Gongol.com Archives: January 2025

January 12, 2025

Whenever a calamity of shocking proportions comes about, four entirely predictable voices are sure to pipe up. One blames the victims, usually for vaguely defined moral failings. One calls the tragedy a judgment from God. Another blames it on "late-stage capitalism". And the fourth uses it as a case for hoarding weapons and preparing for the collapse of civilization. ■ All four of these voices ignore one of the foremost characteristics of human life, if not the most important aspect of all: We are a cooperative species by our very nature. We are not the strongest, nor the biggest, nor the fastest members of the animal kingdom. But we are endowed with the ability to communicate, cooperate, and organize among ourselves -- and to do so quickly, spontaneously, and voluntarily. Wild animals don't lift cars off crash victims or resuscitate heart attack patients in mid-flight. ■ The knee-jerk reactions either ignore or deny this reality at their own peril. If your philosophy depends upon denying aid when others are in need, then you'll find yourself without friends sooner rather than later. If you blame all bad things on godly judgment, then you'll probably succeed mostly in converting people to disbelief in God. If you wave your arms and vaguely decry the social systems around you, then you'll mostly find yourself isolated inside your own ideological rigidity. ■ And if your plans for a nightmare scenario consist of shooting people rather than cooperating with unlikely allies, then in the unlikely event of an apocalypse, you'll probably make it just long enough for an even bigger warlord-wannabe than yourself to discover your cache of stuff and take it for his own, with you left behind as collateral damage. ■ No social order is perfect. Democracy needs to be maintained within the rule of law. Shortcomings of market economies need to be corrected through regulation or intervention. Peace must often be maintained by stockpiling (and occasionally showing off) the weapons of war. ■ But in any contest among economic or political systems, what perpetually emerges on top is whichever alternative does the most to facilitate freely-chosen cooperation. When people have agency and get to choose what skills and resources they can share, we often share better and more productively than when told what to do. ■ It's rarely flawless; human choices never are. Thus, no social, political, or economic system will turn out perfectly, either. But the application of free, uncompelled choices -- in markets, elections, and in day-to-day life -- more consistently gets us to better outcomes than anything else. The voices that scream otherwise are best told to shut up.