Proper Resilience and False Equifinality

Here's something old that I thought I had posted, but apparently had not.

I define proper resilience as employing the capability to cope effectively with certain situations that individuals may be conditioned to view as being non-preferential to their individual system by understanding via reason the true severity in terms of existential risks of a situation. All 'non-preferential' situations that do not threaten the survival of a system are contextual in terms of arbitrary preferences of that system.

The only inherent purpose of a biological system, i.e. something that is living, is to survive long enough to reproduce and thus continue the survival of the genes within that biological system. All else is arbitrarily decided upon. This brings us to self-interest - all living systems have as their sole inherent purpose surviving to procreate.

Now particular situations which are not directly existentially threatening may have indirect consequences to our reproduction-purposed survival insofar as those consequences may affect our ability to reproduce with a desirable mate. This said though, we as humans have the use of reason and may hence develop our own arbitrary purposes based on memetic replication and survivability as opposed to genetic replication: we may live on in our creations by way of our minds, not just our loins.

Improper resilience I define as the ability to cope without the proper understanding of why and not using correct reasoning for / or not having the correct reasoning behind the actions and mindset allowing for the coping thereof; employing the capability to cope effectively with certain situations that individuals are faced with without the employment of reason, i.e. 'for the wrong reasons.' Merely responding correctly does not connote correct understanding of the whys and the hows.

Ludwig van Bertalanffy, the man we have to thank for General Systems Theory, termed equifinality for when you may reach the same conclusions via multiple paths. When we employ reason for coping we are taking the 'correct' (well reasoned, logical) path whereas when we do not employ reason our path does not necessarily correspond with reality or logic and so, although we have coped properly with a situation and hence achieved our desired outcome, we have done so via irrational means and thus we are in danger of applying irrational means in the future with different situations.

Principles are arbitrary. One develops principles according to a given philosophy which may or may not be based on reason. Reason is not arbitrary. It is a corrollary of an axiomatic basis.