Coordination,
Conversation,
Cooperation.

According to Maturana, we exist/live as a consequence of maintaining a certain coordination with the environment/reality.
And we develop self-awareness/become conscious human beings by talking to each-other.
https://constructivist.info/1/3/091.maturana.pdf

Many people, Maturana included, are currently fed up with ‘competition’.
Other people continue to be convinced that Evolution is driven by ‘survival of the fittest’.

Ernst Mayr, What Evolution Is, 2002, explains that ‘Evolution has nothing to do with survival of the fittest and everything to do with the demise of the unfit’. ‘Fittest to what?!?’ since evolution is about being able to cope with change…

Which brings us back to ‘Coordination, Conversation, Cooperation’.

In order to be able to do something ‘together’, we need to pull in the same direction. We need to coordinate our efforts!
That’s what we invented language for.

Since working together, we’ve accomplished a lot. So much that we’ve invented another thing. Spare-time!
Which had to be filled. We already had language. So we talked. We shared information. And then some! We shared experiences. Feelings. We developed trust. And we started to respect our fellow human beings…

So much so that we’ve started to cooperate.
Which is far more than acting coordinately. Pulling in the same direction…
We’ve started to ‘act in concert’.

Imagine an army. Or, even better, a mob. An army is more than a mere mob. A formally structured mob waiting for orders.
A mere mob is enough to illustrate what we want to convey. A mob is coordinated ‘from within’. It’s in the very nature of a mob to act as if following order. To be naturally coordinated…
And imagine an orchestra. OK, most orchestras play music which has already been composed by somebody and do that while being coordinated – directed would be a more formal term – by a specially hired individual. By a ‘conductor’.
The difference between a mob and an orchestra being simple. Both pull in the same direction. But the mob does it viscerally, from within, while the members of an orchestra do it self-awarely. The ‘mobsters’ follow their guts while the musicians consciously listen what’s going on and tune themselves in. Coordination versus cooperation…

‘Acting in concert’ is far more ‘productive’ than mere ‘coordinating efforts’.
Yields way more plentiful results. People involved thrive rather than survive.

For a while…