The Human, the Brain, and Their Things.

I didn’t want to write about psychology or neuroscience.
I didn’t want to write about design, architecture, or UX.
I wanted to write about us, not just as minds, not just as bodies,
but as creatures entangled in the world we’ve made.

We live in a world of things.
Some parts are natural, mountains, rivers, forests and endless skies.
Some parts are raw, stones, water, and air on a winter morning.
Some of them are cultivated, farms, fields, dams, dikes and walls, vineyards, and gardens by our houses.
But most of what surrounds us is, “reorganized nature.”

You can blame economics, saying we needed efficiency and chased wealth.
You can blame capitalism, saying we craved more than we needed.
You can blame technology, saying progress is inevitable.
You can even blame civilization itself, as if we were doomed to rearrange the world the moment we tamed fire.

The human and their things

But at the root of it all, it’s us, humans, reconfiguring, reshaping, rearranging. Maybe it's us leaving our mark, maybe it's us catering to our needs. Birds build nests out of trees, ants move sand like nobody's business, maybe it's just us being human.
We don’t just inhabit the world; we edit it. Nature doesn’t come to us, we reach into it, pull it apart, and put it back together in ways that make sense to us.

Rearranged molecules.

From caves, to cities to mobile phones. We build homes to shelter us from nature and then decorate them with remnants of it. We carve wood into furniture, grind minerals into glass, forge sand into silicon chips. We tame rivers, we sculpt landscapes, we summon forests inside concrete walls. 

The world is not just nature anymore.
Is it curated nature? Destroyed nature? Augmented nature? Reshuffled nature?
Every chair, every road, every algorithm, every book, every screen,
each one a remixed fragment of the physical world, bent to serve a purpose.

We are creatures of nature, yet we live in a world that is mostly unnatural.

The Brain and the World It Never Evolved For

The human brain, the same brain that once scanned open landscapes for predators, that once recognized the rustle of leaves as a warning, that once found comfort in the warmth of a fire and the presence of a tribe, is now navigating something else entirely.

We are wired for survival in nature, yet we spend our days in spaces we have engineered to be comfortable, efficient, stimulating.
We are wired for face-to-face connection, yet we communicate through pixels, voices carried by invisible waves.
We are wired to wander, hunt, gather, yet we sit, scroll, consume.

Our minds, shaped by forests, rivers, and open skies, now exist inside grids, screens, and endless notifications. We are still biological, still governed by the same ancient instincts, but our world has outpaced them. We have built something so unnatural, so synthetic, so designed, that our brains must now do something they were never meant to do: adapt to a world they didn’t evolve for.

And this raises a bigger question: Have we designed a world that fits us? Or have we forced ourselves to fit the world we’ve designed? Because if everything we build is just reshuffled nature, then what have we reshuffled ourselves into?

The world we’ve built, our reshuffled nature, demands something from us that our brains weren’t designed to handle. If we were shaped by open landscapes, communal living, and rhythms of light and dark, then it’s no surprise that when we force ourselves into the rigid structures of modern life, something breaks.

Stress. Burnout. Overwhelm.
They are not just personal failures or the result of bad time management. They are symptoms of a world that demands adaptation beyond what we are built for.

A World Moving Faster Than the Mind

Our biology evolves slowly, over thousands of years, in sync with the seasons, the rising and setting sun, the scarcity and abundance of food. But the world we’ve built moves at a pace biology never anticipated.

We were wired for short bursts of stress, fleeing from predators, fighting off threats, followed by long periods of rest. Now? Stress is constant. Deadlines. Notifications. A never-ending stream of information. The "fight or flight" switch never turns off.

We were wired for face-to-face connection, reading subtle facial cues, feeling the presence of others. facial recognition is the first things babies do, figure our smiles, eyes, and the loving gaze of a mother. One of the most meaningful yet primal visual stimuli. Now? We text, we email, we Zoom. A world of flattened digital interactions strips away the warmth of real connection.

We were wired for deep focus, one task at a time, hunting, gathering, creating, repairing. Now? We juggle 20 things at once. Multitasking, context-switching, trying to keep up with a flood of inputs.

We were wired for movement, walking, climbing, using our bodies every day. Now? We sit, and stare, at screens, at desks, at walls that barely change.

Every time we feel exhausted, unfocused, or overwhelmed, we don’t blame the system.
We blame ourselves. We think we need to be more disciplined. We think we need to be more productive. We think we need to "optimize" our time better, use the right app, wake up earlier, do more, be more.

But what if the real problem isn’t us? What if the real problem is that we are trying to force an ancient brain to survive in a world that no longer resembles the one it was built for?

We think of burnout as failure, but maybe it’s actually a survival instinct, a built-in signal that we are pushing too far beyond what we were meant to endure.

We reshuffled nature, but in doing so, we reshuffled ourselves, compressing time, compressing attention, compressing emotions into a system that doesn’t allow space to breathe. So maybe the pandemic of stress, burnout, and anxiety isn’t a flaw in individuals.
Maybe it’s a flaw in the system we built.

