A human being is a single whole, best viewed as a complex, modular network of interacting systems and capacities. All these ‘instruments’ have their own specific functions within the larger whole. The most important ones in the context of this piece are:

• The instinctive brain (the fast, evolutionary survival brain): This is our basic assessment system that primarily detects danger, opportunities, and simple causalities. Because this instrument operates largely unconsciously, automatically, and emotion-driven, it is stubborn and extremely difficult to change or improve. This also encompasses the fundamental emotional systems that react lightning-fast to changing internal and external stimuli. These systems can start operating better when other systems are actively trained and life experience grows.
  
• Reason / analytical capacity: The capacity for true abstraction, reflection, and critical thinking. This is something fundamentally different from spinning wheels and worrying—the latter is not thinking, but pure verbal noise; the symptom of a conflict that isn’t being dealt with adequately. Unlike the rather rigid intellect/instinctive brain, reason is more flexible and amenable to change. It requires a fair amount of energy and is changeable through serious study and/or dedication to a discipline. Over time, truly critical thinking, reflection, and intellectual honesty can become progressively easier.
  
• Fluid intelligence: Being able to process complex information quickly, working well alongside cognitive flexibility with which we can switch rapidly, getting better only through frequent use, as is the case with multiple systems. The question always remains what it is being deployed for… in any system.
  
• Intuition: Lightning-fast pattern recognition, partly conscious, partly unconscious. Learning to give it space is immensely valuable
  
• Synthetic thinking: Seeing wholeness, knowing and recognizing the whole is more than the sum of its parts, making connections, noticing everything occurs in a context.
  
• Discernment: The mental capacity to determine when one should act and when one should abstain, the ability to separate the wheat from the chaff and distinguish differences and characteristics in complex, nuanced situations. Being able to recognize which system should take the lead now and when to pause.
  
• Empathy: The capacity to ‘read’ others and put oneself in another’s shoes; also: sensitivity to atmosphere (reading the room).
  
• Emotional intelligence/competence: Being able to recognize and regulate emotions in oneself (and helping others with that), being able to communicate effectively without losing connection, being able to feel whether something ‘lands’. Also sensing what another needs or what kind of atmosphere exists. Likewise: no longer being excessively afraid of uncomfortable situations or potential friction with others. Daring to be honest and possessing self-reflection—generously acknowledging one’s own share in all kinds of social interactions.
  
• The body: The physical feedback loop to and from the nervous system. Partly this supplies direct data about the organism, partly it is pure projection from the brain. If the brain perceives a threat, the stomach clenches; if the brain is used to nicotine, the body reacts with restlessness after withdrawal. The body is never morally or intellectually ‘right’, it is no ‘beacon of truth’; the two-way system simply reacts fast and at best half-consciously to all kinds of inputs, generating a myriad of signals that the brain must then interpret. A lot can go right or wrong here.
  
• Other capacities: Fundamental capacities such as proprioception, contextualizing, concentration, the fight/fligt/freeze mechanism, imagination, sense of humor, sense of direction, perspective, creativity, musicality, language ability, and the like.

This highly varied set of instruments is inevitably conditioned and shaped by at least three forces: our genetic makeup (which dictates, but never fixates up to 30-50% of our personality traits, IQ, and baseline flexibility), early and later conditioning (such as internalized dogmas, emotional residues, norms, and values), and current environmental factors (socio-economic status, relationships, work, health). Nothing operates in a vacuum! All these and similar systems, along with ever-shifting circumstances, continuously influence one another.

The more trainable systems or instruments tend to gradually reinforce one another and can also learn to cooperate better. Thus, overall cognitive efficiency can steadily increase over time because, among other things, ‘reason’, intuition, EQ, and cognitive flexibility improve and become more strongly ‘connected’. And EQ and intuition improve because the other mentioned systems become more effective and more life experience is gained, and so forth. Neuroplasticity can achieve a lot, but it will never be flawless. Nevertheless, better is usually simply better. Naturally, things can also gradually impoverish or become further derailed due to all sorts of circumstances.

The Fable of the ‘Pure Compass’

Although all systems or ‘instruments’ are integrated into the body, that does not make them synonymous with it. Nor is the body synonymous with any single system. Furthermore, the human organism is full of conditionings, cognitive biases, emotional residues, identity-protecting resistances, prejudices, deficient knowledge, self-justification mechanisms, and conformist traits. Moreover, in the average human being, many of our inner instruments remain fairly underdeveloped.

