From natural functioning to human psychism

One tends to think, under the influence of cultural relativism, that human conduct can take a thousand different forms under the aegis of different cultures, and that it is equal that one or the other is adopted. It is neglecting a fact of crucial importance: that psychism follows certain guidelines imposed by the de-la-genetique of each species. We certainly have free will, a certain capacity for distancing ourselves from our instinctive reactions, with a magnitude generally unknown to the animal. However, certain situations or behaviours are unbearable and leave irreversible traces. The very notion of trauma presupposes a limitation of psychoaffective adaptability to events beyond individual tolerance limits. And these limits, although varying from one individual to another, remain confined to a range of variation that is itself limited, species specific and genetically transmitted.

Consequently, the concept of cultural relativism also appears to be limited: it is only valid within certain limits, beyond which a particular culture may cause more or less serious mental dysfunction. Overly harmful forms of cultivation were certainly set aside, simply because they prevented individuals from ensuring the performance necessary for survival and caused a state of inferiority of the group compared to competition. A manifestation like another of the laws of natural selection…

But there may be in borderline a whole range of crops whose unfortunate consequences do not appear clear enough to have a short-term consequence. Such a culture can impose itself in history, while causing malaise, suffering, and environmental abuse. Signs of anomaly remain difficult to detect as long as damage remains limited. However, there may be a longer-term drift, which insensitively leads populations to unbearable conflict situations, which they tend to resolve symbolically or territorially through wars, or which will lead to irreversible environmental degradation.

In order to stop such a process of degeneration, it is essential to be able to define the criteria of natural psychic functioning. It is thus possible to identify its alterations and to look for their causes. Knowing that these are psycho-affective processes, restoring the normal course of history still requires general awareness.

It remains to be hoped that the awareness likely to stem the ecological spiral can be achieved early enough and, if possible, without requiring a disaster sufficiently serious to awaken minds. The aim of human ecogenetics is precisely to hasten such an awareness, through an exhaustive search of the root causes of the current situation, rather than to resign ourselves to seeing our civilization victim of its own mistakes disappear under the auspices of natural selection…