Joshua Greene

All living systems are built

on a combination of cooperation and competition, right?

So cooperation at multiple levels means starting with primordial soup, you have molecules come together to form cells and cells come together to form more complicated cells and colonies and individuals with organs that are worked together in complimentary ways.

And then we have individuals forming small scale societies, villages, chiefdoms, nations, and sometimes even United Nations.

And all of that works because

the parts are able to accomplish more together than they can separately, and so they form a whole.

Yeah, well, the story of humanity really reflects the story of life on Earth more broadly.

That is, everything we see around us, all living systems are built on a combination of cooperation and competition.

right?

So cooperation at multiple levels means starting with primordial soup, you have molecules come together to form cells, and cells come together to form more complicated cells and colonies and individuals with with organs that are, you know, work together in complementary ways.

And then we have individuals forming small scale societies, you know, villages, chiefdoms, nations, and sometimes even United Nations.

And and all of that works because

the parts are able to accomplish more together than they can separately, and so they form a whole.

But what drives that process is competition.

That is, groups that are able to survive better and out-compete the competition are more likely to pass on their genes and pass on their ideas at a cultural level.

And so the...

Cooperation is built in to humans.

It's built into the way the cells in our bodies cooperate with each other, and it's built into the way that we cooperate with each other as individuals.

And what we call morality, which has been my main topic of study for

now, depending on you, count something like 30 years, is really a suite of psychological capacities that enable us to be cooperative.