: Procreation.
: To see your children survive to create your grandchildren.
: Your children are your highest concern, fellow man becomes secondary.Cave! This applies to the Anglo-Saxon-descended Western society only.
Which forms a very small minority of the world's population. In countries where the extended family or tribe are stronger (and survival is often more difficult due to environment) there is far more of a balance between the individual and the community.
In the US (and the UK), the ties of family are pretty weak, not least due to the paranoia instilled in people by the notion of "competition". Your relations become people you dislike and spend as little time as possible with. Siblings fight with each other for parental attention and grow up that way - competitive, distrustful, always looking after #1.
Where survival depends on the cohesiveness of society (e.g. the sub-Saharan regions, the Polar regions, or the "Western" world about 70 years in the future) you will find that the family unit is viewed as a necessary and good thing - real care in the community.
: Hence, Individual Apriration. The desire to be better than your fellow man; to attract an equally competant mate and procreate.
Individual aspiration can be linked to an underdeveloped sense of self. Why do you feel the constant need to prove yourself by treading on your fellow humans? There _is_ enough to go around, provided you don't consume more than your fair share or resources.
It may be noted that, in animal communities, individual pecking orders are secondary to group survival. It's that way for a very good reason - any animal that feels it can do without its fellows tends to learn rather quickly how wrong it was. The survivors generally attach themselves to other communities of the same species.
: This Individual desire to succeed is at the heart of everything we do.
Again, a sweeping and inaccurate statement. On a trivial note, we don't eat or defecate in order to succeed. We do it to survive. The whole concept of the detached "individual" is a Western Judaeo-Christian construction (Descartes is a particular culprit, so too is the Bible).
The "Eastern" religions have a far healthier attitude in that there is a balance and linkage between the apparent "individual" and the surrounding world.
: Without Capitalism, you would have no wealth to steal.
On the contrary, the world was here before us and will persist after we are gone. Since there is nothing of "wealth" that doesn't come from the Earth directly or indirectly, you cannot "steal" wealth, as no-one can "own" it. Try to define what constitutes "ownership"
Do you "own" something if you can destroy it or control it?
This is commonly held to be a defining feature of "ownership". Yet it falls down in the case of "owning" land. Of course you can't destroy land, and the idea that you can "control" it is a human conceit. There is no a priori reason that it should belong to you, as distinct from any other member of the human race. So what gives you the "right" to call it yours?
After all, a title deed is a small piece of paper, exchanged between two members of one species on the planet Earth, representing a notional and illusory "control" over a area of planet that bears little relation to the piece of paper.
To use an absurdist example, you could argue that a piece of paper handed between two bacteria would confer ownership of land. After all, bacteria are the dominant life-form on the planet, and anyone who feels differently is invited to discuss it with clostridium botulinum (from which the toxin botulin is derived).
Similarly, any "wealth" consisting of atoms derived from the Earth will eventually return to the Earth. There's nothing you can do to prevent it, and you can't destroy an atom as such (merely transmute it).
Humanity has placed itself in the position of self-appointed steward of the Earth. This is not only staggeringly egocentric, it is also wrong. In actual fact, it's fairly obvious to see that the Earth owns us, and if we try to muck the environmental balance around much further, the terrestrial environment is going to shift in a way that will send us to join the dinosaurs.
Of course, the dominant lifeforms are much better equipped to survive this than we are, as single-celled life can weather incredible extremes of climate.
So we cannot lay claim to anything you'd think of as "wealth", and the idea of us "owning" it is absurd. Capitalism, like ownership, is the product of an overactive imagination. It's also an idea that could well lead to species death for us.
I recommend a famous sermon by John Donne to you. It contains the famous line;
"No man is an Island, entire of himself..."
Gideon Hallett.
None.
