Dear Martin (Mr Jacques),

 

Picking up on what you write in today's Guardian ("The only show in town"): with the best intentions, the Left has always sought to oppose social and economic Darwinism with more enlightened values, but has done so without understanding how deeply rooted is the behavioural programming on which they are based in each and everyone of us. Nor do they seem to appreciate the extent to which our growth-dependent economy and the materialistic lifestyles it engenders are both based and dependent on this very same behavioural programming (inherited from our ancestors).

 

What New Labour and Social Democracy have done is to give up on trying to create a new socio-economic order based on man's "more enlightened", human nature (values), in the assumption that it is simply not possible. Instead they have pursued policies aimed at supporting the existing (particularly economic) order, based on our "more animal than human" nature, with a view to letting it create as much material wealth as possible, a sizable proportion of which can then be creamed off, not just for essential infrastructure (defence, education, etc), but also in the mistaken belief that the socialist dream can be realised, at least in part, using capitalist cash.

 

Having failed to slay the dragon (of capitalism), Social Democrats thought they could ride and steer it towards a more just and humane future. 

 

Unfortunately, the dragon has a (collective) mind of its own (rooted in our "more animal than human" nature), and is carrying us towards catastrophe, because, on a planet with limited natural resources, a finite carrying capacity and soon to be 7-9 billion inhabitants, the values, attitudes and aspirations determining its course are fundamentally unsustainable.

 

Roger Hicks

www.spaceship-earth.org