Dear Polly,

Your comments in last Friday's Guardian ("Be robust about risk") showed little understanding, I thought, of man's "more animal than human nature", or of what Darwin taught us about the individual's struggle for survival.

We are the planet's "Greatest Ape" (Homo stupidus), programmed and conditioned over millions of years to take care of "Number One". The social programming and conditioning which you like to champion, from which our ideas of social welfare and justice derive, is a relatively very recent development, new programming and conditioning which is all too easily overruled by the older, more deep-rooted programming of our primitive, "more animal than human nature", in which - it is very important to realise - our lifestyles and market economy are rooted.

Man's programming to struggle for survival in the natural environment has been adapted to the struggle for survival and status (power) in the socio-economic environment, on which now alone we seemingly depend. Surviving in the natural environment has become far removed from direct experience, thus explaining our relative indifference to it, and what is happening to our planet, Spaceship Earth (how it is being plundered, its climate and life-supporting ecosystems disrupted). 

What concerns us above all else is the struggle to maintain or improve our status in the socio-economic environment (jungle), which is there for each to exploit as best they can - for themselves and their own. Those at or near the top of the hierarchy have the best means of exploiting it to their advantage (cleaver accountants to reduce their tax burden, inherited wealth, unearned income from investments or speculation, etc.), while for those at or near the bottom of the hierarchy there is the welfare system to exploit.

Insurance fraud (which is rampant) and suing for compensation are just other examples of people struggling for advantage in the socio-economic jungle.

If we want to create a more just and humane society (achieving sustainability and thus avoiding extinction while we are about it), then we have to create an alternative to what we have now, basing it and its economy on our "more human than animal nature". As it grows - the more enlightened among us first, but others will follow - we will be able to transfer more and more of our activities and dependency from the old to the new.

What do you think?