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...it is no exaggeration to say that the measure of civilisation is the degree in which the method of co-operative intelligence replaces the method of brute conflict.
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Miles replied:
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I'd flip the binary above: brutal conflict is more prevalent in our "civilized" society and "cooperative intelligence" is more prevalent in the hunting and gathering society.
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Perhaps Dewey wasn't making the distinction between modern, big machine societies and long ago hunter gatherers you suggest. I don't know, not having read the entire work (context, and all that).
The assertion can be re-shaped further: societies are 'civilized' to the extent they avoid violence. By this criteria, the most technologically advanced civilizations can be 'savage' and the simplest 'advanced', as you say.
But onward to Ravi's concerns, which, if I read correctly, have more to do with the idea that either conflict or cooperation is the heart of human intelligence and the engine of what we call progress.
In response, I can only offer fragmentary thoughts.
There are surely different sorts of intelligence and different kinds of progress. I believe cooperation produces and enhances one of these forms while conflict develops another. Intelligence, very broadly defined, is primarily real world problem solving capacity, yes? Abstract capabilities (mathematics, art, etc) are icing on that cake.
Conflict and cooperation present different challenges, different sets of problems and require the application and flourishing of different elements of our problem-solving toolkit. I suspect the relationship of the two during our cognitive history was more synergistic than either/or.
.d.