Polystasis, Money, and Happiness
Elsewhere, I (Bergquist, 2025) introduced the concept of Polystasis, building on the neurobiological concept of Allostasis proposed by Peter Sterling (2020). I (Bergquist, 2025, pp. 76-77) offered a summary of Sterling’s radical perspective on neurobiological functioning:
“We live in a world of allostasis rather than homeostasis. Introduced by Peter Sterling (2020) about the physiological regulation of our body, Allostasis refers to an organism’s capacity to anticipate upcoming environmental changes and demands. This anticipation leads to adjustment of the body’s energy use based on these changes and these demands. Allostasis shifts one’s attention away from a homeostatic maintaining a rigid internal set-point to the brain’s ability and role in interpreting environment meaning and anticipating environmental stress.
Peter Sterling (2024) puts it this way:
Nearly all physiological and biochemical regulation is continuously and primarily managed by prediction, even the smallest changes when a thought flashes through the mind and predicts something that needs either raising or lowering various systems to adjust to the predicted demand. Corrective feedback is used secondarily when predictions fail. To me, this is the origin and purpose of the brain, to manage these predictions. When our body returns to “normal” from a deviation, normal is not due to a set point but to the brain’s prediction that this is the most likely level of demand. How the brain does this across time scales from milliseconds to decades and spatial scales from nanometers to meters, is a huge mystery.
The interactions that occur between the brain and body are quick and fully integrated, making it difficult to distinguish between these two functions. The brain predicts and the body responses in a highly adaptive and constantly changing manner.”
I (Bergquist, 2025, p. 77) then introduced my own expansion on Sterling’s Allostatic model:
“While Peter Sterling, as a neurobiologist, has focused on the body’s use of neurotransmitters, hormones, and other signaling mechanisms, we can expand his analysis by looking at the function of stasis in all human systems. Not to distort Sterling’s important description and analysis of the allostatic processes operating in the human body, I am introducing a new term: Polystasis. I have created this word to designate the multiple functions engaged by complex human systems in addressing the issue of stasis. As Peter Sterling has noted, it is not simply a matter of returning to an established baseline of functioning (stasis) when considering how actions get planned and taken in a human system. . . . Polystasis blends the concept of Statics (stabilizing structures) with that of Dynamics (adaptive processes). Operating in human systems, we are guided by certain core outcomes that do not readily change (statics); however, we must also be open to modifying these guiding outcomes as our environment changes. As Sterling has proposed, the static notion of homeostasis is inaccurate . . .”
