One useful framing is to ask not about the mechanics at the individual level, but at the level of society (and by extension, sustainable civilization). There

One useful framing is to ask not about the mechanics at the individual level, but at the level of society (and by extension, sustainable civilization). There is strong signal everywhere that strong signals deeply shape not just individual behavior but individual understanding of it. This is in significant part what we mean when we examine "cultural difference" which many of us here know is very real and sometimes seems unbridgeably deep. A question to ask then, aligned with the concern, is, "what do we want our society to be like?" I.e. what culture do we wish to live in and inculcate in ourselves? This converts readily in to the question facing societies since before Aristotle, and this is why he was interested in the related question, "what is 'the good'?" This problem–the problem of our consumpation-based, demand-manufacturing, resource-consuming culture–has been explicitly analyzed and critiqued for several generations now; and there are reasonably contemporary, reasonably sound models of how we might change course without e.g. wholesale Marxist revolution. Of these I have always been fond of Paul Goodman's communitarianism, which is recent enough to address the real systemic pathologies of contemporary America, albeit of decades ago; but is in need of a total reboot wrt its reliance on hard data, and the language formal and "on brand" for the mechanisms it proposes for us to pivot. TL;DR: communitarianism proposes humans find deepest satisfaction and contentment in contributing to a community in a tangible way, to the betterment of their fellows as well as themselves; isolation, cynicism, tribalism, and alienation are hence considered primary targets; the premise is that addressing these requires systemic (legal, political, economic, and infrastructural) change, not the "personal responsibility" which however drives that change.