A Case for Being More Like the Trees
By Karen Kahle, CGC Executive Director
Trees do it. Birds do it. A growing body of research shows how cooperation prevails across the natural world. Cooperation, truly, is everywhere: Plants provide each other with nutrients, fish remove parasites from each other’s scales, ants build nests together, predators hunt in packs and bees will even give their own lives for the benefit of the hive.
In nature, whether the collaboration is between members of the same species or between individuals of different species, cooperation is a founding principle of diversity, complexity and resilience.
But first, let’s go back to the fundamentals of Darwin’s theory of evolution. Evolution by natural selection, Darwin wrote, mainly depends on “success in leaving progeny.” This sentence was simplified as “the survival of the fittest,” with the fittest being the strongest and most competitive individual. Often however, individuals benefit from working with each other. Cooperation, then, is sometimes the key.
Tree Take-Aways
Here at the CGC we’re fascinated with trees. A revolution has been taking place in the scientific understanding of trees. Research about trees has expanded drastically in recent years, as the intricate and complex movement within the soil ecosystem (considered a form of communication) is better known, confirming what close observers of forests have long suspected: Trees are far more alert, social, sophisticated—and even intelligent—than we thought. What’s more, the growing field of traditional ecological knowledge is drawing wisdom from indigenous traditions alongside western science to regularly reveal new insights.
Why do trees share resources and form alliances with trees of other species? Doesn’t the law of natural selection suggest they should be competing? Scientists now say it doesn’t make evolutionary sense for trees to behave like resource-grabbing individualists. They live longest and reproduce most often in a healthy, stable forest. That’s why they’ve evolved to help their neighbors.
To Compete or Cooperate: That Is the Question
Competing for control of areas of Earth's surface, large and small, is a universal trait among societies and has resulted in both productive cooperation and destructive conflict between groups. Cooperation and competition are part of our daily life. Self-interest constrained by competition is regularly championed as a general recipe for progress. For a long time, cooperation was thought to be unsustainable, because cheaters would eventually take advantage of a cooperative individual until the relationship broke down.
You wouldn’t know it from our 24/7 news cycle, but humans’ most distinctive characteristics as a species are our propensity to cooperate, to incur personal costs to uphold ethical norms and to go out of our way to help strangers. Human cooperation exceeds that of all other species with regards to the scale and range of cooperative activities. Of course, all such behavior is sensitive to institutional context, but in general, humans are a cooperative species.
Maybe it’s time to observe nature in a different way, to change our gaze to not focus solely on the lion killing the antelope but to observe also the finch on the tortoise’s back. Just like them, we have everything to gain by favoring cooperation over competition.
