Hmm, I wonder if I can find the words that I want, probably not

If I view your arguement from the side, as it were. Isn't it more people failing to be content with what they have? Also some people's need to be better than others, to make themselves feel worthwhile? But again, that's just the inability to find content with what you have.

I could ramble on and on. But it all boils down to my basic philosophy: Humans have got too much time on their hands >.>

Life is easy for us now, so we struggle to find a way to deal with that basic survival instinct. Because it's still there, it just doesn't know what to do with itself any more. So it comes out in modern ways. Where as you used to defend your patch of earth because it couldn't sustain more than your family, now you shoot people who are a different colour who come into your part of town.

Same shit, different eon : /

On an individual level I do think it's just a different aspect of the same thing. Maybe it's because we spend our lives being told we're the superior race? So some people feel the need to be superior in everything. Though this is often hiding deep psychologic issues, usually ones of deep unhappiness.

Maybe all the people who feel they are better than anyone else because they eat fancy food and so on. They should all spend a year living an extremely simple life. Having to be entirely self-sufficient. Basically, go back to how this race lived before modern conveniences. I think they'd find they were too busy working to stay alive to have time for any bullshit like fancy burgers :)

At the end of it, they'd probably find themselves pretty reluctant to go back to the rat race, too. No matter how much they were looking forward to a return to mod cons, because their mental and physical health would have improved dramatically from a year of manual labour, no junk food or addictive substances, no work-induced stress. Plus the general satisfaction of doing stuff yourself.