What have we established so far?
By looking at behaviour as an emergent property we can see that some of what drives behaviour can be changed, namely our culture and beliefs. By looking at our deep history and the evolution of life we have seen that people are naturally social and cooperative (at least as much as they are individualistic and competitive) Sapolsky, p454
We also looked at the Past, Present and Future
- We know that the world as a whole is a lot better than it was a generation ago and is continuing to get better although the knowledge is not as widespread as it should be
- We have seen that change is possible – society now is very different to what it was even 50 years ago
- We have some (potentially existential) challenges to face and must navigate ourselves though a growth in population that will test our ability to allocate resources and live together peacefully
Large amounts of our exiting culture and beliefs are out of step with what we know. We know how to get the best out of people but don't do it. We know that cooperation is a key driver of evolution but fetishise competition and take it to destructive levels. We know the world is complex but continue to look for (simple, point) top down fixes implemented by doing it to you not with you. We know that the world is complex and interdependent, that it takes multi-disciplinary teams, systems thinking and constant refinement to make progress.
Our overemphasis on competition and individualism at the expense of cooperation and collaboration creates many problems. If we make it a competition then it’s not a surprise if we get cheating, selfishness and zero-sum contests where for me to win you must loose. That’s not how families or clubs work, it’s not how communities work, it is not (if we are lucky) backed up by our day to day experiences of being with other people; but it is the dominant theme we seem content to let rip through our political and economic institutions. In fact it is eulogised.
We actually know that we have evolved to constantly adapt our behavior to our environment; so if we believe that zero sum competition and devil take the hindmost is the natural order of things and make it part of our environment, surprise-surprise people will adapt and become more competitive and selfish.