Along with her colleague James Lovelock, Lynn Margulis was responsible for the Gaia hypothesis, the radical scientifically validated notion that we are not apart from the world, but are a part of one living world being. She argued that we misinterpret Darwin’s “survival of the fittest” to mean that nature evolves through competition. Margulis showed that nature / the living planet evolves through cooperation; symbiotically partnering, combining, and forming mutually sustaining parasitic relationships with each other (check out your gut!). So, shouldn’t our social and economic systems learn from the cooperative approach that sustains life?
