Liberty without cooperation is savagery. The foundational pillar of our continued survival as a species (for however much longer we can continue to survive) is that we developed complex societies that were ultimately built on cooperation. All our advancements were predicated on the notion of specialization, where separate groups would each perform a specific task necessary for our survival, and they would trust that other groups would perform their tasks and would share their results in kind.
Of course, throughout history this cooperation often occurred under the threat of violence, first directly and later more subtly through the systems of coercion we previously discussed. However, these threats were predicated on two things which we must work to dismantle:
- The premise that “human nature” is lazy and untrustworthy
- The imbalance of power that actually fuels humans’ laziness and untrustworthiness
Many societies– historic and contemporary– have proven that humans are categorically not lazy, and that while time for leisure and recuperation is necessary, we all ultimately are driven to achieve things, whether personal goals, professional endeavors, or simply idle activities to . Capitalism has worked diligently to make it seem that market economics are necessary to motivate people to work and innovate under threat of starvation and homelessness, even though volunteer organizations and open-source software (to name just a few examples) continue to thrive even under the increased pressure to fulfill our capitalist obligations.
Thus, the second tenet of the Savior Self: Humans should cooperate. On its own, this is another seemingly-superficial statement that can be interpreted countless ways and could ostensibly be applied to any form of interpersonal behavior. While the tenets are deliberately intended to be , this tenet is ultimately intended to discourage competitive systems such as “free markets”.
Humans should cooperate.
Tenet 2 of the Savior Self
Although free markets have inarguably spurred tremendous innovation, they have done so in the interest of self-enrichment through capitalist gains. This is a flawed ideology through which to see the world and, it could be argued, has actually stifled innovation in more recent times due to hoarding of advancements through patents and obfuscated intellectual property.
Imagine if everything was open-source; every person could contribute their knowledge, ideas, and skills to improve products. And rather than flooding the “market” with a hundred variations of the product– each with its own shortcomings and compromises for the sake of undercutting the “market price”– we simply get the best version available to us, and we generate a lot less industrial waste or unsold products dumped into landfills to preserve the artificial scarcity.
Of course, “best possible” may be subjective and different groups may have different wants and needs, and and achieving general consensus is often tedious and significantly slows progress. Cooperation does not negate the concept of markets enitrely; people can still have choices and can create their own variations as desired. But rather than wasting energy and resources “reinventing the wheel”, they can simply “” to create their own variation and share it with others who are interested.
Innovation would skyrocket if we removed the artificial barriers that allow capitalist endeavors to hoard knowledge as they do other resources. Humans would still specialize and find their niche upon which to obsess, and they would be driven by both their personal passion as well as the status they would achieve within their community for their efforts.
To further clarify: cooperation does not preclude competition. Individuals can– and should— be rewarded for their efforts via public recognition, and friendly competition in pursuit of material incentives is not necessarily incompatible with the spirit of cooperation. Two groups can compete to find the most efficient method of producing a certain item; whichever group succeeds should be celebrated and rewarded, but their results should be shared with the world to allow the next great innovative leap.
We must stand on the shoulders of giants, and we must be willing to be a part of the giants upon which others may stand.
