The life-force is the principle of multiplicity in the world.  Its career stretches from viral reproduction all the way up to human communication.

In a great First Phase, the life-force was concerned wtih multiplying the number of individuals in the world, thereby securing Life against imminent Death.  A Second Phase effected a transition between the reproductive body and the communicative sign.  The body itself -- which had been complexified and stabilized during the First Phase -- became a sign for purposes of sexual selection. Individual organisms began to select mates in semi-conscious fashion, so that sexually desirable traits began to be proto-memes in their own right, disseminating themselves via sexuality. In a Third Phase – with the propagation of new individuals having become both automated (via the First Phase) and relatively expensive (the Second Phase) – the life-force leapt entirely into the social ether. Ever concerned to distribute the benefits of life across multiple individuals, the life force began weaving species and clades into communicative systems.

The Three Phases frame the disjunctive leaps between the physical shapes of the life-forms. The life-forms from viruses to insects innovated dramatic, baroque advances in reproductive technology.. In the Second Phase, the life-force took up residence in that Darwinian anathema: behavioral traits. The great transitions to sea, land and sky were effectuated by unique behavioral quirks (accompanied by a holocaust of deaths in the attempt). In the Third Phase. styles of communication dragged phenotypes along with them, though culture was now where the action was,

Gender difference is a leitmotif throughout the entire progression of the life-force. From a pure state of reproductivity, a virus acquired cellular bodiliness; but the asymmetry between bacteria and viruses gave rise to the exploitation which is sexual reproduction. This was a false start, as sex was immediately consolidated into botanical hermaphroditism. Yet sex burst again upon the scene with the appearance of insects, which derived their mobility – as well as their proto-brains – from an exaptation of sexual organs. Beginning with plants, the course of the life-force is marked by an alternation between distinctly feminine forms and masculine ones. The origin and being of plants, fish, birds, and primates implicate feminine principles, while insects, reptiles, and mammals record underlying masculinism. The two strands of masculine and feminine principles form a helix or caduceus, which finds unity only in the primordial undividedness of viruses, and the complexified world of humanity.