Reality 101: The Nature of Being

SEE HERE What makes a thing the thing that it is? For Aristotle a thing was the combination of essence and matter (not matter as we normally think of it, for that matter already has an essence, but the potency that is the principle from which matter originates). A thing is what it is when it has received its form. Now in more modern language (largely flawed by a number of doubtful assumptions such as naturalism and methodological materialism) one might construct the essence or informing potency which makes of the matter what it is, in living things, the DNA which defines the construction so that when the DNA is present so is the being in potency and transforming in act.
I'm using language here that is invoking the potency and act language of Aristotle. All of us are formed of potency and act. Act is the principle that defines what we are right now, one might call it "actuality" and potency is the principle which allows us to change becoming either less or more than we are now. The combination is part of our essence and our job is to transform ourselves more and more into act, that is develop our potential to become as the Army recruiting ad says, "All that you can be."
Life is a continual journey then from potency into act but we are the being that we are at the moment of conception when our potency is formed and we first begin streaming into act. Modern philosophers who are mostly charlatans, have distorted these great insights and have created instead a barren sterile world of ideas that are not true. We always pay a price when we follow error and the state of the modern world testifies to this. Abortion is murder plain and simple.  COVERING UP IS SYSTEMIC MORE