and political system that would be well suited to helping us live better with each other and with nature. A long time back I realized that our economic and political systems were not working well and I started to try to understand why.

To make a long story short, I have been writing about what a new system should look like and I have come to the conclusion, at least for now, that modeling our economic and political system based on biology could help provide some guidance for system design and how we think and talk about our systems. Part of the process, since we are conscious biological creatures, is to define who we are. The most basic and meaningful thing I could come up with was that we are conscious, a pretty amazing fact, and that all the boundaries that comprise us at all levels, even the less physical ones of thought and emotion, are semi-permeable. When you look at it that way each one of us is an individual and not separate or truly apart from those we live with and the environment we all share, kind of like holding Buddha (the non reality of the separate self) and Maturana and varella (autopoesis) together in the same concept.

My sig line comes from observing that life as a whole and human social interaction is far more cooperative than it is competitive. The ecological web of life in incredibly cooperative through all the interconnections all things have through their semi-permeable membranes, I include breathing, eating, sensing, and other processes as macro levels of semi-permeable boundaries, and social life is also incredibly cooperative. Competition stands out against a backdrop of cooperation which, like the remarkable fact that we are conscious, we sort of ignore.

When you feel love, whether it is focused and specific or diffuse and universal, I think you are noticing the ever present backdrop of mutually beneficial exchange made possible through the existence of semi-permeable boundaries that define form of any kind. I like Maslow calling it unconditional positive regard but I wanted something that encompassed a broader observation of living systems so I made up the idea that Love = Awareness of mutually beneficial exchange across semi-permeable boundaries.

Thanks for appreciating the idea, what's not to like about love. I have a lot of bio this and that on my website http://urpartofit.net if you want to see more.