Synthesis: 5
A Metric for Truth and Value
What is true? What is good?
These questions have haunted philosophers, theologians, and ideologues for millennia.
But within the framework of life, the answer becomes both simpler - and sharper:
Truth is what helps life persist. Value is what helps life grow.
This is not relativism. It is not pragmatism. It is a fundamental axiom: only that which aligns with the conditions for life’s flourishing can survive in the long term. Everything else is noise - temporary, beautiful perhaps, but doomed.
So if you want to test an idea, a belief system, an economic model, or a culture - ask this:
Does it help life endure and expand?
If not, it will fail.
If yes, it may still struggle - but it will remain.
The Natural Filter
All of history is a grand experiment. Every civilisation, every ideology, every institution is a hypothesis in the lab of time. Most fail. Some adapt. A few endure.
Why?
Because evolution doesn’t just act on genes - it acts on memes, systems, norms, values. If a belief helps its carriers survive and reproduce, it spreads. If it doesn’t, it fades. No matter how noble it sounds.
This is the brutal, beautiful law of life:
What works, lives. What doesn’t, dies.
Case Study: Capitalism vs Communism
Consider two economic systems. Capitalism, for all its flaws, has endured because it taps into incentives that align with life’s expansion - competition, innovation, productivity. It produces and distributes goods efficiently enough to sustain complex societies.
By contrast, rigid communism - especially in its 20th-century forms - collapsed under the weight of its own abstractions. It often stifled innovation, punished individuality, and misallocated resources, leading to stagnation or collapse.
This is not about ideology.
It’s about fitness.
The question isn’t “Is capitalism good?” or “Is communism evil?”
The question is: Which system better supports the continuation and flourishing of life?
Beyond Economics: Ideas, Relationships, Technology
This metric applies everywhere.
Religious systems that encourage family, stability, and hope tend to endure.
Technologies that make life easier, safer, or more connected tend to spread.
Social norms that reduce conflict and promote cooperation tend to become tradition.
This doesn’t mean the most brutal systems win. Far from it. If a system causes too much internal decay, it collapses. If it overextends, it implodes. The systems that survive are those that find balance - efficiency without fragility, change without chaos.
Truth as Survival
Truth, then, is not merely what feels right.
It’s not just coherence or elegance.
Truth is what aligns with reality deeply enough to be sustained.
In that sense, the scientific method is a life-affirming tool - it creates repeatable knowledge that improves our models of the world. Religion can be, too - when it offers frameworks for behaviour, family, and continuity. Even myths can carry deep truths if they encode survival wisdom.
What fails the test of life’s expansion is, ultimately, false.
Not because it offends our reason - but because it cannot last.
Implications: A Compass in the Storm
In an age of digital chaos, culture wars, and ideological fragmentation, this axiom offers clarity:
If you want to know what to trust, ask: Does it help life thrive?
If an idea produces despair, sterility, or entropy, be wary.
If it produces resilience, meaning, and generativity - it may not be perfect, but it’s pointed in the right direction.
This is your compass.
Not imposed by any doctrine, but written in the laws of nature itself.
Conclusion: The Fifth Pillar
So here it is, the fifth stone in the foundation of Synthesis:
Truth is what endures. Value is what allows life to grow.
Everything else is aesthetics - or delusion.
This axiom does not destroy morality, it grounds it. It does not erase truth - it locates it where it has always been: in the continuity of life, rising through trial and error toward order.
Life is the only scale on which anything matters.
And everything that forgets this is already dying.
– James Dean Conroy