To:    Comment at the Guardian
Re:    It is in man's "animal nature" to be dazzled by power
Date: Saturday 18 November 06

In response to Guardian article, "A nice bit of sparkle:  David Starkey, like many historians, is too dazzled by monarchy's power to explore it in any depth" by Hywel Williams

Link to article and thread at The Guardian.
 

It is in man's "animal nature" to be dazzled by power.
 
The most important thing that can be learned from history is generally missed, probably because we remain immersed in and are ourselves very much a product of it.
 
It is that with the advent of civilisation, the "prime ape" (excuse the pun), Homo sapiens, in its struggle for survival and advantage, which millions of years of evolution adapted its behaviour to, effectively moved from the natural environment (with included other, rival, groups of humans) to an artificial "socio-economic environment ", the growth and development of which in modern times has been exponential, with new niches and ecotopes (industries) being created at a dizzying pace.
 
When you see the courts of Kings and Queens as groups of "Greatest Apes " engaged in the struggle for survival and advantage in their "socio-economic environment" they are much easier to understand. It also provides an urgently required perspective on modern society and "Greatest Ape" behaviour, explaining why he persists in giving priority to economics (the household of man in the artificial socio-economic environment) instead of to ecology (the household of the planet in the natural environment) when it is obvious (were he not blinded by familiarity and dependency) that medium and long-term human survival demands the opposite.