🚀 go-pugleaf

We introduce a philosophy of Man and Nature that stems from the
phenomenon of Life as a necessary foundation for pondering about our
being and must be. The distinction between the Living and the Non
Living manifests itself as a problematic and fundamental opposition,
for which every living being represents an unique and unrepeatable
solution to the problem of being against the pressing indifference of
the Non Living. It is in this scenario of primary conflict in which we
find the motive of union to the rest of the living beings on the
planet. The biological struggle of the "the law of the jungle" is
nothing more than the Method with which the Living confronts Reality
which is, in principle, unknowable, unpredictable and definitively
chaotic. Life fights to preserve its duration against the mechanical
and destructive pressure of the Non Living and achieves it by
anticipating in the diversity of beings the answer to the problems
that poses existence in the unpredictable, spreading those
peculiarities that most successfully fulfill their function:
facilitate the preservation of Life, extend the order of the
biological over the increasing disorder of the a biotic. To that, the
Living turns against itself, nourishing on itself, exercising by means
of the jungle law a constant self-examination, rejecting the inferior
and preserving only the useful, to obtain first an advantage and
ultimately total dominion over the Non Living, over which it prospers.

Life wins its struggle against the inert by taking within the
conflict, transmitting it in a learning mechanism. Thus learns the
Living in its fight against the environment, imprinting in the
diversity of individual beings, in their form and behavior, the
knowledge to survive and reproduce acquired through eons of trial and
error, where error is death and the test is to conceive, incorporating
in the design of species the tools developed by evolution, modeled by
Chaos, always under the unique compulsion of giving origin to more
life.

The permanent conflicts among species are thus secondary before the
primordial problem of keeping imperishable the Spark of Life against
the undifferentiated ness of Chaos, reason why we fraternize with all
living beings, over which we must exercise our best protection.

Because in Man the learning evolution mechanism arrived at a
particular tool, our unique specialized adaptation, the rational
processing of information and its control, language, an evident
survival advantage, a method to explore and penetrate Reality that
allows a single individual to evaluate and incarnate possibilities
that, evolutively speaking, can only be essayed by several
individuals, in several species. So Man learned to fly in less time
than birds and without developing wings on their own bodies.

Reason explores more rapidly the possibilities of the Real than
evolution, and does so, or can do it, systematically, by means of the
accumulation and direct transmission of knowledge, in which the
characteristics inherited by parents in the Lamarckian sense are,
precisely, the fruits gathered by means of its rational exploration of
Reality. Thus, Reason reveals as Method, but not a particular one, but
any method, from the most descabellado like magic to the most
productive which is Science. There reside the advantage by which
Reason, as a survival advantage, surpasses the results of evolution,
which results displaced as the principal tool to propagate life. We
are not limited to decide only from the information in our immediate
environment, nor from a strict impulse to propagate our own genes, but
we can transcend locality and biological egotism to raise
organizations with rules more complex than "big fish eats small fish".
The law of jungle has transformed in Law and Economics, in Accountancy
and Politics and also in War. By the simple fact of being unnecessary
as a technique of adaptation and survival, natural selection does not
hold in a human world, where error is not judged (always) with death,
the ugly, weak and mean survive and reproduce, although unfortunately
the fair many times are sacrificed uselessly.

We do not need evolution to confront in time what Chaos furnishes,
since our ability to combine symbols and representations through
language is more efficient than combining actual beings to explore
Reality, given the economies in the use of energy and the savings in
time. Reason proceeds lineally, penetrating deeply in the
unpredictable with the single thread of consciousness, in contrast to
evolution, which proceeds simultaneously and in parallel along the
populations of living beings. In Man, in its characteristic as a
living and rational being, both procedures join magnificently. Every
human being is unique and unrepeatable, diverse, necessary condition
of the living being, and from an always new position exercises Reason
to penetrate the horizon of the world and then communicate its
privileged viewpoint.

As a result, in Man the Living conducts an accelerated search in the
infinite possibilities of the Real, anticipating, and thus
controlling, the chaotic change in the Not Living with a velocity and
effectiveness that surpasses that of evolution alone, making it
irrelevant to the human world. Reason reproduces in fullness evolution
on a different plane, substituting and complementing the combination
of living entities with the combination of representations,
morphological adaptation with technological adaptation, the law of the
jungle with the exchange economy, the ecological niche with productive
specialization, genetic inheritance with historic inheritance,
survival instinct with the rational search for meaning, and,
principally, substituting natural selection, the survival and
reproduction of the most fit, with more complex systems that we call
Society, Culture and generally Civilization.

And as in the Pre-rational Living, we observe the enormous diversity
of species resultant from evolution, of which we know are just a few
from the infinite number of possible species, human cultures are
equally diverse, a reflex of the essential diversity of the Living and
Man, and of the diversity of representations, not only of the Real
that every individual human can generate, but also of the inexistent
and even the impossible, as is evident par excellence in Art.

Man manifests to us therefore as a living being, animal, diverse, but
indeterminate in its possibilities, with the double task of surviving
as a living being and building himself. Although the animal nature
directs effectively the basic tasks of conserving the organism, every
human being has the ability to generate and explore alternative
solutions to the problem of existence among which determines his being
in the world. Only if the individual realizes this effort to explore
Reality from Reason to find new mechanisms of survival as a living
being and select those viable but not available to animality, he will
be expressing completely our nature as a human beings.

That requires a constant vigilance of Reason to avoid the modes of
behavior proper to the Irrational Living and to which we are prone
from our animal nature, so that we can choose those that are open only
to Man. It is thus the care of the quality of being human by
exercising Reason, that is, the conscious development of the dignity
of the human being, that which establishes definitively the difference
to animals and to which every one of us must be devoted permanently as
the means to express with integrity our human essence. There is thus a
continuity to the irrational world that forms the substrate upon which
operates Reason but against which it has the task of distinguishing
itself, and select that which is proper of being human from what is a
disguised expression of animality.

The products of Reason, being the result of a search of the possible
in Reality, can however become contrary not only to what is humane,
but even be contrary to the essential need to preserve the Living,
from which it becomes indispensable a redoubled vigilance of Reason in
its decisions. Therefore, established as human decision criteria are
the preservation of Life, represented it by all and each of the
living; the continuation of Life, fundamental problem of every living
being and to which evolution found as unique mechanism the instinct of
survival of the individual, whose function is to favor the
reproduction of individuals, reason why it must be allowed to operate
freely; the development of Life's diversity, in beings as in ideas,
main weapon with which the Living confronts the scaring
unpredictability of Chaos; and the impulse to the Methods that
distinguish Reason respect to evolution as a solution to the problem
of existence: the systematic and deep exploration of Reality, the
joint decision making, the consideration to the welfare of the fellow
man, the technological adaptation to the environment, the use of
dialogue as proper form of human interaction, the search for welfare
beyond mere survival and generally the search and construction of
possibilities in the Real with special attention to artistic creation,
in which Reason finds its complete expression as a search mechanism of
sense in the Chaos of Reality.

Written in 1997. A miracle I still have the copy at hand...