Daily Times

Darwin was right in his philosophy of survival of the fittest, but the same competition led humanity to evolve cooperatively to resolve the issues and crises created by this survival of the fittest. Human life has passed through multiple stages of its progression toward civilisation as it has moved from competition to cooperation. Competition has been an essential component of his survival during all ages, where survival against the odds of life was an absolute necessity. Search for Food and shelter made man fight and struggle against others for protection and better life. This competitiveness is in our genes, and the desire to excel from other fellows is human nature. So is our competition with life and nature around us. Human beings constantly struggle against nature for survival and protection. The same competition has led man to bitterness, resulting in wars, fights, and quarrels, so bloodshed and destruction entered this competition.

But very soon, humans realised they must have a civilisation built on cooperation instead of competition. Consequently, the competition of individuals began to take the shape of the competition of groups, and ultimately it gained the form of social cooperation. Human beings realised the significance of collaboration for better survival and togetherness. With this passion, civilisation was established, and the foundation of society was laid. Even eth ancient human beings, when life was so harsh in the absence of tools, the hunters made groups and shared their food. The same happened in the case of the foundation of agriculture, where men and women joined hands to grow crops. All this contributed to making human societies.

The same cooperation has become the modern lifestyle because success and achievements become almost tricky without this. J. B. Mathew’s essay ‘The Cooperatives–an Experiment in Civilisation’ also stressed that human life has gradually shifted from capitalism to Consumers Cooperation. Today we have established institutions with cooperation and collaboration for the better function of societies. This cooperation is visible in the business world corporations, Multinational businesses, and Governmental and Non-Governmental organisations working for the benefit of communities. In sports, human beings fight as teams to win their targets. Similar teamwork has been popularised in almost every institution of today’s life for running machines of society. In the socio-political arena is also the party systems that ensure gradual progress and success. So, cooperation and competition go hand in hand.

Human beings constantly struggle against nature for survival and protection.

This sense of cooperative competitiveness must be part and parcel of daily life to keep the direction the same because in eth absence of any such spirit, everyone will have a different approach, and never any goals of human life would be achieved. This spirit must be one of the primary goals of our teaching and training in our educational institutions. The child must be brought up with the confidence that he has to provide and seek the cooperation of his fellows to achieve collective and individual targets. This type of training can go a long way in establishing even healthy and robust societies. Moreover, this would create the spirit of nationhood, which is essential for a multicultural and diversified society like Pakistan. At the psychological level, togetherness is a positive and healthy way of life and helps promote anti-war and anti-destruction sentiment, and one feels protected and better placed. So, the spirit of cooperation must prevail instead of working in isolation.

Human civilisation has continually evolved, and this evolution has no end. Today’s modern age calls for even more cooperation when information technology and the Internet have created a cyberspace where the individual is becoming gradually isolated in their tiny capsule and cocoon. Although individuals are electronically connected more than ever, they are mentally and spiritually separated from each other. This type of dual life is causing many socio-cultural issues for human beings because togetherness gradually shifts to isolation. But the ways and means can be devised to find a healthy cooperative environment even in this age of technology and its advances for a positive evolution of human societies. For example, sharing knowledge and skills with fellow human beings so that the dispossessed and deprived can enjoy the fruit of technology and its working. The spirit of this cooperation can work better for the socio-cultural issues of humanity. Some nations are gradually being left behind. They are being pushed back to the stone age, where hunger and insecurity led to the destruction of the civilisation developed so far. So, it is the need of the hour that we must learn competition with cooperation. In the case of education, this spirit can lead to many advances in education, and human beings would find bigger and larger chances of survival and gaining fruit from each other labour. The same spirit would lead to killing the nature of war and terrorism. The heart of cooperation must function at levels ranging from individual to group and ultimately at the national and international levels. The training for this spirit must begin with the training and schooling of the children and must be reminded repeatedly at all levels of education. Moreover, the sociopolitical institution must ensure that the nation progresses with a similar spirit of cooperative competitiveness.

The writer is a professor of English at Government Emerson University, Multan. He can be reached at zeadogar@hotmail.com and Tweets at @Profzee