Those Who Have It Made

What would have to happen for us to "have it made"? We usually think of having enough money so that we could buy whatever we wanted and would never have to work again.

But we wouldn't completely "have it made" because there would still be work that we had to do, such as taking care of our bodies. We would still have to move from one place to another.

What "having it made" really comes down to is complexity. We are more complex than our surrounding inanimate environment so we must exert energy, doing work, in order to survive. Whenever we alter our environment, such as building settlements or creating technology, we are actually imposing our higher level of complexity on our environment.

Living in an environment that is less complex than our own complexity also means that we must have free will. The fact that our surrounding environment cannot hold all of the complexity that our more-complex brains can conceive of means that our necessary free will has the possibility of being wrong.

So to really "have it made" we would have to live in an environment that is just as complex as we are.

If we lived in a "paradise" environment, that was just as complex as we are, we would have no need to move or think to get what we needed to live. We would truly "have it made".

What about plants? In my information theory living things that are more complex than their surrounding environment require free will. Living things that are not more complex than their surrounding environment do not require free will. This means plants. In my information theory plants are of far higher intricacy, meaning complexity per mass, but of overall complexity that is not higher than the surrounding inanimate environment.

This means that plants are really the ones who "have it made". Plants require sustenance to live, since they do have higher intricacy than the surrounding environment, but they do not have to exert any effort to get it, since they are of no higher complexity than that environment.

Everything that plants need is delivered right to them by the surrounding environment. They get water and nutrients from the soil. All of the energy that they need comes to them from sunlight. They take molecules of carbon dioxide that the air brings to them and use the energy that sunlight brings to them to split the molecules. The leaves or needles of the trees return the oxygen to the air and use the atom of carbon to build up the structure of the plant.

From the plant's own perspective it "has it made". Everything that it needs to survive is brought right to it. Plants must be doing something right because there is only a certain limited number of bioatoms on earth, atoms that are necessary for living things, which living things compete for. It is believed that there are about a thousand times as many bioatoms in plants as there is in all living things that can move and have free will, including all microscopic creatures. 

In the competition for bioatoms plants win easily and beings with free will are essentially parasites that are dependent on plants. This is yet another way that plants really "have it made". Plants are by far the dominant form of life on earth.

Plants cannot move. But why would they need to move? Everything that they need is brought to them by their surrounding environment. We can move but it is because we have to be able to move to get the things we need to survive.

Plants do not have senses. But why would they need to have senses? They do not have to seek anything that they need to survive because it is brought to them by their surrounding environment. We can see because we have to be able to in order to get what we need to survive.

Plants cannot think. But why would they need to think? They don't have free will because, although of higher intricacy, they are of no higher complexity than the surrounding environment. But why would they need to think? Since they are not of higher complexity than the surrounding environment, that environment is able to deliver to them all that they need to live.

Plants do not have civilization or great cities. But they have no need of civilization. Our civilization began when humans began to live in settlements, instead of a nomadic way of life. The reason for fixed settlements is that humans had learned to plant seeds to grow crops. The reason that humans needed a reliable supply of crops is that we are unable to digest grass. If humans could digest grass then civilization would have been unnecessary and of no benefit to us.

Aside from us not being able to digest grass another way we see that civilization is actually a sign of our weakness is in the places where civilization began. Humans are utterly dependent on water. So why then did the early civilizations begin in places that are dry? It doesn't seem to make sense.

The reason is that, in wet places, humans could survive by hunting and gathering and did not need civilization because wild foods were plentiful enough. But in dry areas people had to congregate around rivers to ensure a reliable supply of water. This weakness is why civilization began around major rivers like the Nile, Tigris-Euphrates and, Indus Rivers, which flow through areas that are usually dry. Further east the same principle applies to the civilizations that formed around the Hwang-Ho, Yangtze and, Pearl Rivers, that united to become China.

So the much sought after "having it made" comes down to complexity. The only way to truly "have it made", meaning that no work or effort is necessary to survival, is to not be of higher complexity than our surrounding environment. But then there would be no reason to have free will or the ability to move.

The earth is thus a paradise, but only for plants.

Here are links to the two postings that I use to introduce the information theory:

www.markmeeksideas.blogspot.com/2019/04/how-information-works.html?m=0

www.markmeeksideas.blogspot.com/2021/02/examples-of-how-information-works.html?m=0

The entire information theory is "The Theory Of Complexity", August 2017.

As far as ourselves, in terms of information, see "How Real Are We", March 2018.