I. The Basics ↑
7. We live in cooperative groups.
We humans are innately social creatures.
What do I mean by this?
That we tend to get stuff done by forming groups of one form or another.
In other words, we cooperate with other humans to hunt, to forage, to farm, to cook, to eat, to share stories, and to do almost everything else that we think of as human.
The groups within which we cooperate vary in size, complexity, structure and intent (more on this later), but we are rarely if ever completely divorced from them.
When you think about it, this makes a lot of sense.
After all, as individuals, we humans are not very fearsome creatures. No thick fur or tough skin to protect us, no sharp claws or teeth with which to fight, no great running speed to chase down prey.
No, it is only by working together with other humans that we become a force to be reckoned with.
In fact, there is next to nothing that we accomplish on our own, as isolated individuals.
Even when there is no one else around, and we are enjoying a quiet moment to ourselves, we are almost always making use of things that were provided by others: knowledge, clothes, buildings, furniture, tools.
Words from Others on this Topic
But he who is unable to live in society, or who has no need because he is sufficient for himself, must be either a beast or a god: he is no part of a state. A social instinct is implanted in all men by nature.
Aristotle, 20350, from Politics: Book I
Societies are not merely statistical aggregations of individuals engaged in voluntary exchange but something much more subtle and complicated. A group or community cannot be understood if the unit of analysis is the individual taken by himself. A society is clearly something greater than the sum of its parts.
Lester Thurow, 1983, from the book Dangerous Currents
What allowed us to thrive while other humans went extinct was a kind of cognitive superpower: a particular type of friendliness called cooperative communication. We are experts at working together with other people, even strangers. We can communicate with someone we’ve never met about a shared goal and work together to accomplish it.
Hare, Brian, Woods and Vanessa, 2020, from the book Survival of the Friendliest: Understanding our Origins and Rediscovering our Common Humanity
People love connecting with other people. We get together, we talk, we imagine. We cooperate and build new things. We form communities. Those communities become part of our individual identities. And none of that requires top-down control and direction. It is simply human nature. It is how our species rolls.
Jimmy Wales, 2025, from the book The Seven Rules of Trust: A Blueprint for Building Things That Last
Living socially places special demands on us, and many cognitive capacities and behavioral repertoires evolved in order for us to cope. For example, we are innately equipped to cooperate, and living in cooperative groups favors certain genetic predispositions related to kindness and reciprocity.
Nicholas Christakis, 2019, from the book Blueprint: The Evolutionary Origins of a Good Society
This is part of the model that we’ve developed called the social baseline model. When you average everything out that humans have experienced, over millennia, the only thing that’s constant is other humans. We’re so adaptable, we’ve been to so many places; we live in the arctic and the equator. We eat whale blubber and unrefined grains. We’ve been to the moon and practically at the bottom of the ocean. The only thing that’s constant there is other people.
Jim Coan, 2020, as quoted in This View of Life
We want the Big Ten championship and we’re gonna win it as a Team. They can throw out all those great backs, and great quarterbacks, and great defensive players, throughout the country and in this conference, but there’s gonna be one Team that’s gonna play solely as a Team. No man is more important than The Team. No coach is more important than The Team. The Team, The Team, The Team, and if we think that way, all of us, everything that you do, you take into consideration what effect does it have on my Team? Because you can go into professional football, you can go anywhere you want to play after you leave here. You will never play for a Team again. You’ll play for a contract. You’ll play for this. You’ll play for that. You’ll play for everything except the team, and think what a great thing it is to be a part of something that is, The Team. We’re gonna win it. We’re gonna win the championship again because we’re gonna play as team, better than anybody else in this conference, we’re gonna play together as a team. We’re gonna believe in each other, we’re not gonna criticize each other, we’re not gonna talk about each other, we’re gonna encourage each other. And when we play as a team, when the old season is over, you and I know, it’s gonna be Michigan again, Michigan.
Bo Schembechler, 1983, from the speech “Schembechler's Team Speech”
For nothing is fixed, forever and forever, it is not fixed; the earth is always shifting, the light is always changing, the sea does not cease to grind down rock. Generations do not cease to be born, and we are responsible to them because we are the only witnesses they have. The sea rises, the light fails, lovers cling to each other and children cling to us. The moment we cease to hold each other, the moment we break faith with one another, the sea engulfs us and the light goes out.
James Baldwin, 1964, from the book Nothing Personal
Relevant Reference Models
- An element of Self-Determination Theory
- An element of DRAMMA Model
- An element of The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People
- An element of Humanist Manifesto III