Nexus State Theory

Most people want agency, self-regulation, or self-control – the ability to build habits, stay true to our values, and find meaning in our actions. The goal here is to enter a state in which one has more self-control. This is what I will call a nexus state.

A nexus state can be autonomous (finding meaning in our individual actions) or dyadic (finding meaning in our actions that are collaborative – that we pursue with partners). In the first three parts of this work, I will focus on autonomous nexus states, because I believe that autonomy is more basic than being with others. If one cannot be alone, one cannot easily be with others. In the previous post, I discussed Attachment Theory; my suggestion is that an autonomous nexus state helps with attachment anxiety (by finding meaning in being alone) while a dyadic nexus state helps with attachment avoidance (finding by finding meaning in being with others).

To enter a nexus state, one wants to be optimistic about effort leading to net positive pleasure. That is, in a nexus state, a person expects that their efforts will be rewarded with pleasure; this tends to give them more ability to self-regulate. For instance, if a person has experienced the pleasure of climbing a mountain, they may assume that future efforts will also lead to pleasure. This may make future efforts easier.

This optimism is related to generalized self-efficacy, which is the general sense that one will be able to face challenges and overcome difficulties. However, whereas generalized self-efficacy is about challenges and difficulties, nexus state optimism is about expecting that efforts will lead to pleasure.

Climbing a mountain often leads to net positive pleasure – that is, it is less likely to lead to regrets or partly negative experiences than pleasures such as binging on television watching or internet surfing. When we surf the internet, we may feel pleasure initially, but after a time we feel we are just compulsively scrolling through meaningless posts on social media. Pleasure is net positive if an action leads to pleasure overall, as opposed to pleasure that is tainted by guilt, regret, boredom, etc.

Default Human Range (DHR) states are the positive states that humans evolved to experience. Climbing a mountain could be an example, since humans evolved to be in nature. What’s interesting is that Default Human Range states often lead to net positive pleasure even though it is essentially irrational for them to do so – they do not always have any economic benefit – because humans evolved to experience them as pleasurable. These states help us move toward a nexus state, where we have a generalized optimism about effort leading to pleasure. Some examples of Default Human Range states will be given below.

Because Default Human Range states evolved in hunter gatherer bands, my first task is to summarize my model of hunter gatherers’ experience.

I will also mention other states, such as Default Human Range of Stressors (DHRS) states, which represent dangers to hunter gatherers, and Learned Layer (LL) states, which humans have learned to experience in modern times. Default Human Range of Stressors states can lead to unpleasant emotions, while Learned Layer states are mixed. They are necessary, and some people may like them (many people like reading, for instance) but others can lead to feelings of alienation if they are not managed appropriately.

Learned Layer states fall into many categories. One category includes Learned Layer states that involve effortful learning, especially via working memory and requiring a cognitive load. The most prominent examples including learning to read and learning to do math and other technical subjects. Another type of Learned Layer state addresses Default Human Range needs but in a modern way – sometimes leading to addiction if modernity allows a greater access to that need. For example, sugar is a Default Human Range need – but Learned Layer cookies and doughnuts allow unlimited access to that need, creating a potential for unhealthy consumption of sugar. However, it’s complicated: consumption of sugar need not always lead to net unpleasant experiences. Sometimes it leads to unpleasant experiences for cultural reasons, i.e. people shame each other for eating sugar. Shaming is not the “fault” of the sugar per se; shame is a social construct that humans choose to inflict on other humans. So it is important to distinguish between unpleasantness that comes from the Learned Layer behavior itself and unpleasantness that comes from people’s judgment that there is something wrong with the behavior. The lesson here is that people should be able to say for themselves whether a given behavior is good or bad for them.

It is important to note that, just as modern countries can have quite different systems of government (e.g. the United States vs. the Soviet Union), so too hunter gatherers could have wildly different societies. Thus, the “range” (in the phrase “Default Human Range”) can be quite broad; I do not mean to imply that all hunter gatherers participated in these practices to the same degree – they certainly didn’t.

