By Antoinette Weibel and Otti Vogt (Inspired by a stimulating conversation with Blaine Fowers)
In Search of Homo Economicus
We have looked everywhere — the infamous ‘homo economicus’ has gone missing like Ötzi the Iceman! This abstract model of men who act and decide solely based on rational calculation of benefits and costs, and who are exclusively guided by self-interest, or even greed and guile, exists mostly in the heads of economists (who, by the way, are 80% male!) and corporate finance departments. Behavioural economists, anthropologists and psychologists have proven and re-proven in experiments and field studies all over the world that humans naturally “care about fairness and reciprocity”; are “willing to change the distribution of material outcomes at personal expense”; and “are inclined to reward those who act in a cooperative manner while punishing those who do not” — notwithstanding the cost to themselves (Henrich et al 2001). As it happens, even in so-called “one-shot” games with complete strangers, positive mutual interactions quickly emerge…
Survival of the Friendliest
But what about Charles Darwin?! Certainly, human evolution is all about the “survival of the fittest”? Yes, just not about the fittest individual. In his seminal work “The Evolution of Ethics” (2015), Blaine Fowers extensively analyses both historic and recent findings from evolutionary science and demonstrates that we have survived as a species precisely because we did not act selfishly most of the time. As humans continuously adapted to changing environmental conditions, cooperative strategies — not the often-alleged cutthroat competition — kept us alive: we learnt to care for our children (the depth of human altricity and attachment was critical for the development of our brains), to cooperate with each other (developing capacity for imitation and identity was critical to learn and share tasks), and to organise ourselves in ever larger groups (creating norms for social order and shared social identity). In fact, for the first time in evolutionary history, a uniquely human collaboration strategy based on ‘prestige and reputation’ trumped blatant aggression and the innate urge for territorial domination as practiced by our closest evolutionary relatives, like chimpanzees.
Blaine concludes that — contrary to much neoclassical economic ‘umph’ in perpetuating methodological individualism — humans are best understood as “ultrasocial, cooperative and caring”. Of course, not all of the time and not everybody: Blaine points to equilibrium experiments where on average 70% of people turn out to be collaborators — the trick is not to let the few non-cooperators (or economics professors) run our States!
Evolution Meets Politics
This is indeed when things get very interesting. Blaine is a neo-Aristotelian philosopher-psychologist and had set out on a mission to use evolutionary theory to improve our understanding of modern ethical dilemmas. In particular, his intent was to bring the famous “functional argument” in virtue ethics to life.
For those unfamiliar with the concept: in his celebrated Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle claims that in order to attain the ultimate ‘human good’, the ‘telos’ of our existence, we must focus on the essential function of human beings. To note, “function” does not mean “purpose”, but rather indicates a way of good functioning — “how a thing does well what it does”. Being an arduous biologist and practical observer, Aristotle’s simple idea was that like a flower “functions well” when it grows and blossoms, or a knife is good when it is sharp and durable, humans would lead a “good life” when expressing their fullest human capacity. In the context of his time, Aristotle then argues that human functioning is, above all, a matter of reasoning, feeling and acting well — i.e. living in accordance with virtue.
This interpretation was often criticised for being too unspecific and many attempts have been made to develop a more complete human “anthropology” (i.e. study of what makes us truly human). For example, Self-Determination Theory examines our common psychological needs, and intrinsic motivations, cognitive theories examine the way we construct meaning, and many researchers have investigated social or “psychological functioning”.
Here, Blaine’s approach was to thoroughly examine evolutionary theory to discern what “made humans truly become human”, and based on his analysis he stresses especially the innate sociality of humans and our capacity to create orderly societies. As Aristotle wisely anticipated, we are not just “social animals”, we are “political animals”. Not only do we have a strong propensity towards attachment — loving and caring relationships are extremely important to our wellbeing and have intrinsic value to us, far beyond any notion of survival — but we are also predistined to develop complex and norm-bound societal forms of engagement.
In a nutshell, as homo cooperativus we are quintessentially both social and individual at the same time — our lives are intrinsically and fundamentally bound to each other and we must find ways to positively interact: “humans are self-constituting through our relationships with others and the value of a human life is not contingent primarily on its utility, but on its role in the co-constitution of other individuals and the group.”
Evolution Needs Practical Wisdom
That’s great, you will probably say, but in very practical terms — can evolution teach us how to live better? Sadly, not directly. Whilst it is evident that as human beings we are predestined to develop in life-giving-yet-fragile bonds with each other, nothing in evolutionary theory tells us exactly how to organise our interpersonal and societal relationships, or how to best run our world. But not all hope is lost, suggests Blaine: as both Aristotle and evolutionary theory indicate, humans have a unique rational capacity to reflect on themselves and their lives. As a matter of fact, no other animal is able to ponder and engage in conversations about what it means to be “truly human” and what a good human life is all about.
