y that views social cooperation, not conflict and warfare, as the key to our success as a species and holds that wars represent some kind of aberration, or a by-product of various “external” social, economic, or political conditions. Perhaps the earliest advocate for a more benevolent view of human nature was the philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau, although the 1902 book by the Russian émigré anarchist Prince Pëtr Kropotkin, Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution, remains the classic, full-length argument for this scenario. Many nineteenth and twentieth century socialists – from Pierre-Joseph Proudhon to Karl Marx and the Fabian Society – also championed the cooperation theme.
The truth in this case can be found where it most often lies, in the middle. We are, in fact, an evolutionary paradox. We are both intensely cooperative and intensely competitive and destructive. What has been programmed into our genes over time is a propensity, or inclination, for both kinds of behavior, though they are also shaped by a vast array of learned, experiential, and context-specific factors. We can be killer apes or altruistic apes, depending on the particular individual (variation is the rule in all living organisms) and the particular situation. Indeed, collective violence in human societies very often involves intense partisan cooperation, with many different kinds of synergy. I refer to it as competition via cooperation. (This is discussed further in a section of my new book on “Synergy Goes to War.”) We are above all a “synergistic ape”; cooperation of various kinds has played a central role in our evolution.
What our past history tells us is that warfare is a major element of our behavioral repertoire as a species but that it also depends on the economic, social, and political circumstances – factors that are usually within our ability to exercise deliberate choices. We can choose to “make peace” when conflicts arise, or we can choose to go to war. So, our fate as a species is that we will never escape from the need to make life-and-death decisions about using collective violence – and then bear the consequences. Our ultimate fate is, in fact, in our own hands.