The Default Human Range is the range of positive states that humans have evolved to experience. I will mix autonomous states, dyadic, and collective states together:

• Speaking a language.
• Living in a natural environment (as opposed to an urban one).
• Experiencing a high degree of personal autonomy. Hunter gatherer groups could split up with relative ease, meaning that tyranny could usually be escaped. This incentivized hunter gatherer groups to allow individual freedom. I am getting this partly from The Dawn of Everything, and partly from Francis Fukuyama’s observation (in The Origins of Political Order) that early political states had to prevent people from leaving in order to impose authoritarian regimes. My model of hunter gatherer autonomy is that it’s like a friends’ gathering today. If you’re at someone’s house and everyone is having dinner, there may be a strong social pressure for you to have dinner too. However, if you skip dinner, there is no law to punish you for doing so. Moreover, your friends are capable of common sense: almost any good reason for skipping dinner will satisfy them. In contrast, in a political state, it requires a great deal of effort on the part of legislators and judges to cause the law to feel like it has this kind of common sense. I suspect that to many people, it does not feel this way at all. This personal autonomy includes:
  • Being able to rethink social structures when need be.
  • Being able to travel to another place if need be.
  • Being allowed to be different / weird / be oneself.
  • Being allowed to express gender diversity.
  • Being able to ignore leaders’ commands without being punished (except, as noted, in a social sense.)
  • Having freedom of religion.
• Subsisting on hunted meat and gathered plants, possibly supplemented by part-time farming or gardening.
• Engaging in rituals where people from different locations or groups come together. This could bring a large group together for the purpose of peace – or of mutual protection (to defend against other large groups).
• Engaging in storytelling, music, dancing, and/or art. The arts may have served to bring people together in order to maintain the social bond. They also served as a performance of one’s abilities, e.g. for mate selection.
• Caring for children.
• Coming together in small communities of twenty to fifty individuals. Dunbar’s number (150 people) represents the likely maximum size of a band in which everyone knows everyone else.
• Sharing food within the community. Consider that when a large animal is killed, the meat will spoil if the animal is not eaten immediately. Thus, schemes for distributing the meat are desirable. For this and other reasons, hunter gatherers were motivated to care for everyone in the group.
• Lower birth rate (than ancient farmers, but likely not lower than today).
• Playing games of all kinds. Some would say that playfulness is a fundamental trait of hunter gatherers.
• Reasoning about and finding meaning in social practices. This is also about storytelling: hunter gatherers could have told you narratives about their practices. Thus, hunter gatherers might have been able to tell you why a given leadership structure was needed. This also has to do with having a simpler society where such understanding is more possible, even without an extensive formal education, as well as a more adaptable society where such knowledge is needed to change society in response to changing circumstances. Thus, Graeber and Wengrow note that hunter gatherers could change their social structure on a seasonal basis. For example, one band had a particular structure, during hunting season, where a kind of “police” could enforce restrictions on hunting in order to avoid scaring the animals. At other times, the band reverted to the more usual high-autonomy state that is more typical of hunter gatherers.
• Hunter gatherers might also have told stories about themselves, personally – what were they doing, personally, and why? – at any given time. Telling stories about ourselves is a source of pleasure and meaning that will be extremely important for Nexus State Theory.
• Learning new things – including LL things. Learning about the LL is part of the DHR; acting out the LL is not.

The Default Human Range of Stressors might include the following. These are stresses that were likely more dangerous for hunter gatherers than for us, yet many of them were in some sense less commonly faced than for us.

• Large predators, such as wolves. Humans today encounter animals quite frequently (e.g. pet dogs) but these animals are not dangerous.
• Disease. By some estimates, this accounted for the majority of hunter gatherer deaths. Humans today must engage in many purifying behaviors, such as washing hands or throwing out food if it passes the expiration date. Thus, humans face less real danger but have more cleansing activities to perform.
• Losing an important object. Objects required time and skill to construct, and could be left behind at a previous campsite. Humans today have many more objects to keep track of, but many objects are more easily replaceable than for hunter gatherers.
• Social rejection. A hunter gatherer who was cast out of their band would face great danger – they would have to find another band quicky or else they would die. Today, humans face rejection much more frequently than hunter gatherers, but the rejection is less dangerous.

