Dear Editor,

 

That was a very perspicacious article of Madeleine Bunting's in today's Guardian (Threats, fear and control), providing a glimpse into the breadth and depth of the crisis we are in.

 

A glimpse that must incline many to assume that we are witnessing, from our comfortable bubble of prosperity, the final decades of civilisation, perhaps along with the depressing realisation that this bubble of prosperity has the same origin as the crisis itself- thus preventing us from doing anything about it.

 

The origin I'm referring to is a socio-economic order still deeply rooted in our primitive, "more animal than human" nature.

 

Considering what Darwin taught us about man's animal origins, this should hardly surprise us. But like Christian fundamentalists, we are not facing up to it (except when it is safely compartmentalised in a natural science).

 

Why? Because doing so would undermine many of our seemingly vital interests, along with many of OUR religiously held beliefs, values, attitudes and (material) aspirations.

 

Yours sincerely

 

Roger Hicks

www.spaceship-earth.org