Evolution Is Up to Us: Invest in a More Cooperative Human Ecosystem

By Donovan C. Wilkin, Ph.D.

While the human species can take credit for being the most complexly ordered social species yet to have evolved, that certainly doesn’t mean there is no room for improvement.

Our list of shortcomings is monumental. Whatever our virtues, we are far too acquisitive, selfish, greedy, competitive, parochial, bullying, war-like, exploitive, insensitive, short-sighted, lethal, and in the dark as to the peril we represent both to ourselves and to the rest of the living planet to be able to long survive.

All these troubling tendencies have been facilitated by our discovery and exploitation of fossil fuels which have, in a sense, allowed us to hijack the more natural evolutionary tendency for biological communities to become more benignly social and sustainable, i.e. more mutualistic, cooperative, caring, sharing and nurturing over time.

On balance, power has made us more lethal, more virulent. Each American now commands in excess of 100 thermo-electro-mechanical slaves doing our bidding, most of them poised to make war on other humans around the world. Our economic system reflects myriad destructive priorities.

It can’t last. It shouldn’t last. What, if anything will replace it?

The cooperative movement is the first major practical step by humans in an alternative direction – toward an economy that is committed to more sharing, more equity, and more justice, not to mention toward healthier, more productive biological communities surrounding us. It has been obvious for decades that our fate is in our hands.

Here’s a real opportunity. Make your statement. Invest in a more cooperative human ecosystem.