Nexus State Theory

I will ask you a few questions about pleasant, unpleasant, and mixed experiences. It is okay if you cannot think of any examples for some of these questions. When answering questions 1-6, it may help to think the “pleasant” experiences are those that would contribute to your overall happiness if you did more of them. Then “mixed” or “ambivalent” experiences may or may not increase overall happiness if you did more of them. You might prefer to do these things no more than necessary. Then “unpleasant” experiences would be those you’d ideally never want to experience.

1. Describe some activities that feel pleasant, and that would contribute to your overall happiness if you did more of them. This might mean that you typically feel little or no discomfort or sadness while doing the activity, and no regret or guilt after the activity is done. You may also feel a sense of accomplishment after the activity is complete.

2. What about such activities from your childhood or other past experiences?

Pleasant activities that contribute to your overall happiness could be called by a variety of names:

• Net positive pleasures mean that happiness is greater than sadness – maybe even 5 happiness and 4 sadness.
• Unmixed pleasures require something like 5 happiness and 1 or 0 sadness.
• Satisfaction or fulfillment imply that some broader goal has been attained – perhaps a long-term happiness or a gift of happiness to others.

It’s okay if different people find different words to use here.

3. Describe some activities that feel pleasant to some extent, but you are not sure if they would contribute to your happiness if you did them more often. You might prefer to do them only when necessary. When you do them, you typically feel some discomfort or sadness, or, afterwards, you feel some regret or guilt. In other words, you feel ambivalent or have mixed feelings.

4. What about such activities from your childhood or other past experiences?

Activities with some pleasure and some regret, guilt, discomfort, or sadness are ambivalent experiences.

5. Describe some activities that are mostly unpleasant (or even entirely unpleasant) including both the activity itself and its likely consequences for you. You’d prefer to never do these things.

6. What about such activities from your childhood or other past experiences?

7. Describe a time in your present or past experience when you felt relatively optimistic about your efforts leading to net positive pleasures or unmixed pleasures? This might mean optimism about a narrow effort – a specific activity – or about something broader.

At the time in (7), you were in a nexus state. This is a mental state in which one has greater agency, self-control, or self-regulation. The reason for this greater agency is that one is optimistic that efforts will lead to net positive pleasure (or other positive feelings, such as unmixed pleasure, satisfaction, or fulfillment.) A nexus state can be fairly general: it may not just be optimism about one effort, but about a variety of possible efforts leading to net positive pleasure.

8. Describe a time in your present or past experience when you felt relatively pessimistic about your efforts leading to net positive pleasures?

At the time in (8), you were in a sink state. This is a mental state in which you were pessimistic that efforts would lead to net positive pleasures. It relates to a feeling of reduced agency, self-control, or self-regulation. A major purpose of Nexus State Theory is to get out of sink states and into nexus states. What it means to “get out of” a sink state is complex – it could mean not feeling pessimistic; it could mean no longer being concerned about the problem (even temporarily); or it could mean achieving net positive pleasure – among other possibilities.

9. Think of times when you did the following things. Did you perceive them as net positive pleasures, ambivalent experiences, or unpleasant experiences? In particular, for each item, specify: very pleasant, pleasant, ambivalent, unpleasant, very unpleasant. You can use the number 5 to mean “very pleasant,” 4 for “pleasant”, 3 for “ambivalent”, 2 for “unpleasant”, and 1 for “very unpleasant.” It’s okay to give a range of numbers for each.

These items are what I call the Default Human Range (DHR) – I view them as positive experiences that humans evolved to experience. For example, early humans certainly talked to each other, lived in a natural environment, and experienced personal autonomy.

• Talking to other humans (particularly friends and family.)
• Being in a natural environment (as opposed to an urban one).
• Experiencing a high degree of personal autonomy.
• Rethinking social structures, such as rules or leadership hierarchies. For example, you might discuss with your family how to change responsibilities – or discuss with your workplace how to make the work process better.
• Traveling.
• Being different / weird / being oneself. (Assuming you are not punished for that.)
• Expressing gender diversity. (Assuming you are not punished for that.)
• Having somewhat different (or very different) religious beliefs than others. (Assuming you are not punished for that.)
• Hunting.
• Engaging in a ritual or holiday observance when many people came together.
• Telling or listening to stories, either in books or movies.
• Creating or listening to music.
• Dancing or watching people dance.
• Creating art or visiting an art museum.
• Caring for children.
• Coming together in a small community of perhaps twenty to fifty individuals.
• Sharing food or resources with others.
• Playing games.
• Reasoning about your activities or social practices and understanding why they are important.
• Learning new things.
• Knowing that you cannot control everything.
• Knowing that you cannot know everything.

Many of these activities are not as functional in the modern world. If so, it seems miraculous that humans value any of them today. (Why do humans often love creating art, but usually hate paying taxes, when the latter is a much more useful activity?) Thus, it’s less that humans only like DHR things and more that humans like DHR things more than an alien observer might expect.

(Imagine an alien from another planet who watches an animal enjoying some food. You explain to the alien that the animal enjoys the food because it needs the food to survive. The alien then asks to see something that humans enjoy, and you show them a human creating a painting. Why does the human need this to survive, the alien asks?)

10. Describe times when you did the following things. Did you perceive them as net positive pleasures, ambivalent experiences, or unpleasant experiences? In particular, for each item, specify: very pleasant, pleasant, ambivalent, unpleasant, very unpleasant. You can use the number 5 to mean “very pleasant,” 4 for “pleasant”, 3 for “ambivalent”, 2 for “unpleasant”, and 1 for “very unpleasant.” It’s okay to give a range of numbers for each.

These items are what I call Learned Layers (LL) – they are aspects of modern society that humans did not evolve to experience. For example, modern humans (but not early humans) use money, own substantial material wealth, and may live in urban environments.

