For life, I've stopped thinking in terms of objects and now think in terms of a one singular substance. Now, following along Heraclitus, Spinoza, Bergson, Whitehead and Deleuze, i think about just flux and processes interacting at differing speeds and intensities. One might call that panpsychism (consciousness everywhere at all scales), I think about it more as pansemiosis (meaning everywhere at all scales)

Rocks are alive in the same sense that organisms are alive, the difference is in temporal scale. Emergence doesn't happen through "axioms" or rules, it happens at the boundary between differing fluxes that must encounter another. The coastline "emerges" through land and sea slamming into together, just as mountains are formed from earth slamming into itself.

The tensions I feel from interacting with people and ideas I may not agree with. It is the forcing of myself to sit with the ideas, not trying to dominate or run away, that I become a better person.