While our vision, the Indonesian dream, sets the ultimate goals that we need to achieve and provide values that we must uphold in achieving the goals, cooperation is the power we must build to achieve the goals.  All has to cooperate for a fundamental purpose - realizing the dream – and for a strong reason that cooperation is an effective way to realize the dream.

The essence of our dream – harmony and abundance – is cooperation.

Cooperation inherently entails a set of rules. Some of them are tolerance, diligently, honesty and responsibility. Any cooperation without tolerance will be ineffective since cooperation demands an acknowledgement of others. The latter automatically recognizes that people are different and diversity is natural and unavoidable.  

Cooperation also demands hard-working attitude from individuals joint in the cooperation. Hard-working individuals are generally honest people since they usually accept the fact that they have weaknesses. They are also responsible people since they value their resources preciously and view their responsibilities as opportunities to realize a higher level of achievement. Cooperation also links one’s idealism to those of others. It connects people in achieving their common vision. That’s why Bung Hatta, one of the founding fathers of the nation, was very convinced that only by cooperation Indonesia would be able to achieve her independence and her greatness in the future. The former president Soekarno once summarized Pancasila - the philosophical basis of the Indonesian state where "panca" meaning five and "sila" meaning principle – into one principle: gotong royong (cooperation).

Even power, when it is viewed objectively, is nothing but cooperation. When power is exercised without cooperation, it either becomes repressive and totalitarian or pathetic and ineffective. When power is emerged not by cooperation, it becomes totalitarian. The former US President, Woodrow Wilson, precisely put this into a wonderful line, “Power consists in one's capacity to link his will with the purpose of others, to lead by reason and a gift of cooperation.”

Cooperation is the engine that we must build and develop.

For decades, however, the development of cooperation has been focusing more on institutional and ceremonial aspects rather than on substance and spirit. Through out the 1970s and 1990s, the New Order regime established thousands of cooperation institutions across the countries, but the result is nothing more than the marginal role of cooperation, institutionally. No wonder, for most Indonesians cooperation means weak organization or worse, it becomes a joke.  The decades of the wrong focus have led to a misunderstanding of cooperation from acting together to enacting symbols; from working together voluntarily to working together by order. This violates the basic principle of cooperation.

One of the striking natures of cooperation is it involves a voluntarily take and give attitude. The essence of cooperation is voluntary trade. Not just trade in goods or money, but in human emotions, friendships and associations. According to Webster’s New Collegiate Dictionary, cooperate is (1) to act or work with another or others; act together and (2) to associate with another or others for mutual benefit. This definition can be extended to a broader perspective. It is an acting together, in a coordinated way and voluntarily, in the pursuit of common goals, the enjoyment of joint activity and in the establishment of relationship.

But, is human nature to cooperate with one another?

Is Human Nature Cooperative?

It is the nature of living organism to cooperate. In the animal kingdom for instance, the majority of primates live their whole lives in close association with others. The social group occupies a range, share knowledge of local foods, paths and dangers, and offers opportunity for play; grooming and close association.  Like all other social insects, ants are another example of live in social groups. The weight of the world’s ants exceeds that of all land vertebrates and they have been described as “the actual owners of the Amazon basin (Trivers, 1985). One nest may contain millions of ants and weigh several tons. The degree of cooperation is so high that in many ways an ants’ nest is like a single organism (Dawkins, 1976). There is a degree of reproductive altruism by the non-productive, wingless, and individual (female) workers.  Individual worker units signal various types of information, called pheromonal, so that a colony can often seem just as integrated as an individual organism. In social insects, pheromonal signals indeed often serve social functions like alarming colony members for predators, recognising colony members or signaling food availability (cooperative hunting involving trail formation or recruitment to newly discovered food sources).

Meerkat is another example of animal that shows remarkable cooperation with one another. Meerkat is a kind of mongoose, found in the Kalahari Desert, lives in highly cooperative groups of six to nine.  Meerkat develop cooperation over defense against predators and to dig food. They develop a division of labor between digging holes for snakes, scorpion and grubs, and for guar duty, to look out for eagles, jackals or other predators.

The biological and sociological natures of human beings are more complex and complete than those of ants, meerkats and monkeys.  If those animals possess cooperative spirits, don’t human beings develop a better spirit of cooperation? Genetic evidence gives interesting clue. At a very early age, infants show sign of sympathy for others in distress and are able to establish communication and interaction with their mothers. Schaffer (1984) for instance studied that the infants are in a number of ways preadapted to interact with other people. They behave more relaxed with their mothers compared with their peers or strangers. And so, infants appear to be born prepared to cooperate.

