Acting Cooperatively

To act cooperatively you have to follow the logic of the situation. The logic of the situation is that which best delivers or satisfies what everyone involved is trying to get out of a particular context. People cooperate (i.e., follow the same logic) as long as they share that context/purpose. When a setting has a particular purpose (e.g., supermarket), purpose drives the logic. True, the purpose of a supermarket for the shopper, the guy with the cheese samples, the owner, and the checkout person may be radically different. Some may have more than one purpose, e.g., to meet people and also buy dinner. But for all those purposes to be satisfied, they have to cooperate to some extent. The conversation becomes one of cooperation between purposes and degrees of cooperation.

Alternatively, you can tinker with/extract value from the situation by following a foreign logic. For example, performing TikTok dances in a supermarket or in the middle of a busy intersection disrupt the natural flow of the situation for the sake of online engagement. Social media as it exists today invites us to tinker with every situation, not for our sake but for the sake of an online audience always thirsty for fresh imagery.

Speaks to

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• Topic / Understanding Cooperation, Production of Harmony

• Topic / Mediological Induction