Competition is human nature, sure. Which means there is a range of environments where humans are competitive in various ways. Cooperation is also human nature, ditto. Some of those environments overlap. Ours is one where they do. We might try to create environments where there is less competition and more cooperation, just as the right tries to do the reverse. At this level of abstraction there's no more to be said.
jks
--- Dennis Perrin <dperrin at comcast.net> wrote:
> > Man, I thought Justin just went over this. If by
> "human nature"
> > you mean some biological or genetic imperative,
> Luke and Woj's
> > claim here is nonsensical. One more time: any
> genetic or
> > biological factors must be expressed in an
> environmental
> > context. There is no way to "strip away" the
> environment
> > to assess the pure, isolated genetic effect.
> > Thus to make the claim that X is "natural" or
> > "inevitable", independent of environmental
> conditions, demonstrates
> > a (willful?) ignorance of what has been learned
> about genetics and
> > biology.
> >
> > Miles
>
> This is microbe-splitting. We're talking about
> "human nature" as expressed
> in a human environment (at least I was). Joanna
> appears to believe that
> competition is a creation of capitalism (that's the
> drift I'm getting), and
> clearly this isn't the case -- lacrosse, the
> "Creator's Game," was played by
> the Creek, Choctaw and Iroquois. Tribes competed on
> incredibly large fields,
> and games could last for days. The contests,
> oftentimes used as preparation
> for war or as a means to settle land disputes,
> resulted in massive injuries
> and at times death. I would view this as a form of
> competition, but I
> wouldn't say that the Iroquois were free marketers.
>
> DP
>
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