Crisis and opportunity in the wake of the pandemic

A well-known phrase by Charles Darwin is "Life is a struggle for existence itself". However, it is difficult, from an evolutionary point of view, one tha assumes that success and survival are a function of competitiveness, to explain the natural evolution of altruism, human cooperation, and morality. Seemingly this is a paradox. Recent studies, however, show that altruism and human cooperation are in fact a positive component of success in nature.

Except for the unusual behavior of ants, bees and other species of animals known for their coordinated behavior, and their self-sacrifice examples for the sake of community success, it is hard to find, among the millions of species on Earth a species that even approaches the complexity of human cooperation.

If you ever boarded a flight in Tel Aviv, and a few hours later landed in New York City, you probably did not think of the thousands and possibly millions of people who contributed in order to complete this mission, says Professor Quinn Leland of the Department of Evolutionary and Behavioral Biology at St. Andrews University in Scotland. These include travel agents, luggage carriers, security personnel, meteorologists, pilots, flight inspectors, flight attendants, engineers, aircraft designers and builders, and more. Examples such as these are not rare in the modern world, but human societies have been involved in large-scale collaborations for thousands of years.

As mentioned, cooperation also exists in the animal world, not just in the human race. Apart from the above examples, we are familiar with the example of the elephants protecting their baby elephant and encircling it with a "live shield" to keep it safe from predators, or the wolves who not only hunt in flocks but also raise their offspring together. Slightly less familiar is the phenomenon of dolphins in Eilat, according to a study by the University of Haifa, which prefer to "cuddle" in pairs, with the divers, although it is a more complex activity that requires coordination, and in practice they thus receive only half the caress.

These phenomena occur among "your own people," between species who know each other or live in the same family or community. But the example of chimpanzee monkeys willing to share a delicacy with monkeys of a species they do not know, or the fact that they "patrol" together over a wide area to protect their alien species (a study by Brian Hair of Duke University in the US) is the link between the animal world to that of human beings. This research link hints to the fact that human beings are willing to cooperate even with other humans whom they do not know. This is the example that leads us to our day.

Moreover, human cooperation is characterized by a much wider range and intensity of activities than that known in the animal world.

28 years ago, a 12-year-old girl named Severn Suzuki stood on the UN stage and taught world leaders about personal and state responsibility, trying to motivate them to defend her future and the future of humanity, while seeking significant and swift action against global warming, poverty and inequality among humans. Her speech moved the crowd and received a big, strong round of applause, but very little has changed since then on the issues she raised. The opposite is true, the situation has certainly become much worse. The last months' events, worldwide fires and floods just prove that.

A year ago, another girl, Greta Thunberg, a very militant Swedish environment activist took the same stage, and in real anger rained fire and brimstone on the representatives of the countries, and the issues - those were the same issues, only the rage was several times stronger. It is well worth watching the two speeches on the YouTube channel.

It turns out that global warming and the emergence of viruses and bacteria are inextricably linked. Warming evokes viruses and bacteria that have been dormant and frozen for thousands of years (Haaretz, May 2017). Beyond the enormous challenge currently facing humanity in the face of the deadly Corona virus pandemic, scientists warn of the impact of global warming on the functioning of bacteria essential for the survival of many species, as well as the emergence of new bacteria and new viruses that will spread far-reaching diseases and pandemics.

The World Health Organization warns of an increase in the recent emergence of infectious diseases around the world, including new diseases, as a result of demographic, environmental, social and technological changes, and further changes in our climate and lifestyles.

Against this background it is difficult to explain how there is such close cooperation between the countries of the world in the war against the Corona virus, while in the other areas mentioned in the paragraph above the cooperation is low?

What is the current crisis trying to teach us?

Psychologists Paul Piff and Dacher Keltner write in an article in the New York Times (2015) that human beings have become increasingly individualistic, more self-focused, more materialistic, and less connected to other human beings.

To my understanding, the farther a person moves from himself, his family, his home and so on towards the wider community, ie the neighborhood, the city, the country and the world, the harder it is for him to identify with the goals or problems of those wider circles.

In homogeneous societies, such as the Scandinavian countries, civic cooperation is broader, social cohesion is higher, while tax evasion, for example, is lower, despite high taxation (see Eyal Winter's book - Rational Emotions). It is more difficult to understand cooperation, and also to create it, in ethnically non-homogeneous societies, such as the United States.

And while social scientists, organizational consultants and coaches know quite well how to activate and bring about collaborations among groups and organizations smaller than a neighborhood or a city, and with an emphasis on organizations, this knowledge and skill is lacking as far as wider social circles are concerned.

With that being said, breakthroughs are now more evident in understanding the human phenomenon of collaborating in wider circles, and among people who do not necessarily know each other, such as the studies conducted at the Human Nature Lab at Yale University. The studies give hope for progress in the field. We are beginning to increasingly understand the foundations and sources of human collaboration, and we will be able to implement these in policy design and in the creation of tools and platforms that will enable large-scale collaboration.

The world around us is going crazy "all over the head" as we say in Hebrew, or at least it is right now with its feet up and its head down, and the pandemic strikes mercilessly and without distinguishing between yellow and white, rich or poor, old or young, educated or ignorant, and everything we knew and thought was stable is changing rapidly, and the earth is shaking (and warming) beneath our feet.

Significant and rapid changes are happening around us in a large number of areas (economics, employment, climate, science, technology and education, as a partial list), and we live in an age where the butterfly effect is well felt when a virus outbreak in a small place (market or laboratory, that has not yet been decided) in China turns into a worldwide "hurricane" in a matter of weeks, a storm that not only kills hundreds of thousands at record speed but completely paralyzes the world economy.

All of these clarify the unprecedented interdependence that exists today among all human beings on earth, and emphasizes the need for deep and meaningful cooperation in a broad range.

This fact brings us to the understanding that in order for such cooperation to happen, we must change the dominant individualistic paradigm which I will call "only I" to the paradigm of "I belong", a paradigm of "Me too" and especially to a paradigm of "together we will succeed".

From here I want to go straight to the current Corona pandemic, and to the most important change required of human society in the present age, if we want our grandchildren and their grandchildren to live here in a better world.

The emergence of the corona has led to many examples of international and cross-continental cooperation. No matter what the Chinese policy of hiding around the plague outbreak is at the moment, very soon after the events were known to the worldwide public, Chinese delegations of doctors from 18 countries around the world are helping to find solutions to the plague (and the list grew much since I first published these comments, in early 2020). This includes expensive equipment that allows the virus to be detected in twenty minutes (see Italy), and the transfer of tons of medical equipment that is required to needy countries, such as Cambodia, Spain and more.

Until a year ago, cooperation at such a level and intensity would have required many months of diplomatic efforts at the highest level. In this case it took ש few days to a few weeks to get there, and with almost zero bureaucracy. Not that there are no hidden interests lurking behind these good deeds.

We need to start seeing such cooperation in other areas as well, such as global warming or helping the most vulnerable populations across the globe.

Many questions remain open, and the main ones we need to answer first are: What is the next thing we need to do to improve cooperation in our communities, cities, countries and on the planet, and what is the first step, the "baby steps" we will take? I mean every single one of us, starting tomorrow morning.

And, If I may add, as coaches, what could be our role here??