Hmmm. The pattern is the "cause" and the "effect"; the cause is not other than
the effect, and the effect is not other than the cause; and my "self" is the
flow of pattern: "extended, interdependent and self-reinforcing processes
known as evolution."
On Mar 17, 2012, at 4:43 AM, MarshaV <[email protected]> wrote:
>
> "Self-protection begins at the beginnings of life, manifesting in the
> processes of attraction and aversion that are implicitly based upon the
> distinction between self and non-self. At the most basic level of life,
> single-cellular organisms distinguish between what is threatening and what is
> beneficial to them in their environment, aggressively repulsing the one and
> engulfing and absorbing the other. This discrimination of semiporous
> membranes is a primary prerequisite of life. Without it, single-cellular life
> forms would never have survived and gradually developed into more complex and
> multicellular organisms such as our present species, homo sapiens.
>
> "We are all descended, through the extended processes of evolution, from
> those creatures whose successive transformations produced successful
> biological organisms. This occurred through the processes of differential
> reproductive success, in which those organisms that reproduce more
> prolifically over successive generations pass on more of their heritable xvii
> characteristics than those who reproduce less. The theory of evolution thus
> depicts a positive feedback loop in which those specific behavioral patterns
> that lead to greater reproductive success are steadily reinforced over
> extended periods of time. As biological creatures, we all therefore embody
> the cumulative results of whichever behaviors facilitated more reproductively
> successful interactions between our forebears and their natural and social
> environments. That is to say that the characteristics we embody today
> reflect, for the most part, behaviors that have successfully furthered their
> own reproduction in the past
.
>
> "Chief among these behavioral patterns are the physical and mental
> capabilities that allow us to acquire food and shelter, and the cognitive and
> emotional wherewithal necessary for reproducing and raising offspring. In
> other words, the will to preserve personal existence, a desire for those
> activities that lead to reproduction, and sufficient attachment to the people
> and things necessary to achieve these objectives are all essential for
> producing, preserving and re-producing human life. That these drives, this
> thirst for life, are constitutive of the very form of existence we embody
> right here and now follows from the simple yet profound postulate at the
> heart of evolutionary theory: what has been more (re)productive in the past
> is more plentiful in the present. These include as well, of course, our acute
> social sensitivities, our abilities to think, feel and empathize, to wonder
> and to worry, to love and to hate, to compete and to cooperate; none of these
> are, in theory, w
holly outside the broad scope of the "extended, interdependent and
self-reinforcing processes known as evolution."
>
>
> (William S. Waldron,'Common Ground, Common Cause: Buddhism and
> Science on the Afflictions of Self-Identity').
>
>
> http://www.gampoabbey.org/documents/Waldron-CommonGround.pdf
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
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