Throughout history, philosophers have wrestled
with the question of how to live well.
For Socrates and Aristotle, the good life was an endpoint, a telos.
Hellenistic schools, such as the Stoics,
shifted the focus to method:
Philosophy became a guidebook for living.
By the nineteenth and twentieth centuries,
Existentialists like
Søren Kierkegaard,
Friedrich Nietzsche,
Jean-Paul Sartre, and
Martin Heidegger
reframed the good life as an ongoing, personal journey.
There is no universal destination and no single map.
Each of us is "thrown" into existence
and must navigate who we become
in dialogue with the world around us.
Yet the world we are thrown into is not neutral.
The apparent stability of our environment
gave rise to the illusion of genetic determinism
But this was always a mirage.
In truth, becoming human has always been an engineered process,
shaped by the environments we build.
What is new in the Anthropocene
is not the fact of environmental influence,
But its visibility.
The once-invisible hand of culture and ecology
has revealed itself.
Now we face a collective choice:
Do we continue to shape humanity unintentionally?
Or do we take up the responsibility of intentional design?
This shift toward meta-reflection
sets the stage for our current moment
the Anthropocene,
where the boundaries of becoming are no longer merely philosophical
but material, ecological, and systemic
In the Anthropocene
a time when human beings have become the dominant force
shaping climate, ecology and culture
This philosophical insight carries a biological weight.
The child is not born into a neutral world;
It is thrown into a human‑constructed culture
that selects which of its potentials will be expressed.
We now prescribe
the diet, air quality, rhythms of schooling and digital input
that calibrate our children’s nervous systems.
These prescriptions are the scaffolding
upon which their minds will grow
and the lens through which they will interpret their freedom.
As a result, the art of becoming
is no longer a purely private project;
It is something society actively designs.
To understand human development today
is to see that the environment is not a passive backdrop
but an active hand shaping the interostate,
and thus shaping who children can becom
Freedom, Thrownness and the Slippage of Language
Jean‑Paul Sartre’s famous declaration that
“existence precedes essence”
was a manifesto for radical freedom.
Human beings are not born with fixed identities or purposes.
We exist first,
and only later,
through our choices and actions,
Do we carve an essence?
This perspective is profoundly hopeful:
A child is not destined to be shy,
lazy or brilliant
simply by virtue of their genes.
Instead, every child is an open possibility.
Their character emerges
from what they do
and how they interpret their experiences.
Martin Heidegger agreed
human beings are self‑shaping,
But he emphasised
Freedom is never absolute.
We all enter the world
with a particular body,
a particular history and
a particular culture
that we did not choose.
Heidegger called this facticity:
the concrete facts of our existence.
These givens do not dictate who we will become,
But they do define the range of possibilities we can meaningfully pursue.
A tall, athletic child will find different doors open
than a child with a chronic illness;
a girl born in Afghanistan
will encounter different expectations
than a girl born in Sweden.
Our language itself mirrors these constraints,
sometimes in ways that cause confusion.
We toss around the word “woman”
to refer to both biological sex
and to social roles.
Simone de Beauvoir’s famous statement,
“One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman,”
emphasises that feminine roles are learned, not innate.
Yet, by using “woman” for both sex and role,
Our language often blurs the line.
A mother can be someone who gives birth
or someone who raises a child;
A bricklayer is a role anyone can perform,
regardless of sex.
Clarifying these distinctions is crucial
because much of what we call “gender”
is simply the assignment of roles,
not a reflection of biology.
In cultures where sex-based roles are violently imposed,
what’s truly preserved isn’t “gender,”
but a harsh system of social control over bodies.
Today, in the West,
we increasingly see that biological sex
does not dictate a life’s path.
Yet, the word “gender” still lingers,
often empty of meaning,
caught in outdated ideas of roles.
Recognising this confusion
helps us speak more honestly
about our bodies, our roles, and our freedoms.
Being autistic
or anxious
or one’s sexuality
is less like possessing an immutable property
and more like participating in a pattern
that emerges from the interplay of genes and environment.
Crucially, that patterning happens below awareness.
Just as we do not choose what a stem cell becomes,
We do not choose which Apps are installed
in the experience-expectant brain.
The interostate
The physiological gatekeeper of reflection
filters what can be learned or regulated
long before intent is possible.
Becoming, then, is not authored by the child;
it is scaffolded by the system.
