The Eye of the Storm: Understanding Our Minds During Struggles
yuval bloch
This morning, the stark reality of war struck close to home. Beersheba, a city that until now had remained relatively peaceful compared to central Israel, was hit by a bombing at our main hospital. The shockwave I felt from the public shelter near my apartment served as a cruel reminder of humanity’s darkest capacities. This experience profoundly underscores the urgent importance of learning to manage our emotions in such circumstances—a challenge that, as I’ll argue, complexity theory can illuminate.
In my, “previous post”, I explored how conflicts emerge. The core insight was that disputes aren’t isolated phenomena residing within individuals or nations, but rather arise from the dynamic interplay between them. This perspective, suggesting that different higher-order properties can emerge from the same underlying components, offers a glimmer of hope for more peaceful dynamics in the future.
However, when conflict escalates to international war, these dynamics become overwhelmingly vast and incredibly difficult to comprehend. Frankly, this level of complexity rarely offers comfort. While complexity theory teaches us to embrace uncertainty, it doesn’t yet provide a clear path to overcome the pervasive fear that often accompanies it.
So, I want to zoom in on a different complex system—one we know intimately yet barely understand, one we easily influence and are profoundly influenced by: our minds. As the ancient Delphi oracle advised, “Know yourself.”
The Mind, The Brain, and the In-Between
For a long time, researchers described the brain as a sophisticated computer: a system that receives input, processes it, and generates output in the form of feelings, decisions, and actions. Memory was seen as an integral part of this process, with some input stored for future use and retrieved as needed. The mind, in this traditional view, was simply a product of the brain.
By the end of the 20th century, however, this approach proved incomplete. The revolutionary discovery of neuroplasticity transformed our understanding. Our brains don’t just passively receive, process, and output information; they are also constantly changing and adapting. The truly fascinating part is that these changes aren’t solely a result of environmental input. They are also profoundly shaped by what was previously considered the brain’s “output”: the mind itself—our emotions, decisions, and, most importantly, our attention.
The Mind: A Self-Causal System
The first crucial conclusion from this understanding is that the mind isn’t merely the result of electrochemical processes within the brain. Instead, it emerges from a dynamic interplay between those neural processes, the environment, and, remarkably, itself.
This means the mind cannot be fully explained without referencing its own influence—a concept akin to Aristotle’s “primum movens” or “unmoved mover.” This perspective powerfully reaffirms the significance of our feelings; they are not simply byproducts of something else. They are, in themselves, deeply real and influential, deserving of the place we give them in our understanding.
Consider, for example, the experience of falling in love. While sometimes instantaneous, it often blossoms over time. That initial spark of interest directs your attention toward another person. You might find yourself imagining shared moments, physical intimacy, or even future plans like naming children. As you do, your brain literally rewires itself: the neural pathways associated with that person strengthen, your capacity to vividly imagine them grows, and your desire to continue thinking about them intensifies.
The Self-Reinforcing Nature of Our Minds
This is a powerful positive feedback loop that can expand exponentially. However, our minds also employ negative feedback loops. You can’t, for instance, spend every waking moment imagining your beloved. The demands of daily life and other responsibilities naturally regulate your focus. Eventually, a heartbreak might force your attention elsewhere, or if the connection is mutual, the relationship evolves. Your attention shifts from an idealized internal image to the real person, with all their complexities and imperfections.
Regardless of the outcome, this dynamic process fundamentally changes you. While love is a straightforward example, this principle applies to everything happening within your mind.
But what happens when the positive feedback loops become overwhelmingly strong, as they often do during war? When the entire environment—from the immediate shock of sirens and explosions to the pervasive fear reinforced by news headlines and social media feeds—relentlessly reinforces our focus on threat and fear, we must become our own regulatory force. We need to learn how to diversify our attention so that fear doesn’t dominate our mental landscape constantly.
This is where the idea of complexity proves useful once more. Each feeling and thought emerges from the dynamic interplay between us and our environment. Crucially, from the very same environment, multiple feelings can arise. This understanding allows us to appreciate the dual nature of our emotions: they are, on one hand, authentic and meaningful, but on the other, temporal and limited.
To be able to feel fear without becoming fear itself—to observe our feelings without getting caught in their grip—we can employ methods like mindfulness. The key is not to push away any feeling or thought, as pushing away is merely another way of giving it attention. Instead, we learn to avoid clinging to them.
Staying Focused Amidst Fear
While methods like mindfulness are incredibly valuable, their effectiveness can be limited, especially without consistent training, as most of us struggle to sustain focused attention for long periods. This is where we can leverage our brain’s inherent task-oriented nature, which is a powerful driver of our mental intensity.
The intense fear we experience often stems from activity in a part of our brain called the Default Mode Network (DMN). This network, responsible for mind-wandering, self-referential thinking, and often rumination, tends to quiet down when our brain is engaged in a focused task. This reduction in DMN dominance is a key reason why studies show people who focus on one task at a time are statistically happier.
Therefore, in challenging times, finding something to focus on becomes a vital coping mechanism. Whether it’s your work, a good book, a puzzle, a creative art project, or anything else that demands your focused attention, engaging in a task can help to temporarily “shut down” the neural circuits that perpetuate fear and rumination, offering a much-needed respite and allowing for more balanced mental states to emerge.
Quenched Disorder: The Balance of Mind
Still, sustained, rigid focus on a single task is also limited in its own way. There’s a reason our minds tend to wander, a reason any living system—from ant colonies to immune cells—shows a balance between wandering exploration and task-oriented movement. This reason is beautifully captured in the lyrics from the song “Audition (The Fools Who Dream)” from the musical La La Land:
A bit of madness is key
To give us new colors to see
Who knows where it will lead us
And that is why they need us
If we only focus on what we know we can do, we risk missing new possibilities and insights. So, we need to find a balance: allowing some time for our minds to wander, but doing so with an observant, mindful awareness—being careful not to grip too hard onto any particular feeling or thought—and, most of the time, engaging purposefully in tasks.
Getting Out of the Loop
Another critical thing to notice about complex systems is that once they settle into a particular state, they might struggle to shift out of it on their own. If you find yourself stuck in a prolonged “bad mode”—a cycle of fear, anxiety, or despair—it’s crucial to recognize this complexity and seek external support. Don’t hesitate to ask for help, both from friends and from mental health professionals. Understanding our minds as complex, dynamic systems empowers us not only to navigate daily struggles but also to recognize when we need a helping hand to guide us back to a more adaptive state.
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