Why whacky environmental behavior

1
Why whacky environmental behavior?

• What causes our bad behavior?
• Possibilities
• Behavior
• Cognition
• Knowledge
• Belief
• Habits
• Ethics
• Religious
• Historic
• Inertia

2
Sources of Better Behavior?

• Nature
• Science
• History
• Culture
• Creativity
• Religions
• Families
• Cities
• Organizations

3
Atomism

• Biological facts
• Survival of the fittest Survival of the fitted
• Competition vs. Cooperation Mitochondria
• Social as secondary to biology Social as
  primary
• Individual as life-span vs. Individual as
  mid-life
• Individualism vs. Atomism
• Rights as conventions vs. rights as unbending
  absolutes
• Individual as one reality vs. only reality
• Self-interest as one cause of behavior vs. only
  behavior
• Self as body vs. self as nexus of relations and
  concepts
• Mythical understanding of individual as
  self-sufficient supported by historical,
  technological, religious, and societal forces.

4
Readings on Atomism

• Emerson Self Reliance
• Declaration of Independence
• Maslow Self-actualization
• Wachtel Poverty of Affluence
• Modernity
• Protestant Reformation
• Wealth vs. Faith Community
• Industrial Revolution Dislocation
• Irony of Consumption

5
Technologies Enabling Atomism

• Government
• Insurance
• Highways
• Police, Fire, Laws, Courts, Infrastructure,
  Defense
• Banks (FDIC)
• Grain Silos
• Agriculture
• Money / Wealth
• Language (see Emerson Thomas)
• Story Telling, myth building
• Cell phones, air-conditioning, horses,
  trains,cars, IRAs

6
Religious Views Enabling Atomism

• Think what defines truth, good, value
• Values within individuals, not larger realities
• Man created in image of God dominion over earth
• Humanism as highest good
• Im ok youre ok
• Psychological theories of Health
• Salvation as afterlife of individuals