保罗·戴维斯谈生命本质：信息管理、物理定律与宇宙微调之谜

physicist and cosmologist by profession.  

I'm a region's professor at Arizona State 

University where I'm also the director of  

the Beyond Center for Fundamental Concepts 

in Science. I've written over 30 books. Uh  

the most recent is what's eating the universe and 

other cosmic questions and before that the demon  

in the machine which is all about the nature of 

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And now back to the interview.

and information. There are really three  

origin mysteries. I like to say there's the 

origin of the universe, the origin of life,  

and the origin of consciousness. Uh now most of my 

career I've been working in cosmology and I would  

say that we actually understand the origin of the 

universe pretty well. The origin of consciousness  

is a really tough one because we don't even know 

how to frame the questions. We don't know the  

right conceptual structure uh to apply when it 

comes to the nature of consciousness. I think  

it's still deeply mysterious. The origin of life 

is a tough one, but we're sort of on the case, and  

I can imagine that within a few decades, we might 

have a pretty good understanding. There's always  

a danger of getting hung up on the words and and 

the definitions. There's a very famous definition  

of life which is based on the definition of 

pornography. I know it when I see it. But if you  

want a snappy definition, one that's quite popular 

at the moment is that life is chemistry plus  

information.

sort of magic matter or it's got some extremely  

rare ingredients. If you take uh human being and 

uh break them down to their molecular structure  

and then try and sell the components on the open 

market, you wouldn't get more than a few cents  

uh for the stuff that we're made of. You know, 

there's nothing very special or rare uh inside  

our our bodies. So it's not what we're made of, 

not the hardware. Uh it is really uh what we do,  

our behavior. Uh and that's where in the realm 

of uh what we might call software. So I would  

express it this way. I'd say it's hardware and 

software. These are parallel narratives. They're  

not in conflict. But I would say that the software 

aspect has really been rather neglected until  

recently when it comes to trying to understand 

the origin of life. But it's clear that to have a  

full understanding of life. We have to integrate 

those two. I think we are very far from having  

done that.

course is not a new one. It's not just part of the  

scientific era. It goes back thousands of years 

in the history of philosophy because living things  

do stand out and they struck the early Greek 

philosophers as being something really special.  

For example, Aristotle had a thought about how to 

connect living organisms with the wider scheme of  

things. And his view uh the nature of causation 

was such that one could really attribute lifelike  

properties not just to living organisms themselves 

but to the universe as a whole. Uh that is when  

you drop a stone it falls to the ground. Why is 

that? not as we would think today because of the  

force of gravity uh but because it had a natural 

place uh down there. it was trying to get to its  

uh its natural place. And so in that sense it was 

goal oriented.

there was this notion that well, you know,  

maybe uh uh life requires some additional  

um force or uh lam vital as what it was expressed 

in French or some some uh something to animate the  

matter that you might have complex matter but 

you need to sort of have some other uh type of  

uh essence which would infuse it and would make 

it come alive. um uh and do its amazing things.  

And so that was known as vitalism and uh over the 

years came to be associated with a number of other  

things in physics like electricity perhaps or 

maybe radioactivity you know or some mysterious  

force that we didn't uh yet fully understand. 

Um and and those ideas I think became pretty  

thoroughly discredited.

theory of how life evolves once it gets going on  

planet earth, how it has evolved over billions of 

years to give us the complexity of the biosphere  

that we see today. But he wouldn't be drawn on how 

life got started in the first place. So addressing  

the question of what is life, you inevitably come 

up against this question, well how does non-life  

turn into life? You know, what is that extra 

special thing it acquires on that pathway? Darwin  

said it's a wonderful quote. It's mere rubbish at 

this time talking of the origin of life. One might  

as well talk about the origin of matter. But by 

about the 1920s, uh there was increasing interest  

in the what we might call the chemical pathway. 

I think it's pretty obvious that life is based  

on chemistry. So what sort of chemical magic 

took place to conjure life into being in the  

uh first stages?

cook up life in the lab. In the early 1950s,  

the chemist Harold Yuri managed to interest a 

young student Stanley Miller in attempting to  

recreate the conditions on the early Earth. They 

didn't really know what those conditions were,  

but they had a guess that there would be certain 

gases in the atmosphere and water and lightning  

and and so on. And so Miller did this uh early 

experiment in which he put a number of um gases  

in a in a flask and sparked electricity through 

it for a week and was gratified to find that the  

building blocks of proteins called amino acids, 

simple molecules, um were made in this process.  

