Modifications of psychic functioning

The great alternative is this: are the destructive behaviors of the environment, those that have led to deforestation, pollution, consumerism, global warming and other ecological damage derived from the innate characteristics of human psychism? Or, rather, changes in the psychic state as a result of factors that remain to be determined?

In the first case, we must deplore the imperfection of our de-la-genetique, which gives us a brain limited to the point of being unable to predict the distant consequences of our actions. We have the unfortunate tendency, when we invent a new artifice, to see only the goal immediately pursued, and to hide the effet-pervers that it might have in the long term.

Inventors of the automobile proved only a naive satisfaction to think that men could travel without being dependants on horses and coachmen, a fun enjoyment to overcome nature through their own genius. To give the human being a freedom he did not have. It quickly became dependants and ecological damage known. Apart from the energy dependence of oil-exporting countries and its serious political consequences.

Same pattern when our ancestors invented frying. Fascinated by the metamorphosis of their meat or fish by fire, the idea that these new foods could harm their health certainly did not touch them. If some shaman with precognition has seen the risks of atherosclerosis, they may have preferred the greedy way to that of asceticism. And it was centuries later that science was going to reveal the food origins of cardiovascular diseases, which became the main cause of premature death…

This is quite different from the behaviour that would result from psychic changes affecting innate characteristics. As we can see with psychotropics, it is only a little for the psychoaffective state to change singularly. A few ergot molecules of rye are enough to alter the approach, to make speak unknown languages, to see demons emerge, as it happened in Danvers and to earn hanging to the unfortunate “salem witches”. A repressive education induces a life-long neurosis that alters all relationships, induces a sadistic attitude to nature. A level of stress and anxiety too high, and the individual makes hasty decisions, no longer manages to assess their consequences, or on the contrary remains abnormally passive in the face of danger.

The situation is worse when the drift is both loose and widespread. Not appearing clear enough to be verbalized and combated, she settles in her manners and ends up acting as a norm. A certain diffuse malaise betrays its presence, everyone notes that the community does not function as it should, clashes, mistakes, failures come to bear witness but no one knows what to do to restore the situation. Only science can come to the rescue, but from here until it puts its finger on the real causes of the process, it can flow much water (poluted…) under bridges.

These are the symptoms of our modern societies. Everyone feels that something is wrong in our consumer society. Unease is pervasive, but no one knows how to denounce the exact causes. No alternative solution seems able to change things in a fundamental and lasting way. The environment makes it the expense and damage increasingly frustrate the irreversible without knowing how to break the impasse.

The bet of human ecogenetics is to highlight the hidden causes of this irresistible evolution. They are certainly in human behavior. And there, obviously, the criteria of psychic functioning are at issue. It remains to be determined either the irremediable defects of psychism and to take appropriate measures to limit the ecological damage; the changes that could be made to these criteria, and what factors are responsible for these changes. The programme is simple and will only lead to improvements in the general situation.