That’s life! C’EST LA VIE.

I tried to publish this note on the Russian literary portals three times, but the system here is so smart and so “xenophobic” that the simplest French saying obviously takes it for a call for a coup de Etat in France, Russia, Bangladesh and Guadeloupe, and therefore rejected my “French” name from the doorstep.

I had to give in and name the note in Russian.

What fun!

WHAT IS “LIFE”???

I was looking for an article on a certain topic in the Encyclopedia Britannica and accidentally opened volume VI of the Micropediaon page 212, where it was marked “LIFE”, that is, “Life”.

Not so long ago I wrote a note about “Human self-determination”. And about life: “Life is a way.”

But, I admit, I have NEVER seen SUCH an article about life as in the Encyclopedia Britannica!

Read the Encyclopedias, Ladies and Gentlemen!

So, in this article there is only one sentence!!!

«LIFE – a phenomenon almost impossible to define or to explain in all its varying aspects».

Life is a phenomenon that is almost impossible to define or explain in all its various aspects!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

After this amazing phrase, there is immediately a link in the tenth volume of the “Macropedia“, in which a whole sheet is devoted to the definition of “life”!

There are MANY definitions: Physiological, metabolic, biochemical, genetic, thermodynamic!

But this is Britannica, the capitalist imperialists. Intellectual impotents!

And how do the Soviet encyclopedias define it, our life on planet Earth?

They are Marxist-Engelist-Leninist-Stalinist-loyal and therefore invincible!

I looked into them too. There, not impotent bourgeois write, but real Soviet scientists, armed to the teeth with something! With a powerful Soviet scientific potential!

Even funnier!

In their opinion, «life is a form of existence of the matter»!!! Or the form of motion of matter!!! The second phrase usually quotes Engels’ cretinous definition of life as «the way protein bodies exist».

So life, like space and time, is also a form of existence of the matter.

And what is a “shovel”? This is also a form of existence of matter, even two: wood and iron. And if it’s made of durable plastic, then as many as three! Polymers!

These “definitions” were provoked and I also decided to make my modest contribution to the definition of such a small thing – just think, some kind of swarm of something on a seedy planet in the system of a seedy star hanging around somewhere in the back of a seedy galaxy among hundreds of billions more other seedy stars and the same number of galaxies… Zilch, nonsense!

So it will be allowed to Esprit de Lascaille to try to define such a microparticle in the universe.

I thought about it and decided that it was necessary to find a radical difference between dead matter and life.

I figured it out – metabolism with the environment.

Yes, there is plenty of this in the inanimate nature. Is the water evaporating from the sea? It’s evaporating! It rises into the atmosphere. It condenses there and pours back into the sea by rain, snow or through rivers. An exchange?

Does the sand get wet in the rain? It gets wet And then dries up under the rays of the sun. Sharing with the environment? Exchange.

So the exchange is not suitable.

Ah, a brilliant idea – reproduction! (I have, I will say without false modesty, whatever the idea is, it’s like this – brilliant!)

And what is reproduction? This is an increase in a certain amount. So the appearance of many water droplets in the clouds is reproduction? And an avalanche in the mountains, a whole mountain of snow is flying down from one small lump of snow. Is this not reproduction? And the growth of crystals in an oversaturated solution is not reproduction? And the chain reaction in an atomic or hydrogen bomb is not reproduction? Even the reactors are called that: a breeder reactor.

In German: Vervielfältigung Reactor . Vona, how clever!

And a fire in the forest or steppe arising from a small single cigarette butt is not reproduction? And chemical chain reactions are not reproduction? And the photomultiplier?

I was sad, how can I define her sweet, damn life anyway?

And suddenly a thought popped into my head. This time, alas, not brilliant, but ordinary, sober.

Everything that happens in inanimate nature is the exchange and transfer of MASS – ENERGY.

And life is a purely material embodiment of the storage, exchange and relay of purely Immaterial things: Ideas, Information, Code!

Faciant meliora potentes.

Let him do the best he can.

17 I 2017