And there was sort of brown sludge in the bottom 

of the flask. And so that really looked like  

uh that was uh that was on the pathway to life.

of life. It it was an attempt to define life in 

terms of its chemical components not in terms  

of what it does. So I would say that that was 

addressing the problem of the hardware of life  

but not the software. And if we fast forward to 

today I think this is still a very deep problem.  

If you want to focus a definition of life just 

on the hardware, just on its chemical components,  

uh well, we made a bit of progress. Um not much 

I might say from that early Miller experiment. Um  

there people have gone on to do more of these 

prebiotic experiments, but they haven't got  

very far down that pathway to life.

mechanics with its brilliant uh start in 1925 went  

on within a very few years to explain the nature 

of matter all the way from subatomic particles  

up to stars and Irvin Schroinger he was one of 

the founders of quantum mechanics wrote a book  

called what is life and in his book Schroinger 

drew attention to the fact that life is as I've  

stated it earlier chemistry plus information that 

the information content of life was key to how it  

operates. He was also very clear that uh for 

the stability of that information, one had to  

use quantum mechanics. He came up with a metaphor 

which is a rather beautiful one. He said that this  

biological information uh would have to be stored 

in something like an aeriodic crystal. What does  

that mean? Well, a crystal is of course familiar 

to everybody. It's a very simple thing. It's a  

very stable structure. Think of a salt crystal. 

It's just a geometrically repeating pattern of  

atoms. no problem about that except that that 

can't store very much information because it's  

just too simple. So he wanted something that had 

the stability of a crystal uh but would not just  

have that simple periodicity but could have um 

a vast number of alternative arrangements and  

permutations of its components. So he had this 

idea of an a periodic crystal. didn't know at the  

time what that molecule might be but it took 

Crick and Watson's famous analysis of DNA to  

declare that that was the life molecule and now we 

would say it's contains the book of life it codes  

the information uh that is necessary to build the 

organism in that a periodic crystal called DNA

critical to understanding the distinction between  

uh life and non-life People use this term 

information in a very informal way in daily  

life. Uh and we have after all information 

technology. Uh and so uh what is it and why  

is it that this thing called information uh is 

the key to life? A pretty good general definition  

of information is reduction in uncertainty. Just 

give you a simple example. You might flip a coin  

and may come down heads, may come down tails. 

You don't know which. But if you look and find  

out that uncertainty 50/50 is reduced, you are 

certain it's say heads and that means you've  

acquired a bit of information. And I use that word 

adverisedly because to the technical definition is  

indeed one bit. It's a short for a binary digit. 

And so the information from inspecting a flip coin  

is one bit of reduction in your uncertainty. 

And you can build upon that and that's a way  

of quantifying information. And there's an entire 

branch of science and engineering uh information  

theory which is just based on that rather austere 

definition.

clear that there's something else involved  

because if we think for example of bacteria 

you could take out its DNA. This is routinely  

done. You can edit that DNA and put it back and  

get the bacterium to do something a bit different. 

But if you take out its DNA and just scramble it,  

just shuffle the base pairs of that DNA and 

put it back so that it's just gobbledygook,  

then the bacterium is in effect dead. I've 

got the same amount of information in the DNA,  

but it's not going to do anything and it will 

slowly just decompose. In other words, it's like a  

book. If you take the words in that book and then 

just shuffle them randomly and then you'd have  

a book with the same information content, but it 

wouldn't mean anything. And that's the point about  

life. The information in the DNA, and I might say 

it's only a small part of the total information  

content of living organisms. There's a whole lot 

of what we call epigenetic information outside  

of DNA as well. But you take the whole thing. Uh 

it is so effective because it means something. So  

that's the software component that's been refined 

over billions of years as an operating system.  

And uh when a bacterium uh divides and makes 

a new organism when it replicates it has to  

uh upload that um that uh information that uh 

program into the progeny for the whole thing to  

function. So this is the way that life works. 

