[For those who missed the introduction: We have stolen a small Imperial Shuttlecraft. Using a hacked recognition code, Han and Chewie will attempt to land on Endor with the assault team and deactivate the force shield. Now read on...]

Beyond the Porcelain Throne

Series 1 / 1 - To Be Beneficial, or Not to Be Beneficial, that is the question.

Well, we've gotten as far as what entelechy means and realizing that destruction can be beneficial.

-Notice we don't call it "good", though, because in this story there is no bad or good. That's because this story is about Reality, and in Reality, there is no bad and good; there is only "beneficial" or "not beneficial".

Beneficial to what? I hear you wonder. Well, the forces of nature are by their nature always acting in the interests of nature as a whole, otherwise the universe wouldn't hold together [hear me baby; hold together!] and entelechy is no exception. "Beneficial", to it, means "Beneficial to the ongoing development of entelechy". In our terms, as living creatures on a planet, that means "beneficial to life, to health, and to our own and other species' development".

Okay, that's the 'light' side of the force. Obviously there's a dark side, or this story would be dull. The opposite of beneficial is "deleterious" -in our terms, anything that is deleterious to the ongoing development of life, health, ourselves and our environment.

You can probably think of a whole big bunch of things that you think are deleterious to life: war, murder, pollution, disease, British Rail sandwiches, weapons grade plutonium, and so on. But in doing this you're making the first mistake because you've forgotten that Reality doesn't think as humans do. Let's recap –there is no good or bad- in Reality, "beneficial" and "deleterious" are applicable differently in every individual situation.

For example, if you're a human, being at the bottom of the sea would be a very bad idea. But if you're a shrimp living in a thermal vent down there, it's really quite groovy. A nest of ants, aerating the soil accidentally by just going about its business, is beneficial; a nest of ants in your pants probably isn't. For a hungry human, cheese is pretty good. If you're a hungry human who has to take certain medications, however, cheese will kill you. Now you've got it. To nature, nothing in itself is good or bad –everything always depends upon the circumstances. Even nuclear reactors are beneficial to the little colonies of bacteria who live there ...because life does that –it's not prejudiced and it turns up everywhere.

Even things like murder, can be beneficial –most of us would happily murder the Ebola virus if it tried to infect us. And that carrot you are eating, has been murdered, yes. But –and this is an important clue to the way entelechy works- the carrot dies, that you might live...and you are a far more complex, developed expression of entelechy than that carrot. We have to eat something, but that's why most of us feel better about murdering a carrot in order to stay alive than we would, say, a dolphin, or each other. The humble carrot has less potential, in terms of entelechy, than we do. If carrots squeaked pitifully or shouted, "Aagh! Goodbye, my darling!" to each other when we tried to dig them up, we'd probably choose some less articulate vegetable to have for dinner.

Entelechy always prioritizes the agent with the greatest potential for entelechy, in computing what is beneficial, and what is deleterious, in any given situation. If we are to work with nature; if we are to find ways to live and to behave that are aligned with the natural laws of the universe, we must do the same. So in chapter 2 we're going to explore applying these laws to ourselves, and discover an underlying natural morality that all creatures are born with, that is the source of our happiness, intelligence, and wellbeing, and how staring down the porcelain throne can take that inherent natural wisdom away.