Sociological theories predict that human beings develop a high degree of cooperation and altruism to those who share our genes.  Just as animals develop spirit of cooperation for their protection from predators and for finding food, human beings also develop cooperation for common goals. These common goals may be blanked under the name of culture, ideology, religion, political view or nationality. Boy and Richerson (1985) for instance argue that human tendency to form groups – as a basis for cooperation – is through cultural, not genetic selection. What it meant by cultural selection is that an element of culture introduced, it becomes popular, is taught to children and perhaps enforced by sanctions. This brings us to the discussion of the roots of cooperation.

Roots of Cooperation

There are many theories outlining the roots of cooperation.  For instance, Hanna Newcombe identifies six roots of cooperation in human societies: kinship, reciprocity, contract, utility, equity, and universality.[6] Argyle (1991) describes three roots of cooperation: external rewards, relationship and shared activities. Here we describe three of the most familiar roots of cooperation. They are kinship, common goal and rewards.

The kinship principle, rooted in sociobiology, is related to one’s genes. One shares approximately half the genes with her parents and her children, and a high proportion with her closed relatives and extended family. This gene’s closeness makes her to be more cooperative with her closed family members and less cooperative to other people. While this type of cooperation may produce a strong bond, the scale or the size of its member is typically small. There hardly be one region or one society is comprised solely by one family including extended family.

The second root cooperation is due to a common goal. The common goal can be driven by either or both of the following. One is each member joint in a group shares a common goal. An example is the case of family given in the previous chapter where the father shares a goal, a better family, with his wife and his children. And so are the mother and the children. For a broader group, some of the treasured activities in life such as celebrating festival or maintain irrigating structures, where farmers share a goal of having a better irrigation system, or civic initiatives for the promotion of a better society are intimately associated with cooperation.

Two, the existence and the welfare of each member depend upon the existence and the welfare of the group. Consider a firm for instance. The existence and the welfare of the workers depend upon the existence and the profitability of the firm. Consequently, workers work together, either in spirit or in action, to achieve the firm’s revenue and profit targets. This is close to the theory of utility pioneered by Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill. To utilitarianism, the aim of our actions should be the securing of the greatest utility of the greatest number of people.  Under the utility principle, the rule was to maximize the sum everybody's utilities. In the case of firm, the goal is to maximize the firm’s profit and in the case of a nation the goal is to produce a higher national output.

However, there is a fundamental problem. In striving for the greatest happiness or utility we are trying to maximize the sum of everybody's utilities and leave aside the problem of equity. Suppose for instance we maximize the sum of two numbers while simultaneously minimizing their difference. This means that we maximize the product. The largest product is obtained when the difference is smallest. For examples:  1+9, 2+8, 4+6, 5+5 all add up to 10 but the products are 9, 18, 24, 25.  This is true for the case of adding or multiplying more than two numbers which is well known in economics and decision theory as the Nash solution, after John Nash, who proved the existence of solution in a non-cooperation game.

In the case of firm, while firm is maximizing its profits, it does not necessary that all workers receive the same wage. Some receive higher wages than others. CEO’s salary may be 20 times than that of the lowest level of clerk. While cooperation due to a common goal may produce the desired outcome, its negative side is the distribution of income or pay-off may be not equal. Hence, inequality becomes an important concern.

The third root of cooperation is external rewards or also called reciprocity. The idea is when someone does me a favor, I feel obligated to return it at the next opportunity. But, reciprocity also means that when someone does me a disfavor I will do the same to her at the next opportunity, and vice versa. Reciprocity has therefore been called "tit for tat", a subject that is studied extensively by Robert Axelrod in "The Evolution of Cooperation".  Axelrod's book deals with a "game" situation called Prisoner's Dilemma (PD), which simulates situations or games in which partisan non-cooperation (when one party tells a lie or cheats), pays off in the short run but if both participants do not cooperate, they receive less benefit than if both cooperate (tell the truth and practice honesty). But the biggest loser is the player who cooperates while the other defects. Thus there is a temptation to defect in the short run.  In the context of community, cooperation may be beneficial, but usually individuals can do even better for themselves by letting others cooperate while they cheat (corruption and etc.) Axelrod and Hamilton (1984), in their game-playing experiments found that tit-for-tat was the winning strategy against all others that is cooperate if other player does, but cheat if he does.

How could the positive cycle start? It could happen if the other is recognizably kin so that there is a part-interest in his pay-offs. The amount of cooperation can also be enhanced if there is a long series of meeting - but if players expect to meet repeatedly over the long run, it pays to cooperate - if cheating is punished, if individuals can be socialized to care for one another, if they are taught reciprocity.  

