The Prime Covenant

"If you don't kill me, I won't kill you."

This promise, this agreement, this covenant, was the first step to the development of civilization. I call it the Prime Covenant and it's benefit, beside avoiding mayhem, was that it allowed cooperation.

Primitive man learned this concept slowly through trial and error. Procreation worked better when the man and the woman didn't try to kill each other in the process, and they soon learned that if the man brought home food to feed the woman, the woman could feed the babies and generations could follow. The family it seems was the basic level of cooperation for Man. This cooperation thing was not all that easy, however. Many thousands of years later (today) there remain imperfections in this basic relationship, and it is sometimes referred to as "the battle of the sexes". More on this in later blog entries.

Another level of cooperation came as men learned (or perhaps were instructed by women) that it took more than one guy to bring down a mastodon, or even a saber toothed tiger ("Get Og from next cave to help, fool"). And soon hunting parties became an application of cooperation that benefitted groups of families.

One thing lead to another and before long somebody wanted to make a law. It was probably a little guy. They were always keen on cooperation. Some of the big guys preferred mayhem. Maybe that first law had to do with not using clubs to settle arguments or maybe it had to do with sharing food when times were tough. But whatever it was, it started this big thing with laws that eventually lead to lawyers. Aside from lawyers there were some good things that came out of having laws. After all, laws are the written version of cooperation.

This process of finding more and more ways to cooperate is the growth of civilization. It is my premiss that many of us, or maybe all of us in different ways, have lost the connection between cooperation and civilization. Maybe it's just Congress, but I think we all could do better.