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Survival of the most cooperative?

May 21, 2011 By Anne 1 Comment

Is evolution evolving? A column by David Brooks in the New York Times points to a growing number of books about a fresh take on evolution. Move over “survival of the fittest,” make room for survival of the most cooperative – or maybe survival of the kindest, or the thriving of the kindest, or of the most collaborative? In one such book, The Righteous Mind, the authors “argue that natural selection takes place not only when individuals compete with other individuals, but also when groups compete with other groups,” Brooks reports. “Both competitions are examples of the survival of the fittest, but when groups compete, it’s the cohesive, cooperative, internally altruistic groups that win and pass on their genes.” He goes on to write that, compared to other animals, “humans developed moral minds that help them and their groups succeed. Humans build moral communities out of shared norms, habits, emotions and gods, and then will fight and even sometimes die to defend their communities.” I would argue that this is exactly what we humans are in the middle of doing online: creating the social norms we need for the digital part of our world to be a truly viable place of operation (of sociality, commerce, production, etc.) and to integrate well with the offline part of our lives.

This online “social norming,” which is by its nature protective (i.e., ups the level of online safety), needs to be a conscious effort on the part of an increasing proportion of humanity, including governments and industry (the providers of social media environments). It has to be a collaborative, multidisciplinary process or it won’t work; all forms of expertise are needed. Diversity is essential. As film director Tiffany Schlain put it here, in her 2010 commencement address at University of California, Berkeley, let’s “declare interdependence” and, I suggest, start building global consensus around a 21st-century online/offline citizenship that connects, empowers, protects, and promotes the social good – both online and offline, naturally. [See also author, theorist, and professor Howard Rheingold on this very subject in a video talk, “Why digital citizenship’s a hot topic” and this on the guild effect of social networking.]

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Filed Under: Literacy & Citizenship Tagged With: Connected, David Brooks, digital citizenship, evolution, interdependence, social norms, survival of the fittest, Tiffany Schlain

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  1. We need to work out the social norms of social media: Why? | NetFamilyNews.org says:
    June 27, 2011 at 2:55 pm

    […] Brooks’s column on today’s version of evolution and the new survival of the fittest: survival of the most cooperative, whereby people develop moral communities and the social norms that help those communities succeed. […]

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Control Shift: a pivotal book for Internet safety
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danah boyd's blog and book about networked youth
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If you watch nothing else: "Parenting in a Digital Age" TED Talk by Prof. Sonia Livingstone
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Let Grow Foundation
Making Caring Common
Raising Digital Natives, author Devorah Heitner's site
Renee Hobbs at the Media Education Lab
MediaSmarts.ca
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Report of the Aspen Task Force on Learning & the Internet and our guide to Creating Trusted Learning Environments
The Ruler Approach to social-emotional learning (Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence)
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"Youth Safety on a Living Internet": 2010 report of the Online Safety & Technology Working Group (and my post about it)

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