Mutualistic Anteractions
Benjamin Blanchard,
The Daily Ant,
Oct 24, 2017
At the end of a movie there is a long (sometimes endless) list of credits acknowledging everyone who contributed to its production, even down to the people who provided catering and security. I have often wondered what it would look like if we provided attribution to other things in that way. Buildings, for example, could list each person who took part in construction. McDonalds wrappers could list everyone who works at the store and provides services to it. A student's diploma could list every teacher, administrator and custodian on the back side. Shirts could name the people who made it on the tag. Ambulances could list entire hospital staff on the side, your car could list all the people at the design and assembly plant, and your coffee could list the names of the people who picked the beans on the side.
Why is this important? Because it points to the way - even in the film industry - we do the exact opposite of that. We give one person credit for the work that resulted from the interactions of hundreds or thousands of people. As Benjamin Blanchard says, " I use the city sanitation service as a tool to clean my house" ("This is not to deny the agency of the individuals that constitute those tools"). I think we need to understand, first, the degree to which individual success depends on sopciety, and second, that this is the result of social cooperation rather than collaboration. We have different purposes and different intents. "I use the city sanitation service as a tool to clean my house. The city officials use me as a tool to facilitate the convenient removal of garbage." Photo: Alex Wild.
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