David P. D. Munns: Does Cooperation Benefits Society
Cooperation benefits society because it allows people and certain groups to work together to achieve a specific goal. Cooperation is a win-win situation whereas one person may not end up benefitting in competition. As frequently seen in history and even today, historians are finding that cooperation allows certain societies to accomplish their goal in a successful community. From cooperation in ancient history to today's society, many people are seeing how everyone can benefit from working together. Many civilizations in ancient history cooperated with one another to benefit themselves. Whether they did this just for better living conditions or to simply stay alive, many people cooperated with someone else at least once in their lifetime.
…show more content…
Two early civilizations, the Hindus and the Hohokam, both lived in water-scarce environments. The only way they could survive was by cooperating with each other in the form of trade and helping each other build sophisticated irrigation networks. According to the authors of the book, even though they both lacked water the technology shared amongst them was enough to help both of them to survive. In studies about the two civilizations, historians find that the scarcity caused more complicated cooperative arrangements(Pande and Ertsen,1). Researches also find that the people living in these water-scarce towns were not affected by the water loss nearly as much as if and how they cooperated. This means that no matter what condition people are living under, it is how they cooperate that will affect their society. The results of this study clearly explains how cooperation causes societies to survive in almost any setting(Pande and Ertsen,2).
Today, there are still massive social movements today that rely entirely on cooperation. A perfect example of this would include the open source movement. This is a social movement amongst computer programmers to help them figure things out using unrestricted sharing of computer coding. This allows users of software to openly modify the software in anyway they see it fit. With this, users and developers can all benefit from someone else's discoveries. Many people believe this is a more efficient way of computer programming than a closed source software, which controls both customers and markets. This cooperation between the people causes an increase in productivity and society. The whole concept of an open source is to create free online databases and to help commercial Internet vendors. Open sources all started with computer science practices back in the 1960s. It was common for programmers to informally share codes with others. Interestingly, this was actually a form of hacking. Sharing code became the normal thing to do for some programmers, so they made licenses to allow certain groups to do this. It has evolved into what we now call open source code(Raymond).
There are many people today asking if cooperation or competition benefits society more.
David P. D. Munns asks himself the same question when it comes to the history of radio astronomy. Although he can see it both ways, in the end Munns has determined that cooperation benefits radio astronomers more when it comes to science. He believes that if they study in a more open way and share their thoughts and ideas with one another their community will succeed. Munns also brings up that competition between schools and even nations can take the cooperative aspect out of the whole deal and therefore not be beneficial early as much. While competition may be the only process to challenge someone else's previously accepted theory and possibly change or improve it, Munns thinks that cooperation can unite nations and societies and help them succeed. In other words, Munns believes that if radio astronomers saw a single sky they would work together much better and in the end improve society in many ways. Although this study that Munns has brought on only focuses on radio astronomy, it addresses the much bigger question. Whether cooperation or competition in more beneficial is society. Based on the results of this study, the answer is clear. Since cooperation causes schools and nations to work together, the long lasting effect is more profitable on both sides. Competition usually only benefits one side while cooperation helps both
sides(Smith).
There has also been numerous times in history when cooperation could have benefited the communities but they still didn't cooperate. For example, in 1989 the cooperation between the United States and Portugal in the science field was almost non-existent. The United States science agencies saw this and tried to get the two presidents to meet and talk about the issue but it never happened . Today, not much has changed between the two countries. A search has found that there was only one agreement between them over the past few years. News articles pointed out several areas of cooperation which included genetics, cancer, archaeology, geology, tropical medicine, and HIV-2. All of these studies would be available for the two countries to study together. If the two nations cooperated it would benefit themselves and many other countries to come(Mcsweegan,1). Although some societies either stick with just cooperation or competition, there are also times when neither of these options work. William Golding explains this in his timeless novel Lord of the Flies. The novel is set on a remote island sparsely populated with young boys who have been stranded. At first, the boys try to use cooperation to maintain order. They elect a leader who they think is fit for the job and just go around that. This works for a little bit but being the young boys they are everything starts going downhill. Some boys start to get jealous of the leader’s power. As soon as this happens another boy comes and splits the group up. When the two groups are finally separated they start competing for resources such as fire. This competition cooperation and competition can both be harmful to a society(Golding). Cooperation can either harm or benefit society. As seen in the examples above, it is much more common for it to benefit rather than harm society. From cooperation in ancient history to modern day, cooperation will still continue to affect people's daily lives.
