Habit persistence is a known phenomenon. It governs what economists refer to as the consumption function, which is a mathematical representation of our behaviour. Even if we move away temporarily from what we thinks good, correct and right, we tend to ratchet back to earlier patterns of behaviour.
Fundamental changes in the way we do things come not from within ourselves but from the environment around us that force us or lead us to new behaviour. If the environment were like us, and predisposed the way we are to copy cat behaviours and to habit persistence, then we would be in a stable equilibrium world. Fact is our environment changes and we change as a response to our environment. Only difficulty is that our environment is not moving in the direction of change that it should be moving in. This means that we are having to adapt to a world that is full of hidden dangers that our weakness in choosing appropriate technologies have created.
There is a way that we can have some control over our behaviour and that is through making the correct technological decisions that eventually feed back into our environment. I am of the opinion that technological innovation and thus our behaviours have been stifled by the inability of human beings as a sufficiently large group to make the correct technological decisions. This means that societies tend to persist in their bad behaviours and it becomes extremely difficult for individuals of societies to move towards improved behaviours.
The world is at a technological crossroad. We are being offered the opportunity to redirect change towards good and wholesome technologies. I have no faith in the process because those people who define the most appropriate directions are being ignored or vilified while those that ratchet us back to habitual and bad behaviours are almost worshiped as saviours. It does not take a very high intelligence to understand that we need to move towards an enormous restructuring of our between work and home habitat travel.
We have technologies that could reduce travel between work and home, but we are persisting in continuing the twice daily mass movement of bodies to and from locations that are in many cases enormous, but in most cases could be greatly reduced.
What if a limit were imposed that forced people to live close to work if their physical bodies were needed at the workplace? What if employers were required to pay for peoples' travel costs to and from work? That would force a big change on our wasting of resources travelling between home and work.
Ok! My proposal is that a law be passed that requires employers to pay one third of the cost of peoples' commute to and from work each day.