Does anyone know what is the purpose of all this? Why do we struggle for survival whenever something threatens us? Does any living creature understands the nature of its own life and death, or of life itself? The answer, as far as we can tell, remains unknown.
From the moment we are born, in a biological point of view, something changes. The Universe changes. As if there was some sort of physical process that can literally give a life of its own to a set of non-living components. And though we are not born with a conscience, neither in a biological, nor in a more conventional point of view, the truth is, human life does not depend on it. Consciousness, many say, is one of the deepest mysteries of the human nature, something that - as far as we can tell - clearly separates us from most of "the others". Some - or maybe the majority - of the most preeminent minds would even say without a blink that, in fact, we are intelligent beings. Free-willing, creative, innovative. Nevertheless, is it really true? Do we really control our lives, our options? And are we really creative and free-willing as we often believe, or are we just well treated slaves, who will do all the work without even knowing (do our cells know what they are?)?
Despite all the claims, and the enormous excitement in the XX century in explaining the origin of life, the truth is that, at the moment, we have absolutely no idea of how to create it, what it really is, if anything, or why it happened. We can only tell that it should be quite easy to begin - to get. Mainly due to the fact that it started really early in our own planet - almost as soon as it cooled down enough. Many still believe in a progressive and continuous path from complex molecules to life, but the evidence, despite the claims, is far from convincing, and, in most cases, purely speculative.
While it does seem reasonable to sustain that there was a certain logical path, the incapacity to recreate it in the lab should at least make us reconsider. Maybe we got it wrong. Completely wrong, or maybe just part of it. It is a fact that complex molecules could have formed in the primitive Earth. In fact, they are almost everywhere in the galaxy, mainly in the interstellar medium (which we don't really understand why). But life, well, that's really something else.
If the subject was something else, scientists would have already moved on. Trying different approaches and alternatives is a must when one is determined in knowing the answer to some particular question or questions, though the sensitivity of the subject seems to be pushing everyone back. But what if there is an answer?
We do know particular things about life: it can resist even in the most bizarre conditions - the extremely hot or cold, or even in the most "toxic" environments. Thus, if we want to explain the origin of life, and if we do believe that we need i) enough energy ii) a lot of carbon and other atoms to make molecules, then what IF life is, in fact, created in stars? Maybe it can only be created as a side-effect of a supernovae explosion. Or maybe it can only happen in some sort of strange conditions and space, and it is then spread.
Furthermore, why does life points in a direction which doesn't look random at all? It is not a novelty that, at the moment, just like it happened in the past, life is auto-regulating the entire planet. And it has done so for a long, long time in the past. Without life, Earth would definitely be different from what it is now. No oxygen, no water, probably as dry and hot or as dry and cold as any other random planet orbiting its star.
However, for some reason, life seems to have a point, a purpose. It does take its time, and, sure, when we look at the individual efforts, at the individual lives, it almost seems like there is no pattern, no sign of design, of inherent intelligence behind it. All that changes when we start looking carefully, and doing so in larger and larger time-scales - and in larger space-scales as well. as far as we know, life on Earth began with the simplest cells, similar to bacteria. For a long, long time, they lived on their own. Until something else happened, besides starting to be able to get most of their energy from the sun: complexity. If life is random, and has no purpose, why would it tend to a higher and more complex organization? It is not "natural" to achieve a greater complexity than the one that sustains the minimum energy possible. So why would bacteria, or simpler cells like it, start building a society big enough to male it a living being on its own: an eucharyotic cell? Was that what happened in the first place when the first bacteria were "created"? Random molecules tending to such a complexity that they became ONE?
However, that would be just two lucky events, right? Yes, life has to be random, how could we explain it otherwise? So why did cells, which were made of cells, started becoming cells of something larger, ultimately building new beings, like us?
Slowly, like a virus or a tremendous infection, life has conquered the planet, and made a slave of it. Controlling it. Regulating it. And today, if we would dare to look at the mirror, or from space, maybe - just maybe - we would be able to see that life is not stopping. Life won't stop in its quest for complexity. For growth. For expansion. Actually it is getting more effective. Faster and faster. Greedy, one might say.
Thus, while we are too busy living our free-will lives, the truth is we have failed to see that we are no longer the living beings which some sort of cells give life to: we are already the cells of a much larger living being. Something that is already bigger than our own planet.
Will it ever stop?
