Many claim ours is a new era of the so-called ‘strongman’, where zero-sum, realist, competitive politics and culture rules the day. But philosopher of science Manuel Delaflor argues this will be the final act of the worldview based on competition, survival of the fittest, and ‘might is right’. Through examples stretching from biology to game theory, Delaflor argues that cooperation, not competition, is the optimal strategy to adopt throughout our lives and societies.

For millennia, our dominant narrative has cast human progress as an arena of winners and losers, a relentless struggle where only the victorious should stand tall. History books lionize conquerors, empires, the victors. This drama has shaped how we imagine success: survival of the fittest, richest, strongest, a cultural mythology so pervasive that we rarely question its foundations or validity. We've learned that excelling means surpassing others. Children are pushed into competitive games, rewarded for outpacing others. Academic honours reserved for the top percentile, athletic competitions that crown champions while forgetting the rest. These structures shape not just behaviour but identity itself, conditioning children to view life as a zero-sum game.

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Neo-Darwinist interpretations of evolution emphasize a brutal contest of "survival of the fittest", and from the shadows of history we see this everywhere. Surprisingly, once we dig deep into it, turns out this storyline is fundamentally flawed.

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How did we arrive here? Is all of it a natural truth that highlights a necessary aspect of our humanity? What if it is based on a specific interpretation of nature rather than reality? Neo-Darwinist interpretations of evolution emphasize a brutal contest of "survival of the fittest", and from the shadows of history we see this everywhere. Surprisingly, once we dig deep into it, turns out this storyline is fundamentally flawed. Peter Kropotkin was one of the first to challenge this narrative, documenting how animals survive through cooperation as much as through competition. Mutual aid, he observed, is just as much a part of our evolutionary history as the Darwinian struggle. Modern science vindicates this view with mounting evidence. And if we pause and think, cooperation reveals itself not as some starry-eyed idealism whispered by dreamers, but as evolution's strategy for survival across billions of years. Nature's most spectacular achievements aren't solo performances but symphonies of collaboration. Biologists have documented life's greatest leaps forward, breathtaking transitions where formerly independent entities surrendered their isolation to create something greater. From solitary cells that joined to form the first complex organisms, to early humans who discovered that collective hunting and shared shelter meant the difference between flourishing and extinction. After half a century dissecting ant empires, E.O. Wilson condensed the lesson to a single maxim: “Selfishness beats altruism within groups; altruistic groups beat selfish groups.” Evolution’s jackpots, he argued, go to collectives that weaponize altruism, not to lone predators gnashing their teeth at the edges.

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