Already probably in those of our ancestors

We tend to think that the fundamental features of human psyche have always been what they are today. There has of course been great progress, thanks to culture, but the background characteristics would not have changed, nor would a crocodile today be more or less violent than a crocodile of dinosaur times. Ecological evil would thus take root in the very nature of man. It would only crown (with a mortuary crown, in this case…) a slow progression whose guidelines were fixed in advance…
Nothing is less certain: it is on the contrary possible that some elements that escape us have altered the functioning originating from our psyches. The psychic state depends on many environmental factors: landscapes (as Shepard showed), distance from nature, food, education, cultural constants, social relations, sexual life, promiscuity, constraints of all kinds.

It is therefore the list of these factors that must be reviewed as exhaustively as possible if nothing is to be missed. As everyone knows, the causes of a breakdown are often hidden, multiple, and unexpected. The case before us is far more difficult than a mechanical breakdown.

When a machine fails, we see it because it does not meet our controls or its automations as we expect. We observe from outside, based on certain criteria of normality, which allow us to objectively see any anomalies.

When it comes to anomalies in our own behaviour, we can only observe them subjectively. We’re trapped in the machine that we should detect. We take our trends as normal, because we have always worked in the same way. The case is even more difficult if all the individuals we can see around us are affected by similar disorders.

We do not have any reference to normality other than ourselves and others, so that we inevitably confuse innate and acquired, nature and norm. And we automatically rank people who display other criteria in the category of bizarre ethnology, rather than making the effort to seriously question ourselves.

We cannot therefore rule out that our psychic functioning of modern men has moved away from that of our ancestors. Nor that certain features of this modified functioning play a major role in our way of life and its ecological consequences. This hypothesis seems annoyed, but it changes the prospects of deep ecology by opening up previously unexplored pathways.