Joy, in the end, was a reverse cursor for me to identify a pattern.
Video no.1 | Subtang
Subtang started by reviewing the reports of people who underwent therapy. These records were significant because the concentric grouping of these myriad stories helped me realize the self-perpetuating drama embedded in their language. When I put together the phrases people used to describe their state of mind, they were limited by common themes repeating themselves in different stories. Whenever these people used these phrases, their reactions got strangely similar but highly intense. But in the completion of a cycle, there was a joy.
Joy, in the end, was a reverse cursor for me to identify a pattern. And it made me question the structure of these stories. As I reviewed them, the words were far beyond their linguistic nature. Regardless of the content, it was as if a particular word was a switch to a well-controlled environment. I was able to follow the routine clearly through words. Because word transitions; and the change in their mannerism; were perfectly synced in each sentence.
The tone and structure of sentences were highly imperative. They were reactive to particular words as if they were commands that needed to be followed immediately. Their first impression of the new environment was fear. It was as if they were kids who still needed the presence of their domineering caretaker. Life was too complex, there was no margin for error, even the smallest ones were disastrous, and they could not handle it.
This particular environment was the foundation of all stories like they were the same protagonist of recurring stories. These ready-made characters were not them. They were the echoes of the drama inherited through an emotionalized language.
When I reduced these stories to their main ideas, the two states dominated the environment; people were either extremely alert or conserving energy in their narratives. And in the end, they were hitting some point of joy, whatever the story was. No one could pinpoint the exact locations of emotions in the brain. [1] Emotions are non-physical connection agents. And they can only be revealed by the states they present. But the continual state of vigilance or preserving energy made me focus on the idea that the drama, internalized in our nervous system, might be located on the axis of primary emotions, such as fear, anger, sadness, anxiety, and joy.
Because no matter how long these people had been apart from their past experiences, they were still under the same influence of the sequences of the past. There was a mismatch between what was happening in their environment and their response history. But they had entangled with the reward-driven execution of a pattern so much and already passed it off as a reflexive behavior.
Even a sense was enough to reconstruct that automated pattern in the present, like sequences of a well-known act, played numerous times. The content could vary, but the structure was the same. Be alert or preserve energy, or do them both, and hit the intense level of joy in the end. These were not random stories made by words anymore. They were automated patterns completed in four stages; the cue, the routine, the reaction to the routine, and the reward. They were habits.
We, humans, are complex systems with many units and moving parts that exist within more complex systems like societies and cultures [2]. Gall’s Law states that all complex systems that work evolved from simpler systems that worked [3]. So if we want to understand the by-product of any complex system, such as human behavior, we must first determine simpler subsystems that convey meaning in our nervous system. Defining the first sequential unit that conveys meaning will give us the main block to build complexity over time because the core function assigns sequences, sequences frame connections, and connections define meaning.
The way to understand our behavior is to understand the core function of humans. So what is the core function of humans?
[1] Andrew Huberman, Ph.D., hubermanlab.com
[2] Josh Kaufman, The Personal MBA, 2012
[3] John Gall, Systemantics: How Systems Work and How They Fail, 1975
[2] Josh Kaufman, The Personal MBA, 2012
[3] John Gall, Systemantics: How Systems Work and How They Fail, 1975