David P. Turner \/ July 23, 2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The waking-up meme is a bit of a trope in the context of global environmental change. Greta Thunberg believes \u201cthe world is waking up\u201d to the climate crisis; attention to the collapse of biodiversity has been cast as \u201cWaking up to Nature<\/a>\u201d; deforestation should inspire waking up to the environmental costs<\/a> of overconsumption. Despite this overexposure (and ambiguous use of the \u201cwoke\u201d meme<\/a> in culture wars about race and social justice), the waking-up metaphor might still do some work for us in trying to understand what it takes to foster global sustainability.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Here, I examine one route to personal waking up in relation to global environmental change (GEC), and consider how the associated psychological processes, or realizations, might help induce societal-scale change.<\/p>\n\n\n\n With respect to GEC, humanity (\u201cwe\u201d)<\/a> are undeniably in a crisis that needs waking up to at the personal and societal scale. Essentially, many of the global environmental quality indices (planetary boundaries)<\/a> are getting worse, yet there is limited public urgency about making the fundamental changes needed to address them. The psychological and social sciences can contribute significantly to understanding how these needed changes can occur<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Waking Up at the Scale of an Individual<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n There are many kinds of waking up (notably spiritual awakening), but for the purposes of this essay, individual waking up to GEC has two aspects: 1) realization that the way you think and feel about the environment is highly dependent on your genetic and cultural programming<\/a>, and may represent a limited worldview, and, 2) coming to understand the evolutionary context that produced and shaped you<\/a>, which could inform a needed redesign of your personal value system.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Genetic and Cultural Programming<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n Genetic programming refers to results from the field of evolutionary psychology that suggest some of our thoughts, feelings, and behaviors are strongly shaped by biological evolution (natural selection). Both benevolent tendencies (e.g. altruism, love for babies) and not so benevolent tendencies (e.g. fear of strangers<\/a>) are probably rooted in genes. Perhaps most relevant to GEC is biologist E.O. Wilson\u2019s claim that we are naturally imbued with some problematic tendencies (e.g. acquisitiveness), but also with biophilia<\/a> (love of biological life).<\/p>\n\n\n\n Cultural programming refers to aspects of our thoughts, feelings and behaviors that we learn from our parents, teachers, peers, and informational environment. It matters for our relationship with GEC because our models and teachers may be ignorant or biased about GEC. If our education lacked much concern for global scale entities and processes, we are unlikely to take an interest in, and help to mitigate, GEC issues.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Waking up is recognizing that personality development and acculturation tend to lock us into highly constructed, and possibly self-harming, belief systems. With that realization, the individual becomes alive to the possibilities for self-directed personal change and growth, or even some kind of organic psychological transformation<\/a>. AI may turn out to be an incredible aid to self-education because individuals can readily enter into dialogue with, and learn from, AI chatbots<\/a> that are vastly well informed and endlessly patient (with, of course, caveats<\/a> about bias, misinformation, and overdependence).<\/p>\n\n\n\n For personal waking up to truly take hold (i.e. change one\u2019s self-identity), new behaviors must be manifested. Regarding GEC, those behaviors might look like reducing consumption of fossil fuels (e.g. buying an EV rather than a gas guzzler), investigating supply chains for products you consume, becoming politically active, or contributing to environmental NGOs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Awareness of Cosmic Evolution and its Implications<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n Once a person wakes up to having been programmed, they may need a framework for creating a revised self, notably with regard to values. In the Enlightenment era, when forward thinkers rejected Christian dogma as a source of truth, they began to wonder what then is the basis for morality (when God is dead, where does morality come from?).<\/p>\n\n\n\n Scientists have pulled together a coherent picture of the history of the known universe (i.e. Big History or Cosmic Evolution<\/a>). A key feature in that scientific narrative<\/a> is a pattern of increasing complexity, generated by pervasive evolution in many forms (physical, biological, and cultural)<\/a>. We owe our existence on this extraordinary planet to these creative forces.