We do not begin as autonomous agents choosing our path,
As Viktor Frankl envisioned,
We begin, rather, as thrown beings in Heidegger’s sense
embedded in contexts we did not choose.
It is not merely a phase of dependence or education.
What, then, is childhood?
It is the continuation of gestation
outside the womb.
Humans are born unfinished.
Our last trimester has been outsourced to culture.
The newborn arrives not as a blank slate,
nor as a miniature adult,
But as a biologically unfinished system
that is expected to be completed by the environment.
This is what neuroscientists call
an experience-expectant brain:
a system waiting to be told
through rhythm, touch, tone, and contingency
What kind of world has it been born into?
From this vantage,
learning begins not with conscious thought,
but with bodily regulation.
The nervous system calibrates itself not through instruction,
but through patterned input
warmth,
safety,
tone of voice,
skin-to-skin contact,
and environmental rhythm.
This is bottom-up learning
learning that occurs
before words,
before reflection,
before intent.
It is the process by which the body tunes the gate of cognition itself.
The interostate
our internal state of
arousal,
calm,
hunger,
stress, and
Safety
acts as the gatekeeper of what can be learned.
If the interostate is dysregulated,
the system bypasses reflection entirely.
The child learns, but what they learn is reactivity.
They install habits, not apps.
They develop adaptations to survive, not routines to thrive.
Top-down learning
attention,
planning,
empathy
requires that the gate has been opened first.
But the body opens the gate, not the will.
Bottom-up precedes top-down.
Safety precedes curriculum.
Rhythm precedes reasoning.
Regulation precedes reflection.
Evolution of the Good Life: From Endpoints to Journeys
Philosophers have always yearned for human flourishing,
their visions shifting like shadows across time.
Classical thinkers cherished it as a fixed destination
a life filled with virtue and reason.
The Stoics offered rituals
daily disciplines to forge resilience from the chaos.
Existentialists proclaimed that no preordained “good life' exists;
we must craft it ourselves,
living boldly and authentically amid life's unpredictable storms.
Viktor Frankl, a survivor of Auschwitz,
whispered that meaning unfolds in how we respond to suffering
an act of courage buried deep within us.
The common thread weaving through these visions
is that living well is a vivid activity,
an ongoing dance
a dynamic pursuit,
not a static possession.
Modern neuroscience enriches this tradition.
It teaches that living well depends
on the brain’s ability to engage its reflective capacities.
The prefrontal cortex,
which supports
planning,
empathy and
self‑control,
is the neural platform
for what we might call “living the good life.”
But these higher capacities
are not always available on demand.
They depend on the body’s internal state.
A brain cannot contemplate virtue
when the heart is racing with fear
Or when blood sugar is crashing.
A person cannot reflect on meaning
If their nervous system is locked in survival mode.
In this sense, the good life
is not only philosophical.
It is physiological.
Access to reflection and meaning
is mediated by the state of our body.
The Interostate
Biological Thrownness and Experience‑Expectant Development
Biologists have long distinguished between
experience‑expectant and
experience‑dependent inputs.
A developing brain expects certain kinds of
sensory and social stimulation.
When these expected experiences are missing,
development deviates.
For example, human infants across cultures require
warm, responsive caregiving,
predictable rhythms and opportunities for exploration.
When these are absent
as in institutional care
or extreme neglect
There can be lasting effects
on cognition and emotion regulation.
Even variations within the normal range of caregiving
can alter brain development networks.
In other words, the thrownness of a child’s brain
is not random.
It is the product of cultural choices about how we
feed,
touch,
teach and
comfort.
The interostate is where culture meets biology.
From a physiological perspective,
What these expectable experiences provide is
calibration of what might be called the interostate:
the balance of
stress and calm,
sympathetic and parasympathetic tone,
That sets the baseline for a child’s nervous system.
The Thought Generator Thought Selector (TGTS) model
illustrates why this baseline matters.
Reflective thought
selecting among generated impulses
requires that the body be in a state of relative safety.
When the interostate is calm,
The prefrontal cortex has permission to act.
When the interostate is in high alert,
control shifts to older, reactive circuits.
The body decides whether we can access our higher capacities.
Crucially, this calibration
happens largely before the age of seven.
In those early years,
bottom‑up signals from the body dominate;
Later, the neurotype that crystallises will feed back top‑down,
constraining how new experiences are interpreted.
