Thanks, John, good point. I like your dance lead role metaphor. Best,
Andrea On Mar 9, 2009, at 1:31 PM, John Bunzl wrote: > > "Andrea Strimling" <[email protected]> wrote: > To: <[email protected]> > Sent: Monday, March 09, 2009 5:07 PM > Subject: Re: Arguments against privileging the competition narrative > > >> >> Hello all, >> >> This reminds me of Elise Boulding's work, especially her last book, >> published at age 80, "Culture of Peace." She argues that history is >> generally written as a sequences of wars, conflicts, invasions, >> conquests, etc., but that history could just as easily be written as >> the history of peaceful coexistence to nonviolent conflict resolution >> to other related episodes in human history. Rather than refute the >> prevailing approach, she focuses on creating an alternative that >> illuminates cooperation. Elise is the wife of the late Kenneth >> Boulding, and a highly-recognized scholar and peace activist - >> nominated for Nobel some years ago. >> >> Andrea >> > > Thanks for the tip, Andrea - I'll check it out. > > Another aproach to human history is the evolutionary approach by > which it > can be mapped, broadly, as the evolution of ever-larger scales of > cooperative social units with competition actually driving the > process. So, > broadly, there's been an evolution from families to tribes to Middle > Age > small states to nation-states to, most recently, supra-national > organisations such as the EU. And paradoxically the driver for these > ever-larger social units was not cooperation but competition. > > Competition between families became so destructive that at a certain > critical point it became in the common interest to become tribes. > Competition between tribes in turn made it in the common interest to > become > small states and so on. > > Seen in this light, competition and cooperation perform a kind of > interconnected dance with each playing the lead role at the > appropriate > time/circumstance. > > Obviously, this only makes any sense taking the broadest overview of > history > and there are doubtless many reversals or contradictions the closer > in you > look. But broadly, to me it makes a great deal of sense and offers a > much > more complete view which marginalises neither competition nor > cooperation. > It also allows us to make greater sense of globalisation, allowing > us to > view it - for all its goods and bads - as part of the natural > evolutionary > process I describe above. In other words globalisation - including > climate > change and the present economic crisis - are indicators that > competition is > reaching its melt-down point; i.e. the point at which global > cooperation - > i.e. some kind of global social cooperative unit - becomes in > everyone's > best interests. > > Would welcome any comments. > best > John > > > > > Andrea L. Strimling Research Fellow Harvard Kennedy School Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, International Security Program --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "CooperationCommons" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/CooperationCommons?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
