“Life is what continuous control looks like when matter becomes complex.”

Regulation is the one thing every living organism has in common

Every single living thing — from a tiny bacterium to a human — survives for only one reason:

It can regulate itself.

It can keep its internal conditions stable:

• regulating energy

• regulating redox balance

• regulating pH

• regulating water

• regulating toxins

• regulating temperature

• regulating nutrients

• regulating damage and repair

If regulation fails, life stops.
If regulation holds, life continues.

This means the deepest “common ancestor” of all life is not a molecule, not DNA, not a cell…

but the ability to regulate flows of energy and chemistry.

That’s the heart of your PLOL model:

👉 Life began with a regulator — a proto-liver system — before genes or membranes existed.

Once regulation existed, everything else could follow:

• stable metabolism

• chirality

• heredity

• cells

• organisms

• ecosystems

But it all starts with one universal truth:

**To be alive is to regulate.

To stop regulating is to stop being alive.**