Is nature inherently cooperative or competitive, or both?

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Of course evolution allow cooperation! Your body itself is a example, with billions of individual cells cooperating for they survival.

Tell that to the cancer cells.

ruveyn

It isn't just on a political level, it is on a personal and social level. I don't believe that just because a set of beliefs has a humanitarian or egalitarian theme that it is automatically more moral, especially when it is extreme enough to justify anything in the name of the greater good. I'm all about deeds and not words. If for example you're against war and violence and yet you are verbally vitriolic and eager to prove your moral superiority, then that makes you a self-righteous hypocrite who cares more about your own ego than the issues themselves. If however you are against conflict on a big violent scale and also seek to resolve conflict on a small verbal scale then you are a man of your word and I respect that. However, that still doesn't take the us and them mentality out of the equation. Like I said any collective is subject to that. We're only human. I'm a right winger who is concerned for the well-being of as many people as practical. Having concern for all people tackles too many things at once. I'm not against universal healthcare or public schooling, but I have a different idea of social equality and fair wages than you might.

Heh what I find even more interesting is that my country has a chump change military budget and yet we invented a sport where you can not only check other players but fight them and only get a few minutes in the penalty box for it. I can see how sports appeals to a more toned down "us and them" mentality then say a war but killing, raping, and looting is just something else. Just like everyone else I prefer to have my favourite teams win but I'm not so fanatical that I'll start cheering if a player on the opposite team gets seriously injured (unless that person is a bastard who likes seriously injuring others).

I would claim that nature is inherently competitive, but that cooperation can be adapted as a competitive strategy. Reciprocal altruism is a form of cooperation where two or more individuals cooperate for the mutual survival of the individuals involved.

I would say nature reduces to 1 or 0 so anything that transpires on a tiny planet between people who exist for the tiniest flashes of time is either cooperative or random.

I think its both. In order to have society, you have to have individuals that make up society, and in order to have individuals, you have to have society to create the contrast between self and whole.

I think overly reductionist thinking on the dynamic between self and whole is repressed and short sided. The best way to approach the problem is to see individual and self as two parts of the same coin. If you're so much of a communitarian that you're willing to throw an individual to the wolves for the greater good of the whole, you really are hurting society, since that individual effectively is apart of society.

If you're so much of an individualist that you're willing to do things that compromises the greater society for self advancement, you're really not being a true individualist since society is the culmination of individuals. You're hurting society, other individuals, by your actions.

Last edited by JNathanK on 01 Mar 2012, 9:48 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Perhaps less war, but more individual competitiveness.

There is actually a very good documentary from the 80s on this exact question. It's definitely worth the 45 minute run time if you're legitimately interested in the subject.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BA4dZ6NVNbk[/youtube]