The Spencerian, Social Darwinist model was partly right but also deeply wrong. Humankind most likely evolved, over perhaps 5-7 million years, in small, closely cooperating, egalitarian groups. Every human society is, in essence, a “collective survival enterprise.”

From an evolutionary/biological perspective, our basic vocation as individuals and families is survival and reproduction – specifically the meeting of some 14 domains of “basic needs.” And if capitalist markets fail to meet our needs, we have every right to cooperate in an effort to redress our grievances.

The ecological and political underpinnings for global governance and social peace in our increasingly interdependent global economy are being undermined. The search for a more peaceful world order must therefore begin with a biological approach to the “common good.”

Many of the world’s governments are corrupt, dysfunctional and/or the captives of retrograde vested interests. Does this pose an insurmountable obstacle?

Aristotle, it seems, got it right. Politics may have played a key role in human evolution as the classic primate pattern of male dominance hierarchies shifted to a pattern of consensual leadership for common goals and collective action.

In the 21st century our ethical systems must, at one and the same time, weed out the dandelions and fight the aphids, and snails, and voles while simultaneously planting, fertilizing, watering, pruning, and harvesting the plants upon which we have come to depend for our very sustenance