this post was submitted on 08 Feb 2024
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While I agree that cooperation is rad AF, I think it's willfully ignorant to ignore the historical context of cooperation in the face of competition against the other.
Trying to make a naturalistic argument without acknowledging that is only telling half of the story, and the other half is pretty wart-y.
It’s not about ignoring crazy people and prisons, aberrant behavior will always exist. It’s about instilling a culture of collectivism versus individualism, which incentivizes competition and exclusion.
It’s historical materialism.
That's not at all what I'm referring to.
Collective organization has almost exclusively been in the context of there being "barbarians" on the doorstep.
We need to cooperate because if we don't the (Sumarians, Babylonians,Persians, Macedonians, Mongols, Visigoths, Blackfoot, English, Soviets, Terrorists) will destroy our way of life.
I'm not saying it's necessarily and universally TRUE (although in many cases it was) but human cooperation has historically been bound to human competition.
"Let's all work together in harmony" is the first, rosy half of the fuller "so that those other people don't fuck us. Even better, so we can destroy them first"
A peaceful society (in your estimation) has never existed, so it’s not worth it to try.
Again, that's not at all what I'm saying.
I'm saying that claiming human cooperation as a natural state without acknowledging the other side of the coin as being human competition is intentionally cherry picking.
If an intelligent person were to be listening to history, they might instead conclude that cooperation w/ competition could exist without necessarily a violent competition. Humans vs space, humans vs COVID. I think it's possible to frame non-human agents as "the competition", it's happened before.
It’s not an either/or. It’s how we organize society. If you prescribe to historical materialism, which I do, you understand that it’s a choice of how we prioritize resources in society.
This is is the age old battle of idealism versus materialism.
I guess the difference is that you're viewing history through a philosophical lens, whereas I'm viewing it through an anthropological/archaeological lens.
I admit, I am biased to the belief that for the purposes of understanding history, these are more appropriate academic tools.
I can't stress this enough: you are continually attributing to me positions that I probably don't hold (at least in the way that you're keen to attribute).
My only position is that it is disengenuous to represent human nature as being a certain way by refusing to acknowledge historical context. All (and I mean that, all) I am asking you to do is augment your position by including the reality of history, rather than rejecting the parts of it that you don't want to deal with. I don't even believe they're incompatible, it just demands of you an expansion of your ideas.
That’s what Marx’s historical materialism does.
I have acknowledged the violent past of humanity, but I understand they were shaped by socio-economic conditions.
My ideas are expanded by reading and understanding, not by demands. I’ll leave you with an article on Human Nature and the Alternative to Capitalism. It states:
I envy your courage.
I am a coward. But I am aware of my limitations.
I profoundly disagree.
As proof of your hypothesis, I am offering the PvP experience in Elder Scrolls Online. So-called “ball groups” dominate. Ball group members all agree to wear armor sets that boost the other members of the group and are complimentary with other armor sets worn by fellow members.
These group-focused armor sets mean that individual members are weaker alone than players wearing armor sets which enhance individual performance. But a ball group can take down groups several times their size if the other groups are composed of players with only individual enhancing armor sets.
Game Theory > Historical Materialism. Who knew?