In the merciless arena of life, we are all subject to the law of the jungle, to ruthless competition and the survival of the fittest – such is the myth that has given rise to a society that has become toxic for our generation and our planet.

But today the lines are shifting.  A growing number of new movements and thinkers are challenging this skewed view of the world and reviving outdated words like ‘altruism’, ‘cooperation’, ‘kindness’ and ‘solidarity’.  Our era is rediscovering with a sense of wonder that this jungle also has a strong scent of mutual aid.  A close look at the wide spectrum of living beings reveals that, at all times and all places, animals, plants, micro-organisms and human beings have practised different forms of mutual aid.  And those who survive difficult conditions best are not necessarily the strongest, but those who help each other the most.

Through a multidisciplinary inquiry, Pablo Servigne and Gauthier Chapelle explore a vast, forgotten continent of mutual aid in order to discover the mechanisms of this ‘other law of the jungle’.  In so doing, they provide a more rounded view of the world of living things and give us some of the conceptual tools we need to move beyond the vicious circle of competition and self-destruction that is leading our civilization to the verge of collapse.

Pablo Servigne is an agronomist with a PhD in biology.  He is a specialist in questions of collapse, transition, agro-ecology and mutual aid.
Gauthier Chapelle is an agronomist and biologist and an expert on biomimicry.  He founded Biomimicry Europa and co-founded Greenloop.

Acknowledgements

Foreword by Alain Caillé


Introduction. The age of mutual aid

The law of the jungle

A potentially fatal paralysis

The emergence of another law of the jungle

The construction site of the new century


Chapter One. The history of a forgetting

Everywhere, all the time, and in every colour

Among one’s peers

Between distant cousins

Between dissimilar organizations

Our most distant ancestors, champions of mutual aid in all categories

All the colours of ‘symbiodiversity’

We are an inextricable bundle of interdependencies

Setting the record straight

Why society hasn’t seen it - a story of myths

Kropotkin, the anarchist prince swimming against the tide

Our blinkered society

Why science didn’t see it – a history of genes

Before the 1970s

The life, death and rebirth of sociobiology, 1970-2000

The renaissance of the 2000s


Chapter Two. Spontaneous mutual aid

Contrary to popular belief…

Where does Homo œconomicus live?

What emerges in a crisis situation

What emerges from stress and the unknown

How are we to explain these automatisms?

The end of simplistic models

A malleable automatism


Chapter 3. Group mechanisms

The hard core of mutual aid: reciprocity

The obligation to give back

The roots of reciprocity

The transition to the group: extended reciprocity

Reputation (indirect reciprocity)

Rewards and punishments (enhanced reciprocity)

Very large groups: invisible reciprocity

Social norms

Institutions


Chapter Four. The spirit of the group

A magical moment: when the group becomes one

The sense of security

The sense of equality

The sense of trust

The birth of a superorganism

Towards universal principles?

The ‘fundamentals’: putting them into practice

The principles of good governance

Mutual aid taken to the extreme

The dissolution of the self

Collective ecstasy

Group closure

A tragic moment: when mutual aid collapses


Chapter Five. Beyond the group

The big bad wolf principle

Competition with other groups

A hostile environment

Reaching a common goal

Can groups provide mutual aid to each other?

Overcoming competition between groups

The same mechanisms as at the lower level

A limit on size?

The opportunity of global disasters

Chapter Six. Since the dawn of time

The evolution of human mutual aid

Associating to survive

A band of immature primates

The evolution of mutual aid between peers

‘There is strength in unity’: the power of group selection

‘Winter is coming’: the power of the hostile environment

Other evolutionary forces

The evolution of mutual aid between species

Needing the other...

... sometimes it’s mutual...

... and eventually you can’t do without them

Again and again the hostile environment

An endless source of innovation

Mutual aid calls for mutual aid

Transforming yourself in contact with others

Taking it to the next level

How mutual aid changed the face of the world


Conclusion. The new face of mutual aid

Much more than just a law of the jungle

The main principles of mutual aid

Towards a new vision of mutual aid


Epilogue. For which world?

Are we going to kill each other?

Towards another mythology

Beyond humankind


Appendix. On the ‘new sociobiology’

An earthquake in the land of sociobiology

The secret had to lie in the genes

The slow betrayal of the founding father

The power of one man

The various evolutionary forces behind mutual aid

The origins of sociobiology: kinship selection and reciprocal altruism

The discovery of other paths: indirect reciprocity and spatial selection

Towards a more open and complex sociobiology


Notes