To:    dtletters@telegraph.co.uk
Re:    Transcending our animal instincts

Date:  Tuesday 6 August 05

 
Dear Editors,
 
I liked very much indeed what you wrote in Monday's leader, "Naked ambition", about "it [being] the exercise of free will, in opposition to our baser promptings, that makes us human". Which, you go on to say, "is why the rest of us admire the Edwardses and Cracknells and Fogles. In transcending their animal instincts, they elevate and ennoble us all".
 
Despite most of us paying lip-service to Darwin and what he taught us about man's animal origins, we are not facing up to the profound implications for understanding individual, social and economic human behaviour. There are very powerful forces - within us and built into the system - keeping us from doing so.
 
It should not surprise us that our socio-economic order is deeply rooted in our animal nature. How could it be otherwise? But we are loath to face up to the vitally important implication that this makes it fundamentally unsustainable on a planet with limited natural resources and a finite carrying capacity - despite it staring us in the face and already impacting on our lives.
 
If we want our children and coming generations to survive (and prosper), we all - as a society - (not just a few individualists) have to "transcend our animal instincts" and create a sustainable socio-economic order rooted in our more enlightened, human nature.
 
It is the biggest challenge that mankind has ever faced. Our children and coming generations depend on us rising to it.
 
At the moment, however, we are still struggling to remain in/come out of denial.

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