Uncertainty, Belonging, and Consciousness: from birth to death

We usually imagine that the human mind seeks, above all else, truth. But, looking more carefully, perhaps that is not its most primary movement. From the very beginning of life, what we first seek is to reduce uncertainty, regain regulation, and feel belonging. Truth may come later. Sometimes it does. Sometimes it does not.

At the beginning, this appears in a very concrete way. The baby is not born with elaborate logical thought, nor with an organized critical sense. The baby is born in radical dependence. Its body still needs co-regulation: warmth, touch, smell, voice, rhythm, presence. The developmental literature shows that adult care helps sustain the baby’s physiological and emotional homeostasis, and that the caregiver’s sensory cues — touch, odor, face, and voice — participate in this regulation.

For this reason, the first form of belonging is not an idea. It is a bodily experience. Before any narrative, the baby learns something like this: “when the world becomes chaotic, there is another body that helps me return.” This is a decisive point for our lens of the Damasian Mind and Human Quorum Sensing: consciousness does not begin as a thesis; it begins as embodied regulation, as one body finding support in another body. This resonates with recent work on social allostasis and co-regulation, according to which meaningful bonds help stabilize internal states in uncertain environments.

At the same time, the baby is already learning regularities. The literature on infant development and predictive processing suggests that, very early on, the infant brain learns through expectation, surprise, and updating its models of the world. In other words, from very early in life we try to predict what will happen, and we feel when the world departs from what was expected.

Here a central point emerges: reducing uncertainty is not the same as finding the best explanation. Many times, it is enough to find a tolerable explanation. This is where narratives, beliefs, and forms of belonging enter as prostheses of stability. Classic models in social psychology, such as the Meaning Maintenance Model, show that when the sense of the world is threatened, people tend to reaffirm other structures of meaning in order to regain coherence. And Uncertainty-Identity Theory shows that identification with groups can reduce uncertainties about oneself, about life, and about the future.

From our perspective, this helps explain why so often we do not leave behind a fragile belief even when the opposing argument is simple. Not because the argument is bad, but because the belief is performing a metabolic and relational function. It reduces anguish, organizes chaos, and protects belonging. When this happens rigidly, we may say that the individual has entered Zone 3 simulating Zone 2. They seem to be at peace, but it is not real fruition. It is closure. It is rigidity protected by narrative. This formulation is ours, not a clinical category, but it is compatible with findings on social-cognitive rigidity, identity threat, and motivated reasoning.

In this reading, Zone 3 simulating Zone 2 may appear not only as an error of argument, but as a bodily signature of protective rigidity: a slightly tense jaw, subtly raised shoulders, higher and more symmetrical breathing, a smaller difference between the heart’s inspiratory and expiratory rhythms, the center of gravity shifted forward even while seated, and a reduction in the body’s degrees of freedom in space. The person appears calm, but is not in genuine fruition; they are merely contained within the narrative they adopted in order to tolerate uncertainty. Instead of critical openness and living flexibility, what emerges is a narrower, more vigilant, and less exploratory body, as if it could exist only within the line of meaning that protects it from chaos.

This is exactly where the problem of fallacious, non-stochastic arguments appears. A person may cling to a narrative because it was “right” once, or twice, or in a few striking moments. And a simple observation would be enough to show the logical fragility of that: even a stopped clock is right twice a day. The point of this sentence is clear: occasional accuracy does not prove a true underlying structure. But when the subject is anchored in an identity-based belief, that sentence has almost no effect. The reason is that the debate is no longer taking place in the field of probabilistic critique. It is taking place in the field of belonging-defense. Research on motivated reasoning and identity-protective cognition shows precisely this: information that threatens beliefs important to an individual’s or a group’s identity tends to be ignored, devalued, or reinterpreted.

For this reason, the whole of life can be read as a tension between two paths. One path seeks real belonging with openness to chance, error, and revision. The other seeks quick relief from uncertainty through rigid narratives. The first strengthens critical sense. The second may produce relief, but often at the cost of a less plastic consciousness. From infancy to old age, the question may not be “what should we believe?” but rather “how do we endure uncertainty without selling consciousness to a false certainty?” This reading is coherent with what the literature points to regarding the search for meaning, the reduction of uncertainty, and group identification, especially under threat.

Growing old, then, should not mean merely accumulating narratives. It should mean building the inner strength to tolerate what does not close perfectly. Maturity is not the absence of uncertainty. Maturity is being able to remain before it without dissolving and without becoming fanatical. It is being able to belong without needing to turn every doubt into an enemy.

In the language of BrainLatam2026, this brings us closer to real Zone 2: a state in which we do not eliminate complexity, but are not kidnapped by it either. Zone 2 is neither naivety nor anesthesia. It is critical openness with enough regulation not to depend on consoling lies. Zone 3 simulating Zone 2, on the other hand, is when narrative produces a false peace while blocking stochastic thinking, belief revision, and contact with the living body of reality.

BrainLatam2026 Comment: DREX Cidadão, belonging, and Decolonial Neuroscience

This theme also directly touches DREX Cidadão. When a society produces chronic material insecurity, it pushes millions of people toward a desperate search for rigid forms of belonging and simplifying narratives. A threatened social body tends to trade criticality for symbolic shelter. For this reason, belonging is not only a psychological issue; it is also a political, economic, and civilizational one.

In our reading of Decolonial Neuroscience, reducing uncertainty in a dignified way should not depend on dogmas, enemies, or affective manipulation. It should depend on concrete conditions of existence, bonding, critical education, and minimum metabolic security for all. A citizen who breathes less fear can think better. A less humiliated social body needs fewer false certainties in order to keep existing.

Closing

From birth to death, we never stop negotiating with uncertainty. Sometimes with courage. Sometimes with fantasy. Sometimes with science. Sometimes with belief. The problem is not having narratives. The problem is when narrative becomes a substitute for critical sense.

Perhaps the most human task of all is this:
to belong without imprisoning oneself, to seek meaning without idolizing certainties, and to learn how to remain alive within that which has not yet been fully explained.

Brief References

Graf NG et al. Neurobiology of Parental Regulation of the Infant and Its Disruption by Trauma Within Attachment (2022).
Buhler-Wassmann AC et al. Studying caregiver-infant co-regulation in dynamic, diverse interactional contexts (2021).
Bigelow AE et al. To have and to hold: Effects of physical contact on infants and their caregivers (2020).
Filippa M et al. Early parental vocal contact in neonatal units (2024).
Köster M et al. Making Sense of the World: Infant Learning From a Predictive-Processing Perspective (2020).
Berger A et al. Beyond Infant’s Looking: The Neural Basis for Infant Prediction (2022).
Heine SJ, Proulx T, Vohs KD. The Meaning Maintenance Model (2006).
Hogg MA, Wagoner JA. Uncertainty-Identity Theory (2020 entry).
Kahan DM. Ideology, motivated reasoning, and cognitive reflection (2013).
van Doorn M et al. The skeptical import of motivated reasoning (2024).
Abendroth J et al. Non-strategic detection of identity-threatening information (2022).