Conatus: THIRD EDITION by Tom Wallace - HTML preview

C O N A T U S

new universes. Then life will triumph once more — indeed continue forever. But — you come back here with the ultimate coup de grace — an eternal happy life would have no meaning. There needs to be a struggle for life in order to make life worthwhile. There’s just no way — it seems — for us to reach some kind of ultimate meaning or purpose to life, even eternal life. Let’s unpack this a little more.

Harmony is a word usually taken to mean a wholly or mainly positive balance of some sort. But harmony can also be a balance between opposing forces — it might be called a truce — but that would imply there is no conflict involved. So let’s stay with harmony and I’ll explain what I mean. Is the universe in harmony then? The most concerning things are good and evil. In nature this contrast between co-operation and competition is clearly evident — symbiosis and predation. Perhaps it is best to be wary of ascribing moral judgements of good and evil to these, but it is difficult to avoid a certain amount of horror at the often cruel actions of predators and to have a certain compassion for their prey. But is there harmony here or does co-operation win out over competition? There is only the nature of our own planet as a basis for a judgement on this, but it does seem as if variety and complexity have increased gradually over time — despite the setbacks of mass-extinction events. If competition and predation were the sole aspects of nature then it might be concluded that nature would not be flourishing as well as it otherwise is. So there’s a harmony — a balance of co-operation and competition — but co-operation seems to have the edge.

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