Mutual Aid
...there is in Nature the law of Mutual Aid, which, for the success of the struggle for life, and especially for the progressive evolution of the species, is far more important than the law of mutual contest. ... ...we see that the very documents [historians] habitually peruse are such as to exaggerate the part of human life given to struggles and to underrate its peaceful moods. Bright and sunny days are lost sight of in the gales and storms.
Peter Kropotkin (1902)
Kropotkin traces, through multitudes of examples, the presence of co-operation, and then of mutual aid, among animals from ants building underground ‘cities’, to the human industrial strikes of the 1890s in Europe and North America. He argues from
accounts,
Explanation is far from a simple matter.
rather than statistics, that such support is of far greater importance to evolution than the conflicts of individuals. Historians, and writers in general, he suggests, have been over
persuaded
One factor in persuasion.
by the way society records its calamities while quite failing to document the great bulk of human life which is passed
calmly.
An example of the calmer norm.
Maybe his point is well reflected in contemporary media, however, less transient sources claim co-operation as fundamental to human life: witness
Buddhist
Not on co-operation, but takes the reader on to Buddhist literature.
teachings, or the origins of
language.
Co-operation as one of the basic traits necessary for the development of language.
Mutual aid (which inevitably blends into co-operation) forms the
vast sea
All analogies do need a health warning!
of normality, certainly there are occasional sharks and icebergs, but swimming is universal.
In his book Mutual Aid: A Factor in Evolution Kropotkin brought together essays that he had published originally between the years 1890 and 1896 in the periodical The Nineteenth Century. I have only had access to the very low grade undated reprint by Amazon, attributed to Will Jonson with an ISBN978-1497333734, the first part of the quote being from page 6, and the second from page 80, of that reproduction.
The photograph, of a flock of Barnacle geese rising and flying as a single entity, apparently with never so much as the touch of a wing, was taken at the RSPB site, Mersehead, Dumfriesshire, which is on the coast of southern Scotland. Mutual aid has co-operation at its base; its hard to imagine co-operation which draws a line, once the parties have the necessary physical and intellectual capacities, at offering assistance.
Above, hovering on blue introduces a link: click to go, move away to stay.
Saturday 28th September 2024
...guide to this site