It never ceases to amaze me that
the more we discover about
intelligence it’s always in the same
direction: it’s deeper and more complex than we ever thought. Are we really so dim?
Wilson, like many biologists, affirms that “competition” (in our
simplistic understanding of that term) is not nearly the force that
cooperation forms in the story of evolution.
I think we will also
discover that socially the same holds true, that no person is separate,
no matter how much we attribute our successes to our own volition. We
can see that competing auto dealers benefit from clustering together.
There are plenty of examples of the opposite of conventional thinking
being true about evolution: it is not every creature in competition, but
we are all part of a hugely interconnected web that rises or falls
together. GAIA is a perfect example of this. As Nature thrives, all her
creatures shall as well. As she suffers, so do we all.
I really
believe we will eventually “prove” scientifically that actually the
Buddhists are right, we are One! The separateness that we experience as
individuals is just an illusion, an attitude that we westerners have
adopted to justify colonizing the world for our selfish
benefit.
I
once designed a planetary life system as an assignment in an
astrophysics class that takes cooperation to the next level. In this world
different life forms survive in opposing chemical worlds, but still
depend on each other for survival, like each of us and our gut biome
depend on each other to survive. I made a short video about a planetary intelligence that’s kind of a trip. Here is the detailed version. I hope we figure this out before our sustainability coupon expires!
