tis but a piece of the puzzle we call life

Nietsczhe's Will to power. The will to survive is only a manifestation of the will to power. most things can be reduced to just another form of the will to power.
the desire to commit suicide is also an expression of it, since it is a desperate attempt of an individual to grab the reigns back into their own hands again. Self-mutilation by prisoners, emos, etc.
It is one of the most basic biological functions for organisms (and even inorganic processes) to expand and grow, and exploit. .. and eventually encounter others. Complexity arises from simplicity, it emerges, out of itself.
Viruses... grow... they're not even alive.. it's a macromolecule... why? why my little virus, why do you grow? What is your ultimate purpose?

That's an interesting way of thinking about the concept, though as you said it doesn't address the underlying reason.

the desire to continue existing is mostly a subconscious inner hope someone has that they can still achieve something. Hypothetically, If the world blew up, or were to come to an apocalyptic event... even the saddest most desolate individuals would be.. quite pissed.. like "Hey! not fair! i still wanted to.. achieve something.. I had Plans! :O"
Those who are suicidal but apprehensive have yet to figure out what it was. Most people simply fear to cease existing because they fear being forgotten. Without having made a dent on the flow of history.
one of my fanfic character's last words, "whatever you do...Leave a big Mark"
I say again, the Will to Power is a pretty low-level fundamental thing.

Porn.

And the question is answered, once and for all.

Thank you.

Ah but porn is simply a further expression of that same instinct. Thus porn is in fact a facet of the great mystery of life.

That's just it. We're nothing but replicators. We do nothing more than replicate on the most basic levels. It's how we got our start and it's the primary limitation. The only time we deviate from it is when outside forces come into play. Radiation can cause DNA to replicate imperfectly, but it's still going to replicate.

To expend energy. The idea behind abiogenesis is this as well--that life began as a way to expend the mass quantities of energy being output from the Sun, because, as scientists tend to say, "nature abhors a gradient." Single-celled organisms formed, then evolved into plant life, the energy of which is consumed and transformed by plant-eating animals, which are in turn consumed and their energy transformed by meat-eating animals.

Also, because the primary purpose of any object is to continue its existence. Otherwise, chairs and other useful non-living objects would pop randomly in and out of existence, or break and transform into something else, and that would be most unpleasant.

I believe you are not only on the right track but that your ideas are well reasoned :)

You reveal that the motivation to continue to exist is not only exclusive to living things but a fundamental function of existence.

Well, I wish I could take even SOME credit for the idea, but you can read about it where I did: an article titled "Life as an Agent of Energy Dispersal" by Scott D. Sampson, found on pages 29-32 in the wonderful book "What is Your Dangerous Idea?: Today's Leading Thinkers on the Unthinkable" edited by John Brockman. It came out only back in mid-March, and I discovered it almost immediately as it hit the shelves. I devoured it, and all the articles in there are so fascinating, so I highly recommend it to everyone.

One explanation, from a human perspective, is that it is a will for immortality. And through passing on your genetic code you find a way to partially achieve it... A legacy is also a good way of explaining it. As a legacy is also an attempt to immortality. Well thats my way of looking at it.

Organisms without a survival instinct perish, organisms with a survival instinct survive and flourish, spreading the genes for the survival instinct through the population. Just like anything else in evolution, if it increases odds for survival, it will have a tendency to multiply in the gene pool.

This is the correct answer to this very easy question ^_^

Why does it exist? Random chance.
Why does it persist? Organisms possessing it tend to live longer and reproduce more often.

That is all there is to it.

There is a big hole in the logic though. The survival instinct is meaningless if one chooses not to reproduce, so why does it appear in the first place? Why did reproduction itself become any kind of priority?

This is also quite simple: no desire to reproduce leads to no or little reproduction. Reproduction being the method through which genes are passed along, this tends to cause the vast majority of creatures to have this desire. Obviously there are multiple factors to consider as to whether or not this or that gene gets passed on; it was not my intention to make it sound otherwise.

A has no genes for reproduction or survival.
B has genes for reproduction, not survival.
C has genes for survival, not reproduction.
D has genes for survival and reproduction.
A doesn't reproduce, gets killed. Will decline in population immediately.
B reproduces, but doesn't survive long. Children do the same. Will generally decline in population.
C lives a long, hearty life but doesn't pass genes on, so declines in population.
D reproduces and survives, as does its children, and its children's children. Becomes plentiful in population.
Simple logic.

To ensure that there's life. To answer that question, you first need to ask: "Why is there life in the first place?"


And the only answer I can think of to THAT is... umm... the planet would be boring without little things running around on it?

tell that to the rocks :P

The rocks already know they're boring! Even the pretty ones are boring after you look at them for a few minutes.

