The origin of competition
„Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate”
C. G. Jung
If we want to understand ourselves, we have to study our history. Don’t worry, I do not want to bore you by dwelling in old stories of kings and wars. For our purpose it will be sufficient to study the very first phase of our history. In this stage we can already see the fundamental principles at work, but things are still not overly complex and therefore easy enough to understand.
Let’s start:
Life started in the primordial soup of the oceans around four billion years ago, when a first molecular structure (let’s call it just „molecule“ in the following) managed, by coincidence, to replicate itself. Of course the first replica of the molecule would immediately start to self replicate too (and so on). For a while this process was not obstructed: there were enough chemicals to build new molecules (enough „food“ if you want). Therefore the molecule filled, within a short time, the whole primordial soup with identical copies of itself. We might call this first phase „the first paradise“, the exclusive reign of self replication. It was a boring paradise because the molecules most probably had no significant consciousness which would have allowed them to enjoy their replication party. Then at some point in time something important happened: The replicating molecules ran out of „food“, the building blocks to build new copies. Self replication stopped suddenly. Self replication, which I will call the „male principle“, had met the „female principle“: limitation. This is the moment when the process of evolution started. A small percentage of the replicated molecules were different from their originals, maybe because the replication process was not perfect or due to other influences like radiation. One day, one of the molecules was able to crack other molecules to use their parts for his own replicas. This allowed it to self replicate in spite of the lack of food. Molecules started to „eat“ other molecules for the first time. Since this day, there is a war going on on this planet, a war on resources which are required for replication. The process of eating other molecules is the result of „replication frustration“ (a precursor of the sexual frustration we all know): because of limitation - the female principle - easy direct replication was not possible anymore, more sophisticated mechanisms had to be found. An evolutionary arms race led to the creation of more and more complex self replicating structures: plants and animals. This „war“ has been raging for billions of years and we humans are a result of it.
Later life invented sex, a method to mix genes to generate variation in the offspring. The goal was still self replication, but sex added new complexity to the game. The reasons why sexual reproduction has evolved are still disputed and probably quite complex.
I will call self replication the male principle, because a man creates millions of sperm cells every day (vs. about only 300 ovulated eggs in a whole lifetime of a woman). Sperm cells are mere information and are very cheap to produce. The enclosure part - needed only for transportation - is discarded when it enters the female egg, so really only the genetic code matters. The female egg on the other hand is a highly complex machine: a complete cell with membrane, organelles etc., therefore it is matter. The availability of matter is limited. The female cell is of course information too (it also contains DNA). It is important to understand at this point that men and woman are not implementing only the principles named after them. Women of course reproduce, and men are very much shaped by sexual frustration: they cannot easily reproduce all the time and they reflect this in their bodies and minds. Both sexes implement both principles to some extent.
Fortunately we do not feel the full extent of this sexual frustration. Our mind is shaped by evolution in a way which allows us to tolerate it. It’s not possible anyway to conceive 100 babies a day (due to a lack of available women), therefore men don’t feel the urge for sex all the time. But everything we do is ultimately directed towards reproduction. This is why we enjoy highly complex activities like conducting physical experiments: it‘s always frustrated (I don‘t mean this in a bad way) sexual „energy“ which is driving us. In the case of physical experiments it is the subconscious dream of a large gain in power resulting from a better understanding of nature which will allow us to have better access to resources (and ultimately increase our chances of reproduction).
The process of self replication together with the limitation of available resources makes sure it is always difficult to reproduce: resources are always scarce, because they are immediately used by a living creature to self replicate. Even if a creature is able to devour other creatures, there will be soon copies of it around which will do the same (and therefore compete for resources with the original creature). There are always only eight bones for the ten dogs.
What other creatures should be devoured? Of course not the own replicates („children“), this would not make sense because it would counteract replication. Members of the same species also rarely eat each other even if this would make sense from a resource perspective: it is dangerous to eat genetically close creatures, as this might transfer parasites and diseases. But many species kill competing individuals (to get access to their territory) or at least try to push them out of their territory. Even slavery is known in the animal world (i.e. certain ant species).
So far we have talked only about genetical information. But with the development of larger brains a new phenomenon appeared: culture. Culture is information stored in the brains of a population which is also replicated from generation to generation by communication processes between individuals (e.g. chatting). Like genetic information, culture is governed by the process of evolution. We have seen that genetic information is always searching for material („hardware“) to build creatures. Culture is in a very similar way always searching for brains (again the „hardware“) to run on. This means that elements of culture also have a mechanism for self replication (if they don’t have one, they disappear very quickly). This can be their obvious usefulness (e.g. a cooking recipe for a tasty cake) or an obligation to preach in the case of some religions. Sometimes culture is spread by means of killing or enslaving those who don’t share the same culture (e.g. the christian crusades) and acquire their reproductive potential (territory, women). As these two levels of information (genetic and cultural) behave in a very similar way, it is often not important to identify whether a human behavior is dominated by genes or culture (the famous „nature vs. nurture“ debate). But an important difference is that our genes cannot be changed easily. Culture by contrast can be altered relatively quickly. Therefore if a behavior is driven by our genes, it cannot be changed easily as well.
This is why research about the genetic causes of human behavior (like in the field of evolutionary psychology) are refused by many. The genetic causes seem to deprive us of options to improve society. This is of course true.
I believe however that ignoring reality is a perfect recipe for failure. A better society can only be built on the ground of what we truly are and not on wishful thinking. We can build a new better house only with the bricks we have (or we can produce) and not with the impossible ones we would like to have. Unfortunately biological arguments have been often abused in the past to support simplistic right wing political views („to be egoistic is our nature, it’s impossible to change this“).
As you will see in part 2 of this book, I believe that luckily a very comfortable „house“ can be built for all humans using the currently available „bricks“.