A living being is ordering within disordering, in other words it's the continual attempt to make a distinguished pattern in otherness. Life's fundamental aspect is need. Living beings have the need to sustain, then when possible grow, and when possible create or procreate. All those needs are fundamentally the need for continued and increased power. Power is measured in terms of how ordered a living being is, how distinguished it is in its environment, its complexity, efficiency, and size. Power is also measured in terms of a living being's ability to replicate its order and the amount of resembling order that exists outside of it, including other similarly ordered living beings. All actions by a living being are caused by needs. There is no fundamental difference between needs and actions. Needs that may also be considered actions follow actions that may also be considered needs in a cycle. The cycle is similar to cause and effect, where every cause is an effect and every effect is a cause. When a need is following an action, that action is a disordering action. When an action is following a need, that action is an ordering action. Actions can be both ordering some aspects of a person and reality and disordering other aspects. The need to grow, create, and procreate are related to a living being's need to cause actions that are more ordering on average than disordering. Complex needs and actions are the accumulation of various simple needs and actions. This cycle of need and action takes place intermittently both internally and on the external portion of the living being. Internal needs and actions eventually provoke overt external needs and actions or what to an outside observer simply looks like action. Opposing needs compete and the strongest needs have the most influence on the more complex needs and actions that are caused by them. A simple living being has simple needs. The higher the animal the more complex the needs it's capable of having. People who have complex needs have them because they use their ability to make complex thought to think about their needs. All thought is action caused by need and the fundamental subject of all thought is need and action. Needs and actions are part of reality, therefore all thought is about reality. A need all people share in various intensities is the need to hide from aspects of reality. For some people this need manifests itself as the need to hide from reality altogether. If one's need to hide from reality is stronger than other needs one won't think about his needs and therefore won't obtain complex needs. He'll act from simple needs and be little more than an animal. Some people do think much about their needs, and therefore create higher needs, but they do so inaccurately. Rather than hiding from reality by not thinking about it, they hide from reality by avoiding aspects of it and misrepresenting it. Such people may be far from animals, but have very little power. When a person is willing to think about reality, but has the need to hide behind misrepresentations, then people and cultural forces, with needs that don't necessarily correspond to that person's individual needs for power, will be able to easily fool him. It takes courage to spend much time and energy accurately reflecting on reality. Basically, in this case courage is defined simply as having sufficient need to counter the need to hide from reality. If one has the courage to think about reality long enough to take his need for power and make in into the complex need to use his intellect to seek power, then that need may outweigh the need to hide from reality in subsequent circumstances. Overall his power will increase. When actively thinking, various needs take turns coming to the forefront for various lengths of time. Since needs are caused by disordering actions as well as causing ordering actions, thought can both be ordering and disordering. Basically, certain aspects of the body are being ordered while others are being disordered. It seems likely that what's most being ordered during thought are parts of the brain and what's most being disordered are other parts of the body that are integral to the thought process. Concerning overt external action; indecisiveness, lack of focus and actions done halfway are the result of a stalemate or near stalemate among the needs competing in the moment. This is common during times of pressure. One obtains more power by efficient use of thought; by letting one's need compete during times of leisure, during times of pressure one will have resolve.