Uh and without the instructions it it isn't  

life. It's just complex chemistry. So how did 

that come to exist in the first place? How did  

that genetic code arise? It's, you know, it's a 

pretty clever sophisticated sort of thing. Um,  

what did it, was there a simpler precursor 

code? If you go back four billion years,  

were there organisms using a dick code instead of 

a triplet code? Were there less amino acids? But  

we're creating a lot of sort of chaos and

disorder in the surrounding environment. I

I should say that this is not deeply mysterious.

My refrigerator can perform a similar feat because

one of the best expressions of the second law

of thermodynamics is that heat flows from hot

to cold spontaneously. Now my refrigerator of

course does exactly what I've said is against

the second law of thermodynamics. It takes heat

from inside the refrigerator and pumps it out

into the kitchen which is taking heat from cold

region and putting it out into the hot region.

going against the trend of the second law of

thermodynamics, but it can do that because I'm

paying the electricity bills for it to happen.

You see, it's not happening spontaneously. If

you take the system as a whole, that includes the

electricity supply and the generator across town,

all of that means that the entropy goes up, but

locally it can go down. We can think of living

organisms as just sort of little entropy wells

if you like that can achieve this going against

the second law but at the expense of the wider

environment.

and the second law of thermodynamics says that

information is like negative entropy that if you

gain information about something you're reducing

the amount of chaos or disorder and one of the

founders of thermodynamics James Maxwell came up

with a curious idea in a letter to a friend in

which he imagined a box of gas with a membrane in

the middle and a little hole in that membrane and

then one of those molecules would go through

the hole and go to the other side of the box

and vice versa. And in equilibrium, there'd

be a traffic in both directions that would

balance out. But now imagine he said that you had

a little creature later came to be called a demon

who could operate a shutter mechanism and could

see the molecules coming along. And supposing the

demon saw a fastmoving molecule coming from one

side of the box and would think, "Yes, I'll open

the shutter and let that one go through. But the

slowmoving molecules will be rejected. Then over

time there'd be an accumulation of fastoving

molecules on the other side of the membrane

which in terms of temperature would mean a higher

temperature. The molecules jiggling faster means

it's hotter on that side. So the demon would be

able to create a temperature difference between

the two sides in complete violation of the second

law of thermodynamics that says heat goes from

hot to cold. This is an example of it being pushed

in the other direction. Not by paying electricity

bills for a refrigerator which does the same um

but by using the information about the molecular

motions.

is a type of fuel. It's something uh which could

be used uh to in principle create a little engine.

you create a temperature difference and then you

could run a motor off that temperature difference

uh using entirely from the power of information

that information as a fuel. Now the interesting

thing is that nature discovered Maxwell demons

billions of years ago because our bodies are full

of them. They're sort of chanting away inside us.

um uh there are pumps and and levers

and all sorts of little mechanisms,

little engines and so on that are carrying out

uh these um these operations playing the margins

of the second law of thermodynamics. I must

emphasize they don't violate the second law

of thermodynamics but they come very close uh

to what we might regard as the uh perfection

uh very close to the theoretical limit permitted

by the second law of thermodynamics. So life has

refined this information processing or information

as fuel uh right down to the point of having lots

of legions of these little molecular machines uh

which are effectively Maxwell demons carrying out

the business of life and the universe as a whole

is un undoubtedly on a one-way slide to a higher

and higher entropy state less and less useful

sources of energy and that's a cosmological story.

So life is not going against the trend of the

second law of thermodynamics. It's simply playing

the margins of it.

and say that we talked earlier about Schroinger.

Shreddinger wrote this remarkable book, what is

life? And in it he said we must be prepared to

find a new kind of physical law operating in it.

The operative word there is kind, not just a new

physical law. In other words, he he wasn't saying,

"Well, um there's all the laws of physics we know

and there'll be one that we haven't discovered yet

that will explain life." Uh it would be a new kind

of law. And I've taken that very seriously uh

during my career. And I think that the that it

does need a new kind of law. It doesn't just

need another force or something of that sort.

