To: pezz who wrote (374 ) 8/12/2000 1:27:43 PM From: Solon Read Replies (1) | Respond to Perhaps I should restate my point. I may be misunderstanding you. In post 363 you stated that religion could be viewed as the law that enforced cooperation which was essential. Now I would not dispute that cooperation is essential. However, the idea that cooperation would have to be coerced or enforced in some way...sort of belies some of the nuances of the word. (After all, people ought to know what is to their mutual benefit, and when to work together). That starts as soon as two men pull the deer home because it is too heavy for one...and so on. What I'm saying is that working together for true self interest seems a natural corollary of that self interest. Therefore, I question whether cooperation that conferred such a distinct advantage on a particular tiny group of power brokers was necessary for the evolutionary advance, or whether it may have actually retarded human progress by channeling natural cooperation into cooperation that is not chosen or given freely. As an example, we could look at the cooperation of the (slave)serfs to the feudal landlords, or the cooperation of captured Blacks, in working as slaves for others.by apart and outside of the cooperating members ...is perhaps capable of being understood slightly differently, than cooperation that is self chosen without coercion, and is truly for the benefit of the cooperating members, and not solely for the benefit of the enforcers and creators of that cooperation . Much of civilization's advances came when groups of people broke the chains of their cooperation and started to evolve forwards again. Add the French Revolution to the previous two examples. Here, a freely chosen cooperation went against a coerced cooperation and smashed it from within.
