Harmony and Conflict in the Living World - Alexander F. Skutch [12]
There was a time when an intelligent observer of events on this planet might have suspected that the process of creation at multiple centers had reached an impasse, a point where cooperation and harmony could not be increased without at the same time intensifying competition and discord; and competition could not be diminished without at the same time reducing the number and quality of existing organisms. For the more highly organized the creature, the more it needs the cooperation and support of a complex environment, yet the more it preys on or competes with the very organisms that make its own life possible. Although nearly every living creature is in some respects a cooperator and in some respects a competitor with its neighbors, the latter is perhaps more evident in its behavior. Its instincts and appetites are directed primarily toward its own welfare, prompting it to seek what it needs without much consideration for its neighbors. Only toward its mate and dependent young, and more rarely toward other members of its flock or herd, is it explicitly altruistic. Yet by the secular interactions of species in living communities, the habits of each become compatible with the survival of associated species, in so far as this is necessary to preserve the biotic association in a thriving state. Species that cause the deterioration of their environment dig the ground from beneath their feet and prepare their own doom.
To break the impasse between cooperation and competition and turn the balance in favor of harmony, only one hope is at present
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discernible on this planet. Very recently, as cosmic and even terrestrial time are measured, beings gifted with free intelligence and morality arose upon it. At first, these faculties were dedicated exclusively to the welfare of the individual animals endowed with them and their close kin, but gradually they acquired a broader vision. When leavened with sympathy, intelligence can understand the way of life of other creatures, their needs and tendencies. Taking the external view, intelligent beings can often predict at what points others will come into conflict with themselves, and sometimes they can also foresee how such conflicts might be avoided, or at least mitigated. They can guide the formation of patterns from two or more centers simultaneously toward eventual harmonious union, in a manner impossible to an immanent creative process that can work only from within.
Morality at its best is willingness to modify one's own life and reduce one's material needs so that other beings may fulfill themselves. As long as life can be sustained only by exploiting an environment that can never satisfy all the demands made upon it by teeming creatures, strife and conflict will never be wholly eliminated. But moral effort, inspired by love and directed by intelligence, can do much to diminish disorder and promote harmony. A person becomes the more eager to dedicate his strength to this endeavor when he reflects that the contrast between himself and the beings that surround him is not nearly as sharp as it appears to minds that spontaneously exaggerate distinctions in the interest of effective action. Humans so endowed, who devote themselves to this cause, become voluntary workers in the cause of harmony, impelled to undertake this high endeavor by their sensitivity to the creative energy within them, their loyalty to the process that made them. At all levels of the world process we detect a tendency to overcome conflicts by the union of colliding patterns in a higher synthesis, but it is by means of moral agents of this high quality that harmonization most readily overcomes strife between physiologically and psychically insulated organisms not directly sensible to the pain or distress that one too often inflicts upon another.
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2
The Individual and its Species
Before we explore the