No, not you are a member of a co-operative – although if you are reading this you probably are in at least one, if not several co-operatives. (My current count is membership of about 7-8).
What I mean is that you, as an individual human being, are in effect a co-operative. This thought occurred as I was (re)reading a book by the evolutionary biologist Martin Nowak, Supercooperators.
Nowak points out that the billions of cells in our bodies do not compete with one another to out-reproduce each other. Instead they co-operate by limiting their reproduction and functions to form our various organs. Together these keep us being “us”. If they do stop co-operating and limiting their reproduction and functions we call this cancer. And it can stop us being “us”.
And we are co-operatives in a wider sense – because human bodies do not consist solely of human cells. Some estimates suggest that the typical 70 kg adult human body consists of about 30 trillion human cells and about 38 trillion bacteria (although the bacteria only constitute about 0.3% [0.2kg] of our entire mass). Most of these bacteria are “good” – they help us to live, and us them.
Charles Darwin established that the competition to survive and produce offspring was at the heart of how life has evolved on Earth. But competition is not the only, indeed not even the dominant, factor in driving evolution. Co-operating, in order to compete for survival, is also a major factor.
It’s worth quoting this from Nowak on the ubiquity of co-operation among living beings:
“Creatures of every persuasion and level of complexity co-operate to live. Some of the earliest bacteria formed strings, where certain cells in each living filament die to nourish their neighbours with nitrogen. Some bacteria hunt in groups, much as a pride of lions hunt together to corner an antelope; ants form societies of millions of individuals that can solve complex problems, from farming to architecture to navigation; bees tirelessly harvest pollen for the good of the hive; mole rats generously allow their peers to dine on their droppings, providing a delicious second chance to digest fibrous roots; and meerkats risk their lives to guard a communal nest.”
Related: Colin Talbot looks at the orgin stories of co-operation
My favourite human example of co-operating in order to compete are team sports – in particular football (soccer to our American friends). Two teams of 11 players compete to score the most goals and win the match. But if all you see is competition you are missing the bigger story of cooperation in football.
Firstly, and most obviously, there is cooperation amongst team-mates. Soccer is often called “the beautiful game” and I’d suggest this is because of the beautiful co-operation among a team that is playing well. They look almost like a single organism rather just a collection of individuals. (Which is not to say there is not also some competition within football squads – for being picked to play for example).
Secondly, and much less obviously, the two teams are also co-operating as well as competing. By accepting a whole series of rules of the game – size of the pitch and goals; length of play; rules of behaviour; the dreaded off-side rule; and so on. In fact without co-operation over the rules there would be no real competition – just an anarchic free-for-all.
Part of the reason many of us have been conditioned to see more competition than cooperation is because of misreadings of Darwin and evolutionary theory. Some of Darwin’s followers over-emphasised the competitive element in evolution, while Darwin himself recognised the importance of co-operation and, for social species, what has become known as “group selection”. More about that shortly.
In Supercooperators Nowak sets out to explain the widespread nature of co-operation, especially among humans and other sentient species. He suggests main five mechanisms, although there may be more.
First is kin-selection or kin-altruism. This is the idea that people will tend to favour helping their kin, at cost to themselves, depending on how closely related they are (and therefore how many of their genes they have). One of Darwin’s popularisers, JBS Haldane, summed this up nicely when he said “I would lay down my life for two brothers or eight cousins”.
The next three mechanisms all relate to reciprocity – making sacrifices for another in the expectation they will, at some point, repay the favour. Nowak identifies three types of reciprocity:
- direct, person-to-person, tit-for-tat cooperative exchanges;
- indirect or reputational reciprocity – where individual acts of generosity are repaid in increased willingness of others to co-operate;
- and network reciprocity – where sub-groups develop co-operative behaviours.
Finally, Nowak lists ‘group selection’. This idea originated with Darwin but has gone in and out of fashion. It is really a special case of what is called ‘multi-level selection’ (MLS). This is the notion that selective pressures act on populations at multiple levels. Genes, yes. But also groups of genes; individuals; social groups; and even of whole species. No amount of slow, gene-level, evolution would have saved the dinosaurs, for example. Multiple species suddenly became not the fittest because a dramatic environmental change (a meteor hitting Earth).
Humans are social animals, who evolved in small groups. And it was the survival of these groups that shaped human evolution, including that of whole species like our Neanderthal cousins. The African saying that “it takes a village to raise a child” captures this idea well. Nowak argues this is humanity’s super-power – co-operation between individual and diverse members of social groups at a level not seen anywhere else. And crucially it is the explanation for human innovation and creativity.
As Nowak says: “Co-operation – not competition – underpins innovation. To spur creativity, and to encourage people to come up with original ideas, you need to use the lure of the carrot, not fear of the stick. Co-operation is the architect of creativity throughout evolution, from cells to multicellular creatures to anthills to villages to cities.
“Without co-operation there can be neither construction nor complexity in evolution.”
