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Is the World Learning that Cooperation Sucks
As we look at our largest global challenges, I fear we tried to hard to all get along and work things out toghether.
In seven years, at the height of the Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union, Americans answered John F. Kennedy’s challenge to land and man on the moon by the end of the 1960s.
It was an audacious goal, set after the Soviet’s shocking leapfrogging of the US in the space race by putting a man into orbit in 1957.
But the Americans did it, landing a man on the moon in July 1969. They did it not because it was necessarily for them or humanity, not because they particularly wanted to, but because they needed to beat those Commie bastards in the most ambitious of global ambitions — the exploration of outer space.
There is a lesson in that 1960s space race that we desperately need to learn right now if we are to continue to thrive, and possibly even exist, on this planet.
Human beings are, at their hearts, unevolved, ruthlessly competitive animals that want little more than to beat the other monkeys to the hottest she-monkeys and biggest bananas.
As a generally pleasant and social guy, it kills me to have concluded that we’re competitive animals at heart, but I feel we may need to own that for the good of all of us.
