Frank:

<<  ( I prefer he to (s)he because it flows better when it is read, but I
respect your  concern. ) >>

Actually, I prefer he to (s)he too, but I've discovered that on the internet,
you've got to dodge all kinds of attacks from WAY out in left field on all
kinds of wild subjects. Lurkers come out of the woodwork like

<<   One ate just what he needed. .....The other ate what he needed and
gathered extra and stored it.>>

Frank , what you have described here I would not call greed, I would call it
good thinking! I don't think its greedy to plan ahead and take care of
yourself. Where greed comes in, and I'm not sure How (by accident in some way
I'm thinking) it would have gotten into the brain of the very first greedy
person, is described in your next sentence:

<<  Thegreedy one had just enough stored to allow him to survive but the other
one died.>>

What I don't understand, is how the person (the first person, who didn't learn
it as a habit from his parents or the scared and massively confused world
around him, like we do), how he would have been humanly able to not share his
portion with his mate. That's what I don't understand. (I guess it doesn't
really matter at this point - since our entire global system is so deeply
entrenched in a pattern based solely and completely on greed alone, that the
real challenge is figuring out how to work our way out of this - not to wonder
about how it got started).

<< Of course the other one could have been more aggressive that the greedy one
and then stole his food. >>

>From everything I know about anthropology, and human cultures over time, and
from my experience with people and where their heads really are, I simply have
not seen any evidence to suggest that it is iinherent in human nature to put
one's own survival over the survival of one's group. So, in your example, for
the second one to have wanted to steal the first one's food, he would have had
to have been super messed up too, by this time. So, your example is just
something that would have come along after the contagious habit of greed was
being passed around.

<< You talked about group survival verses individual survival. I think this is
the biggest societal problem we have. How do we get people to look at the
benifit of improving every ones situation instead of just trying to make
theirs better. If every one could see that educating, feeding and providing a
good environment for all children would lead to less crime, safer streets,
less costly health care, and so on, every one would support it and think it
was cheap.>>

Yes, I agree! Its the problem of confusion in people's heads about their own
survival, I think, and, even uglier, the evil and greedy hording of ALL the
worlds resources by the tiniest handful of invisible people (I think I read
recently that its been reduced to five families or something astounding like
that - who basically, between them, share ownership of  all the mega multi-
national corporations which own and operate the planet, at this point in
time). which forces people to either mistakenly, out of fear, think that they
have to make "me or you" survival choices, or worse, in this time of ample
resource, be forced to  have to actually make choices like that. This to me is
calculated, intentional greed and evil, on the largest scale.

What do you think?

Hopefully, this discussion does not seem too off-topic. It was provoked by a
mention of the greedy, dishonest, self-promoting tactics of the NFL, and an
attempt to understand how to avoid becoming as lacking in integrity and as
rigid and fanatic as they.

Love, Liza
[log in to unmask] (Liza May)