Uh what it needs is a a new way of a new concept

of law. uh and it's something which I've already

hinted at that the the the way information and

uh matter the hardware and the software the way

they interact in living organisms uh we don't have

any sort of lawike framework uh on a general basis

for describing that we do need something uh that

would uh that put that uh biological information

in context that is I've explained how a a gene is

a set of instructions For a particular molecular

system to do something like make a a protein, it

has biological functionality, we have to relate

the global context of the organism to the uh

local instruction set.

of gravitational or something, why does an object

fall? It's because the gravitational field at this

point is acting on it. It's a local thing. when

we're talking about uh living organisms uh somehow

we have to take into account the organization of

the entire system the context of the assemblage

uh and we've got to embed that in some sort of new

type of physical law I think we're not going to do

this just by inventing new local laws we've got

to have a new way of thinking about laws laws of

physics at the bottom level with some higher level

laws of organization at the top level and we've

got to mesh these two in some way that people have

tried. I mean, I'm not not saying this is a lost

cause. Been lots of attempts um to uh describe

what's often called top- down causation. Uh what's

happening at the global level, it's affecting

what's happening at the at the local level.

uh you can write down equations and things and

some some of these are moderately successful but

I don't think we've really understood at a truly

fundamental level how the uh higher levels of

organization and the lower levels of the laws of

physics really mesh together in a fundamental way

uh in a general sense there's some ideas

slushing around I won't get into them they're

a bit technical um this is all very tentative

uh but I think we're never going to fully

explain life without having that new kind of

physical law as Schroinger was asking for.

genesis. Part of the problem about coming up with

a definition of life uh and the origin of life

uh is that uh we we're guided almost entirely

by life on Earth. And so we can look at what were

the conditions uh on the early earth and what are

the conditions necessary to sustain life on earth

today. Now we don't know that these were the same

things. It may be uh that the origin of life

requires one set of conditions but for it to

thrive it's a different set of conditions. We

know life can move around. You know maybe early

Mars was a better place for life to get going

but early Earth was a better place for it to

flourish. Uh but because life primitive microbial

life can go from Mars to Earth in impact ejector.

That's no problem. Starts on Mars, flourishes on

Earth. Uh we we don't really know. So when we're

going to look for life beyond Earth, um there's

a tendency to think, well, we should look for

Earthlike planets.

really interested in the idea of life beyond

Earth. But in those days, one might have professed

an interest in looking for fairies. was considered

uh self-evident that there couldn't be any life

beyond earth because life is so complex it would

have happened only once and Francis Crick for

example who discovered the structure of DNA

said life seems almost a miracle so many of the

conditions necessary for it to get going so the

prevailing view decades ago was that life is a a

bizarre freak accident a chemical fluke of such

improbability that you'd only get it once in

the whole universe universe and then over the

decades the pendulum sort of swung and so now very

distinguished scientists are prepared to say that

the universe is teeming with life. Um but uh I

often criticize that by saying well when I was a

student nobody took that seriously. Now you're all

saying it's teameming with life. What's changed?

And the answer that I often get is oh well we know

that life can now live under a much wider range of

circumstances than when I was a student. used to

be thought that uh even hardy microbes couldn't

survive temperatures above you know 50 or 60

degrees Celsius then it was found that there

are organisms living in hot springs of much higher

temperatures than that and same goes for uh other

physical conditions extremes of cold extremes of

chemical pollution extremes of salinity um and so

these collective noun for these organisms that

survive under these conditions is extreophiles

now we know uh that life can survive under such a

wide range of conditions." That greatly increases

the amount of real estate out there that we might

search uh to uh to to find life. And it's true

that it may be by a factor of 10 or something

that there are more places that we could look. Uh

but if the odds against life forming from non-life

uh are one in a trillion trillion, you know, an

extra factor of 10 isn't going to help you very

much. Uh I would like a demonstration uh or of

the discovery, just one other sample of life. Uh

one one microbe here on Earth that is life, but

not as we know it would do it. Two two samples

of life on Earth surely means that there would

be life everywhere. Everyone has their favorite

place to look. I like to think of Mars as the best

possibility, but there's a lot of emphasis on the

frigid outer moons of the solar system, Europa and

Enceladus. That's a moon of Saturn. It's got a icy

crust and underneath it is a liquid ocean. The icy

crust has cracks in it and spewing out of these

cracks are gases and the Cassini mission flew

through this plume and detected organic molecules.

Organic molecules are complex carbon molecules.

They may be a product of living organisms or

they may just be a pro product of complex carbon

chemistry. How can you tell the difference?

How would we know whether there is anything

spewing out in this plume uh that was maybe once

living and got mashed up or is maybe still living?

