Everything happened at 23 (and how it closed the loop at 45)

July 2003: Widener Library, Freud on repression; an Ipswich basement, the spine of Zarathustra; a Ugandan student commuting to a Harvard elective—three days that planted a five-stage model I only understood decades later.

  • 23yo cluster = origin shock (Freud ↔ Nietzsche).
  • Lifetime development mapped to a neuron pentad (θ, Σ, h(t), e, θ’).
  • Most “closure” is survivor-weighted feedback—unless we decentralize data.

The 23-year cluster

, Harvard’s Widener Library: reading Freud first-person and noting his guarded distance from Nietzsche…

The neuron pentad (Ubuntu series)

θ (World) → Σ (Perception) → h(t) (Ideology/Agency) → e (Operations) → θ’ (Embodied feedback). Ubuntu verbs: Ukuvula → Ukuzula → Ukukona → Ukubona → Ukukula.

What changes at 45

  • Operate at Stage 4: ship, mentor, institutionalize.
  • Audit Stage 5: feedback ≠ truth by default; it is survivor-weighted.
  • Corrective: decentralize data streams or myth will masquerade as closure.

Myth is survivor bias (usually)

When institutions canonize what persisted, they also inherit the measurement and selection filters that let it persist…

Appendix: a minimal neurochemical gloss

  • Σ (perception): noradrenaline (pattern alert).
  • h(t) (agency): NA → dopamine (overcoming drive).
  • θ’ (feedback): serotonin (hierarchy regulation; canon formation).

Use as a metaphor, not a mechanism.