All of these adaptations are handled by automatic programming within us. Automation made it quick and efficient. Quick made us adaptable. Efficiency conserved resources. So most of our behavior is automatic, without conscious thought. We have a built in need for survival that our entire being is built on.

Our brains abilities increased to better integrate our needs with reality by affecting our relationships of the environment around us. We learned more of the cause and effect relationships. We became better at manipulating reality. We learned to rationally think things through their cause and effect relationships. If I do this, then this happens.

Better communication between individuals allowed for better cooperation. We expanded our knowledge of reality to better understand and function within it.

Living, thinking human beings became apex predators. We developed the best combination of control of environment, utilization of resources, and continued growth to stay ahead in the competition at the cost of all other plants and animals that we use for resources. Competition drove us to keep getting better at being a predator. If we fell behind, we became the prey to other humans.

Sensemaking of reality, knowledge of cause and effect relationships, and our abilities to change reality improved with our memory and rational thinking abilities.

Then came consciousness. We could use the rational thought as a tool to improve our lives. We overcame the limitations of our automatic programming. We could think things through and choose.