The Wooden Man - When a Narrative Becomes Our Very Being

From blind faith to Yãy hã mĩy: we can belong, believe, and transcend our own Being.

Have You Ever Felt Someone Question Who You Are?

Think of someone you deeply love.

Perhaps they taught you a prayer, a gesture of respect, a political belief, or a particular way of seeing the world.

You learned by watching. You repeated words. You imitated behaviors. You received affection when you became part of that story.

Now imagine someone deeply questioning that belief.

What happens in your body?

Perhaps a memory emerges. An emotion grows stronger. You feel an urge to defend that person, that story, that sense of belonging.

We are beginning to meet our Wooden Man.

He learned to Be through imitation.

And he found a narrative so meaningful that he came to recognize it as his own identity.

I want to explore this with you, because perhaps we all carry some wood within our stories.

How Is a Wooden Man Born?

Imagine a child learning the names of things.

Family. God. Nation. Science. Money. Truth.

Each word arrives accompanied by people, gestures, emotions, and experiences.

The child learns which stories bring friends together, which behaviors receive recognition, and which symbols represent their community.

The wood of our character begins to take shape.

Each layer represents an incorporated experience: a habit, a belief, a memory, an expectation.

Over time, certain narratives provide so much security that they begin to organize what he expects to encounter.

One day, our Wooden Man meets someone with a different interpretation.

And he feels something extraordinarily intense.

That conversation seems to touch his very existence.

When a narrative becomes deeply embedded in our sense of belonging, questioning it can feel like questioning our very Being.

The Local Optimum of Blind Faith

Imagine finding a place where everything seems to make sense.

Your friends share your beliefs. Your experiences confirm your expectations. Familiar words offer answers and comfort.

It feels like a good place to be.

At BrainLatam, we use the metaphor of a semantic-affective local optimum, inspired by optimization problems, to explore this configuration.

Beliefs, emotions, memories, and social recognition form a relatively stable region of experience.

Our Wooden Man has found such a place.

His narrative works so well that every event begins to receive a familiar interpretation.

In our metaphor, blind faith emerges when identity becomes rigidly dependent on that interpretation.

This can happen with religious, scientific, economic, ideological, or political narratives.

Now think with me:

How can we experience a new interpretation when the familiar narrative also sustains our most precious relationships?

The Brain Learns, Predicts, and Feels

Neuroscience offers pathways for investigating this experience.

Our organism learns regularities, develops expectations, and updates interpretations as it encounters new events.

Memories, emotions, and social bonds participate in these processes.

Research on social identity and belief updating explores how group belonging influences the evaluation of information.

We can investigate aspects of these relationships using EEG, observing electrical responses during tasks involving expectations, conflict, and evaluation.

With fNIRS, we can study cortical hemodynamic changes associated with certain tasks and social interactions.

Each instrument provides specific measurements for developing and testing hypotheses.

From the BrainLatam perspective, these processes participate in the metabolic configuration of the Body-Territory.

A stimulus may already be participating in that configuration while attention is directed toward another experience.

When it gains attentional priority, its influence may increase.

In this way, a word associated with identity can mobilize powerful memories, emotions, and bodily responses.

The Screen Adds Another Piece of Wood

Now imagine our Wooden Man using a smartphone.

He encounters a video confirming an important belief.

He shares it. Receives comments. Feels recognized.

Soon, similar posts begin appearing.

Each image has been selected, processed, and presented through pixels.

His Body-Territory transduces light stimuli and participates in the resulting perceptual experience.

Our perception of reality is already a selection.

On a screen, we encounter a technological selection within that perceptual selection, further organized by editorial decisions and recommendation systems.

Understanding this offers a valuable possibility: seeking other perspectives, discovering different experiences, and expanding the questions available to us.

At BrainLatam, we propose a provocative thought:

We are mass-conditioned by choices we never had.

What stories would you like to discover to expand the possibilities of your own Being?

Yãy Hã Mĩy: Imitating to Transform

Now I want to bring our character closer to ancestral Latin American knowledge.

Among the Tikmũ'ũn people, also known as the Maxakali, we encounter Yãy hã mĩy.

In the Mundos Indígenas exhibition at the Federal University of Minas Gerais (UFMG), Isael and Sueli Maxakali present relationships between imitation and transformation involving animals, beings, and positions experienced within their community.

This contribution deserves to be understood within its own cultural, spiritual, and territorial contexts.

Inspired by this dialogue, we have developed an extended philosophical interpretation at BrainLatam:

Imitate Being to transcend one's own Being.

Imagine a child experimenting with the movements of an animal.

The child adjusts their posture, perceives rhythms, experiences gestures, and learns through that relationship.

Imitation opens possibilities for transformation.

Now think about our Wooden Man.

He also learned through imitation.

And he can continue learning by experiencing other positions.

Two Paths Within the Same Story

Our Wooden Man learned beliefs, gestures, and customs through imitation.

He found recognition and developed belonging.

His narrative became a local optimum.

Our extended interpretation of Yãy hã mĩy invites us to experience another movement.

We can use what we have learned to understand other experiences and expand the possibilities of our Being.

Imagine talking with someone whose faith differs from yours.

