In response to a Sept. 5 column by Alex Symington, “Just Sayin”

Alex,

I’m concerned about your recent take on the problems of the world.  [“Just Sayin”, Sept 5, 2014] While you concentrate — this time — on the general inequality of all humans, I’d like to point out that’s only a surface issue.

The real problem, it seems to me, is  with people’s predisposition to “me-firstism” and greed, which have and alway will trump all the sad human endeavors on earth, which masquerade as civilization. Maybe that’s why Halloween is so popular — we get a chance to pretend we’re better than we are.

Unbridled egoism and greed has been the bane of our human existence since pre-historic myths to contemporary politics of marginalizing and slaughtering people who impede our lust for self-gratification.  That’s why all the advocates of love, mutuality, and sharing have been executed: it violates the intrinsic, hereditary predisposition toward survival, which is encoded as domination for wealth and power.  All attempts at altering the human condition have failed.  Maybe genetics can remove our greed gene?

No amount of editorial or philosophical speculation can alter that fact.  If you can’t beat ’em, join ’em is the mantra of the self-interested optimists on this planet. Nevertheless, I cast my early voters ballot for the lesser of two evils.

Sincerely,

John N. Gish Jr.

Key West