The observed competitive nature of various systems (e.g., biological organisms, ideologies, languages) is an emergent dynamic that occurs within this interconnected whole.
This competition is driven primarily by resource scarcity. For biological life, this includes material resources and energy. For information systems, key resources include limited cognitive processing capacity in hosts, the material substrates for their instantiation and transmission (e.g., brains, texts, digital networks, energy for computation), and more abstract factors contributing to their "memetic fitness" or "influence potential" in a crowded informational environment.
The "striving" of these patterns for persistence is not a teleological imposition but an outcome of the fundamental processes outlined in the pathway of emergence (Section 1a), including thermodynamic driving towards dissipative adaptation, the self-reinforcing nature of autocatalytic networks, and the boundary-maintaining imperatives of autopoietic organization. These mechanisms provide a physical and organizational basis for the Outward Stabilization Propensity of patterns.
Thus, competition does not necessarily contradict fundamental oneness but is a characteristic of how distinct patterns interact and strive for persistence at emergent levels under conditions of limitation. The patterns that outcompete other patterns are the ones that end up persisting.
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