PATTERN
COMPETITION TO CO-OPERATION
There's a story about a pioneering psychiatrist, who used to put his patients in a room, with a row of mops and buckets on one side, and a row of taps on the other. Then he would turn on the taps, and wait to see what happened. Those he considered mad ran for the mops and buckets. Those he considered sane walked over and turned off the taps.
The extent to which humanity is currently rushing for the mops and buckets is an indication of the degree to which we are on autopilot. Rather than looking at the root causes of the problem, and turning off the taps, we seem incapable of looking beyond the symptoms - we just keep grabbing those mops. In addition to being a failure of our linear systems, the mops and buckets approach is indicative of an economic system built on competition rather than co-operation.
The Industrial Age has been dominated and supported by the Darwinian notion of 'survival of the fittest', and now neo-Darwinian concepts like the 'selfish gene'. However, according to some evolutionary biologists, what Darwin proposed was an evolution built more on partnership and co-operation than conflict and competition. Examples of co-operation taking precedence over competition occur throughout the natural world, from bacteria to sea anemones, from fungi to primates. In fact, we are now told that ancient bacteria nearly drove themselves to extinction a few billion years ago through hostile competition. Then they began to negotiate with each other, forming complex cooperative communities which steered the course of evolution.
Maybe the time has come for humanity to do the same?