Two early civilizations, the Hindus and the Hohokam, both lived in water-scarce environments. The only way they could survive was by cooperating with each other in the form of trade and helping each other build sophisticated irrigation networks. According to the authors of the book, even though they both lacked water the technology shared amongst them was enough to help both of them to survive. In studies about the two civilizations, historians find that the scarcity caused more complicated cooperative arrangements(Pande and Ertsen,1). Researches also find that the people living in these water-scarce towns were not affected by the water loss nearly as much as if and how they cooperated. This means that no matter what condition people are living under, it is how they cooperate that will affect their society. The results of this study clearly explains how cooperation causes societies to survive in almost any setting(Pande and Ertsen,2).
Today, there are still massive social movements today that rely entirely on cooperation. A perfect example of this would include the open source movement. This is a social movement amongst computer programmers to help them figure things out using unrestricted sharing of computer coding. This allows users of software to openly modify the software in anyway they see it fit. With this, users and developers can all benefit from someone else's discoveries. Many people believe this is a more efficient way of computer programming than a closed source software, which controls both customers and markets. This cooperation between the people causes an increase in productivity and society. The whole concept of an open source is to create free online databases and to help commercial Internet vendors. Open sources all started with computer science practices back in the 1960s. It was common for programmers to informally share codes with others. Interestingly, this was actually a form of hacking. Sharing code became the normal thing to do for some programmers, so they made licenses to allow certain groups to do this. It has evolved into what we now call open source code(Raymond).
There are many people today asking if cooperation or competition benefits society more.
David P. D. Munns asks himself the same question when it comes to the history of radio astronomy. Although he can see it both ways, in the end Munns has determined that cooperation benefits radio astronomers more when it comes to science. He believes that if they study in a more open way and share their thoughts and ideas with one another their community will succeed. Munns also brings up that competition between schools and even nations can take the cooperative aspect out of the whole deal and therefore not be beneficial early as much. While competition may be the only process to challenge someone else's previously accepted theory and possibly change or improve it, Munns thinks that cooperation can unite nations and societies and help them succeed. In other words, Munns believes that if radio astronomers saw a single sky they would work together much better and in the end improve society in many ways. Although this study that Munns has brought on only focuses on radio astronomy, it addresses the much bigger question. Whether cooperation or competition in more beneficial is society. Based on the results of this study, the answer is clear. Since cooperation causes schools and nations to work together, the long lasting effect is more profitable on both sides. Competition usually only benefits one side while cooperation helps both
sides(Smith).
There has also been numerous times in history when cooperation could have benefited the communities but they still didn't cooperate. For example, in 1989 the cooperation between the United States and Portugal in the science field was almost non-existent. The United States science agencies saw this and tried to get the two presidents to meet and talk about the issue but it never happened . Today, not much has changed between the two countries. A search has found that there was only one agreement between them over the past few years. News articles pointed out several areas of cooperation which included genetics, cancer, archaeology, geology, tropical medicine, and HIV-2. All of these studies would be available for the two countries to study together. If the two nations cooperated it would benefit themselves and many other countries to come(Mcsweegan,1). Although some societies either stick with just cooperation or competition, there are also times when neither of these options work. William Golding explains this in his timeless novel Lord of the Flies. The novel is set on a remote island sparsely populated with young boys who have been stranded. At first, the boys try to use cooperation to maintain order. They elect a leader who they think is fit for the job and just go around that. This works for a little bit but being the young boys they are everything starts going downhill. Some boys start to get jealous of the leader’s power. As soon as this happens another boy comes and splits the group up. When the two groups are finally separated they start competing for resources such as fire. This competition cooperation and competition can both be harmful to a society(Golding). Cooperation can either harm or benefit society. As seen in the examples above, it is much more common for it to benefit rather than harm society. From cooperation in ancient history to modern day, cooperation will still continue to affect people's daily lives.