This ability to reason can lead us to embrace ingenious and ethical ways to overcome conflict between groups and co-create those flourishing civilisations we have built at several times throughout our history. In fact, ethics at the most basic level is about positively mediating the relationship between individual and collective through our actions. In particular, building on neo-Aristotelian ethics, Blaine argues that in order to flourish in today’s pluralistic and complex world, we must use our evolutionary potential to learn to become “practically wise” — developing and practicing what Aristotle called “phronesis” — both individually and collectively.
He says: “Aristotle was adamant that there can be no universal rules. We always need to address the particulars of each situation, bringing it in connection with a choiceworthy common good, and by finding ways to habitually practice relevant virtues that help us bring the good into being in every specific case”. In other words, there will never be a simple rulebook for a good life in the 21st century, but by wisely embracing virtues of “good citizenship” — and by participating in society, helping others, cherishing our friendships, role-modeling and teaching crafts and insights — we are able to construct societies that enable the full expression of our essential humanity and the flourishing of all.
Collaborating for the Common Good
So what are the takeaways? Firstly, the fabled ‘homo economicus’ never existed. Evolutionary theory confirms that as humans we care deeply about each other and we are primed to develop and enact social norms that are necessary to build human and humane societies, without resorting to domination and violence. Secondly, in order to fully unleash our potential as ‘homo cooperativus’, virtue ethics teaches us that we must use our human capacity to develop individual and collective wisdom — and as Blaine shows convincingly, civic virtues can be the means not only to bring out our individual best, but to make us continuously become better versions of ourselves in order to build good societies, together.
Some of you might think: why does all of this matter? Simply put, we belive every society is only as “good” as the citizen it “produces”. If we continue to teach, incentivise and cherish humans to be “homines oeconomici”, we will continue to develop egoistic, greedy, rational utility maximizers. Our research shows beyond doubt that whenever “we expect our colleagues to only look out for themselves, we create distrust and cooperation and reciprocity become growingly unlikely.” When we incentivise and instrumentalise employees to focus merely on profit, we crowd out the intrinsic value of work and human relationships. When we single-mindedly press technical competencies, we underdevelop our capacity for compassion and reflection-in-action. Hence, going forward, we must better understand how to nurture wisdom and character in inviduals, how to create collective spaces for shared reflection and “ethical deliberation”, and how to endow civic virtues with “social prestige” — we must stop worshipping selfishness and wealth, and confer appropriate esteem to those “who enact virtues or skills that are valuable to us all”, for the common good.
Evolution Never Stops
Most importantly maybe — combining both evolution and ethics — we should eventually acknowledge that human rationality, in striking contrast to the dismal anthropology of “modern economics”, is so much more than just instrumental rationality. Who could ever claim that expressing the authentic beauty of humanity in our love and attachment, in art and songs, or indeed in our collaborative work and co-creation as an end in itself, is less rational than the commodification of ourselves in a quest for profit, efficiency or maximum utility? The splendor of human life emerges when we act with compassionate wisdom in the face of the wonderful messiness of our deeply interconnected existence, and can never be abstracted into an NPV calculation in an Excel spreadsheet.
Undoubtedly, our evolutionary path towards social freedom and flourishing will continue to be intrinsically vulnerable and fragile — it will take commitment and dedication from all of us to evolve towards a beautifully interdependent whole. In the face of growing hostilities, despair and anti-democratic movements, our societies, universities and organisations must become the catalysts for fertile communities that enable better and more beautiful forms of living together. Roll over, Adam Smith! Cheers to evolutionary ethics! May we never cease to collaborate to become our collective human best!
#UnitedForGood #GoodOrganisations #Leadership #Management #EthicsAndExcellence #Transformation #PersaonalDevelopment #Work #LeadersForHumanity
For our Leaders for Humanity interview with Blaine Fowers see: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=egC9-h-4M1I
The podcast on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/3B5NN89pIDPgGDEPqNv0W7
More information about the Good Organisations inquiry: https://goodorganisations.com
Our Good Organsiations LinkedIn page: https://www.linkedin.com/company/good-organisations/
Original publishing on our Good Organisations Medium page: https://medium.com/@goodorganisations/homo-economicus-is-dead-long-live-homo-cooperativus-14c2e9761c0c
