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  1. Apr 2023
    1. I reject both pure Rousseau-ism, i.e. humans would be good and equal if not for unequal structures, and Hobbesian-ism, i.e. people are bad and are only kept good by forceful institutions. What matters most I believe, is the right balance between cooperation and competition, both are real, at the individual and collective level, and we as humans are a mixed and complex bag.
      • Michel begins the essay by doing away with simple, absolute assumptions about society.
        • We are each and collectively a mixture of
          • cooperative and
          • competitive tendencies
      • This echoes the evolutionary description of an individual as a distinct living system that is demarcated from its environment so is
        • in competition with other individuals for resources in order to survive as an individual organism
        • at the same time that it cooperates with other types of individuals that can enhance its individual and collective (species) survival
      • In other words
        • competition and collaboration are often entangled phenotypes necessary for evolutionary fitness