Nexus State Theory

This work describes some theories about nexus state, self-control, and positive experiences. I will summarize here some of the major ideas of this work, including many of the strategies for achieving positive experiences, along with the origins of these theories. This page is optional – it is a dense, rapid introduction to the ideas in this work.

The modern dilemma

• At this moment, humans often feel disconnected from each other, for several reasons including (but not limited to) the following:
  • Modern people marry late in life (or not at all).
  • A decline in social capital (i.e. norms of trust and community) has been observed by sociologist Robert Putnam in his books Bowing Alone and The Upswing [1]. The reasons for this are still unknown, although Putnam proposes many theories. I suggest one reason is that the 1960s introduced a generation gap and a political gap in our cultural values. These two value disagreements can make it harder for people to associate with one another.
• Instead of answering political questions, Nexus State Theory is meant to help with concerns about disconnection on a personal level, both by giving people optimism and self-control while alone (autonomous regulation) and while together (dyadic regulation). One cannot solve these problems either by being perpetually alone (which is not desirable for most people) or by being perpetually together with everyone in the world (which is also not desirable).

Nexus States

• A nexus state is a mental state of maximum self-control, self-regulation, and agency. In this nexus state, we can get ourselves to do even onerous tasks with relative ease.
• But what kinds of mental states are nexus states? I suggest that this is a state in which a person has a generalized expectation that effort will lead to pleasure. In other words, a nexus state is a kind of realistic optimism about pleasure. It is realistic in that it has a kind of wisdom about what kinds of effort really are likely to lead to pleasure – one doesn’t expect that playing the lottery will always lead to winning, for instance. However, it is optimistic in that it tends to find ways for effort to produce pleasure. Thus, a person who is in a nexus state can take on large projects and complete them, because they are optimistic that the project will turn out well.
• Ideally, a nexus state has both autonomous and dyadic components. We have self-control when doing autonomous activities (we expect good things from being alone) and dyadic activities (we expect good things from being with a partner).
• The nexus state is also a state of generalized self-efficacy. This is a term in psychology meaning “the belief in one’s competence to cope with a broad range of stressful or challenging demands.” [2]. However, they are not quite the same. Self-efficacy refers to an optimism about coping with demands, while the nexus state refers to an optimism about obtaining net positive pleasure.
• There is no universal word that combines the meanings of: pleasure, happiness, satisfaction, fulfillment – and other positive words. These words all mean different but related things. As you read this work, you should choose the word or phrase that best fits the way you experience pleasure and/or satisfaction. I will tend to use the phrase “net positive pleasure” for the most part, meaning a pleasure that may be mixed with suffering, but that outweighs the suffering.
• The way people learn that effort will lead to pleasure is by finding that in a variety of cases, effort does indeed lead to pleasure. A person who takes joy in meditation, autonomy, and conversation with loved ones may unconsciously assume that, because these particular efforts lead to pleasure, it means that efforts generally lead to pleasure.
• This is a primary way in which people develop self-control and agency, because a person who expects that effort will not lead to pleasure will not be able to make an effort. The expectation that effort will not lead to pleasure is called learned helplessness. A person who experiences learned helplessness may feel that nothing will bring pleasure; in the extreme case, this could be a state of depression.

Attachment Theory

• Having a positive expectation for both being alone and being with others is a source of secure attachment. Securely attached toddlers are those who get upset when separated from their parents, but are easily consoled. Anxiously attached toddlers are inconsolable, even when their parents return. And avoidantly attached toddlers don’t seem to get upset, even when their parent returns.
• Therefore, the autonomous component of a nexus state (having high expectations for being alone) are helpful in reducing attachment anxiety, while the dyadic component (having high expectations for being with a partner) are helpful in reducing attachment avoidance. I will spend the first three sections of this work discussing the autonomous component, in part because I think that there is a sense in which comfort in being alone is more basic than comfort in being with others.
• A limitation of Nexus State Theory is that concerns about secure attachment and self-regulation are not as important as being a loving person. Valuing love is, in my view, higher and better than the topics of this work. Loving in an anxious way or an avoidant way is still loving. Relative to valuing love, this work is a footnote.

