In our book club meeting last week, we got off for awhile on a tangent about cooperation and competition and human nature. This was in part because we were discussing a book on Elinor Ostrom’s work on the commons, which is a form of cooperation.
Now I’m a big fan of the cooperative approach from way back – I organized food co-ops, lived in housing co-ops, and am currently a member of at least three credit unions. And I also think competition tends to be overrated, especially since it so often leads to cheating and overemphasis on the winner of some contest.
On the other hand, competition is a good way to block monopolies and to give us the diversity of enterprises we need.
But here’s the thing about cooperation that really hit me: we don’t just use it to do good.
As my Aikido friend Ross Robertson once observed when we were discussing the subject, one of the first things human beings cooperated to do was war.
Now it’s likely that they cooperated to raise kids and feed each other first, but war does go back quite a way in human history. It’s not new.
And while an army usually has forced cooperation, it can still be seen as a cooperative enterprise, with the competition side coming out in fighting with others.
I mean, mobs can also be a form of cooperation. Social groups cooperate to keep others out.
We are social beings, and standing up against the group is difficult, even when we’re right. So while I’d like to think that true cooperation isn’t done for evil purposes, the truth is that people cooperate for both good and bad reasons.
Which, to get back to Ostrom and the commons and various kinds of co-ops, is one reason why it’s important to create solid and workable structures for such enterprises. Continue reading “Some Thoughts on Cooperatives”…