On Wed, 22 Oct 2003, Luke Weiger wrote:
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Dennis Perrin" <dperrin at comcast.net>
>
>
> > Competition is part of human nature and not strictly a capitalist conceit,
> > though capitalism does corrupt the competitive urge.
>
> Bingo. Would that more leftists acknowledged this to be true...
>
> -- Luke
Man, I thought Justin just went over this. If by "human nature" you mean some biological or genetic imperative, Luke and Woj's claim here is nonsensical. One more time: any genetic or biological factors must be expressed in an environmental context. There is no way to "strip away" the environment to assess the pure, isolated genetic effect. Thus to make the claim that X is "natural" or "inevitable", independent of environmental conditions, demonstrates a (willful?) ignorance of what has been learned about genetics and biology.
Miles