>Only once production is so great that all members of a community are no longer part of the survival effort, can selfishness as we see today be compatible with survival.

And I can't see the difference between selfishness displayed by a squirell gathering up enough acorns for the winter while others fail to accumulate an appropriate supply and a CEO like Kenneth Lay ripping off all the employess at Enron.

You are trying to draw an imaginary line seperating the genetic selfishness apparent in wild animals and the selfishness apparent among the wealthy in an advanced civilization. And I will admit that most other organisms don't have swimming pools in their mansions, but that isn't enough evidence to suggest that there is a different kind of selfishness or one that is more compatible with survival than the other.

>My point relates to selfish behaviour, yours to a theory about genes trying to ensure representation.

They're one in the same. I understand your first point. As the cost of accumulating wealth decreases, other things being equal, more wealth will be accumulated. But I fail how you reach the conclusion that depending on that cost, the selfishnesses may have a different source and that it is more compatible with survival.

>Please consider that the "selfish" behaviour of populations like ours, leaves fit, healthy specimens of your age with no offspring and therefore limited genetic survival no matter what else such a person does. Meanwhile poorer, less selfish communities would see such people with several offspring and more to come. So which "selfish genes" are surviving best? Not those in the selfish individual.

Can you restate this please. I have a difficult time grasping what you're saying here.

First, having no offspring but capable of and expecting (recall that genetics is not about specific situations, but being able to predict correctly generic situations, for example, on average how many children one will bear) and having several offspring and expecting more cannot be compared as two different strategies. And how are you arriving at poorer=less-selfish? And why do you assume they will have offspring but the more selfish wil not? Are you assuming the conclusion that you're attempting to arrive at?

>Oh. So when you lumped churches in with "war, ignorance, and arrogance" you just happened to choose those examples, you might equally have chosen love, generosity and peace?

Like I said, I chose those examples purposefully to show that just because they appear to be permenant fixtures in our species, it doesn't mean its automatically "a good thing". And just because its not "a good thing" I'm not implying that its "a bad thing", simply that its a thing, and its value is not dependent on its longevity.