We speak of the modern world as if it has revealed new kinds of minds
as if neurodiversity were a recent invention.
But what if the world hasn’t become more diverse at all?
What if it has simply become more selective?
The Anthropocene hasn’t created new forms of mind.
It has changed which ones the environment now rewards.
This is the granularity problem
not an explosion of difference,
but a re-weighting of equilibria
a shift in which patterns of thought
the world makes room for.
For most of human history,
children grew up in environments
that rewarded patience, apprenticeship,
and the endurance of boredom.
These conditions biased the autonomic spectrum
toward the parasympathetic,
the branch of the nervous system
that steadies us, slows us, makes reflection possible.
In the language of TGTS
Thought Generator / Thought Selector Theory
Such environments cultivated an Interostate
that allowed access to the Thought Selector,
The inner faculty that chooses among thoughts
rather than simply reacting to them.
But the Anthropocene rewrites that fragile dance of life.
Childhood is now immersed in a symphony
of noise, novelty, and micro-stresses
that seldom gives a micro-reward.
The familiar Interostate
races faster,
burns hotter,
and stirs more inflammation.
Autonomic…