The Composite Human

Musings on Neuroscience, Psychology, Biology, Physics, Philosophy, and Human Nature

Recent Posts

  • The Modern Human?: Rewiring a Microwave into a Radio

    Humans: we’re not made like we used to be. While we’ve adapted to sitting 8+ hours a day and shopping for food instead of hunting, I can’t help but imagine there are consequences. For abandoning our biological hardware plans, for retooling ourselves into something evolution had no say in.

    Our bodies benefit from exercise, but our society encourages sedentary behavior. We’re mostly indoors when vitamin D is created in our bodies through sunlight. We use the internet and memes and movies and music apps, but our brains never evolved to take in such stimuli. They evolved to spot lions in the distance.

    It’s like turning a microwave into a radio. Assuming such a thing is possible, the radio might be effective, but it still has the quirks and traits of the microwave. It would be better if the radio was built slowly and over time. It would be better if we evolved, over thousands of years, to have sedentary lifestyles, rather than thrusting ourselves into it.

    Jamal H. Goodwin Jr.
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  • Word Choice in Our Brains – Revisited

    *A Continuation of This Post from 2/11/24*

    Here’s an example of what I’m talking about: the word “Montezuma” just popped into my head. I have no idea why.

    I was standing in my bedroom, looking at my TV, bed, desk, and plant, and amidst this looking, the word “Montezuma,” followed by the phrase “Montezuma’s corpse,” just narrated itself. Or rather, I said it, as I say these words now, only I am choosing these words I say now with intent, while the words in my room appeared as an unconscious and arbitrary action.

    No doubt the words were spurred by the DMN (default mode network) of my brain, which picked up on a trigger my conscious self was not aware of. I suspect it’s a word I heard in a podcast 1-2 days ago while doing dishes/eating. Throughline from NPR did an episode talking about the Aztecs; I enjoyed it.

    But it’s also possible that word never appeared in that podcast episode, but my brain associates Montezuma (I don’t even know who that is) with Spanish/Aztec topics, so it popped in my head anyway. Perhaps in my room some moments ago I was unconsciously thinking about that Throughline episode when “Montezuma” bubbled up to the conscious surface. Who’s to say. Entropy, I feel, lives inside the skulls of all of us.

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    Jamal H. Goodwin Jr.
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  • Location is Memory

    Location is memory. When you move to a new home, your routines change, and you lose the daily rituals you once saw a common and never thought much about. These rituals, the memories, they soon fade, only to be recalled on occasion.

    People are memory too. Our daily rituals of how we used to interact with certain folks on a regular basis, the minute details of their face or body we noticed but gave little thought to. These fade, only to be recalled on occasion.

    The significant memories remain, but the minutia is the scaffolding that builds reality, separates it from daydreams.

    Rose-colored glasses. It can happen to anyone. Don’t journal the significant things. Keep a record of the small ones; the ones that seem like they don’t matter; the ones you know you’ll forget.

    Jamal H. Goodwin Jr.
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  • The Third Hand

    If the mind is the third hand, it is also the most active. How often does it lay on a table or rest within the pockets of pants? Seldom.

    It is always reaching, always working, for better or for worse.

    Negativity could be seen as a cloud that rises from the brain’s depths and hovers about for hours. But a better metaphor is the clinging hand. Like nervous fingers twitching, the third hand can’t help but continually reach and squeeze on the different sensations and memories inside itself.

    Mindfulness is the key. Stay your antsy hand. Become aware of it, and you shall command it.

    Jamal H. Goodwin Jr.
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  • Therapy Doesn’t Exist in The Wild

    Therapy doesn’t exist in the wild, but that doesn’t mean it wouldn’t be helpful. In the PBS Nature documentary, Mystery Monkeys of Shangri-La, one of the fathers in a troupe of snub-nosed monkeys is killed by a wandering bachelor monkey who steals his mate; the father’s son is ousted by the family, and the mother creates a new child for the bachelor monkey. Think of the emotional trauma the original son must’ve gone through, losing his father and being replaced so quickly.

    Think also of the desperate lioness whose newborn cub was murdered by a jealous male. Videos exist on YouTube of lionesses “adopting” an antelope calf in order to fulfill its maternal instinct, only for the mother to starve and for the calf to be hunted by other lions.

    When a bird breaks its wing. When an animal loses an eye. When a female creature is forcibly mated with. How could they not carry trauma with them? But animals cannot speak. Cannot practice EMDR therapy or write in a journal. With luck, the most they’ll get is a hug from a loved one.

    Jamal H. Goodwin Jr.
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