Yet popular spiritual (wellness) culture claims that there is one subsystem that has miraculously remained immune to these influences and distortions and operates flawlessly: ’the body’!

But no single capacity is an infallible compass. Reason alone is wing-clipped, pure feeling is a rudderless wandering, and steering blindly by emotional-physical impulses is outright destructive. Fashionable mantras like “always follow your feeling”, “your body knows”, “the heart always knows best”, “the body doesn’t lie” do not survive confrontation with reality for even a second. They are intellectual pacifiers for those who dare not face the complexity of their own fallible organism—and consequently still long for, or believe in, one infallible instrument. How naive is that?! If I just listen to ’the body’, everything will turn out fine, right?

Quite apart from its childish simplicity, this kind of fashionable meme generates a dualistic division by setting head and heart, or ratio and body (body versus mind), against each other as a kind of enemies. People act as though the ratio is a cold, malicious mechanism that is also detached from emotions, feelings, and values. In doing so, an extremely complex, sensitive, modular network system is artificially sliced in two. It’s a laughable and cringe-inducing paradox: the culture that swears by ‘holism’ introduces a hyper-reductionist, dualistic schism here. That hostile image is fed by an obviously deep misunderstanding of what rationality actually entails and how fundamentally it is connected to the entire organism. But my ears are certainly not the enemy of my hands. My intuition doesn’t get in the way of my empathy, and neither opposes my ratio. And: these instruments or systems never operate truly independently of one another.

A wise human being utilizes and develops all modules as far as possible, without elevating one into an all-knowing tyrant, or demonizing another. Such a person also accounts for coincidence, interplay, and the often unpredictable side-effects of actions, and moreover realizes that he or she might be wrong.

If (inner) friction arises—and it will, no matter what—that means it must be thoroughly and rigorously investigated. Utilizing all systems, preferably. And not that one should quickly take refuge in a single canonized subsystem just to evade friction, look away, feel ‘good’ again quickly, or harvest cheap empathy—and in doing so, learn nothing once more. (Fortunately, this one-sidedness doesn’t really work either, whatever people try to fool themselves or each other into believing. But this attitude severely hinders growing up and becoming skillful, because it trains one-sidedness.)

The Body’s Status Report

The body does not supply universal wisdom, but a status report. It simply reflects the organism within a current context. It emits conditioned signals, triggers, and biological cues. It also makes all kinds of conscious and unconscious motives feelable. Without rigorous interpretation, critical reflection, and adequate knowledge, that is of precious little use to you. In fact: anyone who steers blindly by the sensations of their supposedly all-knowing body is guaranteed to drive themselves headlong into trouble.

The popular claim “the body never lies” implies a liar. “The heart has your best interests at heart” presupposes a malicious opposite. The spiritual world then immediately points to the head or the ratio. This is a false dichotomy. What people usually mistake for ’thinking’ is often not thinking at all. It is usually emotionally driven, anxious, and un-clear mental babble. It is the verbal noise of people who cannot zoom out, possess a mediocre pattern recognizer, display a lack of discernment, and refuse to learn how to consciously experience an emotion or feeling—let alone know how to truly think critically. If they could, or at least better, they wouldn’t spin their wheels and worry so chronically and get thrown off balance so easily.

Ironically, such people love trying to demonstrate the limitations of the ratio using quasi-rational arguments, thereby merely underlining their own lack of clarity once more. Everything in a human being is limited! The intellect, feeling, and thus also the ‘heart’ (or ‘body’). That should be common knowledge if you’ve been walking around for a few decades with your eyes open. The same kind of twisted reasoning is deployed to declare the body or heart all-saving.

The terms they use are, by the way, rather vague, metaphorical umbrella terms. Physical sensations, intuitions, feelings, and impulses are lumped together and placed opposite the wicked ‘being in your head’ or ‘being rational’. But these manufactured polarities are too limited and crude. You can’t do everything with ratio, but neither can you with just your body. Moreover, intuition is a mental capacity (pattern recognition) rather than a physical process. Naturally, consciously feeling through emotional charges is a good thing, and feelings and physical reactions shouldn’t constantly be suppressed. Of course, thinking clearly is sensible, and learning to use your intuition instead of ignoring it is a good plan.

