SALON LUITPOLD | DenkTheater | Kooperation und/oder Konkurrenz? | Mit Michael Pocsatko und Michael Brück

In the organizer's words:

Cooperation and/or competition? With Michael Pocsatko, moderated by Michael Brück

Competition is the driving force of evolution. The question of whether human individuals seek only their own advantage or develop an adapted life strategy in cooperation with others is as old as documented history. The answer: both exist. A contradiction? Modern economics seems to assume so. Adam Smith formulated the principle that the market regulates economic relationships and that market players act most effectively when they are guided by self-interest and optimize their own benefit. Altruism is therefore not an economic principle. But what is "self-interest"? One's own only develops with and on the other, both are poles of mutual dependency. Interests arise together, the opposition is part of a broader dynamic of mutual stabilization. Competition is a means of optimizing this reciprocity in cooperation, not the other way around, i.e. cooperative behaviour is the framework in which sub-competitive systems compete for the better solutions.

All sociological data show that people today also see their happiness primarily in seeking the realization of individual happiness in family and friendship relationships, i.e. individual and social happiness are interrelated. However, the frame of reference has changed: The nuclear family, clan, extended family, village, region, nation state, continent, etc. mark the respective identity groups to which the cooperation framework can refer, and those who are not integrated into the system are then excluded as competitors. Today's field of action for business and politics is the whole world, and yet local cooperation structures retain their meaning because they enable clarity and emotional ties. The large economic, organizational and communication cycles and, above all, the ecological problems demand a global functional system.

Both in education and in legislation, framework conditions and rules must be created that mediate the local and the global in such a way that state-controlled incentive systems enable an optimum of cooperation with rationally controlled competition. Internationally valid rules for globally effective sustainability can be based on international trade regulations such as those of the WTO. Only in this way can the creative power of the individual be demanded, realized and integrated into the cycles of shaping culture.

Cooperation and competition are therefore not on the same level: cooperation is the comprehensive framework within which regulated competition continuously optimizes the system and thus dynamically stabilizes it.

Concept and staging of the artistic presentation: Lennart B. Schürmann

Speaker: Michael Pocsatko, Senior Vice President, General Manager of Corporate Marketing & Incubation HQ, TDK Corporation Japan

Concept, moderation: Prof. Dr. Michael von Brück, religious scholar at the LMU Munich, Zen and yoga teacher