Many religious institutions teach that humans are anti-social and must overcome their sinful nature. More secularly oriented teachings explain that all life is a brutal struggle in which only the strongest survive and procreate — “survival of the fittest.” But this concept of fitness is problematic. In reality, the most fit, or best adapted can be those who do not waste valuable energy fighting.
Some of the most successful adaptations in nature enable new species to exploit uncontested resources, and life on earth has always been crucially dependent on symbiotic and cooperative survival strategies. Over the course of its 3.8 billion years, life repeatedly evolved elegant solutions to its most common problem — resource scarcity. An astonishing amount of the time, those solutions involved perfectly tuned cooperative strategies. From single-celled organisms to bonobos, one of our closest genetic relatives, the prevailing truth about all life is its utter interdependence and interconnectedness.
State of the art science illustrates life on earth as a swirling amalgam of chemicals, metabolically reacting in a continual exchange of gases, solids, and liquids, with one form of life converting the fuel it utilizes into usable fuel for another, which then reciprocates. The inexorably interconnected web of life is the embodiment of grace and efficiency. American evolutionary biologist, Lynn Petra Margulis, points out that life is so overwhelmingly inter-dependent that were any individual or species disconnected from the complex web of life into which they are inextricably woven they would immediately perish.
The earliest form of life, single celled organisms, developed into multicellular organisms when two different single celled organisms, one possibly seeking to consume the other, instead achieved an unexpected mutually beneficial relationship with one thriving inside the other. The result was a proto-typical cooperative relationship leading to ever more complex multi-celled organisms, cellular specialization, and the vast diversification of life that followed. These ideas emanate from the widely accepted theory of endosymbiosis first proposed by Margulis.
Trusting, sharing, reciprocation, negotiation, reconciliation, and second chances are all key cooperative behaviors present in numerous successful animal species. Rather than wasting energy competing over access to a particular resource, successful species are inclined to spread out to exploit comparatively uncontested resources.
Cooperation is a key aspect of flourishing in the botanical world as well. In addition to the cooperative mutualism that benefits both plants and insects, researchers have learned that plants cooperate with each other in astonishing ways. Some plants share resources when they are limited such as sunflowers which have been observed to share a food source that is equidistant between them. Many plants can communicate through the gases they emit to warn neighboring plants of imminent danger such as being eaten by herbivores. In response to such chemical warnings neighboring plants can produce defensive compounds which may be toxic, harmful, or distasteful. By protecting its neighbors, plants avoid being left isolated and vulnerable.
When competition to utilize a scarce resource becomes unavoidable, often the species which emerge successfully adapt to the pressure of scarcity by taking advantage of some latent capacity, or a beneficial genetic mutation enabling them to exploit a less contested ecological niche, sometimes resulting in the emergence of a new species. Still, competitive strategies and violence are common in the natural world. Survival strategies of some species can include extremely anti-social behaviors.
Some species of birds will destroy the eggs of other birds and replace them with their own, and others will destroy the nests of competing males to render themselves the more desirable mate. Male primates might kill the offspring of competitors. Some might commit in-group homicide or bond by killing individuals from a neighboring group. Lacking the necessary conditions for optimizing their human potential, some of these aggressive, violent, and homicidal behaviors are known to have occurred among groups of pre-modern humans as well.