The Default Human Range and Learned Layers

• To enter a nexus state, we must spend time in states that are net positive for us. If, for instance, we gamble, and the gambling makes us sad or guilty overall (perhaps because we lose money), we may learn that effort does not lead to pleasure – we do not enter a nexus state. On the other hand, if we walk in nature – and the experience is positive overall – we learn that we can achieve pleasure through our effort.
• What states tend to lead to net positive pleasure? I suggest that many of these states are in the Default Human Range (DHR) – the range of positive states and behaviors that humans evolved to experience when we were hunter gatherers. For example, walking in nature tends to lead to net positive pleasure because humans evolved to be in nature. Most people would go the countryside – not the city – to relax, although I’m sure there are exceptions. In contrast, using the internet too much may lead to dissatisfaction – perhaps because humans didn’t evolve to use the internet. Books such as The Dawn of Everything, by David Graeber and David Wengrow; Religion in Human Evolution, by Robert Bellah; and Hunt, Gather, Parent, by Michaeleen Doucleff, are my basis for understanding the Default Human Range. You know your own part of the Default Human Range more directly than I do; it’s better to trust your intuition than to take my word for it. My guess is that for many people, the Default Human Range includes experiences such as autonomy, learning, exercise, being in nature, storytelling, collaboration, listening to music, and being in the company of loved ones. These experiences may involve modern modifications – for instance, humans evolved to like storytelling, and movies are a modern form of storytelling. When we are in the Default Human Range, we learn that effort is associated with pleasure in net. This helps us to “build arrows” (as I would call it) toward a nexus state – that is, we are in the process of learning the optimistic lesson of the nexus state.
• States that aren’t in the Default Human Range are often Learned Layer (LL) states – that is, we’ve learned about modern activities such as television watching, internet surfing, and car driving. The idea of Learned Layers comes from Joseph Henrich’s The Secret of Our Success, although not by that name; and he is much more optimistic about Learned Layers than I am.
• Many people enjoy some Learned Layer activities, such as reading. It’s not that Learned Layer states never lead to net positive pleasure. The puzzle is more why humans like “useless” Default Human Range activities at all while hating some “useful” LL activities. For instance, most people hate paying taxes. It may be obvious to us that we’d hate this – but why is it obvious? Paying taxes is ultimately just another activity that humans perform. Many humans love to read stories and watch movies that contain violence, and to practice martial arts, even though violence is dangerous. Why are there so few movies about paying taxes? My answer is humans evolved to care about violence in a way that we don’t care about taxes. Thus, living entirely in Learned Layer states can lead to a feeling of alienation – we are cut off from an important source of net positive pleasure. Separately, there are Default Human Range of Stressors (DHRS) states, which are anxiety or stress-inducing due to their association with danger for hunter gatherers. These two things (alienation and stress) are distinct, often unpleasant, experiences.

Strategies for self-control and agency

• This section focuses on the Intrapersonal Default Human Range, which is the DHR for humans’ “autonomous” mental states that don’t depend too much on other humans. I have also tried to avoid pleasures that require having great wealth. (Note: intrapersonal means “within a person” while interpersonal means “between people.”) The point is that even without changing our material circumstances or collaborating with others, we can choose to enter a psychological state that is more comparable to the Default Human Range. This may help us to learn that effort brings about net positive pleasure and to reach a nexus state. This is not mutually exclusive with other strategies for changing our material circumstances, but in this work I will focus on intrapersonal circumstances.
• All of these behaviors are partly learned and partly DHR; it is a matter of degree. Thus, the most accurate picture is of a DHR behavior that is modulated by learning.
• I will describe five types of intrapersonal strategies. They are:
  • Being present. This means mindfulness – being present in one’s body or being in the present moment.
  • Reading. We can find pleasure in reading about other people’s stories or in learning nonfictional material. Whereas hunter gatherers value learning, only modern humans learn from books.
  • Activities. These include listening to music, walking in nature, or doing physical exercise.
  • Narratives. These are stories we tell ourselves that give our lives meaning.
  • Compassion. Compassion is intrapersonal when it is unilateral – it is done without expectation of reward or praise. Compassion is, therefore non-transactional, and the compassionate person is unsurprised to learn that there will be no reward (apart from this action’s potentially being an arrow to a Nexus State, as with any other item on this list.) One gets happiness from the act itself, much like reading or listening to music. This does not mean that one will never have needs or require anything from others; but in this particular act (as with the act of reading), one does not impose requirements on others. Compassion requires trust and truthfulness, because we learn compassion partly from people we respect (it has a Learned Layer aspect as well as a DHR aspect.) To do this, we must trust their motives; that they are truly unselfish. When we distrust others’ assertions about their motives (e.g. we think they are motivated by dominance), we cannot learn to be compassionate.
  • Happiness: Intrapersonal happiness, and inhabiting a nexus state, is the goal of the above strategies; this leads to the BRANCH acronym.
• The “Awareness of Emotion” strategy, a Narrative strategy, requires naming one’s emotion. This is based in the “Name It to Tame It” idea in Teaching With the Heart in Mind by Lorea Martinez Perez, as well as the book Affect Regulation Theory by Daniel Hill. Discursive states simulate talking to other humans, which is an important positive Default Human Range state. What’s “DHR” about naming one’s emotions is less the naming of emotions per se and more having a positive narrative of some kind. Having a narrative is like talking to a wise individual or friends about understanding one’s goals or problems – which hunter gatherers would surely have valued. Thus, it may help to name one’s emotions with a therapist (or, for a child, with a parent) before trying this on one’s own. A major burden with a negative emotion is the fear that we may be rejected due to this feeling. By naming our negative emotion, we can imagine that our emotion is accepted by ourselves or by another person.
• The “Awareness of Body” strategy, a Being Present strategy, involves mindfulness meditation. This is based in my experience with mindfulness meditation, including some lectures by Sharon Salzberg and Joseph Goldstein. Breathing, awareness of the body, and resting are Default Human Range states. These practices also help in “denarrativizing” or removing difficult narratives.
• The “Serenity” strategy, a Narrative strategy, means acceptance that one cannot control everything. It is based on the serenity prayer and the Seven Habits of Highly Successful People by Stephen Covey. This, like awareness of emotions, involves having a positive narrative that validates one’s experience.
• The “Mystery” strategy, a Narrative Strategy, means acceptance that one cannot know everything. It is founded in the Tao Te Ching, Nietzsche’s Beyond Good and Evil, and the writings of Raymond Smullyan about Godel’s Paradox. This is another positive narrative that allows for not understanding everything.
• The “Secure base” strategy, a Narrative Strategy, means supporting oneself emotionally. As a very young child, we are wholly dependent on our parent; but as we grow up, we have an “internalized” attachment figure – an internal parent who helps us feel secure. This is founded in attachment theory, which I’ve read about in Attached by Amir Levine and Rachel Heller, Attachment in Psychotherapy by David Wallin, and the aforementioned Affect Regulation Theory. Hunter gatherer children, like modern children, had an important bond with their parents.
• The “Cognitive Behavioral Therapy” strategy, a Narrative Strategy, involves creating arguments that counter unhelpful narratives. It comes (of course) from Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT). The CBT arguments, like some of the previous examples, create a positive narrative. Most people start CBT with a therapist.