The environment thus decides the
initial settings for the interostate,
which in turn decide the range of
top‑down influences that will shape future learning.
Crucially, the interostate is not genetically predetermined.
Research informed by the polyvagal theory
shows that an infant’s ability to regulate physiological state
emerges through interactions with caregivers in a safe environment.
The autonomic nervous system is rapidly
maturing in the first years, and this depends on feeling safe.
Safe environments enable flexible shifts in autonomic state,
often described through the vagal “brake,”
which allows smooth transitions
between mobilisation and social engagement.
Vagal tone is one of the clearest readouts of this process.
It sits alongside
heart-rate variability,
cortisol rhythms, and
inflammatory cytokines
as indicators of how flexibly the interostate
moves between defence and restoration.
A study of women found that
a positive home climate and
Strong social embeddedness
predicted higher vagal tone
and greater vagal flexibility,
which in turn buffered the stress response.
Conversely, harsh environments
dampen these signals,
reduce synaptic proliferation,
and alter circuits for cognitive control
and emotion regulation.
Interostate precedes neurotype
Before a child expresses traits like
focus,
sociability or
Anxiety,
Their physiological state
has already constrained the range of possible expressions.
Two children with identical genomes
raised in different contexts
may thus emerge with very different neurotypes.
Both outcomes are authentic
because authenticity means fidelity to one’s environment,
not to a blueprint.
Autonomic Flexibility and the Turnstile of PreForm
Understanding the interostate
allows us to describe differences
among neurotypes in a concrete way.
The TGTS model proposes that thoughts
are continually generated by lower brain circuits
and then selected (or not) by higher circuits.
Access to this selector mode
(which we call PreForm)
It's like passing through a turnstile.
The quality of the turnstile matters.
In autism, the turnstile is sticky
Once a thought passes through,
it catches, holding attention in place
and making it hard to disengage.
In ADHD, the turnstile is loose
and spins too freely:
thoughts rush through without resistance,
flooding reflection and scattering attention.
In neurotypical development,
The turnstile has the right amount of give
not sticky, not loose
allowing novelty while maintaining stability.
These are not moral judgments
but descriptions of how the PreForm gate opens and closes.
What controls the speed of this turnstile?
Autonomic flexibility
the ability of the nervous system
to move between
sympathetic arousal and
parasympathetic calm.
High flexibility means the vagal brake
can slow the heart when danger passes,
opening the turnstile for reflection.
Low flexibility leaves the brake jammed.
The body acts as if danger is constant,
and PreForm is rarely accessible.
In other words, autonomic flexibility
determines the bandwidth for authenticity.
It is the physiological foundation for Sartre’s radical freedom.
Without it, we are stuck in the
Reactive “jellyfish mind”,
carried by the current of habit and environment.
With it, we can step back,
reinterpret our thrownness
and project new possibilities.
Autonomic flexibility is the escape hatch from pure repetition.
It allows a child, and later an adult,
to do more than reenact the culture they were thrown into;
it allows them to pause,
Imagine something different
and begin to invent a new pattern of being.
The implications are profound.
A child’s ability to “become themselves”
does not reside solely in their brain or will;
it depends on how their body has been tuned by early experiences.
A safe, rhythmic, loving environment
fosters flexibility and opens PreForm.
Chronic stress,
unpredictability or
malnutrition
locks the turnstile and narrows the self.
From Possession to Access: Rethinking Traits and Interventions
If interostate precedes neurotype and traits are emergent,
Then many of the qualities we prize or worry about
attention,
empathy,
creativity,
resilience
are not possessions but access states.
They are like apps installed on a smartphone:
present in everyone, but only usable when the battery is charged.
Positive caregiving and social support
increase vagal tone and stress buffering,
whereas deprivation reduces synaptic growth.
This suggests that difficulties
in focus or emotion regulation
may reflect a low‑battery state
rather than a missing trait.
Traditional psychology and education
often assume that traits are possessions:
stable properties one either has or lacks.
The solution, therefore, is imagined as top‑down
teach the
skill,
drill
behaviour,
medicate the symptom,
reward compliance.
These approaches can sometimes be useful,
but they treat the child as if their essence is defective
rather than their access impeded.
A nervous system stuck in high alert
cannot simply calm down.
No amount of cajoling or punishment
will open a turnstile jammed by stress.
The more effective approach is bottom‑up:
charging the battery by changing the conditions.
