Lehal Library

Looking again at the Earth Life System, we see that the underlying competition theme seems to be a product of the command to survive. Each and every living unit competes for the basics of physical survival: food, water, oxygen, warmth, and sunlight. Often this translates into living space, on and in the ground, in the water, in the air. We have various names for this: territorial imperative, room, home, lair, den, hunting preserve, personal property, real estate, cities, nations. Life-forms fight for these, and die for them. Set against this is the delicate assignment of living space on the basis of capability. Each species can survive only in its appropriate environment. In water and air, the system remained in fair balance with the food chain operating efficiently, often to the point where changes became no more than a small shift or tune-up. On land, however, the balance was harder to sustain. Hence the variety of life- forms evolved more rapidly, with impressive ingenuity being used to solve the problems of replication and survival.