• Using money. (Obtaining it, managing it, spending it).
• Dealing with material wealth (houses, possessions, stocks).
• Sorting / ordering material wealth (cleaning one’s house).
• Living in urban environments.
• Full-time farming.
• Dealing with corporate or administrative hierarchies.
• Being above someone else in a hierarchy.
• Being below someone else in a hierarchy.
• Watching television.
• An eight or more hour work day which take place according to a time schedule.
• Using the internet and social media.
• Serving in the military.

Some people learn to like these Learned Layers, some don’t. Humans like Learned Layer things less than you might expect, given their utility, and there is more potential for alienation.

My contention is that experiencing unmixed pleasure as a result of your actions can teach you to be optimistic about efforts leading to pleasure – that is, to be in a nexus state. It’s important to be aware of Default Human Range states here, because they’re “not functional” and so easily overlooked.

Intrapersonal Default Human Range states are those that can be pursued without requiring substantial wealth or connections with other humans. “Intra” means “within” a person, whereas “inter” would mean “between” people.

Now I will ask about specific Intrapersonal Default Human Range states. It is okay if you cannot think of any examples for these states. Most people will not have examples for all of them.

11. Think of a time when you talked about your emotions, or when you talked to another trusted or loved person when you were experiencing an unpleasant emotion. Was there ever a time when this helped you or produced some pleasure in spite of your feeling bad?

I suggest that talking to other, trusted or loved humans is a DHR state, and hence may lead to unmixed positive feelings. This teaches us that efforts lead to pleasure. In our modern world, we are often disconnected with people, leading to difficult emotions that feel unshareable.

Did you ever get this kind of benefit by naming your emotions in your own mind? This would be purely “intra”-personal.

12. Think of a time when you became aware of your breath or body, observing it in a nonjudgmental way, perhaps during meditation. Was there ever a time when this helped you or produced some pleasure?

I suggest that awareness of the breath or body is a DHR state, and hence may lead to unmixed positive feelings. This teaches us that efforts lead to pleasure. In our modern world, we often live in our heads rather than in our bodies.

13. Think of a time when you became aware that you could not control something, but accepted that. Was there ever a time when this helped you or produced some pleasure?

I suggest that awareness that we cannot control something, and accepting that, is a DHR state, and hence may lead to unmixed positive feelings. This teaches us that efforts lead to pleasure. In our modern world, we often believe we can control everything – such as the temperature (using the thermostat), the weather (using an umbrella), and so on.

14. Think of a time when you became aware that you could not know or understand something, but accepted that. Was there ever a time when this helped you or produced some pleasure?

I suggest that awareness that we cannot know something, and accepting that, is a DHR state, and hence may lead to unmixed positive feelings. This teaches us that efforts lead to pleasure. In our modern world, we often believe we can know everything – for instance, via the internet.

15. Think of a time when you enjoyed a story, either in the form of a book or a movie. (Or even a story that someone else told about their life.) Was there ever a time when this helped you or produced some pleasure?

I suggest that enjoying a story is a DHR state, and hence may lead to unmixed positive feelings. This teaches us that efforts lead to pleasure. In our modern world, we actually have access to quite a few stories via books and movies, but many of these stories are “shallow” and are not that connected to deep DHR needs.

16. Think of a time when you walked in nature, engaged in physical exercise, travelled, or touched someone. Did any of these help you or produce some pleasure?

I suggest that these activities are DHR states, and hence may lead to unmixed positive feelings. This teaches us that efforts lead to pleasure. In our modern world, we spend more time in cities than in nature.

17. Think of a time when you experienced the present moment without thinking of the past or future. Was there ever a time when this helped you or produced some pleasure?

I suggest that experiencing the present moment is a DHR state, and hence may lead to unmixed positive feelings. This teaches us that efforts lead to pleasure. In our modern world, we worry about material wealth and our career, causing us to think about the future.

18. Think of a time when you experienced a feeling of being loved or cared for by another person, or by yourself. Was there ever a time when this helped you or produced some pleasure?

I suggest that experiencing love, including self-love, is a DHR state, and hence may lead to unmixed positive feelings. This teaches us that efforts lead to pleasure. In our modern world, we have fewer connections to people, although those connections that we do have can be strong.

19. Think of a time when you used reason to figure out how to solve a problem or to get out of feeling stuck. Was there ever a time when this helped you or produced some pleasure?

I suggest that reasoning is a DHR state, and hence may lead to unmixed positive feelings, as long as it is used to our benefit and not to ruminate and to get further stuck. This teaches us that efforts lead to pleasure. In our modern world, we often use reason to ruminate about difficult problems rather than leveraging it to solve problems.

20. Think of a time when you talked to yourself in a positive way, perhaps having a conversation with yourself in which you gave yourself advice or support. Was there ever a time when this helped you or produced some pleasure?

I suggest that talking to other, trusted or loved humans is a DHR state, and receiving support from oneself can imitate that. Hence, it may lead to unmixed positive feelings. This teaches us that efforts lead to pleasure. In our modern world, we are disconnected from people, leading to fewer supportive conversations.

The point is that our current intrapersonal environment is different from the hunter gatherers’ mental landscape. We think we can know and control everything. We are more likely to have difficult-to-manage unpleasant emotions that we think we can’t share with others, to live in our head instead of our body, to live in the future instead of the present (in order to manage our money, for instance) to use reason to ruminate about negative consequences instead of to rethink problems, and to spend time in cities rather than in nature. Many of these things are easy to do differently if we were to do the right exercises, such as mindfulness meditation, naming our emotions, reading more literature, walking in nature, cognitive behavioral therapy, positive self-talk and self-support, accepting that we can’t control everything, and accepting that we can’t understand everything.