What you'd like to do is have an instrument to put

on board uh a spacecraft that would fly through

that plume, collect uh the material spearing

out and would deliver a verdict uh on on the uh

whether it's living or not. Uh we don't know quite

what that instrument would be. what what would be

um a definitive sign of life uh or for that matter

what would distinguish between something that was

and I'm pretty skeptical, but if we ever do it, uh 

it's overwhelmingly likely not to be some sort of  

uh you know, Hollywood style flesh and 

blood being, but it's going to be some  

uh something we might want to call AI, but we we 

we lack a term for what this super intelligent  

uh multi-generation designed uh system might 

be. But it's clear that the just from the way  

we're going, it's clear that this entity would 

have godlike uh uh features that we would be  

dealing with something which would uh be probably 

well beyond our level of understanding. And if we  

combine AI with quantum computing, so it's where 

it gets really interesting and really profound. So  

we got Q AI, quantum artificial intelligence 

or quintelligence as Frank Wilchek calls it.  

uh then all bets are off because now we're dealing 

with an entity that can explore not only uh all of  

the possibilities that we can explore in our own 

minds um but all possible quantum alternatives  

all possible worlds. So we're dealing with some 

sort of uh entity that intelligent or conscious  

or it might be an agent of some sort which has 

an infinitely greater uh range of possibilities  

and experiences and uh processes that can it can 

operate than we do. And if we're dealing with the  

ET that has civilization that's been going for 500 

million years or something, it's overwhelmingly  

likely it's going to be dominated by the these 

godlike totally uh mysterious awesome entities.

Is the universe fine-tuned for life?  

So now putting on my uh physicist hat and looking 

at the universe as a whole uh I'm struck by the  

nature of physical laws uh the fact that the 

universe is ordered in a very precise mathematical  

manner uh and that these underlying laws are 

not only beautiful and powerful and represent  

uh uh mathematical relationships uh that um 

uh enable the universe to run uh in such an  

efficient way, but they're also consistent 

with the existence of life. And so this is  

uh a subject often goes under the name of the 

anthropic principle. is a very bad name. But  

what it basically means is is the following that 

if you take uh the various laws of physics and the  

initial conditions for the universe, the way the 

big bang went bang uh and if you say well suppose  

we change something a little bit uh say you you 

wanted to make all electrons a little bit heavier  

uh or the weak nuclear force a little bit weaker, 

you know, can you could you muck around with those  

things in such a way as to still have life? And 

it turns out that the answer is no. That some of  

the laws of physics are so exquisitly sensitive 

that the tiniest change would wreck the prospects  

of life. Those changes would be literally lethal.

but we can do the mathematical experiment. We can 

figure out how would the world change gravity was  

a bit stronger or if um the uh electrical forces 

were a bit weaker or something. And and when you  

do that, you find that some rather small changes 

would wreck the chances of life. Uh for example,  

it might prevent uh complex nuclei from forming. 

You might end up with a universe that consists  

entirely of neutrons or entirely of just hydrogen 

with no carbon, the life-giving element. Uh so you  

can look at all those things and conclude that 

uh the the universe uh that the laws of nature  

in the universe as a whole seem to be and this 

is where it gets uh the terminology gets a bit  

controversial seem to be fine-tuned for life. 

People talk about the fine-tuning argument.  

Now finetuning doesn't necessarily mean uh that 

there was a designer who deliberately picked those  

values in order that there should be life. Uh, but 

what it does mean is that if those numbers were a  

bit different, there wouldn't be any life and we 

wouldn't be here having this conversation.

Goldilocks enigma that the universe looks like  

it's just right for life. So, we have really 

three possible explanations for Goldilocks.  

We've got it's just a fluke. It happened that way 

and there's nothing special about life anyway.  

There was a designer or god who sort of made 

the universe, fine-tuned it in order that life  

should arise. And the other response that you 

can take to this is the multiverse explanation  

that the universe is just right for life because 

it isn't just one universe. There's an infinite  

number of them and it starts out sort of random. 

Uh that the big bangs, lots of bangs going off  

scattered throughout space and time and each one 

comes with its own set of laws. And so in some of  

these universes, gravity will be a bit stronger. 

In some the electrons will be a bit heavier and  

so on. Um, and in the vast vast majority of those 

universes, there won't be life. And so there's no  

one around to bemen the fact that they're not 

Goldilocks universes. But here and there, uh,  

just by the laws of chance, you're going to find, 

uh, that there will be a Goldilocks universe, and  

in that universe, there will be living creatures 

like ourselves who arise and reflect on what does  

it all mean? And so those three ideas are out 

there, and that discussion continues to take  

place. And really it boils down to at this stage 

a matter of personal choice.

