i mean that what i call the “principle of action” is just the fact of the impossibility of stasis, or rather the universal principle that EVERYTHING MOVES.
from this universal fact, combined with the fact that living things DECAY AND DIE, results the principle of survival, that all things move necessarily, and those living things (possessing an organization which can decay and perish) which move better than others in terms of securing their survival (resistance against death) will tend to pass on their form/energy/DNA more (their “instincts” or inner nature from which their behavior derives), and therefore over time all living things will possess this inherent survival instinct.
will to power arises because it facilitates survival. by “will to power” i mean the striving towards a being’s expansion and application of force within its environment, which allows it greater control and efficient/effective use of available resources. this is a survival benefit because life forms with greater “wills to power” (in this context i define here) will survive more because they are more ABLE to act in ways which guarantee survival: ergo, the will to power becomes universal within living entities in the same way that the survival instinct has.
now, we could just define my “principle of action” as Nietzsche FUNDAMENTAL ‘Will to Power’ in the sense of “. . . and nothing besides”; in that case, we must understand the will to power as two separate forces/things: 1) the will to power which is fundamental to all things, which is just the principle that all things which are real MOVE and MUST MOVE, i.e. they never remain still (however, this is not technically a “will” as there is no intention which is “willing”), and 2) the will to power as the specific type of action that living entities take in order to further the expansion of their power-base of control over their environment, to extend their reach of their forces/influence, etc (this IS a will in the strict definition of the concept).
Nietzsche’s application of this second understanding of will to power to the universality-context of the first (my definiton 1 above) seems incorrect. he seems to blend these two together into one Will to Power, but how can a non-living thing or a fundamental force “intend” or “will” something? how can it deliberately STRIVE TO EXPAND itself or its “influence”? sure, fundamental forces act within their means by mandate of the type of force that they are (whatever actions/effects it is that they naturally generate), but this is a natural occurance which follows the laws of nature (electromagnetism, thermodynamics, gravity, weak and strong nuclear forces, quantum forces, etc): each of these has a specific nature, each force acts within a certain context and in a certain defined way. Nietzsche seemed to think that the will to power was behind all these forces, in that this will to power was an intentional striving to achieve maximization of that forces effects/power/control over other nearby forces… i see this as impossible. rather, i conclude that such action as he talks about here IS fundamental to all LIVING entities which can only exist by differentiating from desirable and undesirable stimuli; they exist only by absorbing good energy and avoiding/excreting bad energy. fundamental forces do not do this. only living entities do.
so i see Nietzsche’s fundamental Will to Power (“and nothing besides”) as different from the will to power of living entities. the fundamental Will to Power is really just the fact that stasis or nonmovement is impossible; the will to power of living entities is a force/action/intention/behavioral tendency or instinct which generates from the need to survive that all living entities have. having a strong will to power in this sense furthers survival, and therefore tends to become univeral within living entities. survival instincts themselves becomes universal within living entities because those entities without them tend to die more often, failing to pass along their energy form/DNA/type to future generations.
only the second type of will to power. this second type of will to power (as action/behavior/intention/instinct to expand ones influence/power/control/forces within ones environment) IS subordinated to the survival instinct INITIALLY, because it only arises in living entities which necessarily must make such intentional/differentiating choices/actions in order to avoid disintegration/death. the survival instinct is primary in living entities because the will to power (this second type) is only initially benefitial to living entities in that it furthers their survival itself (or rather, it would not have been initially generated if it had NOT furthered survival). the need/instinct to survive (which evolved and became universal within all life out of necessity) gave rise to this type of will to power because it furthers survival itself.
HOWEVER, once this will to power was generated (due to its ability to further survival), it became a dominant force within life, and often enough expresses itself and manifests in ways that can be detrimental to survival; in this sense, the will to power, once created, became a second primary instinct/drive within all life… sometimes the will to power acts in ways that further survival of that living entity, and sometimes it acts counter to survival. once it exists, it is its own force under its own instinctive power.
the other type of will to power (the “principle of action” as i call it, or the fundamental impossibility of nonmovement) is not a “will” in the sense that the second will to power is a will; it is more of a fundamental law of nature which entails across all entities/things that exist, living or not.
when you see that the will to power as Nietzsche describes it is infact TWO SEPARATE FORCES/THINGS, each one very different from the other, then yes, the will to power can be the principle of action itself (“will to power” is just a word-choice we use to convey meaning of this principle of action, it is not a “will” at all), as well as a force generated by living entities in order to further their survival ability (and thus becomes necessarily universal to all life due to evolution/selection) (but which, once generated, takes on a life of its own and acts according to its own means and drives, sometimes furthering survival, sometimes not).
yes. the principle of action (or the first type of will to power, the “. . . and nothing besides”) is just the recognition of the fact that nothing ever is motionless, nothing does not move. everything which exists has motion, necessarily. those things which we see as motionless are in fact moving within themselves, and the “motionlessness” of them is only apparent, an illusion resultant of the fact that we occupy the same frame of reference. get down through matter-energy into quantum levels, and you see that all fundamental wavefields or quanta of energy (or “strings” if you want to call them that) vibrate at a frequency. everything that exists has a vibrational tone and frequency pattern.
thats all the principle of action is: the realization of the fact that if something exists, it moves necessarily, even if this motion is only an ocillation from one point to another and back again, over and over.
