IV. The Restless Animal ↑
33. We compete with one another.
We generally cooperate with others within groups, if the groups are functioning well.
And as we nest groups within one another, the size of the groups, and the scope of the cooperation, tends to increase.
But we also compete with one another.
Competition often serves as a form of testing.
Competition can be destructive, as in a fight to the death, or an all-out war of one group against another.
But competition can also be non-destructive, as in most sports.
Economic competition is an important element of capitalism and of liberalism more generally.
However much we wish to live cooperatively with one another, the drive to compete is part of being human, and so we need to productively channel our competitive urges, rather than trying to eliminate them.
Words from Others on this Topic
Workers demanding more from their employers is an essential feature of effective capitalism. It drives prosperity and creates a more competitive landscape for talent, pushing companies to create better, more innovative environments for their employees – actions that will help them achieve greater profits for their shareholders. Companies that deliver are reaping the rewards.
Larry Fink, 2022, from the letter “to CEOs from Larry Fink in 2022”
So the first biological lesson of history is that life is competition. Competition is not only the life of trade, it is the trade of life — peaceful when food abounds, violent when the mouths outrun the food. Animals eat one another without qualm; civilized men consume one another by due process of law. Cooperation is real, and increases with social development, but mostly because it is a tool and form of competition; we co-operate in our group — our family, community, club, church, party, “race,” or nation — in order to strengthen our group in its competition with other groups. Competing groups have the qualities of competing individuals: acquisitiveness, pugnacity, partisanship, pride.
Will Durant, 1968, from the book The Lessons of History
Conflict of interests and beliefs was, to the liberal mind, inescapable. If tamed and turned to competition in a stable political order, conflict could nevertheless bear fruit as argument, experiment and exchange. … When liberals took conflict for inevitable and competition, its peaceable form, for desirable, they excluded or demoted social virtues that their political rivals favored. To liberals, competition in the town square, laboratory or market place encouraged bargaining, creativity, and initiative, whereas social harmony stifled or silenced them. Conservatives, who saw harmony in tradition, and socialists, who saw harmony in fraternity, were each quick to insist that liberal ideals grossly distorted the true picture of society.
Edmund Fawcett, 2018, from the book Liberalism: The Life of an Idea, 2nd ed.
Our ancestors found ways to suppress disruptive competition among individuals within groups, so that between-group selection became the primary evolutionary force. This favored group-level coordination in all its forms, including the transmission of learned information across generations.
David Sloan Wilson, 2019, from the book This View of Life: Completing the Darwinian Revolution
Relevant Reference Models
- An element of The Tribal Instincts
Next: V. The Most Adaptive Species