What about self-interest? Because self-interest can lead (depending
on societal pressures) to either Selfishness or Cooperation, is it not a
deeper force in human nature? Self interest/human nature has, to
my knowledge, beat all utopian reformers. To my knowledge, this,
and certain other human traits, have evidenced themselves no matter
what the idological/societal enviornment. In those societies which
wished these human traits away when formulating the "ideal" always
found massive hypocrisy within their poorly-functioning societies.
For instance, early christianity's beliefs regarding sex were fine, so
long as it remained a religion. When the religion became the dominant
construct in medieval Europe, Christianity went from being voluntary
to mandatory -- and guaranteed its own corruption as a result of its
emphasis on the ideal, as opposed to real, view of human nature.
Barbara Tuchman's _A Distant Mirror_ shows in large part the folly
of the belief that an ideologically - imposed societal construct cannot
remold human beings into something that they are not.
One of the best students of the subject, IMHO, is the writer Orson
Scott Card, particularly reflected in his _The call of Earth_ series.
It is difficult for me to imagine a purely "cooperative" or
"competitive" society -- Capitalist societies are highly cooperative,
when viewed as a system, and Socialist/Communist can be highly
competitive. Where the fallacy lies, in one system or the other, is
when it is assumed that a given group or class of people will behave in
a self-less way over time. Selflessness is not unknown to human
individuals, but again IMHO, it is too dammed rare and unpredictable
to attempt to base a society on.
---Greg