Creationary Refinement: A Natural Law
Information is a currency that we cultivate and trade for the lessons learned
“It is not the possession of truth, but the success which attends the seeking after it, that enriches the seeker.”
- M. Planck
Process of Progress
Lived experience seems to be less about arriving at any given point of accomplishment and more about the adventure made towards that point.
It’s the journey that’s often regarded as the ultimate reward, not the destination - a common bumper sticker adage.
Intuitively, it makes sense. Things seem to be more about the process of shaping that which not yet is into that which could yet be; of looking to the open horizons of potentiality and playing — instinctively and constructively — with possibility.
In this way, progress is the only reliable metric for value, which carries some pretty substantive consequences.
It means that if we take time to appreciate (and thus value) the constructive process, we affix meaning to a considerable portion of our output and of the effort sacrificed.
If it’s suddenly not all about the outcome, meaning is spread out between the start and finish lines; the growth and decline of personal ambition, the failures and lessons learned - everything earns a purpose.
“The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes.”
- M. Proust
Beyond infusing meaning into many write-offs in life, such a perspective also breaks reality down into a much more manageable state of affairs.
Things don’t have to be all or nothing, as value isn’t solely derived from the success as much as its derived from the pursuit thereof. It’s cultivated by any steps taken in the right direction, even (and sometimes especially) from those steps that take us the wrong way.
In this way, failure becomes quite valuable as an informational commodity, possibly more valuable than its overrated counterpart.
Thus another simple but powerful revelation: Refinement, as a general process in itself, seems to be the golden common denominator that often gets overlooked in the whole equation.
Archetypal Refinement
The desire for refinement is encoded into every layer of existence; nature pursues it with unparalleled vigor.
Our own adaptation and evolution is a fortunate example of this.
A baby developing their motor skills day after day; medicine becoming more effective decade to decade; architecture becoming more sound from one generation to the next.
A proper existence demands continued improvement - a characteristic evident across life and matter of any kind.
“Life as we know it is a dynamic system of all these different molecules playing together and reinforcing one another, keeping the entire system stable and able to resist perturbations, learning about its environment and being creative and curious.”
- M. Wong
In an interview with astrophysicist Michael Wong, Wong explained to me his proposed Law of Functional Information - detailing how the increasing informational complexity of any system allows it to refine its way to evolution; “the system will evolve if many different configurations of the system undergo selection for one or more functions.”
This commitment to exploring configurations is evident among all lines of existence - biotic and abiotic, organic and even artificial; it’s a universal archetype applicable to anything from apples to moons (as Wong’s team examples in their study).
But what fuels it? What accounts for the motivation behind the all-encompassing need for explorative refinement that courses through all organisms?
While we may not understand the prime and primal reason, we at least understand one of the major propelling forces behind it all: failure.
“Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better.”
- S. Beckett
Explorative Failure
Failure is probably the most useful tool used by any organism trying to expand its presence through space and time. From origin and adolescence, everything learns how to do and to be via what not to be or do.
Moreover, for those organisms that enjoy the privilege of conscious awareness, the information gained from failure is much more everlasting than the momentary pain that comes with it.
Even if out of our control, negative experiences can consecrate positive outcomes.
If bad circumstances are inherited, lived experience will seek to avoid perpetuating the undesirable; this is especially true in child rearing, where effort is made to avoid repeating the ‘mistakes’ of parents.
It’s not always the case, but it’s the ideal outcome anyway.
Appreciating that Refinement courses through all parts of our reality allows for everything to hold value - the good, the bad, the triumph as much as the tribulation and the error as much as the inerrancy.
This refinement is predicated upon the information gained from failure.
And information is a currency that we cultivate and trade for the lessons learned that propel us towards the inevitable successes we seek out.
Creative Agency
Everything contains an innate curiosity about how to better improve its navigation through space and time. It gets there via failure, individually as much as collectively.
This process is an eternal one, with no fixed end in place, and there seems to be no ultimate point of achievement — only improvement in perpetuity.
It’s a testament to what seems to be the whole point of existence: progression, with an affixed level of creative agency that denotes empowerment and an authorship over ones own existence.
To be human, and to live any kind of meaningful existence, is to assume this authority over the whole adventure from start to finish, with an ability to appreciate the highs and lows and everything along the way.
