This reminds me of this post from Gena Gorlin (and the themes in her writing more generally): https://builders.genagorlin.com/p/death-is-the-default
It doesn’t quite map on precisely, but this quote seems to capture something you’re trying also trying to get at: “On the contrary, remembering that “death is the default” should mobilize us to fight them with everything we’ve got—recognizing that the one thing we’ve got, in the fight against entropy, inertia, and death, is our power of agency.”
I also see a parallel to two different conceptions of ethics:
“Living willpower” is grounded in an ethics which is finite, “horizontal”, and comes from within. Normative demands and ethical truths arise from mutual interdependence, from relationships, commitments, and attachments between finite agents.
“Dead willpower” is grounded in an ethics which is infinite, “vertical”, and comes from the outside. Normative demands and ethical truths exist independent of the finite agents they constrain. They come from God, social pressures, ideologies, are unchanging facts about the world, etc.
Lastly, I think your observation that healthy processes “must take an active interest in things they don’t yet know” is perhaps a recognition that a key component of our finitude is our bounded rationality, and that we must recognize our limitations if we are to live well.
Have you heard about constitutivism in metaethics?
Stay tuned :)