There seems to be a fear of big things these days in Washington, most of all, fear of the very government that resides there. But if one examines the hallmarks of humanity, one finds that big government fits right in with the natural evolution of our species.

The one thing that makes us so successful, and sets us apart from our closest relative, the chimpanzee, and our very clever kissing cousins, the Neanderthal, is cooperation. And what is more in line with cooperation than big, democratic government?

We engage in super-coordination in order to accomplish big things. We design and build colossal and complex things together that no individual could ever accomplish.

While humans produce radios, rockets, health care systems, religions and armies, you never see two chimpanzees in the wild carrying a vessel of water together. Neanderthals made some decent tools but couldn’t develop a language to pass on information to future generations.

Democratic government is a cause of super-coordination, and super-coordination is an incentive for democratic government. Humans have naturally formed progressively larger and more complex governments over the past 40,000 years, although not in a linear fashion.

That is our way of protecting ourselves from those scary “others” out there who would do us harm and take away what we have. But most of all, it is our way of having something in the first place.

If we are going to be the species that maps our own genome and explores the heavens and passes knowledge on to the future, then maybe that level of cooperation has to also include taking responsibility for what we have created.

We do that by supporting civil rights and an equal distribution of wealth in society, and protecting all citizens, including those who can help themselves and those who cannot, all of which are hallmarks of big, democratic government.

Cooperation and government have gone together at least since the beginning of chiefdoms 7,500 years ago. But it doesn’t seem like the new tea party Republicans get that. Did they even hear the word cooperation in President Obama’s jobs speech? I doubt it.

Mark Rollins

Davis

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