<\/p>\n\n\n\n When that cosmic perspective comes into view, a possible alignment of the self with the cosmic process presents itself. Rather than a lifestyle of blithely contributing to degradation of the biosphere \u2013 as we are doing with the 6th<\/sup> Extinction and by mowing down the remaining rain forests \u2013 we might aspire to conservation and enhancement of the environment. Aldo Leopold\u2019s \u201cland ethic\u201d<\/a> points the way towards a new (non-dualistic) GEC values paradigm<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The current Earth system \u2013 with its interacting lithosphere, atmosphere, hydrosphere, biosphere, and technosphere \u2013 is one of the most complex entities in the universe. It deserves our respect and care. And, with sympathetic attention, it could well evolve into something more sustainable than its current state (albeit with greater technosphere energy flow<\/a>).<\/p>\n\n\n\n What Waking Up Means at the Societal Level<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n A society begins to wake up when a critical mass of citizens starts to question social norms, e.g. the counter-culture movement in the 1960s questioned societal norms regarding civil rights, the Vietnam War, and environmental quality. Social awakening leads to public discourse, with the effect that the current status or trajectory is viewed as a product of obsolete thinking or sentiments, and should be changed. Organized public movements advocating for change follow, and lastly actual changes are built into laws, policies, and norms.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Societies around the world are indeed now waking up to: 1) the fact that we are living in the Anthropocene<\/a> (human impacts on the Earth system are at the geologic scale), and 2) the recognition that humanity has a responsibility not to extinguish itself<\/a> or degrade the biosphere<\/a>. These are societal identity issues. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Concurrent Individual and Societal Waking Up<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Optimally, individual waking up and societal waking up re-enforce each other. Individuals, who wake up and change their own ideas and behaviors, self-organize to alert others to new possibilities for themselves and for their society. <\/p>\n\n\n\n To complete an effective societal wake-up, the ideals emerging from individual waking-up experiences must inspire more organized, movement-type activities that ramify into structural changes in society<\/a>. Some movements (e.g. Occupy Wall Street in 2011) were effective in raising issues and popularizing particular viewpoints, but not successful in generating structural change. In contrast, the 20th<\/sup> Century civil rights movement in America led to specific legislation, e.g. the Civil Rights Act, because activists engaged with the political process.<\/p>\n\n\n\n There is always a danger that individual psychological change can be hijacked, e.g. by corporate or commercial interests, hence blunting pressure to change at the societal scale. The proliferation of roadside litter in the 1950s \u2013 caused in part by corporate introduction of single-use disposable containers \u2013 induced individual awakening about the issue, and roused public sentiment to do something about it. However, corporate interests introduced a very successful advertising campaign that put the responsibility on the litterer (rather than on the importance of mandating recyclable containers).<\/p>\n\n\n\n In driving societal change, it helps to have prestige bias<\/a> (we tend to believe people who are famous, e.g. Robert Redford on the environment), and conformity bias<\/a> (we tend to believe in something the majority believes) come into play.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It also helps to have economic conditions in society that support new enlightened views. The Boomers were able to build an effective counterculture movement in the 1960s partly because of the prosperity of the post WWII decades. Young people were able to support themselves and be activists. Renewable energy is now growing by leaps and bounds, perhaps more so because the economy favors renewables than because renewable energy is an effective strategy to mitigate climate change. Economists debate the design of an economy that is not destructively consumptive but retains the vitality to power through a sustainability revolution<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Conclusion<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Addressing GEC will require significant changes in individual and social psychology. Fortunately, individuals and societies have malleable identities. At the individual level, waking up to limitations imposed by biological and cultural programming, and to the cosmic origins of order, can inspire new identities as planetary citizens<\/a>. At the societal scale, civil society and educational institutions can spread awareness and motivate structural change. Economists must design an economy that can invest in an eco-friendly infrastructure. Leaders and politicians must make it all happen.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" David P. Turner \/ July 23, 2026 The waking-up meme is a bit of a trope in the context of global environmental change. Greta Thunberg believes \u201cthe world is waking up\u201d to the climate crisis; attention to the collapse of … Continue reading