Capitalist competition as “human nature” is a false description of human evolution that reinforces patriarchal ideology. Capitalism is not natural and is a violent product of social relations.

Our beliefs create the systems we live in. The system we collectively buy into right now is a system of capitalism and patriarchy. At the core, this system holds deeply unforgiving assumptions about human nature. Is there something ingrained in human default settings that has doomed us to create such a distorted system? And is that system doomed to destroy us and this precious planet, because we can’t be better? The collective certainly believes so, otherwise the system couldn’t exist. Humans have reached an extremely powerful point in our evolution. We are wielding energy capable of wiping out the very planet that gives us life, and we are doing exactly that. This is tragic, but it’s not our fate. Let’s unpack the collective beliefs that keep these systems in place. Our society normalizes the idea that hierarchy, domination, and exploitation are unavoidable truths of human nature and there's nothing we can do about it. Some may even point to Darwin's theory of evolution as justification for capitalism. This idea that human beings are naturally evolved to dominate each other and “win” to survive is deeply ingrained in patriarchal ideology. It’s a problematic interpretation, like most historical “facts” that are used to justify harm. In actuality, evolution states that an organism will do whatever it takes to survive and prosper. Human beings have always needed cooperation to survive. How else could we have built the Pyramids of Giza or developed life-saving medicine? There’s that enforcing a hierarchy is detrimental to human cooperation because lower-ranked people tend to be less invested in the goal. Anyone who’s worked a minimum wage job will attest, no study needed. There’s nothing “natural” about organizing human beings into haves and have-nots. There’s nothing “natural” about assigning different values to different people. We are all worthy, we are all valuable, just as we are. Imagine if we institutionalized this kind of self-love. Instead, we have institutionalized self-loathing. Miki Kashtan, creator of the , writes on her blog ‘’ about the feeling people in the Global North feel knowing our lifestyles come at the expense of people in the Global South. She calls this feeling “moral anguish”. She argues that perpetuating violence, even unintentionally, creates inner pain. To deal with this inner pain, we numb and distract ourselves with consumerism, drugs, or we become depressed or anxious. From this perspective, capitalism goes against human nature. We must continually deny and suppress our humanity to keep this system going.