You listen to their stories, learn about their relationships, and begin to understand part of the experience behind their words.

Perhaps you discover another way of asking a question.

Your own sense of belonging participates in that transformation.

The Wooden Man learned to Be through imitation. Yãy hã mĩy invites us to continue imitating so that we may transcend our own Being.

The Atlantic Forest and the Freedom to Move

I want to take you back to an experience I lived.

I entered the Atlantic Forest barefoot, wearing only shorts.

I stepped off the trail and found roots, branches, and tangled vegetation.

I protected my skin while trying to preserve every branch.

At times, I had to crawl.

My hands found support. My feet sensed the terrain. Every movement revealed another possible passage.

There, I experienced a principle intensely:

Perceive what is possible.

Now imagine the Wooden Man beside me.

With each new position, he discovers another possibility.

His previous experience provides knowledge for his next movement.

And the forest participates in his learning.

Perhaps transcending one's Being happens in this way: we experience another configuration and expand our horizon of action.

Let It Come. Let It Be. You May Disobey.

At BrainLatam, we propose a sequence:

Let it come → Let it stay → Let it Be → You may disobey → Let it go.

Imagine a different idea entering your experience.

You allow yourself to become familiar with it.

You observe its meanings, emotions, and possibilities.

You can experiment with another position.

You can question an inherited narrative and develop your own interpretation.

And you can move forward, carrying the knowledge produced through that experience.

We call this possibility transcending one's Being.

We can respect our ancestors without reducing our Being to the limits of what they were able to perceive.

Our relationships can also participate in new forms of coexistence.

Jiwasa: Who Is Transforming Whom?

Notice how you have participated in this reading.

Perhaps you remembered a belief, a conversation, or someone you love.

Those experiences are already participating in the interpretation we are building.

At BrainLatam, we explore Jiwasa as shared agency.

One person offers an experience. Another contributes a difference. Their encounter allows both to explore new configurations.

Within our proposal, the Body-Territory is the smallest and indivisible unit of the State and participates in this collective construction.

Personalissima AI, Citizen Drex, Biome Income, and the investigation of Production of Excess form part of BrainLatam's proposed pathways for studying institutions that expand participation, autonomy, the foundations of life, and ecological responsibility.

Who Might You Become Tomorrow?

Now meet our Wooden Man again.

He carries stories, beliefs, and relationships that participated in shaping him.

A new conversation offers another perspective.

He experiments.

His story continues to participate in who he is.

The past offers knowledge. The present allows us to perceive and act. The future participates in the possibilities we begin to build.

We are heirs to the past, participants in the present, and jointly responsible for the futures we make possible for the next Body-Territories.

Perhaps our deepest freedom lies precisely in this movement.

Belong. Learn. Experiment. Transform our Being.

And now the question belongs to you too:

If we learned to Be by imitating those we love, what new possibilities can we explore so that our children may also be free to transcend their own Being?

Commented Scientific and Cultural References

Isael Maxakali, Sueli Maxakali, and Tikmũ'ũn collaborators (2023). Indigenous Memory and Sound Records — Listening to Tikmũ'ũn Documents. Explores knowledge related to imitation, transformation, songs, and beings within Tikmũ'ũn worlds, providing an essential Indigenous perspective for our dialogue with Yãy hã mĩy.

Isael Maxakali, Sueli Maxakali, and Indigenous curators (2025). Mundos Indígenas — UFMG. An exhibition presenting cosmologies and experiences from Indigenous peoples through their own perspectives, including the Tikmũ'ũn, Xakriabá, Yanomami, Ye’kwana, and Pataxoop.

Rosângela Pereira de Tugny and Tikmũ'ũn authors (2013–2014). Cantos dos povos morcego e hemex-espíritos and mõgmõka yõg kutex. Collaborative works documenting Tikmũ'ũn repertoires, narratives, songs, and knowledge, recognizing Indigenous narrators, writers, illustrators, and community leaders.

Silvia Rivera Cusicanqui (2018). Un mundo ch'ixi es posible. The Bolivian sociologist explores the coexistence of differences, experiences, and temporalities, contributing to our understanding of belonging and transformation.

Ailton Krenak (2022). Futuro ancestral (Ancestral Future). Connects ancestry, the continuity of life, and territory, expanding the conversation about cultural inheritance and future possibilities.

Van Bavel, J. J. et al. (2024). Updating the identity-based model of belief: From false belief to the spread of misinformation. Current Opinion in Psychology. Read the article. Investigates the relationships among social identity, belonging, information evaluation, and belief updating.

BrainLatam (2026). Local Optima — When a Belief Works Too Well. Develops the metaphor of semantic-affective local optima to explore the stability of beliefs, expectations, and belonging.

BrainLatam (2025). Yãy Hã Mĩy — Imitating Being to Transcend Being. Presents BrainLatam's extended interpretation of imitation, learning, and transformation of the experience of Being.

BrainLatam (2026). Jiwasa — Belonging Without Remaining in the Same Position. Explores shared agency as a possibility for experiencing different individual and collective configurations.

BRAINLATAM · W43/2026 · THE THREE-BODY PROBLEM