Today, all scientists agree that we must react to the environmental disasters that our modern mode of consumption causes. While all the lights are red for the environment; biodiversity, global warming, drinking water, natural disasters, the new pandemic, the efforts implemented seem weak compared to today’s challenges.
Since the Thirty Glorious Years, our consumption, whatever the product, has increased. In a world of finite resources, it is impossible to believe in eternal material growth.
However, we remain in this perspective of growth, currently speaking of “green capitalism”. This oxymoron shows how much we refuse to grow. But why is that?
Let’s go back millions of years ago, when the human species had to overcome different challenges today in order to survive.
Five motivations could allow it, starting with the most necessary: The search for food, the need to reproduce, to dominate a social group, to acquire as much information as possible, and finally, to do all this with a minimum of effort.
To become real motivators, the species needed an ultra-efficient machine, capable of giving even more than survival; a great satisfaction.
We see that when one of these five motivations is satisfied, the striatum sends dopamine, the reward molecule, to the rest of the cortex, which motivates individuals to continue the behaviors. For example, it is the same molecule that we will find in addictions At the time when we had to hunt prey, seek a partner with whom to reproduce, and survive in the face of the dangers of their environment, these motivations allowed the species to survive. Anchored in biological memory, we are still seeking, in 2020, to respond to these five motivations.
Nevertheless, we no longer live in the same environment, so what happened to these motivations?
It was then that the search for food, which had become much more accessible, turned into overconsumption of food. With a third of food produced and not used, as well as a diet that is far too rich, there is an increase in obese people around the world, as well as a huge number of wasted resources. Likewise, the search for sexual pleasure is no longer content with reproduction. Pornography consumption represents 35% of Internet traffic, which corresponds to 150 millions tonnes of CO2 each year. The social rise that allowed before to have more food and descendants now makes it possible to be rich, afford material comfort that is costly to the environment (huge apartments, private jet, etc.), and gain recognition. Our laziness is now served by many machines that do the work of factories and farmings workers. Finally, our searches for information become hours spent on the Internet, among other things seeing the social successes of others on social networks and watching out for new technological releases.
So how do you stop excessive behavior when the individual enjoys dopamine daily, becoming addicted to food, pornographic images and power? How can we make people understand that it is a reasoned mode of consumption that will allow our ecosystem to persist? These behaviors, in addition to being natural, are incited by social norms; advertising to consume, valuing people who have wealth, having the same habits as his relatives to remain included. It is then a double challenge to change these habits.
Thus we find ourselves with all the experts who warn about the need for behavior change, and a population driven by genetic selection to always want more.
Fortunately, consciousnesses are awakening more and more. But most people who realize it make minimal changes, to avoid disrupting their daily lives, or buy new, greener products. New glass jars, reusable straws, clothing made from ecological materials… A new ecological market has been created, where consumption continues, with a better conscience on the part of buyers.
How did these buyers manage to continue consuming, whether they changed their behavior a little or not at all?
In 1957, Festinger demonstrated how humans, faced with an incoherent situation within themselves, were able to reduce this cognitive dissonance.
When a person has cognition, an attitude contrary to his behavior, he has several choices; stay in a state of tension, cognitive dissonance, change behavior, which is costly but which reduces the tension, or change attitude to have the same result.
Today, everyone has heard ecological speeches, and more or less subscribes to them. Access to knowledge to modify one’s behavior in the direction of ecology is easy to access. But the act of changing one’s behavior is so costly that people change their attitude. Instead of reducing its consumption and making it of quality, they will change their point of view. Either prefer to adopt “green growth”, in others words to continue to consume, paying more attention to a few ecological and ethical criteria, or not to feel concerned by these changes.
Do we have any possible solutions for people to choose to change their behavior?
More than behavior, it is the way of thinking that must be changed. Studies have shown that instead of directly achieving your goal, taking breaks and doing gratitude exercises gives you just as much feeling of happiness. Indeed, the dopaminergic circuit is used more by noting the luck of what one already has (a home, health, friends …), rather than by immediately seeking to rise.
Instead of continuing to aim for material growth, we should learn to include more mental growth.
Learn to take the time to do activities that we like, even if they are simple.
This mental growth, rather than a deprivation of growth, might appear more socially acceptable. It would be a way of thinking to disseminate more widely than to spiritual people, where “positive psychology” has already integrated this notion.
However, it should be restored to the status of a social norm. This is the most powerful way to get people to adopt behaviours (for example, waste sorting), especially since, in order to meet the motivational criteria seen above, adopting social norms allows one to rise in social status, and the person is therefore happy, having met the needs required by his striatum.
References
Bohler, S. (2019). Le bug humain: pourquoi notre cerveau nous pousse à détruire la planète et comment l’en empêcher. Robert Laffont.
Csikszentihalyi, M. (2008). Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience (PS). In Harper Perennial Modern Classics.
Festinger, L. (1957). A theory of cognitive dissonance (Vol. 2). Stanford university press.