The only time rocks are ever fun is when they roll down-hill. Or we throw/catapult them at each other. :<

Because without it the anarchy of the ecosystem would collapse and we would all be idiots +). It gives us a sense of safety while impairing our ability to think straight by contradicting your logical thoughts. Instinct is nessesary for the checks and balances of life =)

Surivival instinct doesn't really play the same role as it used to when survival of the fittest was key to survival X3

We have the instinct to survive because everything that did not have this instinct died off rather quickly.

Because it must!

Survival instinct is there due to the continuing process known as evolution. Creatures, even a single celled ones, that posessed no survival instinct or aversion to pain became food for other creatures. The ones that were left didn't necessarily have what we would think of as a survival instinct, so much as an aversion to injury. Injury is an unpleasant experience. The ones that developed a high enough aversion to pain or any form of negative stimulus, eventually bred with others that had similar aversions to negative stimulus. This led to a race against death referred to as survival of the fittest.

Basically, there isn't so much a thing known as a "survival instinct," so much as a wide array of aversions to negative stimuli, that when added together, amount to death.


At least, that's my two cents on the matter. We all survive now primarily because our ancestors got better at being picky about how they allowed their bodies to be treated.

"It's funny how all living organisms are alike... when the chips are down and the pressure is up, every creature on this earth is interested in one thing and one thing only. Its own survival."

Not not on this earth. You must be mistaken :3

Whoops... my bad.

Sorry if I came off as harsh there. Was making a point. Me and a good friend of mine think that there's no point of the survival instict thing. I've seen a lot at a young age...and tbh i think the humans should be blown outta this galaxy. Especially on what happened yesterday....eesh

Oh? What happened yesterday? o.O

you didn't hear? A mob of walmart shoppers actually killed a temporary worker because of the black friday rush

How could someone (or in this case a mob) take a man's life to save money on material possessions?

Don't ask me...ask the people that did it :3.

me being a gaianatic(made up word) I believe its just natures way of having a perpetual motion of life and death, rather than have none and go kaput. and the survival instinct is brought the many stages of evolution, starting from the micro organism, to the changing survival techniques of the modern mammal to amphibian... etc. thats what I think.

42

To a certain mind, sentience is the cruelest joke the Cosmos ever played on a group of primitive mammals.

However, there is an underlying question - why does anything exist at all? Why is there a Cosmos to begin with?

Personally, I see it as an extension of the Theory of Evolution: those that are best adapted to survive, will. Basically, when faced with a threat to its health of some sort, some ancient sea slug or something had a moment of psychosis and ran while the others didn't, thus allowing the creature to pass down its broad psychosis to its descendants. The descendants than over the course of several generations narrowed the psychosis into a "survival instinct" by the natural weeding out of those with the wrong psychosis (i.e. an anchovie attacking a hungry shark by swimming straight into its mouth while the rest of the school flee).

that assumes that reproduction developed.

That in fact is the underlying question, why did the need to reproduce appear?

So species won't die out, because creatures of it are too lazy/scared/self-centred to have kids. Sadly human kind is very misguided and outrageously unimaginative at it's procreation practices.

There is no 'need' to reproduce. It's just that organisms that do reproduce are very quickly going to outnumber those that don't.

Living organisms have been reproducing themselves since the days of bacteria. As stormydragon said, those species that do reproduce are going to overwhelm those that don't relatively quickly. Therefore, the species that have a stronger urge to reproduce will be better able to out-compete with other species by sheer numbers.

Of course how this whole shebang called "life" with all its weird habits that it developed along the way (self preservation, reproduction) got started is a bigger question. I personally think the multi-verse has a sense of humor and it probably all got started when someone went back in time to figure everything out and sneezed.

So I can destroy each one of you.

My first thought would be "because everything that didn't have survival instincts died out due to lack of survival instincts". Obviously it'd be a bit more complicated than that, but I imagine that it's probably the simplified reason.

In my mind, the brain sees the danger and the body reacts to it, even before you think about what you need to do to survive, this is most likely an instant segment of random code in your brain that becomes trigured when you see, hear or feel threatend/indangered.

This might not make sens but thats just how my mind works.

god doesn't want to keep creating humans so she made it so they would do it themselves.

XDDD This is the basical question why do we exist that people have tried to answer for years if you think about it the right way. Truth is, I don't know the answer to it, and to formulate what I wan tto tell it would take too long for this journal not to be old by then :b

It's kinda' interesting to note how the conflict between the will to exist and the total inevitability of death is the major driving factor behind a lot of how the world has developed. EVERYONE wants to survive, and yet in every case, they'll eventually die. Even if they manage some measure of immortality - either by protecting themselves, or (and necessarily) by shutting off the aging code in their genetics, something will still eventually kill them. Whether it be a genetic mutation, some flaw in the "protection", the heat death of the universe....

