It’s possible to see the evolution of society as a battle between competitive and cooperative urges.
Those groups are cooperative, but there is competition for status and privilege within them.
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We compete for power but also know that power corrupts. The only way to overthrow overpowered corruption is by collaborating with less powerful but more numerous people and groups against them.
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This dynamic is everywhere. And points to the fact that competition and collaboration aren’t opposites, but rather siblings. One uses might, the other uses size, but both aim for power. And both can be corrupted by power. (See: all institutions)
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It’s tempting to see the corrective power of collaboration and to believe that if only collaboration could permanently overpower competition, we’d be better off as a society. But I disagree.
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I see competitive and collaborative urges as two forces that must always remain strong enough to overpower and correct the corruptive tendencies in the other. They sharpen each other. Each blade is improved by the other, against its will.
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Some call this dynamic a virtual engine, or an opponent process. I think of it as productive disagreement. A disagreement can be productive even if you only wanted to win, as long as it stays alive long enough to fuel this back-and-forth self-correcting dialogue.
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It had to be this way, since most of evolution and history climbed towards higher and higher forms of productivity without any true intention (or wisdom about how) to do so. It’s a free-floating productive disagreement / virtual engine / opponent process that works despite us.
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