Cows, Capitalism, and Human Nature

We live in a system which promotes a false view of human nature.

Religious dogma and ‘original sin’ pale in comparison to the divisive effect of our modern financial system.


Our civilisation is sitting on a time bomb - an improvised and explosive economic device constructed without regard for human life and dignity.

The system we have doesn't just misrepresent human nature - it forces humans to act in inhumane ways. 

It's perfectly illustrated at one of the world’s largest dairy farms in Fair Oaks, Indiana.

Thirty thousand cows stand in dirty, crowded stalls. After the age of two the cows will come to live inside this processing plant until they die. They are milked three times a day, placing a huge metabolic strain on their bodies. Their life expectancy will be five to seven years, compared to the twenty years they would live in a natural environment. To decrease the chance of impurities entering the production process every couple of months they have a blowtorch applied to their udders to remove any hairs.

This is not deliberate animal cruelty - it is a direct result of a deeply flawed economic system. The cows in Indiana represent what is slowly happening to everyone, everywhere.

Governments tell us that we must work more hours, for less pay - to satisfy 'the market'. Consumer energy use is charged at higher and higher rates, to subsidise lower rates for failing, anti-social businesses. Reckless investing and debt repackaging have pumped up housing markets, only to see them fall again - at a profit to banks, and a loss to our communities.

To survive, every country, and every competitor must find a way to increase their advantage over other economic entities. Unemployment is no longer a choice - it has become a tool - a deliberate mechanism designed to ensure the constant reduction of remuneration for wage earners. Exploitation and mass economic migration have become the staple diet of an out-of-control machine.

As the system begins to implode, the conditions we live in are constantly eroded to feed the cycle of destruction.

There is less and less time to parent our children effectively and patiently, with no thought for the effect this is having on future generations. Children born now are being born into debt slavery.


Stress and anxiety have become industries in themselves - vast profits are made medicating people to cope with living in the system. 

Deception goes hand-in-hand with allowing a mentality of profit-over-all-else. Advertising has become an exercise in obscuring the real cost of products and services. Food packaging is designed to give false indications about the quantity of the food within.

Transportation becomes more cramped to increase profit, increasing the tension between commuters. Sexuality is treated as a commodity to sell more products, leading to widespread unhappiness and insecurities. Unhealthy food becomes the cheapest option. Bigger, more fearful headlines are needed to sell papers, compromising journalistic ethics. Class numbers in schools are increased to reduce costs, and education, the key to our future, suffers as a result. 

Distrust and separateness becomes magnified - it becomes reflected in our politics, our communities, and in our relationships with each other. Truth, peace, and living in harmony are stripped of their value in a market-led society.

A sense of injustice is permeating every part of society - not because this is our nature, but because the system we have requires injustice to go on operating. 

The result is a total distortion of who we really are, but unfortunately the insanity of the system does not stop there.

Something deep inside our society shifted when our basic need of shelter, along with food, water, and warmth, became the financial tools of strangers.

A wealthy person will be able to buy a house for the price listed, and often less. A poor person will pay nearly twice that amount over the term of their mortgage, and will be highly unlikely to have retained it’s full ownership or financial value at the end of their life. It's far more likely that the house will return to being the property of the banks, as the safety net of care is pulled away from the elderly.

In a system of growing inequality there is a matching rise in the abandonment of social contract. As inequality grows, our communities stretch to breaking point. Escalating divisions of income and wealth create alien cultures within a single country, city, neighbourhood, or street.

In these times of economic deprivation, it is not accurate to say the political 'right' is on the rise. 

In fact, the political right is being created by inequality.

History tells us explicitly what the end result of rampant imbalance is. Rubber bullets, water cannons, and gated communities will be no match for an increasingly angered and disenfranchised public.

So why do our leaders seem powerless to prevent this?

Economic mechanisms have left public governance languishing in the realm of popularity contests and public relations exercises. Private industry has been able to attract the best and brightest brains in growing numbers since the end of the Second World War.

If you match combined private industry brain power against combined public office brain power, there is little surprise that forward traction in progressive social policy is becoming impossible. It is madness to have a system that places the most able amongst us in jobs that are dedicated to devising the best methods of exploitation. 

It’s no surprise either that current economics demand that we abandon the idea of protecting the Earth for future generations. Under this system, profit lies not in making the best and most long-lasting products. It lies in exploiting the wage, manufacturing, and retail process to ensure that economic wealth is removed from all those taking part in the process, and is transferred to those few people controlling the process. The quality of what is being produced has no significance. 

The only viable solution to these problem is to reverse the trend towards inequality.

The proof of this is shown in Nature. Ecological stability, whether biological or financial, relies on diversity. As property and wealth ownership becomes less diverse, the instability of the system increases in direct correlation.

When inequality was at it's lowest, human co-operation was at it's highest. At edge of our solar system a small spacecraft launched over thirty years ago is about to pass into interstellar space. It carries the sound of waves breaking on a shore, a baby crying, and Mozart’s ‘Queen of the Night’ aria. In contrast, today's dialogue about space exploration is turning blandly to 'mineral rights' and weaponisation.

'Human nature' is a function of the environment we are in.

When a city like London is blanketed with unexpected snow a transformation occurs. As transportation systems grind to a halt we are accidentally released from our normal routines, and into our local communities instead. Our lives are temporarily freed from the pressure-cooker existence the financial system enforces. Interactions become free, and more positive. The true version humanity inside us is released, and for a short time we remember that we are all part of the one, larger family around us.

We have to wake up to the fact that our current system is a distortion. By forcing people to work out of fear, the system promotes a view of humans as selfish, anti-social, and aggressive.

'Socially-positive' activities need to be rewarded. We need motivations for living in harmony that are built into, not driven from, the system. We need to link money to social progress.

A socially-positive means of exchange would directly oppose activities like exploitation, the creation of weapons, and any means of negative control over other people.

It would help to identify the people and projects which have the greatest scope for improvement of our lives and our environment. It would help identify people who are 'socially poor', and help them get the help they need. We are drawn not to wealth, but to recognition and love.

This system of exchange would allow us to remember the dreams we once held about the future of our world. It would safeguard future generations, and ensure the best of who we are is yet to be seen.

A socially-positive currency would ensure the most able people become the carers, protectors, and teachers of the next generation. This new system would support a vision of who and what we really are - social, co-operative, and empathic human animals. 

The rewards of such a change are as limitless as human potential.