Cooperation is a form of pleasure and play in itself
An alternative school of Darwinism emerged in Russia emphasizing cooperation, not competition, as the driver of evolutionary change—see Mutual Aid by Pyotr Kropotkin. It’s not just about cooperation as a means to an end though—Kropotkin posits that cooperation is a form of pleasure and social play in itself.
Kropotkin’s actual argument is far more interesting. Much of it, for instance, is concerned with how animal cooperation often has nothing to do with survival or reproduction, but is a form of pleasure in itself. “To take flight in flocks merely for pleasure is quite common among all sorts of birds,” he writes. Kropotkin multiplies examples of social play: pairs of vultures wheeling about for their own entertainment, hares so keen to box with other species that they occasionally (and unwisely) approach foxes, flocks of birds performing military-style maneuvers, bands of squirrels coming together for wrestling and similar games.
To exercise one’s capacities to their fullest extent is to take pleasure in one’s own existence, and with sociable creatures, such pleasures are proportionally magnified when performed in company. From the Russian perspective, this does not need to be explained. It is simply what life is. We don’t have to explain why creatures desire to be alive. Life is an end in itself. And if what being alive actually consists of is having powers—to run, jump, fight, fly through the air—then surely the exercise of such powers as an end in itself does not have to be explained either. It’s just an extension of the same principle. —David Graeber, What’s the point if we can’t have fun?
- previously: play gives meaning to life
- see also: pleasure can be therapeutic — let’s interrogate the puritanical idea that pleasure is destructive