General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: I need a good comeback for my delusional cousin on Facebook [View all]Shankapotomus
(4,840 posts)we wouldn't have evolved beyond the cave. Cooperation and group harmony are evolutionary behaviors that advance the individual's and group's survival. If they didn't, it would not have evolved. In fact, competition, true competition, in most forms, is a danger to the survival of the competitors. You are much more likely to die and not live to reproduce and pass on your genes if you are too competitive with other people. Thus, cooperation and sharing evolved because it gave those who possessed it an evolutionary advantage. Humans would not have evolved to dominate the Earth if they never learned to cooperate and manage to control their fighting over resources, mates, and territory. Without cooperation and helping one another we never would have reached complex societies for our greater protection from predators and natural calamities or longer lifespans.
In fact, cooperation and sharing evolved because competition had less survival value. There is far more survival advantage in cooperating and sharing and living to reproduce than there is in dying as a result of competing over resources and thus never reproducing. Humans who helped one another, who were diplomatic and shared and cooperated, evolved and reproduced because more of the humans who were stubborn, resistant and hostile to others and defensive of resources weren't reproducing as much and probably dying from hostilities.
So sure, competition is natural to many of the lower species and, to an extent, still is found among humans, but it is lower on an evolutionary scale than is freely sharing resources to decrease the probability of death.