Climate Change And Human Personality

We Are The People of the Apocalypse; Clinical psychologist John F. Schumaker reveals the dangerous erosion of human personality at the heart of modern consumer culture.

John F. Schumaker, December 14, 2018 (Films For Action)

“…While the ever-deepening mental-health crisis is common knowledge, less understood is the even more serious ‘personality crisis’ that has rendered the consuming public largely unfit for democracy and nigh useless in the face of the multiple emergencies that beg for responsible and conscientious citizenship…50 years ago, [psychologist Erich Fromm used the term] ‘marketing personality’ to describe the one-dimensional, commodified and de-sensitized ‘eternal suckling’ that was…succumbing to a culturally manufactured ‘consensus of stupidity’ that could prove our ultimate undoing. Since then, the ‘social character’ has become so stunted, and the decline of true citizenship so complete, that some now speak of the ‘apocalyptic personality’ propelling our rush toward self-destruction…

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…[T]he climate crisis cries loudest for responsible citizenship and leadership. It is by far the greatest moral, ethical and psycho-social challenge encountered by our species. But the cultural conditions that foster collective responsibility, other-mindedness and conscience development have eroded…[C]limate concern is on a downward slope, with recent years showing the most precipitous decline…[Research shows] consumer culture has endowed its ‘unfinished personalities’ with minimal aptitude or motivation for constructive disobedience…[Today’s youths] are the most conventional and conformist generation in history – with most being huddled around the same dead zone of market-driven values, commercialized meanings, and digital distractions…Who we are has never been more incompatible with who we need to be. What we have become is the greatest threat to ourselves and the planet…” click here for more

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