Anti-Cooperation Mechanisms

A mechanism which subverts the inclinations among humans to cooperate with each other and usurps or weakens the bonds and relationships between human beings.

Every organism and species on the planet depends on cooperation with other species or members of its own species for its survival—and evolved accordingly. Human beings are no exception. Human beings cooperate other of its own species for food, safety, reproductive success, child rearing and so on. It also cooperates with other species (domesticated animals) and organisms (the bacteria on its skin, in its digestive system). However, human cultures developed mechanisms that undermine the cooperative instincts and abilities and facilitate anti-social behavior.

Companies. These constructs are inherently antagonistic to the interests of others by making the interests of the owners of the company different than the interests of the group and by excluding those owners from group obligations. (For millions of years different homo species, including sapiens, functioned as groups with its members all serving the interests of the group.)

Currency and financial systems. These inventions subverted the bonds between human beings and the role of an individual within a group by making commerce and markets the way in which human being define themselves and organize their efforts. A human being was previously defined by their role within a group and by their relationships within that group. Now those relationships (and the obligations between individuals that grow out of those relationships) are subordinated or even destroyed by the relationships (and obligations that grow out of this relationship) imposed on individual by those with no obligations to the group or concern for the group. In the past an individual’s group helped to provide his or her food, shelter and security—from those with which they had intimate contact and histories. Now markets serve this function and the relationship is transactional instead of relational, intimate or cooperative.

Myths. Myths can foster cooperation but there are also myths that attack the idea of cooperation and as result dislodge an individual from his or her history and from the ethics that fostered cooperation. Individualism and rags to riches stories are two such narratives designed to compliment the structures that destroy the cooperative instincts of human beings.

Fossil Fuel Economy

A process whereby carbon that is sequestered within the planet for millions of years is extracted and then pumped into the atmosphere and oceans as a waste product (which radically changes the chemistry of the atmosphere and oceans and reduces their ability to support life).

Approximately 36 gigatonnes of carbon dioxide are dumped into the atmosphere as a waste product every year.

Here is a brief history of fossil fuels and carbon waste.

Media

1) A disseminator of information that shapes public perceptions according to the interests of the companies that advertise with them; these companies often are responsible for the destruction of ecosystems.

2) The maker of representations of the world who holds its viewers and readers in thrall and persuades them of the authenticity of the representations.

3) A vehicle used to increase the information asymmetries between people and companies; companies use these information asymmetries to reduce opposition to their efforts and gain a favorable bargaining position when purchasing land or resource rights, advocating for legislation that subordinates people and ecosystems to the interests of their business.

4) A spokesperson for those beliefs and claims most conducive to the interests of the management and shareholders of a select number of companies and so a collaborator with those who regularly destroy ecosystems and who see as being in their interests to do so.

Politics

1) Politics is a fight among human beings over how all of the resources of the planet are apportioned among those humans who currently reside on the planet. It’s dividing the pie, with no allowance for the interests of other living things or the biosphere and its systems; it’s a fight over who gets what.

2) It’s a process of deliberation and decision making that neglects to weigh or consider the dependence of human beings on the biosphere and the planet’s ecosystems.

3) It’s a process that sees the planet’s resources and living things as a sum of money and privileges to be divided among the parties at the table, with all other living things and the systems that support life are all defined as commodities or assets (i.e., a proxy for money that can be bought or sold).

4) It’s a process whereby the wants of groups and individual are decided by what these individuals and groups can dream up as opposed to by what is feasible given the finite resources of the planet or the limitations of the living system of the planet. The primary concern of the different parties in the process is one questions (“Am I getting my fair share?”) and all other considerations (such as the proposal’s potential impact on ecosystems and the systems of the planet that support all life) are subordinated to this one.

5) It’s a contest between humans to allocate and distribute all existing resources and the earth’s bounty among themselves, without consideration of other living things, the biosphere or living things (including humans) of the future.

The decision making apparatus of political systems is biased against the systems of the planet that supports life as it excludes or avoids certain types of information, such as the finitude of resources, the fragility of ecosystems, the laws of biology, and the interests of the millions of species that reside on this planet with us. The interests of trees or bears or microorganisms or bees are not considered relevant to the process. In many political systems even the most modest environmental proposals or expressions of concern for ecosystems are scorned and resisted as though the preservation of the planet’s ecosystems were an imposition or even an attack against one party in the political discussion or another.

The participants of political systems often experience a distortion of perception whereby every action or event is seen as either allocating more resources to them or the members of their group or allocating less resources to them or the members of their group. This binary formulation (“Am I getting more or less?”) can consume their thoughts and strongly influence what actions and behaviors they see as permissible or desirable. This distortion of perception can prevent these participants from thinking that “we all part of a larger system and that system includes the biosphere and other living things” and acting accordingly.