Building Cooperative Spirit

In order to promote cooperation, we need to know which root that must be fertilized attentively. As a nation, we need to build and strengthen our common goals. Differences in background, whether race, ethnicity, religion or social status, should not hinder us to discover our common goal. In the previous part we have outlined that our common goals are the pursuit of liberty, justice, peace and prosperity. Thus, the route to build social cooperation is to socialize the dream to Indonesians and to build the same perception about the dream. If for one individual prosperity is self-abundance without justice, he would not be interested in building a mutual social cooperation. And so the common goals are not separated with each other. It is a package we call as the Indonesian dream.

Having socialized the dream, we must now create the condition which facilitate and encourage the development of mutual trust and empathy toward one another.  Trust and empathy are two of the most basic traits of cooperation. They are the attributions of the other people’s response to their cooperative intentions and expectations that others will cooperate.

The willingness to cooperate may also be hindered by one’s prejudices or restricted habits. There is an extensive evidence to show that people not only favor member of their own group but are prejudiced against and hostile to those from other groups. In his robbers’ cave experiment, Sherif (1961) finds that a group favoritism exists as a results of being in the same group. In the experiment on 12 year-old-boys, new groups were formed by putting boys together in huts so that most of each boy’s friends were in the other group.  Prejudice against other group increased when tug-of-war and other contests were arranged between two groups and there was real hostility when one group appeared to have frustrated the other.

Prejudice is the prejudging of persons or things before the facts are in. Prejudiced people restrict contacts with persons whose experience might be valuable to their own development. Besides trust and empathy, communication is another fundament of cooperation. But since communication is largely dependent upon the quality of decision making, prejudice is a significant block to one’s capacity for cooperation. Quality decision cannot be made if one is willing to accept only some intake of information while rejecting other pertinent intake. Imagine a computer which is filled with wrong or adequate data. While it makes motions which stimulate the production of worthwhile results, in fact is only spinning its wheels.

Group differences, due to race, nationality, social and economic status, religion and power, are the potential source of prejudice. One of the reasons that people dislike and develop prejudice against other groups is that it is believed that they hold different beliefs and values, and think differently. This is widely true for religious groups.  Rokeach et al (1960) for instance found that similarity of beliefs was a more important factor than similarity of race, when subjects were asked for their attitudes towards various target persons, presented by verbal description or by photographs.

It is easy to listen to what one’s friends have to say but the test of real character is the ability to glean worthy ideas from one’s enemies. Prejudice tells us that only friends have good ideas, that one’s own group has all the values that other groups may be disregarded. Prejudicial attitude is a poison to cooperation.

The first step in building a cooperative spirit is to tear down prejudice from our mind.

Tearing down prejudicial mind, and thus build and foster cooperative spirit in the society, requires an enhancement of degree of communication and social interaction among people from different backgrounds. The more intense and the higher the quality of the communication, the higher the likelihood that prejudicial mind will diminish. This can be done by establishing community groups, with members from different backgrounds, which actively promote socially beneficial activities such as cleaning environment and helping the education of unfortunate children. Through these groups, people from different background can build solid and productive communication that can respect differences. This will increase the degree of social closeness among people. However, this is not always the case for business enterprises build by people from different cultural, racial and religious background. If cooperation is socially valued in a culture, cooperative rules can be enforced, both by reward of social approval and by punishments for failing to cooperate.

Just like building national discipline, building national cooperation begins from a small scale - individual and progresses to a larger scale - society.  Cooperativeness is commonly recognized as a personality trait. Whether one tends to be cooperative or not, it depends upon the traits that one possesses and develops. One of the traits is extraversion.  The core of extraversion is socialibility, seeking out and enjoying social situations. Thorne (1987) compared the social interaction between pairs of extraverts on the one hand and pairs of introverts. She found that the extraverts tried very hard to get to know one another, by asking questions, agreeing and paying compliments. She suggests that extraverts occupy ‘the niche of catalyst of socialibility and have ‘an underlying expectation that experience can and should be shared.  Empathy, which is perhaps the most fundamental, is another trait. Empathy is the capacity to share the emotions and see the point of view of others. It is precisely the opposite of prejudice. It is an emotional response that is caused by ability to perceive correctly the point of view of others.

The development of cooperative spirit must center on how to develop this trait. Barnett (1987) suggests a number of socialization variables that have been found to be important for the development of empathy.

1. Secure early attachment.

2. Parental affection.

3. Emphatic models, public figure and informal education.

4. Use of inductive socialization such as encouraging the child to imagine itself in the victim’s place.

5. Encouraging perception of similarity to others.

6. Discouraging excessive competition.

7. Encouraging self-esteem. Self-esteem is enhanced by experience of success, competence and recognition.

Just like in building national discipline, the role of education, family and public figures in developing individuals’ empathy is essential. How education, family and public can contribute to the development of cooperative spirit is shown in the following table.

Variable	Education	Family	Public (figures)
1		1
2		2
3	3	3	3
4	4	4
5	5	5
6	6	6	6
7	7