Cooperation or Competition in the Anthropocene
The third decade of the 21st century is going to prove decisive for the survival of homo sapiens. We are very close to experiencing the blue ocean event, which means that the Earth’s systems have been disturbed enough to create an ice-free summer in the Arctic. This in turn, will produce numerous feedback mechanisms that will make us long for the quiet Holocene and regret our tampering with the Earth, causing our subsequent entry into the dangerous Anthropocene and the climate emergency that it entails.
We are 7.5 billion people on Earth while this event is approaching fast. Our further advancement into the Anthropocene will bring increasing lack of water and food depending on the climatic changes that each area develops. The Middle East, India and the surrounding areas of the Sahara are experiencing a rapid move to desert conditions. There will be inevitable and unpredictable movements of people looking for survival. Saudi Arabia, for example, can’t feed its own people so it has been buying big tracts of land in nearby Ethiopia and Somalia, using the already scarce water for irrigation, and leaving the local inhabitants in worse trouble. Countries with a high GDP can buy access to dwindling resources, but the poorer countries will not have that luxury and they will have to migrate.
We don’t know yet how it is all going to play, but it is certain that even countries with high GDP won’t be able to buy their way into comfort. This is a time when our moral mettle will be seriously put to a test. Western culture is proud of the liberal achievements regarding human rights that entered the scene during the Enlightenment. This will be a time when the practice of these idealistic beliefs will have to be at the forefront of our thoughts. Otherwise, the so-called ethical progress envisioned in the Enlightenment would prove non-existent.
We evolved into Homo Sapiens after millennia of selection of myriad of hominins. The knowledge of this evolution only became clear to us during the 19th century, when the Western world was convulsed by the sudden awareness of a less than godlike origin, a series of apes. In the West, Charles Darwin, after traveling intensively around the world observing nature, concluded in his evolutionary theory, that life is based on the inherent struggle of organisms against one another in competition for limited resources. In his theory, individualistic competitive drive is the most important trait for a species survival.
Darwin formed part of a culture and his theory of evolution was not created in a vacuum. The Victorian era was characterized by Britain’s apotheosis, the most powerful Empire on Earth, with colonial domains all over the world that allowed it to fuel its industrial revolution with capital. In this culture, competition seemed like the basis of life, the colonized were evidently considered weak in the competitive game of country survival and Britain was the obvious winner. Inside Britain, industrialization also proved that the winners of the capital accumulation game thrived, while the losers had to migrate or work in poor conditions. It is certain that the zeitgeist of the era influenced Darwin in his assessment of an evolutionary model.
Darwin’s theory inspired his fellow scientist and philosopher Herbert Spencer to come up with the term “survival of the fittest”, which was taken up by many Social Darwinists like Francis Galton as a model for a society based on ruthless competition. In Western culture, it created a backdrop that encouraged a disdain for the weak in society, who were seen as unfit to survive. The fact that England’s people, the winners in the colonial game, were Caucasian, implied that whites were the ones fitted to lead and this view has been taken for granted ever since. Robert Knox explained it in his 1850 book, ‘The Races of Man’, that there were different evolutionary origins for each race, a view called ‘polygenist’. Darwin abhorred this racist view and stressed that his research had proven a monogenist origin for all races. Knox ideas came to be disproven, but the ideas about evolutionary ‘superiority’ and ‘inferiority’ entered the culture at large. Social Darwinism joined capitalism and the protestant prosperity gospel to create a way of thinking that punished the poor for not being fit (according to social Darwinism), being disfavored by God (prosperity gospel) and lazy (capitalism).
The above trio has invaded Western thought and its influence has been increasingly accepted without even noticing. With this way of thinking, the rich, even if corrupt and abusive of the poor are lauded, while the poor are perceived as weak and lazy, undeserving of help. After Franklyn D. Roosevelt tried to break the extremely greedy culture that led to the 1929 crash and bring prosperity to an increasing amount of people, the trio went back at work to undo the threat to their supremacy. Since the 1980s we have seen a gradual erosion of social programs and a dwindling of the understanding of the importance of cooperation in society. In the meantime, Social Darwinist ideas are seeping into the culture increasingly.
When we try to envision the effects of the Anthropocene on the huge population of a planet that suffers from high inequality, it is easy to see that unless we become conscious of the cooperative side of our humanity, a situation that involves huge movements of people searching for safety, water and food will entrench the Social Darwinism of Western culture.
The extreme competition required to be “fit” in a capitalist system, where only profit and power help you advance in the hierarchy, is the same type of behavior that has brought us to the Anthropocene. It is evident that the winners of the social Darwinist game are the same ones that have cumulatively caused the environmental breakdown that will affect the losers of the game first and most severely. In the hierarchical game of world countries, the big populations of previously colonized people, that were relegated to the role of providers of raw materials after their supposed independence, will end up being once again, the biggest losers. Just like the people in the poorer countries will suffer disproportionately, so will the expanding poor within the rich countries. When the massive moves and revolts by the supposed losers become more overwhelming, how are the winners, upholders of the moral supremacy of democracy and belief in human rights going to respond?
