For a long time, a certain way of speaking about the living imposed itself as self-evident. On one side, domination. On the other, cooperation. As if all of nature could be summed up in this double register. This formula has the advantage of simplicity. But precisely, that is its problem. It does not merely simplify reality. It imposes upon it a structure that is not its own.
The living is not binary. It cannot be correctly read through a fixed opposition between domination and cooperation. This vision is archaic.
A False Topology of Reality
Speaking of the living in terms of domination and cooperation already presupposes several things. It presupposes stable poles. It presupposes univocal relations. It presupposes that intentions can be attributed to dynamics that often involve constraints, thresholds, adjustments and regulations. It almost always introduces an implicit moralisation.
The living does not deploy itself in a binary topology. It deploys in continuous, non-linear, multi-scale spaces, where relational forms are not fixed essences but transitory configurations.
What This Formula Makes Invisible
Between domination and cooperation, there exists an entire continent of relational forms that binarisation erases. Conditional mutualisms, unstable symbioses, modulated parasitisms, opportunistic commensalisms, reciprocal exploitations, asymmetric co-adaptations. There are relations where benefit exists, but at high cost. There are relations where constraint also produces stabilisation.
More profoundly, a single relation can contain several logics simultaneously. Conflict and adjustment. Dependence and autonomy. Cost and benefit. Pressure and stabilisation.
The Living Is Processual, Not Categorical
An interaction does not possess an essence. It possesses a trajectory. What seems cooperative at one moment can become competitive at another. A given structure can be viable as long as certain conditions hold, then abruptly cease to be when a threshold is crossed.
As soon as the processual is frozen, one ceases to see regime transitions. One ceases to see how a system holds, then how it rigidifies, compensates, displaces its costs, and sometimes tips over.
Level Effects Change Everything
An interaction can be costly or competitive at the individual level, while producing stabilisation at the group level. What appears as an advantage in one stratum of the system can become a burden in another. The living cannot be understood flat. It requires a multi-level reading.
The Real Question Is Not Moral, It Is Vital
The living does not seek to dominate or cooperate as if it pursued two opposing values. It seeks to hold. To persist. To maintain sufficient coherence under constraint. Interactions are not primary categories. They are situated means.
What viability regime is at stake? What pressures are being exerted? What margins exist? What costs are absorbed, displaced or deferred? What threshold will render this stability untenable?
Thinking by Patterns, Not by Boxes
To move beyond this archaic vision, one must leave fixed categories and enter a logic of dynamic patterns: accumulation, tension, adjustment, plasticity, rigidification, cost displacement, local stabilisation, bifurcation, viability, coherence collapse, reorganisation.
Conclusion
Speaking of the living in terms of domination and cooperation is still speaking as a humanity that has not fully left its old schemas behind. Thinking the living in terms of regimes, patterns, viability and transitions is already beginning to read it at its own level.