Intro: Cooperation Beats Competition

This book is an evolving work. The piece you are about to read is just the first chapter.

There will be updated versions with better grammar, more eloquent phrases, and grander examples of cooperation from readers all around, but the essence will remain the same. You, the Beta-reader, are very welcome to help me in this endeavour with your feedback.

It is the essence of this message that is important part, and it needs to be shared now…with your cooperation, of course.

INTRO

The reason that there is no peace, prosperity, and well-being for all in our planet is not the lack of human resources or raw materials, the lack of technology or even will power (we are very strong-willed people). We have all that we need to accomplish the most important task. The reason that we are failing is that we are employing the wrong strategy.

“Strategy without tactics is the slowest route to victory. Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat.” Sun Tzu

Without the right strategy, we are just spinning our wheels, missing the point, and just rearranging things in different configurations but not moving forward. We are looking in the wrong places for solutions, and we will continue to fail at creating a true global civilization until we change our thinking and feeling, our main strategy, our paradigm.

Paradigm: a distinct set of concepts or thought patterns, including theories, research methods, postulates, and standards for what constitutes legitimate contributions to a field.

Think about these startling facts. We can put people on the moon and send exploration devices to Mars but not feed all the hungry right here at home, we can organize events like the Super Bowl with estimated hundreds of millions in revenue every year but we seem incapable of rebuilding some of our inner cities, we keep inventing all kinds of machines to do our work, but we are increasingly stressed with higher workloads.

If you know there is a better way, if you never lost hope, if this resonates with you… Continue reading because you are part of the solution, part of the change in paradigm.  

CHAPTER ONE

What if a simple, yet powerful idea, could create more abundance and freedom for all people of this planet with less effort and strife?

What if we already have all that we need to create a thriving civilization but are going about it the wrong way?

What if the answer has always been in front of us but we constantly fail to recognize it and act upon it because of its utter simplicity?

Yes, you have heard about cooperation before, but did not think it had anything to do with getting the results you seek personally, or that we collectively pursue in our society. Perhaps your heart tells you “yes, maybe there is some truth to that”, but your brain says a clear and resounding “no, that is silly, get focused!” And, of course, you believe your brain because it is your “rational” part.

Everybody knows cooperation is nicer than competition, but we typically only make room for it once the important (competitive) stuff is taken care of. Very few people are involved in cooperative projects, and the wealthiest countries in the world give a measly 0.7% of their GDP towards development and cooperation. Yep.

Why is this? Because, unfortunately, we have a very narrow view of cooperation, and do not truly understand its true potential. So, in a sort of collective delusion, we keep perpetuating a competitive way of living because we think that:

1) The world is competitive, is just the way it is.

2) Competition brings out the best in us.

But this is not the case, and we just fail to see it because we are too busy (competing) to stop and observe, do some objective research about it, or go into our hearts to ponder what makes more sense. 

The world (society) is not competitive; the world is what we make out of it. Just like on a blank canvas, we can choose to create beautiful shapes and figures or frightening scenes. In the same manner, we decide how to interact with others and organize our social structures. 

Among many, a good reason to implement cooperation is due to its energy savings. Being cooperative is more efficient from an energy standpoint. We have an energy crisis, and it is global. 

Imagine if the Russians and the Americans had cooperated to land on the moon instead of competing with each other to be there first. It would have probably happened sooner, in a safer manner, and with less resources (including human). Two brains together can think more than one. Ask yourself a simple question: how do we put out a fire, organize a meeting or prepare Thanksgiving dinner? We support and collaborate with each other. This same principle works in a larger scale.

The more we cooperate, the more energy we save and redirect in a positive way. The more we compete, the more energy we harness and less “heat” (unusable energy) is “dissipated”. Think about war, the ultimate competition, nothing is a destructive and wasteful for the environment and society as war. Cooperation, on the contrary, is synergistic and allows us to redirect energy in a constructive way and get things done with less. Let's leverage cooperation.

