Traditional ecology has little interest in psychological factors, see psychopathological

It is not by chance that human psychic functioning is not fundamentally called into question. There are some environmentalists who attribute consumerist drift to greed or selfishness. But these defects are then considered unfortunate aspects of human nature.

Human ecogenetics is taking one more step, not only by seeking more systematically the psychological tendencies generating environmental destructive behaviour, but by focusing its research on the root causes of these trends.

This step is usually not taken, because it is tantamount to postulating that the “normal” functioning of the human being as we know it is normal only in the sense of “majority”, not in the sense of “natural”. However, the fact that the vast majority of humans operate in a similar way is not necessarily evidence of natural functioning. Some ubiquitous factors can determine in all individuals malfunctions that eventually become part of the culture under the label of normality.

It is therefore a question of defining methods of observation or experimentation that make it possible to highlight these malfunctions. Then determine which causes have been in history, or are in the present, at the origin of these dysfunctions. And in a third step to make them known on a larger scale in the hope that a general awareness will eventually slow down environmental degradation.

Some will consider this approach utopian, naive, speculative, doomed to a certain failure… There is, however, little alternative to halting in the long term and on a global scale the infernal mechanisms that lead us to disaster. We don’t cure a disease without knowing the causes.