There is a powerful mechanism that began with a simple cell, with energy as the sole currency. This mechanism built all the living beings that exist today.
It started small, with insignificant products. Over the course of 4 billion years, it prevailed over all kinds of threats, such as pandemics, predators and cataclysms. It has managed to adapt to the most diverse environments, ensuring survival and evolution.
It does not matter which name we call it. It could be homeostasis. What matters—and what everyone knows—is that it possesses a divine, non-explicit intelligence that regulates everything, within the appropriate parameters, to preserve life and ensure evolution. The solutions found in each case were so diverse that they made way for around 8.7 million beings of different species.
As with all mechanisms, there are a few tools that enable this process to be wholly effective. The first is sensing, which allows a simple cell to understand what is happening in its surroundings, so that the homeostatic system can act, operating to correct levels of cold, heat and pH.
In a brief explanation (which can be expanded by drawing on the lessons of Professor António Damásio, in his book “Feeling & Knowing”), living beings have changed biologically during the evolution process. As a result, the receptors that read and pass on information for homeostasis have become more sophisticated, in order to face more challenging threats. In some species, the nervous system develops itself, allowing “feeling” to lead to emotion, sentiment, mind and consciousness, as it happens in humans.
All of these increasingly sophisticated tools allow the interpretation of threat—to its varying degrees—and the search for more appropriate solutions to save more energy. This creates the possibility of intentionally developing habits and expectations. The need to socialise, to live in tribes, is ever stronger. Existential conflicts arise in regard to death, meaning and morality, as well as the emotions associated with them. The “pains” and “pleasures” become more sophisticated. Now we have fear, anger, hatred, anguish, sadness, shame, joy, euphoria, affections—all these with different intensities, at specific moments and states of health. None of it is inherently good or bad—everything serves the goals of preservation of life and evolution of beings.
Since this entire process requires energy, the survival solutions are true cases of “expertise” in saving energy. This means that they avoid everything that wastes energy, at all costs—they would rather look for ways to save it.
In living beings with more sophisticated nervous systems, in addition to the information received through the interoceptive system—which tells them what is going on in the body—information from the outside world also comes in through the five senses. All this data is filtered by feelings, emotions, memories, moods and points of view.
These animals continue to expend only the energy necessary for survival and evolution, and they apply basically the same formulas for fighting threats. They have pain and pleasure as parameters for knowing what is good or bad.
However, once it is possible to better interpret these threats and push for the solutions, righteousness, anticipation of scenarios and stronger limiting beliefs arise as additional parameters of energy management. As a result, skills become more sophisticated, developing from mere evolution to progress and technology. All of this is to save time, i.e., to spend less energy. All the great evolutionary, disruptive leaps were linked to huge energy savings. As an example: once we discovered that we could satiate ourselves with less food by cooking, we bought ourselves the time to develop new skills, including speech. As a consequence, tribal relationships developed. Technological advances, from the wheel to the aeroplane, as well as many others, also serve this purpose: saving time and energy.