The individual's enhancement of his or her reproductive chances never happens in a void but only in relation to the reproductive chances of other members of the species.
Just as corporations seek to externalize their costs of production, individuals inevitably seek to externalize their costs of reproduction, enhancing the value of their own genetic property by reducing the value of their neighbor's genetic property. When twentieth-century existentialists sipped coffee in Parisian cafes, or twenty-first-century shoppers flocked to Wal-Mart for cheap consumer goods, they were both participants in a global economy whose ultimate evolutionary effect was to shift the means of reproduction (high protein diets, high standards of living, paid, child care, etc.) to the Consuming Nations, while shifting the limiting factors on reproduction (war, pollution, poverty, etc.) to Producing Nations... Viewed in this light, Earth's ecological collapse can be seen as the logical, even inevitable conclusion of four millennia of human evolution. Earth died not because humans strayed from the path of "nature" or "instinct", but because individual humans obeyed their natural instincts far too well for their own collective good... [from _Spin Control_ by Chris Moriarty] -- ((Udhay Shankar N)) ((udhay @ pobox.com)) ((www.digeratus.com))
