I was in another thread and someone made the comment “literally the only motivating force for any life is actually genetic material’s incentive to propagate itself.”
And that got me thinking, “yeah, I obviously know that the ultimate end goal for an organism is passing on its genes… but why?” Why does that matter, or rather why is it a goal for genetic material to propagate and perpetuate itself? What is the “incentive” here and WHY is that an incentive?
In: Biology
Life itself is the ability of reproduction and procreation.
Why are omelets made of eggs? Because omelets are, by definition, made of eggs.
Why do we go to the doctor’s office to see the doctor? Because that’s what the doctor’s office is for.
Why does life pass on genes? Because life is the process of passing on genes.
For a less ELi5 approach, everything biological is chemical. Every movement and thought pattern and cell function is all driven by chemical reactions. At some point in the far far past, there were conditions that allowed for some chemicals to start this off: little processes that repeated.
Life reproduces because reproduction is what life is. The chemical processes that are favored by physics and chemistry all lined up so that our brains are wired to do what’s best in order to do what it’s always done: reproduce.
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