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Book: Philosophy of Life Instinct: Prologue

It all kept coming back to our being a form of matter called Life that has a need to know combined with serious limitations in its ability to understand and explain reality.

As far as I could see, the origin of the quest for knowledge and the limitations arose from a single fundamental reality. It is a reality that appears simple but is not. I have regularly questioned my view of this in forty years of thinking, waiting for it to change, to prove false. But it hasn’t. This reality is what I call — The Life Instinct.

I will elaborate on the dimensions of The Life Instinct in Chapter 4. In subsequent chapters, I will consider essential features of life from the perspective of The Life Instinct. We will try to understand each feature’s origins, the implications, and how to work with it.

In my journey through the many puzzles, I have found they belong to one of two categories: metaphysical or philosophical enquiries. We will apply the Philosophy of Life Instinct to shine a light on both types — Metaphysical ones and those from the Humanities.

Book Structure

Part I

In Part I of the book, I explore the fundamental questions that set the context for this philosophy. We investigate all existence, life, how we can understand humanity, whether we are free to choose, and the source of the Life Instinct.

Chapter 1 The Metaphysical Context — Why we need to first consider the universal questions Chapter 2 What if it all Just Is? — Existence, knowledge and causation Chapter 3 The Nature of Time — What time is and how it is intrinsic to everything Chapter 4 Life and The Life Instinct — Defining life and the Life Instinct Chapter 5 Thought, Language and Intelligence — Their validity for understanding ourselves Chapter 6 Free Will — Can we really choose our actions? Chapter 7 Science and The Life Instinct — Life Instinct as a fundamental force

Part II

In Part II, I apply the Life Instinct and Free Will perspectives to a range of human concerns to understand them and improve ourselves.

Chapter 8 The Study of Humanity — An approach to studying ourself Chapter 9 The Power of Our Intellect — Where we’ve reached Chapter 10 God — Origins and dimensions Chapter 11 Religion — A necessary phase Chapter 12 Spirituality — Meaning and connection Chapter 13 Emotions — A matter of survival Chapter 14 Love and Friendship — Bedrock of cooperation Chapter 15 Marriage and Family — Institutions for continuity Chapter 16 Learning and Education — The saving grace Chapter 17 Work and Ambition — Essentials to be managed Chapter 18 Sports and Games — Fun with benefits Chapter 19 Migration — We are all migrants, and it’s been good Chapter 20 Government — Self-management by the species Chapter 21 Art — What is it? Chapter 22 Quality — Nebulous but real Chapter 23 Morality — Personal positions Chapter 24 Ethics — Social necessity Chapter 25 Happiness —An unattached examination

Part III

In Part III, I consider the limitations of the philosophy, how our understanding and answers will stand the test of time, and the distillation of this philosophy as a daily guide to living the most wholesome lives we can.

Chapter 26 Imperfections of the Life Instinct — Acceptance and responsibility Chapter 27 Future Evolution — Where are we headed? Chapter 28 How to Live — The existential question Chapter 29 Summation — Your portmanteau Chapter 30 Epilogue —Au revoir

How to Use the Book

Despite the above broad structure, as long as you have read Chapter 4 — ‘The Nature of Life and The Life Instinct’, you can read the other chapters independently. I have written them to make sense on their own. They are beads on the single string of the philosophy that holds them all up. Chapter 4 sets up that underlying, unifying theme.

The book may sometimes feel like a hairball of strands of thought, doubling back, intersecting and running parallel for short and long distances. But go with it because once you get the underlying philosophy and viewpoint under your skin, it will be your ever-present and reliable friend that jumps out to tackle any problem, esoteric or banal.

Reading all the topics will give you a well-rounded ability to deal with almost everything that concerns us in life, so I recommend it. But you may also focus on problems that interest you presently and move through the others as per your needs or curiosity.

We may never know in an absolute sense if this philosophy and its metaphysics are accurate. But if it is more or less so, all other philosophies and metaphysics, large and small, would be subsets of it. It is not hubris. There can be none of that as we, and everything we create, will vanish one day, forgotten and unmissed. Instead, it is the confidence that entirely within the ambit of our world, minuscule and inconsequential, this framework of thought will help us survive better.

This philosophy’s aspects will correspond to other ones, particularly rationalism, scepticism, objectivism, vitalism, existentialism, and nihilism. There are also ‘-logies’ such as evolutionary ontology, psychology, sociology and so on, that apply to several explorations in this book. However, I have not used these terms in this book because I want the reader to come to it without prior frameworks. I also want to stay with a single, simple, unifying theme throughout the various questions, rather than deviate into well developed but distracting academic areas.

Of course, correlation is unavoidable for those who are conversant with the existing philosophical schools and movements. However, I would advise them to set those aside for a while and read every part of this book from only one viewpoint — its premise. One may be tempted to coin a label, for example, ‘Life Instinctivism’, but the concept goes substantially beyond life and instinct, so I deprecate the term myself.

This book does not cover every aspect of life, but you can apply it to answer any other question if you understand and accept this philosophy. Once we consider both Metaphysics and Humanities in the light of the Life Instinct, this mental paradigm will be a powerful tool for any seeker of knowledge, insight and wisdom.

There is no doubt in my mind of the fundamental soundness of this philosophy. However, I may not have applied it correctly in all cases, in minor and major ways. For that, I readily accept complete responsibility.

If this edifice can be improved further through its application by you, my reader, and through your experiences, thoughts and feedback, I will be delighted.

(As each chapter of the book is published, its link is updated in the ToC below.)

Book: Philosophy of Life Instinct: Introduction

Introduction

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