bateson: nucleated cells & narratives of competition versus cooperation

22 Sep 2017

one particular line section in the mary catherine bateson episode of on being sort of blew my mind.

“…the earliest life forms had no nucleus, and on the whole, bacteria don’t have that kind of nucleus. And a biologist named Lynn Margulis, who was a microbiologist studying single-celled creatures and their progenitors, came up with the theory that the cell with a nucleus actually came about by one single-cell organism taking up residence inside the other in a way that was mutually beneficial.

The cells in the green plants have little islands of chlorophyll in order to do photosynthesis that is the base of our entire food chain, right? And it is now understood that they were originally like algae — they took up residence inside these cells, because they needed a home that they didn’t have. And so for millions of years, every cell in every leaf is actually a cooperative enterprise.”

i think a lot about narrative, dominant narrative, and counter-narrative. i genuinely didn’t know about this part of the history of evolution. or maybe i did and i’ve just forgotten (or been encouraged to forget…).

but the fact that most plant life as we know it wouldn’t have been possible without cooperation is mind-boggling. even broader than that, nucleated cells, which (i’m pretty sure) are what makes up most of the human body, wouldn’t be if it weren’t for cooperation.

all of this, to me, points to the opposite of the dominant narrative in america: the competition is the solution to most/all problems. not only does the narrative say that, it makes us believe that competition actually gets us to the best outcomes.

so, as i do with narratives, my question is: who benefits from this narrative? and, unsurprisingly, people who have the highest capacity and therefor likelihood of winning benefit from narratives of competition. this is particularly so in winner-take-all systems (which is a lot of our systems). (there’s something here about the 1% rule that ic an’t remember if i’ve written about but here’s an idea i heard: when competing, in a winner-take-all system, you don’t have to be 100% better than the competition. to win, you just need to be 1% better than them. if you are and you win, you get all the rewards. this has the long-run capacity to have certain people accrue benefits over time. this has the potential for huge inequity. i really wish i could remember the context in which i heard that though…)

anyways, i’ve been paying attention to this “competition as best option” narrative for a while and now i have even more ammo (ugh. still stuck in military frames) with which to combat it.

longer excerpt

MS. BATESON: …we have so much bought into the idea that competition is a law of nature and the only source of creativity. And incidentally, that is not a true biological fact. There is competition as part of the evolutionary process, but there is a tremendous amount of cooperation also involved, even at the cellular level.

MS. TIPPETT: But even evolutionary biology is — these days, is paying so much attention to cooperation. And there’s this much broader palette of science that describes us in so many other ways that you’re a part of, too.

MS. BATESON: Co-evolution, endosymbiosis.

MS. TIPPETT: What’s that?

MS. BATESON: Well, when you were in high school, you looked through a microscope at a cell, and one of the things you learned to recognize was the nucleus of the cell, right? You made pictures of it. Well, the earliest life forms had no nucleus, and on the whole, bacteria don’t have that kind of nucleus. And a biologist named Lynn Margulis, who was a microbiologist studying single-celled creatures and their progenitors, came up with the theory that the cell with a nucleus actually came about by one single-cell organism taking up residence inside the other in a way that was mutually beneficial.

The cells in the green plants have little islands of chlorophyll in order to do photosynthesis that is the base of our entire food chain, right? And it is now understood that they were originally like algae — they took up residence inside these cells, because they needed a home that they didn’t have. And so for millions of years, every cell in every leaf is actually a cooperative enterprise.

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