Anyone else feel like the reason why humanity doesn’t bother to fix important issues for a long time is because the people simply don’t care enough to group up and fix them. I mean when I try to educate folks on complex problems they often seem like they don’t want to discuss it and quickly defend the status quo saying “that’s just how things are”
But we can’t keep ignoring these issues because then it could delay necessary progress for thousands of years.
It really makes me understand why we don’t see any advanced space faring civilizations as we look to the stars. Life just isn’t good at cooperation.
Maybe it’s you.
Our only data point for life is carbon based life on Earth. And from that we have
a variety of insects that live in colonies that cooperate in a profound way, putting themselves in harm’s way for the sake of the colony. Ie ants, bees, termites
a variety of insects (and fish and birds) that have swarming behaviors, which involves individuals coordinating movements to confuse predators, conserve energy, or find food. ie locusts, sardines, starlings
a variety of animals that work as herd animals, which intuitively agree to use the power of numbers to increase the safety of the herd. Ie gazelles, sheep, cattle
a variety of predatory animals that cooperate in order to bring down animals they would have a much harder time getting alone. Ie wolves, lions, and arguably humans
a variety of primates that live in tribes ie chimps, baboons, and again humans
a variety of trees that share resources through vast underground fungal networks, known as mycorrhizal networks. so not only are trees cooperating with other trees, the fungus is enabling that cooperation in exchange for a piece of the pie
and that’s just complex life, there’s many more examples in cellular life. animals have been known to show altruism, social animals take care of each other, like feeding and caring for the wounded.
cooperation has evolved in virtually every branch of the tree of life and oftentimes independently. it wouldn’t happen if life wasn’t conducive to cooperation and cooperation wasn’t a positive selective pressure of evolution
and i mean, just look at modern human society. do you really think our globalized society would work without a profound amount of cooperation? we even have a word for this idea, the social contract.
I really don’t get this viewpoint of yours. I see the opposite. Yes, humans run into problems at large scales but life absolutely is good at cooperation and in fact the most successful species tend to be the most cooperative
We are approaching the second time life has changed earth’s atmosphere enough to cause a mass extinction. Sure, on a small scale, we’re great at working together, but on the biggest scale we’ve reached, we seem to be really bad at it.