That might mean improving a child’s diet,
ensuring adequate sleep,
reducing noise and chaos, or
providing regular opportunities for play and nature.
It may involve trauma-informed teaching,
co-regulation with caring adults,
predictable routines,
and emotional coaching.
When the body feels safe,
The turnstile slows to a manageable pace,
PreForm activates, and the child’s capacities emerge.
In other words,
Interventions should first aim to open access
Rather than discipline possession.
This bottom‑up perspective reframes disorders
like ADHD and autism
not as fixed possessions
but as patterns of gating.
A child with ADHD
may have all the neural “apps”
for focus and self‑control,
but their turnstile spins fast.
A child on the spectrum may have the same apps,
but their turnstile moves slowly.
Both children can access more of their potential
when their environments
are adapted to their nervous systems.
For ADHD, that might mean
structured movement,
white noise and
micro‑breaks to prevent flooding.
For individuals with autism,
it may mean reducing sensory overload
and offering predictable routines.
In both cases,
The goal is not to change the child’s essence
but to respect their interostate
and widen their bandwidth for reflection.
Societal Responsibility in the Anthropocene
All of this leads to a sobering realisation:
society decides what a child is thrown into.
In the Anthropocene, nearly every aspect of a child’s environment
nutrition,
media,
education,
chemical exposure
Is designed by humans.
For hundreds of thousands of years,
our environments changed slowly.
Traits looked hardwired because the environment was stable.
Now, rapid cultural changes are revealing the environment’s hand.
The surge in diagnoses of
autism, ADHD and anxiety
over the past decades
cannot be due to genetic mutation;
our genomes are largely unchanged.
Rather, it reflects new conditions
calling forth different patterns.
In Western societies,
We have allowed language
to go on holiday around “gender”
even as we preserve sex‑based inequality.
We promote a neurodiversity discourse
that emphasises dignity but often underplays plasticity.
We normalise processed diets that starve the gut and inflame the brain.
We create schools that reward sitting still at desks
rather than providing play and movement.
We accept high stress,
constant digital distraction
and social atomisation as the price of modernity.
In doing so, we unconsciously select
for nervous systems tuned toward vigilance and inflexibility.
In other places, children are thrown into
extremes of poverty,
war or rigid tradition.
In each case, the environment we design decides
which potentials will be realised.
Recognising this, we cannot shrug
and say that children’s outcomes are nobody’s fault.
Nor should we respond by
pathologising or shaming individuals.
Instead, we must treat early childhood as a public good.
Policies that ensure paid parental leave,
Reducing child poverty,
limiting exposure to ultra‑processed foods,
protecting against toxins,
providing access to green spaces and
prioritising play‑based education are not luxuries;
they are investments in autonomic flexibility
and the future of authentic selves.
The principle “experience precedes neurotype” becomes a moral imperative.
If we decide, collectively,
to throw children into environments that lock their turnstiles,
We are choosing the kinds of minds our societies will have.
Conversely, if we cultivate environments that open those turnstiles,
We are choosing a future full of reflective, resilient citizens.
The environment is no longer a neutral backdrop.
It is a lever of destiny
that we, as adults, hold in our hands.
The Art of Becoming
Sartre taught that existence precedes essence.
Heidegger, that essence is constrained;
Frankl, that essence is discovered through meaning.
Modern neuroscience completes the picture:
Essence is constrained by neurotype,
and neurotype is selected by the interostate,
which is tuned by the environment.
The art of becoming is thus neither a self‑creation ex nihilo
nor a destiny inscribed at conception.
It is a dance between freedom and constraint,
between the hand we are dealt and how we play it.
Seen through this lens,
philosophy’s evolution takes on a new coherence.
The ancients described the good life as a distant destination;
The Stoics offered methods.
Existentialists emphasised the journey and the discovery of meaning.
Today, we know that even the capacity to pursue the good life is biological.
Autonomic flexibility
the ability to open and close the turnstile of PreForm
determines whether we can escape the past
and imagine a different future.
Two children with identical genomes
thrown into different cultures share the same substrate
but, through differing interostates,
emerge as different minds.
Both are authentic because authenticity is about coherence with one’s context,
not adherence to a genetic script.
For parents and teachers,
this means our role is not to mould a predetermined essence
nor to leave children to fend for themselves.
It is to cultivate the soil in which their interostate will be calibrated.
It is to ensure they have access to
calm, nourishment, rhythm, play and love.
