Cooperation and Competition

What is the go to premise for human interaction? Do we cooperate with each other or do we compete? For one social unit, the family, cooperation is the norm - family members tend to help each other out. However for some reason, the go to model in our economic interactions is competition. Why?

In primitive times, when things were scarce and civilized behavior was not common, competing for the same resource made some sense. In an ostensibly civilized world one could make a case that if we collaborate, perhaps we could do better than one guy wins and the other loses.

Along the continuum of behavioral models for social institutions, where did the family model of cooperation break down? When did it stop being effective and become a world of competition?

Us humans, after we have our basic needs met, love a story, a narrative, something to help us make sense of things and the few people that rule the world have been kind enough to provide one for us. Life is a fight. There are winners and losers. Don't be a loser. Compete! Win! Be the best that you can be! In this world view, humans only are motivated to excel when competing, we are otherwise lazy sloths.

This is a pretty powerful idea. We should excel at what we do because winning is glorious and losing is failure. We should always try harder or we could fail.

Fear gets people to act irrationally and most importantly against each other - divide and conquer, a ruler's best friend. Fight harder! Not smarter.

In the business world, the end game is not winning by competing, it is the elimination of competition. Everything in business is clearly understood by seeing this desired end game. Hence mergers and acquisitions, government lobbying and massive amounts of advertising geared to persuade, not inform.

In the world of sports, competition is great. With effective rules, regulations and enforcement it can certainly be entertaining to see humans excel at something in a game. But that's the point it's a game, it's just entertainment. Somewhat ironically some of the most compelling and popular sports require tremendous teamwork.

The most beautiful parts of humanity are when humans help other humans, to make things better for all. It just feels right. When we collaborate and cooperate, we excel together and create a more beautiful, less fearful world. Win, win. But, this is a problem for the powerful, because the results are a fair and equitable world, the last thing that they want.

Any system worthy of civilized humans must have cooperation as it's basis. Competition is a farce, fine in a fantasy world but terrible in the real world, for all but a few.

Democracy is a cooperative system, it is ultimately about reaching consensus in a fair way, it is not about winning and losing. Capitalism is not, its all about winning and losing, it brings out the worst in us. It also eats democracy.

We are truly the human family, together we can achieve much more cooperating than pitted against each other. More wealth for all, more knowledge for all, more beauty for all, more love for all.