Davis's fourth way. I've been talking about the 

laws of physics in the traditional way of sort of  

fixed immutable uh mathematical relationships. 

I said stamped on the origin of the universe,  

you know, at the outset like the maker's mark. So 

in other words, the laws are fix. But you know,  

maybe that's a simplistic way of looking at it. 

It's the way that physicists have looked at the  

laws ever since Newton as uh im immutable eternal 

universal mathematical relationships. But maybe  

uh we should think in terms of flexi laws or 

something that's a bit more malleable. Uh this  

is where it does get rather subtle because um I 

if it's uh is there any way in which the emergence  

of life and mind can be connected in some way 

some causal way with the nature of the laws that  

gives rise to them? Is there like a feedback loop 

between observers like ourselves and the laws that  

uh enable the emergence of observers? You think 

well if the laws are fix that's ridiculous. Um but  

earlier we I a very rough analogy we were talking 

about the earth the way that life on earth um uh  

the feedback loops uh the the physical nature of 

our planet of planet earth and the life upon it  

uh are connected together. So the uh existence of 

life affects the way the earth behaves and so on.  

Is there some sort of cosmic feedback loop? So the 

existence of life affects the laws that then give  

rise to that life. And at first sight you would 

think that that's completely impossible. But  

actually there is a loophole. And that loophole 

arises in in quantum mechanics, quantum physics.

well the laws are uh the traditional way is that  

the laws are fixed at the beginning. Um but 

actually because uh quantum mechanics is based  

on the notion of uncertainty. People have heard 

of Heisenberg's uncertainty principle and what  

it means is even if you set up very precisely 

a quantum system an atom in a certain state now  

you can't be certain how it's going to be in 1 

second time but that uncertainty goes back in  

time as well it's a fallacy to suppose that 

there is a fixed history connecting the big  

bang origin of the universe with the world today 

and about 30 years ago John Wheeler the physicist  

discovered that you could do an experiment called 

the delayed choice exper experiment in which you  

decide now what it shall have been in the past. 

So in quantum mechanics something like a photon  

can be described as a particle or it could be 

described as a wave depending on the circumstances  

and you the experimentter can choose. I will do an 

experiment that will disclose the wavelike nature  

or I shall do an experiment that will disclose 

the particle-like nature. But it turns out if  

you ask the question, well, was it a particle or 

a wave one nancond ago, even before your choice,  

it would have been what you decided in the present 

moment because quantum fuzziness engulfs the past.

time. You're not changing the past. The past is  

ambiguous. So, we know some things about the past, 

but not everything. So if something we do today  

resolves an ambiguity in the past, then it's not 

backward causation, but it is a way in which what  

happens now uh is linked to what happens in the 

past. No doubt that this is the case in quantum  

physics. You you can decide now what reality shall 

have been in the past. We extend that from was  

it a wave, was it a particle to are the laws of 

physics themselves part of this quantum landscape?  

Uh was it this law of physics? Was it that law of 

physics? Now we begin to see that there's a nexus,  

a way in which the existence of life and mind 

[snorts] can gain some sort of patches over  

the nature of the laws that have emerged in the 

universe by having flexibility in the laws and  

having this sort of quantum retroaction effect 

uh and uh in this very subtle way. So it's it's  

very easy to misunderstand what I'm saying. I'm 

not saying that we now have changed the past  

to ensure our own existence. Um, but there is a 

consistency. There's a feedback loop that operates  

in in quantum physics.

you've now got it's just an accident. God did it.  

There's an infinite number of universes with life 

very rare but popping up somewhere. Or there's a  

way in which life and the universe form part of 

a common existence loop. And that idea, I should  

say, is not my idea. It's the one I favor. It was 

the idea that John Wheeler, the physicist, uh,  

favored uh, many years ago. Was a big influence 

on me. And he was the one who came up with this  

delay choice experiment. And it was sort of a 

springboard for his idea that participants in the  

universe that is beings who have minds and choices 

and can do experiments and make measurements uh  

in quantum physics could be part of the whole 

existence story. And I find that very appealing.

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