Other concepts

• Self control involves the ability to regulate the “state” of one’s mind and body. The notion of a “state” (or “self state”) comes from the Affect Regulation Theory book.
• A “nexus state” is a state of the mind and body that allows the maximum self control or agency. My hypothesis is that this nexus state corresponds precisely to a state in which we expect that effort will lead to net positive pleasure (either from autonomous, dyadic, or collective activities), and that net positive pleasure states are often (though not always) Default Human Range states. The idea that the nexus state is related to the Default Human Range is supported by a literature review in the page on The Bodymindmap in Part Two. The behaviors recommended in this psychological literature are linked to what I know about the DHR.
• Lack of self-control often comes from “narratives” (patterns of thought, emotion, and action) that are hard to escape or regulate. These narratives need to be “denarrativized” or “renarrativized.” Positive narratives are a DHR state; distressing narratives might not be. “Denarrativizing” is my own word, but in spirit it comes from the ideas in Zen Buddhism, such as Thich Nhat Hanh’s book The Heart of the Buddha’s Teaching. The narratives that need to be denarrativized are primarily those that teach us that effort will not lead to net positive pleasure. Of course, merely stating that effort will lead to pleasure, if it then doesn’t lead to pleasure, will be disappointing; so the narratives also need to teach us how to find pleasure. At the same time, my point is partly that positive narratives are themselves a source of pleasure and meaning.
• This theory applies to dyadic regulation – a regulation that occurs between two people – as well as the usual autonomous regulation or self regulation. The ideas about dyadic regulation come from the attachment theory books mentioned above as well as from Getting Real by Susan Campbell and I and Thou by Martin Buber.

However, a major purpose of these theories is motivational, and as such, the test is whether they work for you. Whether they work for me or anyone else is irrelevant. Suppose you want to have more agency, and you believe the research suggesting that you should take certain steps (such as mindfulness meditation) to get there. Now the problem is motivating yourself to take those steps. If reading my theory helps provide that motivation, then it has succeeded! Therefore, in a very real sense I cannot tell you whether my theory works for you. Only you can decide that. In the same way, if a motivational speaker shows up at your high school to tell kids to be kind to each other. The question that matters most is: does their talk motivate you to be kind to others? And only you can answer that question.

What is the brain like? It’s like many things:

• A neural network in machine learning.
• An iceberg, with the conscious mind above and an unconscious mind below.
• A library, where memories are stored and retrieved.

My “self states” model of the mind is just that – a model; no better or worse than any of these. The actual brain is incredibly complex. My hope is that my model is useful to you.

In this work, the stories are entirely fictional and are for illustrative purposes only. They are not evidence, but only explication. ChatGPT was used to generate initial ideas for some of the stories, but the stories in their final form have been rewritten by two separate human authors.

None of the stories represent real things that actually happened, and you shouldn’t trust them in that way. You should, however, trust the stories to accurately explain the abstractions that I’m setting forth.

[1] Robert Putnam, The Upswing 2020. See also Robert Putnam, Bowling Alone 2000.

[2] Luszczynska, Scholz, and Schwarzer, “The general self-efficacy scale: multicultural validation studies,” Journal of Psychology 2005.

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