Dear Sir/Madam,

 

In response to the article by Sandra Laville and Sally James Gregory in today's Guardian, "No-win no-fee firms blamed for compensation culture that costs £10bn a year", if you will allow me, I would like to explain what lies behind the development of our so-called "compensation culture".

 

The forces behind our compensation culture are the same forces that drive our economy: they are rooted in our "more animal than human " nature.

 

If you failed to notice what a profound statement that is, please read it again.

 

We have "known " about our animal origins at least since the latter half of the 19th century, but the implications, even now, have not properly sunk in.

 

Like all animals, we are programmed and conditioned to struggle for survival and advantage in our natural environment. With the advent of "civilisation", an artificial, "socio-economic environment " has increasingly replaced the natural environment as the place where this struggle takes place. Modern, free-market economies are tailored to exploit and take advantage of man's animal nature and programming, with individuals and groups of individuals (families, companies, etc., even nations) now struggling (competing) for survival and advantage within the socio-economic environment, which generally boils down to making money in the local, national or global economy.

 

This is a fundamental change, with profound but hardly recognised consequences for man's future, especially in respect to "sustainability " and the limited carrying capacity of Earth's life-support systems, on which the very survival of our species depends. Most dangerously, it has led to us to giving a higher priority to economics (the household of man) than to ecology (the household of our planet).

 

Compensation lawyers are simply taking advantage of conditions in their "socio-economic environment ". They have discovered a niche which they would be fools not to exploit. Making money is the proof and measure of their "success". That is the way the system works. 

 

Creating the welfare state was a noble idea (from man's more human nature), but it greatly underestimates the role of our animal nature, on which our economy is both based and dependent. As a result, many people at the lower end of the socio-economic hierarchy simply see it as something to be exploited for what they can get out of it, just as those at the top of the socio-economic hierarchy have always exploited the advantages available to them (inherited wealth and status, unearned income, cleaver accountants, tax loopholes and havens, celebrity perks, etc, etc.).

 

We are Earth's "Greatest Ape " and it is time that we woke up to the fact and stopped pretending otherwise. Not so that we can then justify our animal behaviour (our competitiveness, greed, lust for power, etc.) but so that we can recognise where it comes from and where is leading us, i.e. towards catastrophe!

 

Only then can we set about replacing it - as we must - with more enlightened behaviour, behaviour that is rooted in our more "enlightened ", human nature.