But, does not competition bring out the best in us? No, that is a myth, a misunderstanding. Under healthy conditions, the innate humane desire to learn and expand our limits, to grow and contribute to something bigger than ourselves, is what drives our personal and social evolution. All the great masters and achievers do in order to excel, whether pianists or painters, scientist or athletes, is to work at their craft with passion and consistency because they love it and want to be better at it. Do you think Mozart, Einstein or Steve Jobs were trying to be competitive? Or were they trying to capture an inspiration, deepen our understanding of reality and connect people in beautiful ways? I cannot think of anything more cooperative.

Children know all of this intuitively. Yes, they have competitive games, but when it comes to solve actual problems, they would not justify others having less than necessary because they did not “deserve” it.  Their hearts and minds are more connected and therefore cannot justify that which is unreasonable. We adults, however, have lost touch with our humanness due to our indoctrination into the competitive paradigm (the fear-based paradigm). And so, when children share with us their simple solutions to things, which are effective and doable, we may roll our eyes and think: “how cute, if they knew how complicated the world is out there…”. We (adults) do not get it, but they do.

How could children imagine that we have created a world that is so ungrounded and different from their reality? A world that is so complex and out-of-touch with the laws of nature? 

They cannot, especially because we are quite good at pretending and living a “double life.” Out there, in the “real” world, we act in a certain way, mostly competitive and distrustful (but disguised with plenty of correctness). Then, when we come home, we show our other side, the more cooperative and trusting (at least with the little ones, not so sure with our spouses…ha). We teach children to share at the playground and to cooperate in the classroom, to not worry about tomorrow, while we turn around every morning to participate in the competitive world, out of which, we hope, our children may one day be able to somehow escape to enjoy a worry-free life or, at least, gradually adapt to the daily grind of work (starting at 16 at the local fast food chain) in an ever-increasing insecure job market…That or else.

But until they become “well-adjusted” individuals, children see with more clarity than adults, and therefore, offer simple solutions, because “simplicity is the ultimate sophistication” (Leonardo Da Vinci).

Being competitive is the name of the game. But, as I am about to show you, there is no need to tease our children. The game is not working as we intended, the outcomes are poor and not fun for most, so it is about time to change the rules: the paradigm in which we play this game.

We have been led to believe that in order to become more productive, abundant, and fulfilled; in order to overcome economic crisis and increase innovation we have to become more competitive. Nothing could be further from reality; it is just the other way around.

Cooperation is the way to higher yields and ROIs, better outcomes in health and education, more sustainable economy and politics. And yes, it's also nicer than competition.

Despite the fact that we are only getting mixed results (at best), we keep pushing and trying harder with this same competitive mindset, ignoring that "we cannot solve our problems with the same thinking that we used when we created them", as if there was no other way, no alternative… But there is!

We think our society, our world, is complicated and often times we wish it was different and easier to tackle. But this perceived complexity prevents us from understanding the simple principles that run the whole show and to take action accordingly. Like fish in water, we are too close to our own problems to see with more perspective.

I remember my dad used to tell me to get up and do something else when I was in middle school and I would get stuck trying to solve a math problem for homework. It was a tip to change my thinking about it (like Einstein suggests).

Here is a new idea: the world is not complicated, we make it so. The world can be simple and work really well for us if we change our ways, our thinking, our paradigm.

I know this is hard to believe, but I invite you to stop looking at problems so closely; to get up and leave behind your competitive mindset for a while as we take a look at how cooperation can transform our daily interactions at all levels, our personal outlook on life, and our society as a whole for the better.

Cooperation is faster, smarter, stronger, more sustainable and powerful, overall better than competition. In fact, cooperation beats competition at its own game.

It is not what we do that makes a difference; it is how we do it. Cooperation is already transforming (quietly) our world, and the sooner most of us understand and adopt this new way of thinking and being, the faster we will reach critical mass and see benefits of greater scale.

This change is going to happen at some point, whether in our lifetime or sometime in the next 5000 years. We humans seem to be slow learners, but we do learn in time, and this is the next logical step in our evolution. I say the time for this idea is now.

"Nothing is more powerful than an idea whose time has come" Victor Hugo

People want change, but not just any change... Change to something better, and here it is: cooperation is the new competition.