In the Sept. 6 Recorder, columnist Pat Hynes, in her appeal for world peace (“Peace is as possible”), quotes anthropologist Margaret Mead: “Warfare is only an invention — not a biological condition.” Hynes finds hope in the world’s peace movement and believes peace is “as possible” as warfare. As always, I applaud our columnist’s optimism for peace, but I must take issue with Mead’s understanding of the “biological condition.” In my opinion, war, not peace, is our natural condition: We are born to fight one another because that’s the way we have been created biologically.

My reason for saying so? Our “human nature” is that to live we must eat. To eat, we must labor to cover the distance between here (where our hungry stomach is) and there (where food is). And we want to accomplish this eternal task with the least amount of energy consumed. Why go 10 steps when one will do? All of our everyday exertion is really nothing but the struggle not to have to exert at all. All human energy consumption — daily routines, career pursuits, trade competition, war, colonialism, slavery, wealth pursuits, inventing tools and technology, whatever — is about how to minimize our own exertion and, if possible at all, use somebody else’s energy and labor. All thinking human beings concentrate all their clever thinking every moment on one cardinal task: how to avoid labor yourself and let somebody else do it for you. (In America, money decides who labors and who doesn’t.)

Our biological energy is always finite and in limited quantity, and is, therefore precious for everybody. Our natural desire is to minimize our own exertion, which naturally maximizes someone else’s. In fact, we can simplify the measurement of “love” by how much energy we are willing to spend for somebody else’s benefit.

Otherwise, it’s dog eat dog. In a cannibalistic country, everybody is somebody’s potential dinner. Who shall be whose dinner tomorrow, and why, would be quite complex as their social rules. Naturally, a huge body of theology, philosophy and political-economic theories would develop by the cannibal-logy professors and other idea professionals to explain why person x deserves to be person y’s dinner, or vice versa. In cannibalism, it would be their permanent struggle to be the “eater,” not the “eatee.”

For world history, all the miseries and conflicts of humanity lie in the gulf between ere (hunger) and there (food): Consider war, conquest, colonialism, enslavement, religion, political systems, law and government, childrearing and education, economic bondage, and all the cultural-social tools of labor-avoidance. As long as Homo sapiens remain a food-eating species, this “human nature” can never change.

If you are rich or live in a rich country, like America, the Here-There Gap is small, as your hunger and food are seldom far apart. If you happen to be born in a place like Somalia, the gap is forever and you may die on the way from Here to reach There.

Labor is so naturally avoided that we assign labor to our most helpless class of people, generally the poorest of society. We also do it to our worst enemies, just short of killing them, as the most detested and dreaded punishment, with words like “forced labor,” “hard labor,” or “labor camp” and so on with the most dreaded connections of meaning. In American capitalism, we soften the cruelty with words like “employees,” “workers” or “associates,” but just the same: Poor men’s labor is commandeered by the rich.

Your money can free you from any kind of labor. If chewing food were hard work, you could buy somebody’s labor to chew the food for you. If making babies were hard work … With money, you don’t have to do anything you don’t want to; without it, you toil to your grave. Hence our life-and-death struggle for money.

Naturally, the greatest inventiveness of humanity has always been displayed in the clever, cruel and creative ways to command other people’s energy and labor for our own benefit, either by force or by luck. Hence we wholeheartedly support inheritance laws (legal force) and celebrate lottery wins (sheer luck). All so-called successful people are those who don’t have to labor and toil like everybody else. Everybody likes to be rich because wealth is the currency that buys other people’s labor, like the poor Bangladeshis toiling in sweatshops to make life easier for the rich nations.

The Romans had one slave for every two Romans to do all the dirty work; the Nazis used millions of slave laborers and planned to enslave 100 million more Slavs for their farms; and in America today, the poor labor and toil all the days of their lives so that the rich can live their labor-free lifestyle as their “biological condition” dictates.

It is our permanent human nature. Like the cannibals who eye each other for potential dinner, we Americans eye each other for our potential slaves and servants. The so-called American Dream is nothing but finding ways to make somebody else do all the unwanted work for us, even if it takes inhuman means to do it.

Peace, domestic or global, is not possible without material equality. Our southern border will see no peace while it separates abundance and poverty — 20 to 1. Why would they not try to break into our bounties with all their desperation and ingenuity?

On the other hand, if we practiced cannibalism in America, who would be our cheapest food?

Jon Huer, columnist for the Recorder and retired professor, lives in Greenfield.