Fresh Material on the Death Drive

I'm writing something for Nicola Masciandaro and Eugene Thacker, and some of it bears repeating here, based on a conversation I just had with Dirk Felleman. Quite happily it combines the ecology side of my work with the Buddhist side.

For me the death drive goes way beyond even the single celled lifeform that Freud imagines. How come self replicating molecules are possible at all? I believe DNA and RNA are like Henkin sentences that contain some self contradictory message as in a Godel sentence, "This sentence is not provable." Viruses are long strands of RNA or DNA.

The inherent disequilibrium of such molecules seeks the equilibrium of nonexistence, as if the molecule were trying to erase the stain of itself.

Even before DNA, RNA hitched to some self replicating silicate crystal. Why? The silicate crystal was already "trying" to cancel itself out.

Now, irony of ironies, when the replicant tries to undo itself, it reproduces itself....

I conclude that the death drive precedes life as such, even DNA.

Now Freud calls the death drive the Nirvana principle before he calls it the death drive. In this he concurs a little with Theravadin schools of Buddhism, for whom Nirvana was the cessation of grasping.

The small print is, how do you get there without reproducing yourself? Samsara is precisely the search for quiescence (death drive) which results in repetition (also death drive). Thus the Wheel of Life (above) depicts samsara in the jaws of Yama, the lord of death.

The Mahayana and Vajrayana schools argue in different ways that instead of trying to erase your personal stain, you just have to get used to it...somewhat Heideggerian, yes?