P1: Pursuits in life

 Pursuits in life

At the heart of human experience lies an enduring question: What is the basic human drive?

The answers to this question shape our understanding of why we pursue what we do, and why we strive, create, compare, and sometimes, self-destruct. We can divide most of these pursuits into one of the two categories. The first class is a set of survival instincts which has the biological tendency to overcome everything else. The second class, however, consists of our most common cognitive patterns which form the basis for most of our pursuits once we are out of the initial survival phase. These include associations, simulations, perfectionism with architectural thought, and cerebral projections.

 

Associations:

Augustine in his Confessions recalled observing his peers steal pears and feeling both repulsion and attraction toward the act. These moments illustrate the first stage of human pursuit: ‘association’. We see behavior, label it noble or contemptible based off cerebral storage since infancy, and subconsciously write a note to ourselves: ‘be that or avoid that’. A single gesture, accent, or manner of speaking gets welded to our memory. Over time, the brain begins to treat these associations as shorthand for judgment. Phrases like “He’s one of those people,” or “that turned me on /off,” are reflections of such prior associations, which later evolve into the default tool for both self-definition and social orientation.

 

Simulations:

René Girard’s idea of mimetic desire captures this concept: we do not simply want, we also want what we feel from observing admirable or formidable figures. Don Quixote emulates his imagined knights; in cinema, characters like Rocky Balboa or Maverick let viewers momentarily inhabit courage and victory through such mental rehearsal. The thrill is not ownership but imagination. We place ourselves inside the frame, and that substitution generates its own chemical euphoria.

This is the brain’s simulation engine at work. When admiration or formidability stirs us, we unconsciously run first-person scenarios of embodying the admired trait, and the dopamine surge from anticipation of actual dopamine, becomes the driving force of our pursuit. The pursuit of dreams, passions, and ideals is thus more of a neurological theater sometimes, than a moral or rational action. We remain motivated by the anticipation, yet when the dream is realized, and the neurochemical light is felt in ‘the moment’, the feeling soon fades away, leaving behind a very common felling of “It’s nothing in the end.”, hence explaining how such simulations can fuel pursuits for a lifetime, however, quickly fading away once realized.

 

Perfectionism with Architectural Thought:

From Kant’s kingdom of ends to Le Corbusier’s Radiant City, history brims with minds determined to make reality fit a blueprint. In literature, Ayn Rand’s Howard Roark embodies the same tension, an architect who insists that the purity of design outweighs compromise with circumstance.

Perfectionism emerges when the rational mind tries to make sense of life’s disorder. We synthesize principles, build moral compasses, and then live to preserve their symmetry. This crystallizes into architectural thought, the drive not only to be perfect but to construct a perfect future. Whether in administrative planning, ideologic pursuits, or even in daily personal routine, the intention is identical: to project the inner order outward.

 

Cerebral Projections:

When the illusions of total control dissolve, a new cognition arises: cerebral projection. It is detached, sometimes pragmatic, and sometimes cold. The thinker stops idealizing and starts calculating. What do I need, and what levers must I pull to obtain it? This is the realm of Machiavelli’s Prince, of Bismarck’s Realpolitik, of the strategist who sees the world not as moral order but as moving geometry.

Cerebral projection is the adaptive mind’s late stage. Having understood the limits of association, the volatility of simulation, and the rigidity of perfectionism, it now operates through foresight. It weighs variables, anticipates reactions, and models futures. The motive may be noble or ruthless, but the cognition is the same: emotion regulated, strategy engaged. At its highest, this becomes statesmanship; at its lowest, manipulation.

 

The Music Sheet of the Mind

In the long run, we pursue a combination of the above mentioned cognitive patterns. But when it comes to the moment by moment functioning of our brain, the question shifts: what determines which thought we are having right now?

We walk, drive, eat, or stare blankly into space, yet a constant stream of inner commentary persists. It changes every few seconds. Sometimes it clings, sometimes it jumps. So the core question is what governs which thought we’ll have at a given time? To answer this question, the brain can be imagined as a music sheet, full of notes being played at a given time. Each cortical and subcortical area fires its own rhythm, some sharp, some faint, some sustained, and some transient. What we call thinking is the brain’s way of cruising through this neuronal orchestra.

But the question then arises: what is the playhead that moves across this sheet?

That playhead is our conscious awareness, the act of knowing what we are thinking at any given moment. The playhead scans across notes, and whichever note has the highest amplitude or emotional charge becomes the dominant thought. For a few seconds, that note occupies consciousness, then fades, and another rises. We may dwell on this thought for three seconds, five, or a minute before the next one replaces it. Our entire inner life is this endless traversal of the score: one thought at a time, then another, then another.

The strength of a thought / note depends on the value attached to it. Thoughts tied to survival, hunger, safety, sex, or immediate danger, have evolutionary neurochemical dominance. They fire louder and their notes spike higher on the sheet. Frequency, on the other hand, is the number of similar notes that appear within a given timeframe. A repeated motif gains familiarity and, through repetition, attention. This explains why cravings, obsessions, or habits gain power over time, they are not single strong notes, but dense clusters of repeated ones.

If addiction is viewed through this framework, it’s essentially an overrepresentation of a particular motif on the neuronal sheet. The same circuits are replayed over and over while the playhead has little room for alternative notes. ADHD represents the opposite extreme: too many scattered notes, each too brief for sustained melody. The playhead keeps jumping before one tune completes.

Meditation, by contrast, slows the sheet down. It reduces the frequency of active notes, and lets the playhead linger longer on a given note, leading to an increase in concentration, leading to a phase where distractions recede, and over time, productivity and clarity rise as the mental orchestra becomes more synchronized. So controlling thought at its origin could reshape an entire life, addictions, procrastination, impulsivity, even unhappiness.

But the control depends not on forcing the playhead but on altering the score itself, the underlying distribution of notes. The stronger and more frequent a type of thought, the more likely it is to resurface. Changing it requires reweighting the neural sheet: reducing the salience of certain nodes and strengthening others. This can be achieved through behavioral conditioning, mindfulness, cognitive reframing, or long-term habit training. Over time, the emotional charge attached to certain ideas diminishes, and the playhead naturally gravitates toward calmer, more deliberate notes.

The next question is whether this process can be externally manipulated. Could external devices  alter the frequency or nature of the notes or the playhead? The mystery to solve before this is the playhead, the conscious observer, which remains elusive. Where exactly is it located? The brain has no single “center” of consciousness. It’s considered more of an emergent phenomenon, a dynamic synthesis of sensory input, emotional valence, and memory integration.