COLLABORATING—UNNATURAL YET TRANSCENDENT

Here’s a question for you. Is collaboration natural or unnatural? Does it come to us easily or with great difficulty? Given the self-interest drive in all of us, in that way, collaboration is unnatural and what follows is that it does not come easily, but only with effort and focus. For this reason also it should actually strike us as amazing—as absolutely amazing—when it does occur. Instead of collaboration, what is “natural” is self-interest. Taking interest in and focusing on others is what does not come to us naturally. That is an act of learning, development, and maturity.

You and I are wired for self-interest in that we want to survive and to not only survive, but also to thrive. This foundational level of self-interest is wired into our DNA, our genetics, and our biology. It is the default option. So when you see someone behaving in a self-interest way— you are not seeing anything strange or inhuman. You are seeing humans being human, that’s all. That is what’s natural.