There are also some Default Human Range of Stressors phobias that were dangerous for hunter gatherers, yet are not particularly more common for us – e.g. fear of the dark. Nighttime was dangerous for hunter gatherers because one could encounter predators, trip and hurt oneself, etc. Snakes and spiders, another common phobia, were also a danger encountered by hunter gatherers.

Learned Layers are states that emerged only “recently” – perhaps in the last few decades, centuries, or millennia. These states may lead to feelings of alienation, where one simply feels “wrong” about the world. Many of these, such as the internet, seem good when we get them, yet in the long run can lead to unhappiness if overused. They include:

• Coin money or similar all-purpose currency. Hunter gatherers did not have coin money. Their most common way of getting a desired object was likely to “borrow” it. That is, just as today, a family member can “borrow” a book, pen, or cup from another without payment, potentially without ever returning it, hunter gatherers in the same band could borrow from one another.
• The possession of significant material wealth.
• Living in urban environments.
• Full-time farming.
• Kings or administrative hierarchies (e.g. corporate hierarchies). Anthropologists used to use the words “chiefdom” or “state” (in the political sense) to refer to a group with a hereditary leader. These groups were typically much larger than a typical hunter gatherer band – thousands of members for chiefdoms; even more for states. Hunter gatherer bands were, again, like a typical friend group today – potentially with informal, adaptable leadership but without a fixed administrative hierarchy. Thus, perhaps when you go to one friend’s house, they are in charge to some degree, and at another friend’s house, that person is in charge instead. There is no formal “president” or “king” of the friend group. This does not mean that there was no such thing as status: young people surely competed for status and wanted to prove themselves. In fact, when there is no king the competition for status (which now is not hereditary) may be even greater.
• Television.
• Long work hours which take place according to a time schedule. Hunter gatherers did not have fields to farm that required constant attention. They also did not have factory work that required total synchronization of work hours.
• Electric lights on at night.
• The internet and social media.
• Long term or large-scale warfare.
• Nuclear families that take care of children without help from others. Hunter gatherers engaged in alloparenting – that is, getting parenting help from people other than the mother and father.

I would argue that a major purpose of philosophy has been to enable nexus states. I think of philosophy as beginning with Confucius, Socrates, the Buddha, and the Old Testament at a time long ago. However, it is still the case that Learned Layer states were commonplace even at that time. For example, Learned Layer behaviors such as wealth accumulation, coin money, slavery, and extreme patriarchy were already common in Socrates’ Athens. In some sense, that is the purpose of philosophy – to connect humans to DHR states (such as finding meaning through narrative) in spite of these alienating Learned Layer behaviors.

Plato did not want to eliminate Learned Layer states – he envisioned a Republic that would be similar in many ways to Athens and Sparta, with coin money and administrative hierarchies. Yet Plato wanted his “guardian” elites to live in a communistic sub-society without significant economic incentives. Plato also wanted his guardians to possess the education required to make sense of society and to reason about it – just as hunter gatherers would have done. He also valued storytelling about society; he wanted his guardians to promote a myth that humans came from the earth, and hence owed allegiance to the state which was founded on that ground. Thus, the Learned Layer states would be managed by a Default Human Range subpopulation. This management of Learned Layer states via nexus states (that are enabled by Default Human Range states) is a common goal of philosophy, although in a democracy, we would ideally educate everyone rather than a small group of elites.

In order to easily recall the phrase “Default Human Range,” it may be helpful to understand its origin. The word “default” is important: this is not the “only” human nature, but just the “default setting.” Humans can enjoy reading, math, driving cars, and other modern activities; but these have to be learned. Likewise, the word “range” is important. No two humans are exactly the same in terms of their innate tendencies to like particular states. This is very important, because the alternative could be tyrannical. That is, if we believe that everyone innately likes eating meat, then we could believe that there’s something wrong with vegetarians. We could even pass laws that punish vegetarians “for their own good.” This obviously could be problematic.

Responding to Potential Concerns