Читать книгу Mutual Aid - Pablo Servigne - Страница 10

If you observe living (‘other than human’) beings from the point of view of competition, the picture jumps out at you: the lion eats the antelope, chimpanzees kill each other, young trees elbow each other aside to gain access to light, and fungi and microbes show no pity to each other. The myth unfolds in the light of this ruthless universe. The state of nature is synonymous with chaos, strife, looting and violence. It’s the law of the jungle, the ‘survival of the fittest’, or the ‘war of all against all’, in the words of one of the fathers of liberalism, the philosopher Thomas Hobbes.

Myths give colour to the world. And an idea, when repeated countless times, ends up being true. Just look around: if you say that human beings are naturally altruistic, you’ll probably be viewed as naïve or idealistic. If you say they’re naturally selfish, you’ll have the ‘realists’ on your side.

Since the last century, Western culture, modern and utilitarian, has effectively developed a hypertrophied competitiveness, abandoning its generous, altruistic and benevolent aspects, which are now quite atrophied. Mutual aid? Who still believes in that? Sometimes it miraculously reappears, thanks to an unusual item on the evening news or in an animal video on the Internet that gets watched millions of times. Fascinating!

Let’s be honest: surely everyone has felt the deep joy of helping a loved one or of being given a hand by someone else? And what happens when a region is hit by a flood? Is there more looting than acts of solidarity? Of course not! Neighbours pull together, other people rush in from all sides and take crazy risks to save those who need to be rescued. Strangers from hundreds or thousands of miles away get organized and send in money. More generally, aren’t social security, the redistribution of wealth, humanitarian aid, education and even cooperatives incredible institutions of mutual aid? Why has this fact become so impossible for us to see?

A close examination of the spectrum of living creatures – from bacteria to human societies, via plants and animals – reveals that mutual aid not only is ubiquitous, but has been present since time began. It’s simple: all living creatures are involved in relationships of mutual aid. All of them. Mutual aid isn’t a mere news item; it’s a principle of the living world. It’s even a mechanism of the evolution of living creatures: the organisms which survive difficult conditions most easily are not the strongest; they’re those which manage to cooperate.

In fact, in the jungle, there’s a whiff of mutual aid that we can no longer smell. This book will be an attempt to inhale that inspiration, in a long deep breath.