Invisible Rivals?

 I’ve just read a book called “Invisible Rivals - how we evolved to compete in a co-operative world” by Jonathan R Goodman. This is the first book I’ve read that acknowledges humans have evolved the capacity to act co operatively, but also competitively, as they mainly act in their own self interest. I totally agree with this premise, and even my partner (who is far wiser than me) said “isn’t that obvious?” so I strongly recommend the book. 

If you have dived into my blog (thanks for being so brave) you may have come across my thoughts that run parallel with Mr Goodman’s. In response to life’s problems we have the capacity to choose different strategies  because we do have free will and the mental ability to assess likely outcomes if we engage our frontal cortex. Ie think before acting. Being co operative is best, but deep down our biological drive to reproduce with the best genes means we all complete in the mating game for the sake of our offspring. Mr Goodman describes this wonderfully in his book which highlights how we are all invisibly exploiting one another to get ahead. Life is a mix of hidden Darwinian competition and Kropotkin’s more visible mutual aid. 

However, I cannot help but think that the book is a product of a younger generation that has grown up with the internet and social media as a integral part of their lives. Thinking about all the people I have encountered during my life time, I would not describe them as exploitative. I would describe them as collaborative. But the book more accurately fit’s the online world, where trust is breaking down, and anonymity enables uncaring exploitative relationships to develop with out social constraints. Is the exploitative behaivour invisible in the real world as the author suggests? Or is this an expression of a mild form of paranoia, rooted in a socialist fear of capitalism? Or am I just lucky to have only met nice people in my 60+ years of life on this beautiful planet? 

Highlighting that humans are both competitive and cooperative is obviously correct, but the balance between the two is not set in stone. The balance is different for different people, different cultures and different circumstances. It is always changing, This important fact is not made clear in the book and I was left with the worrying idea that humans are more exploitative than cooperative. Perhaps this is only because the author is promoting his “new” idea and has to focus on the exploitive, but I feel it is just an expression of the authors bias. My bias is that people all over the world are far more co operative than competitive, but in exposing our potential for competition the author should be highly commended for attempting to shift human nature to being more cooperative.

Further thoughts 

If the laws of physics are universal, then they also apply to human behaviour - after all, humans are a complex mix of chemical reactions and electron exchanges. Therefore the second law of thermodynamics applies and humans are always going to increase entropy. In his book molecular storms, Liam Graham describes life as a very efficient “engine” increasing entropy and evolution is driven by producing ever more efficient “engines“ or life forms. Certainly energy hungry humans are the most efficient creators of disorder on the planet. This needs to be understood by evolutionary biologists and perhaps worked into their theories of human behaviour. It would certainly explain humanities great difficulty to give up burning fossil fuels (which increases entropy more efficiently than renewable energy sources) and building energy hungry data centres to use our computers. Humanities energy consumption keeps increasing year on year.

Finally, with humans use of contraception which has freed up women’s lives from being constantly pregnant and a life of child rearing, are evolutionary processes no longer applicable to human behaviour? Birth rates are falling in richer countries as people choose not to have kids and this does not fit evolutionary theory. If this trend continues, will the human race shrink and ultimately go extinct? This seems unlikely, but evolutionary biologists applying their theories to human behaviour need to think if these theories are still applicable.