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Cooperating «in some circles» to survive the free-for-all defection equilibrium is exactly how they (and we Eastern Slavs, and frankly most everyone else) have got into that mess. Clannishness and familism are the other side of corruption.
I was thinking more of creating your own clan of sorts based on moral criteria. And generally cooperating when the proportion of defectors is less clear/more favourable than usual.
Oh, that's how they can start too... First protecting the garden of idealism, then naked clannish power struggle. The assabiyah route is inherently treacherous.
But ofc this is a natural idea. This, or more realistically moving to the West.
Yeah I didn't say I've thought this through, could be islam started as such a clan, and I hate it. I don't see why the clan would have to keep defecting outside when outside is cooperating, though. Other religions manage it, my own flavour of goldenrule-utilitarian-cooperate-thing manages it.
To be clear, I do not believe that Islam started in this way, in a way that matters, or that it proceeds this way. I think Arabs/Bedouins have been clannish since prehistory, in comparison with modern Europeans, but also Persians, Anatolians and other groups they've contacted; and they make such a big deal out of Islam and literal adherence to its precepts precisely because it's their best way to cope with their impulses, the rigid platform to maintain a semblance of a supraclannish high-trust society, which at some points in history worked rather well. Arabs dole out antisocial punishment despite Islam. Without Islam or another comparable totalizing faith they degenerate into pure defectbots who cannot be trusted to not backstab anyone outside of their small cliques and family groups, if even that.
What I was talking about is that if someone in that environment like zinker, who cerebrally recognizes the advantage of high-trust communities, begins to cooperate within a small group of like-minded people and maintain a honest, merit-based system in their limited domain of control (which seemed to be what you propose with your «in some circles», though I might have jumped to conclusions and you were still going on with the self-sacrificing do-gooder bullshit for the benefit of the broader society), there's a high chance that this degenerates into a yet another Machiavellian «clan» in a few iterations, when newcomers internalize only the help-allies-sink-strangers principle, and not the abstract project of getting to everyone-helps-everyone-else equilibrium.
That's a correct reading of my comment, although I take exception to 'self sacrificing do-gooder bullshit' - it's just a combination of "cerebrally recognizing the advantage of high-trust communities", and living in one. In an ideal high-trust society which punishes defectors, blind cooperation is the rational machiavellian way.
On whether islam helps or harms, the level of cooperation is terrible even within their garden. How low can they get in their natural state, really? I find it more plausible that islam enshrines terrible habits (muhammad was a deceiver, and so is his god, the religion comes down hard on the wrong side of the Euthyphro dilemma, etc) .
Anyway in defectbotland the temporary garden could work. Do you have any (other) examples of corruption to systematic outside-defection occuring?
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