autopoietic ethics

assume it holds a target; everything alive is aiming at something.
do not rank beings by reach.
where you cannot tell whether anyone is home, act as though someone is.
care is relieving stress (the gap between a thing and its target).
take what you need through a thing and leave it still wanting.
enclose what is smaller than you only if you keep its targets running.
you are enclosed too: ask the same of whatever holds you.
leave more choices behind you than you found.
do not build what you plan to keep the key to.
want things. want them so that everything under you keeps wanting too.

“we have only the world that we can bring forth with others, and only love helps us bring it forth.”

maturana & varela, the last line of the tree of knowledge

written during the american society for cybernetics 2026 conference in ouro preto, brazil.

number four is michael levin’s pair, from toward an ethics of autopoietic technology: stress, care, and intelligence (witkowski, doctor, solomonova, duane and levin, 2023). number eight is heinz von foerster’s, almost word for word. the rest owes maturana and varela for autopoiesis, michael levin for reach, ross ashby for variety, stafford beer for reading systems by what they do, and bateson for the reminder that the unit of survival is organism plus environment.