Flipping the script

There are three fundamental perspectives underlying the current evolutionary theories.

The imbalance between population size and limited resources creates the condition of a struggle for survival (existence) - competition. Without winning the resource competition, one cannot survive and reproduce. The survival of individuals is the essential matter of life.

Can we flip these perspectives?

We always begin with a given population and its limited resources. It does not explain how the first living organism emerged or how a population develops. Perhaps we could begin with the opposite, that the abundant resources in the local environment permitted the emergence of life.

 Then, can we doubt the existence of competition, and only the winners survive? 

Accidental encounters dictate the survival of individuals. The survival of individuals is fully dependent on ‘where and when one exists.’  This is not a competition. The survival of individuals is a luck. Think about a Sunfish that lays millions of eggs and a tree that generates millions of seeds.

Can we doubt that individual survival is essential? Maybe not.

Life has continued through reproduction within a species. No single eternal life exists that has been continuing for millions of years. The survival of particular individuals does not matter for a species' continuity. Life continuity is a probabilistic issue of the species.

A species is a group of living organisms that share a stable, consistent range of variation (common variation).  This common variation provides enough opportunities for a sufficient number of survivors to continue in their environment. Whoever survives will pass the common variation to their offspring.

Competitions between individuals within a species and between two species are illusions of human imagination.

Duels arise from accidental encounters between two individuals. A duel is to repel the opponent temporarily. A winner can claim temporal occupancy or possession. To maintain ownership, the owner must be on site and defend it. As soon as the owner is left, someone else (including the loser) comes to take it. In nature, everything is a temporal possession and consumption. No monopoly. All leftovers are shared.

Probabilistic encounters dictate survival, death, and reproduction. ‘When and where one exists at a given moment’. Belonging to a given species guarantees the probabilistic survival in its environment. A species provides a range of stable and consistent variation to have enough opportunities for a sufficient number of survivors to continue. The common variation provides a chance of individual survival, ranging from 0% to 100%. As a species, a sufficient number of survivors reproduce and continue.

The emergence of a new species must be similar to the emergence of the first living organism on Earth. The local abundant resources permit the emergence of a new species.   A new species transforms the previously unusable garbage into abundant usable resources.

Symbiosis, symbiogenesis, multicellularity and society development – being together of two or more entities with distinct expertise or being together permitting division of labour enables entering previously uncharted frontiers. Previous uncharted due to toxic conditions, only waste/garbage, no food, intolerable atmosphere, predators etc. Unlivable. No one knows exactly what is preventing anyone from living until it is overcome. No one can predict what the next new species might be or how it will overcome the unlivable. Only in hindsight does the process make sense.

Prokaryotes to eukaryotes – toxic oxygen became a necessity of life for eukaryotes.

The emergence of Fungi – the garbage of plant and animal remains became part of the carbon cycle.

Fundamentally, the emergence of a new species does not affect the original species and any other species because a new niche is discovered in which no one cares.  Unusable becomes usable.  However, one type of speciation can affect surrounding species - taking an upstream position relative to others’ opportunities. This leads to changes in the frequency of opportunities that others rely on. This process is observed in the expansion of invasive species. They do not compete but instead deprive the opportunities for the local native species. For example, a native species eats only ripe fruits, whereas an invasive species eats raw ones. The opportunity for the native species is decreased, but there is no way to fight back.  

In a healthy natural habitat, various native species form multiple layers, sharing the local frequency of opportunities. The layers are not unidirectional but often form larger positive and negative feedback cycles – balanced. No natural invasive species exists. Humans intentionally or unintentionally transported living organisms to new environments along with our own migration, where they would otherwise have had no chance to discover them. 

For speciation, a physically accessible adjacent open niche that no one can occupy is a prerequisite. Shuffling blocks of DNA sequences (chromosomal rearrangement) accidentally creates new properties that permit exploring the adjacent open, unlivable niche. When the new niche and the novel common variation provide enough opportunities for a sufficient number of survivors, a new species emerges.

Humans contest these natural layers through using clothes, tools, fire, and cooking, as well as through our capacity for cognitive ownership - the ownership without the physical presence of the owner.  Cognitive ownership leads to exclusion, storage, and construction. We manipulate probabilistic opportunities in nature and minimize accidental encounters by owning beyond momentary possession and consumption.

Cognitive ownership is an attempt to exclude future uncertainty. Uncertainty comes from the existence of others. We aim to exclude others in order to secure our own certainty in the future. This causes competition. Competition is the battle for certainty. Permanently excluding or eliminating the others is necessary to terminate uncertainty. A struggle for existence begins. The history of modern Western society is one of trying to conquer nature with technology and to exclude others with ideology.

Competition exists only in the human cognitive world.