Cooperation Benefits All
Most people have heard of the concept of “survival of the fittest” — that is, evolution goes on because those individuals or species which survive fit the environment they live in better than others. Many read into this a sense of individualistic competition, and bring this individualistic competition into human society, saying that it is a law of nature which must be acknowledged. The problem is, this isn’t exactly what has been found in the study of evolution. Instead, we see that groups which cooperate together and work together to deal with problems before give greater chance of survival to individuals within the group than those individuals who try to withstand environmental pressures alone. Even though the individual must give up on some of its own desires and dictates, it receives greater compensation from the resources of the group than it can get on its own. This is true not only for other animals, but for us, too. We are persons; we are not made for individual self-sufficiency. We need society just as much as society needs us. Without such interaction, we will suffer. And just as we all have different personal qualities, we must recognize what we each have to offer to each other might be different, and some might feel like they have to give up more than others; but that is the point of their gifts — they were given to them so they can use them, and share them, for the benefit of all.
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But all of this goes against the Gospel of the Holy Great Hierarch Adam Smith! Not to mention the Holy Great Martyr Ayn Rand!
Seriously, there seems to be a plague on the Catholic Internet of people channeling the holy Epistle of Gordon Gekko: “Greed is good. Greed works.” It is sort of the consummate lie of “whig Thomism”: the best way to look after others is to look after myself, even if that means denigrating others and treating them like subhumans. Therefore my jingoism, nativism, veiled racism, and so forth are really “tough love”. I am sticking up for the truth, and being a good American. And thus we are making the American Catholic Church a shining city on the hill (minus all of the Mexicans, the pinko commie liberals, and all of the other people we don’t like).
I know that before, the Church allowed and turned the other way regarding all sorts of horrible practices: slavery, war, torture, etc. But the immoral genius of the conservative Catholic mind is to change all vice into virtue (save for the vices that “decent folk” don’t commit). What had to be tolerated as “necessary evils” have become positive goods. Ask a Catholic slave owner back in the day if he was doing well in whipping his slave, he might say that he was, but perhaps you could still have sensed a hint of guilt in it. The same would be true of a merchant who cheated his customers. They certainly weren’t canonized for their actions. I would wait a few years to see if “neo-Caths” finally start to advocate their own vices as virtues in the name of free enterprise, the Constitution, and the Stars n’ Stripes. Greed is charity, war is peace, hate is love.
Arturo
I already see such with the situation in Arizona, alas.
Henry:
“Survival of the fittest” is a term from 19th century economics and political theory. By implying a judgment that “those who survive are the best” it says more about the people who use it and their need to bolster a precariously narrow self-perspective than it says about reality. Furthermore, “fitness” for survival is totally context-sensitive: An individual well-adapted to one environment is often mal-adapted to the next.
Without active personal evolution, childhood adaptations like dependency on peer opinions become “group think” in adulthood. Catholics, I think, are particularly vulnerable to falling into a static personal awareness and a spirituality frozen in the last session of 8th grade Confirmation preparation class. This is not well-adapted to mature life in a society motivated by material wealth, conspicuous consumption and physical pleasures.
It’s hard enough to evolve as a person from childhood to adulthood and into maturity in a society that changes slowly. In the 21st century, society, technology and spirituality are evolving faster than the individuals within, much as ocean waves travel faster than the water molecules within. Our choices are to paddle along as an individual, self-sufficient and “successful” until the next wave hits us and upsets our small perspective — or to take a bigger perspective on who we are collectively. Then we can stand up, see the ocean and surf the wave.
Let’s all go surfing. It’s much more fun than drowning.
Frank
My point of this post is that evolutionary study has now begun to examine how groups survive via various social structures which include various forms of cooperation, instead of the dog eat dog mentality people think evolution entails. This is not to say such conflict does not exist, but it is not the full story, just as war is not the full story of human survival.
Henry:
Thank you for your reply; I think we’re in agreement with regard to evolution of groups vs. survival of individuals. The “conflict” between “dog eat dog” and cooperation is only a conflict from within an individualistic perspective. A bigger perspective transcends individuality and embraces identification with family (as was common in Mediterranean culture of Jesus’ time) a nation, all of humanity and ultimately all of reality.
