Dear Sir/Madam,

Last Sunday you reported on how the tobacco company, Philip Morris, had influenced the publication of research findings suggesting a link between passive smoking and cot deaths ("Tobacco firm research linked cot death to passive smoking"), in order to avoid it having a negative impact on business. This Sunday you report on "Britain's multi-billion-pound drugs industry [having turned the] country into an over-medicalised society that believes in a pill for every ill" ("Drugs firms creating ills for every pill") - because it is good for business.

Both reports reveal and are critical of how these two very large and powerful industries put their business interests (making money) before the well-being (even the lives) of their customers. What the reports fail to reveal (presumably because their authors do not recognise it) is that this is normal business practice. The automobile and air-travel industries are two more examples of even bigger and more powerful industries putting business first, in this case, before the conservation of natural resources and the carrying capacity of our planet, which will have devastating consequences for our children and coming generations.

Companies are required to operate within the law, but otherwise are free to peruse and give priority to their main objective of making money (mainly for shareholders and management, but also for other employees). The tobacco industry does so by selling cigarettes; the pharmaceutical industry by selling medicines, the automobile industry by selling automobiles, and the air-travel industry by selling aircraft and flight tickets.

There is a saying in German, "Erst das Fressen, dann die Moral", which translates roughly as "First food, then morality".

It can be rephrased for the modern world as " First money, then morality".

Under extreme circumstances (if I or my family were staving or desperately poor) I would have some sympathy with the saying. The mistake is in applying it to people, like yourselves, who are not staving or desperately poor. Yet who can deny that we do? Or that it underlies our entire economy, as evidenced by the behaviour of the companies you report on?

In fact, most of us do deny it - because it is a difficult and frightening reality to face up to.

It is easier and less frightening to face up to when we understand the reasons for it. They lie in our primitive, amoral,  "more animal than human " nature.

In view of what Charles Darwin and evolutionary theory tell us about our animal origins and the implications for understanding human behaviour, this should not surprise us. But just like Christian fundamentalists, we are not facing up to this either. 

Why? Because it undermines many of OUR core beliefs, too; not religious, but religiously held, relating to our economy, lifestyles and material aspirations.

There are in fact more and stronger forces keeping us from facing up to the truth than there are keeping Christian fundamentalists from doing so.

Man’s social behaviour evolved over millions of years to serve the survival and advantage of individuals and family groups in the natural environment; there has been no time for it to adapt to the much larger social units of human civilisations. This same behavioural programming is now focused on the struggle for survival and advantage in the "socio-economic environment ", which in the modern world largely boils down to making money in the local, national or global economies. This is why, at terrible peril to ourselves, we persist in giving the economy (the household of man) priority over ecology (the household of our planet), and why making money is more important to most companies than their customers' heath and well-being.

Our capitalist, free-market economy has developed and been honed to exploit our primitive, animal nature (fear, greed, competitiveness, the desire for a free or cheap lunch, for power, social status etc.), which is why in many respects it works so well. Unfortunately, apart from being inherently unjust and inhumane, it is also fundamentally unsustainable.

Once we overcome our fears, come out of denial and face up to root cause of our problems, the solution - otherwise so elusive - presents itself: we have to create a socio-economic order based on our more enlightened (far less materialistic) human nature.

The way to proceed is not by trying to overthrow, or even reform the existing order (which is not impossible given the massive vested interests we ALL have in it), but by creating an alternative within but distinct from it. The rudimentary beginnings are already there: renewable energy, recycling, organic farming, moral investment funds, fair trade, cooperatives, open-source communities, etc). As this alternative grows (and keeping it, and those supporting it, clearly distinct and distinguishable is essential), people will be able to transfer more and more of their activities and dependencies from one to the other - not under coercion, but when they are ready (i.e. as they come out of denial and recognise what is at stake, perhaps not for themselves, but certainly for their children and grandchildren), and at their own pace. 

Roger Hicks
@ www.spaceship-earth.org