The aim of life is pleasure and the removal of pain. These states are not reducible to each other; pain is not the absence of pleasure and pleasure is not the absence of pain. These states exist to restore internal equilibrium, a balance which perpetuates bodily motion.
Voluntary motion could not begin nor continue without these fundamental drives, for what "reason" or cause could there be for anything if not the prospect for more or the fear of loss from a state of balance?
Every action is the result of a prior action and is itself the cause of future actions. This continues for the duration of our existence.
The means of life are attraction and repulsion, love and death. Love and death are the intrinsic motivators of life as opposed to external forces which change the arrangement of things but do not determine their individual nature.
Life is not the natural state of the universe. The unliving dominate our world. Taking an individual form requires work, a transfer of the energy of the constantly changing world to perpetuate the motion of a body complex. In a closed system this uses up the energy available for life to manifest. Thus the aim of life is death.
What is good is what the body attracts toward to reduce internal tension or what the body avoids for the same reason. Without hunger food wouldn't be as satisfying. As our needs are satisfied, our drives decrease. Need emerges from the fact that nothing ever ceases to truly exists and things act to preserve themselves in some way. But individual needs results from lack. Drives are driven by an imbalance, driven by external excitation.
Instinct is the power in the inherent constitution of our being. The potential for action. Objects are the spatial/temporal expression of the universe's potential which instincts aim towards to fulfill needs and which constrain the subject.
The instincts which promote life are opposed by the universal drive towards death. For existence is either marked by strife, action to remove tension which can result in a state of pleasure or pain, or a state of indifference where needs are satisfied.
To be something means to not be something else, thus the meaning of individual life is judged by its effects. It's essence is its continuation, it's striving. The individual will be no more, just as they were not. The continuation and extension of life's energy is the purpose of life.
"Happiness means ending life without being crushed by pain" Oedipus Rex
Conscious life requires an object for its existence, for it is as a living being no longer an object. A cleavage is established in the world, the creation of the subject. Which is not determined to always be a particular object but nonetheless requires an object to identify with to fulfill the prior existing needs. Life's fundamental needs which drive the individual cannot be satisfied. Thus conscious life is a constant struggle between love and death, towards and away from objects.
Sexual energy cannot be destroyed but merely channeled in different ways. In the beginning, the entire world is a source of pleasure. Sexuality is the bodily expression of pleasure, not only associated with genital stimulation. Sexuality drives everything because from the outset the entire body aims toward gratification without any other aim and by any means physically possible. Everybody is born into the world polymorphically perverse. The continuation of life is enabled when pleasure yields to the genitals as the erogenous zone and pursuit of reproduction.
Life is the process of becoming an individual. Forming a satisfying relationship with the world. Internal balance which must act constantly to maintain itself.
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