LEVELS
The Physics of Behavior
Why do people do what they do? LEVELS answers from the bottom up.
It starts with energy and constraint in physical systems, moves through metabolism, genes and the nervous system's threat machinery, and arrives at the habits, relationships and institutions that shape a life. At every level the same rule holds: behavior is what a system produces under the conditions it's in. Change the conditions at the right level, and the output changes.
That idea has a practical edge. It explains why insight alone rarely settles a nervous system tuned for threat, why willpower is a weak lever, and why people so often get blamed for being changed by what happened to them.
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Who it's for
Readers of Robert Sapolsky's Behave, Bessel van der Kolk's The Body Keeps the Score and Daniel Kahneman's Thinking, Fast and Slow. And clinicians who want mechanism under their methods.
How it handles evidence
Every major claim is labeled by how strong the evidence is. Where the science is settled, the book says so. Where it's a model, a debate, or the author's interpretation, it says that too. Metaphors are used to explain mechanisms, never to replace them.
The architecture
- Part I: Energy Without Us. Physics and chemistry, metabolism, membranes and signaling, prediction, allostasis, threat and flow, and culture.
- Part II: Energy With Us. Thresholds and motivation, the gap between demand and capacity, trauma loops, EMDR and memory, CBT, hypnosis and trance, network change, acceptance, social repair, and designing constraints.
- Part III: Essays. Diagnosis, ritual, hormonal architecture, sexuality, and machine intelligence.
About the author
Brad Flinn started his career in genomics labs at Celera and Applied Biosystems, then trained in sport psychology and mental health counseling. He has spent the years since as a therapist, most of them working with trauma. More about Brad.
Publishers, agents and press: bradflinn.lpc@gmail.com