Since American attitudes and culture so dominate the modern world, I hope you won't mind me making some critical observations on what Mark Kingwell refers to as your "treasured national ideal", i.e. "competition" ("Competitive States of America", June 25, 2000).

It is not just America, of course, but the whole industrialised world that idealises competition, in the mistaken belief that without it there can be no progress or prosperity. According to Mark Kingwell, commerce and even justice are supposed to be based on it.

"Competition" was also central to Hitler's philosophy, with races and peoples competing one against the other, not just economically, but also militarily. He believed Germans to be the master race and destined to eliminate or dominate the others. I'm not suggesting for a moment that Bill Gates is anything like the evil person that Hitler was, but the philosophy of competition to which he and most western economists and politicians so fervently subscribe, is basically the same as Hitler's, only restricted to the economic sphere, where it appears - and of course is - more humane, i.e. less evil.

We rightly reject the idea of races competing with one another (although biologically it makes the most sense!), and  instead embrace and sanctify the idea of individuals, companies and nations competing for scare resources and as much of the produced wealth as they can lay their hands on.

Accordingly, the USA, comprising only about 5% of the world's population, but accounting for 25% of global consumption of natural resources and a similar proportion of global wealth, is considered to be one of the worlds most "successful" nations.

But is America really successful, any more than Hitler was when his armies occupied most of Europe?

If the world's developing countries ever manage to catch up with America it will be just before the Earth's life-supporting ecosystems collapse under the strain. And that will have dire consequences for us all.

The main force driving our economies is the desire for "success", to win the biggest possible share of the market or of available wealth; but where is it leading us, if not into conflict with our planet's limited carrying capacity and life-supporting ecosystems? The outcome can only be a disaster even greater than that caused by Hitler's insane and evil philosophy.

It seems that it is not enough for man to avoid evil; he must strive to do what is right and good, or be doomed to perish through his own folly.

Instead of basing our economic activity on a competitive struggle for wealth and power, fame and fortune ("American success"), which is non-sustainable on a finite planet, and thus bound to end in disaster, we need to start thinking aloud about how we can give our economic activity a more humane, wholesome, just and sustainable basis.

That will only be possible if we start to question and change our definition of "success".

It is a fatal modern (and typically American) mistake to equate "success" with material wealth. The idolisation of Bill Gates as the world's richest, and thus most "successful", man is complete idiocy, and is also completely contrary to the teachings of the founder of Christianity, the religion in which western civilisation in rooted.

In his own, less harmful way, Bill Gates has been as successful (or not) as Napoleon, Stalin and Hitler. Like them he acquired a great deal of power, and misused it. Like them, he has been encouraged and assisted by
his many admirers.

If we, particularly the media, were to show admiration for more wholesome definitions of success, and contempt for those who wield power (through might or money) over others, the Napoleons and Bill Gates of this world might set themselves other, more useful goals, which would benefit of us all, instead of leading us to disaster.