Activated Consciousness – Between Inner Value and Cultural Hijacking - Brain Bee Ideas
Activated Consciousness – Between Inner Value and Cultural Hijacking - Brain Bee Ideas
We live in an era where human consciousness can be continually activated by external stimuli, often reinforced by emotional or symbolic returns in cycles shorter than 72 hours. Although this kind of activation may seem harmless—or even pleasurable—it often reveals itself as a systematic hijacking of attention, time, and bodily energy. In this context, activated consciousness does not arise from interiority or values embodied by the body-territory, but rather from external commands: short videos, impactful phrases, religious slogans, narrative hooks, and monetizable emotional loops.
Neuroscience has shown that intense emotional experiences can form long-lasting memory traces if reinforced within a 72-hour window (McGaugh, 2004). When consciousness is repeatedly stimulated by symbolic rewards—likes, views, ritualized phrases, or promises of quick transformation—it becomes structured upon dopamine and serotonin systems that hinder the spontaneous dissolution of the activated state. As a result, the body remains in a persistent mode of alertness, craving, or repetition—even when the experience bears no real value for the individual’s life.
This process directly interferes with the development and sustainability of tensional selves, especially when these “selves” are molded by fleeting emotions without roots in enduring feelings. A self shaped by a constructive feeling—such as belonging, authentic love, or lived purpose—can be fragmented or even interrupted by successive cultural activations that overload the attention system and block deep symbolic processing.
This phenomenon becomes especially problematic when we consider the concept of Yãy Hã Miy, from the Maxakali people, meaning “to imitate in order to transcend oneself”. Originally, this process describes the formation of identity through deep experiential imitation—incorporating what is observed at sensory, motor, emotional, and symbolic levels. However, when this imitating-to-become is captured by algorithms or cultural slogans, it transforms into a “stimulus-driven self”, where consciousness does not guide, but is guided. Transcendence is lost, replaced by reactive performativity and a search for immediate identification, not meaning.
Neurophysiologically, this dynamic molds brain connectomes that are highly responsive to external stimuli but weak in integration. Brain plasticity—meant to organize experiences into cohesive networks of affective memory and identity—is hijacked by prepackaged narratives and instant rewards. The result is the formation of “improvised selves”—fragile and highly manipulable—which occupy consciousness whenever a new stimulus presents itself as an answer to the existential question: “Who am I?”
To prevent this chronic fragmentation of consciousness, it is essential that, in early childhood, foundational experiences be lived with depth, continuity, and relational presence. Science has already shown that prefrontal networks develop through experiences involving self-regulation, silence, enjoyment, touch, symbolic storytelling, and belonging without performance demands (Siegel, Schore, Zelazo, Tomasello). The brain needs slow rituals, internal rhythms, and non-monetizable symbolic spaces to shape a consciousness grounded in value.
Therefore, we advocate for a form of consciousness activated by inner values, guided by deep, self-regulated feelings. This is what enables the true Yãy Hã Miy - the process of becoming oneself through symbolic experience with the other. Conversely, consciousness activated by external forces with immediate emotional returns functions as a metabolic hijacking of the body, preventing it from living what it truly is.
The choice between a consciousness of value and a hijacked consciousness will become increasingly urgent in the years ahead. And it will be necessary to educate for silence, for the body, for rhythm, and for the symbolic—or we risk losing not only free thought, but also the very capacity to be.
