“We Have to get along” — Joseph Stiglitz
For the most part the advance of Homo Sapiens, compared to other primates, has been attributed to our ability to cooperate. Any one or two of the guys in the following painting would likely have a difficult time subduing the mammoth but as a group, with each member taking a strategic position relative to each other and the beast, they make it work so they can do it on a recurring basis and get better at it as they do.
As historian Yuval Noah Harare writes in his award winning book “Sapiens” “The power of Homo sapiens does not come from something superior in our body or brains. It comes from our ability to co-operate flexibly in large numbers.”
Cooperation in and of itself is quite an intricate capability that requires those involved to communicate, tolerate and compromise all at the same time.
Cooperation means improving the effectiveness of others in the creation of a joint output by putting your own personal interests aside and taking others’ needs and constraints into account. It involves creating an end product that is more than the sum of its parts. The focus is on the result. Cooperation, like that illustrated in the following picture of firefighters battling a blaze, is a demanding activity. It involves taking individual risks because individual contributions to the joint output can’t be directly measured.
Cooperation is often used synonymously with coordination or collaboration but there is an important difference in meaning between these three terms.” Yves Morieux of Boston Consulting Group (BCG) explains that “when you collaborate or coordinate, it’s easy to avoid confrontations and hard choices. Not so when you cooperate — because you are working together on a single thing.”
Cooperation between and among parties is often referred to as a cooperative relationship. Participants in these relationships often share vital resources and knowledge as well as staff and personnel to accomplish a specific task.
Spontaneous cooperation occurs when volunteers and first responders work together to rescue residents from rising flood waters from Hurricane Harvey along the Gulf Coast.
A good example of cooperation is that demonstrated by players on a basketball team attempting to score a goal against a team of opponents.
The zig-zag black line represents a player dribbling while the other black lines also represent player movement. A dashed orange line is used to signify a pass. The arrow head shows its direction. A shot or field goal attempt at the basket is indicated by an orange dotted line with an arrow head.
Ironically cooperation can often require more ambiguity than precision. Just a bit of ambiguity allows individuals to create individual images of the items on which they need to cooperate. Often there is just enough difference to satisfy individual wants and requirements without diminishing those of others. While this can be difficult for very tangible physical items like an automobile purchase, it’s much less difficult for less tangible things like entertainment or a restaurant with a certain cuisine. Many a marriage has been saved because of the flexibility available in individual impressions about a movie and a meal.
Nuance and ambiguity are often the things that allow human beings to see commonality where they may be little. When a legal agreement to sell a car includes language that says the parties agree to “discuss issues regarding performance of the automobile” before filing a claim the language offers opportunity for both the seller and buyer to discuss what “performance” means. The ambiguity provides opportunity to resolve any dispute amicably.
The entire U.S. system of government was designed to force cooperation and compromise. Critics of the Constitution argued that the proposed federal government was too large and would be unresponsive to the people. In 1789 James Madison responded to those critics by writing in Federalist №10 defended the form of republican government proposed by the Constitution.
In Federalist No 10 Madison explored majority rule v. minority rights. He countered that it was exactly the great number of factions and diversity that would avoid tyranny. Groups would be forced to negotiate and compromise among themselves, arriving at solutions that would respect the rights of minorities. Further, he argued that the large size of the country would actually make it more difficult for factions to gain control over others. “The influence of factious leaders may kindle a flame within their particular States, but will be unable to spread a general conflagration through the other States.”
Along with his friend and neighbor, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison worshiped at the temple of reason. They both were skeptical about the role of any state-sponsored church. Historian Edwin S. Gaustad wrote:
“Jefferson and Madison came to understand much of western European history as needlessly besmirched and tragically bloodied by the heavy hand of despotic religion. So also in Virginia, Jefferson found the Church of England much too privileged and protected, with the virtually automatic result that it became pompous, persecutorial, and far more involved in political than in spiritual concerns. Madison, at the age of twenty-two, already found himself out of patience with neighboring Anglicans who indulged in that ‘diabolical, hell-conceived principle of persecution.”
A century before the founding of the United States by Madison, Jefferson et.al., William Penn, who grew up in 17th Century England amidst the religious wars between the Cavaliers and the Roundheads, was a strong advocate of religious toleration. As the “Proprietor of Pennsylvania”, Penn wrote into the colony’s laws in 1682:
“That all persons living in this province who confess and acknowledge the one almighty and eternal God to be the creator, upholder, and ruler of the world, and that hold themselves obliged in conscience to live peaceably and justly in civil society, shall in no ways be molested or prejudiced for their religious persuasion or practice in matters of faith and worship, nor shall they be compelled at any time to frequent or maintain any religious worship, place or ministry whatever.”
While cooperation is not only an enabler of public safety and a requirement for success in sports it is the bedrock of American society. Our well being depends upon it and its capabilities need to be practiced and it’s performance constantly improved. Very often cooperation requires leadership much like Winston Churchill offered British citizens during World War II.
In the dark early days of the Second World War Churchill had few real weapons. He attacked with words instead. The speeches Churchill delivered are among the most powerful ever given in the English language. His words were defiant, heroic and human, lightened by flashes of humor. They reached out to everyone in Britain, across Nazi-occupied Europe, and throughout the world. As journalist Beverley Nichols wrote, ‘He took the English language and sent it into battle.
“Hitler knows that he will have to break us in this Island or lose the war. If we can stand up to him, all Europe may be free and the life of the world may move forward into broad, sunlit uplands. But if we fail, then the whole world, including the United States, including all that we have known and cared for, will sink into the abyss of a new Dark Age made more sinister, and perhaps more protracted, by the lights of perverted science.
Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duties, and so bear ourselves that, if the British Empire and its Commonwealth last for a thousand years, men will still say, “This was their finest hour.”” — June 18, 1940; House of Commons
Winston Churchill is cheered by workers during a visit to bomb-damaged Plymouth on 2 May 1941. This was one of many morale-boosting visits he made across Britain. Public opinion polls, then in their infancy, show that between July 1940 and May 1945, never less than 78 per cent of those polled said they approved of Churchill as prime minister.
Below Churchill waves to crowds in Whitehall, celebrating the defeat of Nazi Germany on Victory in Europe Day (VE Day), 8 May 1945. In a speech to them, he declared: “God bless you all. This is your victory!” The crowd roared back, “No — it is yours”. For Churchill, nothing would match his wartime triumphs of leading the British people to cooperate like perhaps no other people in history have.
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Notes:
- https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/cooperation-when-whole-greater-than-sum-its-parts-yves-morieux
- Edwin S. Gaustad, Faith of the Founders: Religion and the New Nation 1776–1826, p. 37.
- Edwin S. Gaustad, Faith of the Founders: Religion and the New Nation 1776–1826, p. 27.
- https://www.iwm.org.uk/history/how-churchill-led-britain-to-victory-in-the-second-world-war
