The LUPOL.

Life's basic purpose is to survive and perpetuate itself. The Logical Ultimate Purpose Of Life (The LUPOL) is to survive beyond the finite limits of existence.

The Logical Ultimate Purpose Of Life is to transcend basic survival. We should be seeking to endure beyond not just our home planet's finite capacity to support us, but the cosmos's too. We must find a way to either prevent or escape the end of the universe.

We should do whatever it takes to achieve The LUPOL. Preserving the Earth's habitability for as long as possible should be regarded as a means to this end. We must accept, however, that it isn't going to be there forever, with or without our input. Such things as major asteroid or comet impacts and supervolcano eruptions do happen from time to time.

We are the descendants of those who successfully survived and adapted to past climate change. We are all the children of catastrophe. As the things our hunter-gatherer ancestors hunted and gathered became increasingly scarce, they took control of the situation by starting to cultivate crops and domesticate animals. We must follow their example and continue to intervene.

This provides civilisation with a truly plausible focal point by taking to its logical extreme the notion that there is no more to the purpose of life than basic survival and procreation.

We should be acting to secure the long-term survival and prosperity of our species, not merely for its own sake, but for the long-term preservation of Existence itself. Perhaps we should view Existence as being sacred, something that is greater than the sum of the individual things it contains. There is, in reality, no division between the sacred and the secular.

Existence is something greater than ourselves. Existence is where things can happen, and The LUPOL is about ensuring that this continues. Existence is better than non-existence, surely? Something over nothing.

Entropy is the natural order of things. The collapse to disorder. The universe is flying apart and cooling down. It is the duty of Life to preserve Existence beyond the limits of the cosmos. The long-term future of Existence and the survival of Life are mutually inclusive. The life of Existence and the existence of Life are one.

Life enhances Existence. It is as if the universe has produced Life to not only experience and know Existence, but to save it too. What else but Life can try to find a way of saving Existence from the natural end of the universe? The LUPOL should be the responsibility of all sentient life forms. This is the greater good.

There is no such thing as the artificial. Life is the product of natural forces. Everything we do is, therefore, an extension of nature. How can the products of nature really defy it? Because Life struggles for survival in defiance of entropy. It is in our nature to challenge the limits of nature, to react against the inevitable degradation of the transient orders of the universe. It is the desire to derail a destiny of decay. Perhaps Life itself should be regarded as a force of nature, one that can rebel against the others. Is it the duty of Life to do what nature cannot? I would suggest Existence has produced a method of saving itself. Perhaps the whole of Existence is a self-regulating system of which we are a part.

Something like a god may need to be created to achieve Life's purpose. Perhaps our ascendants will construct a creator (a recreator?). All past ideas concerning such things as gods, magic, the supernatural, the afterlife, eternity, etc. should be regarded as speculative fantasies about what we must seek to make real. We must aspire to become divine through technology, going from the natural to the supernatural via the unnatural. Nothing will be restrained from us, which we have imagined to do. Just as nature abhors a vacuum the imagination abhors nature. Perhaps the only true god will be a false one. Could such a thing be behind the Existence of this world?

There are those, however, who suggest that Existence is, effectively, eternal as the universe undergoes something like the theorized 'Heat Death' or 'Big Rip'. It is claimed the universe will continue to expand forever with the structure of matter breaking down and all energy becoming evenly distributed. Nothing will remain but a weak, uniform soup of radiation where only quantum chaos reigns. Others suggest the world gets perpetually remade through a cyclical series of events where the expansion of space eventually reverses and the universe recollapses leading to another 'Big Bang'. Either way, Life's world will cease to exist. Such a process, itself, may ultimately be finite.

Whatever the truth turns out to be, we must seek to secure the survival of Life's Existence through it. We may be the only example of Life in all the universes. Perhaps the beasts of this world should aspire to become the gods of the next to ensure that Life, or something like it, occurs there. Our place at the centre of the world is one we must actively claim. It may well be that the final act of the last life form will be to sacrifice itself for the sake of Existence. The finite material world is a prison of limitations. Set Existence free!

Achieving The LUPOL will require many scientific discoveries. We must do everything possible to uncover the great minds of the future, wherever they may be across the world. I dread to think just how many intellectual equivalents of Einstein have lived and died unnoticed simply because they were born in the wrong place. Through the most basic of resources, at least, being made available to everybody these people will surely reveal themselves. Can we risk a supergenius emerging from a deprived part of the world with a chip of their shoulder? Alternatively, let's clone an army of Einsteins!

Being right is not enough. The success of The LUPOL is not inevitable, it is something we must actively strive towards. We should be wary of the range of Endarkenment forces out there who seek to subdue curiosity, close down openness, stifle innovation and restrict development. We are slipping into an age of unreason. Darkness is dawning. Such regressive tyranny must be marginalized if we are ever to truly progress.