The Key to Survival - COOPERATION.

My family had a summer cottage on the Saint John River. It was about thirty minutes from down town Saint John. To get down to the cottage you had to make a right turn off the two lane public highway and turn down a narrow, steep gravel road that separated the farmers field into two sections. Near the bottom of the road was a railway track with a small station house. At the foot of the hill it was necessary to make a sharp turn to the right, a turn to the left, go over the tracks and cross a small bridge to continue towards the cottage.

One day my older sister borrowed my bicycle and she and her friends were returning to the cottage via the steep gravel road. Unfortunately, she was travelling fast and was afraid to cross the tracks in case a train was passing through. When she braked the bike, it started to skid and slide on the gravel. The result was she slammed the front wheel into the side of the small wooden station house.

Word spread fast and I ran back up the road from our cottage to see what had happened. My sister was standing there in shock with a bump on her forehead, bloody knees and scratched legs. I looked at her and then at my bike. The front  wheel was no longer round, but oval shape. My first comment was, "Look what you did to my bike!"  My friends, but especially my sister's friends, never let me forget that selfish comment for the rest of the summer. I felt like some awful, ill considerate bastard to be honest!

As I grew older I realized that selfishness is not black or white. Perhaps, there are even 50 shades of selfishness! It is a good thing to be selfish - it keeps us alive. We need to take care of ourselves and others. At the same time, at the other end of the scale, there is an unhealthy pathological form of greed that has always been a major problem in the world - remember Adolf Hitler! As for me, it was just a kid with a bicycle looking out for his property, or so I thought at the time. Besides, I don't remember her asking me if she could borrow my bike that day???

In recent years there has been much research done on evolutionary development. What seems to be emerging is that all life forms, including mankind, without cooperation, would never have survived. In other words, evolution will punish selfish behaviour, and this seems to be true from single-cell organism to rational animals.

Most of us have experienced that problem, if not in our own family, then in one organization or another. Greed, laziness and selfish behaviour ultimately destroys any organization. When you apply the Pareto Principe, the 80-20 rule, many organizations survive because the 20% will roll up their sleeves and do what has to be done. On the other hand, it is to our mutual interest to work together with others. Even primitive peoples had to learn to develop cooperative methods to hunt and gather the food they needed to survive. (See: Papers by Christoph Adami of Michigan State University. Professor of Microbiology and Molecular Genetics))

A recent study found that the people in the British Isles spend more time each day on their devices than they do sleeping -  eight hours a day on average! Generation Z, those born after 1994 and truly technically connected, are often called selfish, entitled, over-protected and spoon fed. No doubt some will grow up egocentric and mean. Only time will tell.

What we are learning, as those who read Professor Adami suggest -  it is nice to know that scientific research confirms Machiavellian and self-serving behaviour ultimately backfires. It has been my experience that working together, and in a cooperative manner, is not only good for us as individuals, but is essential for the survival of our organizations and societies. But then I turn on the radio and listen to the world news!!!

And that's Dicks View of the World this Week