I understand that your reply is not in any way a 'flame' or whatever the technobabble term for being critical may be. In any case, I'm not sensitive in the least. It amuses me when people take personal offence regarding things like having their opinions called idiotic. Who cares?
Samuel Clemens had a very low opinion of humanity. He was absolutely correct, of course. His primary weapon was scorn and satire. He felt sorry for those victimized by the powerful, but always understood that these victims would be just as evil had they the opportunity.
I had much, much more than overfishing in mind when I mentioned greed and stupidity. Having taught history and historical perspective through the use of literature for 30 years has given me some modest background in several of the issues you raise. I hope you understand that the expansionist imperative is an integral, fundamental and indispensable element in any capitalist economic system. Without expansion investment profits are impossible. Interest payments depend on expansion. That is one of the contradictions that critics of capitalism like Marx pointed out 150 years ago. David Ricardo, an extremely influential early 19th Century British economist also had much to say on this topic. This is not a political analysis. It's strictly economic. Why do you think there is such despair when the economic growth rate is only one or two percent? Lack of expansion will bring down the whole economy.
WW2 was not fought because of the murderous policies of the Nazis. That is absolutely false. The war was fought over issues of power and global control. Some of the modern world's earliest concentration camps were established by the British in South Africa. We here in the US had a few into which those Indians who had unreasonable objections to having their land stolen were placed. Then there were the camps for American citizens of Japanese ancestry during WW2. It has recenly been admitted that the US intentionally infected Central Americans with venereal diseases to test various medicines, and the infamous Tuskeegee experiments during which the government intentionally withheld medical treatment and forbade doctors from treating those unknowingly involved in the experiment is well documented. There are some wild-eyed extremists today who think that forcing impoverished seniors to choose between medicine and food is immoral and barbaric.
Certainly, our WW2 ally, the Soviets, killed more innocents than the Nazis ever dreamed of, and shifted far more populations than anyone, though our hands are not very clean in that respect. Where are the Massachusetts? The Connecticuts? The Lenape? The Chickasaw? Nations of patriots returned to their earth, buried, killed to make room for Europeans. Or forcibly evicted, as the Cherokee on their Trail of Tears. We have much to be ashamed of. To maintain that WW2 was fought for any reasons of morality is absurd, and no flame intended. I find it incredible that this country ever had the nerve to take a moral stand on any issue when legal segregation existed until 1964, slavery until 1864. I am old enough to have witnessed segregated restaurants and rest rooms, to have been physically attacked as I marched against these vile American institutions as a teenager. Our moral positions frequently reek of hypocrisy. Ask Latin Americans about American morality. But enough of this.
Some of what you describe can be subsumed under the general heading of sociobiology. I have no doubt that there is much validity in the concept that our behaviors as a species are programmed by survival mechanisms that evolved at the dawn of the human race. Biology is not destiny, however. We have the capacity to rise above such things as the impulse to take what we want from those weaker than us, perhaps hitting them in the head with a rock to facilitate the process. Laws and religions exist to try to force us to resist these impulses. These persuasive measures tend to be less effective when applied to large groups and nations of people, who frequently decide that God is on their side.
I'm a great believer in the dictum that honey catches more flys than vinegar. Still, there is abundant evidence that we have a great deal in common with such winged vermin. This is not negativism. It's an accurate assessment of reality.
