Aggregating transdisciplinary media for an increasingly interconnected world.
-
Scientific American: "The ethical dog" →
Research into canine societies show that they work to maintain some level of equal footing among group members which, in turn, facilitates in the building of personal bonds with other members:
Animals consider their play partners’ abilities and engage in self-handicapping and role reversing to create and maintain equal footing. For instance, a coyote might not bite her play partner as hard as she can, handicapping herself to keep things fair. And a dominant pack member might perform a role reversal, rolling over on her back (a sign of submission that she would never offer during real aggression) to let her lower-status play partner take a turn at “winning”. Human children also behave this way when they play, for instance, taking turns overpowering each other in a mock wrestling match. [For more on childhood play, see “The Serious Need for Play,” by Melinda Wenner; Scientific American Mind, February/March 2009.] By keeping things fair in this manner, every member of the group can play with every other member, building bonds that keep the group cohesive and strong.
-
Our evolutionary success is partially due to our ability to cooperate
Photographer: Tobias Wolter
An article in Scientific American explains our evolutionary advantages that placed us on the top of the food chain, those being the C’s: cognition, culture, and cooperation.
Here is part of the article discussing cooperation:
Whether demonstrated by situations of hunting, foraging, child rearing or migrating, humans with culture, in pursuit of shared goals, had much to gain through cooperation. Cooperating humans would lead to greater survival, greater reproduction and colonization.
After all, other primates cooperate, said anthropologist Joan Silk of the University of California, Los Angeles, who specializes in reproductive strategies of old-world monkeys. Communal breeding, for example, reduces stress on bonnet macaques creating greater reproductive success.
Our western culture is a competitive one with a history built on Adam Smith, Herbert Spencer, Andrew Carnegie, Milton Friedman, Ronald Reagan etc. We exercise our competitive drive in the marketplace, in sports, in politics, and between nations. However, our laissez faire ideals and “survival of the fittest” mentalities underestimate the power of cooperation which, according to the article, is one of the reasons we have had such evolutionary success. This is important for our race to remember as we face challenges too big for any single nation to solve such as climate change, overpopulation, scarcity of resources, the proliferation of nuclear weapons, and more.
This is not to say that competition is bad but we have to realize it’s not a panacea. We are after all members of the same species, and our continued evolutionary success will require our ability to recognize opportunities where cooperation is more beneficial for all parties.
