Life, having the characteristics that it has, seems to have to generate boundaries between itself as it grows. Energy, upon flowing into a given system, concentrates with uneven distribution, with formations growing in disparate regions in time and space.
A living thing then is a concentration of a given flow of energy, and this concentration removes components of matter in various levels of integration, separating them from other energy flows and concentrations, and integrating them into its own body, in order to sustain itself or grow itself.
Life can sustain itself by growing its body, pursuing energy, and coming up against boundaries, can either break them down, or else the old formations curl in on themselves against the boundaries and begin wilting, necessitating the creation of new bodies and boundaries.
There is an art to living then. One should be able to grow to sustain oneself, but to continue to grow is to eclipse the other flows and formations, and ultimately destroy the surrounding energy that contributed to one's growth in the first place. If endless growth and the resultant ecstasy is to be compressed in time, one should expect to meet its mirror image: catastrophic contraction and horror, in due time.
We reach a paradox in which growth and unification of a given entity requires separation, in that the separation of units of energy from other energy flows and formations is required in greater amounts, breaking down and extinguishing those flows. And then at the same time, the respect of boundaries at various life system levels leaves other systems intact, so that multiple interconnected life systems can sustain each other for some time. This is interesting: at what level should one be respecting boundaries, and then at what level should they be broken down? Power becomes important here: a unity which concentrates power above its surroundings should actually break down, whereas lower level unities should be respected and preserved.
Marx has observed that what distinguishes capitalism as a social system is its radical separation of workers from their products, their communities, and their means of production, and at the same time, capitalists are separate from all these things as well, and must coerce their own subsistence out of these processes which are rearranged in various manners of contrivance, just as the workers are forced to sell their own labor to access this subsistence as well, so that a central market must be sustained to procure all these things, which reproduces this state of affairs indefinitely.
A bad dialectical state of affairs: for the body of capital to continue to grow and sustain itself, it must keep everything separate below itself, while incorporating all of these separate elements into itself.
So capital continues to grow, breaking off and separating all of the life flows around it in a radical way, destroying them. What began as an eruption of life is now a growth into death, which as we observe it now, appears to be intent on growing and grinding itself into oblivion.
Understanding this state of affairs is crucial if something is to be done, if this is any longer possible. Marx's work provides a good foundation for this understanding, and a good friend continues this project with his own work.
Still to be understood are the complex historical roots and relationships to this process. Why this endless expansion? How to halt this process, at least apart from the process halting itself by burning itself out? Threads we should continue to pursue.
