All living organisms - all self-organized systems - are like this: They all retain an exquisite sensitivity to perturbations of the equilibrium that occurred when they self-organized. They remember that moment of equilibrium; they are attuned to it. The threshold itself is a living identity to them. They very closely monitor their internal and external world through extremely tight couplings, at billions upon billions of points of contact, in order to process the energy, matter, and information that is coming to them. These couplings occur in space through their nonlinear, fractal geometries and in time through their nonlinear fractal processes.

Self-organized systems are living identities, that engage in continual communication, both internal and external. They are not isolated, static units that can be understood in isolation. To examine them in isolation kills the living entity itself, and paying attention to the thing and not its communications - its balance-initiated information exchange - reveals very little about the true nature of what is being studies.