Greenenvironmental's Blog

Teamwork

‘Teamwork’ is the ‘evolutionary’ advantage that allowed the human animal to climb down out of the trees and become a society.  Initially we probably behaved much like a wolf pack, or a colony of meerkat, but then we evolved further to form tribes, and eventually ‘society’.  Teamwork allowed us to reach the moon, as the marines say gung ho, or all pull together.  Unfortunately, the other side of that coin are the detrimental aspects, and many people have found ways to take advantage of this aspect for their own benefit: such as Jim Jones, Joseph Mcarthy, and Charles Manson, to say nothing of every single one of today’s ‘politicians’

We pack animals have a need for togetherness and to work collectively as a unified group.  There are some members of packs who are loners and don’t seem to have the need for the social aspects of a community, but this only a small percentage of the population and may be dictated by the ills in society and not society in genereal.  The majority of society needs that connection, and this is best demonstrated by our own findings that married couples live longer than single people, and even the company of pets can prolong human life.

The detrimental effects of teamwork are clearly demonstrated by Nazi Germany, and the institution of Slavery.  Also, there are  numerous examples of dictators who have ‘scorched the Earth’ in the name of some imaginary ideal such as Pol Pot, and Augusto Pinochet.  In the US, this aspects is often demonstrated by those who wish to gain power at any expense, from Nixon stealing his opponents strategy papers, to McCarthy’s Jihad against the communists.

The problem lies in those who believe that their quest is more important than unity. When these few are able to convince others to join their ’cause’, with slogans like “those who are not with ‘us’, relegating some to be against ‘us’, they only succeed in degrading humanity.   The reality is that there are no ideals that are more important than unity, without unity their is only rioting.  Those who become true believers are only contributing to the downfall of society by making their cause more important than anything else, including unity.  For example, Antoine Lavoisier was a great chemist, and many have lamented about how unfair it was that he was guillotined during the French revolution.  However, someone else would have eventually repeated his work, but no one could reverse the divisiveness that drove the French to kill each other.

The rich always have some important cause, and believe that the poor should be happy to eat  cake, or whatever other left-overs they don’t want.  As has happened repeatedly in history, the poor accepted this treatment until their pent up frustration erupted in a moment of rage, exemplified by the modern song ‘Freedom is just another word for nothing left to lose’. Similarly there have been many riots in the United States attributed to some spark igniting an already volatile situation, and unfortunately, our leaders ignore the events that create the volatile situations, and focus on  the spark.