Epicurus was one of the very first people to ever stress the importance of cooperation. Ever since then, whether Adam Smith, Hobbes, Milton Friedman or Dawkins, all tell us that human beings are selfish.
In fact, this is not true, although those who are selfish do tend to run the show. Whether raising a baby (thanks for your help, Grandma), hunting out on the plains, cooking together, eating together, defending the tribe together, people needed to work together, problem-solve together, and today, run huge organisations together. The resulting relationships, which involve love, care, friendship, care and trust, all are of vital importance.
The prediction is that the societies which will survive in the future will be be fair and relatively unhierarchical, because they are good at cooperating and being inclusive. Those that are unequal and hierarchical will fail (which makes the huge differences between rich and poor in many countries, including Western European countries and the United States particularly troublesome. The worst thing i s that those who actively promote the inequality cannot see what it is leading to).
Long before Jesus, the Sermon on the Mount, and the Christian church, Epicurus was promoting just this idea of cooperation, and in a time of huge violence and political disruption. He was a wise man.
(I owe the basis of this post to Charles Leadbetter in The Guardian Weekly 3/16/2012)
It seems to me that the Ancient Greeks were way ahead in all sorts of domains: medicine, politics, philophy etc.
What happened I wonder!
I would like to know exactly what he did say about co-operation. The concept and its outworking has been vital to our survival from the beginning, so I suppose you are saying he is the first person to be recorded as having stressed its importance. Small family groups roaming the Savannah in Africa, had to co-operate to find food and raise the young; then as the groups became bigger and incorporated other groups the same applied with the sad incentive of defending their territory against other groups, Then co-operation in warfare became even more essential.
However with this came the prejudice against those of other groups and this dies very hard . I cannot see, in the near future at anyrate, a time when we shed this hard wired ‘in group-out group’ mantality however much we like to think that we , as individuals are not prejudiced against other races, classes, sexual orientation or people who are different.
Two thousand years ago, the Jews were particularly prejudiced against the Samaritons who they considered to be inferior ‘jews’ The parable of the good Samariton is stressing the importance of co-operation even with those considered to be inferior. One step further than Epicurus?? I think they would both get on very well!