I think a lot of folks nowadays completely avoid noticing that. :P

I only read some of the other peoples posts because theres far too many of them but I beleive that the survival instinct is a left over instinct from the time when we first climbed out of the primordial ooze, back then it would of been fight or flee, since then we evolved enough that we barely ever need that instinct any more but because of where we came from its practically imprinted upon our very souls to find a way for ourselves to survive no matter what

becuase who or what ever created us made a a fuckin big mistake if you need proof of this look at the website we're on. ;)

It just happens. We know how it happens and have a pretty good idea how the conditions came to be that led to it starting to happen, but that's it. I don't know that further investigation, which will no doubt continue, will ever find a reason for it to happen though. Having a 'reason' implies that someone/something decided that it should happen in the first place, for their reason, which is something that we have no credible evidence of. *shrug*

It's probably simply a hard wired instinct that goes back to mankind's early history when we had complete ignorance of the universe beyond that there were a whole bunch of things that want to hurt us. And that pain is bad and should be avoided at all costs. Or all that kind of thing.

Life is inherently driven to reproduce. The life that came about that did not have this will simply did not reproduce and died off. After reproduction comes the care for the offspring, which can go on well after the reproduction itself is difficult or impossible.

But we've got enough people around that are taking care of reproduction so we can just put around and have fun if we want. :)

God did it.

If we did not, then we would not reproduce and in 100 years then we would all be gone except a few and fewer and fewer children and their children and then we're all gone. We go extinct without it and woulnd't have to ask this question because we're all dead. :(

We like it too, yes? :))))

Hmm, I personally believe all life has the drive to survive simply because it wishes to continue and strive to find out more about itself. Our eternal quest for understanding of our world makes us want to be in it longer so that we might learn and have more to pass along to our offspring in addition to our genes.

that's just my take on it though, I'm sure a lot of people have thier own opinions.

Suppose the poetic origin of all.

Light and dark.

Can we assume along with science that light is in fact energy, hyperactive protons whizzing about in a delightful glow? And the absence of this energy, entropy, is darkness.

Does energy desire to survive? If it could, would it?

Suppose light is representative of life. It is in all popular myths. Life and light go hand and hand. Entropy, death and darkness revolve around the same sphere.

Perhaps energy itself, in the resistance of entropy, begot the earliest of will that encouraged longevity and nurtured the concept of sustained existence. Thus the very simplest of life forms, single-cells and onward, were hard coded with a driving force extending beyond memory or neural wiring; but an innate compulsion as a being composed of matter that sought to extend its active energy presence. This of course follows right into reproduction, the longevity of the species.

Alternatively, perhaps unseen forces we might know as gods have particular plans for our biological mass at a key evolutionary point. Of course, we must live long enough to get there.

Also a very well thought out theory. Simplifying the concept into one that is purely physical and is mirrored in all things.

Boy am I the wrong person to ask. I won't go into it here, but there are times I hate having a survival instinct.

I've always considered the theory that this life is Hell (or some other such punishment), and while we have the ability to end it at any time, we're given survival instincts to make us fear that option more than anything. Life, then, is either a gigantic and immesurably cruel test of our souls, or a learning experience.

I'm not saying I really BELIEVE this is true, only that if it WAS it'd explain some things... *shrugs*

Eastern thought tends to relate the question as a quest to find self-fulfillment. The survival instinct is, therefore, in a strange way, false. The destination is pointless without the journey.

Suppose we look at the opposite: what if we "DIDN'T" have the survival instinct? Then, given a fight or flee response, we wouldn't do neither-- we'd just stand there and let death. No effort to live implies no desire to find that ultimate meaning or fulfillment. The endgame's value lies in the overall experiences. We need as many of these as possible to finally make self-fulfillment mean something. And even then, after we found it, we work to bring others down that same road.


Death means nothing without life, and life means nothing without death. It's opposite is the only thing that gives anything value. Our survival instinct exist because life means something.

God: "Whoops, that was an accident. I just haven't got around to fixing it yet"

Inheritance, really. Any genus/species way back when that lacked such motivations/systems never got off the ground, and have long since been buried in time. Life's had a long time to go through this trial-and-error period to find out a system that works.

Why does life exist? Eh i personally think a mistake happened at the dawn of time/dawn of the breaking of matter and energy into space. Because otherwise life and energy wouldn't exist the way we know it. it'd just be one big ass ball of stuff.