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Good people… but not that good
The good news is that we are prosocial; in other news, it comes with strings and conditions attached
Take a look around you. Unless you’re in the middle of a nature reserve, miles from human settlements, most of what you see is the result of people working together — buildings, machines, clothes, food, transportation, you name it. And even beyond the stuff that is constructed, or made in factories, we can see collaborative efforts everywhere.
Think of the arts (yes, orchestras and bands obviously, but even solo musical artists rely on others to get their music to their audiences), or of sports (yes, team sports obviously, but individual athletes too rely on others to coach them or supply them with tennis rackets or track spikes).
This tendency to collaborate with others to achieve more is not something that is unique to humans. In The Social Instinct, Nichola Raihani describes how it has been instrumental in the development of many species in the natural world — including us. Arguably, it is precisely because of our highly sophisticated social instinct that we discovered the principle of division of labour, and have become as successful as we are.
This allowed us to collaborate in ways that were not just transactional or rule-based, but often driven…
