Heroes Not Zombies

The concept of a “life force” fascinates me. What is it that enlivens a creature? What changes in that moment between life and death? I vividly remember the first time I had to certify that someone had died. That person was an old man who had died peacefully in a geriatric ward in the middle of the night. As a young doctor this was a diagnosis I absolutely wanted to get right. I took my time and completely convinced myself that this old man had indeed passed away. Perhaps because I spent so long over this, I found myself thinking long and hard about that borderline between living and dying. What changes in a moment? As I sat next to this man’s lifeless body, what had gone? How exactly do we die? Of course, as a doctor I’d learned about the stopping of the heart, about the ceasing of the lungs and about “brain death”, but the closer I looked the harder it seemed to me to discern the exact moment of death. Life and death seem two such absolute states. There isn’t really a transitional zone that is neither life nor death. Even “half-dead” is still life! All these years later I’m no closer to understanding exactly how to pin down the moment of death or to understand what disappears or dissipates at the end of life.

The “life force” (or the “vital force”) is an old concept to try and capture what it is that enlivens us, what it is that is present when we are alive, but gone when we are dead. In fact, for a long time the life force was believed to be an entity, but when the anatomists dissected human bodies and couldn’t find any such entity, the concept lost a lot of ground. Science, it seemed, had shown that no such entity existed and materialistic understandings of the human being became much more accepted than “vitalist” one.

It’s fascinating, therefore, to see the re-emergence of the life force in a totally new guise. Modern systems theory, and complexity science, both show that complex systems have certain characteristics which are remarkably like the old “life force”.

1. Self-organisation. Complex systems (specifically, complex adaptive systems) have the ability to self-organise. They are made of many, many components, connections and systems, which co-ordinate with each other to maintain overall defence, to adapt and maintain homeostasis of the inner environment, and to be self-repairing.
2. Autopoiesis. Living systems have the unique characteristic of “self-making capacity”. This is a term coined by Maturana and Varela. Autopoietic organisms can make and maintain themselves.
3. Emergence. This is a fairly new term which captures that characteristic of being able to produce new, previously unwitnessed, behaviours.
4. Consciousness. Finally, let me add the phenomenon of consciousness. Not every living creature has consciousness. However, consciousness is a phenomenon which, like the old “life force”, is actually not an entity but a behaviour, or an experience. OK, I know, this is way too simplistic a description of consciousness and clearly it isn’t the same as the life force (think of persistent vegetative states for example). But it strikes me that the life force is a similar kind of phenomenon.

I am repeatedly impressed with the strength of the life force in the patients I see. It seems to me that it’s the basis of their ability to cope, to grow, and to shine. It’s the basis of the fight to overcome disease and to say to Death, “not yet”. Without it, there is, indeed no life at all.

I’m reading Antoine Sainte-Exupery’s “Citadelle” at the moment. Here’s the line I read today which set me off thinking about this post –

The tree is more than first a seed, then a stem, then a living trunk, and then a dead timber. The tree is a slow, enduring force straining to win the sky.

That captures it for me. Aren’t we all the slow, enduring force of life straining to win the sky? The life force flows through us, maintains us, repairs us, and drives our growth. Amazing, isn’t it?