Capitalism

1) A system that reduces human beings into economic actors (shoppers and consumers) and other living things into assets and commodities.

2) A system that defines human beings only and as nothing more than economic actors that are valued according to the size of their transactions and as participants in markets (i.e., as buyers, consumers, labor). It sees no other aspect of them as being of significance or value.

3) A pervasive system of reductionisms; a claim that transactions and market participation are the sum of an individual.

This system and its definition of human beings is so pervasive (and persuasive) that many people willingly define themselves according to these terms. Those who see themselves (consciously or unconsciously) as only economic actors (and most are pressured to do so by this system) are driven to vie with others on these terms. This may result in single-mindedness and ruthlessness, as well as a contempt for other living things and ecosystems except in how those things might be bought or sold and contribute to their effectiveness within markets.

Defined as only economic actors human beings then seek to increase their value within the marketplace. This pursuit often causes them to disregard the interests of other living things and the biosphere as this can only interfere with their efforts to maximize their value as economic actors.

This system also holds that any demand in the marketplace—the fulfillment of any desire—is legitimate. It does not allow for the hearing of concerns about the waste or harm that might result from a demand and it’s satisfaction and there is no thought about its long-term viability. In the market, demand is necessary and any criticism against a demand is met with hostility.

Industrial Agriculture

1) A system that relies on monocultures, factory fertilizers, pesticides and herbicides and depends on the undervaluing—or mispricing—of resources (such as land, air, atmosphere, lakes, ecosystems, and oceans) to extract profits.

2) A group of entities which includes chemical companies (who manufacture pesticides, herbicides and fertilizers), biotech companies (who product genetically modified seeds), industrial scale growers, and the processed food companies and industrial meat producers who buy the resource-intensive crops grown by them. These entities often use obfuscation, misdirection, lobbying and lawsuits to hide their practices from the public or gain preferential treatment from governments (such as subsides or the passing of laws that discriminate against small scale farmers).

GMO (Genetically Modified Organism)

1) A ploy by companies to intervene in a process (the act of growing food) so that they can extract rents from those dependent on that process; a way to own a patent on what currently (and for over a billion years) occurs naturally and without the company’s involvement.

2) A device certain companies use to establish a market for its pesticides and herbicides.

3) An excuse for growing of monocultures and for the use of herbicides and pesticides; the seed being the first in a chain of harmful actions that destroy habitats and ecosystems.

Organisms are constantly changing through evolutionary processes. So modification is not, on its own, contrary to the planet’s ecosystems. However, when people alter an organism a number of questions must be asked before the alteration is deemed to be beneficial or hostile to humans and other living things:

What is the plant being engineered to do? Is the plant being engineered to taste better or be more nutritious? Is it being engineered to survive a drought or to be more beneficial to the complex web of insects and microorganisms in the soil? Or is it being engineered so company can sell more ecosystem destroying herbicides and pesticides? Is it being developed so that industrial agricultural companies can consume more land with monocultures that deprive some species of habitat and kill others? Or is the plant being engineered so a company and its shareholders can hold a patent and thereby intervene in the process of growing food so they can set its rules?

A company with a patent on a GMO seed achieves, by the imperatives of the accounting statement, one of the most desirable conditions: it becomes a rent-seeker, year after year collecting a fee on an existing properties with negligible competition and without the need to make further investments to improve the product. (What advocate of GMOs is proposing that the patent for the seed be publicly owned or in the intellectual commons?)

GMO seeds are currently used in corn, soy, wheat monocultures that rely heavily on pesticides, herbicides and industrial scale fertilizers. These pesticides and herbicides are often found in lakes, streams, water supplies and many of them have been found in honey, birds, fish, and the blood streams of people.

There may be, in the future, GMO seeds that are beneficial. But, currently, most prevalent GMO seeds are a Trojan Horse for pesticide and herbicide sales or for patent ownership.

Eating products made with GMO corn, for instance, or beef from cattle fed with GMO corn, benefits the chemical companies that sell the pesticides and herbicides used on those crops and whose products are now pervasive in ecosystems.

Plausible Deniability

1) The plausibility of our claim that we are not aware of the dangers posed to species and ecosystems.

2) The insistence that we are not complicit in a certain deed because, as we also claim, we do not personally see it happening or were not informed of its existence.

3) The practice of denying what we know about the costs of our behaviors because if we admitted these costs we would have to change them.

4) A tactic to avoid accountability and perpetuate the status quo.