Elisabeth Oberzaucher
In biology, the use of opportunities is a factor of adaptation and thus of survival. In a modern society, ruthless strategies have a negative impact.
In biology, the use of opportunities is a big issue. Evolutionary existed only those living beings that coped well with the respective living conditions. To act opportunity means evolutionarily an evolutionary advantage.
However, only under certain conditions: In biology, living beings that have a high degree of flexibility and can therefore react very well to changing conditions are referred to as generalists or as opportunists. Such organisms can survive in many places and are also not very susceptible to changes in living conditions. At first glance, these abilities seem great and worth striving for: getting around everywhere and being able to counteract all the surprises that life has to offer is quite worth striving for.
Specialists vs. Opportunists
However, an organism does not acquire these skills without paying for them. Opportunists are like a Swiss Army Knife: Among the large number of built-in tools, there is certainly one that can solve the current problem. Hardly anyone, however, would rather work on the screws with a Swiss Army knife than with a suitable screwdriver when assembling a cabinet. We pay for the flexibility of opportunism by the fact that the special skills are rather below average. From an ecological perspective, this means that opportunists can only use resources less than optimally. As soon as living conditions stabilize, specialists take over the helm more and more, who can deal with these conditions much more effectively and efficiently. Between the two extreme forms of opportunists and specialists, there are different intermediate forms of living things that are characterized by a mix of flexibility and specialization.
In this spectrum, we humans are more likely to be classified as opportunists, which has also enabled our species to more or less colonize the entire planet Earth. Cultural achievements enable us to build up different specializations on this biological basis of the Generalistum. This can be seen in the division of labor, but also in the diversity of people's personality structures. There are also distinct individual differences with regard to the tendency towards opportunism.
Not a reliable partner
Calling someone an opportunist is rarely meant as a compliment. It is not just about taking advantage of favorable opportunities - which is not in itself negative - but what sets the opportunists apart is their willingness to do so regardless of values and consequences. The short-term profit - whether material income or the approval of voters - becomes the sole yardstick.
Opportunists live in the moment without thinking about tomorrow. The climate crisis shows us with terrifying clarity how instantly opportune action can have a catastrophic effect on the future. The refusal to leave the path of least resistance means that overexploitation of resources is carried out in the service of reaching immediate goals, which has a serious impact on future living conditions. But opportunists have another downside: the lack of a stabilizing component in the form of reliable values means that their future action is also not predictable. Since they are based solely on the current conditions, tomorrow, completely different rules will apply to them than today. That makes them unreliable social partners.
The unpredictable opportunism
Living beings who live together in groups like humans are constantly faced with the challenge of having to make predictions about the actions of others. We do this the better, the better we know someone, the more similar our values are, and the more conclusive a person's actions are. Since opportunists are governed by the prevailing conditions like the proverbial flag in the wind, it is impossible to estimate what will determine their future actions. In complex social systems such as modern democracy, political opportunism can lead to massive social, economic and ecological problems. Decisions are made in the sense of the prevailing mood and not on the basis of sustainable visions.
The short-term satisfaction of our needs corresponds to the unreflected gut feeling. In other living things, unchecked opportunistic behavior may have negative consequences for the individual or their own species. Due to the technological and cultural innovations that we humans are capable of, the impact of our actions is far greater. We endanger the entire planet with our actions, provided that we do not use the same brain that enables us to develop new technologies to assess the long-term consequences.
Not only cognitive skills and the knowledge of consequences are required to make good decisions with foresight, the relevance of future effects must also be recognized so that we behave sustainably. Personal concern can be helpful, as can be seen from the Fridays for Future movement. The fact that it was created by young people is not least due to the fact that they will have to live with the consequences of the decisions for a very long time, which today are short-sighted and against better knowledge.
Opportunism - Opportunities arise from the crisis
Are opportunism and sustainability in fundamental contradiction? If we humans our talent for reason - nothing else means "sapiens" in the Latin name of our species - deploy, then a crisis also brings opportunities. Success stories from different companies show that they recognized the challenges of the climate crisis at an early stage and offer solutions to ensure that living in harmony with sustainable goals also opens up new options. A new lifestyle is emerging and a lot of money can be made with sustainability. Even if the promise is not really kept for many products.
Wrong way materialism
Current developments show us that we have to change the way we live in order to contain the worst consequences of the man-made climate crisis. There are high hopes in technological inventions that should enable us to continue in our everyday life as before. For example, replacing internal combustion engines with electromobility or hydrogen drives should be the solution to all of our problems. Scientifically, this is completely misleading and wrong. With this approach, we distance ourselves from the quality that has made us so successful as generalists in the course of evolutionary history: the ability to adapt ourselves and our actions to changing conditions. We will not be able to avoid switching from motorized private transport to public transport, to name just one example.
To bring about this fundamental and only sustainably effective change, it will be necessary to put the western value system to the test. Alignment with materialism and productivity are the causes of the catastrophic exploitation of our planet's resources. Success and happiness are measured by how high our income is and how much we have. However, material goods are unsuitable to guarantee satisfaction and happiness.
In the social sciences one speaks of socio-economic status as a measure of a person's success. The designation shows that this is composed of two aspects: The economic part relates to the material resources that can be secured. The western value system is very strongly characterized by an emphasis on this aspect. The fact that the status is also characterized by a social side seems to have been forgotten. So if we want to find a value system that enables us to live more sustainably, we don't have to invent anything new. The raw material already exists in the form of our social systems. What is needed is simply a different weighting of values - away from the material to the social aspect.
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