“Dog eat dog” may be the only way for an isolated pack to survive in hard times, but we aren’t experiencing that kind of hard time where most VN readers live. Globally, the story is different, but most of us have yet to embrace the global perspective which I think the Gospels promote.
Frank
Right. The dog eat dog mentality is indeed a perspective which comes out of modern individualism; Berkoff and Pierce in Wild Justice see that it was a problem which Darwin understood within his own analysis, and yet remained with it, because of the cultural influences on him; they note it is really in the 1960s things begun to change in evolutionary studies to look at group evolution and survival, and that it remains controversial. I certainly think the individualism of our society explains this, as you rightfully say.
Arturo,
Your description of Adam Smith’s “gospel” does not seem to jive well with what Smith actually wrote in Wealth of Nations and Theory of Moral Sentiments. Indeed, I find it hard to imagine that someone who is a fan of Ayn Rand really has any clear understanding of Adam Smith, the two have startlingly different visions. Though Rand acolytes may imagine that they understand Smith, I think it’s pretty clear they don’t.
Henry,
You’re certainly right that many people mis-understand evolutionary theory as necessarily involving constant individual competition to survive in which one individual’s gain is another’s loss. And it’s also true that there’s been some very interesting work done over the last 50 years on the adaptive power of social structures and cooperation.
However, it’s important to see that this springs from an aspect of evolutionary theory which is not necessarily one that we want to embrace as a more norm either, which is the understanding that evolutionary success needs to be understood not in terms of individuals “succeeding” but rather in terms of populations and genes “succeeding”.
In other words, it is evolutionary success for the population and the genes it carries if the population grows and thrives, regardless of whether this is achieved by means which disadvantage or kill individual members of the population. This means that many behaviors are selected for which are not necessarily good for the individual performing the behavior, but are good for the population as a whole.
There can be a useful corrective in this for the excesses of individualism, but if taken as a moral imperative this vision is in some ways even more dangerous, since it would support the excesses of totalitarian statism. More important is simply for people to understand: Evolution is an observation of how things work in the natural realm, not a moral code.
“Evolution is an observation of how things work in the natural realm, not a moral code.”
Two things. One, there is natural theology, natural law, and the “book of nature” which all have moral and theological value. Second, while the first is true, it is right to proceed with caution, because what we see in nature is often subnature because of the fall. Nonetheless, the first has a role and it is in this way that value comes out of our observations.
Mutual Aid : A Factor of Evolution
http://www.calresco.org/texts/mutaid.htm
http://www.cjd.org/paper/roots/rkropotk.html
Marc Bekoff and Jessica Pierce in the book I referred to earlier, Wild Justice discuss Kropoptkin, and wonder how the history of evolutionary studies would have developed if his ideas were given more credibility earlier.
Re: Adam Smith
Obviously, someone does not know the meaning of “tongue in cheek”. Having been subjected to classes in political economy, and run through the Wealth of Nations, I well know that Smith is more nuanced than pro-capitalist propagandists make him out to be. Nevertheless, when we were bubbly bright youngsters in Econ 1, we all are subjected to the magical invisible hand that makes human selfishness the fuel of progress. Whether or not we can base that in the text or not is neither here nor there: like all “saints”, all they have to do is look good in a coffin for a photo op. It matters little what they actually stood for.
Next you will take issue with my interpretation of Gordon Gekko. Or did I get that one right, at least?
But if that is the only thing you take issue with concerning what I have written here, I stand corrected.
It is not enough to cooperate. One group must come together in a spirit of cooperation without competing for the same ends with other groups. Cooperation must involve sharing or it becomes greed by mob.
Mutual respect and cooperation must replace competition. That is taken from Alfred Adler back in the ’60′s I think. It has been so long.
Another powerful unconscious influence in understanding human development is attachment styles and their effect on the wiring and chemical balance of the brain in determining how a child will react to self and others. Critical in this is the discovery of the “mirror neuron system” that sets up our basic unconscious emotional and behavioral expectations prior to the age of 3. Theoretically this system is responsible for the creation of social systems based on how the mirror neurons have been programmed through primary and secondary attachments.
I wish to write more but am functioning on empty at this time.
Great discussion once again.
Ron
Yes, the mirror neurons are interesting; for those not familiar with them, here is an article, a few years old, about them: http://scienceandreason.blogspot.com/2006/02/mirror-neurons.html