Letters.

• Position: Letter to the editor

Contrary to "The Great Divide" (S/R 57) by Henry Robertson, the basic issue of "Human nature vs. cooperative democracy" has been fully answered by recent genetic and historic research: empathy, cooperation, community planning and caretaking are essential components of humankind's survival. Social Darwinism has been debunked as has the old shibboleths of humanity's innate selfishness, irrationality and laziness as reasons why participatory democracy and economic and civic grassroots decision-making can't work.

The article assumes we are faced with industrialism or de-industrialization, while it says nothing about alternatives. It does nothing to explain how we can solve problems caused by capitalism. It ignores that societies and human behavior have always changed in accordance with changing needs, changing tools, new expectations. We need not give up a healthy future because human nature is complex and imperfect. In fact, doing that subverts the natural gifts we actually are endowed with. Yet "The Great Divide" declares we have to accept the current economic systems' destructive, irrational motivation profit before every human or environmental consideration. Or we are doomed to a hellish future of dark, pre-industrial scarcity and want.

That's nonsense. We know the profit system--not human nature--needs waste, duplication, planned obsolescence, cheap labor, cheap energy, cheap materials. We know the system is built to protect that profit at any cost: conduct devastating wars, ignore the catastrophic consequences of unemployment, debt, disease, lost homes and lost futures. It places in government the best lackeys money can buy, controls access to public airwaves and media, education and information. It is a machine designed to chew up people and things and throw them away. Business as usual. Laws are rigged to protect its institutions.

Every reform is fought or twisted into a benefit or a protection, but never a solution. In fact, the system stops any research, innovation or technologic advance that interferes with its hegemony and relentless pursuit of greater exploitation--of people, of nations, of natural resources, of any and all things. We need to understand it is a system, man-made and therefore "man" can undo it. What we don't need are so-called progressives who can't separate our human ability to imagine, create and solve problems from an economic system that has become destructive to our well-being.

To balance the front-cover...