Evolutionary and Economic Foundations for an Ecological Civilization

ABSTRACT: Human civilization threatens the life support functions generated by global ecosystems. Humanity must forge an ecological civilization to avoid collapse. We apply evolutionary theory to the human system, with an emphasis on the economy, to understand how we have arrived at our current predicament and to suggest paths forward. Neoliberal economic theory claims that within markets, the self-interested behavior of individuals and firms maximizes societal welfare, while some strands of evolutionary theory claim that selfish individuals will outcompete their selfish conspecifics. Yet, cooperation is ubiquitous. Humans have become more interdependent than ever. We present a theoretical argument that the structure of the global economy is best explained by multilevel selection (MLS)—an evolutionary process wherein competitive individuals outcompete cooperative individuals within groups, while cooperative groups outperform competitive groups. MLS helps explain why both cooperation and selfishness co-exist, with cooperation the most adaptive social behavior at higher-scales. We conclude that achieving an ecological civilization will not only require cooperation at the global scale, but also the forging of a new relationship between humans and the rest of nature, akin to the relationship between a human cell and the human body.