Can Parental Sacrifice Train Us to Think Differently About Climate Change?

25 Pages Posted: 9 Jan 2013 Last revised: 10 Feb 2023

See all articles by Sudhir Chella Rajan

Sudhir Chella Rajan

Indian Institute of Technology Madras

Date Written: January 8, 2013

Abstract

This paper postulates that personal actions to avert climate change can potentially be raised to the iconic status that parental sacrifice in general has come to have in our societies and that this can in effect play a significant role in changing our collective attitudes and behavior to favor future generations as a group. Moreover, because parental sacrifice is so deeply rooted in our collective psyche as a basic human value across cultures, I argue that we can indeed all be socialized, even as non-parents, into feeling generous toward the interests of children and their peers. That is to say, even those of us who do not have the personal experience of being engaged with parental effectivity with our own children can potentially feel sympathetically inclined toward future generations, simply because of the residual symbolic power of parental sacrifice in most societies.

Keywords: climate change, sacrifice, liminality

Suggested Citation

Rajan, Sudhir Chella, Can Parental Sacrifice Train Us to Think Differently About Climate Change? (January 8, 2013). Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=2197703 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2197703

Sudhir Chella Rajan (Contact Author)

Indian Institute of Technology Madras ( email )

Sardar Patel Road
Chennai, Tamil Nadu 600036
India

HOME PAGE: http://www.iitm.ac.in

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