Bioregioning 🌍
“Selfishness beats altruism within groups. Altruistic groups beat selfish groups. Everything else is commentary.”
—Edward O. Wilson
What it takes to grab the biggest slice of the pie is different than what it takes to make the biggest pie. This is, quite literally, the fundamental problem of human social life, and it is just as true for an individual in a team as it is for a nation-state arguing that it should be allowed to release more carbon than other nations.
We need to construct conditions in which altruism can thrive.
What's in it for me → What's in it for us? Eco-system!
The three Cs of human distinctiveness:
Cooperation. First, we easily cooperate with others who are genetically unrelated to us and are by far the most cooperative primate.
Cognition. Second, our cognition is different, especially our capacity for symbolic thought and relational learning.
Culture. And, third, we culturally transmit more learned behavioral information across generations than other species.
This vision is obviously still very much in the making. We do not know exactly how to serve the network together properly, whether we should let it expand so fast, or how to pay for it next year. The tasks we have undertaken will take years, but they have the potential to transform the way people all over the world think about their resources and... See more
Calvin Po • Donella Meadows Revisited - Future Observatory Journal
