Predation is the taking from others by force or advantage, the fundamental operation of the law of the jungle when just systems fail to constrain the strong from consuming the weak.
Predation is not a moral category but a structural one. It describes the relationship between those with power to take and those with the vulnerability to be taken from. In the absence of just systems that constrain the strong and protect the weak, predation is the default mode of social organisation.
The essay invokes predation in the context of the civilisational cycle: “The desperate get hungry, then they hunt. The hungry always eat the comfortable.” This is not a celebration of violence but a structural observation about what happens when systems of justice collapse. The law of the jungle replaces the law of God. The strong consume the weak. The cycle resets.
Predation operates at every level: individual (the strong taking from the weak), institutional (organisations extracting from populations), and civilisational (dominant societies consuming the resources and labour of subordinated ones). The mechanism is consistent: power determines outcome, and justice is whatever the powerful define it to be.