It is to recognise when a child’s turnstile is spinning
too fast or too slow, and to adjust the environment
rather than scolding the child.
It is to use language carefully,
distinguishing possession from access.
It is to resist the temptation
to label neurodivergent children as defective
or fixed and to remember that the difference
between them and us is
often a matter of gating speed, not capacity.
In the Anthropocene, the responsibility to get this right is collective.
We cannot rely on genes to determine destiny
or on individuals to overcome structural barriers.
The environment is no longer a backdrop.
It is an active player.
By making it supportive,
We can open the turnstile of PreForm for all children,
giving them the bandwidth
to escape the inertia of the past
and imagine new futures.
There is no greater gift we can offer.
The art of becoming is the art of opening turnstiles.
Let us become, together, better gatekeepers.
Further Reading
Philosophy & Existential Development
Aurelius, M. (2003). Meditations (G. Hays, Trans.). Modern Library.
Beauvoir, S. de. (2010). The second sex (C. Borde & S. Malovany-Chevallier, Trans.). Vintage.
Heidegger, M. (1962). Being and time (J. Macquarrie & E. Robinson, Trans.). Harper & Row.
Nietzsche, F. (2003). Beyond good and evil (R. J. Hollingdale, Trans.). Penguin Books.
Nietzsche, F. (2006). Thus spoke Zarathustra (G. Parkes, Trans.). Oxford University Press.
Plato. (2002). Five dialogues (G. M. A. Grube, Trans.). Hackett Publishing.
Russell, B. (2009). The problems of philosophy. Oxford University Press.
Sartre, J.-P. (2007). Existentialism is a humanism (C. Macomber, Trans.). Yale University Press.
Wittgenstein, L. (1922). Tractatus logico-philosophicus (C. K. Ogden, Trans.). Dover Publications.
Wittgenstein, L. (1953). Philosophical investigations (G. E. M. Anscombe, Trans.). Blackwell.
Developmental Neuroscience & TGTS Foundations
Arnsten, A. F. T. (2009). Stress signalling pathways that impair prefrontal cortex structure and function. Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 10(6), 410–422. https://doi.org/10.1038/nrn2648
Beauchaine, T. P. (2015). Respiratory sinus arrhythmia: A transdiagnostic biomarker of emotion dysregulation and psychopathology. Current Opinion in Psychology, 3, 43–47. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.copsyc.2015.01.017
Brown, S. M., Doom, J. R., Lechuga-Peña, S., Watamura, S. E., & Koppels, T. (2020). Stress and parenting during the global COVID-19 pandemic. Child Abuse & Neglect, 110, 104699. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chiabu.2020.104699
Damasio, A. R. (1994). Descartes’ error: Emotion, reason, and the human brain. Putnam.
Hair, N. L., Hanson, J. L., Wolfe, B. L., & Pollak, S. D. (2015). Association of child poverty, brain development, and academic achievement. JAMA Pediatrics, 169(9), 822–829. https://doi.org/10.1001/jamapediatrics.2015.1475
Lehrer, P. M., & Gevirtz, R. (2014). Heart rate variability biofeedback: How and why does it work? Frontiers in Psychology, 5, 756. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2014.00756
McEwen, B. S. (2012). The ever-changing brain: Cellular and molecular mechanisms for the effects of stressful experiences. Developmental Neurobiology, 72(6), 878–890. https://doi.org/10.1002/dneu.20968
Porges, S. W. (2007). The polyvagal perspective. Biological Psychology, 74(2), 116–143. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.biopsycho.2006.06.009
Raichle, M. E. (2015). The brain’s default mode network. Annual Review of Neuroscience, 38, 433–447. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-neuro-071013-014030
Rigley, K. P. (2025). Reflection Requires Permission: A Biologically Constrained Model of Thought (TGTS). Willows Research.
Thayer, J. F., & Lane, R. D. (2000). A model of neurovisceral integration in emotion regulation and dysregulation. Journal of Affective Disorders, 61(3), 201–216. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0165-0327(00)00338-4
Uddin, L. Q., Supekar, K., Lynch, C. J., Khouzam, A., Phillips, J., Feinstein, C., & Menon, V. (2013). Salience network-based classification and prediction of symptom severity in children with autism. JAMA Psychiatry, 70(8), 869–879. https://doi.org/10.1001/jamapsychiatry.2013.104