And if that’s true, the real question is: Can we unshuffle it? Can we design a world that works with us, not against us? Or have we already gone too far?

How do we design spaces, products, and cities that support, not fight against, our mental and physical well-being?

Is this where salutogenic design comes in?

Unlike traditional design approaches that focus on fixing problems after they arise (the pathogenic approach, treating illness, stress, or dysfunction), salutogenic design asks: How can we create environments that actively promote well-being, resilience, and cognitive ease?

Living in a faster world

It’s a shift from curing to preventing, from designing systems that just function to designing systems that nourish us.

And neuroscience plays a key role in this, because if we understand how the brain and body respond to their environment, we can intentionally create healthier experiences, whether in UX, architecture, or urban planning.

UX and Digital Environments: Designing for Cognitive Ease

Most digital experiences today ignore human cognitive limits.
They demand constant attention, force multitasking, and overwhelm users with choices.

Neuroscience tells us that:
Our brains crave predictability and clarity → Too many choices or ambiguous designs create cognitive load and stress.
We function better in flow states → But constant notifications, interruptions, and cluttered interfaces break flow and fragment attention.
Humans process visual information faster than text → Yet many interfaces still rely on dense menus and hard-to-scan layouts.

A salutogenic UX approach would focus on:
Minimizing cognitive load → Simple, clear interfaces, fewer decisions at a time.
Reducing interruptions → Instead of constant pings, designing systems that respect focus and deep work.
Human-centered personalization → Not just more recommendations, but better, context-aware interactions.
Encouraging digital well-being → Designs that help users balance engagement with rest, rather than addiction loops.

Think of it as designing for mental clarity instead of just usability.

Architecture and Urban Design: Cities That Heal Instead of Harm

Most cities are not built for humans, they’re built for efficiency, scale, and cars.
But neuroscience and salutogenic design suggest that the built environment deeply affects stress, cognition, and even longevity.

How the Brain Responds to Bad Cities:

Long commutes → Higher cortisol, increased anxiety, and lower happiness.
Concrete jungles → Lack of nature exposure raises blood pressure and slows cognitive recovery.
Overstimulating environments (noise, lights, crowds) → Chronic stress and sensory overload.
Monotonous, lifeless spaces → The brain craves variety, texture, and beauty—but many cities feel sterile and visually exhausting.

How Salutogenic Cities Work With the Brain:

Human-Scaled Design → Neighborhoods that are walkable, mixed-use, and not dominated by massive highways.
Biophilic Elements → Integrating nature, trees, water, and daylight into everyday spaces to reduce stress and improve focus.
Fractal and Organic Patterns → Cities with winding streets, varied facades, and softer edges feel more psychologically comfortable than rigid, grid-like layouts.
Quiet, Restorative Spaces → Just as our brains need sleep to function, cities need calm zones—parks, plazas, and green roofs that buffer overstimulation.
Aesthetic + Functional Harmony → Buildings that look good and feel good to move through—textures, warm lighting, human-friendly materials.

A city that nurtures the brain isn’t just “efficient.” It’s designed for human rhythms, not just traffic flow.

Homes for Humans: Spaces That Restore, Not Drain

Our homes should be where we recover from the world, but often, they contribute to the stress cycle.

Neuroscience-backed salutogenic home design focuses on:
Light and Circadian Rhythms → Using natural light, warm lighting at night, and layouts that align with our sleep-wake cycles.
Nature Integration → Houseplants, views of greenery, natural materials, small doses of biophilia reduce cortisol and increase well-being.
Acoustic Comfort → Reducing background noise (traffic, appliances, buzzing devices) helps lower stress and improve sleep.
Multi-Sensory Balance → A home should stimulate enough (colors, textures, meaningful objects) but not too much (clutter, excessive stimulation).
Clear Zoning of Spaces → Separating areas for work, rest, and socializing prevents cognitive confusion (e.g., working in bed trains the brain to stay alert instead of resting).

A healthy home isn’t just about style, it’s about how it makes you feel over time.

Can We Unshuffle the World?

The stress, burnout, and anxiety of modern life are not personal failures, they are design failures.
We reshuffled nature to serve economics, efficiency, and technology, but we forgot to design for human well-being.

Salutogenic design offers a path forward, whether in UX, architecture, or city planning, by aligning our built environments with our biological and cognitive needs.

Will we continue designing for speed, convenience, and economic growth at the cost of human health? Or will we start designing spaces, systems, and experiences that actually support the people who live in them? If we understand the brain, we can reshape the world. If we understand what makes us healthy, we can start unshuffling what we’ve broken.

And maybe, just maybe, we can build a world that doesn’t burn us out, but makes us feel alive again. Maybe we need to reinvent our relationship with nature, instead of using it for our own good, we need to acknowledge we are nature, and find a harmonious way to live with ourselves. Rooted in the deep understanding of what it means to be human, to be nature.