We pause on the path of the unfolding of life and take a step back to take in the whole, both as it has been seen so far, and how it will develop. Several characteristics of the journey can be seen from this point of view.
- Life is a journey in discrete stages.
- The larger entity develops to a point and then it becomes host to new cooperative beings. Cooperative relationships develop concurrently that weave the new entities into the whole of a new stage. We have so far only looked at the relatively cooperative world of bacteria. From the next stage onwards, each stage will be composed of a photosynthetic part and a predatory, animal part.
- Even with the introduction of competition and predation as functions of the developing system, the journey is characterized by increasing cooperation. Cooperation is often the winning strategy in the survival of the fittest, and there is also advantage in cooperation on the largest scale, because it results in increasing stabilization and regulation of the whole environment.
- The path of life is also marked by increasing awareness. This too is often a winning strategy. Awareness, or “mind”, is seen to have been an essential ability of life from its very beginning. The development of mind can be traced in individual beings up through the development of nervous systems and brains.
Composed of cooperating new beings, each new stage can also be seen as itself more aware. A new stage either finds ways to inhabit new parts of the environment or it finds better ways to make use of the old environment.