the mind is made of modules

In The Society of Mind, author Marvin Minsky describes at length a model of the human mind more like a democracy than a supercomputer. In this model, the mind is made up of countless relatively specific processes (which Minsky cals “agents”), each of which evolved over time to meet specific survival needs, and the interactions between which generate our more complex behavior.

I happened to be reading The Society of Mind in my youngest child’s first year of life and was stunned to see this theory play out quite plainly in her behavior. Feeding her a bottle before bedtime, I could watch in real time as the hunger and sleep modules competed: she would drift off, then suddenly snap into consciousness to drink a bit more, then slowly drift off again as the sleep module became ascendant.

Mindfulness Meditation Practice Supports the Modular Mind Theory

Robert Wright in Why Buddhism is True delves into this model (without crediting Minsky specifically) and argues that the “modular mind” theory and mindfulness meditation practice support each other. Very early in my meditation practice it becomes quite clear that I am not in control of my thoughts: “thoughts think themselves” as some say, or at least arise independently of my conscious volition. As Wright puts it:

When your mind is wandering…another way to describe it is to say that different modules are competing for your attention, and when the mind wanders from one module to another is that the second module has acquired enough strength to wrestle control of your consciousness away from the first module.

Wright goes on to explain the role of feelings as processes that give control of our conscious minds to specific modules based on stimuli in our environment:

In the modular model, feelings are the things that give a module temporary control of the show. You see someone who inspires feelings of attraction, and suddenly you’re in mate-acquisition mode seeking intimacy, being exquisitely considerate, maybe showing off, and in other ways becoming a very different person… It stands to reason that if these feelings of attraction and affection, of rivalrous dislike didn’t get purchase in the first place, the corresponding modules wouldn’t seize control. So one of the ideas behind mindfulness meditation—that gaining a kind of critical distance from your feelings can give you more control over which “you” is you at any given moment—makes perfect sense in light of the modular model of the mind.

More on how the presence of an attractive potential mate (or the image of one in a laboratory experiment—after all, our evolutionary wiring doesn’t know the difference between a photo and the real thing), can trigger feelings of attraction which make the “mating module” ascendant, causes major temporary changes to our minds and behavior:

So we have three things that can change about people who sense a mating opportunity: they can become crowd-averse, suddenly partial to intimate environments; their inter-temporal utility function can get re-calibrated [causing them to prioritize short-term over long-term gains]; and their career goals , at least for the time being, can become more materialistic. These three changes hardly exhaust the list of things that can happen to a person’s mind in mating mode, but already you can see why it’s tempting to think that a module—or a “sub-self” as Kenrick and Griskevicius put it—takes control of the mind when people are in the presence of a potential made who strikes them as attractive.

Making Friends with Your Modules

As a fun therapeutic intervention, I’ve taken to calling my more troublesome mental modules (like the ones that produce anxiety and depression) my “little buddies” in order to remind myself that they’re trying to help. The module that’s constantly reminding me of all the ways I or my loved ones could be hurt is just trying to keep us all safe—it’s just a little too enthusiastic about its job. Or the module that’s always pushing me to please others, it just doesn’t want me to get banished from the tribe and get eaten by a lion. Or the module that pops up thoughts that maybe I’m not good enough and nothing I do will ever amount to anything…it’s just the monitor trying to help me do better and avoid wasting my time. The point is that many types of psychological distress are the result of mental modules doing exactly the jobs they evolved to do, except our world grown beyond some of their utility. For me mindfulness, the practice of mental self-awareness, has been key to at least occasionally noticing when I’m starting to get carried away by one of these modules. And because modules get stronger the more you interact with them, I find dismissing them with a pleasantly patronizing “Thanks for trying to keep me safe, little buddy,” is an effective way to make them fade away for the time being.

• The Integral Guide to Well-Being, a family systems therapy resource, calls these modules “protectors” and has quite a bit to say about them.