To The Guardian:

Regarding Jonathan Steele’s review of “Insatiable” by Stuart Sim (7 April): Insatiable greed, the profit motive and competition are not the only aspects of human nature that conform to the Darwinian principle of “survival of the fittest”. “Fittest” in “On the Origin of Species” doesn’t mean most able to exploit those around them any more than “selfish genes” in the sense that Richard Dawkins used it means selfish behaviour.

“Fittest” means best adapted to survive. Adaption to survive a hostile environment is actually more likely to result in cooperation between members of the same species than is selfish individuality.

This matters because the selfish interpretation of “survival of the fittest” is used to justify behaviour that threatens to destroy our species. Collaboration is the only strategy that will ensure that our species can adapt in time to remain “fittest” to survive in an environment being degraded by selfish individualism”. Frank Cottingham, Leeds, UK (published in the Guardian, 21 April 2017)

Epicurus would agree. We are threatened by selfish people who put their own profit and careers ahead of the general good (I am thinking particularly of climate change), and thus putting the future of the human race and scores of animals amd wild creatures at risk of extinction. Whole political parties are predicated upon the idea of selfishness, the so-called Libertarians being the most egregious. Whether they are gerrymandering constituencies or engineering whole nations out of the EU, they have one thing in common: they have the benefit of not having to think about anyone but themselves. We need to put them back in their boxes. We have to either work together or be destroyed apart.