ESSAYS

Original research and thinking on human development

  • The Process & Purpose of Purpose

    How the brain composes meaning and why you should participate in the process

    Meaning doesn’t arrive fully formed. It’s composed—moment by moment—by a brain that ranks relevance, encodes emotion, and acts before you’re aware it has chosen a direction. This essay explores how purpose actually emerges, why instinct feels like truth, and what becomes possible when you consciously participate in the process instead of mistaking the map for reality.

    By Milo de Prieto

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    An illustration of a large sailing ship at sale at night to demonstrate how our minds are like ships always at sea, are we taking responsibility for the navigation when we need to?
  • Rethinking Maslow

    Rethinking Maslow

    Breaking with a hierarchy of scarcity to cultivate neuroecological abundance.

    Maslow’s famous pyramid positions personal meaning as the last stage of a hierarchy of priorities. Neuroscience shows something very different. The brain is a living ecosystem where purpose, connection, and creativity are daily requirements, not luxuries. When we stop climbing a hierarchy of scarcity and start tending our internal ecology, wellbeing becomes generative rather than conditional.

    By Milo de Prieto

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TOP TOPICS

An illustration of a tree showing its roots, trunk, branches, and leaves in harmony with its surroundings of sun, soil, water, and air to illustrate that the brain is an ecosystem, not a machine or computer.

Neuroecology

An illustration of city full of people where the buildings are part tall trees and part stone, metal, and glass to illustrate how society can live and evolve as an ecosystem. The people joyfully living in diverse community.

Quality of Life for All Life

An illustration of a woman (an every person) navigating a schooner by the stars to demonstrate the capacity to connect your cognitive identity and purpose to your work and living.

Cognitive Identity

ASD

ADHD

Human Development & Evolution