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To:
oped@nytimes.com |
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Dear Editor, In response to the article: "Cutting Here, but Hiring Over There" in today's NYT. Dear Editor, Having been rightly proud of the principle on which your constitution is based, “Government of the people, by the people, for the people” for more than 200 years, what about (not just) you Americans now considering the following: “An economy of the people, by the people, for the people” Or is the economy there, like the governments of 18th Century Europe, primarily for the privileged few? If this all sounds a little revolutionary, you are right, it is. But then so too was the American Declaration of Independence. What we consistently overlook, or refuse to face up to (even those who accept what Darwin taught us about evolution and human origins), is the extent to which we are still animals, our behaviour programmed by millions of years of evolution to serve our (individual and family group's) survival in the natural environment. Civilisation, however, has led to the natural environment being effectively replaced by the artificial “socio-economic environment “, within which the economy has developed and been honed to exploit our animal nature (fear, greed, sex, competitiveness, the desire for a free or cheap lunch, for power, social status, etc). Now our behavioural programming, to the neglect of all else, focuses our attention on making (and saving) money in the local, national or global economy. As communities expanded, merged and developed into societies and civilisations, individuals and groups (classes) emerged which exploited the rest of society for their own advantage. Many of the original European settlers came to America to get away from such exploitation, but human nature being what it is (i.e. more animal than human) some sought to exploit, and secure for themselves and their families advantage over, others, just as hundreds of years before European “nobility” had done; only they didn't use the power of the sword, as the warrior thugs, calling themselves princes, had done, so much as the far more versatile power of money. Just as in the Middle Ages most people believed in the divine order of things, particularly in respect to the way in which society was organised, injustices and all, so today most people believe in the “natural order” of things, injustices and all. Much has changed, but basically things are much the same, particularly in respect to the socio-economic order still being based to a very large extent on our "more animal than human " nature. To be continued . . .
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