Our culture takes for granted this competitive view of the world, yet it doesn’t have to be. Our future is going to force us to face a very difficult situation as a species and our current choice of competition as the evolutionary basis of our species will not be a good strategic survival mechanism. On the contrary, it is going to prove detrimental in the natural selection game.
While Darwin saw selection in terms of competition for survival, and Spencer expanded it into a fitness contest, there was another scientist and thinker on the other side of the world, who came to the opposite conclusion. Pyotr Kropotkin was a Russian prince, activist, scientist, geographer, philosopher and revolutionary born in 1842. His scientific leanings made him take interest in Darwin’s findings, which led him to do evolution research in Siberia where he traveled extensively. His social activist and philosopher side allowed him to arrive to a very different conclusion from Darwin. For Kropotkin, the basis for the success of a species was more in cooperation than in individualistic competition.
In 1902, Kropotkin published his book Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution, in which he expounded his ideas on cooperation. Here are two excerpts from his book that explain well his ideas:
“In the animal world we have seen that the vast majority of species live in societies, and that they find in association the best arms for the struggle for life: understood, of course, in its wide Darwinian sense — not as a struggle for the sheer means of existence, but as a struggle against all natural conditions unfavorable to the species.”
“In the long run the practice of solidarity proves much more advantageous to the species than the development of individuals endowed with predatory inclinations.”
For Kropotkin, cooperation was the key to a successful species and it is certain that as homo sapiens, we have become successful in great part due to our sociability and capacity for cooperation, which combined with our high dopamine daredevil attitude, allowed us to conquer the world. Cooperation was essential during our hunting gathering years and also for the slow progress in the development of fire and tools. The arrival of agriculture and private property still required cooperation, but the inequality inherent in ownership progressively created hierarchies in which the cooperation was mostly limited to your peers. The Industrial Revolution and Social Darwinism increased the hierarchical tendencies and reduced cooperation even more.
Kropotkin did not deny the competitive urge in humans but he didn’t see them as an essence of the human condition that should determine history. He believed that conflict seeking only benefited the species during attempts to destroy unjust authoritarian institutions that led the societies into less cooperation. In essence, he saw conflict as necessary only to restore balance of a basic natural order that worked best with cooperation.
We are at a juncture in which the dominant culture is based on a trifecta of eternal growth capitalism that encourages endless wars for resources, a prosperity cult that values mostly profit, and a belief in ruthless competition as the only means to success. Into this picture-perfect competitive world, the evidence of the extreme environmental debasement and climatic disorder of the Anthropocene is rearing its ugly head each day more and more. We are facing unfavorable conditions that will increase over time and we have a choice: are we going to continue with the competitive approach or are we going to realize that our species also has the possibility of prioritizing cooperation over competition.
This is a time when we need the Kropotkin view, a view that chooses to prioritize our species cooperative qualities as essential for survival. It is undeniable that we have a mix of cooperation and competition in our tendencies but our preference for the competitive ones have not led us to good survival outcomes. As the climate dysfunction progresses we are going to suffer lack of resources and we will have to accept that our consumption orgy has to end and that the future survival of the species depends on a new lifestyle characterized by a much simper life in which resources are shared.
The rich might think that they can build walls, space stations or go to Mars, but even if at first they manage, soon they will find that just like as Taoism teaches, building high walls to protect yourself does not ensure security, and they will find themselves equally vulnerable to the effects of the Anthropocene. Jeff Bezos recently admitted at a space conference advocating for the move of humanity to space stations, that the Earth is finite and we are nearing the depletion of many resources. He also admitted that the escalation of infrastructure required for renewables is unfeasible. Yet, his solution insists on continuing with the same competitive system based on growth, only moved to space. His proposal obviously could not include all of humanity, since he would need 7500 space stations if he were to include everyone in his project.
Earth is the planet we have and the sooner we understand that our overly competitive behavior doesn’t give us a survival advantage, the better chances our species will have. However, it is evident that our profligate status quo is quite entrenched and I doubt that we will be able to convince the majority of humanity to reduce consumption and energy use dramatically; the change will only happen when the need becomes self evident. At that time, the best tactic will be to deal with the problems as they arise, understanding that we get a survival advantage as a species by cooperating with each other. Who knows, we might discover that basing our egos on consumption and accumulation was an unsatisfying mirage and that living simply, sharing and helping others will prove much more fulfilling. We are all in this together and this is no time for regrets or wishful thinking about solutions that are not feasible.
