Session 1 · Metacrisis Motivation
Intro to
Collective Action
Why cooperation fails, how it succeeds, and how it scales
Rufus Pollock · Seeds of Renaissance · Wed 28 October 2026
Welcome
Prototype run · teach, then talk
Recording · case doc · quick poll at the end
We could stop the bully, if we all stood up together.
We didn’t.
One word for your own playground moment.
In every battle, each of us is safer running.
Mosul, 2014: a few thousand fighters took a city from an army many times their size.
Each soldier saw others leaving, and went too.
Authoritarian regimes last for decades, then fall almost overnight.
Martin NiemöllerFirst they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out, because I was not a socialist.
Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out, because I was not a trade unionist.
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out, because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for me, and there was no one left to speak for me.
When everyone sees everyone else in the streets, it’s suddenly safe to go.
Potsdamer Platz, 14 November 1989 · US Department of Defense · public domain (Wikimedia Commons)
We’d all be better off with a shared commons.
Each of us does better keeping ours closed.
The biggest commons of all is the planet.
We’d all be better off cutting emissions.
None of us can afford to go first alone.
A few are organised. The many aren’t.
£10 each ×50 million of us=£500 million →5 companies
Economics explains why we fail. It has few cures.
So how did we get from bands of dozens to eight billion?
Many names, one kind of challenge.
collective action problemtragedy of the commonsfree-rider problemsocial dilemmarace to the bottommultipolar trapMoloch
In this course: collective action. It can succeed as well as fail.
Our ability to act together: when it fails, when it succeeds, and how we make it succeed more.
Your turn
Was there something like the playground in your childhood?
What has brought you to this now?
So what’s going on underneath?
One metaphor for the whole course: symptom, organ, cause.
“They died of heart failure.”
Is that what they died of?
What you treat depends on the cause.
Collective action is the organ, not the cause.
We’d all be better off acting together, and none of us can afford to go first alone.
Or worse: each of us does better breaking ranks, whatever the others do.
“It’s a multipolar trap.” “It’s Moloch.” True, but that only names the organ.
What would it take to cooperate on a planetary scale?
Climate.
The AI race, and powerful technology in general.
Two misapprehensions
Two common misapprehensions, and they’re opposites.
1“It’s modernity’s fault.”
2“It’s an ascent of civilisation.”
“Get rid of modernity, and we’d all cooperate.”
Some truth in it. Overall, a misapprehension.
When the lions come: stand together, or run?
Animals and every human society face it. Many find skilful answers.
We’re also wired to cooperate.
“History is progress. Thank God for civilisation.”
Some truth in it. Overall, a misapprehension.
Agriculture may have been the first great collective action trap.
Gatherer-hunters: healthier · more free time · more equal
But nobody could stay out alone.
Cooperation comes in two forms.
Bottom-up
democratic
egalitarian
chosen
Coerced
the army
the Leviathan
fear of punishment
The wisdom gap
We have the tools of gods with the minds of chimpanzees.
After E. O. Wilson
Which did you half-believe before today?
It’s modernity’s faultIt’s an ascentBothNeither
What you’ll get from this course
Two arms, matching the heart.
1 · See the pattern
2 · Go beneath it
Arm 1: see the pattern.
- Rigorous basics, no heavy maths
- Stories that stick
- Everywhere: from the AI race to the washing-up
Arm 2: go beneath it, to causes and cures.
The same failing heart can have different causes.
My view: culture comes first.
The primacy of being thesis
Yours to examine, and push back on.
You’ll see this pattern everywhere.
The arc of the course
One climb: the scale at which we’ve learned to cooperate.
Each time: what made the jump possible?
Pick your case
Pick the issue you’ll carry through the course.
Who are the players? What would they all be better off doing together?
Collective Action · Session 1
Symptom → organ → cause.
Quick feedback poll: now, in Zoom
Before next time: watch If a Tree Falls. Some held out and some informed. Why?
Images: Charles Le Brun, Horatius Cocles (public domain) · Berlin Wall, Potsdamer Platz, 1989, US DoD (public domain) · Battle at Kruger (2004), linked