If Life Thinks, What Does It Think About?
Let’s strip it down. If life thinks, it begins by thinking about three things: Where to find food. How not to become food. How to stay safe.
Those aren’t just primitive concerns—they’re foundational ones. And truth be told, they still take up most of my day.
After a million or so years, you’d think we’d be past this. But even now, with refrigerators and deadbolts, the same trio runs silently in the background—just dressed in different clothes. Our grocery list may be digital, our dangers abstract, but the same ancient instincts hum beneath the noise.
So when do we get to think about anything else? Only when those three are quiet. That’s the window. That’s where complex thought happens—in the space between meals and threats. Maslow tried to diagram this with a triangle. Food, safety, belonging, and finally… at the peak… “self-actualization.” I’m suspicious of that phrase. But the pyramid makes a point: higher thought rests on lower needs. Remove the base, and the whole thing collapses.
Here’s how it works: We eat. We feel safe. And for a brief stretch—before hunger returns, before danger knocks—we get a moment of free thought. In that moment, thought stretches its legs. It refines grunts into gestures. It points at coconuts and says, “throw the rock from the left.” Still about food—but more precise, more cooperative. Language emerges. Tools follow. Villages form. Walls go up.
We worry less about tigers. And thought gains space. The more space we have, the further thought can wander. From concrete to abstract. From instinct to premeditation. From reaction to design. Premeditated thought is an amazing workaround. It says: I don’t have to be fast—I just have to be early.
Wind the spring, press the trigger. That’s the birth of strategy, of architecture, of art. That’s how we outwit instinct itself. And eventually… thought turns inward. Not just what should I do? but why do I do anything at all?
That’s the question that no one else seems to ask. At least, we assume they don’t. But maybe that’s just our poor interspecies translation. Still, for the sake of argument, let’s say we are alone in asking Why? Maybe it’s just the next natural question after What then? Maybe Why? is the child of abstract thought.
So here’s the chain, as I see it: Life thinks → What?
Safety thinks → What then?
Surplus thinks → Why?
And if we lose the surplus?
Back we go. Back to instinct. Back to hunger.
Back to hush.
Back to the Edge.
