"However, I was thinking about what Miles wrote. It seems to me that cooperation among humans is inevitable. Survival would be virtually impossible without it. But competition seems wholly dispensable. Or am I just so thoroughly socialized, I can't see that human society _requires_ competition. Given the likelihood of the latter, anyone have any examples that might shatter my social dupeness?"
Well, competition is a part of game playing -- but that's really a temporary form, engaged in for the purpose of play ...and not necessarily of "winning" -- a very charged concept in this culture. One could also picture competition for scarce resources...but not necessarily as an inevitable behavior even under those circumstances. I also think that a few posters are confusing "competition" with "struggle for survival"; I don't think they're necessarily the same.
For the last few days, I have also been musing over the irony that Capital nowadays is headed straight for those states where social supports are the highest... where social support for education and health care and a minimal standard of living has produced a reliable, educated workforce that Capital can mine in the same way as one mines for gold or oil. The metaphor of the free competitive market conceals the reality of the cooperation that must exist in order for anything to be mined or exploited at all.
The notion of "competition" in a world in which there IS enough for everyone and in which scarcity is artificially constructed is purely obscene.
Joanna