One of the things that move life is the metaphysical reality that we are all connected, the awareness that each of us shares something with other living organisms and people and that the basis of incentive is related to life itself - the most fundamental incentive that drives all living organisms is the will to live.

At the very core of understanding human survival are two primary systems that drive all life - actions that satisfy needs for (1)reproduction and (2)nutritional sustenance. Without them, the very notion of species survival would be impossible.

Limited resources and the fragile nature of survivability give rise to two intrinsic patterns of behavior common to all species and that guarantee successful survival and thriving; they are self-reliance and competition. From competition, species learn awareness of differences that threaten the ability of individuals and groups to thrive. Groups are organized around common traits in a way that, by encouraging cooperative respect for and protections of natural rights, enables and encourages the process of individual thriving and fulfillment. We have come to know this process in the well-known euphemism "birds of feather flock together".

Self-reliance, with the emphasis on "self", is most important to survival. Humans realize and achieve survival on a one by one basis. First the self, then the group. For members of the species to thrive, behavior must first be driven to satisfy needs close to oneself. And herein lies the "irony of life", that as much as we are aware of being connected, successful survival and thriving (which becomes the goal of survival) really depends on taking steps to protect the circle of life that is closest to one's self and self-interests. Eventually, the circle widens. As successful survival continues, there becomes the learning of the concepts of advantage, first over one's neighbor and then leveraging the neighbor to assist in enabling a better circumstance for one's own survival - the notion of thriving. And it is from the idea of advantage; the true idea of "quality of life" is born. Learning to thrive becomes the goal of species survival. Thriving is the process of learning the value of advantage that is key to the concept of incentive (the operational definition of "quality of life"), what we commonly call happiness. Successful survival depends on the unique abilities of the individual to learn successful patterns of behavior, those that are self-sustaining, reproductive and lead to the circumstance of advantage that ensures sustainability.