Being in your head is obviously not optimal, and it’s clear that those body-and-heart slogans are intended as a remedy against that. But that ‘being in your head’ is sub-optimal doesn’t automatically elevate ’the body’ (or ’the heart’) into the best instrument. Replacing one one-sidedness with another is absolutely no progress. You generally can’t fix a mistake with another mistake. Because ‘body and heart’ form only a part of the complete set of instruments, just like the metaphorical ‘head’. Two halves still don’t make a whole in this context, whatever the wellness-spiri-culture might claim. And ‘body and heart’ are also, just like the other systems, full of the aforementioned conditionings, false needs, defense mechanisms, pollution, childish traits, residues, and evasive tendencies.

The Flight into Infantilization

Take the example of someone who grew up extremely sheltered and pampered. As soon as this person comes into contact with a critical counterpart, cognitive dissonance arises. This also manifests physically: a nasty knot in the stomach and heart palpitations. Anyone who now believes that “the body never lies” will henceforth avoid almost any form of healthy feedback ‘because it doesn’t feel good’. Any form of knowledge (or instruction) that feels too difficult, hard, or abrasive is subsequently evaded. After all, it must be nice and feel good! It is the ultimate justification for remaining emotionally and intellectually infantile. Yet cognitive dissonance belongs to growth and learning, just like doubt and wrestling with something.

But this soft-hearted, half-baked nonsense aligns seamlessly with today’s concept creep, where the meaning of psychological or spiritual terms is stretched further and further to pathologize everyday discomfort. A candid conversation is quickly labeled ’traumatic’ nowadays, and whatever isn’t laudatory, sweet, or affirmative is ever more rapidly dismissed as unkind, hurtful, or even hostile. Because ‘it doesn’t feel good’, ‘my heart said no’…

Once again: every human instrument can remain fragile due to lack of challenge and input, become polluted, be wrong, or claim leadership at the wrong time. There simply exists no subsystem immune to ’the lie’, misjudgment, or misconception. Never. So neither does the supposedly elevated ‘body’.

The Multi-Instrumentalist

Of course we desperately need our fast systems—truly thinking is, as mentioned, a rather slow system that costs quite a bit of energy. Many situations, however, demand immediate action, not a treatise. We live in a dynamic reality that frequently triggers and challenges us. When those fast systems are fed by a deep reservoir of knowledge, skill, and experience, they usually function surprisingly accurately—provided you keep learning and developing yourself.

But whichever way you slice it: one hundred percent reliability does not exist. Anyone who blindly trusts only a single instrument can count on a pile of emotional, physical, intellectual, and social misery—and never truly grows up. Anyone promoting a single subsystem as the ultimate truth is fooling both themselves and others. And that is harmful.

Remaining intellectually unskilled or emotionally incompetent takes little effort; the brain simply likes to operate in biological energy-saving mode. Cultivating yourself in a multifaceted way, on the other hand, costs energy, dedication, theoretical foundation, and external correction. It is exactly like learning to play the piano or guitar. Anyone can fumble around, but true skill never falls from the sky. Without effort and friction, no talent comes to fruition, in whatever field.

Essentially, we are all multi-instrumentalists in the making. We ought to understand, cultivate, and dynamically let our various fast and slow systems work together. Only when ‘reason’ is truly clear do you recognize the moment to switch to intuitive pattern recognition. When you’re power of discernment is online you know when to stop thinking and to make way for the physical or the unconscious creative. When empathy is online then you will feel when to stop taliokng and start listening. If all these instruments work together properly you know when you need to feel through an emotion, or when you should simply wait and shift attention to pure consciousness itself (which we leave out of further consideration here), or whether it’s simply time to go do the dishes. Not separately, or in conflict with each other, but together. That is the true art of being human, to my mind.

Smash out

In fact, as organisms, we are that entire collection of instruments. There is no separate conductor or producer operating the systems. That it was presented that way above was purely for convenience—and so as not to instantly inflame cognitive dissonance. Plus, language simply forces that structure and way of thinking upon us (there always is the projection of a ‘doer’).

There is no dwelling principle directing the show. There are interactive systems, sliders, and controls, but there is no controller, soul, or self. That changes nothing about the core of this argument, by the way. For should you wonder who is supposed to become that multi-instrumentalist? The answer is: the entire system. It is a self-learning orchestra that involves no separate ‘little I’. The word ‘I’ simply refers to the entirety of these complex, embodied systems. The whole modular ‘biocomputer’. That doesn’t sound very romantic, but it gives an integral and complete picture. And that was the point here. After all, it was an especially argument against one-sidedness.

Hans Laurentius – september 2026, The Netherlands