Mutual Aid. Pablo Servigne

of the planet Lunt; Julie, Pierre, Nico, Corentin and the satellites of the planet Giraf.be.

      We also wish to thank all the pioneers, in particular the thousands of researchers who added their special touch and helped to raise up the giant on whose shoulders we stand (and it’s not just Darwin …). Seen from above, it makes us feel dizzy!

      Finally, thanks to those who put at our disposal their patience as naturalists, their analytical intelligence, their nocturnal intuitions and their taste for wonder, helping us discover the countless stories of encounters between living organisms of all sizes, of all ages, of all shapes and of all origins, and to reveal their beauty and fragility.

      (Pablo Servigne)

My first and most heartfelt thanks go to Élise, who helped, supported and encouraged me so intensely and for such a long period that I believe that we have gone beyond the framework of the principles of the living world … It’s your turn to accompany me in giving birth to another little monster! I look forward to expanding our family, this little superorganism to which we give so much and which returns it to us fivefold, for example when our sons, without us realizing it at the time, keep us connected and (inter)dependent.

      Thank you also to all those who made it possible, materially and psychologically, for us to write this book, in a real ritual of initiation. You made all the difference! A special dedication to all my neighbours who spontaneously practise mutual aid on a daily basis, by helping out and caring. In town: Mat and Andrea; in the plain: Annette, Francis and Nadia, Jean, Bernard, Philippe G., Philippe M., Daniel and Elke; and, in the mountains: Luc and Flo, Didier and Violaine, Sam and Typhaine, Flo and Aline, Yannick and Virginie (the list is certainly not exhaustive).

      A huge thank you to my parents and to my brother, who demonstrate a particularly persistent and comforting kinship altruism, to Jacques Van Helden for having been such stimulating company at the time when we were both giving a critical course in sociobiology at the Université libre de Bruxelles, and to former colleagues from the same institution, with whom we shared so many ideas and PDF files! This is all very impersonal, but I hope you will all recognize yourself in these words.

      Thank you also to the anarchist friends whom I have met over all these years, and who have engraved in me, by theory as much as by example, the great and warm idea of mutual aid. Thank you to the members of the editorial board of the journal Réfractions, in particular André Bernard, Pierre Sommermeyer and Marianne Enckell, who encouraged me to write on this subject at a time when I didn’t dare. This is all your fault!

      Thanks also to the editors of Imagine demain le monde, the Carnets de n’GO, the Institut Momentum, Éditions Aden, Sarkophage, La Revue du MAUSS, Etopia and Barricade for giving me the opportunity to learn my skills on this subject by writing little articles throughout the years.

I also want to name my heroes, my guides, who have inspired me and awakened me for years, to whom I feel deeply connected through the vision of the world they have passed on, a vision that is gentle, sparkling, immensely colourful, systemic and complex, and by their tenacious refusal to separate science and society: Peter Kropotkin, Charles Darwin, Lynn Margulis, Edward O. Wilson, David S. Wilson, Jonathan Haidt, Stephen Jay Gould, Richard Lewontin, Edgar Morin, Jared Diamond and Jean Claude Ameisen. You have given me so much through your writings and your talks … This book is proof of the power of indirect reciprocity. Thank you!

      My fingers have vibrated to the sound of many musics: Muse, Jean-Paul Dessy, Armand Amar, René Aubry, L. Subramaniam, Dead Can Dance, Daft Punk and numerous others. Thanks also to Yves Blanc and his brilliant radio show La Planète bleue – the most podcasted in the world! –, which I discovered when we were starting the editorial marathon, and which helped me weave the ideas, colours, textures and shapes together.

      Finally, thank you, Gauthier, my brother, for being so ‘simpatico’ (from the root meaning ‘to suffer together’) during these few months of sharing when we finally wrote down what we had felt for a long time and couldn’t really express. And it’s not over! If I have sometimes taken you on uncomfortable paths, it was because I was sure to find reciprocity on the way.

      (Gauthier Chapelle)

Indeed! Thank you, Pablo, for the honour you have done me by associating me with the delivery of your baby after such a long gestation (ten years – much longer than even in sperm whales). Thanks to you, I took enormous pleasure both in re-examining the latest research on the incredible universe of symbiodiversity and in discovering the entire spectrum of human relationships, patiently woven in your networks (of neurons … and of PDF files!). Beyond our incredible complicity of seven years, you also taught me solidarity in writing, while showing patience and wisdom in the face of my belated and/or fiery reactions as a big brother of a proofreader (a lot) and as a scribbler (a little).

      I also thank all those who are so close to me, parents, brothers and sisters and children, for having simultaneously welcomed, endured and encouraged my periods of writing, in particular the summer and holiday times: Nicole, Michel and Geneviève, as well as my two big sons Hoël and Ywen.

      While paying homage in my turn to the many heroes whom Pablo and I share, I wanted to add a special mention of the extraordinary tellers and transmitters of stories who have so influenced me (some of them have already left us): Jean-Marie Pelt, Desmond Morris, Patrice Van Eersel, Wade Doak, Yves Paccalet, Francis Hallé, Frédéric Lints and Philippe Lebrun – not to mention Adrien Desfossés and his comrades from La Hulotte, the most widely read newspaper in the burrows, who have been educating and delighting me with each issue devoured since 1982 (thirty-five years of subscription) – a huge thank you to Pierre Déom!

      Thank you to my godfathers and godmothers Michèle, Constance, Viviane and Jean.

      Thank you again to all my naturalist accomplices and lovers of the living, with whom I have shared for so long the joy of encounters with ‘other than human’ creatures, near Brussels or on the other side of the world: Godefroid, Pierre, Marc and Sophie, Fatine, Enzo, Hubert, Benoît, Erik, Jean, Claude, Cova, Henri …

And, of course, thank you to all those creatures without whom life would be infinitely dull: the most familiar ones, like Orion el magnifico, the Great Red Beech, Dony the ethnologist, Dusty the Irish bard, ‘my’ Montpellier maple, ‘my’ avocado tree and ‘my’ ferns² from Costa Rica; some of the most memorable, such as the Antarctic killer whales, the baobab of Boa Vista, the great crows of Brittany and the Ardennes, the saffron mycenae, the midwife toads, the Atta ants and the Acanthogammarus of Baikal; all their cherished communities, from the coastline of King George Island to the colourful depths of the Weddell Sea, from the Hyères canyons to Mont Sainte-Victoire, from the Blanc-Nez cliffs to the Poulloc foreshore, from the Laerbeek pond to Tenbosch Park, from the cave reliefs of Gembes to the micro-meander of the Samson. Above all, a vibrant thanks to the entire invisible but tireless network of underground bacteria, forest fungi, oceanic phytoplankton and abyssal sponges, you who among so many others bring to our ungrateful species oxygen, fertile soils, purified water, improbable music, shimmering colours, heady scents and daily wonder.

      Finally, a deep thank you to you, Marine, for making so much room for the delivery – so soon! – of a second book, at the service of the Earth and the living world, while yourself being so attentive to the one who was at the same time growing within your intimate soil.

      Viggo, welcome to the age of mutual aid!

Notes

      1 1. Facilitator in collective intelligence. See www.audeladesnuages.com.

      2 2. Or am I ‘their’ human? Or are we both at the same time?

Foreword

      What a great symbol this is! Two trained biologists have asked a sociologist to write a preface to their excellent book – which has very little to say about sociology,